h time as they become agents of the
Church in China, instead of the Church in America.

Suppose by some means suspicion should arise at home concerning the
orthodoxy or morality of one or more of your Missionaries. On the plan
proposed, what can the Church do with them? May the Board of Missions,
on mere report or suspicion, recall them without giving them a proper
trial? Can the Board try them? No. It is not an ecclesiastical court.
Will the Church be satisfied with the decision of a court, a majority of
whose members have recently been converted from heathenism through the
instrumentality of these very Missionaries? But continue the plan of the
Missionaries and all will be simple. If any of the Missionaries give
occasion for suspicion, let them be tried by their proper Classes in
this country. This is all that the Church at home can do
_ecclesiastically_ towards keeping the Church pure in China. Whether
the proposed _nominal_ union be consummated or not, the only hold you
will have on the Chinese churches will be through your Missionaries. If
they will not receive the instructions, and listen to the advice of your
Missionaries and of the Synod through them, you would not expect them to
obey the injunctions of Synod. Your only other resort will be to
withhold from them help. Can you not do the same now?

But in all this discussion, I fear, we lose sight too much of our
dependence on the Head of the Church to keep His Church pure. Sure I am
that the Church in China cannot be kept pure by legislation on this, the
opposite side of the globe. But we expect Christ to reign over, and the
Holy Spirit to be given to the churches, and the proper ecclesiastical
bodies formed of them in China as well as in this land. Why not? Such
are the promises of God. The way to secure these things is by prayer,
and the preaching of the pure gospel, not by legislation. Let the Church
be careful in her selection of Missionaries. Send only such as she has
confidence in--men of God, sound in the faith, apt to teach--and then
trust them, or recall them. Don't attempt to control them contrary to
their judgment. Strange if this, which is so much insisted on as the
policy of our Church, be right, that she cannot get a single man, of all
she sends out to China, to think so. Can it be that the Missionary work
is so subversive of right reason, or of correct judgment, or of
conscientiousness, that all become perverted by engaging in it?

2. Another su