dour
be kindled in the churches. A Church which is not adequately marshalled
for activity in heathen lands will soon become self-centred and will
easily forget the claims, if not the very existence, of the heathen.

A Foreign Missionary Society of well organized efficiency has, up to the
present, been the best agency in the development and furtherance of the
foreign work of every denomination. And the day does not seem near when
this agency can be dispensed with.

This missionary society should be in close touch with the denomination or
body of Christians which has organized and maintains it. It should be
plastic to the touch and will of its constituency and should seek in every
way to be at the same time a faithful exponent of the thought and ambition
of the churches, and a leader and a source of new inspiration and light to
them on missionary problems. This society should scrupulously avoid, on
the one hand, the danger of too much independence and of a purpose to
shape the missionary policy of the churches; and, on the other, the
equally serious evil of dragging, or of declining to move a step without
the direct intimation, command or leadership of the churches. There has
been a time in the history of the American Board when the one evil
constituted its danger; at the present time it would seem as if the other
danger seriously threatened it.

It is of much importance that the foreign missionary benevolences of a
church should be wisely administered _as a whole_. When different
missionary societies of a denomination appeal, as they do at present, to
our churches for funds to support the missionary cause in foreign lands,
it is of great importance that moneys received by these different bodies
should be appropriated wisely. They should be brought together both for
unity of results and for economy of expenditure on the mission field. My
observation convinces me that, for want of a wise union or correlation of
our missionary agencies at home the various departments of the work (of
the Congregationalists, for instance) on the mission field are very
unequally supported, and an unwise distribution of the benevolences of the
churches follows as a result. A previous, full consideration, by a
competent general committee of finance, in America, should be had of the
needs of the various departments of each mission and of the distribution
of all the funds collected for that mission by the various societies; and
they should be ca