it was drawn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  The text was, “Who is my neighbor?” The address of the honored late President of this Association at the close of the last Annual Meeting which he attended, was in the trend of this very same Scripture.  “This organization,” he said, “is the Good Samaritan, loving to bestow its aid upon the poorest and most despised, the most severely wounded races of our country.”  The sermon, a score of years ago, told us that our neighbor was the Negro, just then made free.  So said President Washburn, “If you can point out to this organization any race that needs its assistance, whether colored or white, there is the legitimate field of this Association.”

It would seem that a law so emphatically taught by Jesus Christ as the common brotherhood of man, and so familiar to the world, would long ago have been accepted and adopted in the practice of Christian nations, especially by a Christian Republic within its own borders.  But, instead of that, it is the hardest of all laws for us to learn and the most difficult of all to put in operation.  Our policy toward the general colored races in this land has been one of cold-hearted and cruel selfishness.  As ex-Senator Brace has said, speaking in behalf of his own people, “From the red race was taken their lands, from the yellow their labor, from the black their persons.  The red race was gradually driven toward a setting sun; the yellow race, the rabble demanded to be driven from the country; the black man was a slave in chains, with no rights which the Constitution recognized.”

These unjust prejudices are by no means altogether a thing of the past.  They are not as violent as they once were, thanks to the influence {160} of this Association, but they still exist.  “Niggers,” are still ordered out of Southern churches.  Many a professed Christian still wants his Indian “dead.”  This work has all along been compelled to fight its way against suspicion, bigotry and hatred; it must do so still, because it recognizes man as man, whether his skin be white or black, red or yellow; and, in taking this radical ground, it is interpreting to the world the benevolent spirit of the Saviour, and is preparing the way for that universal reign of love on earth which He came to establish.  Such a work as this is the salvation of our Christianity.  Without it, one of the chief evidences for Christianity would be taken away, and the spirit of it would die.  Standing before a congregation of white men, Negroes and Indians, with a Chinamen or two to make the tale complete, President Mark Hopkins last May dedicated the new chapel at Hampton to the worship of Almighty God.  He voiced the sentiment of this whole Association when he said, “Here will be taught and promoted a Christianity as narrow in its creed as revealed truth, and as broad in its love as humanity!” “A creed as narrow as revealed truth.”  Yes! we want no inspirations from outside the sacred book.  “A love as broad as humanity.”  By all means, yes! for no smaller measure will satisfy the demands of that book or fulfil the will of the Master.