When the American Missionary Association went “down toward the South,” Congregationalism was hated by the ruling class, as coming from the hot-bed of New Englandism, and was absolutely unknown among the people to whom the Northern evangelism then had access, and even on their part, as a system, it had yet to encounter the densest opposition which ignorance, superstition and sectarianism could combine. And when, like John the Baptist, it laid the ax at the root of the tree, demanding morality as well as pietism, it confronted the momentum of generations of pagan vice confirmed by the indurations of the system of slavery. In order to get any foothold on this basis, it has to begin with the spelling-book, as the key to the incarcerated Bible. But the hunger for letters, for ideas, forced a way into the word of God. Schools followed the army across the Southland. Revivals, like the Northern clover, sprang up in the same track. Every teacher, by his or her vow, entered into with the A. M. A., became a missionary. Talk about women’s work for women. Here, for a score of years, have been from 150 to 200 gifted consecrated women, of whom the world was not worthy, sacrificing youth and beauty, going for a time into places where men could not stand, with their names cast out as vile, yet lifting up their lowly sisters and starting scores and scores of young men on into a religious life and into the ministry of the Lord Jesus. As converts multiplied, many of them took to the old churches, and not a few desired to have the way which their dear teachers represented. And so, gradually there came on these churches, each one a miniature republic, and each, in almost every case, an outcome of the school process. In that early time, not a few of the best tried friends of the Association grew uneasy at the slow progress of the church work, only in late years to admire the wisdom of the administration in not picking the pear before it was ripe. The M. E. church going South had only to open its doors to receive 200,000 of the old-time Methodists, with their clinging immoralities and their corrupting ministers. Grandly has that patriotic church wrestled with its problem. But ours has been a call to a different task.