to go, they settle their strong shoulders to the yoke and push right forward, like true yoke-fellows. Then the cart or the plough moves right on.

So children and men who wish to work together for the Lord will work much more happily and usefully if they are agreed as to what they will try to do, and are ready to follow cheerfully their chosen or appointed leader, as to the way in which they will do it. A boy who will sulk unless the mission band will always do everything his way is like a hauling ox. He is not of much use in the team. And such a girl is not one bit better. Such a boy or girl had better try to get cured of that spirit, or else by and by there will be such a man or woman to worry and hinder some presbytery or some board of missions.

Watch the good oxen, my little Presbyterians, and learn to be as patient and obedient as they, and to pull together.

Several of the children who have so pleasantly written to me tell me that they

have been admitted to the communion of the church. I am glad of this. I have been the pastor of some little communicants, and I was kindly permitted to be a communicant myself when I was a little boy. I think that it helped me in my endeavors to follow Christ, to come to his table, as much as it does now. But true little Presbyterians will take the advice of their parents and pastors about this. It is quite right for you to ask them to teach you carefully what coming to the communion means. When you understand that well; when you have prayed God to make you true disciples of his Son; and when you and your parents are quite sure that what coming to the communion really means is exactly what you mean, with all your hearts, then, no doubt, they will be as glad to have you at the Lord's table with them as they are to have you with them at the home table while you show that you really love them and wish to be obedient to them. I think the Lord will be glad too. H. A. N.

The young readers of THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD will be interested in the following, which is taken from a letter written in June by Rev. W. L. Whipple, of Tabriz, Persia:

Our work here seems especially difficult just now. We are in the midst of Ramazan, the month of fast, when every Moslem is required to abstain absolutely from all food, water and tobacco from about three o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night, seventeen hours, and this continuously for one month. Oh how hard and cruel it does seem, especially upon the poor laboring classes! They cannot do as the rich doturn night into day and day into night but are compelled to work all day, and this with empty stomachs. They look so exhausted it makes one's heart ache. Yet they

bear it patiently, because they think the greater the self-denial and suffering the richer will be the reward; but what a mistake they make! I often tell the Moslems, with whom I have almost every day many conversations, that it certainly cannot please God to see them injure their health by such a course, when their hearts are not touched. He would much prefer that they should fast (abstain) from the many sins which daily they commit, and especially during this month, such as evil thoughts, hatred and enmity toward those who do not keep the fast, and many like sins. I try to show them, out of a heart full of compassion and love toward them, the better way, as it is found in the gospel of love; but it is so hard to make an impression upon their hard and sensual hearts. It is so much easier to buy your way into heaven by "good works"

(sáwáb, as you continually hear from Moslems here) than it is to accept it on the gospel terms as a free gift.

Perhaps some of you will think that their having to abstain from tobacco, as well as from food and water, is not any addition to the hardship; but, whatever we may think about tobacco not being a good thing, there is no doubt that, for those who are accustomed to use it, it is very hard to do without it, and no doubt it is much harder when they cannot have food or water. Their hunger and faintness must be dreadful.

Mr. Whipple tells of opposition to the missionaries' work and of complaints made against them to the ameer. The ameer is a Moslem, but he is an intelligent and wise. man, and believes that our countrymen, the missionaries, are doing a great deal of good to his people. He is very friendly to them, and tries to protect them from wrong. Yet he cannot prevent the ignorant and fanatical among the people from sometimes making disturbance. The missionaries of course try not to give this friendly ruler any untrouble in keeping order and necessary peace. Mr. Whipple says:

The ameer was very sick in the winter, and Dr. Holmes attended him. The Persians, both Moslems and Armenians, say that he saved his life. The doctor is also one of the physicians to the wali ahd (or heir apparent), and is treated with much consideration by him. He gave him a khalat, or robe of honor.

This ameer is the same of whom something was said in our April number (page 294), and whose likeness is in the Foreign Missionary of June, 1885. Although he is indeed a terror to evil-doers, he is very kind to the missionaries, and was very kind and polite to me when the missionaries took me to see him and when he returned our visit. He knows about our country, and spoke very pleasantly to us about our people hav

ing done so much in only a few hundred years to make it a great and powerful country. You know that his is one of the oldest countries in the world, and had powerful armies and great kings when our country was inhabited only by wild beasts and sav age men. See how much you can find in your Bible about Persia.

I would like to interest all my young readers in this Persian ruler, who is such a powerful friend to our missionaries.

I told him that we believe, as he does, in one unseen God, a spirit, who must not be represented by images or pictures; and I also told him, in a few words, how we think that only through Jesus Christ can we, sinful men, be at peace with God, and I asked him to try to learn from his friends, the missionaries, more than I could tell him of our reasons for believing so. He replied to me in words which Dr. Labaree translated to me, in which he put high honor upon Jesus as a prophet of God; but he does not believe in him as the Son of God, and as having died for our sins. How I wish he did! Do not you? Will not you pray to God to teach him by his Spirit to find the peace and hope which you and I know come from believing in Jesus? I told him that I should tell my countrymen about his kindness to their missionaries, and that they would pray God to bless him and his people and their king.

October is the month for remembering Persia at the monthly concert and at the mission band meetings. A lady, who says that she has charge of the exercises of a foreign missionary society for October, wrote to me in July asking me to write something about Persia for her to read at that meeting. I hope that she will accept this, and that those ladies and many others and all my little readers, in their mission bands and at home with their mothers, will pray for that Persian ruler.

A Moslem gentleman whom I employed to translate some Persian writing for me, when he brought his translation told me that as he was coming he prayed to God to give me light and to show me the truth. It a Moslem could thus pray for a Christian, shall not Christians pray to the same God for Moslems? and when we know Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, and know the blessedness of Christian faith, shall not we pray that they may learn it too, especially one of them whom God has set to be a ruler over so many people and who is so friendly to our missionaries?

I also wish you to remember the physician, Dr. Holmes, whom God enabled to cure the ameer's sickness, perhaps to save his life. You see how grateful he is for this. and how he respects Dr. Holmes, as he does

also Dr. Cochran, of Oroomiah, where the ameer lived when I was there. I have great reason to be thankful to both those physicians, and I saw a good deal of the excellent work which they are doing for the people of Persia. The work of missionary physicians is very important in our time. God is greatly blessing it. I hope that you all read about it. In the August number (page 107) there was something about this medical missionary work in Teheran, the capital of Persia, and in the September number there is something about the same work in that new mission field, Korea. Perhaps some of the boys and girls who read this mean to be physicians. If so, will not you think carefully, and ask the Lord to show you whether he does not want you to be missionary physicians? H. A. N.

Our little readers will know at once that that is not the name of any American nor of any Englishman. They will understand from the Rev. that it is the name of a minister, and most of them will know that the three short names of one syllable and only two letters apiece are Chinese. In the Chinese language they would be written with a very different sort of letters: only one, I suppose, to each syllable, and these in a column right up and down, one below another.

The story of this Chinese preacher, Rev. Li Yu Mi, is given in the Bible Society Record, as he told it himself. He was born in 1836 and died in 1886. How old was he when he died? Not a very old man, you see. This is the way he told his story:

My father and mother died early. Having no money nor home, and also being without relatives or friends on whom I could rely, I was poor and wretched. Therefore

I could not study books, and did not even know one letter. When I was little I was very vicious, and would rail at people. Being born in the country, I was like one who looks at the sky from the inside of a well. How could I know that heaven and

earth are so large, and that there are so many things in the world? I saw nothing beyond the hills and the flowers and the wild grass. I heard only the sounds of birds and fishes and insects. I was acquainted only with the toilers in the fields and the gatherers of fuel. My objects of faith were only hill-sprites and hobgoblins. Moreover, I did not know how to seek precious things, and had no hope of fame; but my only thought was to follow my father's hand, and earn a mouthful to eat until death. How could I know that the just heart of the heavenly Father would not be offended at a lonely man?

I was twenty years old when I first heard Mr. Maclay preach the gospel. This was my first sight of a foreigner, with strange countenance and clothing, and I did not

know whether he was a man or not. But I saw that his language and conduct were very polite, and at once perceived that he was truly a man, and a good man. At that time he gave me a book. The arguments I heard him use were reasonable. We three brothers, because of this, believed the Saviour, kept the Sabbath and began to pray; but when we thus first believed we did not thoroughly know our own sins. We had scarcely got further than to think that it was good to do right.

Afterward the Kwi-hung church members on the Sabbath day taught me a portion of Matthew. From this my heart could not leave that book. When I had leisure time I would at once go to reading it, and in a short time I had read it through. I also read the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and thus came to know that all men are sinners and must obtain the Saviour's great grace in order to be saved. When I was twenty-one Teacher Maclay

baptized me and received me into the church. When from twenty to twenty-three, for a period of four years, my eyes did not leave the Holy Bible, and my mouth did not leave the Saviour. As soon as I saw a man I began talking doctrine to him-not stopping to think that it might injure my trade as a blacksmith, but only longing that the Sav iour's doctrine might get the victory. Teacher Yong Mi, seeing how it was with me, said, "Leave the blacksmith's trade and become a preacher."

So he found that the entrance of God's word brought light, and when he was ordained elder he had studied in the classical language the entire Old and New Testaments, besides other religious books. The poor ignorant boy had been lifted out of darkness and superstition, and had come to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

$800,000.

Not less than $800,000 will be needed to meet the most urgent demands of this work for the coming year. We repeat,

therefore, our urgent admonition to pastors and ministers generally, as those charged by the Head of the church with submitting his claims to the people, to do their share to secure this increase of funds and to meet these golden opportunities. — The Assembly of 1887.

We keep the above announcement on the first of our pages in every number of THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD, to remind our readers that the amount expressed in the heading may be remembered as the sum the late General Assembly thought would be necessary to carry on our work

this year.

In this and in every number of the magazine, there is a showing of a multitude of places where the gospel should be preached, where people are willing and anxious to hear itand in this number we have set the statement by itself-and of missionaries, a hundred or more in every number, appointed or located in such places; but what avail des titutions and preachers, unless there are resources for their relief or support? how shall the one hear without a preacher, and how shall the other preach unless he be sent?

It is appropriate, then, that for one month of the year, at least, at the monthly concerts our thoughts should be turned to the subject of the necessary supplies. The bestdisciplined army falls to pieces and fades out of sight if due regard be not paid to the state of the exchequer and the source of supplies. Our number of missionaries last year was 1465, and our missionary teachers 215, or a total of 1680. All of these drew a part or all of their support from the treasury of this Board. If the treasury fails all this missionary work fails. A part of them, whose people nearly support them, would continue.

their work at great suffering; but the most of them would be driven back from the West, and their fields would be abandoned; the schools would cease and the teachers would return to their friends in the East, and ignorance, immorality and infidelity would take their place.

The growth and advancement of the church in the West last year was, and every year is, largely dependent on the Board of Home Missions. If the supplies fall off, the laborers famish, the growth ceases.

CAN WE RAISE $800,000?

Eight hundred thousand dollars is a large sum of money. It cannot be raised without an effort and the united effort of many people.

There are ways of looking at it that make it seem easy. We have, in round numbers, 700,000 communicants. If every one would contribute $1.14 it would be raised. And what a paltry sum it is for each one for a whole year! Besides, there whole year! Besides, there may be $100,000 left us in legacies, and that reduces the amount to one dollar a member. Then noncommunicants, as Sabbath-schools and others, give considerable sums, that would reduce the average still more. Then, again, we know that many contributors will give more than a dollar each-many will give $100 each; some will give $1000 each, and some will give $5000 each, probably, which will reduce it still more. But it will require a great deal of hard work to raise $800,000.

For, there are a great many communicants that are minors who are not encouraged by their parents to give anything to the cause of missions; there are a great many people who will not give anything; and there are a great many careless or penurious people, yes thousands of them, who will give nothing; and if this year be like those that have gone before it, there is probably one church in every five, 1200 or 1500 in all, that in spite of all that is said and all that