of the class-room over the
sermon as a means of informing the mind and clearing away the rubbish
of superstition and the misapprehensions of meaning, derived from the
ignorant preachers who have been in many cases the only previous
expounders of the word, and resulting also from a very vague and
limited understanding of the language of the Bible, the
preacher--even the teacher.

It would be impossible for one new to the work to even _grasp at_ the
distorted images and superstitious misconceptions connected with
religious subjects in the minds of the more ignorant colored people
without the free interchange of personal conversation. So for years
the Sunday-school has been placed at the head of the Sabbath services
here, and given the forenoon, the review by the Superintendent
occupying the time of a short sermon, with the lesson for the day,
already explained and impressed by the several teachers, for its
text. Later in the day class prayer-meetings are held, and here young
Christians learn to take up the cross of bearing testimony for
Christ, and making audible prayer for themselves and others. Many of
the scholars feel these meetings to be very valuable.

At the close of the school year a Sunday-school Convention is held,
and it is urged as a duty upon all Christian students who go out to
teach that they should organize and conduct Sabbath schools in
connection with their day schools.

We have recently received two donations of library books, so that we
now have enough to go once around, and we loan them out each Sunday.
We also generally have papers to distribute, sent us by kind and
careful Sunday-school scholars in the North who make their papers do
double duty. If some school changing song-books would send our school
a hundred or more well-preserved copies of those they lay aside, it
would be a gift highly appreciated.

One of our neighbors is a good Mother in Israel, who has always taken
a warm interest in this institution in all its departments and
appreciated its uplifting influence upon her people. She belongs to
one of the branches of the Methodist Church, and felt that she wanted
something done for the improvement and revival of interest in the
schools of that denomination in the vicinity. Accordingly, she worked
up a S. S. Convention among them last Fall, and invited Mr. Pope and
some others of us to go and help to make it profitable. We could not
get off until after dinner and might as well not have g