by an appeal to the results of dispassionate observation and reflection, we shall find only its confirmation. Outside of religious movements, the other activities of man in modern civilization all emphasize the same idea with the strangest unanimity. Science comes to say through Darwin that all nature in time and space is a process of nurturing individuality,—the principle of survival of that which develops the most intelligence and will-power. Nature is a process for the creation of souls. It implies, of course, the supremacy of mind, since all its lower processes exist for the production of spiritual beings; they depend on mind, so to speak, and demonstrate the substantiality of mind. Mind is the final cause and purpose of nature. This again implies that mind creates nature to reflect it. God creates nature, and through nature creates spiritual beings who participate in his blessedness. Hence nature presupposes a God of grace and good will towards his creatures.
Through Comte and Spencer Science also announces altruism as the highest law of social existence, and as the necessary condition for the most perfect development of individualism. Finally, the political and industrial activities proclaim the same thing: the former by continual approaches towards democracy; the latter by the progressive introduction of machinery to perform the drudgery of labor, and to elevate the human being to a directing power using and controlling the forces of nature. Without machinery he used his bone and sinew to obtain his livelihood, and was a "hand;" but with the aid of machinery he saves most of the severe bodily labor, and substitutes for it brain labor and directive intelligence. Hence man's wants have come to necessitate his intellectual education and the development of his individuality. All the people as people must be educated in schools, in order to secure that directive power over nature requisite for national safety in a military as well as in an industrial sense.
Thus religion, which states the deepest principle of our civilization, is confirmed by the scientific, political, and social movements of our age, and all agree in this supreme doctrine, that the lowest must be lifted up by the highest,—lifted up into self-activity and full development of individuality.
Religion states this in sentimental forms. Science and philosophy echo, with more or less inadequacy, the dogma of religion in their account of the physical and social structure of the universe. The one lost sheep shall occupy more attention than the ninety and nine that went not astray. The return of the prodigal furnishes the chief source of blessed satisfaction and joy in the divine world.
It is evident that any problem relating to a lower race, savage or downtrodden, must be discussed in the light of this religious principle. The utterance of Mr. Winthrop, quoted above, in regard to the race problem in the South was dictated by this lofty ideal of our civilization. Fortunate it is for our age, too, that science has come to an altruistic first principle, and is in process of readjusting all its conclusions in subordinate spheres so as to harmonize with it; likewise fortunate that the political and social welfare is now seen to involve the care of the weakling classes, and their elevation into self-help by moral, industrial, and intellectual education.
I shall endeavor here to expand and apply these considerations to our race problem, and to show how this Christian solution meets the given conditions.
The negro was brought to this country as a slave almost from the date of its first settlement. Two hundred and fifty years of bondage had elapsed when the issue of civil war set him free. He had brought with him from Africa the lowest form of civilization to be found
