But is it more than a look? The educational institutions of several of
our societies were born out of the inmost life of those organizations
and lie on their bosom for nourishment to-day. To ask the American
Board, for example, to turn over its colleges and schools to some other
society, for that, of course, is involved in the plan suggested--would
be like asking one of our Christian mothers to send her babe to the
foundlings' home. Some of us are old enough to remember that the
venerable and now sainted Dr. Anderson was at first vehemently opposed
to the schools planted by the missionaries in India. It was confounding
things that differ. The work of a missionary society was not to manage
schools. The schools were discontinued. But the Board soon discovered
that it was doing its work with but one hand. The schools came back and
came to stay. Now we conservatives are rather jealous of our progressive
brethren calling for a reconstruction of the American Board. We know not
whereto this thing may grow.

If the colleges and schools of the American Missionary Association were
secular, if they had no vital oneness of life with its churches, there
might be room for the plan suggested. But they are as thoroughly
Christian in their aim as the churches. The churches are as
indispensably educational as the schools. As Dr. Strieby remarks, the
teacher is often the pastor. The pastor finds a great part of his flock
in the school. The teachers teach in his Sunday-school. The
prayer-meeting depends on them for its success. The unseen shuttles of
mutual sympathy, flying back and forth incessantly, are weaving the two
together, and working out the one pattern of the Divine life in souls,
that covers both. The plan proposed would, at least to the eye,
disentangle all complications. It would lay out the work in the
Year-Book with clean-cut precision. But vital things are not always
improved by vivisection. It would doubtless simplify our apprehension of