"
If I am not mistaken, these statements imply a resolution on the part of
the gentlemen now in the Direction, to devote the decreasing income of
the Society committed to their charge to parts of the world of easy
access, and in which the missionaries may devote their entire time and
energies to the dissemination of the truths of the gospel with
reasonable hopes of speedy success. This, there can be no doubt, evinces
a sincere desire to perform their duty faithfully to their constituents,
to the heathen, and to our Lord and Master, yet while still retaining
that full conviction of the purity of their motives, which no measure
adopted during the sixteen years of my connection with the Society has
for a moment disturbed, I feel constrained to view "the untried, remote,
and difficult fields," to which I humbly yet firmly believe God has
directed my steps, with a resolution widely different from that which
their words imply. As our aims and purposes will now appear in some
degree divergent--on their part from a sort of paralysis caused by
financial decay, and on mine from the simple continuance of an old
determination to devote my life and my all to the service of Christ, in
whatever way He may lead me in inter-tropical Africa--it seems natural,
while yet without the remotest idea of support from another source, to
give some of the reasons for differing with those with whom I have
hitherto been so happily connected.
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