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Two State Associations of unusual interest were held during the month of November.  The Central South Association met with the Trinity Church, in Athens, Ala., Nov. 3d.  This Association includes the churches of Tennessee and two or three of those in Alabama.  The reports from the churches were very complete.  Only one church in the Association was without regular ministerial services, and that church had recently lost its pastor by death.  They are now supplied by a competent and faithful minister.  The temperance question was discussed with great enthusiasm.  The influence of Fisk University on the right side, during the recent prohibition battle in Tennessee, can scarcely be over-estimated.  Many expressed the judgment that the argument of the Southern whites, that the colored people defeated prohibition, was not true.  One pastor reported that his county went almost solidly against prohibition, and there was only one colored man in the county, so far as he knew, and he was a staunch prohibitionist.  Some argued that while so many churches and Women’s Christian Temperance Unions and Young Men’s Christian Associations shut out respectable colored people, and saloons welcomed those who were not respectable, it would be a difficult task for the better class to induce the more ignorant to vote against those who welcomed them and in favor of those who shut them out.  Is there not considerable force in their arguments?

A young colored man, who had been a preacher in one of the old churches of the South and had become disgusted with its ignorance, superstition and immorality, presented his credentials and applied for admission into the Congregational Association of the State.  This action of his is a straw which shows which way the wind of religious thought blows among the intelligent colored people of the South.  The weather-vane points toward Congregationalism.  An aged pastor, who had endured ostracism and violence in New York State in the early times, on account of his anti-slavery opinions, was present during the meetings of the Association, and added greatly to their interest.  It was a thrilling sight to him to look upon these colored brethren during their earnest and often eloquent discussions, and to remember how much he had suffered in their behalf in other days.  Trinity School opened its doors wide and offered generous hospitality to the pastors and delegates.  On the whole, it was one of the best meetings the Association has ever enjoyed.

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The Congregational Association of the State of Georgia met with the church at Macon, November 9th-14th.  The church and its new pastor, a son of Connecticut, did their utmost to make the meetings pleasant and helpful.  The band of earnest Christian teachers of Lewis Normal Institute, the A.M.A. school at Macon, joined hands with the church and pastor in helping to make the sessions of the Association profitable.