"The Lord hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, And he is become my salvation."
And if we trust him, if we make him our hope, we will be able in the end to sing the same song; we, too, will triumph gloriously.
In the voyage of the apostle Paul to Rome the ship was caught in a terrible storm. For fourteen days and nights it raged. The wind blew furiously; heavy, dark clouds shut out the light of the sun by day and of the stars by night. There seemed no hope of escape. Of the nearly three hundred souls on board, all except one man were filled with the most appalling apprehension. That man was the apostle Paul. During all those awful days and nights he alone was calm, self-possessed; he alone showed no fear, no apprehension. And why? It was because the angel of the Lord had stood by him and had said to him, "Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee." And it was because he believed what the angel had said to him. The fierceness of the storm, the raging of the elements, the appalling darkness that enveloped them, had no disquieting effect upon him. It was the triumph of faith—faith that saw safety, and rested in sweet content in the face of the raging storm. And faith in God is what we need if we are not to become discouraged in face of the gathering hosts of darkness, in face of the constant accessions to the ranks of the enemy. David once exclaimed,
"Jehovah, how are mine enemies increased! Many are they that rise up against me."
But he comforted himself with the thought,
"But thou, O Jehovah, art a shield about me; My glory and the lifter up of my head."
And we may find comfort in the same thought. Let this new half century be one of abounding trust in God; let us more and more accustom ourselves to dwell in the secret place of the Most High, under the shadow of the Almighty.
II. In leaving this first half century of freedom and in entering upon the second half, a word also ought to be said to the white people of the country. There are four things that I want to say to them:
(1). I want to remind them of the fact that we came here originally through no volition of our own. We were brought here against our will, and brought here for purely selfish purposes, to serve their interest. We are not responsible for being here—the responsibility is with the white race. That fact ought to be remembered by them. If our presence in this country is undesirable, as is frequently alleged, it is not for the white man to set that up as an excuse or justification for ill-treating us. If it had not been for their selfishness we would not be here. If our presence here is an evil, they are not the ones to complain, they at least, ought to be willing quietly to accept it as it is an evil of their own making. This is one of the things that has always seemed to me to render the treatment of the Negro by the white man particularly contemptible. After forcing him away from his home against his will; and after getting out of him all that he could without compensation, when that is no longer possible, then to turn upon him and tell him to get out, that he is no longer wanted, is conduct of which even savages ought to be ashamed. Whenever you are tempted to ill-treat the colored man, to deny him a man's chance in the race of life, remember that you brought him here, and that the least that you can do, the least that you owe him, is to treat him decently, humanely.