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AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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The record of the old year is made up. It is written in a sealed book and no man can break the seal to change a single letter. We may regret or we may rejoice, but we can not alter.

We do regret that our means have not been more adequate to meet the urgent demands of our varied fields, and we regret any want of faith and diligence that may be written down in the unchanging record.

But we rejoice, and rejoice greatly, that through the efforts of this Association, thousands of minds have been made brighter and wiser, thousands of hearts have been made holier and happier, thousands of hands have been made more diligent and hundreds of homes have been made cleaner and purer. We believe that substantial help has been given in lifting one notch higher four races of ignorant and needy peoples. We rejoice that again the record tells that no debt clogged the close of the fiscal year, that an unusually strong and interesting Annual Meeting marked its close, and that we have many assurances from our wide constituency of the deeper confidence and interest in the work of this Association.

THE OPEN BOOK OF THE NEW YEAR.

But we turn to the open and unwritten volume that lies before us, and in which we must make our record for the coming year. The responsibility and the task are great. But we enter upon it with strong confidence that God will grant us the means for the needed uplift along the whole line of our work, both in the collecting and the working fields.

IN THE COLLECTING FIELD.

First of all, we will try to make up the deficit in our Indian work occasioned by declining to receive Government aid for Indian schools. The mass of our

constituents believe in the correctness of the principle involved in that surrender, and we cannot think they will sanction the movement and not sustain it. We hope for an almost spontaneous response to this call, and yet our constituents will hear from us frequently and earnestly if that response should

not come.

But more than all that, we will press hard upon our constituents for an enlargement of the general fund upon which our great work depends. We bless the memory of the dead for their legacies, and we thank the living for their gifts. But our friends must know the facts. For four years we have been out of debt, but this happy result has been largely due to legacies, while the contributions of the living have hardly increased in all these years. We are but agents of the churches. They wish us to strengthen and enlarge our work. We have no capital but their confidence and contributions. It is for them to say, therefore, whether we shall sustain and strengthen or not. The decision in this case does not rest with a general feeling, but can be met only by the individual purpose and the individual act. We say, then, respectfully but earnestly, to the man or woman who reads this: Make your donation larger, and do not content yourself with the hope that everybody else will enlarge.

IN THE WORKING FIELD.

Here we are met with a task both important and complex. The work of this Association is specially significant as being devoted to those who are the least among the brethren of Christ. It is diversified not only by the different peoples among whom it is carried on, but by the variety of the work itself. The Association must buy land, plan, erect and keep in repair parsonages, churches, schools, shops and barns. It must aid promising students and plan, build, sustain and direct primary and normal schools, colleges and theological seminaries, most of them with industrial departments and some of them with large farms attached. It has under its care nearly twenty thousand Sunday-school scholars and it is engaged in planting and sustaining churches in the midst of a people unusually poor and ignorant.

This diversified work is concentrated along two main lines of effort—the school and the church.

The School Work.-Christian education is an essential lever in the uplift of ignorant and impoverished peoples. Religion lies at the foundation of character and should, therefore, begin and run through all stages of its development. We have schools of all grades from the primary to the college and seminary. But we are not rivals of the public schools, and hence our educational efforts are largely in the training of teachers, preachers and leaders of the people. But besides these, there is an equally great, if not a greater number of men and women who go forth from all grades of our schools fitted for the duties of common life; the men as mechanics, farmers and business men, and the women as wives and mothers, the makers of Christian homes.

Our heaviest expenditures are in the higher institutions. They need en

dowment as much as do the colleges and theological seminaries in the North -nay, much more, for the impoverished people of the South can do less to support them. While, therefore, we appeal earnestly to the general public for means to sustain our whole educational work, we especially commend these higher institutions to the thoughtful attention of those who are planning to give directly or to leave in their wills money for endowments.

The Church Work.-We frankly confess that this is the most difficult and yet most needed part of our work. The people among whom we plant churches are poor, very poor. Those, even, who live on the denuded hills of New England or on the sage brush lands of the West cannot realize the poverty of these people. They are so few that they can not vie with the oldtime Methodist and Baptist churches who are native to the soil, while ours are not, and whose membership numbers hundreds in each church and who by their very aggregation and peculiar methods of raising money can build churches and sustain their pastors. Then, too, our churches are not made up, as those are largely in the great West, of people of New England training and acquaintance with business methods. It is not easy for us to find among the members of our churches those who can purchase lands, plan buildings, secure their economical erection and care for them as trustees.

These churches, therefore, need not only more supervision but more pecuniary help than churches do in the West. We state this to our constituents frankly, and say to them that if this church planting in the South is to be sustained and enlarged, it can only be done by increased contributions. hope our constituents will accept the facts and aid us to meet the duty.

OUR APPEAL.

We

Our appeal, then, is for enlargement. The Finance Committee which reported at our last Annual Meeting, was made up of clear-headed business men. They spent some time in the office, examining thoroughly our books and our work, and they unitedly recommended, and the meeting unanimously voted, that our receipts should be increased $100,000 this year. We know that this vote binds no one, but it is worthy of the attention of thoughtful and Christian people who desire the extension of the Redeemer's Kingdom.

REV. C. J. RYDER.

In view of the wide range of the work of this Association and its need of careful and minute inspection, the Executive Committee has decided to increase the supervisory force. The gradual enlargement and the additional burden in the care and disbursement of the Hand Fund have rendered

this imperatively necessary. To meet this need, Rev. C. J. Ryder has been appointed Assistant Corresponding Secretary with special supervision of the Indian and Mountain Work.

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Mr. Ryder has not only won for himself an enviable reputation by his years of successful service as an Eastern District Secretary, but he has

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