So, then, I do not believe that we, as Congregationalists, need any other agency in the Southern field than the one that has wrought there so nobly in the years now past. I am sure that even the educational work of this Association would be obstructed by the entrance of any other missionary organization into this field. Because I love and honor the Home Missionary Society, I do not want to see it compromise itself or imperil the interests of Christ’s kingdom at the South by turning from its proper work, its urgent work, to try a doubtful experiment. And I trust this Association, in all love and kindness, but with all needful frankness, will express its wishes in this matter. Two little boys were astride of a hobby-horse, and the one who was riding ahead was being crowded out of the saddle, and was clinging with some difficulty to the neck of the wooden steed. Finally he ventured: “Jimmy, don’t you think if one of us should get off I could ride a little better?” I hope that the American Missionary Society will say, by her representatives here, to her honored sister, the American Home Missionary Society: “Don’t you think that if one of us should keep out of this Southern field, I could do my work in it a little better?” I am sure that she has earned the right to express this wish, and I have not the slightest fear that the wish will not be heeded.
From the trend of the discussion this morning I find that a large responsibility has drifted into my hands. There is among the churches in the North a deep, unmistakable interest in those long-neglected ignorant whites of the South. It is a difficult problem to tell how to turn this into channels that shall benefit these people without on the one hand neglecting the work already undertaken by this Association or, on the other, giving some suspicion of countenancing a color line and perhaps bringing a clashing of interests between sister societies. In the report on education just received, special attention was turned to the mountain whites. Perhaps the solution of our difficulties may be found here. Certainly there will arise in your minds no suspicion of waning interest in the colored people or sympathy with caste on the part of those who have heretofore been closely connected with this mountain work at Berea College and the surrounding regions. It is their unanimous conviction that work undertaken for these mountain people with firm faith in Christian brotherhood and unswerving courage will assist in unfurling upon a higher masthead the broad motto borne on the seal of Berea College for twenty-five years past: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.”