The Women’s State Convention organized in 1886, marks a new era in the history of our denomination. The present brick building on our school grounds owes its existence chiefly to this organization. They came into the field in a dark time, and at a time when the wheels of the school dragged heavily. The circumstances which sent Miss S. A. Stone before the people of the State seemed a providence. The time, the conditions, needed the heart of a woman to control them. And the Women’s Convention conquered the hardness of heart and the division of opinion, prevailing among the people, by sending Miss Stone among them. Most grandly did she conquer. Well, what is the lesson here? It is this: let the women still be encouraged, let them continue to operate. We need all our forces in line. Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon Mesdames G. J. Brooks, R. T. Pollard, C. J. Hardy, A. A. Bowie, W. R. Pettiford, A. J. Gray, M. Tyler, S. H. Wright, E. W. Armstead, J. A. Craig and the other noble women associated with them, for the services they have rendered the state in the support they have given their Convention. The times demand that this work shall still be faithfully continued. I am glad that we are up in our ideas of woman, and the fact that we are argues progress on our part. It is a praiseworthy fact that we colored Baptists occupy advanced ground with regard to the questions which involve the powers and rights of women. I remember that upon one occasion just after the close of the war, my mother returned from church rather disgusted because a woman had been called upon to lead in public prayer. Now, too, the singing, the reading and the praying in our congregations, are assuming forms suited to our advanced or advancing state of mind. The song is suited to the text and fewer stanzas are sung. The music is not so slow and is rendered with more harmony and life. In the sermon, the preacher aims to give his audience _thoughts_ rather than _feelings_, and longs to make his hearers _wiser_ rather than _happier_. He who reads the Bible to others, whether he reads in family or church, reads by paragraphs--taking in a single thought or fact at the time--in place of the old custom of reading a whole chapter in connection with which no one idea was raised into prominence. In short our gospel reformers seem now to realize that saving faith in the truth is that exercise of soul regarding truth that satisfies the intellect, impresses the sensibilities and bows the will beneath the gospel forms and gospel spirit. Of course this is not true of all our teachers, but it is true of many of them; and the tendency upon the part of the whole people is in this direction. Individual human essence leavened with the Divine essence, is the goal in the eye of the representative leader of our people. Largely we have attained to the confidence of our white brethren. In the union conference of the white and the