Man was created in God’s own image and likeness.  This image and likeness is, however, not a physical one, it is a spiritual or soul likeness.  The likeness and image of the operation of the human soul—­the mind—­through the material, physical medium of the brain, is not only similar, but substantially and formally alike in every division of the human race.  It thus follows that fundamentally there is an identity of mental or soul activity and action in all the human race.  Neither color, nor form, nor feature, nor clime, operates a change on the formal and fundamental identity of human thought as evolved by the human mind....

It follows that the negro race, thinking the same thoughts, have the same apprehension of the perfect, good and true, and, thinking in the same lines as the Caucassian race, must needs be of the same order of creation, in the image and likeness of their Maker, although physically different in color, yet in mind and soul the same.  This, too, removes the theory of the inferiority of races, and relegates it to the lumber room of the mere physicist or corporal anatomist, who, because he cannot find life in death any more than thought, would deny life as he would deny the soul, even as La Place would not admit a Creator—­God—­ because he could not see him at the end of his telescope....

Naturally working for and under white men, their industry, versatility and submissiveness have made many people think they were an inferior race.  This cannot be.  Give them a fair chance in life’s battle, train their minds, fill their immortal souls with worthy conceptions of the truth as only presented by the Roman Catholic Church, and you will make of the negro race a kind, charitable, intelligent, worthy Christian people, as full of love for the country of their former enslavement as the best patriot descendant of the Revolutionary fathers.  Tried in peace and in war when they have received but half the training of the white race, they have not been found wanting, but have proven themselves worthy of offices of trust and honor in every sphere of life and as good Christians as God has ever granted His divine grace to.  His promises are for all nations and for all times, and necessarily for the negro as for the white man, all of whom in their souls are created in His own image and likeness from the beginning.

Apropos of Romanism among the colored people, Archbishop Janssens, of New Orleans, writes: 

     Last year there were baptized 3,705 colored children and 297
     colored adults, which I estimate forms a population of about
     75,000 Catholics in this Diocese.

We have six convents of colored Sisters, of which four are schools, one an asylum for 74 girls, and the other an asylum, for 21 old women.  There are, besides, nine schools conducted by white Sisters, and eleven schools conducted by lay teachers—­in all, twenty-four schools with 1,330 scholars.  It is not bad.

At Emmetsburg, Maryland, the Roman Catholics report the following: