GEORGIA.
A Struggling Church—A Growing Temperance Work—Hindrances.
REV. J. R. McLEAN, NO. 1 MILLER STATION.
The school is doing well. I have enrolled 67 now, and have larger scholars than at any time before. The Sunday-school is growing in numbers and also in interest, and its work has had great power over the people here for good.
The church has been pulling together quite well, and has raised towards the work here about $30. A number of the people are not able to do anything, for they need some one to help them to get bread. None have joined the church this year thus far; still I hope to have some come in before the year closes.
We have our house all ceiled inside, and now we are trying to get it painted. I do wish we could find some one to give us some singing books, both for Sunday-school and church. We have only three that we can use in worship. I like the “Songs of Devotion,” but then anything else will do if we can get that.
The Temperance Society is doing good, but there is room for it to do much more. At our meeting last Sabbath, five joined us. The band numbers now about 50. Some, as might be expected, have broken their pledges. I find it is those who are trained in our schools, and those only, that take hold of our principles.
O, if more could be done for the children, and for a larger number of them, there would be some hope for the race yet! What can be done for them?
The white people are doing nothing to help them, as I shall tell you when I get to it. But the old ones find it hard to leave off the habits of slavery, which have been going on so long that they have taken deep root, and how they are to be dug out I cannot tell. But will not our Heavenly Father overlook many of these wicked habits!
Our church grows slowly because we are trying all the time to get the people out of their old ways, which most of the people like best, and so they are held by the other churches.