In this effort Jones had a very difficult task; for the tendency during that day was rather toward segregation in the church. Most southern men had no idea of elevating the Negroes to the status of white men, not even in matters of religion. The whites believed that the domestic element of the system of slavery itself afforded adequate means for their improvement and the natural safe and effective means of their elevation. In other words, their instruction must be decidedly different from that of white men, in regard to whom the term education had widely different significations. The best the Negro could hope for would be an imitation of the white man to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the mental and moral habits of the superior race. Jones's work did not differ materially from that of the Rev. Josiah Law of Georgia, who was almost as successful in grappling with the same problem. These workers, however, soon found that there was a strenuous objection even to the verbal instruction of Negroes for fear that the oral exercise would inspire a desire for literary training, which was out of harmony with the status of the Negro in a slaveholding commonwealth. Thinking that it might lead to such a state of affairs, most masters in some parts of the South opposed all instruction of Negroes during the thirties and forties. Thereafter appeared occasional evidences of further interest in the religious instruction and the evangelization of the slaves and free people of color, however, in spite of this opposition. Much interest was manifested in this work by the Presbyterians of Charleston; Union, Georgia; Concord, South Alabama; and Mississippi. In 1825 the General Assembly went on record to the effect that "no more honored name could be conferred on a minister of Jesus than that of Apostle to the American slaves, and no service can be more pleasing to the God of Heaven, or more useful to our beloved country, than that which this title designates."