them peculiarly lights shining in dark places, and invest them with that quiet, but inscrutable transforming power that belongs to good leaven. In this has been vindicated the wisdom of the policy which has preferred quality to quantity, good character to great numbers, intelligent piety to ignorant devotion, a pure life to a noisy profession. Without doubt the Association might have doubled its present number of churches during these seventeen years. It has cost something to move slowly in this matter. We have said that the past year has witnessed the average growth. The rate of progress during the last seventeen years has been uniformly very constant, about five churches a year. Ten years ago six new churches and ten houses of worship were reported. The question now comes whether it is not quite time to change the rate by doubling it, at least to quicken the pace. The church work is initial and fundamental. It underlies all else. The Association is in the South for no other purpose than to make Christian manhood and womanhood. For this glorious work the church of God is the divinely appointed agency. Others are auxiliary. There is but one opinion as to the sore need of more churches. The Macedonian cry is heard in many directions. It has been demonstrated that Congregational churches can exist and thrive west of the Hudson and south of Mason and Dixon’s line. The polity and faith of the Pilgrim Fathers is not for the elect few but the unsaved many. And if the methods, influence, and example of our churches in the South are greatly stimulating to the churches round about them, that is an additional argument for their multiplication. It can hardly be doubted that the schools and universities, by their direct and indirect influence, have prepared sufficient material for more churches. What are eighty-three among the millions who sit in darkness? It must be kept distinctly in mind that educational facilities are multiplying in the South, and that to educate without Christianizing is possibly to augment the perils instead of the defenses of the Republic.