What this Association and other missionary forces have done and are doing—­this Association more than others—­will be the balance of power to prevent the dreaded conflict of races; the balance of power to settle the question; How can the two races live in the same section with mutual respect for each other’s civil and Christian rights?  This may take time.  Christianity takes time.  It is ours to take Christianity to teach that the beginning of Christianity was the death blow to wrong principles and evil practices of men, however well intrenched and fortified these forces may be.

It is this which gives us courage to grapple with centuries of wrong and to undertake the slow reduction of these evils.  When Christianity came, the era of conscience came, and in His gospel is the power of intelligence and moral determination that shall not be overcome of evil, but shall overcome evil with good.

     “Men bound with right are strong: 
     Right bound with right in Christian faith
     Will conquer a world of wrong.”

The missionary schools and the missionary churches are, we believe, the only safeguard against the conflict of races.  They are the guardian against this national peril.  This being so, the churches must speed them more and more.  They must not hinder them nor tie their hands.  The guarantees of this peaceful solution are in the hands of the churches.  Multiply and hasten the Christian energies.  Multiply the Christian prayers that we may be workers together with Him of whom it is written, “He shall not fail or be discouraged.”

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REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.

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REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK SOUTH.

BY REV.  WM. BURNET WRIGHT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

It is an ominous fact that in the South illiteracy is steadily increasing.  It is an encouraging fact that in the region surrounding our chartered and normal schools illiteracy is steadily diminishing.  The colored people are multiplying more rapidly than the means of educating them.  If the supply of school accommodations to-day exactly equalled the demand, so that every colored child of suitable age was provided for in some school, there would be at the time of our next annual meeting 255,500 children asking to be taught their letters to whom we should have to say, We cannot teach you.  But the supply does not yet nearly equal the demand.

In respect to education, the South is a dark sky rapidly growing darker, but flecked with patches of lighter shade, which are gradually growing brighter and larger.  Such a bright space frames each of our chartered and normal schools.  Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University, in New Orleans, and Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas, are doing work which vindicates each year more distinctly the strategic sagacity which located them.  In these