n proportion to their numbers; no more, no less. And
all these rising colored men must have correspondingly intelligent
wives, for their comfort and improvement and for the training of
their children. To meet such wants the existing schools of high grade
will all be needed and should all be liberally endowed.

* * * * *

OPINIONS.

The American Missionary Association and those allied to it have been
the chief agency at the South, so far as benevolent effort is
concerned, in diffusing right notions of religion, and in carrying
education to the darkened mind of the negro.--_Hon. J. L. M. Curry._

* * * * *

Of all the questions which disturb the mental equanimity of the
patriotic and thinking citizen of our Republic, none is looming in
his horizon with a more lurid and portentous aspect than the black
cloud of illiteracy which is rapidly spreading over the country, and
especially resting upon the Southern States of the Union. Compared
with it as an element of vital danger to the Republic, Mormonism,
Communism and Socialism sink into obscurity. The only way out of the
unfortunate dilemma or of ameliorating the condition in which the
country is placed by the thrusting upon it of this mass of ignorance,
is by education--an education both mental and moral.--_George R.
Stetson._

* * * * *

The real tests of Northern zeal and liberality, of Northern faith and
patience in the work of educating the negro, are yet to come. At the
first, Christian zeal was mightily stimulated by the patriotic
fervors of a great war for the preservation of the Union. In most
minds the course of events identified the preservation of the Union
and the abolition of slavery. The tremendous moral and political
forces that were at work during the war, and for many years after its
close, all conspired to make such an appeal to the thought, sentiment
and conscience of the church in the North as was perhaps never before
made for any form of Christian philanthropy. Christian men and women
were filled with pity for the poor negroes, and there was a movement
of "men and money" for their education that was never before seen in
this, or perhaps any other, country. The effort was stupendous, and
the results are amazing.

But the conditions that obtained from 1865 to 1875 will obtain no
more. The enthusiasms peculiar to that period pass away with the
coming of