The colored people show their appreciation of the schools by an increased attendance. The roll is larger than last year in the aggregate, and in nearly all the departments. The total number of pupils reported this year is 8,052 against 7,207 last year. The largest proportionate increase is in the theological, grammar and normal grades.
Our schools are meant to be religious. If not, they are as nothing to us. We watch, therefore, with great jealousy, the developments in this direction, and we are gratified to be able to report interesting revivals at Fisk, Tougaloo and Woodbridge, with conversions and a quiet spiritual work at other schools. The usefulness and activity of our students as they go out in vacation or at graduation may be illustrated by facts like these: “One pupil who is a minister reports over forty hopeful conversions in connection with his labors during the summer vacation.” Another writes: “I was assigned to a place where there was no school-house or church. The people had their meeting under an arbor. I worked with the patrons until they built me a school-house.” From Memphis the report is: “Sixteen of our young people have, during the summer, taught 1,035 day pupils, and very nearly as many Sunday-school scholars.” The returning pupils at Tougaloo reported that “the Sunday-school and Temperance work had been vigorously pushed with excellent results, one of which was over 1,300 signers to the Temperance pledge.”
Our Theological Departments are the flower of our schools, and the germinating seed for our church work. They have this year, as we have seen, increased in the number of their students and in their efficiency. Talladega reports that “eight young men will graduate from the Theological Department, all of whom will enter the Congregational ministry in the South. They are now warmly welcomed to the pulpits of all denominations.” From New Orleans: “The Theological Department is larger than in any previous year. Four of the class are ordained ministers, of whom two are pastors of churches in New Orleans.” The Theological Department of Howard University reports that “sixteen students were sent forth to preach, all of whom go to the South to the Freedmen.”
With such a record before us, a work so useful and that needs almost indefinite expansion, invites to that expansion by its very success.
Our Church Work shows a steady and healthful growth. The number of churches in the South is 73 as against 67 last year; of church members, 4,961—last year, 4,600.
In the four new churches organized, and in the six new edifices erected, and two in the process, five repaired, and in the parsonages improved and built, we see the additions to the outward scaffolding, within which is going forward the spiritual work of preparing the polished stones of the sanctuary; and we see the added force of workmen ascending this scaffolding, in the ordination of four young men to the Gospel ministry, and in the reports from our Theological Departments of well trained young men graduating and entering the service.
That spiritual work is indicated in part by the reports of precious revivals and ingatherings into the churches. The pastor at New Orleans writes: “It is my happiness to record one of the most precious revivals in the history of the Central Church.” From Shelby Iron Works, Ala: “The meetings closed with twenty-one conversions reported. Last Sunday fifteen came forward, entered into covenant with the church, and were baptized on profession of their faith. Some eight or ten are to unite by letter the first opportunity, who were not ready to join last Sunday.” From Savannah, Ga,: “There has been an unusual work of grace among this people, and the meetings have been quiet and orderly as with a New England congregation.”
We have been impressed this year with the unusual mention in the reports from the churches of the attendance and interest in the prayer meetings. If the prayer meeting is the pulse of the church, we should infer that the life blood flows warmly from the heart in our churches in the South.
The disposition for self help is a plant of slow growth among a people marvelous for their faith and passive endurance, but little used to forethought and activity. We have felt the need of developing “this grace also,” and have, therefore, taken unusual pains to induce the churches to aid more fully in the support of their pastors. The responses have exceeded our expectations; in almost every instance the additional sum we have named has been given, and in some instances more.
Other facts of the same purport are seen in such extracts as these, culled from the “Detailed Report.” The pastor of the church in Atlanta proposed that the church debt should be paid off. With a little help from the North, and from the professors of the University, it was done, making about $563 raised by the church, aside from current expenses, in six months. They have also aided in securing a fine bell of 800 lbs. The young church at Marietta, Ga., raised $300 for their new church edifice. In a church collection for the American Missionary Association in Marion, one man put in $5, being one-tenth of his crop—a bale of cotton. A man and his wife are sustaining their daughter in the school at Tougaloo with the money saved on snuff and tobacco since they signed the pledge. The church at Wilmington, N. C., claims to be the banner church among the constituents of the American Board, having given more than any other, according to number and means, as judged by the report of Dr. Alden.