Our plan of work in the South is often misunderstood and often misrepresented.  It is not our plan to force the races together.  It is not our plan to agitate questions which arouse the prejudices of the Southern people.  We do not agitate.  Quietly, steadily, patiently, lovingly, our missionaries seek to lift up the degraded, enlighten the ignorant, and bring them all to Christ, well knowing that bitter prejudice cannot forever stand opposed to an enlightened, cultivated, Christian people, whatever may be their color or their past condition.  We have nothing to do with the question of social equality in the South any more than we have in the North.  We are not even trying to force the races together in the churches.  We have no principles which would prevent our aiding two churches in the same town—­one with a membership of white, the other of colored people.  We have done it.  In our church work, we simply maintain that a Christian church should stand ready to fellowship any one whom Christ fellowships, that it should turn no one away because of his color, or because he, his father or his mother was a slave.  We maintain that there is no Christian reason why there should be either State or local organizations of churches which will not fellowship churches whose memberships differ in race.  We seek to establish churches and other institutions which dare interpret Christianity as Christ taught it, and which will not yield a Christian principle for enlarged statistics.  There are caste churches enough in the South.  No more are needed.  If Congregationalism can go there true to its history, true to its real convictions, true to that gospel which successfully faced the bitter prejudices of Jew and Gentile with the broad invitation, “Whosoever will, may come,” then it goes to become a mighty power and to win both a place for itself and other churches, in time, to accept the same broad interpretation of Christianity.

This Association has faith in the power of the gospel, and, under the reign of God, of the final triumph of the right.  It is willing to enter the doors now so wide open for missionary work, and to wait, if need be, for that glory of the denomination, which is better than long tables of statistics, the glory of adhering to the right.

The time has now come when our church work can be greatly enlarged.  Our schools have been doing their work, and scattering all through the South those who have learned what pure religion and spiritual worship mean, and they are ready and longing for something better than they find within their reach.  We can now push our work as fast as the churches of the North will furnish the money.  We most earnestly appeal for the means to enable us to greatly develop, during the coming year, this department of the work.

CHURCH WORK AMONG NEW SETTLERS IN THE SOUTH.