at the top of their voices—­blab schools they call them—­have for their course of study the spelling book alone, and are taught that a word is correctly spelled when all the letters are named, no matter in what order; their so-called churches, with perhaps a monthly meeting during the summer months, without Sunday-school, prayer meeting, or any form of church work, without morality as a requisite of church membership, with an illiterate ministry—­a large number of the ministers cannot read even, and what is worse in many cases are drunken, impure, and in every way immoral; their children so easily gathered into day-schools and Sunday-schools, and so responsive to the work done for them—­all these things appeal to us with pathetic power.  Perhaps no missionary work ever showed greater results in so short a time than those obtained in these mountains.

We have here in two States eleven schools and twenty-two churches.  Earnest calls have come to us to begin work in North Carolina and Alabama.  We feel sure that if the churches could hear these appeals they would bid us respond.  We have promised to begin work the coming year in these States, and we must look to the churches to furnish us the means.  New lumbering and mining towns are springing up in this mountain country, and immediate missionary work is their only hope.  A single one of these new towns, scarcely half-a-dozen years old, has had already more than a hundred men shot in it, and this awful work still goes on.  This marvelously rich mineral region is sure to be filled in the near future with these mining towns, and unless the Christian work keeps pace with this kind of growth, this large territory will become notorious for bloody scenes as no portion of our land has ever been.  Now is the time to preempt the country for Christ, by planting at strategic points the church and the Christian school, and through them to send forth to every part the pure, restraining and elevating influences of the gospel.  God’s call to us to do this work is loud and clear.  Can we be faithful to Him and refuse to obey?

* * * * *

THE INDIANS.

There are 260,000 Indians in this country.  Compared with our great fields in the South, this is small.  But there is an emphasis on this work which is not made by figures.  Those who were native to this land have been made foreigners.  Those who were the first to receive missionary work here, and who responded as readily as any heathen people ever did, are still largely pagans.  While one Christian has been telling the Indians the story of the gospel, another calling himself a Christian has been shooting them.  They have not yet had a full chance to learn what Christianity is.  From place to place they have been pushed so that they have not had time to build their altars to the true God.  We have wronged them and we owe them more than we shall pay.  We shall meet our obligations but in part, when we do all we can to save them.