“I have heard much, and seen some notices in the papers of the battle you fought on the floor of Synod, and would like to hear your side of the subject from your own mouth, as the question has also been a practical one with us. * * * * * We have our own Presbytery, and manage our own business, and insist on not having too much of what they call the new science of Missionary management; a science which, I believe, has been cultivated far too assiduously.  It was this, more than anything else, which kept me from going out under the A.B.C.F.M., and to Amoy. * * * * * I hear, however, from some, that what you and the brethren there had formed, was some sort of loose Congregational association.  If so, I must judge against you, for I believe in the jure divino of Presbytery (or Classis if you choose so to call it), and I think you and they should have been allowed to form a Presbytery there, and manage all your own affairs, and that your Boards at home should be content to consider themselves a committee to raise and send on the funds.  But it is hard for the D. D’s and big folk at home to come to that.  They think they must manage everything, or all will go wrong; while how little it is that they can be brought to know or realize of the real nature of the work abroad; and then it is the old battle of patronage over again.  Those who give the money must govern, and those who receive it must give up their liberty, and be no longer Christ’s freemen.”

This is only a specimen, one of many, of the mistaken impressions abroad in the Church concerning the views and doings of your Missionaries.  May we not, must we not, correct them?  The letter also illustrates the evils resulting from allowing mistaken impressions to remain in the Church uncorrected.  There has long been an impression in our Church that the A.B.C.F.M. interfered with the ecclesiastical affairs of our missions.  We have been informed that several of our young men, before our Church separated from that Board, were deterred thereby from devoting themselves to the foreign Missionary work.  The writer of the above letter, probably having more of the Missionary spirit, was not willing, on that account, to give up the work, but was led to offer himself to the Board of a sister Church.  The Mission at Amoy, and our Church, have thus been deprived of the benefit of his labors by means of an erroneous impression.  When we learned the fact of such an impression existing in this country, we endeavored to correct it.  In our letter of 1856, to General Synod, we called particular attention to the subject.  Here is a part of one sentence:  “It seems to us a duty, and we take this opportunity to bear testimony, that neither Dr. Anderson, nor the Prudential Committee have ever, in any communication which we have received from them, in any way, either by dictation, or by the expression of opinions, interfered in the least with our ecclesiastical relations.”  We failed to get that letter published, and I find the erroneous impression still prevalent, working its mischief in the churches.