Foreign Missions.

THE Fifth Annual Report is as follows:

The work of missions among the Southwestern Indians has been carried on without interruption during the year, but under varied circumstances of difficulty and encouragement. The demoralizing effects of the war are still painfully evident, especially in habits of intemperance and idleness, and in the revival of old heathenish customs that had previously disappeared from the country. Much discouragement is felt also in connection with the reduced strength of the missionary force. The Rev. Cyrus Byington, who has labored in that field with indefatigable zeal for more than forty years, has recently been compelled, by feeble health and the infirmities of age, to retire from active missionary labor, but will devote the remainder of his days to the completion of the translation of the Bible into the Choctaw language. His life of self-denial, of persevering labor and consecration to the service of Christ has few parallels in the history of the Church, and will command the respect and admiration of the people of God wherever it is known. Mrs. Byington, his aged partner in missionary labor, remains for the present at their post, in the hope that some one will come soon to assume the responsibilties which her aged husband has been compelled to lay aside. No one, the committee are sorry to state, has as yet been found to occupy this important post. The Rev. O. P. Stark, who has likewise labored diligently in the same field for nearly twenty years, has recently removed to Texas, leaving an important station to be supplied.

The present laborers in this field are the Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, D.D., the original founder of the mission, and now eighty years of age, Rev. Messrs. Ebenezer Hotchkin, C. C. Copeland and Alexander Reid, and Rev. Messrs. Allen Wright aud Pliny Fisk, Choctaw preachers; all of the Choctaw mission; Rev. Hamilton Balentine, of the Chickasaw mission; and Rev. Stephen Foreman, native Cherokee, of the Cherokee mission-in all eight missionaries.

It will be remembered that there were a number of missionaries from the South in foreign lands, sent out by the New York Board of Foreign Missions previous to the war. Your committee kept their eye upon these missionary brethren during the whole course of the war, and, so long as it was practicable, furnished the means for their support. A number of changes have taken place in their circumstances during the period under consideration.

Mrs. Danforth, the wife of the Rev. John A. Danforth, died at Ningpo Mission in 1863. Mr. Danforth himself soon after returned to New York, having suffered much, both in mind and body, before he left China. Since then he has been laboring as a domestic missionary in the vicinity of Cincinnati. He has recently made application to be sent to China as a missionary under the direction of the committee. But the peculiar sufferings he endured while there, as well as his imperfectly restored health, have decided the committee against sending him back. Mrs. Hepburn, of Japan, and Mrs. Kerr, of Canton, China, the former a native of North Carolina, and the latter a native of Virginia, but for a number of years before she left the country a resident of Mississippi, still continue in their missionary labors and profess a sincere interest in the welfare of the Southern Church. Their social relations, however, preclude them from any official connection with the committee; but they will no doubt enjoy the Christian sympathies and prayers of all our people. The Rev. Daniel McGilvary, a native of North,

Carolina, but for seven or eight years past a member of Siam Mission, after holding the matter under advisement for several years, prefers to remain in connection with the New York Board, and this decision, of course, terminates all correspondence between him and the committee.

The Rev. Elias B. Inslee, a resident for a number of years of the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, and a member of the Presbytery of Mississippi, went out as a missionary to China, under the direction of the New York Board, in 1856. In consequence of some misunderstanding with the Board in New York, and also with the missionaries on the ground, his connection with them was dissolved, and since that time he has carried on his work, in a great measure, at his own charges.

Publication.

THE Fifth Annual Report is as follows:

In the last annual report it was stated that the store-room and all the property of the committee had been consumed in the great fire on the evacution of this city by the late Confederate Government. We now have the pleasure of reporting that recently a large supply of the tracts, tract volumes and hymn-books issued during the war has been recovered. These pamphlets had not been returned from the bindery at the time of the fire, and thus they escaped the flames. By the carefulness of the former Publishing Agent they were sent to a large ware-room for safe-keeping. About the first of the summer the committee got knowledge of them, and had them transferred to its store-room. These tracts comprise all those published during the war, except five or six.

Moreover, about the same time, three cases of Bibles, imported from England during the war, but which did not reach this city previous to the surrender, were received from the express office. They are supposed to have been sent away from Wilmington by the express company, to Augusta, Georgia, to avoid capture, and this summer were forwarded to this city and came safely into our hands.

As a number of cases of Bibles were known to be missing, a strict investigation of the matter was gone into with the hope of recovering others of them. It was ascertained that six cases, with secret marks upon them, were received at Wilmington, by a commission house in that city, in July, 1863. They say in reply to a letter of inquiry: "We made repeated efforts to ascertain the owners without success, and on one occasion opened two of them in presence of a gentleman from your city connected with one of the Tract societies, who said he believed he could find out who they were for, and would write the parties. Since which we have heard nothing more. cases were left in Wilmington on the evacuation of our city, and upon our return we find that the Yankees had been occupying our store, and the only thing left of the cases which had been broken open by them were a few books and tracts scattered about the floor."

The

Moreover, it was ascertained that twenty-six cases had been sent to this committee, which were still at Nassau at the time of the fall of Wilmington. Seeing the impossibility of their reaching Richmond, the British and Foreign Bible Society transferred the donation of the twenty-six cases, with about

forty more, to a minister of another denomination from Texas, who, through mismanagement or want of knowledge of the business, lost the whole of them at Havana. On account of a violation of the local laws, they were confiscated and sold at auction. A Northern merchant bought them, and brought them to New York or Boston.

Immediately after the fall of the Confederacy, the former Secretary of Publication, the Rev. Dr. John Leyburn, wrote a letter to the Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, stating the poverty of our people under the calamities of war, and as a result of the failure of the government, acknowledging the Christian generosity of the British and Foreign Bible Society extended to us during the war, and confessing our inability at an early period to meet our indebtedness to that society. To this a generous response was given, full of Christian sympathy, and relieving us of all anxiety about our existing indebtedness, the settlement of which was postponed until the committee should be able to discharge it. But while the chairman of the committee, Dr. Moore, was in England, he sought an interview with the Rev. Dr. Bergne, the foreign secretary of that society, who informed him that they had considered the debt canceled. This debt was about $2500 in gold. It ought here to be recorded, also, that the noble society, have likewise canceled the large debt of the Confederate States Bible Society, $20,000. Both of these generous acts were done without solicitation.

CLAIMS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD.-The committee has the pleasure of reporting that a claim which the Presbyterian Board of Publication had, nominally, against the Rev. W. J. Keith, of Georgia, but really against this committee, has been adjusted finally and satisfactorily.

The history of this matter is this: Before the war Mr. Keith was employed as an agent or colporteur of the Board, and had in his charge a large amount of its books for sale in a fiduciary capacity. After war became flagrant, the Confederate Government passed an act sequestering the property of aliens. Under this act the books of the Board were about to be seized and sequestered, when Mr. Keith very wisely set up a claim for the books as the property of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, as the actual and lawful successor of the old Church for that part of the country included within the Confederate States-a principle which would undoubtedly have been acknowledged everywhere had the revolution succeeded. Mr. Keith. was required to give his bond for the safe-keeping of the books, pending the action of the General Assembly. That court justified the course of Mr. Keith at its sessions in Columbia, S. C., in 1863, and promised to indemnify him for any loss he might sustain in the case; moreover, it ordered the books to be sent to Richmond, to be disposed of by this committee. A portion of them were sold, a portion given away to the soldiers, but the bulk of them, with the money received from their sale, perished along with the other property of the committee at the fall of the Confederacy and by the great fire.

When this committee learned that the Board had called on Mr. Keith for a settlement, it promptly informed the Board that it assumed all the responsibility, and would discharge every just claim against Mr. Keith arising out of this business. After a careful investigation of the matter, and obtaining a settlement from Mr. Keith up to the time when our civil troubles began, the Board, by a unanimous vote, ordered the claim against Mr. Keith to be canceled and his account squared. The amount thus canceled was about $2600. Of this action the Corresponding Secretary, Dr. Schenck, gave us information in a very courteous note, the closing sentence of which is in these

words: "We recognize with pleasure the honorable conduct of your committee in assuming the responsibilty of this balance, but are glad to leave the money in your hands, that you may use it in doing what you can toward supplying the sad destitution of books among the Southern churches and Sabbath schools." To this letter a suitable reply was returned, closing in these words: "We beg to assure the Board that we highly appreciate the honorable, kind and just spirit which has marked their action in this case."

Thus this matter has happily terminated, leaving no unpleasant recollections behind. The conduct of Mr. Keith has been marked by the strictest integrity and honor, and deserves, as it has received, the commendation of both the Board and this committee.

Education.

THE Fifth Annual Report is as follows:

The Executive Committee of Education, in presenting its Fifth Annual Report to the General Assembly, has but a brief statement to make. The position in which the whole matter was left by the last Assembly placed the committee in very embarrassing circumstances. It will be remembered that the question of the discontinuance of the Committee of Education, as one of the agencies of the Church for systematic evangelization, has been agitated in the last two General Assemblies, and that the question was left undetermined by the last Assembly-the whole subject having been once more referred to a committee to report to the present meeting. When this Executive Committee was organized last January, the sessions of all our literary institutions were far advanced, and as no candidate can be received as a beneficiary without the recommendation of his Presbytery, nothing could, in any event, have been done previous to the spring meetings of these courts. This threw the subject beyond our reach for the sessions of the seminaries then current, which immediately thereafter came to their vacations, and of the colleges which were far advanced in their last term.

This fall the case was even worse, for the fate of the committee, now in suspense for two years, was so near its crisis that our Presbyteries and candidates would be unwilling to hang their hopes on so slender a cord, and the committee was reluctant to assume future obligations which it might not be permitted to live long enough to fulfill. The consequence was that nothing could be done. In response to all applications, answer was given in accordance with these facts. Students were encouraged to believe, however, that they would receive such aid as they might require, if not from the committee, at all events from the various institutions to which they might resort. The consequence was, they all turned away from the precarious terms offered them by this committee.

Freedmen.

THE following resolutions were adopted :

Resolved, 1. That this Assembly entertains for the freed people the sincerest sentiments of good-will and affection; that it earnestly desires and prays for their salvation, and would encourage the employment of every legitimate means for the promotion of their spiritual good; that this Assembly believes the present condition of the colored race in the country to be one of alarming spiritual jeopardy, and that it is binding on us, as Christians, to do all that lies in our power to save them from the calamities by which they are threatened, and to confer on them the rich blessings of the gospel.

2. That it be recommended to all our ministers and churches to exert themselves to the utmost of their ability to continue to give the gospel to these people; to church sessions to urge upon parents among them the duty of presenting their children for baptism, and of bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; and especially to pastors, evangelists and missionaries to devote a portion of their labor to the promotion of the salvation of the freed people.

3. That in the judgment of the Assembly it is highly inexpedient that there should be an ecclesiastical separation of the white and colored races; that such a measure would threaten evil to both races, and especially to the colored; and that therefore it is desirable that every warrantable effort be made affectionately to dissuade the freed people from severing their connection with our churches, and to retain them with us as of old. Should they decline this fellowship of ordinances, and desire a separate organization, then our sessions are authorized to organize them into branch congregations. In such cases the Assembly recommends that such congregations shall be allowed, under the sanction of the sessions, to elect from among themselves, every year, such number of superintendents or watchmen as the session may advise, who shall be charged with the oversight of such congregations. Their superintendents shall report to the sessions for their action all matters relating to the welfare of said congregations.

4. Whenever Presbyteries may find it necessary to organize separate colored congregations they shall appoint a commission of elders, who shall discharge the functions committed to the sessions in the preceding resolution. 5. That whilst nothing in our standards or in the word of God prohibits the introduction into the gospel ministry of any qualified persons of any race, yet difficulties arise in the general structure of society and from providential causes which may and should restrain the application in the Church of this abstract principle. Holding this in view, the Assembly recommends that wherever a session or Presbytery shall find a colored person who shall possess suitable qualifications, they be authorized to license him to labor as an exhorter among the colored people under the sanction of the body appointing him.

6. That the Assembly recommends that whenever it is practicable, Sabbath schools for the benefit of the freed people, especially the young, be established in connection with our churches, and that the sessions of the churches take these schools under their charge and provide suitable teachers for them. 7. That the heads of families are exhorted to encourage the freed people in their households to attend upon family and public worship, and that they provide for them, as far as possible, catechetical instruction in the doctrines and duties of the gospel.