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 responsibility." This, you will observe, is from a minister of
Christ. It is from a bishop of a church. It is from one who prays our
Lord's prayer, given alike to white and black. "After this manner,