As boys run backward that they may jump the further forward, so we may profitably compare the receipts of this Association in its earlier years with those of this last year. The nearly $300,000 just announced is equal to the total of contributions for the first ten years. And the total for the year, as given by the Treasurer, of the contributions from the same constituency for the general work in which the Association is engaged, more than $500,000, is equal to the receipts into our treasury for the first fourteen years.
Never have the affairs of this Association seemed more prosperous; never have its labors on the field yielded a more abundant and precious fruitage; never has it seemed more firmly established in the confidence of the people, both at the North and the South; never has it shared more fully the favor of God!
May we have grace to walk so humbly before God, and so honestly and faithfully before men, in the administration of our trust, that His favor and their confidence may abide upon us!
THE FREEDMEN.
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.
The Committee to whom has been referred the subject of the educational work of this Association, beg leave to report that we heartily approve the policy of the Association by which it has put its main efforts upon the Christian education of teachers for the colored people. Our Congregational churches, while it is important to plant them, are not the first need. They can enter but slowly. The people do not appreciate them nor ask for them. Education they beseech us for. The lower common-school education we can supply only here and there. We thank God, and we recognize it as a blessed evidence of the growth of healthy public sentiment, that every year more and more attention is paid in the States of the South to free public education, and that in this the colored people are having their part, and that the expense of supporting their schools is more and more cheerfully borne. But the States which are willing to educate children are not all ready as yet to educate their teachers. Whether the common schools of the South are good, depends on whether the schools for teachers are good. We believe there is no other agency which is doing so much to secure teachers for the colored youth of the South as the American Missionary Association. This is a task which does not carry with it ecclesiastical profit; but it carries the blessing of the Great Head of the Church, as it has the good will of good men in every communion.