Absolutely required by the necessities of the case

So, when churches began to be organized, he felt that it would be no charity, but a positive injury, for the mission to assume the entire control, or become responsible for the expenses, any farther than was absolutely required by the necessities of the case. Native pastors, instead of missionaries, were placed over the churches; the people took part in their government; and they were encouraged to contribute according to their ability to the support of the pastors, and to other needful expenses in maintaining the institutions of the Gospel. Soon after the organization of the first church, Mr. Goodell says: —

“ Recently their pastor was in straitened circumstances, and applied to us for relief. We told the church it was tlieir duty to see that their pastor did not suffer, and we informed them of the donation parties in New England. They immediately took up the subject in a business-like style, and appointed committees to receive contributions for the relief of their pastor. One member of the female seminary was appointed to receive what the pupils were disposed to give; and, to our great surprise and gratitude, they brought forward of their own accord between three and four dollars.

The next day I spoke to them on the privilege and duty of their doing something regularly to maintain the institutions of religion among themselves. I told them that after this year the pastor would not probably look to us for any part of his salary, but would look to his church and congregation for the whole, and that they must be ready to do their part. In the evening they all came running to me with money in their hands, — their first payment for this object. I afterwards told the deacons of the church that, if they would now undertake to support their own pastor, I was sure these poor girls could with their needles, even while members of the school, raise one-thirtieth, if not one-twentieth, of the funds necessary.”

Having made a visit to the interior, where churches had been organized, he wrote: —

Importance of supporting

“ In this visit we labored to impress on the minds of the churches the importance of supporting entirely their own pastors; and not only so, but of themselves contributing also to send the Gospel to those who were more destitute than themselves. We told them how the ladies in a certain town in Connecticut once built a meeting-house by raising onions; and we charged every husband who owned a garden to give his wife a corner of it, that site might at once begin to work in it for Christ.

We told them of a town in Massachusetts, in which the good people in a time of great distress contrived to support their pastor by sharing with him whatever they had for themselves, one and another sending to him three candles, thirty nails, some beans, a few hops, two quarts of milk, cloth for a shirt, a broom, half a dozen pigeons bulgaria holidays. We told them that, if there should be an increase of fifteen or twenty to their families ‘ by ordinary generation ’ during the year, they would be able to support them all without asking for the charities of their brethren; and could they not therefore support one whom God had now sent them? ”

Control as speedily as possible

On the still more important branch of this subject, that of educating the people to an independence of foreign direction, by withdrawing that control as speedily as possible, he wrote to the Secretary of the Hoard, in reply to a communication on the subject: —

CONSTANTINOPLE, Oct. 7, 1848.

MY DEAR BROTHER, — I hope you may not find it necessary to curtail us in our expenses next year; but, should you have to do it, would it not be better to leave it to us to decide in what particular department of our labors this curtailment must be made, than for the committee to do it at such a distance? It is of course for them to name the sum, if in the providence of God a sum must be named; but ought it not, of course, to be expected that we should be more capable of knowing than they, where the reduction will appear likely to produce the least possible injury to the cause?

With the drift of your letter to the mission I was much pleased, and I hope you will follow it up with others, urging us not to keep native helpers in the background for the sake of rendering ourselves apparently indispensable to the work, nor to delay settling native pastors, lest we ourselves should be found to be no longer necessary.