due to the conscience of the rank and file of
the Assembly, a victory of the Christian heart of fellowship with the
humblest over the pride and ambition of greatness and power. The
Assembly has done its duty by its colored members, and every colored
member's face was radiant with delight. We have never doubted that if
the subject once came fairly up for discussion, the Conference Committee
would learn something they did not know before about their denomination.
Encouraged by the indorsement given by the Presbyterian Assembly to the
position we have maintained against the separation of Christians in the
Church of Christ, we shall not neglect the same conflict going on among
the Congregationalists and Episcopalians.

_From the Christian Union._

The question whether the Church of Christ shall recognize the color line
is coming up to vex in turn each one of the great Protestant
denominations in the North. We say Protestant denominations advisedly;
for we do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church would for a moment
entertain the notion of excluding a man either from its sacraments, its
worshiping assemblies, or its priesthood, on the ground of color, or
would recognize in its worshiping assemblies any distinction except the
broad one between clergy and laity. To do so would be to violate all its
traditions and history.

In the Protestant denominations of the North, the question is
complicated by two considerations: a strong anti-caste prejudice in the
Northern constituency, on which the missionary organizations are
dependent for their support, and a strong ecclesiastical ambition and
spiritual desire, commingled in various proportions, to push on the work
of church extension in the South, where it cannot, apparently, be pushed
forward with early success, if caste is ignored and colored Christians
are admitted to white churches, and colored clergymen to white
ecclesiastical assemblies, on equal terms with their white brethren. In
the Diocesan Episcopal Convention of South Carolina it is, therefore,
proposed to amend the diocesan constitution so as to provide for two
Conventions, a white and a colored. In the Presbyterian Church the
difference of opinion on this subject constitutes one bar to a union
between the Northern and Southern churches, or even to co-operation
between them. This has been for the time removed by a sort of concordat
by which the relations of the colored and the white members in the two
churches