grace--and men marvel. And so in Alabama and South Carolina, the
missionaries of the cross, true to the same divine example, talk with
black and with white, and welcome them both to the same privileges in
this kingdom--and even some timid disciples marvel. But the principles
of this divine kingdom do not change; the Lord of that kingdom, who
talked with the sinful, weary, despised Samaritan woman, would, if
here in bodily presence now, talk with the sinful, weary, despised
black woman, no matter how much his worldly-wise disciples might
marvel. His kingdom is built upon this eternal truth of human
brotherhood, and it will endure because it is. Nothing short of this
is of his kingdom, but will crumble to dust.

_The Congregationalist_

Forty-Second Annual Report Of The Executive Committee,

FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1888.

General Survey.

The field of missions is the world which lieth in darkness. We have to
do with that part of it for which we are doubly responsible. It is in
darkness and it is our own.

We look upon our own land, with its States equal in extent and
capacity to foreign kingdoms. When we know that they hold the
certainty of a future influence of which their past power has been but
a prophecy, our fears press hard upon our hopes.

Nor are our work and our fears an intrusion. When the pestilence which
walks in darkness brings the destruction which wastes at noonday, it
is our call to feel deeply the distresses of those who are stricken.
But plagues consuming human lives are less grevious than those which
abide, and which, walking in the intellectual and moral darkness of a
people, waste the lives of men and the hopes of souls. This is our
call.

Remember that it is our own country where, in twelve great States,
like empires, forty per cent. of the population cannot read, where,
to-day, three-fourths of the illiteracy of the whole nation exists;
where the darkness is increasing more rapidly than it is being lighted
up; where much which passes for religion even among those who preach
it, is a travesty upon Christianity, openly divorced from relationship
with truth, purity, integrity and intelligence.

Our survey takes in questions that are painful; disturbing questions
that are not in the North, nor in the West. They are difficult to
meet. They are near, and the troubles which the questions hold are
near. They come close to the heart of Christianity. They are c