work should be recognized. But, if now, to all this is added the amount
expended in the South by other religious bodies and by the Peabody and
Slater and Hand funds, it will be seen that a mighty force is at work,
unobtrusive as it is helpful, arousing no antagonism in the South, and
blessing in its rebound the benevolent contributors at the North.


THE INADEQUACY OF THE SUPPLY.

But, as the disciples said in regard to the five barley loaves and the
two fishes, "_What are these among so many?_" The means in both cases
are utterly inadequate, and the need of multiplying is as imperative
here as it was on the shore of Galilee. We have a Negro population of
eight millions, which has doubled in the last twenty years, and
increases at the rate of six hundred per day--requiring, if adequately
supplied, the founding of a new Fisk University or Talladega College
every twenty-four hours. There are 1,500,000 illiterate voters in the
South, and how can the North, while admitting with President Harrison,
that if the public security is threatened by this ignorance the remedy
is education, withhold its share of the necessary means?

How can the churches of the North, who know that the future destiny of
these ignorant masses depends upon their _religious_ far more than upon
their secular education, refuse the needed gifts for that purpose? Here
is where the miracle wrought on the shore of Galilee needs to be
repeated. Our Lord and Master is not here now in bodily presence, and he
entrusts to his church the duty of multiplying the bread of life for
these vast perishing masses. The churches of the North must awake to
this great duty. If done at all, it must be done promptly. Present means
are wholly inadequate. Every individual Christian at the North should