History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China | Page 5

to commence more direct work at Amoy. A very populous suburb (E-mng-kang) was selected as a suitable and promising station. They assumed the immediate care, and all the expense of it, employing, as at all the other stations, indiscriminately, members of their own or of our churches as helpers.
We are not afraid that our Church will ever blame us for working thus harmoniously, and unitedly, with our English Presbyterian brethren, and we feel confident that none of her Missionaries would consent to work on any other principles. If there be any who, under similar circumstances, would refuse thus to work, this would be sufficient evidence that they had mistaken their calling. If any blame is to be attached to the course the Missionaries have pursued, it is not that they have worked thus in harmony and unison with the English Presbyterian brethren, but that they have failed to keep the churches under their care ecclesiastically distinct. Some do feel inclined to censure us for this. It must be, however, because of some great misapprehension on their part. The Synod has distinctly uttered a contrary sentiment, i.e. that the course of the Missionaries is not censurable. We do not believe that our Church, when she understands the true state of the case, will ever censure us on this account. It would not be according to the spirit of her Master. He prayed that His people might be one, but he never prayed for their separation from each other. When separation is necessary, it is a necessary evil. But more of this hereafter. Our Church might well have censured us, if we had adopted lower principles as her representatives in building up the Church of Christ in China.
The first organization of a church at Amoy under our care, by the ordination of a Consistory, took place in 1856. The Missionaries of our Board then on the ground were Doty and Talmage. Mr. Douglas was the only Missionary of the English Presbyterian Church. (Mr. Joralmon, of our Church, arrived between the time of the election and the ordination of office-bearers.) When the time came for the organization of the Church, we felt a solemn responsibility resting on us. We supposed it to be our duty to organize the Church in China with reference simply to its own welfare, and efficiency in the work of evangelizing the heathen around. Believing (after due deliberation) that the order of our own Church in America would best secure this end, of course we adopted it. We did not suppose that we were sent out to build up the American Dutch Church in China, but a Church after the same order, a purely Chinese Church. How much the growth and efficiency of our Church in this country has been promoted by retaining (rather inserting) the term "_Dutch_" in her name, I will not now attempt to discuss. I suppose the principal argument in favor thereof is found in the fact that our Church, in the first instance, was a colony from Holland. The Church in China is not a colony from Holland, or America. We must not, therefore, entail on her the double evil of both the terms "_American_" and "_Dutch_" or the single evil of either of these terms. Your Missionaries will never consent to be instrumental in causing such an evil.
We had already adopted the order and customs of our Church at home, so far as they could be adopted in an unorganized Church. The English Presbyterian brethren had adopted the same. They found that there were no differences of any importance between us and them; the churches being gathered under our care and under theirs--growing out of each other and being essentially one--neither we nor they could see any sufficient reason for organizing two distinct denominations. Especially had we no reason for such a course, inasmuch as they were willing even to conform to our peculiarities. We most cordially invited Mr. Douglas to unite with us in the organization of the Church, and he as cordially accepted of the invitation.
In reference to this subject Mr. Douglas wrote to their Corresponding Secretary as follows: "I need hardly say that this transaction does not consist in members of one church joining another, nor in two churches uniting, but it is an attempt to build up on the soil of China, with the lively stones prepared by the great Master-builder, an ecclesiastical body holding the grand doctrines enunciated at Westminster and Dort, and the principles of Presbyterian polity embraced at the Reformation by the purest churches on the continent and in Britain; it will also be a beautiful point in the history of this infant Church that the under-builders employed in shaping and arranging the stones, were messengers of two different (though not differing,) churches in the two