THE NEGRO WORTH SAVING.—It may be put down as a sure thing that our estimate of men, in the long run, determines what we do for them. Our theories of human nature are the measure of our philanthropies. I am not going to sacrifice much for any man whom I reckon as utterly and hopelessly insignificant. Christian philanthropy is not a sentiment, nor an emotion, but a practical principle; and principles are ideas vitalized and set in movement by convictions. Suppose, for instance, that you assume that men are incapable and cannot be made capable of self-government. I think your political philanthropy will not take a very democratic type. If a colored man—black, red, or whatever—is not fit, and cannot be made fit, for the political suffrage, then we shall have white men’s suffrage, and the question of fitness will inevitably determine the whole matter. If negro suffrage had any rational ground, and was not a wild and desperate venture, it was grounded in the theory that the negro could be made capable for the exercise of the political suffrage, and the men who had faith enough in him to give him the suffrage, assumed that there would be found men who would have faith enough in him to fit him for the exercise thereof. Again, suppose you assume that the Christian churches are incompetent to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs within the limits of a true Christian and ecclesiastical fellowship. I think your ecclesiastical fellowship will not take a very Congregational type. Of course, we must have a strong central government that will manage the affairs of such incompetence. It has been assumed that the colored people of the South are unfit for the superior intelligence of our Congregationalism, or that Congregationalism is not sufficiently spectacular and sensational to fit the primitive wants of the colored people. I will not characterize such heresy as that as it seems to me it ought to be characterized. At any rate, I think it a most beggarly begging of the whole question; and if it be true, then the occupation, ecclesiastically at least, of this society is gone. The truth is, friends, our ecclesiastical, like our political philanthropy, is grounded on faith in men—intelligent, Christian faith in the manhood, capacities and possibilities of men; and when that faith is gone, the bottom is out and we must have new foundations.