ould be more fully secured under the changed
circumstances of modern days; and that the experience of each field
of labour should be so wrought into the general system as to prove
a helper to all the rest.

The result of the system to the Society's finances has been economy,
compactness, and strength. While in several cases the personal
income of the missionaries has been increased, yet, by limiting the
amount of the Native agency to be employed in evangelistic work; by
reducing the help hitherto granted to the Native Christians for their
incidental expenditure; and by enforcing economy in all minor
matters at home as well as abroad; the Board have been able to bring
down the total expenditure of the Society to a point much nearer the
range of the Society's ordinary income than it has for several years
past. They have provided, however, only for the necessities of their
present operations. They need a larger income still, if the friends
of the Society would wish them to undertake that extension of their
Missions into new fields which the world needs, for which the
missionaries earnestly plead, and which they themselves are most
anxious to secure. The effect of the system on certain of the Native
churches has been a most healthy one. As hoped for, it is beginning
to stimulate them to manliness, and to a more earnest consecration,
not only of their means, but of their personal service to the
Saviour's work.

III.--THE SOCIETY'S PRESENT OPERATIONS.

The revision now described has furnished materials for exhibiting,
in a more complete form than usual, the present agencies of the
Society, and some of the results with which its labours have been
blessed. In a few of the older Missions of the Society, the duty of
instructing the heathen has been almost complete; the population are
nominally Christian, and in most of these communities there is a
strong nucleus of spiritual life in a valuable body of Church members.
This is the case in Polynesia, in the West Indies, and in many
stations in South Africa. Around many strong churches in Madagascar,
in India, and in China, the sphere of heathenism is still very large.
Several stations in those Missions--well planted for the influence
required of them--may now be occupied by the Native minister instead
of the English missionary. The number of chief stations in all the
Missions is 130.

The NATIVE CHURCHES of the Society are 150 in number. They contain
35,400 members: in