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to make personal applications, and bring the matter home to all classes of people." So early as the year 1823," an important effort was commenced to systematize and extend the organization for raising funds, which was prosecuted through several successive years. A plan of organization was carefully considered by the Prudential Committee, and published in the Missionary Herald for 1823." Larger auxiliaries to the number of "near fifty," and smaller associations to the number of about sixteen hundred, were formed. Of the latter, 923 were of men and 680 of women. "The main object of this local organization was to secure the annual appointment of a sufficient number of collectors, male and female, to present the application to every suitable person within the limits of the association." "After the lapse of twelve or fifteen years," says Dr. Anderson, "it was found that remittances were made by only one fourth of the men's associations, while more than two thirds of the associations composed wholly of women gave proof of an actual and healthful existence." More than half of these agencies died wholly, it appears, and we may infer that the causes which thus operated abated one half the efficiency of those which continued to remit signs of life. And yet Dr. Anderson, after explaining that the system "naturally suffered from the lapse of time," but "more from the fact that other benevolent societies, seeing its efficacy [!], had adopted it in many places," thus bringing "the use of collectors into disrepute," cannot close the paragraph without the comfortable and inconsistent statement, that "the system still exists substantially, and works to general satisfaction." It would be a curious problem to calculate how much failure would put an end to this smooth culture of corporate selfconceit. The Unitarian body, if it does forever criticise itself before the world, is at least free from this resolute content with the most ghastly failure. For our part, we do not desire its organizations and its members to resolve themselves into a mutual admiration society while redemption is but begun in the world. A state of honest self-reproach is preferable to the condition of "elevated Christian enjoyment" for which the Board so vigorously thanks God. Going up to the temple to pray thus is not the sum of Christian duty, however comfortable it may be.

Dr. Anderson goes on to inform us that hardly were these organizations effected before the Board was moved to the following action, clearly indicating an early apprehension of failure. A committee on the duties of the members of the Board reported that this plan of raising funds was "the most simple, effective, and desirable that had been devised for this purpose; that all previous measures had been abandoned as unsatisfactory, and that the most serious ill consequences were to be apprehended should the favor of the community toward the auxiliary societies be lost, or in any great degree diminished”; and they recommended making it the duty of the corporate members of the Board to attend the anniversary meetings of the auxiliaries, upon the requisition of the Prudential Committee and at the expense of the Board, as also the calling upon honorary members for a like service. This course was adopted, and the result is thus stated: "Historical truth requires the admission, that far less came from these proceedings of the Board than was anticipated by the remarkable man with whom they originated, Josiah Bissell, Jr., and by those kindred spirits who acted with him." If historical truth forces this "admission" of the failure of agencies which the Board paid its own members to look after, what might not appear upon a free and candid recital of the results of the Board's system! Dr. Anderson's chapter on the agencies concludes as follows: "The entire cost of the Agency that is, of all the means for cultivating the missionary spirit in the churches and procuring the funds has been between six and one third and six and one half per cent on the gross receipts. Who that has had experience of the reluctance with which even good men give their money, will not have a feeling of gratitude that the cost has been no more?"

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The effort of the Board to save itself is one means which has been used to augment its receipts. If the Board is in peril from large and increasing debt, there is an access of energy in its members and agencies which the bare and trite idea of saving souls does not produce. Dr. Anderson says: "It is believed to be a fact, that the great permanent advances in the receipts of the Board all stand in immediate connection with its larger debts, and would seem to have resulted from the

effort to throw them off." The year 1842 furnishes an example. Letting our figures represent thousands, from 1836 to 1856 the receipts were (about) 176; 252; 236; 244; 241; 235; 318 (in 1842); 244; 236; 255; 262; 211; 254; 291; 251; 274; 301; 314; 305; 310; 307 (in 1856). These figures show that the great advance of 1842, when the second largest debt the Board has had was removed, was not at all permanent. The only "great permanent advance" to be found was made in 1837, under the quickening influence of commercial disaster and distress. The method of this advance sufficiently explains why it was not permanent. After repeated sessions to provide for the debt at the meeting in 1841, no result was reached when the time for adjournment for the year arrived. The Committee and Secretaries had almost threatened to resign, a Secretary had reminded them that it was for them. to "say whether this or that soul should have eternal life," and every means had been used to awaken feeling. A special session was held, and a pledge obtained from every member to "increase his own subscription for the coming year at least twenty-five per cent above that of the last year," and to use all fit means to induce others to do the same. By sheer force of this pledge, extended as widely as possible, the money was raised. The other case of great advance was in 1860, in the culmination of a severe struggle to throw off debt, extending from 1857 to 1860. The old style of force could not be used, and the struggle dragged along to the year of the Jubilee meeting. Then came "a well-planned effort to remove the debt, suggested by a mercantile friend in Boston. The plan was," continues Dr. Anderson, "to raise sixty thousand dollars among merchants and others, by subscriptions of one thousand dollars each. It was somewhat modified, but the result was secured by comparatively a small number of persons." It is manifest that this was a desperate resort to free the Board from debt before the Jubilee meeting. The state of the case is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the Board expressed the "hope that the Prudential Committee will see their way clear to appropriate" for 1861 a sum sixty thousand dollars less than the amount raised in 1860. Those who attended the meeting know that strong protests were uttered against getting so

much ahead of the churches. They "are not prepared for rapid progress."

We had hoped to discuss in connection with this "Memorial Volume" the principles and working of the missions themselves, their interior policy, and the service which they may perform, especially the kind of agencies which they should make use of; but we find almost nothing in regard to the matter in this volume. Dr. Anderson does say, that "the civilizing agencies, as they have been called, have been found the most expensive, the most troublesome, and the least productive," and there are indistinct references to "the relinquishment of schools," "suspension of a seminary," a "new order of things," &c., but we get no definite information. We are precluded, therefore, from giving distinct evidence of the fact, which the meetings of the Board have sufficiently indicated, that narrow means have conspired with narrow notions to establish the policy of procuring technical conversions without adequate effort to improve general morality and social welfare by means of education and other civilizing agencies. Beyond this, it is still less the aim of the Board to co-operate with the course of events, the progress of discovery, and the movements of civilization, in securing the redemption of the dark lands to order, intelligence, and prosperity. We must leave these most interesting features of the work, therefore, and limit ourselves, in conclusion, to some brief suggestions touching the appeal to the public in behalf of any scheme of organized benevolence.

It is not wise or right to attempt to sustain organizations for benevolent work, like that of missions, by the support which can be gleaned from merely sentimental movements of religious activity. If the end is not one of definite and decided service, dictated by the soundest reason and the wisest charity, pointing to some good which clearly can and ought to be done, no such organization should meddle with it. The American Board is very largely the organ of an indefinite sentiment. It does not stand in the attitude of doing a distinct and real work. It has a large number of missions, for the most part almost, if not wholly, unproductive. A communication to the New York Independent of June 6, 1861, considers the Turkish missions as, "it might almost be said,

the only really productive and progressive operations of the Board," and proposes to reduce the expenses "simply by giving up the unproductive missions, say those in India, Africa, and China." The Board is sustained by the minimum of contribution adequate to vindicate the professors of godliness, not by the application of principles to a distinct and certain work. The attitude of the Board seems to us to no small extent an instance of unconscious "false pretences." With ample piety, it pieces the incidents of success in isolated and often exceptional cases into a cover for the entire operations of the Board, and so maintains a certain hold upon the religious community embraced in Orthodoxy. The fact that the Board is really supported so stingily and grudgingly is itself an evidence that it does not present a good opportunity for investing money in doing a speedy and sure work of love. We must indeed ascribe this in a large measure to the secret protest of common sense against the pretence that God's care of his own offspring will not bring salvation unless man's Board procures "conversion,"-to the secret consciousness of every sensible man that this "conversion" is mere wood, hay, and stubble, still leaving the real work of Christian civilization to be done; but a chief reason for the unquestioned ill-success of the Board is in the fact that it does not present evidence that it can make a good use of means, as such a use is estimated, not by sentimental piety, but by sober common-sense, wisely judging of the duty which is first. It is an error to say that missions as such are made obligatory by the law of the Gospel and the words of Christ. They were in the time of the Apostles, and we are bound to fulfil the whole spirit of that command. And when a work is within our reach, in India, in Hayti, in Liberia, then we must do it. But to assume that money must be raised, and a mission undertaken at random, or beyond the sphere of clearly defined good opportunity, simply that we may think that we have done our duty in the matter of missions, is the serious error of many good men. Place a given church in the midst of a heathen community, and it must become, like the early Church, a missionary organization. Not so placed, it cannot as readily undertake the work of missions; and by the law of what it can well do, or do best,

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