mistress. 'I like the Quarterly so much,' she said one day, 'especially the simple parts.' I determined to try to profit by those words.

"Another lesson came when I was depressed because things were not going just to suit me. I needed a rebuke. The mail brought it in the shape of a letter from a reader of the Quarterly who said she had been confined to her wheeled chair for twenty years. Her loved ones were all dead. She lived in one room. She was dependent on charity. Yet she was happy and she gave the reason: "The Lord is my Teacher, and we hold sweet converse together.'

"Take another instance. Years ago a young couple began housekeeping in Philadelphia. As a matter of course they had family pray ers. They invited their two servants to take part with them. Those servants sniffed at first, but the consistent lives of the husband and wife silenced them. One morning after prayers they said, 'We want to become Christians like you.' Soon they became members of the church to which the young couple belonged. That is one chapter of the story. The second chapter began when a San Francisco business man was a guest in the house over Sunday. Several months later a letter came from San Francisco to the Eastern home, bearing a message something like this: "I have never been a Christian man. I made fun of Christians. It seemed to me they were a lot of hypocrites. Then I came into your home for an afternoon and a night. I went away again but I could not forget what I had seen and heard. I told my wife about it. To make a long story short, we both united with the church last Sunday, and there is now a family altar in our home."

Miss Clara L. Loomis, President Home Department Union, Utica, N. Y., spoke on "City, County and Village Home Department Unions As Organized and Conducted In New York State With Permanent Visitation of Parish, Town and County By Home Class Visitors Connected With Local Churches. She said in part:

"Given a number of classes in different churches in the same city or town, who unite for mutual work and advancement, you then have a Home Department Union in city, town or parish.

"I like the good, old English word 'Parish.' It suggests a nearness, a neighborliness, a fellowship, a mutual feeling, springing from one center, the church. On the formation of a Union in city, town or parish, the needed officers are elected to preside over, and properly conduct the affairs of the Union. Such a Union is composed of officers and visitors from the different classes, and affords an opportunity for the assembling together of the workers of all the classes, at stated times, for mutual study, social recreation, and the devising of ways and means for the betterment and advancement of the work.

"If there are ten or fifteen schools in a town then there are as many Superintendents, leaders and workers in the town organization, all having knowledge of their own school. This is the kind of workers required to institute and keep alive a town, or city Home Department Union.

"The Town or City Union can encourage and stimulate the work; it can foster local pride. At its meetings it can increase the interest by setting apart a period for the discussion of the subject.

The county organization is composed of the Superintendents, officers, and the visitors of the several departments of the different towns of the county, who may assemble at a stated place at least once a year. The purpose of this assembly is to take into consideration, devise ways and means for a broader, general, county-wide advanced work. The officers of such a Union are, President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer.

The rural Sunday-school is obliged to do its work by methods different from those of the city; conveniences are limited, grading is not so easily introduced, and teachers must do this work without the aids enjoyed by those of the well-equipped city schools. All of this is not without some good, the teacher and the scholar are brought nearer together, the workers are more anxious to do with limited means and ways all that can be done, and in the small school nearly everybody knows everybody else, young and old; they know where they live; they know every member of each family in their school. This is an advantage, and creates a common interest, a mutual good will. The Superintendent of the school should know every scholar, and to some extent the home life of every member in the family, and this makes it possible for the Town Association to be equally well informed.

REV. WM. A. BROWN, SUPERINTENDENT.

The Modern Missionary Awakening.

The passing generation has registered so large an advance in missionary interest and activity, that today we are living in the greatest missionary age the Church has ever known. Not since the morning of the Resurrection and the lifetime of the Apostles has there been so strong a desire to carry the Gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. Upon us has literally come another "fullness of time." And had we eyes to see we might easily discern these very days to be big with promise of the missionary hope for the speedy evangelization of the world. For the battle line of our Lord's surely conquering army of peace and good will is farther flung today than ever before. An innumerable company, uncountable, confess faith in the Son of God and believe in the Saviour of the World. The name of Jesus-that name "which charms our fears and bids our sorrows cease"-the name of Jesus is fast coming to be the sweetest word in all the myriad tongues of men.

Many factors enter into making this present age an unparalleled missionary opportunity. There is, first of all, the fact that the world itself is so well known and now lies open to the largest possible freedom of

travel. Intrepid souls have sailed every sea and surveyed all the continents. The last dwelling place of the most remote citizen of the globe has been found. And through modern means of transportation and communication, all the people on our planet are now accessible to the Gospel story. The past century has made of the entire world one vast neighborhood, and some day the dissemination of the Truth as it is in Jesus, will make of all mankind a Christian brotherhood—an all-embracing empire of love.

Then, too, missionary successes single out the present age as one of real opportuneness. One short generation ago, the first Christian convert was baptized in Uganda: today Uganda is nearly a Christian nation. A few years ago Korea was a hermit kingdom, tightly sealed against every influence of the Gospel: today a Korean Christian community of a hundred thousand is asking God for the conversion of a million souls. Our generation has seen as many souls baptized in one day as were baptized on the day of the first Pentecost. And not long since there passed into the more radiant presence of his Master, the soul of him who saw the stacked bones of a cannibalistic feast, and yet who lived to see the day when these Christianized cannibals partook of the Lord's Supper. The record of such marvelous work is the Acts of the Apostles lived over again.

However, by far the greatest heritage from the modern missionary enterprise, is the mastery of the languages of men. It is almost past belief that today the story of the redemptional love in Christ Jesus has been translated into the tongues of all but a few fractions of millions of the children of men. And the truth that is to make all men free, is now proclaimed in thirty times as many languages as were spoken on the day of Pentecost. Many noble foundations have been laid by the apostles and prophets of the divine enterprise of Christian missions. Growing Christian communities witness the faithful planting of that seed whose harvesting shall make glad the angels of God. Established hospitals which bear the sufferings of many, printing presses whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, Christian churches and educational opportunities as free as the air in a multitude of heathen lands are saying, "Whosoever will, may come." And they are coming-coming faster than in any other age, not excepting the early days of the Christian church. And, too, the missionary enterprise itself is becoming more Christian every day, as the beautiful spirit of charity and coöperation is winning an ever widening sway over the minds and hearts of men.

And the present is an age of almost missionary enthusiasm in the Church at home. Missions have so far captured the imagination of our

youth that the largest gathering of students on the American continent is the convention of the Student Volunteers for Foreign Missions. And the men of Christendom-no less devoted than the rest, but lacking leadership-have lately undertaken their full share of responsibility in obedience to the Master's final command. Few greater sights have ever gladdened the eyes of the oft weary watcher on the walls of Zion than to see the hosts of men assemble to plan the Christian conquest of the continents. The field campaign of the Laymen's Missionary Movement will long remain one of the most inspiring events in recent church history, and prophetic of what will be when the Church is thoroughly militant and missionary. While the successful Woman's Jubilee-commemorating fifty years of beautiful ministry on the part of Western woman in Eastern lands-is of unusual missionary significance, as well as a tribute to the organizing ability of the consecrated women so well trained in missionary leadership. That during the past few years several million copies of missionary books have been sold, is an evidence of the depth and the genuineness of the present missionary awakening. And lately the effectiveness of large missionary expositions has been successfully demonstrated by the "Orient in London" and a similar striking presentation of the "World in Boston." Then, too, it is not to be lost sight of that the recent World's Sunday School Convention in Washington was a great missionary gathering. And we may well believe, with the best informed, that the World's Missionary Conference last year in Edinburgh marked the beginning of a new era in the missionary enterprise.

Missions in the Sunday School.

If

Into a needy world so full of promise for evangelization and into a Church finally awakening to its supreme missionary obligation, comes the modern Sunday School, gathering in its vast membership the most responsive ages in life and holding in its possibilities the key to the missionary situation. The place of the Sunday School in the missionary enterprise is in every way strategic. For in the Sunday School there is room for every one. It has been said, "Missions is a man's job." by that it is meant that men share with all others in the missionary responsibility, it is altogether true. But in reality missions is everybody's job. And it has been said, "This is the only generation we can reach." How true it is that in an evangelistic sense, we alone can reach the generation now living. But in the methods of the Sunday School and in the plan of reaching the childhood of the race, we shall reach not only this present generation but shall also preëmpt all coming generations to the end of time.