Now in these churches in the East, by necessity, the first pastors were not thus educated. The missionaries were compelled to get themselves such pastors as they could find, just as the apostles ordained elders in every place. They had to ordain just such elders as they could find, and the missionaries did the same. But these pastors have all been growing men; they have all been put into a way of study; they have all been kept under exciting influences; and pastors and churches have gone on together. And I think, from my personal knowledge of the pastors of those churches in the Turkish empire, that they are a noble, faithful and progressive company of laborers in the vineyard of our Lord. It must also be remembered that, in forming these churches and bringing them forward, they will commit great errors; there will be great immoralities breaking out among these church members. I have known such sins committed by church members in whom I had had confidence, that I would at the first impulse have immediately expelled them from the churches, and denied to them all possibility of knowing or having known anything of a true and pure Christianity; and yet those same men, when faithfully and patiently dealt with, have come to repentance, have returned to faithful Christian life in the church, and I have been at the bedside of some of them when they died in faith and joy, and in hope of a glorious and blessed immortality. Now, I have great confidence in these churches which this Association has formed; I have great confidence in their progress, in their purification, in the elevation and competency and energy of the native pastorate; and it seems to me that this is the very centre, the fountain source, of the safe and onward progress of your great work. * * * * * AFRICA. * * * * * REPORT ON FOREIGN WORK. Your Committee, to whom is referred that portion of the Executive Committee’s Report relating to the Foreign work of the Association, beg leave to report as follows: The experience of the past and Providential indications of the future seem clearly to call upon this Association to concentrate their foreign work upon two fields—the Mendi mission on the West coast, and the proposed Arthington mission in East Central Africa, in the region of the Sobat River.