—Prof. Wm. S. Scarborough, formerly a pupil at Atlanta University, has published a neat volume of 150 pages, entitled “First Lessons in Greek.” The work was designed to be an imitation of Jones’ “First Lessons in Latin,” and to give a clear and concise statement of the rudimentary forms of the language, with copious notes and references to the grammars of Goodwin and Hadley. Under Part II. Mr. Scarborough gives a few selections taken from the Anabasis and Memorabilia of Xenophon. The work is a good indication of what may be expected from the colored people when they shall have had the advantages of a higher education.
—“Worship in Song,” edited by Jos. P. Holbrook, Mus. Doc., and published by A. S. Barnes & Co., contains 450 pages, and is handsomely bound and attractive. Those best acquainted with Dr. Holbrook recognize his excellent judgment and taste, and the great attractiveness of his compositions. The author and publishers invite a practical test of their book, and it appears to quite meet the expectations of those who may adopt it for public worship.
—Bishop Hurst, in the Quarterly Review, writes on this wise respecting the work of the Methodist Episcopal and the Congregational churches at the South:
The two churches which are pre-eminently American, which have grown out of the ideas, convictions and the religious wants of the people under the free institutions of this country, are the Methodist Episcopal and the Congregational. They have laid foundations in the north and west which will endure for all coming time, and both are now doing the same in the South. If considered as antagonistic, which it is not, but rather co-operative, the real rival of the Methodist Episcopal church in the South is the Congregational, with its institutions of learning sustained by the American Missionary Association. It moves upon those lines which will give it a future, while other and older denominations are sleeping, apparently unconscious of the mighty revolution that has taken place, and indifferent to those principles which will inevitably impress themselves upon the church of the next century. Intelligence and morality are everywhere seen in that communion. That it is gaining a foot-hold in the South is obvious to every observer—a fact for which we are thankful. It is not carrying New England ideas into the cabins of the colored people, but it is doing better by bringing them out of their cabins and squalor and ignorance into the New England atmosphere and society created among themselves and for their posterity. We do not entertain a doubt that this denomination will become strong in the South, and we shall rejoice to see the time when it will devote as much attention to the white people as it now does to the colored. Southern ecclesiastical bourbonism is sadly, if not hopelessly, fossilized, and it is very desirable that various churches unite in bringing new spiritual life to the masses in the South, both white and colored.
—Some have made a considerable ado about “Yankee school-teachers” in the negro schools in the South, and in some cases our heathen have acted much as the heathen of Canterbury Green (Ct.) acted in 1831. Perhaps some of them have not been altogether to our taste; perhaps some of them have mixed in with the “three R’s” some things not to our edification. But what else could be done? Would qualified Southern men and women have taken these places when the Northern teachers came? Would they do it now? Not generally, though some of the best would, as a very few of the best have begun to do. Suppose these Northern teachers had not come—that nobody had taught the negroes, set free and citizens! The South would have been uninhabitable by this time. Some may resent this. Be it so; they resent the truth.—From “Our Brother in Black” by Atticus G. Haygood, D. D., Pres. of Emory College, Oxford, Ga.