“But I will not detain the Synod longer.  I would not have left the chair to speak, but for the overwhelming importance of the subject.  It is painful to deny the eager and earnest wishes of our missionary brethren, but I believe we are doing them a real kindness by this course.  Union churches here have always in the end worked disunion, confusion, and every evil work.  There is no reason to believe that the result would be at all different abroad.  A division would necessarily come at some period, and the longer it was delayed, the more trying and sorrowful it would be.  I am opposed, therefore, to the substitute offered by Brother Chapman, and also to that of Brother Talmage, and trust that the original resolutions, with the report, will be adopted.  That report contains not a single harsh or unpleasant word.  It treats the whole case with the greatest delicacy as well as thoroughness, but it reaffirms the action of 1857 in a way not to be mistaken.  And that is the ground on which the Church will take its stand.  Whatever time, indulgence, or forbearance can be allowed to our brethren, will cheerfully be granted.  Only let them set their faces in the direction of a distinct organization, classical as well as consistorial, and we shall be satisfied.  Only let them recognize the principle and the details shall be left to themselves, under the leadings of God’s gracious providence.”

The report of the Committee on Foreign Missions, E. S. Porter, D.D., chairman, was adopted.  Part of it reads as follows: 

“The missionaries there have endeared their names to the whole Christian world, and especially to that household of faith of which they are loved and honored members.”

....  “No words at our command can tell what fond and flaming sympathies have overleaped broad oceans, and bound them and us together.

  “’Words, like nature, half reveal,
  And half conceal the soul within.’

....  “Your committee are unable to see how it will be possible to carry the sympathies and the liberalities of the Church with an increasing tide of love and sacrifice in support of our missionary work, if it once be admitted as a precedent, or established as a rule, that our missionaries may be allowed to form abroad whatever combinations they may choose, and aid in creating ecclesiastical authorities, which supersede the authorities which commissioned them and now sustain them.”

“The committee are not prepared to recommend that any violent and coercive resolutions should be adopted for the purpose of constraining our brethren in Amoy to a course of procedure which would rudely sunder the brotherly ties that unite them with the missionaries of the English Presbyterian Church.  But a Christian discretion will enable them, on the receipt of the decision of the present Synod, in this matter now under consideration, to take such initial steps as are necessary to the speedy formation of a Classis.