The claim of the three despised races in the United States is enforced by a motive of self-interest, by the relation of their leavening to the future prosperity and even perpetuity of our nation. Especially is this true of the freedmen, as large enough in their numbers to have weight, and endowed with privileges which make their numbers powerful for good or evil. So large a mass, if it be corrupt, is also corrupting. Here are three lepers; I can but hint at their diseases. They are full of wounds and bruises and putrifying sores. You shrink and shudder at the picture. But, my brother, they are at your very door. What shall we do with them? This sickness is not unto death. Worse than that; it is perpetuated and transmissible; but it may be cured. The power of Christ, who touched the leper with His life-giving hand, is still with us. But we must go in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot bar the negro out; he has the right to sit in our midst, even among the senators of the land; and if he be still ignorant, and immoral, and superstitious, he will spread corruption around him. The only way to prevent him from contaminating us is to let virtue go forth from us to convert and cleanse him. And the question is, is there enough in us to do it? The very _presence_ of vice and ignorance is contaminating; it conducts all evil influence and spreads it. The swamp malaria which fills the air, while it chokes the hovels of the poor, can by no means be kept out of the palaces of the rich. The foul odors of Hunter’s Point pay no respect to the brown-stone fronts of Murray Hill. If one member suffers, all the body is afflicted. Do you say, “It is not our concern”? But it is every one’s concern. Is the ignorance and vice of your own town or city not your concern? You have to pay for it dearly. Your taxes for police, for courts and for prisons are only a small part of what it levies on you. It, too, pervades the air and mingles its deadly poison with it, and you breathe it in. You are proof against it; it only imperceptibly lessens the tone of your health and vigor. But your neighbor is not, and perhaps your son or daughter is not; and in the traps which line our streets your son or my son may stumble and fall; or behind the shaded windows where the snares are laid, your son or my son may go to ruin. It is so in the nation. If the leaven be not more active and more potent than the mass, it will be itself unleavened and spoiled.