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py Helpers," it looks well, written; it sounds well, spoken; and its meaning is as good as it can be.

Does it not remind you of one of the pieces signed "F.," entitled "Helping"? You remember the little two-year-old girl who was so fond of helping her mother, just as such little children are apt to be, and how "F." reminded you that our heavenly Father lets us help him.

Those Indian girls have learned, I presume, that nothing else makes anybody so happy as helping others to be happy and good, and helping God, as he lets us, to make this world more like his heaven.

This brings to my mind two verses which

I saw many years ago written in a lady's scrap-book. One of them I had seen in print, and I do not think that it is true. The other was written as an answer to it; and I think it a good answer. See if you do not.

I.

"This world is all a fleeting show,

A vain illusion given;

The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow;

There's nothing true but heaven."

II.

"This world's not all a fleeting show,
A vain illusion given;

He who hath soothed the widow's woe,
Or wiped the orphan's tear, doth know,
There's something here of heaven."
H. A. N.

AS WE WERE, AND AS WE ARE.

The little readers of THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD already know something about the home mission work among the Indian and Mexican children, but perhaps you would like to know more of what they learn at their schools. Do you say, of course they learn what we do, to read, and write, and spell, and arithmetic, and geography? Yes, they do, but they have other things to learn beside. Many of them when they first come to school have to learn to speak English. If you read Miss Robertson's letter in the June number of the magazine, you saw something about this. And they have lived in such a wild way in their homes they have to learn how to behave at school, and learn, too, what you are taught at home, that there is only one true God, for they have been made to pray to images.

But they are generally apt scholars, and to show how they improve, the teachers sent specimens of their work to the General Assembly this spring. There were maps they had drawn and examples in arithmetic all correctly worked, and spelling papers, and from the older ones essays that would do credit to our own boys and girls, they were so well expressed and so neatly written. Several of them were in Spanish, and these

I did not try to read, though the handwriting was very plain.

Then the girls are taught to sew, and make beds, and keep rooms in order; and the boys to attend to the garden and do carpenter work. There were a number of articles sent that the boys had carved out of wood; among them spoons of various shapes and sizes, and crosses very neatly joined together.

But one thing I am sure will particularly interest the little girls, and the boys need not read it if they do not like to hear about dolls. The teachers let the girls dress dolls in their sewing-schools, and sent some of them to show how nicely they can sew. One was dressed like a Mexican lady, several as Indians, and one just as little girls are dressed here, in a white guimpe and a pretty blue chambray dress.

Those that represented Indians all had their faces daubed with red paint, and there was such a very ferocious-looking chief among them that I am sure you little girls would run if you should see a "really" Indian that looked as he did.

But the funniest one of all had her face painted dark red, and was dressed in a woollen gown, with no underclothing, rags

wrapped around her legs for stockings, and leather moccasins on her feet. Around her shoulders was fastened a piece of plaid flannel for a blanket, and a paper was pinned to her dress on which was printed, As we were. Then beside her was another doll with a very clean face, nice little stockings and shoes, every article of underclothing, and a pretty gingham dress, apron and sunbonnet, all beautifully made, and on her was pinned a paper that said, As we are.

But the best of all I have to tell you is that many of the children are learning to love Jesus, and to show their love for him

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HOME MISSIONS AND SUSTENTATION.

These two departments of Christian work have been recognized and prosecuted by our church from the beginning, but they have not been separated in management, nor have they always been clearly distinguished in terminology. The phrase home missions has meant not merely what its etymology would indicate, the sending of ministers to portions of our own country in which we have no churches, or to portions of our population who have not been gathered into congregations: it has included in its meaning all that should be done by the church at large for the sustentation of pastors in congregations not able to support their pastors without assistance. For a long time we carried on this work with no separation of its two departments in administration, and with no careful discrimination of them in idea. In the progress of this work, vast new regions rapidly filling with migrating population opened before us, and the older regions became sufficiently filled with churches. But the very process of migration kept many of the older churches from increasing, and reduced some of them in strength. Thus sustentation justly claimed a larger share of consideration. An earnest attempt was made to establish it under a

separate management. This, after awhile, settled into the endeavor to give it a distinct management under the direction of the same Board which is charged with the management of the whole home mission work.

The success of sustentation under either method has not been altogether satisfactory. There are difficulties in the management of a sustentation scheme in a country like ours, over and above any found in such a country as Scotland or Ireland, so much smaller in area, so much older and more settled, with no such wide and urgent frontier work in new and unsettled regions. It was doubted by some, from the beginning, whether the scheme could be worked successfully over so broad a country, presenting, in its different sections, such diverse conditions. There are yet different opinions upon the question whether it could be done. All agree in the opinion that hitherto it has not been done.

A few years ago the question arose, whether the experiment might not be tried more hopefully by a synod, on its smaller and more homogeneous field, than by the General Assembly over so vast a field, the dif ferent parts of which still present so diverse conditions.

In the states of New York, New Jersey

and Pennsylvania the work of home missions, as a frontier work, has been grandly done. Within the memory of men yet living, western New York was the West. Missionaries proper were sent to it by the General Assembly and by the New England Congregational Associations, as they now are sent to Dakota and Montana. They went to evangelize a frontier population; to gather churches out of it; and to establish Christian ordinances and institutions. Speaking generally and broadly, that work is finished. Except in the rapidly-growing cities, and at exceptional points, where population is shifted by new railroads, or by the springing up of manufactories or resorts for health and recreation, there is little occasion for forming new congregations in these states. Mainly the work which remains is not properly home mission but sustentation. For the thorough doing of this work the synods of these states need no pecuniary assistance. On the contrary, their people are the Lord's stewards of pecuniary resources which this work will occupy only in part, leaving a greater part, which they can only employ for him by committing it to the Board of Home Missions for its wide, grand, glorious work over the continent, and to the Board of Foreign Missions for its great part in evangelizing all the continents and all the isles. For the work of sustentation and of home missions, so far as any such work is still called for in these synods, they no more need supervision and direction than they need pecuniary help. It was a graceful, manly, Christian thing for these synods to say to the Board of Home Missions, "As soon as we can make the necessary arrangements, we will cease to ask of you any appropriations for any portion of our fields. But we will still diligently inculcate upon our people in every portion of them the duty of continuing and enlarging their contributions to your treasury, that your proper

work may go on all across the continent proportionately to the opportunities which God is so marvellously opening."

This led directly to the establishment of a synodical sustentation scheme, to be conducted by synodical agency. It was the providential opportunity to make trial of the sustentation idea on a territory providentially adapted to it; where it need not be complicated with a different, equally urgent work; and under a management which need not encounter the embarrassment of such complication.

that

If this effort shall prove successful in these synods, it will doubtless be undertaken by one after another of the synods as fast as they shall have outgrown the need of help to evangelize their own populations. Is it at all to be feared that their ministers and people will then content themselves with providing for their own churches and pastors, and remit their exertions for the general work of home missions? It is not wise to overlook or forget our own human infirmities. Doubtless we should be careful not to plan church agencies in a way encourages selfishness. But is it true that the most thorough and efficient doing of our home work indisposes us to do thoroughly and efficiently the work to which God calls us beyond our borders? If this were so, then the most thorough and efficient doing of our Christian work for our own whole country should indispose us toward efficient prosecution of the work of foreign missions. All experience proves the contrary. It is far more reasonable to believe that the more distinct and separate contemplation of the work of home missions proper-the advancement of the church unto the thorough Christianization of the wide, new, rapidly-peopling regions of our land—will kindle our people's zeal anew toward that work. Synods in which the story of home mission work on their fields fifty or a hundred years ago has

been handed down with so grateful remembrance, and which now thankfully exult in having outgrown the need of it, will not be deaf to the Master's word, " Freely ye have received; freely give." Such synods will rather provoke each other to emulation in the great work of home missions; especially when the Board which is so ably conducting that work, released from the care of these older regions, shall gather up its power for the more decisive advance to the Pacific and to the Gulf; when it shall embrace in its care and nurture not only the wide West with its pioneers, its miners, its nascent states, but also the wide South with its great states reviving from the exhaustion of civil war and its millions of enfranchised but untaught people.

On the other hand, will there be danger that the people and ministers, fired with zeal and perhaps touched with ambition toward the larger work of the Board of Home Missions, will neglect their own feeble churches -will fail to sustain the synodical agency for sustentation of pastors? We have not so learned our people, nor the philosophy of

charity. Christian zeal for the welfare of men everywhere does not harden the heart toward needy men at our own door. Our abundant gifts to people whose homes have been consumed by fire or swept away by tornadoes, or whose crops have been consumed by locusts, as the cry of their distress has come to us far over lakes and prairies, have not inclined us to let widows and orphans starve or shiver in our own villages and cities. Patriotic zeal for the safety and glory of our whole country does not make us indifferent to the interests of our own townships. Intelligent zeal and liberality toward foreign missions always reacts favorably upon the home work. It is only a zeal for Christ which earnestly seeks to win the wide world to him, that moves us to our best efforts for that part of it which is near

est to us.

We shall watch with lively and hopeful interest the development and progress of synodical sustentation, now in its beginnings in the three synods of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

CHURCH

The church of Christ, in this age, in all the forms or denominations in which she exists, is longing for visible manifestation of the essential unity of which she is conscious. This longing is itself a healthy movement of her vivid vitality, and is happily working its own fulfillment. The unity of the one holy catholic church, in and through all her manifold denominational forms, is yearly becoming more manifest. It is also becoming more and more evident that to real unity uniformity is not essential. Not always is it desirable. Let us dwell a little upon this thought, that we may get the full import and the full comfort of it. In undue anxiety for formal union, or uniformity, we may fail to be fully conscious of the union.

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UNITY.

of substance, or essential unity, which is already realized. The more widely and thoroughly any Christian acquaints himself with his fellow Christians in the various denominations, the more happily assured is he that they are his fellow Christians; that what in each denomination is held to be essential to its Christianity, is held and asserted as essential in every other denomination; that the church is the church-one and the same church-in all her various denominational forms.

Each of the denominational forms which the church has assumed has, for its justifying purpose, the assertion of some truth which had become obscured, or the fulfillment of some mode of holy activity which

had been hindered or neglected. Fidelity to the convictions which have originated the different denominations has necessitated earnest contention, which doubtless has not always been duly tempered with forbearance and charity. But it should never be assumed that fidelity to truth is less a Chris tian virtue than brotherly love. "Speaking the truth in love" is by no means the same as yielding the truth to love. The love which consents to sacrifice truth is not true love. Just here we have need of patience. If

we love our brethren in the Lord and in the truth, we cannot wish them to be unfaithful to their convictions in order to become united with us. But surely we shall wish to make sure, by patient and frank consultations, that we understand each other. Perhaps then we shall find that we have helped each other to a more complete and roundabout view of the truth. When we have both seen the truth all around, in all its aspects, perhaps we shall see it alike and love it alike, and hold it together.

SEEKING AND FINDING GOD.

The Wesleyan Missionary, one of our London exchanges, gives an interesting account of a native of south Africa.

On the western border of Amaswaziland, south Africa, is a celebrated mountain, called in the native tongue Umhlongavulle. Fifty years ago its grassy slopes provided pasture for numerous herds of cattle in the time of peace, while its rocky caves gave shelter to fugitive women and children in times of cruel and savage warfare. Around its base were grouped several kraals, in which lived families of the still barbarous Mahlangampiri tribe. At one of these kraals, in the year 1827, Nathaniel Matebule was born. His father was headman of the place, the possessor of several wives and a numerous family of children. Nathaniel's birth took place before the visit of any missionary or the introduction of any civilization. No white man had ever set foot on Umhlongavulle, nor was the existence of such a being known to the inhabitants of those regions.

...

They neither believed in a God nor worshipped idols. There were indeed some absurd legends about fabulous beings, who, though credited with some sort of creative power, were not objects of worship. Their only idea of anything supernatural was associated with the spirits of the departed, to whom they ascribed the power of injuring,

and whom they sought to pacify by gifts or sacrifices.

Though Nathaniel's mind was accustomed to these notions, yet at other times he had other thoughts. He has often been heard to tell in later days how these beliefs failed to answer the inquiries which, even in his childhood, would force themselves upon him. There were some high pieces of rock near his father's kraal, lying one upon another, and with shapes that seemed to speak of design, and in them Nathaniel was faced by a silent witness of the Almighty. Whilst his youthful companions were away hunting or dancing, Nathaniel was often seen lying upon the ground intently gazing upon these masses of stone, wondering whose hand could have shaped and placed them thus. He told us that the conclusion in his own mind was that there must be some being of whom his nation had not heard. He had none, however, to help him further, and there the question rested for the time

At an early age it was intended by his father that Nathaniel should marry. When the missionaries arrived [in 1844] he had already passed through certain heathen rites in preparation for that event, and, although only seventeen years of age, had assumed the isicoco (head-ring) which distinguished marriageable men from youths. Better things, however, were in store for him than a life conformed to heathen customs. The

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