the race are
being sucked into crime and ruin with unprecedented and increasing
rapidity. But, wherever the efforts of white Christians to aid them are
regular, steady, and strong, this destruction and debasement are stayed to
a marvelous degree. Here, then, are conditions that seem to leave no room
for either neglect or delay, so far as we are concerned. Delay is sin to
us, and death to them."

Another minister of the South, whose services for the black man as well as
the white man, have been those of a philanthropist, has said, "In our
extremity we look to wise and just people in the Northern states to help
us, to help both races; without Northern cooeperation things will go from
bad to worse." Yet the old hard word is still uttered by many and thought
by many more, "The negro is free, leave him to himself. We have done
enough for him in taking off his slave chains." Are we then to expect from
him more than we do from the white element of our American populations,
native or foreign? Do we refuse them the gospel of home missions, and
demand from them self-extrication from sin and its degradations?

Our churches have not yet awakened to the vastness and promise of the home
mission fields which they have put in charge of the American Missionary
Association. They have not yet recognized the peculiar fitness of our
free-church system for the people who have so lately come into personal
freedom that the very word is indescribably precious to them. This
Association ought now to have not only the means for a more ample support
of its educational service, but also for the broadening of its distinctive
church missions. The day has come for the planting of free Congregational
churches among the shadowed millions of the South.

In the upbuilding of their minds and hearts, our fundamental work of
Christian education has been developed into remarkable fruitage, and is
steadily doing this imperative and successful service. This education has
been broad enough to make intellectual and moral leaders. It has not been
confined to those who can become only manual laborers. With prominent
emphasis upon industrial training, as is evinced by the farms and gardens
and workshops of our institutions all through the South, we have not shut
the door against the higher training.

The Association has never given in to what may be termed the Southern
theory of negro education, its confinement to the manual handicrafts, and
the rudiments of prim