In all this long process the teachers are with them at every step—­in the shop, the school, the Sunday-school, the prayer meeting, and the church, and often the principal of the school is the pastor of the church.  Thus the church, which grows up within or along side of the school, gets the priceless boon of the personal example and influence of these Christian teachers, in refining the manners and in making character; and as the pupils are converted they enter the church to become its stable members and intelligent officers.  On the other hand, the families in the church, with their kindred and friends, furnish the pupils for the school and help to sustain it by their money and prayers, both the church and the school being stronger by their mutual support and more potent in their influence in the community than if they stood apart.  And even after the scholars have left the school and have entered upon the business of life, the Association is especially fitted to gather them into churches.  It has occurred in several instances, in starting new churches beyond the range of our schools, that we have found them to be made up first almost wholly of graduates and students from our different institutions, and that these have remained the most intelligent and reliable members.

We have found, too, that when a church was thus organized where we have no school, we are very soon importuned to start one.  In localities with a scattered population there might not be sufficient public funds to open a colored public school; in many more places they would sustain the school for only two months in the year, and in larger towns it sometimes has happened that these public schools were of such a character that the parents begged for a Christian school as a means of saving the moral purity of their children.  Thus, in every way, and under all circumstances, the school and the church need and help each other.  And what is true of the colored people is equally true of the whites in the mountains and elsewhere, among whom the Association is working so auspiciously, planting its schools and churches in mutual helpfulness.

The suggestion that all the church work of the denomination in the home-field be given to one society, and all the educational be concentrated in one other society, deserves thoughtful consideration, for it meets with this very serious objection, that it provides for but one collection for work that now receives two or three.  The experience of our churches is conclusive against the hope that one enlarged collection would be given to the one society.  For a time, a brief time, spasmodic efforts might, as in former cases, result in some special contributions, but the new experiment would certainly be more disastrous, if it should fail, than those already tried, because it would involve far greater interests.