Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/381



METHODIST REPORTS WILLAMETTE MISSION 331

spiritually. In these views he seems to have had the concurrence of the greater portion of the missionaries themselves. He accordingly determined upon a course of retrenchment and immediately wrote to the Board in- forming them of his views and purposes and asking their counsel. The letter was dated in June, soon after his arrival. Besides this we have received another dated in July, from which we learn that he is rapidly carrying his plans and purposes into execution. With two or three exceptions, the laymen employed in this field have been dismissed; and the most of the property held by the mission and believed to be unavailable, has been advan- tageously disposed of. We are gratified to learn that our lay brethren, whose services are no longer needed in the mission, will generally remain in Oregon to strengthen the hands of the missionaries, and aid in the cause of promoting the cause of Christianity in that infant colony. Your Board deem it proper to remark at this point that though unforeseen circumstances have imperatively called for this apparently retrograde movement, yet we cannot hesitate to recommend the Oregon Mission as still worthy of the continued confidence and patronage of the Society and the cordial support of the whole church. Without impugning the motives of a single individual, it may and perhaps ought to be admitted, that the Board was somewhat misled in relation to the necessity of the great reinforcement sent out in 1839. But this admis- sion, under the circumstances should not, and in justice cannot subject either the Board or the Bishop having charge of the Foreign Missions, to the charge of reckless- ness in their expenditures. When it is considered that the only reliable source of information to the Board was to be found in the missionaries themselves ; that the mis- sion is some eleven thousand miles distant, requiring from a year to eighteen months for the interchange of correspondence ; that this correspondence was almost uni- formly agreeable to enlargement; that the Superinten-