Let your attention be given to the careful training and education of the rising generation, that they may be useful, and justly command the respect of their fellow-men.  Labor for a competency, but give not your whole attention to amassing the wealth that perishes; but seek to lay up for yourselves “treasures where moth doth not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.”

Suppose not, my brethren, that your task is a light one, or one that can be performed without years of patient toil and unyielding perseverance.  Our oppressors are not very ready to credit our exertion,—­too often forgetting the effects of our long degradation, and vainly expecting to see us arise at once, to the highest standard of elevation, able to cope successfully with those who have known no such discouragements or disadvantages, as has been our lot to bear.

These and many other obstacles must be bravely met, and assiduously removed,—­remembering that Slavery has robbed some of us, and prejudice many others, of that perseverance so necessary to the accomplishment of any enterprize; but in the elevation of ourselves and race, let us never falter and grow weary, until we have reached the elevated station God designed us to occupy, and have fitted the rising generation to fill and improve it after our earthly course is finished and we leave to them the stage of action.

Allow me, however, to entreat, that no success which may attend your determined efforts; no position which you may attain,—­may ever so occupy your mind, as to cause you to forget for one moment, the afflictions of your countrymen, or to cease to remember the groaning millions in bonds, until every slave shall triumphantly chant the song of deliverance from Slavery’s dark prison house.

Bear with me, my dear brethren, while I claim a friend’s license, to say, that I would not that you place implicit confidence in any of the political organizations of the present time; but remember that the majority of those parties are diligently laboring for their own interest.  Look you then to yours; are you less capable of securing your rights than they?  Never was there a time when indolence and supineness among us, would be so unpardonable as now, nor when so much depended on our active and judicious exertions.

Let us not forget, that in the past, we could and did truthfully complain, that we had no helper,—­bound and crushed beneath an overwhelming weight of prejudice and ignorance, we lay helpless at the feet of our political spoilers.  A favorable change has since been effected in the public sentiment; and now that we see thousands who are willing to aid us, and as many more who will not hinder our labor,—­shall we fold our hands in idleness?—­or shall we renew our energies, in the cause of freedom and of our own advancement?  Although we may not implicitly rely upon the political exertion of others, let us not fear to co-operate with the friends of liberty everywhere, as far as a good