It will be observed that nearly all the churches reported have been blessed during the year with additions to their numbers, and that many have made improvements upon their property. The Sabbath-schools have everywhere received due attention, and much of the progress in the different churches has been made possible by the earnest, prayerful and unremitting labors of our missionaries in this department of religious work. Missionary meetings and societies have been greatly encouraged and the cause of temperance widely promoted. Many of the young converts have found their way to institutions of learning, and many have engaged in teaching and missionary service. When it is taken into account that these young churches are reformed churches, and that their church life is a new experience among the colored people, where they shine as lights in the world, it will be readily seen, we think, that this branch of our work augurs most hopefully a day of better things for the new South, and that the hearts and hands of these brethren, whose letters will be found elsewhere, should be strengthened, and their numbers largely increased. * * * * * THE PLACE OF THE CHURCH IN THE WORK OF MISSIONS. In these days, when science is pushing her inquiries in every direction with reference to the discovery of new facts, in order that she may deduce therefrom the course of nature and the system of the universe, there is danger that we overlook the basis in man’s moral constitution on which, alone, knowledge can have the highest significance and value. The drift is seen not merely in the public schools, but in the college and the professional seminary, which, more and more, are reducing education to the acquisition of facts, or to a simple intellectual drill. The scientific method, so called, has no place for moral agents or moral causes, and so its account of the world is forever rendered on a physical rather than on a metaphysical basis. With such a tendency in education, this Association can have no sympathy. It is the friend of all good learning, and will do its utmost to advance education; but it does not believe that a man can be well or symmetrically educated until his moral faculties are disciplined in advance of, and equally _with_, his intellectual. For this reason it would put the church at the center and foundation of all its work. In this respect it would co-operate with God, accepting His own appointed agency for the moral instruction of mankind. The church, as the great moral teacher, bears the stamp of a divine origin and authority. Its function is to teach divine truth, and to put man into right moral relations to the deep order of the universe. Any system of education, then, which ignored the church, or even set her in the background, would fail in a well rounded development of all the mental powers. A partial substitute may be found in other professions and other institutions, but nothing can take the place