Some of the colored preachers in most parts of the South are ignorant, fat, lazy and licentious. Many of them use intoxicating liquors freely. The influence of such men is of course a curse to the colored people, and is the cause of much immorality among the married women who are members of the “colored churches.” But it would be most unjust to allow my readers to infer that colored ministers generally belong to this class. Here, as in the description of all classes of people in the South, discrimination is necessary. The new order of things is manifesting itself in a conflict between opposing tendencies in the negro churches, and among their ministers. Except in the larger towns, most of the older ministers depend on mere noise and excitement to influence their hearers. They work themselves into incoherent fury, stamp and yell, and appeal only to the “feelings” of their uninstructed followers. These old men denounce “de high-flyin’ preachin’ we has dese days.” They say “it’s all book-l’arnin’; dey ain’t no Holy Ghos’ in it, at all. Dis new religion mighty smaht, an’ mighty proud, but it hain’t got no _feelin’_ to it.” There is a great deal of truth in this. The more intellectual preaching of the younger educated men is ill suited to the tropical and impulsive nature of the colored people. Their life is far more a matter of instinct than of thought, and to attempt to teach religion to them by means of appealing to their reason is to disarm religion at once of all its potency. The preachers and missionaries who are best adapted to the peculiar conditions and needs of the colored people are the young men who have received an industrial education, who have been trained to manual labor, and have learned either farming or some mechanical art at such schools as the Normal and Agricultural Institute at Hampton, Virginia, or the other admirable institutions of learning fostered by the American Missionary Association and the churches of the South. Of course, this class is still very small, but it comprises some excellent men, whose influence is already widely felt in the South, and is a potent factor in the soundest and most hopeful religious work now going on there. EDUCATING THE NEGROES. The foremost men in the Southern States—I mean those who are foremost in business, and in the social and moral life and activities of the local communities—are everywhere taking up the subject of education for the negroes in a serious and business-like spirit. I did not find anywhere, except in Southwestern Texas, any manifestation of prejudice against negro education, or feeling of jealousy regarding the advancement of the colored people in intelligence or capability of self-elevation.