_Dr. Hartranft’s Sermon._—“Christ stood not for any one race, but
for every race and every nationality, and whenever we take this cup
we pledge ourselves to put aside all barriers of race, all barriers
of nationality.”
_Capt. Pratt._—“If you wish Indians to live like citizens, you
must let them see how citizens live, must put them for a time in
well-bred communities. The kind of citizens that make free use of
the revolver, they know too much of.”
“I have seen a Western village with eighty-four graves in the
grave-yard, and only one man died a natural death.”
_Dr. Brastow._—“Diogenes with his lantern has been 250 years
hunting among the blacks for a man. Let this Association do its
work in one-fifth of that time, and Diogenes will put out his
lantern and find his man without it.”
_Prof. Cyrus Northrop._—“Your uneducated bad man can be no worse
than a brute. Your educated bad man is a demon. Hence, the
education we give the colored man must be Christian.”
“Votes are the impulses that every man gives to the ship of state
in the direction of safety or of danger.”
_Secretary Strieby._—“When diamonds were found in Africa they
might, in their native condition, have been carried away by
cart-loads without suspecting their value. It was only when they
were cut and polished that men knew their true value. The worth of
the colored people, these black diamonds, cannot be known until
they are educated.”
_Gen. Howard_ alluded to the Exposition at Atlanta where all
kinds of _wares_ illustrating the progress of the South are now
on exhibition, and then felicitously introduced the President of
Atlanta University as a _Ware_ that was having a wonderful effect
upon Southern progress.
When Mr. Wright, the colored man from Georgia, was reading his
address, a venerable white man, more than eighty years of age, came
forward, and resting his elbows upon the platform at the foot of
the desk, with bowed head listened with rapt attention. The scene
was most suggestive, and in the hands of artist Rogers would make
an admirable companion group for “Uncle Tom’s School.”
_Rev. L. Dickerman_, referring to the treatment received by the
Chinese on our Western coast, exclaimed in a tone of indignation:
“I don’t blame them for wanting their bones sent home when they
die.”
In reply to the complaint that the Chinese don’t assimilate with
our people, he says: “Don’t assimilate? It takes two to assimilate.
We stone them, beat them, shoot them, kill them, and then wonder
they don’t send straight to China for their wives and children to
come and enjoy this higher civilization.”
_Prest. E. H. Fairchild_ said that he knew of no people who
contribute for religious purposes so much in proportion to their
means as the colored people South. “They almost universally take
collections every Sunday, and often twice or three times a Sunday.
There is no danger of their relapsing into heathenism.”
“This blessed Association, ... and the dear old American Board, and
the Home Missionary Society, thank God, are one to-day, and all
past bitterness is forgotten.”
_Prest. E. H. Fairchild_ said that the anti-slavery revolution,
despite the indifference of some churches, was essentially a
religious movement, aided heartily by many right-minded men outside
the church, but that the few noisy infidels who denounced the Bible
and the church “had little more to do with the emancipation of the
slaves than they now have with the education of the Freedmen.”
The _Evening Gazette_, of Worcester, says: The meeting of the
American Missionary Association in this city, just ended, has been
singularly practical and business-like. We have the authority of
an old reporter for saying that he has rarely heard, where there
was so much speaking, so little uttered that it was irrelevant or
commonplace. It is a good gauge of the character and intelligence
of the six or eight hundred strangers who have been called to the
city during the week by this occasion.
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