Instead of twenty Congregational churches among them, there is room for a thousand, and instead of nine Christian schools, if there were twenty-five normal schools, it would be only one to each hundred thousand people; and if there were a hundred common schools, there would be one to each three or four counties for models.  There should be one good college.  If there were Congregational churches in this region in the same proportion as in New England there would be a full thousand.  If they were in the same proportion as Connecticut, there would be twelve hundred churches; as New Hampshire, thirteen hundred; as Vermont, sixteen hundred.

Congregationalism goes to these people as the representative of pure, intelligent and progressive Christianity.  We can gather them into schools, Sunday-schools and churches, anywhere where we can put a Christian worker.  Our only limit is consecrated workers and the support for them.  The field is as ripe this very day for a thousand as for a score.  But the school and the church must go together.

This is one of the richest of the mineral regions of the world.  Great forests of black walnut, poplar, and other valuable timber, are awaiting the woodman’s ax and the lumberman’s mill.  Railroads are either built, building or planned for every part to carry away its wonderful natural resources.  The people are poor, but the land is rich, and a few years hence will see wealth in the place of poverty, in the hands of either the natives, or those who will have displaced them.  All the motives which urge the establishment of the church and the school for the incoming population of the West, press us to build them in this great empire of the South; and they become doubly imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be saved now.  The motives for home and foreign missions are thus combined, and impelling us for Christ’s sake, for humanity’s sake, and for our country’s sake, to give the gospel to this people.

We are not building pauper institutions in this mountain country to be forever a dead weight for the Northern churches to carry, but institutions which will very speedily take care of themselves, and give to others as they have received.

This is a portion of the South where slavery scarcely existed.  When war came, it was loyal to the Union almost to a man.  This fact shows that they have a natural affiliation with “Northern ideas.”  The caste spirit is among them—­as it is indeed in the North to some extent—­but it much more readily yields to reason and loving teaching than in other portions of the South.  Vigorous and extensive missionary work can and will mould the ideas and sentiments of this whole region, and thus establish no-caste churches and schools, where they would demonstrate to the South that they do not carry with them social disorder and every baleful influence.