From barrels of clothing received from the North I have sold and given a great many garments; have oftener sold, because it seems always wiser, although the prices may be ridiculously small. This money helps me to purchase medicine for the many sick persons. Let me add here, that with homeopathic remedies I have had most flattering success, always preparing the medicines myself, and carefully renewing them until the patients, without exception so far, are cured.
In addition to my visits, I have tried to reach the women by means of cabin prayer-meetings, and to help the girls and young women by the medium of sewing-schools. I have two schools in successful operation in different parts of the city. One numbers twenty pupils, the other nearly forty. We begin with prayer and short Scripture reading, and then with great eagerness the girls set about their sewing, or lesson in cutting, as the case may be. When a garment is finished, each girl purchases her own work for a dime or fifteen cents.
While they sew I read to them, if occasion permits, and sometimes they sing. They have begged to meet twice a week—a fact which proves their enthusiasm. My kind friends in Boston and Providence have done much toward supplying me with print, gingham and cotton cloth for my sewing-schools.
In Sunday-school work I have succeeded in drawing some strangers into my own class at Howard Chapel, and in forming some other classes for volunteer teachers from Jubilee Hall.
TEXAS.
“The African Congregational Church” of Paris.
The origin of this church, back in the dark days of terror, in 1868, was so unique, so spontaneous, so much after the spirit and form of the New Testament Churches, that we think it worth while to make some record of the same. At that time the colored people were indeed “scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.” Separated from the old church edifices of the white people, they had not yet gathered themselves into their own churches. A Mr. Smith, from Illinois, who had gone through the war as a soldier, and who had settled in mercantile business in Jefferson, Texas, and whose life was soon after sacrificed in the turbulence of those times, came up through Paris lecturing to the colored people. He proposed a church that would accommodate all the Christians, and the result was the organization above named, with a regular constitution and covenant. Its preamble reads thus:
“We, the ministers and members of different Christian churches, feeling greatly embarrassed in our former church relations, and regarding those matters of difference which divided the churches to which we have belonged as being unimportant, mischievous in their tendency, and in discordance with the spirit of Christianity, do now, on this 15th day of March, 1868, unite in a new organization, the African Congregational Church. Thankful to God, our gracious and mighty Redeemer, for this right and privilege of choosing and adopting our own church forms, ceremonies, and government, and of worshiping God as our conscience dictates, we hereby solemnly pledge ourselves to God and to one another that we will maintain a Scriptural Christian character, and support such laws and regulations founded on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as shall be adopted from time to time by two-thirds of the members of this church.”
The Constitution provides in the five articles for the election of “discreet and faithful members” as trustees, deacons, a clerk and treasurer, who shall pay out money only by vote of the church upon an order from the clerk; for the use of either one of the three modes of baptism; and for the choosing of ministers, “who shall preside over all the deliberations of the church;” a Scriptural plurality of preaching elders, a “presbytery” in, and not over the church.