The good missionaries, sent down by Northern Churches, had been zealously laboring at the moral condition of the negroes whom slavery had Christianized. They made encouraging reports, but the facts they mentioned scarcely warranted so cheerful a view of the results of their labors. In the great collections of negroes sent here in 1864, they found marriage practically unknown. The grossest immorality universally prevailed. They had duly married the couples who were living together, which some of them thought a very valuable performance; but it did not appear that the ceremony had yet produced much effect on the habits of the people. They had preached to them and prayed with them, and, as one of them said: “Their interest in religious instructions is very encouraging. As a people, they are much more easy of access on the subject of religion than white people. When asked if they are pious, they will readily give an answer of yes or no. All professors of religion are free to tell their religious experience. There is no part of religious worship they enjoy so much, and in which they spend so much time, as in singing. In prayer they are generally very earnest, often using expressions that indicate a deep sense of unworthiness. One will often hear such expressions as these: ‘Heavenly Master, wilt thou be pleased to hear us?’ ‘O Jesus, Master, if thou be pleased, do come along dis way by thy Holy Spirit;’ ‘We know we are not heard for our much speaking.’ The gratitude which they have often manifested to me for reading and expounding to them the Scriptures has been a rich reward for my labors.” But the good man was compelled to admit that, when these “professors of religion” came out of the prayer-meetings, they had no hesitation in stealing whatever little delicacies they could find for next morning’s breakfast, or in appropriating somebody’s mule, and making off before daylight for some other locality. They would very humbly confess their sins on bended knees, and straightway rise to tell some outrageous lie, by which they hoped to get a little money. What reason had anybody to hope that they believed the story they told on their knees any more than the other? * * * * *