write furnishes perfect illustration. The canvasser who is at work (to my surprise) in your city, and of whose papers you say, "they seem to be all right," is shown by the only paper that ought to have secured him a hearing from any Presbyterian pastor outside of his own synod—that is, by his certificate from this Board-never to have had any right to canvass in your city, and to have no right to canvass anywhere at the present date. His certificate is plainly declared to limit his canvass to a given territory that does not touch your own, and to expire with the meeting of the last General Assembly. The pledges of the Board make it certain that, so far from marshalling a series of twelve canvassers against one pastor, we allow to any one territory but one canvasser at a time; and we promise that there shall not be more than one canvass in a year. One might occur near the end of one year, so that the canvass that might occur shortly after the beginning of the next year might seem to follow it pretty close; but we are pledged to maintain the proportion of only one to a year.

Herewith I enclose a note to the canvasser concerning whose whereabouts and present occupation I am very glad to be informed by you. I beg of you the favor of addressing it in such a way that it will be likely to reach him as soon as possible. It will inform him that unless his irregular canvass is at once arrested, the Board will be compelled to call attention to its irregular character.

See then, dear brother, how a little pains on the pastors' part would reduce to a minimum the evils of this system of solicitation. The solicitor's papers should be seen, and especially his certificate from this Board. He should be kept strictly within his limits of territory and time. The pastors and sessions who, after viewing his cause as largely as they can, are sure that any canvass in behalf of it would injure the interests of Christian benevolence in their congregation, should tell him so. Those who see a fair chance for him, though even with a single donor, may open the way for him. But to include the men whom this Board by warrant of the General Assembly sends out under careful restrictions, with the irresponsible solicitors who are sure to teem where the givers are thought to be, is unjust toward the institutions that submit to Presbyterian rules; is unjust to this Board, which does its utmost to save contributors both from deception and an

noyance; and it is hardly loyal to the great denominational endeavor which Presbyterians are making for a solid and national system of Christian schools. The same mail in which I find your letter contains another, from a different direction, in which I read this statement: "Academies and colleges both South and West have agents almost continually in the field. One of the most prominent ministers informed me that at the meeting of his session at which our cause was presented, there were thirteen other similar applications. I find them, more or less, wherever I go. The ground is burned over." That is, the careful methods which at the behest of the General Assembly this Board has adopted for concentrating upon our denominational system of schools the safe and easy giving of our people, come to nothing. The one man who brings the church's most studied and formal introduction and commendation gains nothing by his distinctive attitude. His fellow Presbyterians herd him with all the independents, and show him how he cannot expect much when there are so many equal claimants! There are not so many equal claimants. There is in no part of our church at any time more than one man having denominational warrant to ask denominational help for a distant Presbyterian school or college. The day will come when Presbyterian concert of giving will dispense with even that one man. But it will be an advance toward that day for Presbyterian people to put their one man at the head of their list of encouraged applicants, and not, as some of our over-generous people do, at the tail. And the day when intelligent and loyal Presbyterians will do as much as that will come soon. That one change will keep our Presbyterian canvass from eating itself up in expenses. There will be gifts, not driblets.

I confess that I have written this long letter in part for you and in part for the public. I must send matter to the magazine to-day; and having motive to touch this very matter, apart from your particular letter, I have taken the liberty, I trust without offence, of making your letter, which in printing I will leave anonymous, my text.

Thanks for your liberal collection for our treasury. In that direction lies relief for all the vexations which inhere in this system of

canvass.

Yours sincerely,

H. D. GANSE.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH:

The undersigned, in assuming the office of Secretary of the Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, would earnestly ask his brethren to favor him with their prayers, and also to give him their faithful co-operation.

He is not yet in a condition to set forth specifically the line of policy that will be pursued by him. All he can now do is to give the assurance that it will be the earnest effort of the Board, of his associates and of himself to give full effect to the general plan approved by the last Assembly.

E. R. CRAVEN,

Secretary of the Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work.

of settlers on our frontiers. Where are these 10,000,000 to be found? Over 5,000,000 are in the North. You will find them in all our cities, towns, villages, and in almost every school district. You need not go west or south to find them. Take the very centre of our country. The Empire State of New York has 880,000 of these neglected youth; the Keystone State of Pennsylvania has 570,000; Ohio, 540,000; Indiana, 410,000; Illinois, 618,000; Michigan, 330,000; Minnesota, 280,000; Missouri, 587,000; Kentucky, 365,000; Iowa, 334,000; Kansas, 240,000; Nebraska, 128,000; California, 189,000; Maine, 150,000; Massachusetts, 140,000; Wisconsin, 120,000. Here are almost 6,000,000 of the neglected accounted for. After one hundred years of effort, we have not even gathered into our schools two-fifths of the youth of the United States. The number

ARY WORK.

This work is henceforth to be "to plant mission Sabbath-schools, to help feeble Sabbath-schools, accompanying these labors with religious visitation and the preaching of the gospel with the printed page."

Does any one imagine that all is being done that should be done to save the youth of the United States? Many so think; but their thinking is a false and dangerous error. Look at the facts and figures. There are, according to the latest educational report, 17,000,000 persons of a school age in the United States. Of these, there are not more than 7,000,000 in Sabbath-schools. In other words, there are 10,000,000 persons of a school age outside all our Sabbathschools, Roman Catholic or Protestant. Do these facts justify the inference that all that should be done is being done? We cannot escape from their force by saying that these millions of youth outside of Christian schools are in the South, that they are children of freedmen, or that they are made up

the ratio at which we are reaching them with Sabbath-schools.

Have you ever stood at Castle Garden and observed the arrival of an ocean steamer with its hundreds of immigrants? Have you seen the arrival of an emigrant train at one of our western railway stations? Men, women and children you have seen, carrying on their heads, in their hands or on their shoulders all their earthly effects. You have seen their eager faces turned toward the train that is to bear them to their still western homes. From the East, the West, the North they come; people of diverse languages and opinions and relig ions. Our nation is one vast crucible, into which are cast all forms of eastern and western life and thought. In many a year 800,000 have come. Hundreds of thousands of them are valuable acquisitions; other hundreds of thousands are not. They are poisoned with Romanism, communism, Nihilism, the worst forms of infidelity and materialism.

Nor do we close our eyes to the South. There six millions have on American soil suddenly sprung from slavery to citizenship. What greater strain could be put upon the institutions of any nation than these millions of immigrants, millions of foreigners, millions of freedmen? Then there are hundreds of thousands of Mormons. These are poisoning Utah and surrounding territories. Then there is the great incalculable evil of intemperance. We cannot stop to notice the peril arising from the growth of our large cities.

These forces in this land are struggling for the mastery. We would be guilty of sinful suppression of truth did we not point out the danger clouds gathering around our nation's escutcheon. Then there are the great problems between labor and capital, not yet solved, and not to be solved within forty years. On one side are dangerous monopolies; on the other, socialism, communism, anarchism. Last spring taught the Mississippi valley, Chicago and the entire nation. a lesson. That lesson is that there are dangerous classes in our communities-tens of thousands of men, easily incited to strikes, boycotts, and even riots.

Fear is not the highest motive, but dread of real horrors is better than stupid indifference. Patriotism alone ought to be sufficient to stir us to earnest labors for the ten millions of boys and girls, our future nation, who are without moral or religious training. We know what a fruitful soil that mass of young ignorance and prejudice and irreligion will be for crime and violence. Not to educate their conscience, not to train them in morality, is to endanger our nation. Ours is a representative government. Every man has the ballot. This nation is unsafe where a million of voters cannot read the ballots they cast, and other millions of voters are swayed by passion, prejudice or bribes.

Can our republic exist without the sentiment of religion or the practice of morality? Washington, though dead, speaks these words: "Of all dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." Yet how many American boys and girls are growing up without either religion or morality—ten millions!

Christianity, thorough and practical Christianity, not only taught in our pulpits, but applied to all the relations between man and man, carried to the ten millions of the neglected and perishing youth of this nation, and moulding the character of our future citizens, alone can save us from the immense and explosive class now in the process of growth in this nation.

But there are profounder considerations than even these. They are those drawn from the certainty of " from the certainty of "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power." Of every one of these millions who dies out of Christ, their destruction will be aggravated by all the light which floods our land. "Arise, cry out in the night; in the beginning of the watches pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young chil dren, that faint for hunger in the top of every street."

DR. HODGE'S LECTURES.

It is pleasant to note the commendations that the press is giving to Dr. Hodge's lectures. There is no doubt of the great value of this volume, not to clergymen only, but also to intelligent Christian men and women everywhere. It is a significant fact that the public is indebted for this volume to a company of Christian women, who hungered for more knowledge of theological questions, and requested Dr. Hodge to tell them something about the things they wished to understand.

The way our Christian women are discovering their gifts and powers in these recent days is one of the most interesting facts of our times. It is but a little while since they did not suppose they could be very highly educated, or that they could be of any particular use in the world. Now they are learning that they can walk side by side.

with their brothers in the paths of all liberal education and research; and also in the Christian church they are finding their place among the foremost in all consecrated activities. This last debt that the church owes to woman is not by any means the least, for these lectures on theology will meet a want in hundreds of Christian families.

The New York Evangelist has the following courteous mention of the book:

This volume is well made by printer and binder, is well indexed, and is very cheap, The ladies in Princeton have the credit of drawing out the recluse professor from his study and class work to the preparation of these lectures, which were in some instances written after oral delivery. They blend knowl

ture in its more formal part was over, one of the young men asked, "Then, Dr. Hodge, should you recommend Schliermacher's teachings as good and helpful?" The doctor, in answer, made reference to the materialism of Germany, pointed out how the almost mystic teachings of the great philosopher might have been of great good for his own German people, when they would not be so for England or America, and then concluded by saying, "It is something like the case of the ladder in the pit. We are passing through a meadow, let us say, where we come upon a deep pit. In the bottom you see mire and filth, while against the sides a ladder rests. You say to me, 'Dr. Hodge, is it

a good thing to have that ladder there?' I should answer, 'That depends entirely upon what purpose you put it to. If men have stumbled into the pit, and the ladder serve to

simple, and lit with illustration. Laymen should own, read and reread these lectures. Ministers should study them as models of theology made interesting as well as profitable. Theological professors who have the requisite gifts should emulate Dr. Hodge's example, and give platform and popular discourses on theology. This queen of the sciences, like some other queens, is too rarely seen in public. A juicy peach should not be blamed for being served as a dried and withered thing. Blame the server. The doctrines of God's word-rich, ripe, juicy—should not be blamed for the arid qualities of so-called doctrinal preaching. Blame the preacher. Wherever we can find a theologian like Dr. Hodge, he should be occasionally taken from his classes to stand before promiscuous crowds, not merely in the pulpit, but in the large secular halls. Some years ago a young lady of our acquaintance heard Dr. Hodge at Seabright, N. J., on the subject of election. Afterwards she exclaimed, "Oh, how interesting! For the first time I understand and believe in that doctrine."

While referring to Dr. Hodge it might be worth while to call attention to one particular excellence of his style which preachers and teachers would do well to study. Those familiar with Dr. Hodge, either as a teacher, a lecturer or a preacher, have been struck by his wonderful felicity in illustration. The following anecdote, furnished by one of his students, is in point:

At one time our subject was the theology of the transcendental Schliermacher. As the lec

thing; but if it should only be there to lead men who are on dry ground into the pit, it would manifestly not be a good thing. So Schliermacher's theology might stand to Germany and to ourselves.""

It is needless to say that no one remained in darkness as to Schliermacher's place after that.

CHILDREN'S DAY.

The observance of Children's Day is becoming more and more general. There was a great demand this present year for the order of worship prepared for use on that day, and reports from all quarters give evidence of much interest and enthusiasm in the exercises. Many hundreds of letters have been received giving accounts of the observance of the day. Of these, we give one, as it is special in its interest, from the pastor of the Presbyterian mission in Logan, Utah, right among the Mormons:

I write to thank you for the aid given us by you in preparing the Children's Day programme. Few of the brethren are situated, as we are, to appreciate the value of anything that will bring people to the place where Christ is preached. Last Sabbath evening our chapel was crowded with people, many of them Mormons, who came to hear the exercises of your programme rendered. I wish you might have seen the zeal and pleasure with which these children, many of them from Mormon houses, sang and rehearsed the exercises.

Since then many who never come to our services have expressed their delight at having been with us, and one lady, who is faithful in attendance upon the "tabernacle" services of the "Saints," said, "I have not been to a Christian service before for five years."

PROVOKING TO LOVE AND GOOD

WORKS.

The success of our brethren in other denominations is a stimulus to more and better work for Christ. Here is the sharp point of a goad in this direction. The Congregational Sunday-school and Publishing Society last year organized by its own missionaries. 210 new Sabbath-schools, and aided other workers to organize 217 other schools; in all, 417 Sabbath-schools. Last year, from the schools organized by this society, 44 Congregational churches were organized. The whole expense of this work was $28,185. Could that amount of money have been placed anywhere else to do more good than, by God's blessing, to produce 417 schools and 44 churches? That was a wise thing done by our last General Assembly-the organization of a Sabbath-school and missionary department in this Board. Thousands will pray, "God give it the same success which he has already given the same work in other churches!"

RAPID WRITING.

Intelligent readers are interested in the habits of authors with whose books they are familiar. The story of how a book was written adds very greatly to our zest in reading it. In the matter of speed in writing, authors differ widely. Some compose very rapidly, others very slowly. The fol lowing paragraph from the Boston Globe will be of interest to many:

The late Ben: Perley Poore accomplished a feat in writing his "Life of Grant" that has seldom been equalled. He agreed to furnish the book to his publishers in two months, and actually finished it on time, dictating at the

rate of 2500 words a day. Some idea of the rapidity of this work may be gained from the fact that the historian Bancroft considers that he has accomplished a great deal if he writes only one-tenth of that number of words in a day. Of course, there is no comparison between the historian's carefully-finished and Poore's hastily-written pages; but the latter has done excellent work of its kind, and many books have obtained immortality that have been as speedily completed. Victor Hugo wrote a successful novel when he was eighteen, on a wager that he could produce a volume of a certain number of pages in a fortnight; while Dr. Johnson wrote "Rasselas" in the nights of a single week, in order to obtain money for his mother's funeral expenses. Sir Walter Scott, when he set to work to pay off his creditors after his failure, finished his great novel of "Woodstock" in three months, and earned by it nearly $42,000. Sir Walter Scott always wrote with great rapidity. The second and third volumes of "Waverly" were written by him in three weeks, and in half a dozen weeks he produced the whole of "Guy Mannering." Many popular poems, too, have been written in an incredibly short time when the author was seized with poetic fervor. Longfellow's ballad, “The Wreck of the Hesperus," was composed just before retiring, as he sat smoking, after finishing his evening's work. ing his evening's work. "It came into my mind," he says, "not by lines, but by stanzas.” "Sheridan's Ride" was dashed off one morning by Buchanan Read, so that Murdoch, the actor, might have a new piece for that evening's readings. James T. Field used to mention the novels of G. P. R. James as examples of rapid composition. When the novelist was in Boston he was attended at his hotel every morning by an amanuensis, to whom he dictated page after page while striding up and down the room, rarely hesitating for a word, but speaking as rapidly as the other could write. Mr. Fields once asked this young man if he were not glad when his morning's task was finished, to which he replied in the negative. "Mr. James has an exasperating way," said the amanuensis, "of stopping in the middle of a chapter just when one has become intensely interested in the story, and I have to beg him to go on, as I am anxious to know how it will end." Even Poore's rapid dictation was probably not equal to the voluminous novelist's ready flow of words.