starting new churches beyond the range of our schools, that we have
found them to be made up first almost wholly of graduates and students
from our different institutions, and that these have remained the most
intelligent and reliable members.

We have found, too, that when a church was thus organized where we have
no school, we are very soon importuned to start one. In localities with
a scattered population there might not be sufficient public funds to
open a colored public school; in many more places they would sustain the
school for only two months in the year, and in larger towns it sometimes
has happened that these public schools were of such a character that the
parents begged for a Christian school as a means of saving the moral
purity of their children. Thus, in every way, and under all
circumstances, the school and the church need and help each other. And
what is true of the colored people is equally true of the whites in the
mountains and elsewhere, among whom the Association is working so
auspiciously, planting its schools and churches in mutual helpfulness.

The suggestion that all the church work of the denomination in the
home-field be given to one society, and all the educational be
concentrated in one other society, deserves thoughtful consideration,
for it meets with this very serious objection, that it provides for but
one collection for work that now receives two or three. The experience
of our churches is conclusive against the hope that one enlarged
collection would be given to the one society. For a time, a brief time,
spasmodic efforts might, as in former cases, result in some special
contributions, but the new experiment would certainly be more
disastrous, if it should fail, than those already tried, because it
would involve far greater interests.