Excerpt from The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions This book does not pretend to be a history of the American Board; that would require more than one volume. Neither is it a history of the Board's missions; that would necessitate even a larger amount of detail. Nor yet is it a record of the 2500 missionaries who have been sent forth by the Board since its organization; that would call for far more of biography. All that is attempted here is to tell the story of the American Board: how it came to pass; what it set out to do; and, in such degree as space will allow and as can be put into words, what it has done. The aim has been to portray the Board as an organism living and growing in the world; to mark the stages of that growth, to reflect the temper and movement of that life, and to describe briefly and yet vividly some characteristic scenes enacted on the many fields of the Board's enterprise. Even within these bounds it has been a difficult task to keep the story down. Only the more striking or instructive events could be at all dwelt upon. The labor of many steadfast years and the careers of noble and influential missionaries have often been compressed into a sentence or omitted altogether as like what had been already related of other lands or of other lives. Having always in mind the reader with but general and remote knowledge of the mission field, it seemed best to fix attention on selected scenes, typical, significant, or inspiring; to attempt a more comprehensive and balanced account might rather distract and confuse. Towers do not make a city; but they mark it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.