what the secretary's personal opinions or impressions would have justified; and recommendations have been held back or qualified in tone where the secretary, speaking from merely his own opinions or feelings, would have gone further.

In every case the welfare of the church conferring with the office is meant to be kept first in mind. No letter is ever written, and no statement is ever made with a purpose primarily of assisting any man to obtain a settlement. It may be altogether proper for others to do this, but it is not proper for us. This imperative rule of action, which requires that the churches should first be considered, is also, in the end, and in its general working, the best for our brethren themselves, the ministers of the churches. That the churches are recognizing the value of the impartial service thus attempted to be rendered would seem to be shown by the very large and increasing extent to which they make use of the office.

It is a matter of the first importance that the work of the office is subject, in every part, to responsible control. Every appointment for preaching that has ever been made, whether in the way of occasional supplying, or with reference to settlement, is entered upon duplicate records, easily and quickly traced. Except for a space at the opening of the office, every letter addressed to the committee of a church concerning any minister has been preserved exactly as it was sent. And letters have been sent wherever men have gone with thought of settlement. If the secretary has shown favor unfairly to his relations, or personal friends, or to the members of the Association to which he belongs, or to any clique or group of men about the Congregational House, or to any section or wing of the denomination anywhere, or if he has withheld opportunities fairly due to any man in comparison with others, or if he has spoken unfairly to the disadvantage of any man, the evidence of the wrong is at hand. If the secretary should be disposed to put aside, or put off, any proposed authoritative examination of the records and doings of the office, or if he should fail to give aid in any such examination, or if, while any such investigation was in progress, he should seem to be uncheerful and sullen, beyond what is natural to him, any of these things should be taken as signs of guilt, and another man should be set to do the business.

There is no thought at all that our work is free from mistakes. Mistakes must be many. But there is the claim of a desire to avoid them, and of intended and systematic openness to exposure and correction. And we are sure it will be understood that this openness to observation, and this subjection everywhere to obligation and responsibility, is, in reality, a main source of satisfaction and comfort in an office not wholly without its burdens.

It is understood that the directors are always ready to hear and to consider any matters that anyone may desire to bring before them affecting the administration of the office. The pointing out of errors of

any sort, or the indication of better methods that may be followed, will be heartily welcomed.

It is probable that the secretary may sometimes lose from sight and from mind brethren whom he may suppose to have made engagements which have not in fact been made. It is hoped that in every case ministers will be free to notify the office of their wishes. These notifications are not at all to be looked upon as in the line of the asking of favors. They are in the exercise of a clear and important public right. It is likely, too, that our Board may often be credited or discredited for more than it really does, or omits to do. The mysteries of Providence will not, we trust, be altogether attributed to the maladministrations of our office.

We have constant acquaintance with the trying conditions in which many of our brethren in the ministry are placed. And we have constant painful experience of our inability to afford any relief. We fear it must often appear to our brethren that we have been unconcerned or neglectful respecting them. It can scarcely be possible that anyone not actually conversant with the daily business of the office should adequately measure the difficulties that hinder the effort to serve these brethren according to what they deserve and properly desire. The desirable places open for settlement bear no comparison to the numbers of men ready to fill them.

The pressure upon us is due in part to the desire of ministers in other portions of the country to find settlements in New England. So far as the influence from our Board has reached, the effect has certainly been not to accelerate, but to hinder the drift in this direction. Discouraging statements are continually made to those who have in mind the coming to us, and little help, comparatively, has been given them. It may probably be true that we have failed to afford them the fair measure of assistance to which they have been entitled. Many of these ministers are as much the men of New England by birth or kinship or training as we who are now on the ground. If for any reason life here is reckoned as a privilege, and life elsewhere as in any measure a hardship in comparison, then the men who have had, thus far, at a distance, the years of hardship, might seem to be entitled at least to an equal chance with those who have had thus far the years of privilege only. But the practice of our office has scarcely followed these lines of apparent fairness.

The disparity between the numbers of men and the desirable places of settlement has increased in these recent years. The increase is chiefly due to the general fall in salaries, which has, by no means, come wholly to an end. The decline has been most marked with the smaller churches, or with those of a medium grade. It has thus fallen most heavily upon those least able to bear it. The general effect has been to bring discomfort upon those whose salaries have been reduced, and at the very same time to diminish the number of other places which might offer a

prospect of relief.

The trouble is thus not so much that in this part of the country ministers are more numerous than churches, but it is that ministers are more numerous than desirable churches which offer a fair means of support.

With the smaller churches the conditions are reversed. And it is often difficult to find competent men who can be engaged for the inadequate sums that are to be paid. It is not easy to see how families can be maintained, and the appliances of study provided with resources so small.

The most earnest effort ought to be made to arrest, and, if possible, to reverse this downward movement in the payment of the ministry. In many cases some relief might be given by improvements in the condition and furnishing of the parsonages, or in the providing of parsonages where there are none. In many of our country towns there is a returning stream of wealth from the children of the place whose homes are now in the cities, showing itself in elegant summer residences, or in beautiful buildings for public libraries. Something of it might well be turned to the improvement and the permanent maintenance of the homes of the pastors of the churches, to which these children of the place owe, themselves, so much. The stronger churches, too, might fittingly furnish, through the missionary societies, more of help in the comfortable supporting of the churches that are weak.

It is a peculiar trial with the minister that when means of support fail in one field, or when serious dissatisfactions arise, he must so often change his place of life. This does not usually occur with men of any other calling. In the midst of misfortunes they keep their homes. But the minister moves with his wife and his children. Sometimes he goes out not knowing whither he is to go. There may be a ministerial unrest, which is to be deplored. But it is also to be inquired whether, on the other side, with more of patience, and more of kindness, and more of hopefulness, and more of helpfulness, there might often be spared to the pastor the depressing pains of removal. Wherever the exercise of these Christian graces may lead to such a result, the pastor and the church may prosper the more together. The work of our Board is much with pastoral changes, but the desires of our hearts are for pastoral rest and comfort and continuance.

REPORT OF THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE1

Your committee in presenting its brief report desire to give expression to the sense of loss they have sustained during the year in the death of their chairman, the honored Rev. Henry A. Hazen.

In arranging for the printing of the "Advance Reports" of the various committees, as ordered by the Association, both money and time are saved by contracting for the publishing of the "Minutes" in connection with the printing of these reports. Your committee, therefore, secured bids for the whole work from several well-known printers of Boston and placed the contract with the lowest bidders, Messrs. Mills & Knight of that city, at a figure considerably below the cost of the work last year as well as below this year's bid of the firm who have had for several years the printing of both the "Year-Book" and the "Minutes."

The fact that thirty pages of both the "Year-Book" and the "Minutes" are identical- the pages of the "Statistics of the Churches,". made possible, it seemed to your committee, another reduction of expense. Conferring therefore with the Publishing Committee of the National Council your committee secured from them permission to make such arrangement as we might be able to make with their printers for the use of the type of the thirty pages of statistics already set up for the "Year-Book." By this means we have saved another considerable item of expense, and it seems to your committee that, in the future, through co-operation on the part of the Publishing Committee of the National Council, a still larger amount may be saved the Association. The total sum which we expect to save this year over last is at least $200.

Your committee have also made arrangements by which, if they are desired, extra copies of the “Statistics of the Churches" simply, can be furnished at the rates of $20.00 per 1,000 or $40.00 per 5,000.

Your committee would recommend, first, that this Association, through its delegates to the National Council, memorialize that body to consider the question of co-operating with the Publishing Committees of the various State Associations in printing the "Statistics of the Churches," to the end of reducing the expense of the publication of these statistics. Second, that this Association communicate its action in the matter, if favorable, to the several State Associations.

AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT1

PROFESSOR JOHN WINTHROP PLATNER, OF CAMBRIDGE.

The close of the eighteenth century seems to mark an epoch in our ecclesiastical history chiefly because it follows so closely upon the readjustment of political and social conditions which the Revolutionary struggle rendered necessary. Under constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, with the certainty that no particular form of Christianity could ever gain the artificial advantage of establishment by the federal government, and with the natural consequence of the free church system already within sight, viz., the downfall of such quasi-state churches as lingered on for a few years longer in New England, the various denominations at once took on new life and put forth splendid energy. It is at this important period that the churches became organized, apart from that European dependence which some of them had hitherto been forced to maintain. They all awoke to the consciousness that vast tracts of new territory were open for their possession. No doubt they also felt the spur of sectarian competition, but this is not always an evil. They girded themselves for a vigorous conflict with the demoralizing results of war, with the new problems arising from independence, and with that foreign importation of irreligion, which was one of the most striking gifts of France to American culture. Among the Protestants no other church responded more readily to the demands of the time than did that calling itself Congregational. Indeed, the churches of our order have more than once had occasion to felicitate themselves on what Leibnitz would call the "pre-established harmony" between their polity and the governmental structure of the republic. Congregationalism certainly felt at home in the United States.

Let us recall a few of our great names at the turn of the century. Joseph Bellamy had been dead some ten years. Jonathan Edwards, the younger, who shines largely by reflected light, died in Schenectady in 1801. In 1803 came the death of Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, who loved "being in general" too well to suffer the interference of any narrower love. Two highly honored theologians (to name no others) were in the prime of their usefulness: Nathaniel Emmons, of Franklin, the educator of nearly one hundred ministers, by the laboratory method, and Timothy Dwight, of New Haven, whose system of theology would bear preaching (a rare distinction), and who thereby also trained ministers. Nathaniel W. Taylor was a boy of fifteen, and Charles G. Finney only nine years of age, both to become valiant soldiers of the Con

1 See page 15.