Excerpt from Address of Col. H. B. Carrington, U. S. An, , At Indianapolis, Indiana, June 17, 1869: In Aid of the Erection of a New Church Edifice, for the Methodist Episcopal (Colored) SocietyMy profession, as you know, does not occupy, nor aspire to occupy, the field of party politics or general oratory, and yet no calling whatever, can entirely absolve any Christian man from the ever present obligation to use in¿uence and strength, at all proper times, in giving impulse and sanction to such moral and religious agencies as are material to the well-being and advancement of others.I can well see that to the colored people of the United States the present is a transition period of great importance. It is a period wherein they have much to learn and much to do. Upon the spirit, courage, ambition and purity of motive with which they labor, will largely depend the public estimate of their fitness for enlarged franchises, and, on the other hand, it is certain that if they accept national blessings with passive indifference, they will go backward, instead of forward, in all essential elements of civilized growth and culture.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.