Such is the state of mind of the Negro masses here. And now what does this attitude of the Negro masses require? GUIDANCE! Guidance, shaping and direction. Here is strength, here is power, here is a task to call forth the sublimest heroism on the part of those who should lead them. And what do we find? No guidance, no shaping of the course for these millions. The blind may not safely lead the blind in these critical times—and blind men are practically all that we have as leaders. The old men whose minds are always retrospecting and reminiscing to the past, who were “trained” to read a few dry and dead books which they still fondly believe are hard to get—these do not know anything of the modern world, its power of change and travel, and the mighty range of its ideas. Its labor problems and their relation to wars and alliances and diplomacy are not even suspected by these quaint fossils. They think that they are “leading” Negro thought, but they could serve us better if they were cradelled in cotton-wool, wrapped in faded roses, and laid aside in lavender as mementoes of a dead past. The young men must gird up their loins for the task of leadership and leadership has its stern and necessary duties. The first of these is TRAINING. Not in a night did the call come to Christ, not in a day was He made fit to make the great sacrifice. It took thirty years of preparation to fit him for the work of three. Even so, on you, young men of Negro America, descends the duty of the great preparation. Get education. Get it not only in school and in college, but in books and newspapers, in market-places, institutions, and movements. Prepare by knowing; and never think you know until you have listened to ten others who know differently—and have survived the shock. The young man’s second duty is IRREVERENCE. Reverence is in one sense, respect for what is antiquated because it is antiquated. This race has lived in a rut too long to reverence the rut. Oldsters love ruts because they help them to “rub along,” they are easy to understand; they require the minimum of exertion and brains, and they give the maximum of ease. Young man! If you wish to be spiritually alert and alive; to get the very best out of yourself—shun a rut as you would shun the plague! Never bow the knee to Baal because Baal is in power; never respect wrong and injustice because they are enshrined in “the sacred institutions of our glorious land”; never have patience with either Cowardice or Stupidity because they happen to wear venerable whiskers. Read, reason, and think on all sides of all subjects. Don’t compare yourself with the runner behind you on the road; always compare yourself with the one ahead; so only will you go faster and farther. And set it before you, as a sacred duty always to surpass the teachers that taught you—and this is the essence of irreverence.