proposal, at a meeting of the Board, to have "a season of prayer," when the discussion of the slavery question seemed tending to a decision perilous to conservative support. Dr. Anderson avoids his subject under the cover of a vigilant effort to be pious. He seems half conscious that a thorough and candid history of the half-century of the Board and its missions would put in peril a considerable portion of "the funds of the Board." In the first vigor of his effort to edify "the patrons of the Board," in his report of the Jubilee meeting, there is an absurd subjection of the Christian to the official. Speaking of the receipts and the payment of the debt, he says: "This auspicious result was owing to the spirit of uncommon liberality which God was pleased to give to the friends of the enterprise generally, but more especially to a well-planned effort for the removal of the debt, suggested by a mercantile friend in Boston." That contrast between the suggestions of God's Spirit and those of a mercantile friend in Boston clearly indicates an official expectation of falling back upon the mercantile friend again, whenever the result of the movement of the Holy Ghost upon the friends of the enterprise generally shall be not wholly satisfactory. It is one indication of a fact which we first saw with unaffected horror, that the Board's Holy Ghost is guaranteed by certain rich and blameless Pharisees of benevolence, who like to be hinted at in reports and memorials.

The labored effort to avoid the vital topics of this history is seen in the references to the subject of slavery. This subject has been much discussed in the meetings of the Board, awakening at times an absorbing interest, and in 1846, as Dr. Hopkins's Historical Discourse mentions, " a difference of views in regard to the best method of dealing with slavery" led to the formation of the "American Missionary Association," on a pronounced antislavery basis. The reader of the "Memorial" will in vain consult the Index for any record of the matter. Let him look, however, for "votes by yea and nay," and he will find the following specimen of the red tape of the missionary circumlocution office: "The first time in which the Board is known to have decided a disputed question by a call of the roll of members, and the formal response of Yea'

or 'Nay,' was at Brooklyn, N. Y., in the year 1845. It was upon the adoption of a report on the subject of slave-holding in churches under the care of missionaries of the Board, made by a committee appointed the previous year. There have been only two other occasions on which this method was resorted to, and those were in connection with the same subject, at Hartford in 1854, and Philadelphia in 1859. The reader is referred, for the more important proceedings of the Board in relation to this matter, to the minutes of the annual meetings at Brooklyn in 1845, Boston in 1848, Hartford in 1854, Utica in 1855, and Philadelphia in 1859." What is "this matter" here spoken of? Is it "votes by yea and nay"? The grammatical structure of the passage implies this, though a slight examination shows that this structure is a contrivance for hiding in four lines of a bare reference the history of the proceedings of the Board in relation to slavery. The meeting in 1848 is mentioned as one in which "this matter" came up. Of the next meeting Dr. Anderson says: "The meeting at Pittsfield, in 1849, is known to have been preceded by an extraordinary amount of prayer, owing to a prevalent anxiety lest alienating discussions should arise; and it will be remembered by those who were present as a season of the most elevated Christian enjoyment." The subject of slavery was kept out by this "extraordinary amount of prayer," and the pious record of the fact is a significant illustration of the way in which the support of conservative piety has been. secured. Dr. Anderson mentions, that the meeting at Hartford in 1854, when a vote on the subject of slavery was taken by yea and nay, "was perhaps the largest ever held, save the fiftieth," the Jubilee meeting; but he does not tell us that a desire to put the Board right on the subject of slavery gathered this unusual number of members. He might be excused from informing us whether he was the timid official who proposed "a season of prayer " to avert that vote by yea and nay, interesting as it would be to hear of that brave and eloquent divine who successfully resisted the "extraordinary amount of prayer" policy, and compelled decided action, at the risk of seeming to prefer the convictions of an honest conscience to the suggestions of the Board's Holy Ghost.

We did not need the suggestive facts set forth cautiously by Dr. Anderson to revert with unaffected sadness to the spectacle presented by the Board in pursuit of funds. It is a most ghastly spectacle for a mind burdened with the thought that every moment souls are sinking into eternal torment. It is fitted to smite such a heart with the most awful doubts of the reality of any conviction or character in his fellow-men, with blank atheism and utter paralysis of the power of faith, unless by the inner light there exist a knowledge of God adequate to sustain the downfall of the whole external edifice of creed and church. But we must not refuse this painful task of pointing out the contrast between the profession of belief in regard to the instant and eternal ruin of souls dying without Christ, and the efforts made in consequence of this belief. Dr. Anderson alludes to "the reluctance with which even good men give their money," and tells us that "the greatest difficulty in propagating the Gospel through the world is believed to be obtaining the funds." Assuming the facts set forth in the Orthodox creed, and speaking after the manner of their own ideas, the devil in the Christian world, as described by the limits of Orthodoxy, is harder to cast out than all the devils of pagan lands. Dr. Anderson refers at some length to the reports of an association embracing sixteen churches in Massachusetts, "as affording means for determining the laws which govern benevolent giving in rural districts." From this we learn that the 2,403 church-members within the limits of the association are found, by including all subscriptions, collections at the Monthly Concert, &c., to pay "the average annual amount" of $1.36. This was the result of "a plan generally entered upon by the clergy of the association for receiving the regular and systematic contribution of a small stipulated sum from each member of the church"; and the Prudential Committee of the Board "highly approved of this method of increasing and concentrating the benevolent exertions of the professors of godliness, and respectfully suggested the utility and propriety of making it known to ministers of the Gospel extensively." We are authorized to conclude that $1.36 is a larger "average annual amount" than is obtained generally in the country churches. Probably one hundred

cents *-less than the average annual expenditure of the same persons for mere pleasures-represents the average desire of "a professor of godliness" out of our cities for the rescue of pagan souls from the certain (?) perils of hell! Dr. Anderson says that "a large part of the subscribers still did but very little,” more than one third paying not more in a year than twenty-five cents each "for the conversion of the world"! He also puts the case thus: "The expenditure has been more or less subject to arbitrary limitations, determined by the amount of receipts rather than by the actual necessities of the missions. Who can tell what an amount of good in missions has been thus annually sacrificed? Who has not sympathized with the disappointments and griefs of the missionaries? It is melancholy to think of the waste of influence thus occasioned in the missions since they reached the stages of manifest success. The churches have not seemed prepared for rapid progress. Instead of glad praises to God for thus answering prayer for the extension of His kingdom in foreign lands, the officers of the Board have often been put upon the painful task of showing that they have labored to the utmost to check the speed of their missionary trains." One instance of this is thus alluded to in a quotation from an address of a secretary: "Well did one of the missionaries say, as he disbanded the schools of five thousand children, and let them go back to the embrace of heathenism, What an offering to Swamy!' We are also told that "the Board has of late years found itself much restricted in the educational department." All this is plain and candid, though we regret to find the senior secretary for the most part silent, and even evasive, in regard to the actual correspondence between the professions and the practice of the patrons of the Board. He repeats the set formula which we have so often heard in missionary meetings, that "no missionary of the Board has ever yet been compelled to retire from the field, or to remain at home, for want of funds." Let this be true in a sense, it is yet calculated to

* Even this estimate must be corrected by the fact that "an inquiry, prosecuted. some twenty years since, made it seem highly probable that not more than two thirds of the church-members, even in the State of Massachusetts, then gave any.... thing for the cause of foreign missions."

VOL. LXXII. 5TH S. VOL. X. NO. II.

24

convey the impression that the churches have fully sustained the advance of the missions, a thing which Dr. Anderson has shown us they have not begun to do. It is wholly false to say that, if a missionary gets his personal support, his "wants" as a missionary are supplied, when he cannot go on with the successful conduct of his work. Although Dr. Anderson touches so lightly on the restriction of the Board's operations in the educational department, the fact is a large and startling one; and it was his duty to have given at least a forcible statement of the demands of Christian education, and the necessity of disregarding them for lack of funds. He has heard, as we did, the passionate entreaties of aged missionaries that the schools might be maintained; and if he had not the candor and the courage to state the whole sad case himself, he might at least have solicited a single word from some honored servant of the Board. It is one of the odious elements of the spirit of the Board, that it always strives to make a fair show in the flesh, as if the corporate vanity of the body were a chief motive to be appealed to. The supporters of the Board will not half sustain its operations, and yet they must be continually complimented on their acceptance and employment of all who have offered. The simple fact is, as Dr. Anderson says, "the missions have grown faster than the habit of giving in the churches"; and yet this growth has been greatly hindered in the direction of education, and this giving has not even begun to indicate a genuine belief that money not given sends souls down to eternal hell. We compare these givers with their own creed. They believe a soul saved by conversion. By the statistics of the Board, the average cost of a conversion is not more than one hundred and fifty dollars. Now, if this conversion were such a boon, to be so secured, is it credible that there would not be found in the immense body represented by the Board enough persons able and willing to undertake the ransom of soul every year to increase several hundred fold the receipts of the Board?

Every means has been resorted to for collecting funds, and yet none can be said to have succeeded. We are told that in the year 1839 the Board declared "that the contributions of the public would not be called forth, unless agents were employed