results, the same living Christianity, and the same moral defects, that existed in the churches planted and nurtured by the Apostles; and whether the Lord Jesus does not bless them with outpourings of his Holy Spirit, though they cannot yet be persuaded, in all important respects, to follow us.

We should remember, that none of us are principals in this work of missions. The work is Christ's, not ours; and we are all his servants, to do his will.

And if

we look into our own churches, and consider their manifold imperfections, we shall find abundant cause for charity and forbearance in respect to all churches gathered among the heathen; and if we study the intellectual and moral condition of the pagan world, we shall only wonder that the first generation of converts from heathenism can be so far raised in the scale of Christian morals and general excellence of char

acter.

American Baptist Missionary Union.

THE CURRENT FINANCIAL YEAR OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION.

Among the subjects presented to the Board at its last annual meeting, there was none that gave rise to more careful inquiry or grave deliberation than the expediency of continuing the Teloogoo Mission. The report of the Committee to whom the question was referred, cannot have been forgotten by any who heard it, or have since read it; nor the earnest discussion which followed its presentation before the Missionary Union. The consultations of the Board at its subsequent sessions were not less searching and anxious, nor with a feebler sense of individual responsibility and of the momentous interests staked on the issue. The issue is known. The Committee were "instructed to continue the Teloogoo Mission;" and to "address the churches in reference to it, and on the necessity of increased contributions to sustain the mission and to reinforce the Karen and other Missions."

With respect to the Teloogoo Mission, the Committee supposed they were to resume it at once and effectively. They were charged with the service not by ordinary direction, as in the original adoption of a missionary field; but by a deliberate and formal committal, after years of experiment and on revision, and when it had been made a subject of specific inquiry by the Committee as to what the missionary contributors, whose agents they are, would have them do. They have accordingly sent forth two missionaries and an assistant, who are now on their way. With the favor of Providence they will soon reëngage in the work; and with an open door of utterance before them, with native helpers and a native church to welcome and aid their efforts, with ready supplies of religious tracts and "the leaves which are for the healing of the nations," and with an intelligent, impressible and "noble" race to preach unto, they will not, we may hope, put to shame the faith in God which has ventured to continue the mission, nor the Christlike sympathy which repelled the alternative of a "peremptory and final abandonment" of the Teloogoo people.

As regards "increased contributions ;"-1. The necessities of the Karen Mission are of present urgency, and will not brook delay. Although com

menced less than twenty years ago, and all the missionaries save two, who have labored in it, still living through the signal favor of God to do it service, it has been prosecuted with such a measure of constancy, zeal and success, and has so extended itself, as it were spontaneously, and stretched abroad its lines forward and rearward and on either hand, that it has exceeded the compass of the few who have conducted it. Reinforcements are needed to save disaster; supplies not only of additional laborers, but of helps and facilities to labor. The missionaries have been left in some instances to "serve with rigor," and to struggle with hindrances which a true economy in missionary contributions would have taken out of the way. A manly, fraternal and Christian sympathy with our missionary brethren demands increased appropriations. They have staked their all in the enterprise, and shall we look back? They have "perilled their lives unto the death," and shall we refuse them succor? Increased appropriations are necessary to strengthen their hands and hearts. It does not fill the measure of their zeal to prevent disaster,-to provide for exigences, to keep things as they are. They must advance, or they recede; must gain conquests, or suffer defeat. They seek to win; and if duly reinforced, with God's continued favor, they must win. "Ten years," say some of the missionaries, these next ensuing "ten years," and the work among the Karens for home evangelization may be taken on themselves. With here and there a missionary to supervise the more important and difficult operations, they may plant their own churches, teach their own schools, make their own Christian books, evangelize their own heathen, and preach the gospel to the Burmans and Chinese. Shall this be done? Will the churches of this land, so honored as to be suffered to begin this glorious work, will they understand "this time," and through their blest agency shall "a nation be born in a day ?"

2. Other missions have their claims, and press them with almost equal urgency. The Burman Mission, whose foundations were earliest laid, in which has been given to the people the whole written word of God, and multiplied religious tracts are dispersed abroad, needs reinforcement,-men to preach the word, and sow the precious seed beside all waters. The Siam Missiou, next in age and equal in promise, with the New Testament translated and books and tracts and a quickened spirit of inquiry agitating prince and people; and China, and Assam, with their crowded population and schools and books and churches and native helpers; call for reinforcements. Europe sues for help; and Africa stretches forth its hands, the Bassa Mission bereaved, as one "smitten of God, and afflicted." Even our brethren in our Indian Missions ask for help which we cannot give. Opportunities such as the world never saw,―opportunities to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to set at liberty them that are bruised, in all the missions of the Union,-opportunities which might well satisfy the largest desires of the largest Christian love,-lie open before us, and invite our grasp. The fields are spread abroad, not a barrier intervenes. They have been explored; the people are known, their characters ascertained, their languages learned, their confidence and good-will secured; some sense of present evil and hope of good awakened; they invite us to enter. We have the men, men tried and found faithful, men accomplished and panting for the work; they have their multiplied preparations,—their schools, their tracts and scriptures, their churches, their native helpers,-all things are ready; SHALL THEY ENTER IN, AND POSSESS THE LAND?

3. The necessity of increased contributions to sustain the missions, has its

proof and its plea in the facts which have been stated. Beginning as late as 1812 with a single missionary, given to us after he had reached a heathen land, and from which "he went out not knowing whither," these missions have wrought a work which has won for them the respect of the Christian world, and now seek SUPPLIES by which they may complete their part in gathering for Christ the ripened "harvest of the earth." But the reinforcements and appropriations needed for this cannot be furnished without contributions, such as shall correspond with the results already gained, with the interests involved in what remains to be accomplished, and with the unfulfilled command of our Lord.

To whom shall the missionaries look for such contributions, if not to their brethren at home, professing the same faith and acknowledging the same Lord? May they not regard us as being their fellow helpers in a common service, to which they and we are alike bound by obligations the most imperative and sacred? We have "offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save," that the way might be opened for the evangelization of the nations; and now, when every barrier is broken down, shall we withhold the men or the means needed to consummate the work?

With the reinforcements on their way, and by the current schedule of appropriations, the present financial year will not be one in which the missions will suffer from the want of supplies. To most of them, as respects men and money, it will be a year of release from intense solicitude. But the Committee are instructed to make "every annual deficiency one of the items to be covered by a specific appropriation the year next ensuing." By so much, therefore, as the receipts of the year next ensuing fall below the amount of such deficiency superadded to the expenditures of the present year, must be the curtailment in the outlays of missionary operations in that year. For example, if the expenditures of this year reach $110,000, and the receipts be no more than $100,000, an additional $10,000 in the receipts of next year will leave $10,000 less to be expended in the missions. Distressing as the results might be, the curtailment would be inevitable. The opposite course could not fail to involve the Missionary Union in hopeless bankruptcy.

Agreeably with an established usage, the Committee within a few weeks must make out and transmit to the missions the schedule of appropriations for the year ending April 1, 1850. In doing this, they are to "make the most liberal estimate of the amount which can be collected, that a careful and candid consideration of the facts bearing on the case will allow." But what are the facts as they now stand? While the expenditures during the first seven months of the present financial year have exceeded those of the corresponding months of the last by some thousands of dollars, the receipts for the same time have fallen below those of the corresponding months of last year by nearly four thousand dollars; and to meet the expenses of this year there must be paid into the treasury in donations and legacies within its last five months nearly fiftyfive thousand dollars, about ten thousand dollars more than were received in the last five months of the preceding year!

With such facts as these before them, what amount shall be promised to the missions for the following year? The monetary affairs of the country are depressed, and many of the churches are under the influence of spiritual declension. But the schedule must be sent to the missions. Shall it go to proclaim the necessity of retrenchment in their operations? It is remembered with

profound gratitude to God, that the friends of the missions nobly met the large balance which it was thought would stand against the treasury at the close of the last year. But it should be known that if nothing more be done before the close of January ensuing, than to recover what has been lost in the receipts of the past seven months, and thus make up the excess of their expenditures, the balance to be paid in the last two months of the present fiscal year will exceed the unprecedented receipts of February and March, 1848, by several thousand dollars. With such an amount to be raised in so short a time, could the Committee do otherwise on the first of February than send to the missions a diminished scale of appropriations for the year ending April 1, 1850 ?

To

The Committee have no heart to look forward to such a necessity. restrict the operations and thus to crush the hopes of men who have invested their all in the work of opening the way of life to the lost, is the severest trial experienced in these Rooms; but far more appalling is the influence of such restrictions on the missions. They know that no more can be distributed among them than is received into the treasury. They know that there are those, among the two hundred and eighty-five thousand members of the three thousand five hundred Baptist churches in the home field of the Missionary Union, whose coöperation has been cordial, permanent and liberal. But they have not ceased to look with amazement on the fact that TWO THIRDS of their brethren give nothing for their support; and that the average among those who do contribute is less than seventy cents per member. They ask, and the question should be reiterated in every church, can no way be devised by which every one calling himself a disciple shall become a regular contributor to an enterprise which exists for no other object than to "preach Christ and him crucified" to dying millions? Such a system introduced speedily into the churches which have pastors, even in these times of pecuniary depression and spiritual declension, would save the missions from the blighting influence of retrench

ment.

Within the present month two individuals in a single church have paid into the treasury the sum of $5000, "to be expended in addition to all appropriations that would otherwise be made," for the purpose of increasing or giving greater efficiency to existing facilities for preaching the gospel among the Karens. This special, unsolicited and unexpected gift, from individuals unknown to the Committee, is presented as a "thank offering for the wonderful success which has followed the labors of Baptist missionaries among the Karens," and is in no way to diminish the ordinary and annual contributions of the donors! The amount thus given will be of no avail in meeting the ordinary schedules of appropriations. But it will prove a timely and inestimable good to the beloved missions in which it will be expended. And shall it not encourage every heart to do at once and with its might all that it may now do for Christ and the heathen?

On behalf of the Executive Committee,

Missionary Rooms, Boston, Nov. 13, 1848.

S.

EDPE BRIGHT, JR., }

Secretaries.

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555,00