| Description | Grieved to write again on same subject as before; the Committee have passed and sent to the Corresponding Committee for the resolutions relating to line of conduct to be pursued by missionaries, if these points are not followed and missionaries are led to unwise conduct "the society and its representatives must discharge themselves ..... of all responsibility on your account"; in communications to London Missionary Society have occurred references to R. and S. having joined with them in acts of public worship; this is most welcome in private (the CMS Secretaries meet regularly with the Secretaries of the London Baptist and Wesleyan Societies for conference and prayer) but cannot be accepted in public, when it is a matter of Christian discipline "we are all supposed conscientiously to prefer our own views of discipline as well as doctrine"; "it must be remembered, too, that the CM Society stands in a situation quite unparalleled in the case of any other missionary institution, unless it be that of the Edinburgh Missionary Society with reference to the Church of Scotland. Almost every other missionary society is supported the whole body of the Christian denomination to which it belongs. But the CM Society is suspected, calumnated and opposed by the majority of the members of the church to which it belongs; and the great body of these persons overvalue the Discipline of the Church, and accuse the CM Society of undervaluing it. Every member ..... and every missionary ..... is conscientiously bound to give no just ground for the accusation." (copy). |