the ordinary duties of life, but the lawless know that these good people
will never disturb them in their injustices to the negro. Then, there is
a relatively small element of the people who are prophets of a better
day. They themselves often feel the slavery of a public opinion which
puts odium upon them when they are too friendly in behalf of the
oppressed colored man. They cannot oppose many things which they feel to
be wrong without losing their influence. These seers of the future are
in hearty sympathy with our work and give it such personal encouragement
as they may under the tyrannical conditions of a public opinion not
friendly to equal rights on the part of the negro.

There is a great gain, also, in Southern public opinion as to the
capacity of the colored man and his possible future. This gain is seen
in the better provisions for the colored public schools, in towns and
cities. The schools of the A.M.A. are both object lessons and incentives
for the education of the white as well as the colored in the public
schools. The South is exceedingly sensitive as to the opinion of the
North. A trifle of published criticism, for example, goes through the
Southern papers with rebuttals enough to break down a national
constitution. An imperfect and incorrect report of an interview, which
lived just long enough to be printed, has been lately passionately
confuted in certain Southern newspapers with a profusion of epithets
which were out of all proportion to the harmless nonsense committed to
the press by an untrained reporter--a new illustration of the extreme
sensitiveness of the South to Northern opinion. Northern sentiment is
often ridiculed, and frequently sends not a few Southern newspapers into
spasms, but it is heeded. Let it be kindly and true, and pressed
fraternally and constantly "In His Name" who came

"To take away transgressions
And set the captive free."

* * * * *

THE VALUE OF PURE AND INTELLIGENT CHURCHES.

The extract given below has the true ring. It is from one of the pastors
of the American Missionary Association educated at Tougaloo and Howard
Theological Seminary. If sometimes our church work seems small and
discouraging there are many things to be remembered. Many times we are
told by the pastors of our churches "we could have larger churches and
more of them if we would accept the standards of those about us."
Moreover, some little church with fifty mem