These are not very exceptional cases.  It is only fair to the generous constituency of this Association to know that their funds are being thus guarded, and that those who give through independent agencies may have their funds squandered because they cannot hold those doing this independent work to strict account as they do the Association, nor can these independent missionaries know the whole field as the A.M.A. knows it.  Here are nearly 500 missionaries in constant correspondence with this office, besides the field officers appointed especially to gather information.

(c.) Again, this systematic method of disbursing funds secures a methodical arrangement of field work.  Take the mountain field as an illustration of this.  This field has been divided into two general districts; one having for its base the L.N.R.R., the other lying along the Cincinnati Southern Railroad.  Each department has its general missionary, who goes back and forth in his district to lay out new work, and to superintend the old.  The missionaries, pastors and teachers are all busy in their own places.  Here then is systematic development of this whole work.  These noble missionaries in this way form a well-organized army, and are not guerrillas fighting behind trees and stones, and scattered hap-hazard over the mountains.  We shall hold these lines of railroad in the name of the Lord.  Churches and missions and Sunday-schools will supplant the saloons and gambling hells if you as churches generously support this painfully urgent work.  But when school-houses shall stand in all their fertile coves and church bells shall call to intelligent Christian worship on all those mountain sides, and the people shall be lifted up into spiritual citizenship, it will simply be the victory under God of the systematic planning and execution possible only when funds are disbursed on the sound principles of this Association.

III.  This systematic spending of benevolent funds also secures permanency.  How few deaths there are in the family of A.M.A. schools and churches!  Why?  Because these missions are born through wisdom and sound judgment.  These schools and churches are not only permanent but they will also perpetuate the great fundamental principles of the churches whose prayers and money have gone into their establishment.

These missions cannot become Roman Catholic or infidel.  They cannot drift away from the safe moorings of evangelical truth, unless the churches to which they are tied up give way.  The churches control these missions forever.  Local management in this work often means mismanagement, on account of the peculiar surroundings in which these schools are placed.  They differ radically from schools and colleges planted among the new settlers in the West.  Here in the South there is no considerable intelligent Christian constituency to direct their work, manage their affairs and keep them in close connection with Congregational conferences and councils.