"Enclosed we send twenty-five dollars, which please accept as our subscription to the American Missionary Association work for the current year. We are more and more interested in this work, especially in view of the hateful prejudice that exists in many parts of the South against the colored people and those who have so nobly espoused the cause of their education and Christianization. This low-minded prejudice is very similar to what we have to endure here in the interior of China, yet it is harder to bear because coming from those who pretend to be enlightened Christians, while here those who indulge in personal abuse are mostly of the lowest and most ignorant heathen, though they are often backed up by the literati." * * * * * COMPROMISES AND THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF GEORGIA. Americans are much addicted to settling difficulties by compromises; but these compromises, in State and Church, especially in regard to slavery, have so often been the sacrifice of principle to expediency that the word has come to have a sinister meaning--implying such a sacrifice; and they have so often proved failures as to show them to be unwise, even as a matter of expediency. A brief sketch of some of these past compromises, with their motives and failures, may throw some light upon the compromise proposed for the Congregational churches in Georgia. POLITICAL COMPROMISES. These have usually been made from more than one motive: 1. One strong plea is that the expediency is so urgent that a small sacrifice of right is justifiable. In that celebrated law case of Shylock the Jew _versus_ Antonio the merchant, so ably reported by William Shakespeare, Esq., this reason was plainly stated. The defendant's attorney, Bassanio, in order to avert from his client the dreadful forfeit of a pound of flesh taken nearest his heart, appealed to the judge: "I beseech you Wrest once the law to your authority; To do a great right, do a little wrong." The "wise young judge" knew the law, human and divine, too well to grant this plea. But that plea had its influence in securing the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Among other difficulties in the way, a constructive guarantee of slavery seemed necessary to secure the assent of some of the Southern States. How strong the plea! Slavery was wrong to be sure, but the terrible seven years' war was ended, and a great nation was ready to come into existence! The compromise was made and the Union was formed. But did the compromise save it? No! The "pound of flesh" was at last the price. After a struggle of seventy-two years the crisis came, Sumter was fired upon and the compromise was found to be a failure. "A pound of flesh!" Nay, the flesh and blood of a million of men saved the Union.