om brought
the right and opportunity of establishing homes. Glorious privilege!
But do we not all know how much good judgment and wisdom and thought
and planning it takes to maintain a _true home_? Freedom gave them
the right of keeping their little ones and seeing them grow to
manhood and womanhood, but oh! how much of patience and God-given
power it requires to train the little feet to tread the right way!

Four million people, half civilized, uneducated, untrained, with the
judgment and reason of children, hitherto knowing little of the ways
of the outer world, suddenly brought into life's conflicts! What an
amount of instruction they needed!

Right here the American Missionary Association stepped in and assumed
the work of training these people. Christian men and women, filled
with love for the Master, went down among these lowly ones. They
carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ, established schools and churches,
teaching in the open air, or in rude huts and deserted cabins. For
twenty years this work has been carried on, and much good has been
done in the name of the Lord. But to-day there are between six and
seven million colored people in our Southland. The work of the A. M.
A., together with all done by other societies and by students going
forth from the colleges as teachers, as yet scarcely begins to reach
this great number.

Their first need is to be Christianized, for this alone lifts them up
and gives a desire for better things. It is the religion of Jesus
Christ alone which has given to us our high estate. How much we owe
to the training of Christian mothers! Let us pity and stoop to lift
up these ignorant ones. Send out those who can carry the glad tidings
and point to the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.

Let us do all we can to teach them what the pure religion is. But we
cannot stop here. We must teach them how to use it. "Woman's work for
woman," surely, for this must be done in the homes.

Freedom gave them the _right_ to establish homes! They did the best
they knew how, many of them, but they needed teaching--they need it
to-day. They must be taught thrift and industry, and cleanliness and
order. They want someone to come to them and help them to transform
their huts into homes. Could you see their rags, their ugly,
misshapen garments, you would agree with me that the women and girls
greatly need to be taught the use of the needle.

Of course Christian schools need to be multipl