Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain more of moral power.  Whatever he wins in the future he must secure because he deserves to.  It will not come to him by favoritism nor by chance, but because he conquers the situation, and by his own ability and resolute endeavor fairly captures the prize of success.  This the weak, degraded, untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never do.  He must develop a strong, clean manhood, equipped with the virtues to which success is fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way.  Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences, making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to eliminate weakness and develop moral power.  His ambition is chastened, his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are being trained.  But Providence waits for us to give him more direct assistance in this matter.  We can re-enforce him in certain directions where he is now in great need of help.  There are certain vices against which he needs to be armed and aided.  In answer to the inquiry, What is the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the colored race? the answer comes promptly from several sources, “Drink.”  This is one of the new perils of his freedom, for in the old days of bondage it was a penal offense to sell liquor to a slave; but since the war, drunkenness has been a widespread curse among them, and to-day hangs like a mill-stone to the neck of many a Negro to prevent his rising.  The sin of licentiousness prevails also to an alarming degree in many quarters.  And wherever intemperance and social immorality abound, you find also the kindred vices of dishonesty, lying and laziness.  No people can possibly have a great future in whose life these iniquities burn like a consuming fire.  The manhood will be utterly burnt out of them before it can bear fruit in a large success.  We need to send apostles of reform among them to turn them from their vices.  We need to erect barriers of defense to protect them from temptation.  Above all, we need to teach them a religion indissolubly joined with morality, a religion that means character and virtue, whose daily experience will mean the constant increase of moral power.  The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul’s day, are very religious.  They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in revivals.  But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in hideous conjunction with gross evils.  They need an intelligent piety and an educated ministry.  As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000 educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, they have hardly 500.  The church work of this Association is a powerful aid to their moral upliftment.