There is no room in the South for our church system if its work be simply to transfer the people in bulk from other communions, with all their prevalent views and practices. Our brethren of the Baptist and Methodist churches are to be congratulated upon their large membership, and so upon their opportunity for doing good. They have the responsibility of purifying from within. Many are struggling nobly, as exhorted by the _Christian Recorder_, “to thin out the ministry of the church until there shall not be found an ignorant man, nor a bad man in the ranks. Thin out the church itself. Expel the vicious. Drive out the notoriously bad. Have a clean church.” Starting as a new church-life, we have no call, no excuse for sweeping in such material. It would be no gain to the kingdom to effect such a transfer in bulk. Our mission is, through our blended educational and Christianizing process, to help raise the standard of Christian and church character. By the stimulus of such example, we are doing more to help the old churches in their eliminating process than we could in any other way. That same article in the _Recorder_, from which I have quoted, shows this. The editor also sets down the A. M. A. as the greatest rival of the A. M. E., and no doubt rejoices in this provoking of his church to love and to good works. But our churches, if they would attain to much of this helpfulness, must gain it upon the standard of intelligence and of Christian character, without the risks of wildness and superstition. And so, if God be with us, if we be humble and spiritually minded in our work, by and by we may expect large accessions of members. The president of a Baptist Colored University, himself a New England educator, remarked to me, a while ago, that he could see that in twenty-five years the Congregationalists would have a large church-work among the Freedmen, simply as the result of their educational process. Our young pastors, who have not as yet the stimulus of the large congregations of some other communions, must remember that the influence of their churches is not measured by numbers, and that if they secure quality, this may go further than quantity.