ommittees. It has a committee on education.
This committee holds meetings in the various communities to arouse in
the people an interest in education. It encourages them to build better
school-houses, to extend the school term and it keeps their children in
school. It is the duty of the committee on labor to gather together
those of our race who still work as contract-hands, wage-hands,
day-laborers, and domestic servants, and impress upon them the necessity
of rendering the best service, tell them that the race is judged more by
what they do than what we do, and how great their responsibility is.

The farming committee is always active, trying to create in the people a
real love for agricultural life, trying to show them that the
opportunities which the country offers us are superior to those offered
in the cities. Other committees are the committee on good government,
committee on business, and committee on good roads. The influence for
good this society is exerting throughout the section can hardly be
estimated. Such is the nature of the work we are doing at Snow Hill.

CHAPTER 19.

BENEFITS WROUGHT BY HARDSHIPS.

The word "Offence" is a general and somewhat indefinite term. As defined
by the various dictionaries, it means an attack, an assault, aggression,
injustice, oppression, transgression of a law, misdemeanor, trespass,
crime and persecution. In all of these definitions there is implied an
act considered as disagreeable if not harmful to the recipient.

Of the various nations of the earth, those that are most powerful and
that have accomplished most good are those which have endured and have
survived the most offences. They have grown by reason of the obstacles
which they have overcome. It is singular, yet it is true, that offences
have never destroyed a nation. Those nations which have been destroyed
have been destroyed not by attack from without, but by their own
internal weakness.

Societies that are accomplishing the most good for the uplift of
humanity today are those against whom the most offences have been
committed. Take the Christian Church, the greatest of all societies. Who
can enumerate the offences which have been committed against the church?
Herod tried to behead it, but could not; Pilate tried to crucify it, but
instead sanctified it; Paul persecuted it and it redeemed him; poor
drunken and debauched Nero poured forth the fury of his wrath against
it in every conceivable, wicked wa