The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-11
A WORD FOR THE NEGRO.
Spoken by the Pastor of an Atlanta
 Methodist Church

Methodist Church.
 In the the sourse of a sermon con- tributed by the Rev. James W. Lee, pastor of Trinity Methodist Church, to the Atlanta Georgian and News, the following reference to the attitude of the white population to the negroes is made.
 Negroes are human beings, and the children of God just as completely as Iany otter race of mankind. To treat them any other way not only degrades them, but more, if possible, the per sons who so treat them. That the ne- groes can be educated and Christian ized no one questions. They respond to fair and humane aud just treatment. The recent and violent expressions of hate toward tue negro seen i'll differ ent parts of the country is the most abject, pagan, unholy, poverty-strick- en asset of our history. It is as mean and unworthy of us as if distilled out o fthe last analysis of inquiry in the bottomless pit. Any man, out of whom the image of God has not totally gone, can only think of it as he hangs his head in burning shame. Every chival- ous and brave Southerner should rise up to scorn it, and by all means in his power run it back to outer darkness, its own birthplace. There never was and iniquitous and black a thing as the expression of inhuman madness against the negro that found vent for itself in the recent riot in this city. It vii. be necessary to get at least ten years away from that lurid eye lone of unreasoning wickedness to be able to find words to point it in the now to do more thar to get into the A. B, C's of q description of it's un- brided, unblushing meanness. It would be necessary for one to have the vocabulary of Shakespeare and Milton and Thomas Carlyle combined to depict the blackness of that bad night.
 The time has come when we should feel again toward the negroes as our fathers and mothers did, when they guarded our homes and protected them while Southern soldiers were fighting at the front.
 Tie time has come when the politi- clan si1ould no longer b0 able to find an audience if he has q" higher aim than to engender strife and opposition on the part of the white people against the negro
 The negro is here among us, and what is more, he is going to stay Ilera, and what is more still, we could not get along without his labor if we wanted to. Let us help him. Let us teach him, Let us preach to him and practise in our relations with him what we preach. The negro asks nothing at our hands butt justice. He cherishes no opposition to a white mans govern ment. He wants white mans gov ernment, for he well knows that he could live In peace under no other. To see one of our modern stump ora Itors crying, as if in the presence of an Invading foe, for white mans gov ernment, when not single negro in the whole United States asks for any other or would have any other, is a performance from which a sense of humor should save him. Vociferously luttering ones self against social Iequality is anotiler form of speculative exercise from which the sense of hu- lmor is the only remedy. People who think below the surface absolutely lknow that social equality has always
 been impossible, is impossible now
 and will be to the end of time
 The color line was drawn by AL Ihigflty God, and can no more be obli- lterated than can the laws of gravity And the man who should go around making speeches upon the importance
 of maintaining the color line would be labout as sensible as the person who Ishould shout himself hoarse in defence lof the power that attracts bodies ir proportion to their mass, etc.
 The negro has been @ negro ever
 since the days of Ham, the son of
 Noah, and will remain negro to the lend of the human chapter on earth.
 What we should concern ourselves Iabout is not the maintenance of a
 white mans government; that is ours
 absolutely and forever without con-
 tention. What we should concern our
 selves about is not the maintenance
 of the social differences between the
 white man and the negro; that was
 fixed for us by the Creator when He made the world. These questions are
 not up for settlement, and in the very
 nature of things can never be up for
 settlement. What we should concern ourselves about is the negro's moral land spiritual welfare. 1t by our treat ment of him we can make of him a moral, upright, God-fearing man, the race problem will be solved There
 would be no race problem now if there
 were not a whole lot of mean negroes scattered about in the same commun- ity with a whole lot of mean white
 folks. The question before good ne-
 groes and good white people now is
 how to get rid of what is wrong and
 bad in both races. The only remedy
 is not new one, it is the old and yet lever modern religion of our Lord
 Jesus Christ. This consists in loving
 God with all one's hearts and one Ineighbor as ones self.