SPRING CONFERENCES AND CHURCH WORK.
Five of our Conferences in the South have held their spring meetings. The reports we have had from them indicate that they were of unusual interest. Almost without exception they are pronounced to have been the best ever held. The high character of the sermons, addresses and discussions shows that these ministers are fit leaders of the people. Their reports of the progress of the work among the churches is encouraging. On another page of the MISSIONARY will be found some brief sketches of revival scenes and of individual experience and effort. This branch of the work of the Association deserves and will receive increased attention and assistance.
MISSISSIPPI IMMIGRANTS.
We alluded in a recent number of the MISSIONARY to the attractive advertisements of railroad and immigrant companies in the South, and we expressed the fear that many colored people might find the change to be disappointing. But the process goes on, and the rich bottom-lands in the State of Mississippi are attracting many hundreds and thousands of new settlers. Perhaps there is no better place to which they can go, for there are no better lands in the South. The great point is whether these people shall be herded together in rude homes, tilling the soil without skill, and rearing their children in ignorance and vice. It is the part of Christian wisdom and the duty of the Christian churches of this land to see that the people in this densely-packed and fertile region shall be promptly met with the means of Christian education. Our school at Tougaloo should be enabled to meet in some degree the opportunity it has to prepare and furnish preachers and teachers for this growing population; and schools and churches should be multiplied to meet the emergency.
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