A gravely important and difficult question as to the future policy of the Society (A. H. M. S.) was submitted in behalf of the executive. It was one technically within the competency of the executive to decide, but too important to be so decided, without larger counsel: Shall the Society’s system of operations with missions and superintendencies be extended over the Southern States? In favor of this measure are urged (1) the desire to make the field of the Society’s work co-extensive with the nation; (2) the duty we owe to white people, as well as black, at the South; (3) the alleged demand for the Society’s aid to communities of Congregationalists who have moved to the South. Against it are (1) the measureless inadequacy of the Society’s present or probable resources for the urgent instant demands of its present field; (2) the wastefulness of organizing and supporting a second system of superintendencies over the field already occupied by the superintendencies of the American Missionary Association, and the chances of friction or collision between the two systems; (3) the impossibility of drawing any line of demarkation between the two systems of missions on the same ground, except a color line: the emphasizing of the color line, in the most obtrusive and offensive manner, not only by two orders of missionaries, one to whites and one to blacks, but by two orders of mission churches, one for black people in which whites shall be tolerated, and one for white people where blacks shall be tolerated with not so much as a common superintendency to co-ordinate them; and thus the danger of indelibly fixing the color line, fortifying it by new vested interests, and defeating any kindly tendency toward the effacing of it from the Christian Church. Such considerations as these led the congregation (we can hardly say the Society), after deliberation and debate, and especially after the very able speech of Mr. Blakeslee, to decline committing itself to this great and not easily revocable step, and to leave it for a year’s consideration, and though a later and less considerate vote was obtained in a form which seemed to throw doubt upon this decision, nevertheless the reluctance toward the new policy was of such a weight and character that a prudent executive may be trusted to keep it in view and move with caution, in a matter that does not press for instant action. _The Advance._ A QUESTIONABLE PROCEDURE. BY REV. HORACE BUMSTEAD, D.D.