literature, its art, and even its own characteristic religious expression, just as marked and important as those produced by any other race?  Certainly we have as much reason for believing it as that the Teutonic race of the second century should produce its Goethe and its Schiller, its Kant and its Hegel, its Luther and its Melanchthon; or that the Frank of the fifth century should develop its Victor Hugo, its Lamartine, its Madam de Stael; or that out of the barbarism, the cannibalism, the paganism of Norseman, Briton and Saxon, there should come Shakespeare, Spencer, Macaulay, Browning and Gladstone.  And we may not have to wait as long; for in spite of slavery’s binding chain thrice drawn round his soul, the American Negro has been absorbing during the past from a civilization which has been fitting him somewhat for the large Christian movement of the present.  We are working for a people which in all probability will form at least one-eighth of our whole population; and we have the problem of lifting them as a race up into Christian enlightenment.  The dark skin is growing darker.  There will be less and less of intermixture of blood between the two races.  Hence all study of this educational question must have in view the large moral and intellectual enterprise of dealing with a race as a race.  I believe that there is nothing in all history to compare with this opportunity which has come to our very doors.  Here is a nation in our land and with it every perplexity, every difficulty, every embarrassment, and also every encouragement, every hope, and every inspiration for work, that can appeal to any foreign missionary.  Here is this God-given task laid at our very thresholds and with all the sentiments of patriotism and Christian devotion urging us to our large privilege.

What the race needs now is right leadership, and for many years to come we are to equip men and women religiously and intellectually, who, in home, in church, in social and business life, will be moral and social leaders.  And by this power of leadership I mean something far other than those foolish conceits which have taken possession of a few who have touched only the surface of the new life that is coming to this people.

I have rather in mind leaders who shall have that moral and intellectual fitness which produces reverence, earnestness and humility, leaders who can draw their people away from their foolishness, weakness and self-consciousness into the larger life that is possible for them.  Without a {97} doubt, what is needed is true leaders, and I wish to show where these leaders are now demanded.

Before the war, the South knew nothing of the benefits of public schools, and the private school was in harmony with its social and political conceptions; but of late, and especially during the last decade, a remarkable change has taken place which is doing as much to affect the whole Southern problem as anything that has occurred there during half a century.  It is a movement in the South, which, however imperfectly it has been developed as yet, has come to remain, and will ultimately affect every institution, social, political and religious, in our section of the country.