1. Slavery has been abolished, and the young Negro has not felt it. He has, therefore, missed its direct evil training. It is not denied that he is damaged because he was trained by a father who was brought up in slavery; but it is claimed that he has not received from his father, and cannot receive, as much injury as his father received from the system of slavery.
2. The young Negro now has the gospel. The many thousands who came to Christ in the days of slavery, and are now at rest from their earthly toils and sufferings, are not forgotten. That they were saved is due to the fact that, owing to God's infinite goodness and mercy, a little knowledge and a little faith can save a sinner; and God pitied our fathers. But the young Negro now has the gospel in its fullness. He gets it from the pulpit, from the Sunday-school, and daily in scores of our highest literary institutions. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and our youth, constantly learning it, have in large numbers been made to feel its power. Their lives having thus been purified and ennobled, beautiful and strong Christian characters have resulted.
3. Many young Negroes have been thoroughly trained for the ministry, who have led strictly upright lives and have taught others to do the same; and many others, not ministers, have enjoyed systematic training in ethics. Is it conceivable that the combined work of this class of our young people has accomplished nothing in the moral uplifting of the race? Such work must and does count powerfully on the right side, or else the gospel is a failure. Just as heathen nations have been redeemed and regenerated, having put away their savage life and accepted civilization and Christ because the gospel was preached to them, even so has our race been saved; and just as no other people ever received the gospel without being immeasurably blessed and lifted up, so also is that true of the Negro. And it is further true of all men that the more gospel privileges they enjoy, the better will be their condition. For the kingdom of evil is sure to be overthrown, and the kingdom of Christ established on the earth. And thus the young Negro cannot help being a better man morally than his father.
4. The young Negro is living in an age of higher morals and necessarily partakes of its superior advantages. The age of brute force is fast passing away. When after our great civil war the adjustment of our troubles with England was arranged by arbitration rather than settled by war, an immense stride in civilization, men say, was made. Very true, but why not say that the men in control of the two great nations involved were moved to act as they did because of their strong ethical principles? And from that time until now the moral advance of the world has been rapid and steady. The new Negro is living in this higher and better age, and his moral constitution has been built up and made strong because of it. The principles of international comity are fast spreading among the nations. And just as the economic principles of the trust are being applied to religious organizations, even so the stronger ethical principles that are moving the nations are inducing Christian white men to come nearer to their brethren in black, and to treat them more as men, brethren, than has ever been done before. And thus both external and internal forces have combined to make the young Negro morally better than his father.
5. And, last of all, the young Negro is turning his social and political disadvantages to his best interest by relying calmly upon the justice and wisdom of God's moral government. Life is, indeed, but a conflict of forces, but the intelligent young Christian Negro knows that the universe does not operate by chance. He feels the full force of what Charles Sumner said in his eulogy on Abraham Lincoln: "In the providence of God there is no accident—from the fall of a sparrow, to the fall of an empire or the sweep of a planet, all is controlled by divine law." And thus he lives undisturbed by the wrathful elements that are at play around him. His full confidence in God at this trying hour, and his firm belief that the wrath of man will yet be turned to his advantage, are but the evidence that he trusts intelligently; and the fact that he does so, and does not become an anarchist, is the proof of his higher moral life. If it be said that his father did not become an anarchist, the answer may be that slavery had dispirited him. But the young Negro is not dispirited. He knows enough and has spirit enough to make this country tremble; but whatever knowledge and spirit he has which could be used for evil, he has restrained and will yet further restrain, because he has abiding confidence in God, and knows that "giant right is more than might;" and this confidence has aided in making him a better man than his father.
SECOND PAPER.
IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?
BY REV. J. S. FLIPPER.
