2. The question of two Congregational Societies on the Southern field receives its greatest importance from its relation to caste-prejudice. There are other difficulties. One of the saddest features of the modern church extension at the West is the starting of two or more feeble churches of different denominations in small villages or among sparse populations, creating frictions and rivalries where harmony and Christian fellowship are so essential, and a waste of men and money where there is so much need of economy. This would be aggravated in the poorer and sparser settlements of the South, and still more aggravated if the same denomination should, by two of its own societies there, thus come into rivalry with itself. In the one case two houses are arrayed against each other; in the other, a house is divided against itself. It is the same railroad company running parallel lines in competition with each other. But all these considerations, grave as they are, are of small importance when compared with the danger that the division of the labors of two societies, running mainly along the color line, would be construed as lending the sanction of the denomination to caste separation. This is the gravamen of the difficulty. I am happy to say that the two societies are equally committed against caste, and will equally and honorably repudiate all intentional sanction of it. But the bare fact that one is avowedly working mainly for the whites and the other mainly for the blacks, will, in spite of all protests to the contrary, array them before the public as separated only by the color line. It is not proper for me to speak for another society, but for my own I must speak. The American Missionary Association was born an opponent of slavery. Amid poverty, sneers and reproach from the best of men, as well as the worst of men, it pressed forward in its opposition till the glorious end came. It must oppose caste as it did slavery. It began its work among the freedmen as the avowed enemy of caste, and amid much misapprehension and reproach at the South, it has pressed onward until it has gained the respect of both races. That position it cannot, and it ought not to be asked to, surrender or jeopardize by being placed on one side of a line of separation in missionary labors that has no reason for its existence except the colors of the people to be benefited. 3. If, in view of all the facts, it should be ultimately decided that the Congregational churches should be represented at the South by one missionary society, the decision should be reached in the broadest spirit of Christian wisdom and kindness.