233,36

125,00

19,40

263,50

223,99

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE THIRD ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION.

[The publication of this Report, presented to the Board at its late annual meeting, has been unavoidably deferred to the present number.]

The Committee appointed to consider the proposed Amendment to the third Article of the Constitution of the A. B. M. Union, would present the following report.

The subject referred to your Committee is itself one of much complexity. Scattered, too, as the members of the Committee were by their residence, over a wide region, it has been difficult for them to secure by writing, the free interchange and mutual modification of opinion that were desirable. Meeting, personally, but at a very recent date, the present expression of their views was prepared with a haste, that must plead in extenuation alike of what may seem its defects or its redundancies.

Coming as Christian Missions do from Heaven; it is certain, also, that just in proportion as they are wisely and successfully prosecuted, they will bring us, in spirit and temper, nearer to Heaven. It is in a temper of lowliness, docility and self-distrust, and in the spirit of mutual deference and brotherly concession that we may expect most conformity to the Cross of the Great Missionary and Apostle of our profession, and thus approximate most closely the Throne, before which some of our missionary laborers and many of our missionary converts are at this hour rejoicing, and to which we are or should be following them. The crying desolations of the heathenism that summons us to its relief and enlightenment;-the self-abnegation of the Ransom that bought us, and of which we witness to a doomed and self-idolizing race;-the lowly charity and self-renunciation that are characteristic traits of the heirs of that Heaven to which we are ourselves invited of Christ, and to which we invite our fellow-sinners in His name;-all remind us, that, in this matter at least, there should be no tenacity for our own opinions, no pre-judgments, and no bickerings. The most simple, fraternal, and economical agency that the churches can devise, let us seek let it be only spiritual and scriptural. Twenty-seven years since, the Baptist General Convention was chartered. Of its founders many are now at rest. The interval elapsed is the ordinary lifetime of a generation. That period seems to many, perhaps, whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." A course or

66 time

On the

system of that date is to some clothed with the authority of an antiquity immemorial and uncontrovertible. Yet were our fathers who founded that most honored and useful body to return to our earth, and to resume the unfinished tasks they bequeathed us there, we see no reason to suppose that they would have framed in 1848, with the benefits of the experience of a quarter of a century, the same system which, comparatively inexperienced, they adopted in 1821. The Convention was composed of delegates or representatives, (for the Constitution uses either term,) made such by the payment, annually to be renewed, of one hundred dollars. These delegates represented either individuals, or churches, or associations, or voluntary societies, or State conventions of our churches. same platform, and with a vote alike weighty, stood the representative who but spoke for himself singly, and the representative who assumed to speak for the 20,000 or 70,000 Baptists of an entire State. Would it not, in any other organization, have seemed strange representation, thus to give an equal influence to the solitary township elector, and to the senator who rose up in the name of an embodied State? Here at least was strange inequality. The objects of the Convention, again, were multiform, and ill-defined, if not illimitable. In the session of 1826, for instance, the body passed resolutions on Home Missions, and on Foreign; on the Sunday school, and on the Tract cause; on books; on the private character of agents; and on colleges. Was it strange, that, at the same session, they found it necessary to protest by solemn resolution against the fears of Baptists in the Western States, that the body might attempt to interfere with the independence of the churches?* Could, however, such protests, or their own personal principles and rare excellencies of character, have saved the churches ultimately from the inevitable workings of the system? If all these objects came legitimately within their powers, and the appropriate field of their duties, they were virtually a Denominational Congress; and then, a session of one week, or of two weeks even, was not sufficient for the wise and due despatch of their appropriate business. It became, however, a growing and a general conviction, in the body itself, and in our churches, that this was not the proper employment of the Convention, and that to local or specific agencies they might more wisely commit other objects, and concentrate their own cares and counsels on the single theme of Foreign Missions. In 1845, an amended Constitution was conditionally adopted. In March, 1846, the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts passed, on request of the Convention, the Acts altering their appellation to that of the AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION, and limiting their objects to the single, but in its singleness vast, field -the diffusion, by Missions, of the gospel of Christ throughout

* Proceedings of the Fifth Triennial Meeting, held in New York. April, 1826. "As fears have existed to some extent in the Western States, and elsewhere, that at some future day this body might attempt to interfere with the independence of churches, therefore,

Resolved, In accordance with its former views, and with well known and long estab lished Batist principles, this Convention cannot exercise the least authority over the government of churches." Session of Monday evening, May 8, 1826, page 20.

that world, of which He is the rightful and predicted Lord. In May of that year, the Constitution thus already conditionally accepted, and by these statutes legally recognized, was adopted, unconditionally and definitively.'

That Constitution changed the membership, as well as defined. anew the province and labors, of the Union. It had been annual exclusively. It became a life membership exclusively. It had been of delegates or representatives. Each member now appeared, on the platform of the Union, as an individual, representing there but his own views. The new Constitution was received with unwonted solemnity and unanimity. If ever a cloud of influences from the Highest veiled the work of man, and seemed to reveal the present God, it seemed then. But at the time, it was known that some brethren loving missions clung yet to the idea of representation; and desired, if not the restoration of a membership exclusively annual, at least its engraftment upon the new instrument, as a collateral branch with the life membership. At the same session which definitively adopted the Constitution, the resolution was offered by the Rev. Alfred Bennett,

That any church or other religious body, choosing to represent itself in one annual meeting only, upon the payment of one hundred dollars, shall enjoy, for the time being, all the rights and privileges of a

member."

The resolution was, after some discussion, referred to the Board of Managers, with instructions that they should report upon it at their next annual meeting. That annual meeting, the session of 1847, was held in Ohio, where many of the members, long accustomed to attend, could not be present. A Committee was appointed by the Board, to consider, during that session of the Board, the resolution so referred-which Committee recommended the postponement of the decision upon it for another year, and the appointment of a special Committee of nine, who should give to the subject "a thorough investigation," and report at the present session. The subject has been thus for two years before our churches, though but for the past year under the charge and special consideration of your Committee. It has been widely discussed. There has been to some extent a change of opinion. But there is not yet entire harmony. The preceding remarks, as giving a history of the origin and scope of the question before the churches, may, it is hoped, aid those who approach the decision of the subject, to form their decision in full view of all the past and prospective bearings of the proposed amendment. Your Committee have supposed it due, alike to the brethren desiring, and to those resisting such change, to the love of brotherly union, and to the interests of our Missions, that there should be a more thorough intelligence, on either hand, of the grounds urged to sustain and to dissuade from the alteration. In the "investigation," which, as is above shown, your Committee were expressly appointed to make, they have supposed it their duty: first, to array the considerations pleaded on either side by the friends and by the opposers of the amendment; next, to remind themselves of the singular intricacies which embarrass the whole question of the relations between the churches on the one hand, and voluntary organizations