The principle, then, by which the color-line question is to be settled is very simple, though its application may in some cases present some difficulties.  The whites and Negroes are not to be coerced or bribed into uniting in one and the same church organizations.  If they prefer to worship and to work separately, they must be allowed so to do.  This is within their Christian liberty.  But it is not within their Christian liberty to refuse the fullest and most perfect Christian fellowship to each other.  The doors of every Christian church must stand wide open to men of every race and color.  The only reason of exclusion must be in moral or spiritual character.  And in the higher representative bodies these churches must be one.  To organize, for example, in the State of Georgia two Congregational bodies, one white and the other colored, would be to organize a church to perpetuate divisions which the church should aim to obliterate.  It were far better that the Northern Church should not go with its missionary work into the South at all, than that it should go with a mission which strengthens the infidelity that denies that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth for to dwell together.

* * * * *

THE SOUTH.

* * * * *

MOUNTAIN WORK IN TENNESSEE.

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.W.  HIATT.

I have found the man of iron.  In one short day, he travelled one hundred miles by rail, walked twelve miles over a steep and rocky mountain, rode fourteen miles horseback through a pouring and drenching rain, and at nightfall preached an earnest, telling sermon to an audience of railroad employees, besides performing the duties of organist and janitor.  The next morning he was up at four o’clock and away for other tasks of similar sort.  One who watches Brother Pope, must do it on the run.  One of the fairest spots on the Cumberland Plateau is Grand View.  Here the American Missionary Association holds a strategic position.  The wild, magnificent scenery and the cool, bracing air, tingling with ozone, make it an ideal spot for a great religious and educational centre.  Already eyes are turning upward from the surrounding valleys to this mountain school.  The first words I heard on landing at Spring City, six miles away, were in its praise:  “They’ve got a mighty good school up thar.”  Such is the fact.  What is needed now to balance things is a “mighty good school” building.  If the insignificant frame structures which are hidden among the trees, and only half supply the needs of the institution, could be exchanged for a good, roomy, handsome edifice, placed on the summit of the mountain, where it would be visible for miles along the line of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, besides being a benefaction to the cause, it would be the best, cheapest and most attractive advertisement of our mountain work, conceivable.  It is to be hoped that someone will visit this beautiful spot ere long whose enthusiasm will not all run to words.