indefensible form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain
truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is
difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach
on the parable of the Good Samaritan if his church refuses to recognize
a Christian brother in one of another race because he belongs to another
race. There is no reason for an attempt to corral all men of all races
in one inclosure; but for any church, especially for a church of the
Puritans, to enter upon missionary work in the South, and initiate it by
refusing to admit to its fellowship a black man because he is black, is
to apostatize from the faith in order to get a chance to preach the
faith. To assert equality and brotherhood at the polls, to reaffirm it
in a public school system, to reassert it by courts of law in the hotel
and the railroad train, and then deny it in the church, would be indeed
a singular incongruity, and would make the Nation more Christian than
the church.

The principle, then, by which the color-line question is to be settled
is very simple, though its application may in some cases present some
difficulties. The whites and Negroes are not to be coerced or bribed
into uniting in one and the same church organizations. If they prefer to
worship and to work separately, they must be allowed so to do. This is
within their Christian liberty. But it is not within their Christian
liberty to refuse the fullest and most perfect Christian fellowship to
each other. The doors of every Christian church must stand wide open to
men of every race and color. The only reason of exclusion must be in
moral or spiritual character. And in the higher representative bodies
these churches must be one. To organize, for example, in the State of
Georgia two Congregational bodies, one white and the other colored,
would be to organize a church to perpetuate divisions which the church
should aim to obliterate. It were far better that the Northern Church