ANNUAL ADDRESS OF DR E. K. LOVE.

DEAR BRETHREN: I greet you to-day in the Lord. I hope I find you well, cheerful, determined, courageous, with a sweet disposition, full of faith, meekness, deep humility, patience, forbearance, love, and of the spirit of the Master.

Since we met together last, we have encountered difficulties that try the hearts of men, and have passed through ordeals that have put our courage, manhood, stability and ability to the severest test. But we have left to us the sweet assurance and consolation that “Grace has brought us safe thus far, And grace will lead us home.”

I rejoice to meet you to-day for the inspiration and courage you will give to my own heart, that has been tried and wounded since I saw you last, as well as that which I hope will come to our common cause which is so dear to our hearts. We are companions in sorrow, yoked together in trouble, fellow-servants in tribulation and laborers together with God in the salvation and elevation of our people and therefore our coming together must be of mutual benefit to each other.

The Condition of the Field and Those Who have Deserted Us and Our Work.

Our work has been dealt a very serious and unkind blow during this conventional year.

While we have never doubted that there were Judases among us, we never dreamed that they would dare to bring their traitorous mid-night plots of treachery with such brazen effrontery to the sun-light of open day in the way and at the time they did. Ambitious to rule and under the plausible garb of friendship, and with a pleasing bewitching kiss they have betrayed us and led away the innocent unawares. Under God, only, the most heroic work and the wisest leadership will avert this calamitous catastrophe. The opposers of Negro progress and independence under salary of the Home Missionary Society, and commanded by Gen. Morgan and Dr. MacVicar for this very thing, have cast a dreadful cloud of despondency over our people, and created a disastrous unrest among us so that no material advance has been made this year.

It has required all of our time, talent and energy to fight the enemy and to prevent further inroads into our ranks. There has been next to nothing done to spread the gospel in Georgia this year and scarcely anything done in the way of raising money. I lay this awful sin at the door of the Home Mission Society. They knew that their deceptive plans would further split the ununited 0005 5Baptists of Georgia; and indeed this was their deliberate intention. They have succeeded admirably. But there comes rolling down from the glorious golden hill of Zion in incomparable sweetness from the precious lips of the Eternal God, “I have reserved unto me in Georgia seven thousand prophets who have not bowed their knees to Baal.” Thank God I am in that crowd and that God and the world know where I stand in this fight. Our field has not been properly canvassed during this conventional year. Indeed, this has been the most shameful, pusillanimous defeat we have ever experienced under any corresponding secretary in the history of the convention. The man whom we elected and entrusted the execution of the plans of this convention and this we did at his own urgent request, has unmanly and ingloriously deserted our work without one moment's notice to your Board or to your President. His excuse for this treacherous desertion is that the job paid better and in his own language, “anybody would have accepted a thousand dollar job.” He told your Board in Augusta that he was satisfied with the salary of $600 per annum, when I was urging the Board to make it larger. He is decidedly mistaken when he says that anybody would have accepted a thousand dollar job. There are men on this floor whom if elected by their begging, and who had declared themselves satisfied with the salary and had promised loyalty and faithful service for one year, would have died 0006 6before they would have betrayed their trust, deceived their brethren and deserted the work. Then it is pretty tough on us when a Gospel minister prizes more highly a thousand dollar job than he does the respect and confidence of his brethren and his honor and moral obligation. No trust would be safe in his hands, for he would desert it as often as he got a better job. Verily, “The Love of money is the root of all evil.” Just a short time before his desertion, I had him in Savanah and planned a most active canvass of the State and promised him the most cordial co-operation. I am sorry to report that he has deceived our Convention, and for a few bloody dollars has wrapt himself in eternal shame and disgrace, and brought down upon his head the righteous frowns and disrespect of all good people everywhere.

When I was told that he had applied for the position of Financial Agent of the Educational Convention and had been appointed to said position, I wrote him stating that if this was true, he ought to resign, which he did. I did this upon the principle that no man could serve two masters at once. I thought it not best to appoint a man to fill the unexpired term for prudential reasons. There has been very little christian work done by our convention during the year. It seems that every time we get in trim for work some unforeseen trouble arises from some unexpected source to prevent our advance. This is to be very much regretted, but should by no means discourage 0007 7us nor frustrate our plans. Race progress and the desire to own and control something that is distinctively negro is increasing as the years come and go; all the plots and intrigues of these Sanballats and Tobiahes and Geshems cannot check the onward sweep of the mighty current of unborn race pride, love and progress which is winding it way through the mountains of difficulties, the rocks of treachery, the hills of opposition and the miry swamps of deception to the mighty ocean of nations greatness. Come it must and those who would get in the way of the progress of this race will be trampled into dust by the mighty, determined, invincible and courageous Baptist army of the sable sons and daughters of Ham. For one, I am more determined to have something under Negro control than I was before the Macon meeting. The conduct of the enemies has simply enthused, energized and nerved me to greater activity and nobler efforts. I hope it has done the same for you. I blush at the every rememberance of the thought that the Negro Baptist of Georgia own and control nothing, and I am verily disgusted when I see those classed as leaders striving to prevent us from owning something. They present but two arguments, viz; Time has not come and we cannot do it. I scorn these verily.

Necessity is Laid Upon Us. The split in our ranks caused by the sinistrous, decoying, 0008 8strategic, devices of the Home Mission Society has forced a fight upon us which we must with zeal and courage prosecute to the last ditch. It is cowardice to surrender, 'tis madness to retreat and under the existing circumstances it is unmanly to co-operate. We must meet the enemies on their own chosen field. Dr. Morgan told us to our faces, in his political harangue at Macon, that if a Negro president was appointed in the College at Atlanta that the North would withdraw its help. Dr. Morgan could not have more forcibly and convincingly illustrated Northern prejudice, and their want of respect for and confidence in Negro ability, if he had tried. But his war record, his leading of negro soldiers in the civil war, his reference to ballot box stuffing, his condemnation of the Jim Crow cars and the merciless way in which he dealt with lynching deluded the weak, and it was a humiliating begging of the question at issue. While I most heartily endorse all that Dr. Morgan said in condemnation of these sins, outrages and injustices; they were not the subjects we went to Macon to consider and were absolutely irrelevant to co-operation with the Home Missionary Society in Christian education which we met to discuss. The sooner we teach men that they cannot play upon our prejudices and emotions by any such stuff, and demand sound and dignified reasons on the merits and demerits of the subjects we are called upon to consider, the sooner we will gain respect, recognition, friendship and help at 0009 9home, and lay the foundations of true greatness, and gloriously march on to permanent prosperity, lasting peace and eternal happiness. God hasten the day.

Our convention decided at Washington, Ga., in 1896 that we would build a college, owned and controlled by the Negro Baptists of Georgia. The convention has never reconsidered this action and hence it is neither honorable nor manly to desert this project until the convention has recinded this action. There ought to be some honor, dignity and stability connected with the action of this grand old body. We must not all prove false to our promises before the people and the world. We must not all prove weather-cocks. We must not all allow ourselves to be blown about by every wind of doctrine. Some of us must be loyal, courageous and true. Some of us must band ourselves together to redeem the honor, dignity, truth and stability of this convention. Some of us must gather out the stones, throw up the high ways and lift up a standard for the people. Some of those who now oppose our project helped to plan it and were foremost in its support at Washington in 1896. The schools in Atlanta open up no avenue of employment for Negroes. They need apply for nothing in those schools. With two exceptions the faculty of Atlanta Baptist College is white and under its present management will remain so. Prof. Holmes has been connected with that institution more than 25 years with no hope of promotion. Why could he not be president as well as Prof. Sale? His only crime is the color of his skin. Willie has been there more than twenty five years with more valuable experience and genuine ability than anybody connected with the school, but this black 0010 10skin is an eternal curse to him and destroys even the faintest hope of his promotion. This is the condition of things that confront us to-day. Have we statesmanship to deal with this momentous problem as it presents itself to us? They tell us that we must not draw the color line. I ask what kind of line was that drawn when Dr. Morgan told us that if a Negro was appointed President of the College that the North would withdraw its support and who drew it? If the Home Mission Society takes the position that we shall not handle nor control their money, then I must be pardoned for retaliation. Retaliation is sometimes justifiable and to my mind this is one of the times. It is not true that we cannot man our own cause, and we ought not to admit that we cannot get along without the Home Mission Society. If because we wish to own and control a school of our own, which is our right as American citizens, the Home Mission Society wishes to withdraw its help, we ought to have the candor courage and manhood to say to them, “Withdraw your help and be blessed; but in the name of our God we will set up our banner.” We will not yield an inch of ground or surrender a single right. We have occupied the humiliating position of beggars long enough. I bid the Negro Baptists of Georgia in the name of Jesus of Nazareth stand up and walk.

Our denomination should have developed some wise leaders, independence and manhood and some substantial progress in all these weary years. If it be contended that we have not, then I ask in most plaintive strains, “Why do our moments move so slow, nor our salvation comes?” Has the Negroes no future? Need they aspire 0011 11to anything? Will they ever become lords of what they survey? Will they always be the wards of other nations? If the Negroes will ever be or do anything, when will they start? Are thirty years not time enough for them to decide whether or not they will start? The great masses of our people feel that the time for action has come, and ere ong will rise in the majesty of their might and demand progressive action upon the part of their leaders and if they refuse to advance the people will relegate them to the rearest rear. I say with all of my heart, God hasten the day. There are times when the people will have to take the reins in their own hands. I believe the time is now. Let the leaders take the hint before it is too late.

The Committee Meeting in Atlanta last November.

In obedience to the orders of this convention expressed by a vote at Augusta last year, I attended the committee meeting in Atlanta last November. The discussion did not proceed along lines which seemed proper to me. They discussed the merits and demerits of organizing an Educational Convention and finally decided to call a meeting for that purpose in Macon, Feb. 16, 1898. I opposed this call because I felt that it was a flagrant transcendence of our authority, and that it would burden the churches and brethren with heavy and unnecessary expenses. I felt that it was simply our duty to consider the propositions of the Home Mission Society and report back to the convention with or without recommendations. Any other course seemed to me unwise and high handed usurpation, and hence I opposed it for these reasons. I felt that it was not the proper way to benefit the schools except its promoters meant, as they evidently did, to destroy the 0012 12project of a Negro college, and to still hold the negro Baptists as serviles to the Home Mission Society's schools. I felt that one-tenth of the money required to convene the Negro Baptists of Georgia, in Macon, would do a great deal more good than to require our poor people to spend all the way from three or four thousand dollars on the railroads and then not raise a dollar for the schools or for any other department of our work. The whole thing showed to me that the good of my people was not even in contemplation and that it was a strategic movement of the Home Mission Society to hold the Negroes to the schools of that society and to prevent them from breathing pure air and straying off into the realms of freedom and manhood. This is plain, since no such offers were made as before we decided to build a school of our own. It seems to me that Bartimaeus could have seen this. I wrote urging the brethren to attend the Macon meeting that they might have an opportunity to stamp their disapproval upon this selfish scheme. The boys were there.

The Macon Meeting.

February 16th of this year a mass meeting of 306 delegates assembled in the Cotton Avenue Baptist Church of Macon to consider the proposition of the Home Mission Society and to decide whether or not they would organize an Educational Convention. It soon became evident that a large majority of the brethren were opposed to this. About night-fall it was reported to me that the minority had greatly reinforced their number by drumming up and packing the house with members from the Cotton Avenue Baptist Church, who were 0013 13not delegates, whereupon our chairman declared the house incompetent to take the pending vote which was to co-operate, and declared the house adjourned till 8 o'clock the next day. After the adjournment, the minority organized themselves into an Educational Convention. The majority left the house under a storm of the vilest and most vulgar epithets from some of the women of Cotton Avenue Baptist Church led by one Viola Lumpkin, a public school teacher of that city, charged with the solemn duty of training the young in good moral and gentle manners. These outrageous insults and abuses were almost unbearable. We returned to the church next morning and found the church locked and orders from the pastor to the sexton that the doors must not be opened till he (the pastor) arrived. Carter took me aside and informed me that arrangements had been made to have me and my crowd arrested should we attempt to enter the church. Several stalwart policemaen were seen perambulating in convenient proximity to the church corroborated the statement of Dr. Carter. This is the treatment we received from the hands of those, who, without our solicitation, invited us to be their guests. The pastor arose and turned the house over to the Educational Convention with such emphasis as to leave no doubt upon our minds that he meant for us to fall in with the Educational Convention or fall out of his church. He had told us plainly, with emphasis and vehemence that “I want you to understand that I am in my own church,” and by ordering one of our members put out, came very nearly precipitating a riot, blood shed and death. We took him at his word and of the 306 delegates 0014 14present 208 of us took our hats and left the house vowing never to re-enter that building again. Rev. W. F. Forbes, pastor of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church, took us in and thus won our lasting gratitude, but for his kindness I don't know what we would have done. Though the Sunday school convention of Georgia meets there next month I will not attend and not one of my 13 schools shall be there. There is no doubt in my mind that the Macon meeting has forced upon us the reorganization of our work in this state. Dr. Morgan is reported as saying after we left the house, “I have won many victories, but I have never won one in which I have taken such supreme delight as this one,” The pitiable sight is scarcely elievable that an educated christian gentleman of the superior race should take such supreme delight in deluding and dividing his ignorant brethren, poor and uneducated. There is not a white gentleman in all the South who would have done or said such a thing. This is the method by which they propose to hold the Negroes to the schools of the Home Mission Socity. It was published for sometime in the Georgia Baptist, the organ of this nefarious scheme that the Educational Convention would hold its first annual session in Friendship Church, Atlanta, but when they got there and found that their crowd did not materalize, they now call it a “Call Meeting” One man wrote me that they had present nineteen delegates all of Atlanta, but seven. Deacon M. V. James told me that they had forty delegatey and Rev. P. J. Bryant told me that they had forty-one delegates. In either case the magnitude of this great Educational 0015 15Convention is an interesting epoch in the history of Georgia conventions. If, as Dr. White in the Georgia Baptist, and Rev. W.G. Johnson in his wonderful paper of retrospection before that mammoth Educational Convention in Atlanta say, the people will fall into the Educational Convention and the co-operation scheme, when their eyes are opened, it would seem from the Atlanta convention, as compared with the Macon meeting, that the oculist is making very slow progress in the multitude of Bartimaeuses in the Elephantine Hospital of the majority which is by the wayside as you go down to Jericho. The men who are members of this convention and members of the Educational convention met in Atlanta the other day and discussed whether they would attend this convention or not. They finally decided that they would come and give me an opportunity to drive them away. I regard that action as the sheerest and most nonsensical cowardice imaginable on the part of men who boast of the education they do. How can I drive them away from here? Are they not men and members of this convention and have every right here that I have? Can I drive them away any quicker than they can me away? Besides, it is an admission that the majority is not with them. “Verily the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth.” They decided upon another strategic move which yeilds the point I made, that another convention was not necessary and that the expense was too great. They decided to meet at the time and place the new movement convention meets, a day in advance. What is this for? First, to get a crowd, which otherwise would be impossible, and second to fool those into the Educational convention who otherwise would not notice it. 0016 16They presume that we will not have sense enough to see this. Third, they know that they will not have money to attend a separate Educational convention; hence by their action, they have substantially yielded every point I made in opposing the organization of an Educational convention. They had just as well done as I told them first as last; viz: Let the existing convention remain intact and do the different departments of our work by boards. That is about all their educational convention will be, meeting in conjunction with the existing conventions. The Home Mission Society does not care whether the Educational convention succeeds or not. That is not what is contemplated in its organization. It is the confusion of our forces and the frustration of our plans that they seek. The insincerity of the Home Mission Society to my mind, is as plain as the noon-day sun in a cloudless sky. Let our conduct and sincerity be as clear, even to the blind.

Our Need of a School.

The Negroes are a separate and distinct race of people. If it is not necessary for them to have institutions peculiar to their nationality, why is it necessary for other races to have them? Nature and public opinion seem to have decided that Negroes must marry Negroes, Negroes must have Negro churches, conventions, associations, societies and must be educated together in most places. Why, then, should they not manage their own schools? Negroes teach the public schools of the South. Negroes teach the State colleges of Georgia and South Carolina. Negroes teach colleges in Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama and Florida. What is the matter with the schools in Atlanta? Will it be argued 0017 17that the Negroes of Georgia are intellectually inferior to the Negroes in the states just named? Every Baptist Negro in Georgia that has been honored with a degree got it from schools manned by Negroes. Drs. Walker and White got their D.D's. from the State University of Kentucky, controlled by Negroes. Drs. McNeal, Carter and Fisher got theirs from Grandalupe College, Sequin, Tex., a school controlled by Negroes. Dr. Durham's pair came from the State University of Kentucky. And yet all of these worthies, Dr. McNeal excepted, disparage the management of great schools by Negroes. Still when they want honor, they expect it from Negro institutions. The white man is not situated as the Negro. He is differently surrounded and does not accept the Negro as his equal and hence is not prepared to teach him, in the truest sense of the term. The Negro cannot get at the inner life of the white man, nor can the white man get at the inner life of the Negro, and hence there is no entire soul communication between the two; therefore, they cannot be of the highest benefit to each other. The Negro who is taught by a white man, out of a white man's book, white faces are all that he sees in illustration of the truest and greatest specimen of humanity, all of the histories he studies is by white men; nearly all the recorded discoveries were by white men and all of the heroes and scholars are white men? What an exalted idea he must naturally get of the white man's greatness, and what notions he must have of Negro debasement and inferiority? I suppose that this is why we have the idea that God is a white man. Nearly every Negro who gets religion and claims to have seen Jesus describes Him as being a little 0018 18white man. If a Negro should claim that he was converted and should ascribe the job to a little black man, he could not join a Negro church in America. Hence, I conclude that the white man is not competent to educate the negro roundly and imbue him with notions of Negro greatness. Since this must be done and since a white man cannot do it, it follows that we must have our own schools to do it ourselves. The teachers and scholars must be friends and companions if they would teach each other's souls, without which there cannot be obtained the truest and greatest results. Only equals can be friends; all others are companions. Confucius, Socrates, Plato and Jesus, the great teacher, took their scholars as members of the family. It is the only way to make the scholars imbibe the true spirit of their teachers. Jesus became like unto his brethren in order that he might redeem them. This the whiter man cannot do, and would not if he could, and hence cannot in the true sense elevate our people. My brethren, that work is providentially consigned to our hands and we had just as well understand it first as last and get down to our work. The sooner the better. We have wasted enough precious time gazing at the magnitude of the work and recounting the smallness of the means. look unto Jesus and bid the multitude sit down on the grass and give ye them to eat. God will give the increase. The man that had an infirmity for 38 years might have been at that pool yet arguing with Jesus about the impossibility of his getting into the pool to be healed, and hence the nonsense of attempting to take up his bed and walk. But at the command of Jesus he made the effort and with the effort came the strength. I am verily disgusted at men sitting on the 0019 19stool of do-nothing and most vociferously exclaiming that we can't man our own cause. I have no patience with such abominable parasites.

We need men who believe that they can do all things through Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us and that all things are possible to those that believe. The most these men can do is to delay the coming of that College. But come it will. They may keep the people lingering around the flesh pots of Egypt quite a while yet, but God has decreed that they shall cross the Red Sea, pass through the wilderness and finally enter the promised land. The ten spies may report that the giants are in the land and that we cannot posess it but there will be two to urge the people that they can drive them out and possess the land, and the people will go up in the strength of the Lord and do it.

What We Must Do.

The Home Mission Society and its henchmen have forced a fight upon us. There is no discharge in this war; we cannot ask any quarters or beg the question. It is life or death with us. We have got to meet these men on the field in actual combat. I call you to arms ye sons and daughters of the Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia. When the voice at midnight comes I want it to find you on the field. Let us show to Dr. Morgan that his victory is not so complete as he supposed it was.

That he has yet many hard and bloody battles to fight.

First, we should appeal to our churches to join us in the mighty conflict. Put them in possession of information of the true state of things. Point out the traitors of our cause and people that churches may know them. Cut the cable so that there shall be no communication between them and our people. Establish a blockade. Organize clubs or educational societies in our churches, and endeavor to raise ten cents a month per capita. Raise after collections in the church once a month for Education 0020 20and Missions. Endeavor to work every member and have him to give something.

Second, appeal to the Sunday schools and interest them in this great work. Inform the children of the state of affairs and endeavor to inspire them with race pride and love. Organize educational clubs or societies in the Sunday schools and endeavor to raise five cents a month. Give one or two Missionary and Educational concerts during the year or more if possible, and turn over the proceeds to the treasurer of this convention. Give suppers and ice cream festivals as often as practicable and send the proceeds to our treasurer.

Third, we must have a first class paper to advertise and defend our cause. In conducting this fight I have been compelled to write hundreds of letters, setting up often the entire night. The time is ripe for a first class Baptist paper in Georgia. I know whereof I speak when I tell you that the people want such a paper and that they will rally to its support in multitudes. I am told that in Atlanta the other day at the Educational convention that the idea of our getting out a paper was ridiculed. I could not see why. We are as able financially and intellectually to get out a paper as they are. The money that has run the denomination work in Georgia for many years has come largely from us. You will make a very sad mistake if you go away from here without raising enough money to get out a paper immediately after the adjournment of this convention. If we do nothing else but raise money at this session to start a paper we would not have labored in vain. There has been an aching void in the hearts of a majority of the ministers of Georgia for a first class Baptist paper for many years. We had hoped that loyalty to our interest and a cessation of the little personal flings and unwise tantalizing of brethren who entertained different opinions would obviate the necessity of another paper in Georgia. But hope along these lines has entirely disappeared and patience has ceased to be a virtue. We owe it to our race, denomination, honor and 0021 21self-respect to start a paper, and start it now. We want a paper that will contain editorials on Biblical subjects and subjects of Homiletics that will be beneficial to the brethren instead of so much where this man went to dinner, or when this, that, or the other man or woman called, and who was met on the streets, and such trash. Years ago nearly every paper could say what it desired. Anything was news then, the thing is changed, people are demanding value received for their money. I commend them for this. If we are wise, we will take advantage of this opportunity to give the Baptists of Georgia such a paper as they need and want. If we do not start a paper we had just as well retreat or surrender to the Home Mission Society. If we let this opportunity pass without taking action, we will find ourselves grossly and maliciously represented, as was the case after the Macon meeting. Unscrupulous men do not hesitate to misrepresent you when they know you have no way of getting the the facts before the world. We have experienced this more than once.

Shall we have a paper? Remember that votes and resolutions and fine speeches will not buy a paper. We want money and subscribers, paid subscribers and job work. We want every preacher and delegate not only to subscribe for it and pay his subscription, but we want each one of them to become an active canvassing agent for it. For once let us arise in the majesty of our might and act the part of men. I have written hundreds of letters to brethren on this subject and many have promised to meet me here. The following brethren have paid on stock the amounts set opposite their names: E.K. Love, Savannah, Ga\$10 00 S.B. Lawton, Sylvania, Georgia 10 00 R.Mouson, Americus, Ga 10 00 W.R.Forbes, Macon, Ga 5 00 E.W.Walker, Dawson, Ga 5 00 U.G.McCall, Dublin, Ga 5 00 0022 22W.H. Bessent 5 00 J.C. Hickman, Millen, Ga 5 00 G.H. Howill, Medville, Ga. 5 00 Cornelius Sandy, Bullard 5 00 A.H. Williams, Georgia 6 90 C.H. Mdore, Jeffersonville, Ga 5 00 A. Jones. “ “ 5 00 G.M. Spratling, Brunswick, Ga 5 00 ——— Total amount of money paid in $86 90

Which I have on hand and brought up here to this convention. If all our men would do as these have done, we could start a first class paper at once. I hope you will.

The Gad S. Johnson Orphanage.

We should not let feelings of disgust at some of our brethren cause us to withdraw our support from those helpless innocent children whose parents lay sleeping beneath the clods of the valley. Pure religion embraces our care of them. Rev. Johnson has labored faithfully and hard and has stemmed a mighty current of ambitious malicious prejudice. Doubtless, many of you read with abhorrent disgust the little dirty, pignant and malicious things at him in the paper, because he didn't bow to the fascinating goddess of co-operation in Macon last February.

Let us be true to our christian duty regardless of who may differ with us. I recommend a liberal donation to his institution and commend Rev. Johnson to your prayer and most cordial support. I want you brethren to help him most cheerfully when he visits you. Those schools whose leaders have held them distinctively Negro and have not bowed their knees to the deceptive goddess of co-operation and thereby betraying Negro manhood and independence, I commend to your prayers, support and patronage. I suggest that we will have to take best the situated and equipped of them and use until in the providence of God we shall be able to start our college. The 0023 23one which we had hoped to so use and thus form a nucleus around which to build up a mighty educational centre, has spurned our gracious intention and discarded our overtures and ingloriously bowed at the shrine of the goddess of co-operation. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. The mills of the gods grind slowly but surely.

Our Publication House and Foreign Mission Work.

I hope each one of your schools take the literature of our national convention published by our Home Board at Nashville, Tenn. The American Baptist Publication Society gave our National Board the same trouble the Home Missionary Society is giving us in this state. They kept it back for several years, but Negro manhood and independence fanned by race pride asserted itself, and our Publishing House was born and is increasing in favor with God and man. I cannot see how men can consistently support our Negro Publication as against the Publication Society and yet join with the Home Mission Society to crush out our college project. The same speech our Dr. Walker made in favor of co-operation at Macon, if turned wrong side out, would be his speech delivered against co-operation upon the floor of the National Convention. Our own Dr. Carter was so enthusiastic in Support of Negro literature hat he was put on the Board that publishes it. Dr. Durham was, I think, the first man to have his Sunday school take the Negro literature in Georgia. Dr. White was a member of the committee on ways and means to get out the literature, and I believe it was he who made motion that the Board get out a series Jan. 1, 1897. Dr. White was so anxious that the Negro enterprise should succeed that he offered to turn over to them the Georgia Baptist plant. Dr, Fisher declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to everything that stood in the way of Negro literature. Now, these cases are perfectly parallel and I can't see for my life how these great men can shift basis so unless there is a hidded power 0024 24that caused the change. Let me respectfully urge that you not only get all of your Sunday school literature from our Board at Nashville, but that before you order a book of any kind first write to Dr. R.H. Boyd and find out if he can supply it. This is what I have done and will do.

Foreign Missions.

There never was a more energetic, earnest and faithful man that ever manned any cause than our corresponding secretary, L.G. Jordan. He deserves our prayers and unqualified support.

“The Archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the mighty God of Jacob.” Our Board at Louisville is honest, wise and faithful. Let us stand by them in the work we have entrusted to their hands. I want Georgia to give not less than $1,000 for the redemption of Africa this year. I recommend a liberal donation from this session and that Rev. Jordan be given all the time he wants to present the convention,

Pardon me for detaining you so long. My excuse is that these are troublesome times both in Georgia and in Cuba.

Wishing for you every good, and a glorious time in this session and that we shall plan wisely and courageously for the future and that we might leave nothing behind us that coming generations may know that we have been here and will rise up and call us blessed, and praying the blessings of Almighty God upon you and upon our deliberations, I now declare this 28th annual session of the Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia duly open and ready for business.

The Convention will please come to order.