As regards orthodoxy and good order, it is incumbent on the Church at home to use her utmost endeavors to secure these.  Doubtless this was the great design of Synod, both in the action of 1857 and in the action of 1863.  But will the plan of Synod give us any greater security for these things?  How can they be secured?  We answer, under God, only through your Missionaries.  The greater your hold on your Missionaries, the better security for the churches under their care.  The plan of Synod would place your Missionaries ecclesiastically almost beyond your control.  They must be dismissed from the various Classes in this country, and, together with the native churches under their care, form themselves into a Chinese Classis.  Either they will have a controlling influence over the native portion of this Classis or they will not.  If they have, then your only way to discipline them will be to discipline their Classis.  It would be a new doctrine in our Church, to make the Board of Foreign Missions an ecclesiastical medium between the Synod and one of its Classes, or to enforce discipline over the ministry by the money rod.  The Classis, as such, must be disciplined by the direct act of Synod.  Or, suppose the Missionaries do not have such controlling influence over the native members of Classis, for the native members will outnumber, and, unless the action of Synod (as we greatly fear) seriously retard the work at Amoy, will very soon greatly outnumber the Missionaries.  What then?  Your Missionaries are under the ecclesiastical control of the native converts.  Their doctrines and morals are to be decided on by a court composed mainly of recent converts from heathenism.  The only way to bring them before the higher courts in this country, is through this native court, as we have already seen, almost an impossibility.  Is it not plain that the Church at home will not thus have a moiety of the control over her Missionaries she now has?  Is this the way to keep the Church at Amoy sound and pure?  It seems to be supposed by some that the Missionaries desire to be separated from the control of the Church at home.  This is altogether a mistake, and another result of withholding their views from the public.  They have no such desire.  The contrary is altogether the fact.  They do not desire to be placed under the control of the native Chinese churches.  They did not derive their authority from those churches, they are not sustained by them, and they are in no sense their agents, but they derive their authority through, are sustained by, and are altogether the agents of the Church in this country; therefore the Church at home has and should retain control over them.  They are amenable to the Church at home, through their several Classes.  These are the only courts qualified to take cognizance of their doctrines and morals.  They desire to remain in this relation.  We think they have a right to demand this, until such time as they become agents of the Church in China, instead of the Church in America.