should prove to be the spark to fire this train of Bible Class men and women into zealous soul-winners, it would be a great day in the King. dom of God. The Teacher Training Department reports for the Pacific Coast section for the triennium 9,706 enrolled members, and 1,656 graduates. The Adult Bible Class Department reports 1,474 enrolled in organized Bible classes for the same time and section. Our other departments are making encouraging progress, and we all believe that the marvelous advance of the Temperance sentiment has in the Sundayschool one of its most potent allies. It is simply and literally true that no man could have foreseen three years ago the extent and character of the "Dry Territory" of today in our West land. The changes that have swept over Oregon, Idaho and Washington would have been ridiculed as impossible if they had been prophesied. Towns and cities have been cleaned up, families transformed, and the opportunity of a generation stands before the churches and Sunday-schools in these changed conditions.

Immediately following the Louisville Convention I was assigned a month's work in Old Mexico. The fires of insurrection were then smoldering and interfered somewhat with the work. But the love and regard shown Mr. Sein were very delightful to witness. He is doing a good work, and however it may be temporarily hindered, it is bound to realize large results. I am sending this report from Hawaii, our Territory 2,100 miles Southwest of San Francisco, further in time and travel than to Chicago. I have just arrived and have only touched the situation, so cannot report details. But these Islands were lifted out of the sea of moral oblivion and heathen darkness by the Bible and the messengers of Christ and the churches. They have become the "Paradise of the Paci fic," and for more than three score years they have been a Gospel light to the Islands beyond. But the battle here is still on. The increased importance of these Islands to the Kingdom of God, with the completion of the Panama Canal, will be just as great as to commerce and as the Pacific Ocean outpost of our nation. It seems to me that the churches of America must again become alive to the significance and importance of these facts. The cosmopolitan character of the population is startling. In a single Mission Sunday-school, with a related membership of 250, 32 different nationalities are found. The leading nationalities are Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Koreans. It is strictly missionary ground.

Two months were recently spent in Arizona and in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico. Both territories are practically unorganized by coun

ties. The response in Arizona, to the call of the Territorial Executive Committee was, as a rule, fine, and the workers are interested for better things. Choice work is going on in many places. Our brother, Walter Hill, has a noble class of organized young men, and the State President, Brother J. M. Stewart, a busy business man, is Superintendent of a fine, working Sunday-school. I presume you will have a large delegation with you from Arizona, to testify their interest and zeal. In New Mexico, Brother W. F. Schwartz, of Artesia, member of the International Executive Committee, arranged for the meetings in the Pecos Valley. It is an interesting field, and good work is being done in many places, but they need help.

We had hoped to visit Alaska, but through their request for a change of date, and later its withdrawal, that was made impossible until later, but we hope to go there in July or August. And so the work goes forward, and we believe that the Lord has great blessings in store for this West land. I append a condensed tabular statement of work done, with expenses and receipts for the triennium, incomplete as to this trip. Since the Louisville Convention, 619 meetings of all kinds have been attended by me in this work, in 294 cities and towns; in 68 different visits, made to 22 States, Provinces, Territories and countries, where 28 organizations of countries or districts were effected, and 1,222 addresses of all kinds, sermons, Round Tables, etc., were made, and $6,832 raised for local work in cash and pledges, involving 72,019 miles of travel by rail, steamer, and stage.

Received on expense account from local fields....$1,196.06
Received from personal friends (unpledged)..

Net expense to the Association for three years..

645.00

1,841.06

$ 90.96

DIVIDENDS ON OUR INVESTMENT

MR. JOHN R. PEPPER, MEMPHIS, TENN.

Among the dividends the Sunday School has already declared I

want to name the following:

1. Friendships. One of the sweetest flowers that blooms in the Sunday School garden is friendship. Many a tie of friendship has begun in the Sunday School that has actually lasted and strengthened through a long life.

2. Winning the Home. Whole families have been brought into the school, the church, and to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ because of the connection of one child with some Sunday School. The scholar furnishes an open door for the faithful teacher and pastor to enter the home.

3. Personal Influence of the Teacher on Life. Not what the teacher says or does, but what he or she really is, furnishes the most potential lesson learned by the scholar. Old Billy Garner, the miller, a very plain earnest old man, who never said a real smart thing in his life perhaps, and whose words I do not recall at all as one of my earliest teachers, had more to do with my introduction to Jesus Christ than any one else, save my sainted mother.

Many years after the old miller had gone I visited the old mill in the mountains of Virginia where I was reared. I went back into the corner of the mill behind a pile of bags, where my godly teacher long ago had put his dear old hand upon my boyish head in loving

admonition, and I took off my hat reverently and I said "Thank God for what old Billy Garner was to my early boyhood life.' More than all the fine teaching is the teacher himself or herself to the scholar.

4. Sending Out Skilled Workers. Every well ordered Sunday School is an academy from which trained and skilled workers constantly go to many other fields and thus extend the work to a much larger area. The quality of work done in a good Sunday School is equal to that of any first class secular school that sends out teachers to teach purely secular knowledge.

5. The Missionary Spirit. Thinking of others outside of your own walls, broadens the vision and enlarges the heart. Many Sunday Schools, large and small, fix upon some one or something beyond their own pale to help-support or help support a missionary in a foreign field, take a scholarship in some school at home or abroad and help fit someone for larger service. So their missionary vision is focalized and broadened.

6. Recruiting for the Ministry. Hundreds of scholars have gained their first and compelling impulse to the ministry at home or abroad during their stay in the Sunday School. It is the most fruitful period for such impressions and all wise teachers are on the lookout for just such results. The boys are led into the Gospel ministry as preachers or missionaries, the girls take special training as missionaries or helpers in many fields connected with the local church. A single school in a decade or two has blessed a large part of the world by sending out valuable recruits from its ranks.

7. Aggregate Ability to Do Large Things. Sunday Schools in scores of places have been the determining factor in giving permanent organizations to churches that have blessed communities for generations. Many a church structure would never have been undertaken but for the active school behind it as a strong backing. Missionaries on the field today would not be there save for the support they receive from some school, some class, some individual member of a school who has caught the spirit of missions through his membership in the school.

8. The Love of and for Little Children. The pure disinterested love of little children is one of the most refining and ennobling influences of life. What could be sweeter than the sweet, ingenuous heart of a little child? We can never grow old, internally at least, while we keep heart company with little innocent children. No compensation can be richer than to win the love of little children.

Is it any wonder that an ancient eminent saint wanted his epitaph to read, "A Lover of Little Children"? The Sunday School keeps the whole church constantly in touch with them.

9. Personal Knowledge of Jesus Christ. When we recall that the record shows that three-fourths of those converted to protestant Christianity are brought to Christ before they are twenty years of age, we gain some fair idea of what dividends are declared by the Sunday School in return for the faithful teacher's work.

10. Religious Habits. No institution is greater in fixing habits of Bible study and prayer than the Sunday School where the work is done seriously and yet sanely and cheerfully. Thousands of stalwart leaders in many fields of Christian endeavor date the beginning of active and successful service from their early life and devotions in the Sunday School.

Dividends in any enterprise are the result of investment. No labor and toil is too great where adequate dividends appear. No field is so capable of big dividends as the Sunday School. Let us invest more in this truly greatest corporation in the world that we may enlarge our dividends.

JUSTICE J. J. MACLAREN, D. C. L., TORONTO, Ont.

This is a great age for capitalization. Capitalists are looking for ward as perhaps never before to dividends on their investments. Those of us who do not belong to the capitalistic class are sometimes tempted to look with a sort of envy upon those who by reason of their great investments are maintained in the public eye and who as a consequence have an importance in this and in other countries which has not belonged to any of the modern ages. Some people are apprehensive of these great accumulations. Students of history are looking with some fear lest the course of Rome, perhaps the greatest city of the ancient world, should be run by us and the fate which overtook her should overtake some of the Christian countries on this and the other continent. Great dividends may be justified where investments have been made. The accusation is in modern times that a large proportion of the dividends on many investments are paid upon water that has cost very little.

But we come to speak about dividends on an investment in which the Christian people of this continent are the capitalists and the investors. We are here to ask if there is likely to be in the future any greater investment for us than the Sunday School movement! A great many of the members of this convention have consecrated not only their money but their time and their lives to it.