The year just closing has been a year of building activity in the church work. Five new meeting houses have been erected; four of these are among the mountain people and one among the freedmen. One new feature in our church work is the organization of two churches composed principally of Congregationalists from the North, who have taken up their residence in the South. They needed help and organized under the care of the Association. Although we have no great Pentecostal baptism to record this year, we reverently speak our thanks “that the Lord has added to the church almost daily, such as are being saved.” MOUNTAIN WORK. When the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association “decided to offer these mountain people the aid of our system,” probably even this far-seeing committee did not fully realize the magnitude of the work, nor the grand possibilities of the field. The few feeble churches that then existed are scarcely recognized now in the larger work that has grown up independently of them and miles away. Indeed, in entering this region in 1882 we were only putting the plow into the field, which had been already turned by pioneer laborers of the American Missionary Association. Before the war a brave man had pushed his way back into these mountain fastnesses in Christ’s name. He went under commission from this Association. He opened a school; his work was successful. Into his school he put a library for the use of his pupils. In this library there was a volume of Wesley’s sermons and, among these, one against the sin of slavery. This book got into the hands of a pro-slavery family. It was told that the preacher was teaching anti-slavery doctrine. Excitement in this back mountain region was intense. A mob was organized. They seized this missionary, bound him, beat him, and took him some two miles over the mountains and threw him into a cabin, and left two men as guards at the doors, while they, with their habitual delay, went to their homes for their dinner. They intended to return and inflict sorer punishment and perhaps hang him. Two mountain lads, brothers, heard of this outrage. They were pupils of this godly school-master and loved him. Each one, unknown to the other, went by a different path to the cabin with his rifle on his shoulder. They took out their teacher, cut the cords that bound him, and while he and his terrified wife at his side climbed the mountain, pushing their way to the Ohio river, these stalwart mountain lads kept back the mob with the threatening use of their unerring rifles. This missionary and his heroic wife finally reached the river and escaped. Now for the wonderful climax to that history. We have recently organized a Congregational Church where these thrilling scenes occurred. Among the original members who united in the bonds of freedom-loving Congregationalism were these two men who when boys defended this teacher at the risk of their own lives. A neat little church stands