The one most formidable evil among our colored countrymen is their deplorable ignorance of the connection between religion and morality—­or rather the fact that religion, on its outward side, is morality.  The sable deacon who, when confronted with a list of his sins as dark as his countenance, replied triumphantly; “Well, bredren, I’se broke ebery commandment ob de ten—­but bress de Lord, I’se nebber los’ my ’ligion,” was no monster of iniquity.  He was only saturated and sodden with the delusion which submerges Pagan, Mohammedan, and Papist alike, and throws no little of its froth over Protestant, too often, that duties toward God and toward man are not blended, or even dove-tailed together.  But they are weights in opposite scales.  Be only devout in your penances or your hallelujahs, and your life among men is of little account.  Now, that notion can not be corrected in such a people as that one with which we have to do in the South by an occasional Sunday sermon.  In the day-school it must be reiterated morning, noon, and night in various applications, line upon line and precept upon precept.  And so, on the other hand, teachers, as well as scholars, must be reminded by pastors, with a little Puritan iron in their blood, of their Christian, as well as educational obligations.  One member of your committee who has had practical experience in the Southern work reports that some teachers, occasionally even now, need to be reminded of the Christian service that the Association, as well as the Master, expects from them.  But divide these different functions, put the churches and Sunday-schools under other auspices, and, self-evidently, that temptation would be so much the worse.  We must have groped out of the morning twilight toward the millennial day much further than we have before any such plan can be reduced to fact.

Dr. Strieby speaks in the paper of his clerical friend of twenty-five years ago, who thought the work of the Association would be transient.  It reminds us of Mr. Seward’s remark that three months would end the civil war.  We are in for a long campaign.  The sad fact is not to be blinked that, with the enormous increase of the colored population, the illiteracy among them is greater to-day than at the close of the rebellion.  We have need to sing at times: 

     O, learn to scorn the praise of men: 
     O, learn to lose with God.

As Dr. Goodwin grandly told us yesterday, our work is under the Master’s order.  Success is no concern of ours.  But success, because it is His concern, is sure.  Every losing battle in His service turns in time to victory.  We remember in Count Agenor de Gasparin’s “Uprising of a Great People,” how spell-bound, awe-struck, he appeared to be before that magnificent ground swell of the loyal nation, rolling on, as a traveling mountain range, to sweep the rebellion as drift-wood before it.  The eight millions of the freedmen and their children are rising.  If, for the present, there are refluent waves that sadden us it is God who brings in the tide.  “And when I begin,” saith the Lord, “I will also make an end.”