to the benefits of salvation as the white man.  But”, he adds, “what do we see?  Nearly all the bodies of Christians even, except the Roman Catholics, shuffling to set the Negro apart and leave him largely to his own ways, shuffling out of their responsibility according to the gospel which they profess as their guide, and putting the Negro apart in spite of the word of God, whom they worship, that he is no respecter of persons.  The Negro was brought over here by theft and outrage.  He is here to stay, and we must deal with him according to the golden rule, and as we would wish to be done by if we were similarly placed.”

This is not a quotation from the National Council of Congregational Churches, where such an utterance would both by nature and by grace find expression, but it is from the pen of an officer of the Southern Confederacy, who knows the light when he sees it, who keeps open an honest eye, and who does not hesitate to speak from an honest mind.  This sentiment balances somewhat of that which pleads against the black man, and not a few friends of this kind has the American Missionary Association won to itself throughout the South.  It never had so many who are saying:  “Yours is the most practical missionary work ever undertaken by a Christian body.”  “You have won our confidence by your spirit and your methods; you have our cordial sympathy.”  At the same time we recognize the fact that both prejudice and partisanship are now making strenuous efforts to create the judgment that the Negro should be stripped of his civil rights and that his education is going on too rapidly.  For example, the Southern Journal, whose Christian sentiments of six months ago, just quoted, with another editor to-day, comes to us with another deliverance, probably nearer to the heart of most of its constituency, saying:  “The Negro is not a fit subject for Northern missionary effort.  Northern money is not wanted to build him schools, and Northern teachers and preachers are not wanted to improve his mind nor to save his soul.  He should be let alone.  He is out in the water:  let him swim.  He should be left alone to work out his own salvation.”  The editor who says we must save him is an ex-Confederate officer who has always lived in the South.  The editor who says he should be left alone is a Northern man who has gone South to live.  The first writes, noblesse oblige.  The second does not understand the language.  He, doubtless, has the largest constituency.

The pulpit also creates and voices public opinion.  Our work is coming to get many a good word from the Southern pulpit.  But a Southern white bishop—­Bishop Pearce—­did not write to unwilling ears when he said:  “In my judgment higher education would be a calamity to the Negroes.  It would elevate Negro aspirations far above the station which the Negro was created to fill.  The whites can never tamely, and without protest submit to the intrusion of colored people into places of trust, profit, and