. . .>new churches have been established during the year—at Shelby Iron Works, Ala., at Cypress Slash, Ga., and at Flatonia, Texas.

After a careful survey of the material and opportunity, we are neither prepared to rush in and organize new churches wherever it may be possible, nor to abandon the field as unfitted to our polity. We could probably buy up a hundred churches within a year at $100 apiece, and then should be worse off than when we began, loaded down with useless burdens. There is nothing in the nature of the South or in the character of the negro by which the people of that region or that race are unfitted to be good Congregationalists. It only demands intelligence and the power of self-control. Where these have been developed by Christian[362] education there is readiness and preparation enough. Hitherto our churches have flourished under the shadow of our schools and of their graduates. But as the sun goes toward the west the shadow broadens, a. . . Read More