press, but what is he going to print--the Police Gazette or the Gospel
of St. John? You have built your college and found your young man, and
trained him up to the very highest point of mental excellence and power,
but what is he going to do with his mind? The mind is only an instrument
under the direction of the man. The great thing is the ethical man who
is going to use this mind. If there is any thing the American people
need to learn, it is that there is one thing greater than talent, and
that is character--the love and regard for righteousness.

It is here that this Association does its work in the genuine way,
regarding education as necessary for the colored race and for all races,
not as an end in itself, but as an instrument in the hands of a man
ethically and Christianly trained. The gospel must go with the school,
so that we may train not only the hand and the brain, but also the
conscience and the heart. When I think of the future of the Negro race
in America, of the possibilities of that race already being revealed, of
the immense political significance of its position to-day, of the
certain increase of its numbers, of the inevitable collision of races by
and by, unless there be a change in the spirit of the whites, I feel
that no education is to be trusted but Christian education, an education
based on the gospel of Christ.

And to what purpose can any of us, with better hope of success, devote
our time, our money, our labor? Let us have more money for this work. I
would say no word to depreciate foreign missions, but is not this after
all the work of foreign missions? How will you influence the future of
China, or of Japan, or of Africa, or of Europe, in more direct,
sympathetic, permanent ways, than by giving the gospel, and the
education that goes with the gospel, to those at our very doors from all
these lands, who shall carry back, and send back, to their own native