highly. It appeared to have a most beneficial effect upon the
parties themselves, and the whole population.

NATIVE ELOQUENCE.

Not a few of the freedmen, though illiterate, exhibit remarkable
powers of eloquence. The missionary, in describing the address of one
of them, after a discourse by the former, says, "The address was a
masterpiece. It melted every heart. He appealed to the soldiers
present who were in rebellion against God, striving to put down
rebellion in this land, and asked them how they, who had been taught
to read the Bible, and had learned the Lord's Prayer in infancy from a
mother's lips, could stand in judgment, when a poor, despised, and
inferior race, who, though denied the Bible, had been taught of God,
and found their way to Christ, should rise up and condemn them. He
then turned to his fellow 'contrabands,' and entreated them to embrace
thankfully, and improve, the boon already given. He considered the
present a pledge of the future--the virtual emancipation of fifteen or
eighteen hundred the promise of the emancipation of four millions. The
Lord works from little to great."

CHURCH MEETING.

The missionary wrote: "Last Thursday I had an opportunity to observe
the intellectual state of a considerable number of the brethren at a
church meeting. I was surprised at their understanding and wisdom in
regard to church order and propriety, and tone of discipline. As the
church records had been burned up in the church edifice at Hampton, I
inquired how far any of them could recall their contents. One or two
replied that they could almost repeat the church regulations from
memory.

"In the discussion, high ground was taken in regard to the Sabbath,
the temperance cause, and other matters of Christian morality. In
discipline, stress was laid on the propriety and duty of private
admonition, in its successive scriptural steps, before public censure.
On this point one brother said he had privately admonished a neighbor
of the impropriety of taking articles to the camp on the Sabbath, and
he had acknowledged his fault, and promised amendment. The duty of
forgiving offenders, and undoing wrongs, was also insisted on. Several
had been improperly excluded from church privileges through the
influence of white power. It was, therefore, decided to-day that those
who had the confidence of the church should be restored to
church-fellowship unconditionally."

One of the members, and an aged leader, stated th