(5.) Missionary boxes should be placed in each family, and the collections taken once a quarter or half year. (6.) An annual meeting should be held, when all the members of the congregation should be present, and a statement of receipts and disbursements presented for their information, and Missionary addresses given, with a view to stir them up to greater activity and liberality. Missionary boxes, annual meeting. Character (7.) It need hardly be added that much of the success in this important matter depends upon the character, and influence influence and effort of the clergy. Pastors of Native churches must be men of education and mark as well as of deep spirituality and piety. It is a patent fact that the Hindus are rising rapidly in importance and influence, as the result of the spread of Western education and thought, and that many Native Christians are equally affected by this influence, and try to secure the benefits of a liberal English education and high mental culture. If native pastors who are, or ought to be, leaders of public opinion in the Church, do not keep pace with the progress of the times and the march of intellect, they will naturally fail not only to influence the Hindu, but also the Christian community. In all our plans for self-support it must not be forgotten that the intellectual position of pastors is an essential factor. action of Societies. Before closing this part of the subject, I beg to submit Combined one important point for the earnest consideration, and if possible, united decision of this great Conference. If the self-support and self-propagation of the Native Churches is a noble object, the final acme of Missions, which all the Missionary Societies should aim at, and endeavour to reach, I venture to think that they must all be one in practice as well as in theory, and by sympathy and cooperation mutually help to promote it. When one Society strives, in the face of mighty obstacles, to accomplish it, certainly it would be highly culpable for another, seemingly or really, to thwart it by pursuing an opposite policy, by which the dissatisfied members and agents are received, often without reference to their former pastors or employers, by offers of aid in temporal matters or by larger pay. I can only urge with all the emphasis and ardour in my power that if this policy be at all pursued or continued, it would postpone ad infinitum that happy time when the Indian Church shall attain its normal and honorable position of independence. Self III. On the subject of the self-propagation of the propagation in the Tamil Church. Baptism of the Spirit. Native Churches I need but make a few remarks after the hints which have already been thrown out about it. As the light, from its very nature, cannot but diffuse itself, so the light of the gospel which has illumined the dark soul cannot but propagate itself and help to remove the surrounding darkness. He who has experienced the enlightening and transforming power of the gospel, and tasted the sweetness and greatness of Christ's love, cannot help telling the old, old story to others. What is true of individual believers must be true of the Churches; for real corporate life is but the expression of individual life. When the Thessalonian Church received "the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost," "it sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place." Whether the Indian Church is conspicuous for its Missionary character and effort, I cannot undertake to determine. But as far as my observation goes, I may state with some degree of confidence, that the Tamil Church has been endeavouring to take its share, however small, in this great enterprise. She has sent her Missionaries not only to all parts of the Tamil field, but also to the Telugu Mission, and the new Mission to the Kois. Indeed it may be added that she has her independent representatives in Bombay and Calcutta also. From her has sounded out the word of the Lord even to regions beyond, to Burmah, Ceylon and to the distant island of Mauritius. If it please the Great Head of the Church to vouchsafe a fresh baptism of the Spirit, another Pentecostal effusion, not only the Tamil Church, but the whole Indian Church will be filled with power and the Holy Ghost, and like the primitive Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, or the modern Churches of Christendom, will send forth her heralds, full of zeal and self-consecration, to proclaim the message of salvation to all the nations of the earth, and declare the coming glorious advent of her risen and ascended Lord, when the "little stone" shall have grown into a "great mountain," so as to fill the whole earth; and the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. May the burden of our prayer be, "Come, Lord Jesus," and let India be altogether Thine, and let her teeming millions from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin learn to acknowledge their allegiance to Thee, and crown Thee Lord of all! SECOND PAPER BY THE REV. A. V. TIMPANY, C. B. M., Coconada, Madras. and self The two statements of this subject are as closely join- Self-support ed in the Christian faith as were the Siamese twins. The death of one is the death of both. A self-supporting propagation. Christian Church is self-propagating. Christianity is a life-divine life-Christ in its subjects the hope of glory. This new life impels to cross-bearing, to sacrifice for the gospel. Very far removed from the true Spirit of Christianity is self-seeking, or a desire to accept of Christianity as a means to worldly advancement. Native Yet for some reason there is no idea respecting Chris- Common idea tianity more widely spread, or more deeply-seated in the regarding non-Christian Hindu mind, than that any Hindu who has Christians. embraced Christianity has done so for more honour or a better living. In very few cases are they willing to grant that the convert has changed his faith from conscientious motives and a sincere desire for the soul's salvation. Thus Christianity is robbed here in India of one of the most potent and convincing evidences of its divinity. The Christian Hindus are held by their fellow countrymen to be so many Simon Maguses. Due to the system of foreign nursing. The well nigh universal system of too much foreign nursing is mainly chargeable with this monstrous perversion of the best proofs of the real divinity and overmastering power of Christianity. Frequently, noble Hindu Christians who have suffered, aye, suffered for Christ, are charged by their countrymen with having apostatized to Christianity for a living. Had not a rupee of foreign money been expended in the direct evangelistic native agencies of India, its old faiths would by this time be like a doomed city in the grip of an earthquake. Proof of this may be had by noting the results which have been achieved where the self-support theory has been most reduced to practice. There are no more liberal Christians in the world than the Bassein Karens. The Missionary The Bassein who first evangelized them insisted on self-support, and left year after year unused, the money given by his Society for the support of native preachers &c. The work at first was slow, but it grew apace until now there is in all Burmah no work to compare with it. Most of you have heard of the great ingatherings at Ongole; if there is one Karens. The Ongole Christians. thing more than another which signalizes this work, it is the amount of evangelizing done for which no foreign money has been paid. The converts are like the Salvation Army. Their recreation even is to tell some one of the world's Saviour. The writer knew one of the earlier converts who for nine days in her village had no food and stayed in the street. The entire village joined in giving her the alternative of surrendering her faith or starving. She did neither. The villagers gave in, and she was not long alone in the faith. Self-denial and mortification of the desires are in the estimation of Hindus, as we all know, prime proofs of truth. The money which would have been saved by having self-supporting native churches, could have been well employed in multiplying Mission stations, and the instruments of Christian warfare, such as the training of workers, increasing the available literature, &c. Comparison Why should not Christian Hindus be like Christian with English Englishmen? Who that knows will venture to say that to-day the major part even of Christian work is done by a salaried ministry. These are only the leaders. The vast army of workers who come from shop and field, from office and daily toil, are pre-eminently the source of our home churches' strength and propagating power. "Let him that heareth say come." Work back system. Our present methods of work have become so fixed, to the right that a sudden change back to the simplicity of the gospel cannot be made. But we can all begin to work back to it, and in time have our native churches self-supporting and aggressive. Bitter things have been written about the mercenary and parasite character of Native Christians. Brethren, let us stop this kind of thing. Our Native Christians are just what we have made them. It is not fair, manly, or Christian for us to train men so that they cannot be independent, and then taunt them with their dependence. It is not fair for us to develop in them wants they never would have known. but for us, and then ridicule them for having them. Other things being equal, no people are more charitable than the Hindus. When Hindu Christians come to realize that the man or woman who teaches their children, and the minister who leads them in Divine things really need their help, according to the measure of their ability they will give it. The first village school-house chapel built upon my First efforts. former Mission field took about two years in the building, and cost me an amount of time and effort that seemed out of all proportion to the work accomplished. The people were few and they were poor. The mother church could only give about one-fifth of the cost of the building. The headmen came again and again to me andwell, they abused me sometimes. Men and women would work all day in the fields and by moonlight at the mud walls of their chapel. The work was completed and it ennobled the converts, and made chapel building easy for the Missionary in other villages, as they came into Christianity. I would expend ten rupees in getting one from the native converts, believing that giving is one of the very best means of grace. Pastoral As to pastoral support it may be laid down as a general principle that the pastor should be able to thoroughly support. mix with his people and partake of their salt. Hence modes of living and dress different from the people over whom a man is pastor cut at the root of the pastoral relation. I have never yet seen a Missionary who could be a real pastor for a Hindu congregation-modes of life preclude such a relation. Again, the income to maintain a pastor should correspond with the average income of the people served. If this is kept in view any fifty Native Christians can support a worker suitable to their wants. It has been well remarked, "a razor is not necessary to trim a hedge." Neither for much of the evangelistic work and care of most Christian congregations, as at present constituted, is a University graduate a necessity. Some churches now require the keenest and best cultivated men as pastors and teachers, are able to pay a living salary to them and do so. With such my paper does not deal. Income. gifts. Various methods may be followed in securing the gifts Methods of of the converts and developing their benevolence. Too securing free much care cannot be given to have the best methods, but they must all spring from the fixed dogged determination that every church-member must contribute something to the general commonwealth, or must be so poor as to be helped from the church funds. Those who are neither hot nor cold may well be spued out. They neither help the church in the grace of giving, nor influence the unconverted for good, but rather for evil. Had I to start a Mission from the bottom, these are the lines which, ac |