At the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, held
in Exeter Hall, London, 1888, Rev. W. J. K. Taylor, D.D., for many years a
most efficient member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed
Church in America, read a paper on "Union and Cooperation in Foreign
Missions," in which he said:

"Actual union has been happily maintained at Amoy, China, for more than a
quarter of a century between the missionaries of the Reformed (Dutch)
Church in America and those of the Presbyterian Church of England. Having
labored together in the faith of the Gospel, gathering converts into the
fold of Christ, and founding native churches, these brethren could not and
would not spoil the unity of those infant churches by making two
denominations out of one company of believers nor would they sow in that
virgin soil the seeds of sectarian divisions which have long sundered the
Protestant Churches in Europe and America. The result was the organization
of the Tai-Hoey, or Great Council of Elders, which is neither an English
Presbytery nor a Reformed Church Classis, but is like them both. It is not
an appendage of either of these foreign Churches, but is a genuine
independent Chinese Christian Church holding the standards and governed by
the polity of the twin-sister Churches that sent them the Gospel by their
own messengers. The missionaries retain their relations with their own
home Churches and act under commissions of their own Church Board of
Missions. They are not settled pastors, but are more like the Apostolic
Evangelists of New Testament times,--preachers, teachers, founders of
Churches, educators of the native ministry, and superintendents of the
general work of evangelization.

"This Tai-Hoey is a child of God, which was 'born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' It is believed to
be the first ecclesiastical organization for actual union and co-operation
in mission lands by the representatives of churches holding the Reformed
faith and Presbyterial polity. Its history has already been long enough to
give the greatest value to its experience."

For seven years, by tongue and pen, Mr. Talmage advocated the establishment
of an independent Chinese Union Church of the Presbyterian order. Even
then the Reformed Church was not fully persuaded and did not give her
hearty assent. The resolution of 1864 was only tentative. It was a plea
for toleration. This was not str