“Mr. Thomas I try to be, and I hope I am a Christian, but if these prejudices are consistent with Christianity then I must confess that I do not understand it, and if it is I do not want it.  Are these people Christians who open the doors of charitable institutions to sinners who are white and close them against the same class who are black?  I do not call such people good patriots, let alone clear-sighted Christians.  Why, they act as if God had done wrong in making a man black, and that they have never forgiven him and had become reconciled to the workmanship of his hands.”

“Charley, you are excited just now, and I think that you are making the same mistake that better educated men than you have done.  You are putting Christianity and its abuses together.  I do think, notwithstanding all its perversions, and all the rubbish which has gathered around its simplicity and beauty, that Christianity is the world’s best religion.  I know that Christ has been wounded in what should have been the house of his friends; that the banner of his religion which is broad enough to float over the wide world with all its sin and misery, has been drenched with the blood of persecution, trampled in the mire of slavery and stained by the dust of caste proscription; but I believe that men are beginning more fully to comprehend the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am not afraid of what men call infidelity.  I hold the faith which I profess, to be too true, too sacred and precious to be disturbed by every wave of wind and doubt.  Amid all the religious upheavals of the Nineteenth Century, I believe God is at the helm, that there are petrifactions of creed and dogma that are to [be] broken up, not by mere intellectual speculations, but by the greater solvent of the constraining love of Christ, and it is for this that I am praying, longing and waiting.  Let schoolmen dispute and contend, the faith for which I most ardently long and earnestly contend, is a faith which works by love and purifies the soul.”

“Mr. Thomas, I believe that there is something real about your religion, but some of these white Christians do puzzle me awfully.  Oh, I think that I will go.  I am sick and tired of the place.  Everything seems to be against me.”

“No, Charley; stay for your mother’s sake.  I know a noble and generous man who is brave enough to face a vitiated public opinion, and rich enough to afford himself the luxury of a good conscience.  I shall tell him your story and try to interest him in your behalf.  Will you stay?”

“I certainly will if he will give me any chance to get my living and help my mother.”

“It has been said that everything has two handles, and if you take it by the wrong handle it will be too hard to hold.”

“I should like to know which is the right handle to this prejudice against color.”

“I do not think that there is prejudice against color in this country.”

“No prejudice against color!” said Charley Cooper,[9] opening his eyes with sudden wonder.  “What was it that dogged my steps and shut door after door against me?  Wasn’t that prejudice against color?”