We notice that the church work, like the educational, is growing on our hands. Five new churches--especially if each prove a metropolitan or mother church--is a gain for which to give thanks and from which to take courage. Sixty-five churches in all, though most of them are connected with our educational institutions, or near them, is certainly not a bad showing for thirteen years of labor. We notice also, with pleasure, a cheering growth the last year by conversions from the world. In fifteen only of the churches, this growth gives a total of 358 additions, an average of twenty-four. Have our Northern churches done so well? It is equally gratifying to learn what kind of Christians our churches South are making, or seeking to make; to know our students are pledged to work; what these converts think of the standard of morality enjoined by the Gospel; the honesty, purity and truth--in short, the practical righteousness which God ordains. We rejoice to know that this Association has planted, and is training, these Southern churches to be the salt of that part of the earth--cities on a hill, lights in dark places--so recognized, having the reputation of being Bible Christians--industrious, virtuous, zealous of good works--thus already having obtained a good report. It is cheering to learn that some of the best of the pastors of these sixty-five churches have been raised not only from bondage, but from all the degradation of slavery--boys picked up in the street, and polished like diamonds, for the Master’s use. We have certainly made a beginning in the matter of church extension, as in that of education. Not the least gratifying feature is seen in the character, the growing influence, and reputation, even among the whites, which these churches enjoy, though some of them are numerically small. By your instrumentality and the grace of God, they have learned what a Christian character is, and that Christ’s friends are not those who can sing loud and pray loud, whether they are honest or thievish, tell the truth or lies, are virtuous or licentious; not those who, with these immoralities, crowd sanctuaries and make them echo; but, rather, those who keep the commandments of God. This Association crowded the years before the war fighting against the extension of slavery; then crowded the years during the war, and those immediately following it, with efforts to teach the colored people to read the Bible; and later, devoted itself to the work of planting higher institutions--as at Hampton and Nashville and New Orleans--in order to make of the blacks men of a higher, nobler type, teaching and preaching men, worthy to lead their host. Shall it now set them to no grand work of evangelization among their fellows?