continued help of the Lord, if we advert for a moment to the wise and successful manner in which the concerns of the Board have been conducted. Bating the imperfections common to all benevolent associations conducted by fallible men, we venture to claim for this institution such a measure of wisdom, disinterestedness, and efficiency in its spirit, policy, and plans of operation, as justly challenges universal confidence and support. Its founders were among the most intelligent, calm-minded, and devotedly Christian men of their day. No one can read the history of the measures adopted by them, in the establishment of the Board, and in its early operations, without feel ng that they were indeed guided by wisdom from above. And from the first, the Board has been favored with the counsels of men eminently qualified by Christian principle, and by their established character and influence, to give a wise and efficient direction to the affairs of a great institution. The four Secretaries who have departed this life,-Worcester, Evarts, Cornelius, and Wisner, were known to many present; and you will not think that I give them undue praise, when I say, that the church has been blessed with very few wiser or better men. Of their successors in office, it is enough to say, that they are every way worthy of the high confidence reposed in them by the Christian community. In the Prudential Committee, who manage the immediate executive concerns of the Board, there have always been men of high standing in society, alike distinguished for their talents and for their sound business habits. In per

forming the arduous and difficult duties committed to them, they have deeply felt their responsibility to God and the Christian community. They have prayed much for divine light and guidance; and wisdom from on high, I fully believe, has been imparted to them in no ordinary measure. It is owing to this, I doubt not, that they have been enabled so to manage the concerns of the Board as to secure for it the growing confidence and affection of the churches. Hence the deep sympathy felt by the community in the operations of the Board. Hence the readiness with which its appeals for aid have been responded to in difficult and trying emergencies. Such emergencies, unforeseen and beyond the control of human wisdom, have several times arisen in the history of the Board; but they have been nobly and generously met by its friends, who have thus evinced their love to the cause, and their confidence in those who are intrusted with its special management.

The continued help of the Lord is still further to be acknowledged, in that he has raised up a succession of able and faithful missionaries, whom he has disposed to devote their lives to his service. among the heathen. The time has never been since the organization of the Board, when young men of talents and piety were not ready to meet the call of duty, and give themselves to the sacred cause of missions. Many who have thus been employed, stood high in their own country for their talents and scholarship, and might, had they been disposed to remain at home, have commanded a settlement in any of the most eligible churches in the land. But

the love of Christ bore them away to other fields of labor; they counted not their lives dear to them, so that they might bear the tidings of salvation to those perishing amid the darkness and miseries of paganism. Some of them have laid their bones in Asia, in Africa, in the islands of the sea, or among the wild men of our own forests. Others still toil on in the service of their Lord, cheerfully wearing out in the cause to which they have devoted their lives.

Among so large a number of missionaries as have been employed by our Board, there must, of course, be a diversity of gifts and qualifications; but the testimony is uniform and full, coming from scientific travellers and distinguished laymen residing on the ground, and from the missionaries and directors of missionary societies abroad, that no abler or more devoted missionaries are any where to be found than those who have been sent forth from the American churches. I have had some opportunity to know, and this testimony I believe to be true, and it is just cause of thanksgiving to God, that he has raised up and sent forth so many of our ablest and most devoted young men as laborers in a foreign field.

Another thing I may mention in this connection, as clearly indicating the helping hand of God. It is this. No essential difference of opinion, no matter of controversy or dispute, or disunion, has ever been allowed to disturb the deliberations of the Committee at the Missionary House, or of the Board at its annual meetings. The annual meetings have uniformly been characterized by great harmony of sentiment and feeling, and often have been perva

ded in an eminent degree by the Spirit and presence of God, and those who have attended them have felt that it was indeed good to be there. May the presence of the divine Savior be vouchsafed to us in the present meeting, and all in attendance receive a fresh baptism from the God of missions.

4. If we consider next the success which has attended the operations of the Board, the actual results of the missions under its direction, we shall have still more striking evidence of the fact, that "hitherto hath the Lord helped us." Here a broad field opens before us, which we can now but very imperfectly survey. A slight view, however, may suffice to convince us that our labor in sending the gospel to the heathen, far from being in vain, has been crowned with very marked success.

In coming to a just estimate in relation to this subject, it should be borne in mind, that the first years of a missionary's life are, of necessity, years of preparation. He has to learn the language of the people to whom he has been sent—a barbarous, unwritten language, it may be; he has to acquaint himself with their manners and opinions; to overcome their prejudices; to gain their confidence; to make them understand the nature and design of his mission; to prepare elementary books and translate the Scriptures for their use. This, and much more like this, is all preparatory work; it is breaking up the ground and casting in the seed, and a great deal of time and labor is necessarily expended in this way, before any fruit can be gathered. And this is, in fact, the work in which most of our missionaries

have been employed a considerable part of the time they have been in the field. It is only within a comparatively recent period that the way has at all been prepared for the realization of results. Accordingly it is a fact, that the success of our missions, estimated by the number of conversions, has been more than twelve times as great during the last ten years, as it was in the whole previous twenty-six years of the Board's history. Ten years ago there

were about two thousand members of our mission churches; now there are twenty-four thousand eight hundred and twenty-four.

It should be recollected, too, that the effects of missions are far from being confined to the fields where they are established. There is a reflex influence on the churches at home, of the most important kind, imparting health and activity to their piety, and securing the frequent and copious effusions of God's Spirit in revivals. No greater calamity, I am sure, could befall our churches, than the suspension or breaking up of our foreign missions. It may seem a solecism, but I speak sober truth when I say, we can by no means afford to be relieved from the expense of supporting these missions. Our poorest churches and the poorest members in them cannot afford to be thus relieved. The spirit of missions departing from our churches would be like the departure from them of the Spirit of God. They would become dead, fruitless bodies, or exist only as worldly associations, diffusing around naught but an influence to mislead, corrupt and destroy.

The fact has often been noticed, and it is one