There is hopefulness among these brethren and sisters as to the reviving of God’s work in the special direction of practical righteousness. With all the immense moral evils of a Federal election, they feel that conscience has been stirred, and profound gratitude to God for the result has been awakened among the Freedmen. Thought and energy, it seems to them, are more likely to turn in the direction of religion now than in any other great common channel, and they have courage and cheer for coming work. No salvation movement among them can overpass their need.
I add, at a later date, that an afternoon given to church extension and the spread of education was of the deepest interest. Between the two papers, or addresses, was another on more generous giving by the churches, entirely in keeping. How vast a work in both church and school is laid upon them, one needs to be among them, and to see and hear them, in order to realize. How the treasury of the A. M. A. could fill to repletion if all who support it could have an inside view. In conversations at Andover on two different occasions, Prof. Park uttered the strongest and most anxious impressions respecting our national future and the condition of the South. I am sure that he and all deep-sighted and far-sighted men would find them intensified on actual examination of the facts. The task before us is vast, and, but for divine help, overwhelming and impracticable. Nothing in church order and work can save these people but the freest and most intelligent system; nothing in education but practical training for the duties and competitions with a more favored race, guided and inspired by thorough Christian principle.
Another afternoon was given to an ecclesiastical council, called by the 2d Congregational church of Memphis, to advise as to the ordination of a pastor. The examination of the young man who had been preaching to them for some months was a thoroughly delightful one, specially full and rich in the recital of Christian experience. The young brother is a light colored man, a native of Pennsylvania, of an earnest, intense nature, studious, modest, instructive as a preacher, and edifying to a group of Northern white teachers in Le Moyne Institute, and bore himself as to clearness and soundness of doctrine, in a manner so admirable, that many candidates for the ministry from the more favored race might well look up to him. Very tender and sweet was his testimony to parental faithfulness, and the divine blessing upon it in the Presbyterian church in which he was brought up, and to the providential leading that guided him into the ministry “for the sake of the work in the South.” The Conference, at an earlier session, licensed two other young brethren, whose work in gathering churches and schools is sorely needed in the communities they represent. One of these preached before it.