Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first morally great. The age of Pericles in Greece, and the Augustinian age in Rome, when the human mind in each of those countries reached its climacteric, was preceded by those great moral virtues among the people which made them severely simple, honest, brave and true. Greece had her Homer, her Solon, her Æschylus, her Euripides, her Sappho, before she had her Pericles. Rome had her Romulus, her Numa, her Cato, her Scipios, and for mothers, her Cornelia, her Marcia and her Portia, before she had her Augustus. England had her Alfred, her Bede, her Wickliffe, her Knox and her Reformers, before she had her Bacon, her Shakespeare and her Milton. Germany had her Luther, her Melanethon, her Calvin, her Zwingle, and her long line of Protestant confessors and defenders, before she had her Goethe, her Schiller, her Humboldt, her Herder and her Beethoven. The ancient nations, whose masterpieces in literature and art are still the models on which we form our taste, declined intellectually precisely as they declined morally. The great age of English literature was a greater age of moral heroism; and Germany’s highest intellectual development is but the consummate flowering of the moral forces which have come down from the Reformation. Both will decline as the moral supports on which they rest are weakened or undermined. In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race, we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority, find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in holy things. It is in the Church, where men speak in the name of God, and where the soul is brought face to face with the claims of God, that the highest moral motives are pressed and felt. And hence we say, the Church _foremost_, and everything tributary to the Church, because the Church deals supremely with the moral nature, through which degraded races can alone be lifted.