_The Congregationalist_



Forty-Second Annual Report Of The Executive Committee,

FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1888.



General Survey.



The field of missions is the world which lieth in darkness. We have to
do with that part of it for which we are doubly responsible. It is in
darkness and it is our own.

We look upon our own land, with its States equal in extent and
capacity to foreign kingdoms. When we know that they hold the
certainty of a future influence of which their past power has been but
a prophecy, our fears press hard upon our hopes.

Nor are our work and our fears an intrusion. When the pestilence which
walks in darkness brings the destruction which wastes at noonday, it
is our call to feel deeply the distresses of those who are stricken.
But plagues consuming human lives are less grevious than those which
abide, and which, walking in the intellectual and moral darkness of a
people, waste the lives of men and the hopes of souls. This is our
call.