But there are also positive advantages secured by the systematic methods
of the A.M.A. in expending the money committed to its treasury.

II. It secures proportion in different parts of the work.

(a.) In appeal.--This Association, constituted, as it is, the immediate
agent of the churches, ought to be your watchman on the tower.

Every pastor is crowded with parish duties. Few intelligent laymen can
give time enough to study thoroughly the whole field covered by the
missions of the A.M.A. It is now an enormous field. Representatives of
five distinct races, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Mountain Whites and
Negroes wait for Christian instruction very largely upon the missionaries
you are sending out.

Now, no one who is not compelled by official duties to do it can find
time, nor has he the information at hand, to investigate thoroughly each
department of this missionary work. The A.M.A. is your agent to discover,
through careful and patient investigation, the exact facts, and so to
direct its appeals to the churches that the department of work which is
especially pressing may be given due prominence. Systematic spending
involves this.

(b.) Greatest care is required and exercised in planting new work. Let us
in fancy plant a new school in the South, as the Association does it.
Exhaustive correspondence is of course, the first step. Then the Field
Superintendent visits the field. He gathers every possible fact bearing
upon the question: The population; schools, if any; the opinions of white
and colored citizens; the religious complexion of the community, etc.,
etc., etc. Now this Field Superintendent has studied maps and statistics