GENERAL NOTES.
The Freedmen.
—The Congregationalist says, in its report of the examination of the students of Andover Theological Seminary: “One of the best recitations made in Greek was by a young man from Atlanta University, a suggestive item for the churches interested in that institution.”
—The Presbyterian General Assembly has transferred its eighty colored churches from the Board of Home Missions back to the Committee on Freedmen. The committee, having somewhat enlarged its educational work, appeals to the Presbyterian churches for more liberal and more general contributions.
—The Southern Presbyterian General Assembly reported as contributed for the evangelization of the colored people, during the last year, $416.75, to which the Reformed (Dutch) Church added $359.25.
—The Christian at Work describes a colored church, south, of which it says: “It was an aristocratic institution, as it seemed, and a failure. The preacher read his sermon, the singing was operatic, and the whole thing a ludicrous burlesque. White people go to an unhealthy extreme, often, in suppressing emotion, but for the colored folks to imitate this folly is death outright.”
—The same correspondent says of a missionary to the freedmen, whom he chanced to meet: “I said to him, as we were taking our leave, ‘It takes a good deal of grit and grace to stand the pressure here, don’t it?’ ‘One can get very near the Lord here,’ he replied; ‘indeed, he has to get very near Him to do any good.’”
—A Louisiana correspondent sums up a letter to the Congregationalist thus: “In spite of all drawbacks, the tendency of the colored churches in Louisiana is upward. The Sunday-schools are well attended, and properly taught. The church members are orderly and industrious citizens, respected in the communities in which they live, and ready and willing to contribute, to the full extent of their means, for any Christian purposes. Take them altogether, the progress of the colored churches has been sufficiently rapid to gratify any one who prays that the beams of the Sun of Righteousness may illumine the dark corners of the earth.”