THE SOUTH.

FIELD NOTES.

BY REV. GEO. W. MOORE.

Central Church at New Orleans is a busy hive of Christian life and work. It has its departments of Christian nurture, training and applied Christianity. The brotherhood of Andrew and Philip is a power in the community; through it the young men are brought to Christ and trained for service. The pastor, Rev. J. W. Whittaker, and his assistant, Miss B. W. Hume, meet the young men every Sunday afternoon. Their meetings and outdoor work last six hours every Sunday from 4 to 10 P. M. At 4 P. M. they hold a conference and prayer service of the workers, after which the young men go forth and invite their comrades and others to share the hospitality of their rooms and attend the evening service. The evening meeting is a gospel service, followed by an inquiry meeting. Hundreds of young men have attended these meetings, scores have been converted, and a large number have united with the church and are being trained in the brotherhood for Christian service.

The school at McIntosh, Ga., is crowded. The teachers and pupils are very grateful for the interest Christian Endeavor Societies are taking in giving them the much needed Christian Endeavor Hall. This school in the Black Belt of Georgia is one of the most needy fields in the South.

The revival at New Iberia, La., not only resulted in the addition of seventy-five persons to the church, but was also the means of closing two saloons.

The Twenty-second Annual Meeting of the Central South Association met in the new Theological Hall of Fisk University in April. The reports from the churches were encouraging, and the need of the work of church extension was discussed. The Central South will be known in the future as the Tennessee Association. The Woman's Missionary Society of the Central South Association is furnishing one of the rooms of the theological hall of Fisk University, and raising funds for our Indian work.

The church at Memphis is increasing in numbers and influence under its new pastor, Rev. Geo. V. Clark.

FIELD ITEMS.

WASHINGTON, D. C.—The past month has been characterized by many evidences of progress. Six adult persons united with the church, and others are standing upon the threshold. A kindergarten school is carried on in the building, having about twenty-two children from the alley. A sewingschool is also carried on, and some twenty or more girls are taught to cut and

make their own clothes. We feel encouraged in many respects, and yet have not attained, along all lines, the desire of our hearts for the glory of God and the enlargement of our spiritual life.

RALEIGH, N. C.-A law student at Shaw University joined our church four years ago. He has helped to support a widowed, sick mother, and worked his way up, teaching a school of eighty scholars four miles in the country, walking both ways, and yet studying law and reciting at night nearly a mile away from home. He was finally graduated with honor and admitted to the bar, sustaining decidedly the best examination in a class of thirty, all the others white, mostly from the North Carolina State University, and he as black as you will often see, yet complimented without stint by his white competitors and by the Chief Justice himself. His valedictory speech was specially good. He has had one important case to plead before a white judge, and won it.

NEW ORLEANS, LA.-Our church meets a great need in this large city. It is putting forth every effort to reach the people. Every Sunday evening the young men of our church go out into the highways and hedges of the city and compel them to come in. Every Sunday we have the great joy of seeing some one born into the kingdom of God. Daily men and women come to be prayed for and instructed in the way of salvation.

Childersburg, ALA.—A great many claim that our church is a new church, because they so lately learned of it; and because we worship more intelligently they claim that we have a new religion. They say that we have Bible religion and not heart religion. Of course, this is ignorance, and we must prove to them that Bible religion is heart religion.

MOBILE, ALA. Our people need very much a more dignified and higher order of service than we find in the old line churches among the colored people. They need very greatly a more intelligent ministry, with a higher tone and purpose, and a stauncher Christian manhood. The Congregational churches in the South are meeting this need. But these churches cannot without help maintain themselves in carrying out this superior religious life. Those colored people who have accepted our church life and views are too few and poor to stand alone financially. Our influence upon the old churches is very great, both directly and indirectly.

SELMA, ALA.—The pupils of the Scio Street public school in Rochester, N. Y., have presented to Burrell school in Selma, Ala., a fine United States flag, twelve by eighteen, to which especial interest attaches from the fact

that it had veiled a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Recently the flag was flung to the breeze from the lengthened staff on Burrell school with cheers loud and long from pupils and their friends, after a simple exercise in the chapel, consisting of readings by teachers, songs by pupils, a talk by Miss Munger, the prime mover in the affair, and a salute to the flag in the words, "We give our heads and our hearts to our country

one country, one language, one flag," accompanied by the prescribed gestures. It has been said that the vocal organs of the Southern people are not adapted to hurrahing, yet on this occasion the crowd gave three cheers in good Yankee fashion.

"FOR THE FREEDMEN.-Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Corresponding Secretary of the American Missionary Association, writes:

"For this year we name something new and peculiar, the erection of a school building, to be called Christian Endeavor Hall,' at McIntosh, Liberty County, Ga. Almost the entire county is now given up to the colored people, who are extremely poor. But they make great sacrifices to have their children educated. The school is already over-crowded. Will it not be a joy to the young people of the Christian Endeavor Society to erect a memorial building for this school, to be called 'Christian Endeavor Hall'? Money should be sent to H. W. HUBBARD, Treasurer, Bible House, New York."

EXPLANATION.

We have received contributions for this proposed building with many inquiries for further information. We give it:

The school at McIntosh, Georgia, is called the " DORCHESTER ACADEMY," and it has a peculiar history, which we sketch briefly below. It has comfortable buildings for a Girls' Hall, Teachers' Home and Dining Room and kitchen. But the school-rooms are greatly over-crowded. They are shown mainly in the one-story wing in the picture. It is proposed to make room by adding the two-story building: "Christian Endeavor Hall."

A REMARKABLE CHURCH HISTORY.

The history of McIntosh is a curious one, and while our story is about a school in the Black Belt of Georgia, we must go back for its beginning two hundred and sixty-three years, to a little town in the south of England. In 1630,

ten years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, a little church of like faith was formed in Dorchester, England. The people moved at once to New England and formed a settlement near Boston, which they called Dorchester. The church prospered, and six years afterwards a colony went to Windsor, Conn., and in thirty-five years afterwards, another colony from the mother church settled in South Carolina about eighteen miles above CharlesThis also was named Dorchester. The land was fertile, and between this settlement and Charleston were the baronial residences of wealthy and aristocratic Southerners. But the climate was malarial and the land was at length deserted by all the white inhabitants. The stately Episcopal church is in ruins, and a large tree is growing in the almost broken-down walls of the Congregational church.

ton.

The Dorchester church removed in 1752 to Georgia, settling between two large rivers, and the place was called "Midway," The people became wealthy, and large mansions adorned the great plantations, and although the land was low and malarial, yet the white people were able to spend the summers in the hills or in the North. The people were intelligent. It is said that three-fourths of the adult males before the war were college graduates. Some distinguished preachers and teachers in all parts of the country went forth from Midway. The father of Oliver Wendell Holmes was for a time pastor of the church, as was also the father of Morse, of telegraph fame. Midway was zealous for liberty in the Revolutionary struggle, and while Georgia hesitated, that county sent its delegate, Dr. Hall, to the Constitutional Convention, to be followed soon by the delegates from the State. The county was named "Liberty" by the State Legislature. In the late Civil War, Liberty county was solid for the Union, but was at length outvoted and carried into the rebellion.

The effects of the war were disastrous. Many of the mansions were burned, the plantations were in ruins, and the white people, unable any longer to maintain residences at home and among the hills, left the country almost to a man. The condition of the blacks was pitiable. There were no white people with money to hire them, or buy the little produce they could raise. Their great endeavor was to obtain little patches of land, and the

effort to pay for these exhausted their utmost resources, and left them almost nothing for food and clothing. They lived in little cabins in the pine woods, the walls open and the roofs leaky. Their food consisted of rice and such articles as they could raise on their little patches of ground, owned or rented, the cultivation being meagre for want of teams and implements.

THE CHURCH RE-DISCOVERED.

A missionary of this Association, in 1868, exploring a portion of the Black Belt of Georgia that had been desolated by the war, "lighted upon a certain place," where he held religious service in the evening and was told by a white man, who entertained him for the night, of the changed condition of the locality. That man said he owned 6,000 acres of land and had lived in luxury, never having worked with his hands. Now he could only set before our missionary the most meagre diet of coarse cornmeal bread (the meal ground by hand mills), and fried bacon, no milk, no butter, no other article of food. But the strangest statement the man made to the missionary was: "I did not know till the meeting last evening that you were a Congregationalist. We are a Congregational church here." He then detailed somewhat the history of the church from Dorchester, and added: "We formerly were wealthy, sustained a branch colored church of five hundred members-supported a minister for their special instruction. Now we are scattered, weakened, desolate."

In 1871, the Association opened a school there, at what is now called McIntosh, and in 1874 organized a church and built a church edifice. Subsequently additional school buildings were erected, and the institution was named the "Dorchester Academy."

THE EAGERNESS OF THE COLORED PEOPLE FOR EDUCATION.

Amid their utter poverty these people are exceedingly anxious for the education of their children, and make almost incredible sacrifices in order We dare not pauperize them by giving them schooling without some compensation. The manly sense of self-help is as important as mere book learning. The following description from the principal of the school tells the story.

"Speaking of paying for tuition, up North it means money; but down here it means eggs and chickens, and rice, and fish, and crabs, and blackberries, and sweet potatoes, and greens, and corns, and many other things. We ate blackberries-well, we didn't quite get the color of blackberries-buying them for the sake of helping the scholars to pay tuition.

"One morning after devotional exercises, as I was going to my office, one of the girls came from her school-room and pulled out a live chicken from under her shawl and asked: Professor, do you take chickens for tuition?' Now that was pitiful, if it does seem absurd. Again and again a little fellow has come to me and brought his little collection of one and two cent pieces and asked: 'Professor, will that make up