DIRECTORS: Rev. George Moor, D. D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. W. E. Ijams, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, E. P. Sanford, Esq., H. W. Severance, Esq. SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq. * * * * * THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION. REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO. By virtue of a tacit understanding, a place is given, year by year, in the course of the meetings of our General Association, for the Anniversary of “The California Chinese Mission.” This meeting was accordingly held this year at Sacramento, October 12th. It shared with the American Home Missionary Society the evening service. A large congregation was present. Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D., president of the mission, occupied the chair, and conducted the devotional exercises. The reports of the Treasurer and of the Directors, (some of the main points of which may be found in the Annual Report of the A. M. A.), were read by the Secretary, and stirring addresses were made by our helper, Mr. Fung Affoo, and by Rev. Joseph Lanman, of Woodland, and Rev. Martin Post, of Stockton. A very satisfactory token of the interest of the meeting appeared in the goodly number and generous amount of the offerings received. THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. The action of our General Association on the Chinese question has excited attention and surprise among our Eastern friends. I am not prepared to defend it, and do not believe that it is defensible. Yet it was not so bad as to the spirit that prompted it, nor so bad in itself as to our Eastern friends it will naturally seem to be. The mistake was in meddling with a question on which we could scarcely speak at all without being misunderstood. The resolutions adopted were three: the first, in emphatic terms, rebuked lawlessness and riot; the second, in terms equally emphatic, endorsed the missionary work among the Chinese; the third set forth the perils attending Chinese immigration, and urged some modification of the Burlingame treaty and the adoption of any other just measures which may restrict this immigration. The fault and the danger is, not so much in what was really said, as in what will naturally and easily be inferred. For the first two resolutions will be taken as practically meaningless;—designed simply to smooth the way for the last: while the last will be interpreted as a surrender on the part of Christian people to the hoodlum element; a cowardly backsliding of Congregationalists in California from the position as up-holders of the liberties and rights of men, which our churches here and elsewhere held so bravely in the years gone by. The following extracts from a paragraph in the _Pacific_, truthfully represents, as I believe, the real sentiments of the Association: