But the work so well begun ought soon to be greatly enlarged. The rapid growth of the colored population gives emphasis to this—a growth that so far outstrips the means of education and spiritual improvement as to leave a constantly increasing number of illiterate voters and of degraded people. The benevolent societies of the North, of every name and order, ought to multiply their efforts for training the needed teachers—the business and professional men, the mechanics and the educated and consecrated ministers. Meantime, as the higher education of some advances, there will be more and more demand for churches of our order. We say this not from denominational feeling. We hold no invasive attitude. We stir no controversy. We aim not at division, but believing that the apostolic method of gathering churches is the true one, that in its fluent and free adaptation, its simplicity of form and order, in its investing Christ as the immediate Head of each local church, in its putting the individual members upon responsibility, and thus setting them to the study of God’s Word for authority and the dependence upon the Divine Spirit for guidance—that in this free and fraternal way of ordering the churches there is a molding power for good beyond others, and remembering its working and product elsewhere, we desire such fruit of it all abroad. That Providence which always surpasses our thought in preparing its agencies has given us for this work this Association with its schools and machinery, its knowledge of the needs of the section where its greatest efforts have been put forth. Started with no expectation of founding churches, it yet has nothing in its constitution limiting it to one kind of effort nor to any one class or race. Its schools are open to all. Its churches are simply Christian churches. It goes to teach and preach and to elevate the masses. That is what is needed—no distinction of caste or class, and in the organization of churches the recognition of a regenerate membership on the principle that mankind are of one blood and on the fellowship of all Christians.