Not long ago I stood in the city of Rome amid its ruined fountains, crumbling walls, falling aqueducts, ancient palaces, and amphitheatres, to-day mere relics of ancient history. One is struck with wonder and amazement at the magnificent civilization which that people was able to evolve. It does not seem possible that the Roman people, who could so perfect society in its organic and civic relations and leave to the world the organic principles which must always lie at the base of all subsequent social development,--it does not seem possible that such a people should so decay as to leave hardly a vestige of its original stock, and that such cities as the Romans erected should so fall as to leave scarcely one stone upon another. Neither does it seem credible that a people who could so work out in its philosophical aspect man's relation to the eternal mystery, and come as near a perfect solution as is perhaps possible for the human mind to reach, that a people who could give to the world such literature, such art, such ideals of physical and intellectual beauty, as did the Greeks, could so utterly perish from the face of the earth; yet this is the case not only with Rome and Greece, but with a score or more of nations which were once masters of the world. The Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, and even God's chosen people, allowed corruption and vice to so dwarf their moral sense that there was, according to the universal law of civilization, nothing left for them but death and destruction. It is no reproach to the Negro to say that his history and environment in this country have well-nigh placed him at the bottom of the moral scale. This must be remedied, if the Negro is ever to reach his full status of civilized manhood and womanhood. It must come through the united efforts of the educated among us. We must be united to stop the ravages of disease among our people; united to keep black boys from idleness, vice, gambling, and crime; united to guard the purity of black womanhood and, I might add, black manhood also. It is not enough to simply protest that ninety-five out of every hundred Negroes are orderly and law-abiding. The ninety-five must be banded together to restrain and suppress the vicious five. The people must be impressed with the idea that a high moral character is absolutely essential to the highest development of every race, white quite as much as black. There is no creature so low and contemptible as he who does not seek first the approval of his own conscience and his God; for, after all, how poor is human recognition when you and your God are aware of your inward integrity of soul! If the Negro will keep clean hands and a pure heart, he can stand up before all the world and say, "Doubtless Thou, O Lord, art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not." Thirdly, and lastly, _the Negro needs intelligent industry_.