, and in every respect, as their
native members, their ecclesiastical relation to their home churches being
entirely severed. This plan ignores the actual relation of missionaries to
their home churches, as spoken of above. Surely the home churches cannot
afford this.

Perhaps we should notice another plan sometimes acted on, but not mentioned
in the letters we have now received. It is that the missionaries become
members of the Mission Church Judicatories as above; but that these
Judicatories be organized as parts of the home churches, so that the
missionaries will still be under the jurisdiction of the home churches
through the subjection of the Mission Judicatories to the higher at home.
This plan can only work during the infancy of the mission churches, while
the Mission Church Judicatories are still essentially foreign in their
constituents. Soon the jurisdiction will be very imperfect. This
imperfection will increase as fast as the mission churches increase.
Moreover this plan will extend to the native churches the evil deprecated
above.

The second plan suggested we take to be that the missionaries, while they
remain the agents of the home churches, should retain their relation
respectively to their home churches, and have only an advisory relation to
the Presbytery on mission ground. This is greatly to be preferred to the
first plan suggested. It corresponds to the relation of missionaries to
their respective home churches. It takes into consideration also, but does
not fully correspond to the relation of the missionaries to the churches on
mission ground, at least does not fully correspond to the relation of the
missionaries to the native churches at Amoy. Our actual relation to these
churches seems to us to demand that as yet we take part with the native
pastors in their government.

The peculiar relationship of the missionaries to Tai-hoey, viz., having
full membership, without being subject to discipline by that body,--is
temporary, arising from the circumstances of this infant church, and rests
on the will of Tai-hoey. This relationship has never been discussed, or
even suggested for discussion in that body, so that our view of what is, or
would be, the opinion of Tai-hoey on the subject we gather from the whole
character of the working of that body from its first formation, and from
the whole spirit manifested by the native members. Never till last year
has there been a case of discipline even of a nativ