baths necessitated a journey of a hundred miles on horseback.

The only respect in which I cannot speak encouragingly of our work here for the past quarter is with reference to the membership. There has been no increase in the membership of our little church. In all other respects, however, we have gladdening signs of the divine presence and favor. Continued good health has enabled me to continue preaching three times nearly every Sabbath, although I have usually to travel fifteen to twenty miles between the services. At the day services at almost all the points families attend who have to travel long distances to do so.

Our Band of Hope and Sunday-school are in a prosperous condition, and the latter has just acquired a new library. Our week evening service also continues to be well attended; this is the first season that we have been able to keep it going through the busy season.

Among the silent signs of the influence of gospel truth upon the community two points may be named. I have referred in a previous report to the breaking up of the Sunday base-ball club. For this year a school teacher was engaged who is reputed to think more of base ball than religion. Soon after his arrival, either voluntarily or prompted by the enemies of religion, he went around endeavoring to organize a club. But he failed signally, and he and his family have since attended our services.

The other point has reference to the saloon curse. For some months we were sorely vexed by a new hotel-keeper who came into the place and set himself to entice the lads and young men into a skillfully-laid net. He was successful enough for a while to injure our Sunday-school and to bring sadness to some hearts. However, we got him discredited at length and he has had to back out by the door of insolvency. The hotel, though kept open by some one else, is virtually deserted, and the saloon belonging to it is closed altogether. Thus we have two saloons less in this little place than we had twenty months ago.

HOME MISSION APPOINTMENTS FOR AUGUST, 1887. Rev. C. E. Fay, Mineville,

W. Va.

Rev. W. A. Dunning, Lawrenceville,
Rev. J. B. Reed, Fairmount and Mannington,
Rev. F. M. Todd, Manassas and Prince William County, Va.
Rev. G. C. Overstreet, Brandenburg and Hodgensville, Ky.
Rev. A. F. Whitehead, Huntsville and New River,
Rev. N. F. Tuck, New Prospect,
Rev. A. Orndorf, Kingston, Bethel,
Rev. G. Carpenter, Wellston,

Rev. James Bassett, Rising Sun, Palmetto and
Concord,

Rev. B. C. Swan, Harrisburg,
Rev. J. C. Parsons, Herscher,
Rev. D. G. Bruce, Good Hope,

Rev. M. W. Simpson, Humeston and Grand River,
Rev. F. A. Shearer, D.D., Earlham,
Rev. W. Russell, Frankville and Mt. Hope,
Rev. R. A. Paden, Burt and Bancroft,
Rev. E. Hamilton, Paton and Rippey,
Rev. J. A. Fitch, Goshen and stations,

Rev. H. McHenry, Lime Springs and stations,
Rev. W. S. Shiels, West Point and stations,
Rev. E. J. Nugent, Derby,

Rev. E. M. Sharp, Wapello and Grand View,
Rev. A. W. Haines, Deep River,
Rev. D. A. Murray, Greene,
Rev. D. S. Iddings, Williams,
Rev. L. H. Towler, Milan,
Rev. S. S. Palmer, Tustin,

Rev. W. C. Peabody, Pinconning and Calvary,
Rev. A. S. Wight, Linden and Argentine,
Rev. William Walker,

Rev. J. Irwin, Wallace, Sprague and Comstock,
Rev. J. P. Dysart, St. Paul, East,

Rev. J. Godward, Evansville, Dalton and Ashley,
Rev. R. H. Hooke, Westminster and Hudson,
Rev. W. H. McCuskey, Andover and Homer,
Rev. J. A. McElmon, Dell Rapids,

Rev. J. M. Boggs, Kimball, Pleasant Prairie and
stations,

Rev. J. Loughran, White Lake,
Rev. G. S. Baskerville, Tower City,
Rev. C. McLean, Pembina,

Rev. D. G. McKay, Elkmont and Inkster,

Rev. W. T. Parsons, Fairview, Mt. Pleasant and vicinity,

Rev. G. C. Giffen, Minden,

Rev. F. R. Wotring, Plum Creek,

Rev. J. Schaedel, Buffalo Grove, German,
Rev. N. S. Lowrie, O'Neill,
Rev. J. Huston, Green Valley,
Rev. J. Riale, Blair,

Rev. L. D. Wells, Tekamah,
Rev. E. C. Haskell, Stromsburg,
Rev. A. B. Martin, Kansas City, 3d,
Rev. G. E. Woodhull, West Plains,
Rev. M. G. Gorin, Louisiana, 1st,
Rev. W. Meyer, Edina,

Rev. J. A. McKelvey, Chillicothe,
Rev. J. P. Barbor, Lyndon,

Rev. H. Farwell, Le Ray and Neosho Falls,
Rev. C. C. Hoffmeister, Axtell and Baileyville,
Rev. A. H. Parks, Syracuse and Richfield,
Rev. T. Bracken, Phillipsburg,

Rev. E. P. Thompson, Idaho Springs,

Rev. E. M. Landis,

Rev. W. E. Archibald, Silver Cliff,

Tenn.

i

Ohio.

Ind. Ill.

Iowa.

"

44

Mich.

Wis. Minn.

Oregon.

THE ONE HUNDREDTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

Until the meeting of the last Assembly several of the institutions which are aided by this Board were hoping, not very def initely but warmly, that the year now passing might turn to them a tide of denominational interest and help that would lift them out of many embarrassments. It is now known that the denominational effort, by means of the Committee on the One Hundredth General Assembly, is to be concentrated upon a single aim of very wide and tender interest. But the collateral objects originally indicated as deserving the liberal gifts of the denomination are approved anew by the vote of the last Assembly. According to that repeated expression, the General Assemblies of 1886 and 1887 would not judge it a financial mistake for Presbyterian people to lay out in "immediate distribution," upon the field of this Board, $500,000. A recent circular of the committee just referred to provides that gifts made under this recommendation be forwarded to the treasury of the Board and that record of them be made on the books of the Assembly's Centennial Committee. Inasmuch as the present issue of THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD will find most congregations with their fall harness on and prepared at least to be informed of our desires, we devote our present pages to matter bearing on this aim. First of all, it is evident that the General Assembly has contemplated a class of centennial gifts quite distinct from the ordinary church collections. "The last Assembly," "The last Assembly," says its committee, "urged sessions to take subscriptions and not collections." "The centennial donations are special and do not include the necessary annual contributions in support of the boards of the church."

Yet we wish it to be known that we have devised no new agencies and incurred no new outlay. Our centennial apparatus is exactly that of our past years, and will be

that of years to come until the churches shall wisely and liberally suffer us to dispense with it. That apparatus requires some candid notice.

ABOUT OUR CANVASSERS.

A secretary who has ever been a pastor must know what a demand he is making upon the patience and loyalty of the pastors of a given district when by certificate he authorizes a college officer or agent to canvass it for an endowment or building fund. As mere writer of the certificate, indeed, he can fall back upon the fact that he is obeying the behest of his Board, and that his Board is obeying the General Assembly (see Minutes, 1883, p. 189, under letters "G" and "H"). But none the less he knows that such a paper cannot effect its intent without making some trying exactions of helpful pastors.

It may require, first of all, no little good temper and patience to discover any reasonable ground on which this work of canvassing can proceed, at least in common years. The pastor may naturally say, "Has not the Board of Aid for Colleges its regular annual collections? Then why should that Board, any more than each of the others, send out a man to solicit our people individually?" The question will seem entirely unanswerable except to those who will consider that what the Board receives from the annual collections does not at all avail for the ends for which the canvass is made. is the effort of some particular institution to get clear of debt or to create an endowment fund. The collection is applied to the general work of the Board; which is to aid in the support of teachers, just as the Home Mission Board aids in supporting preachers. See further a subsequent article on "The Pressing Need."

The canvass

This explanation, however, only renews the question "Why should these institutions, whatever their need of money, get this ex

ceptional privilege of scouring our congregations for it?"

That is a reasonable question. The answer is this: The givers themselves will have it so. They practically invite the canvassers, and thus far refuse to dispense with them. It is only the man that comes for the money, and has tact and persistence, that is likely to get the money. Witness these facts: Our Board reported last year, as the total of its receipts from churches and Sabbath-schools, $27,880. In the same year the statistical tables of the presbyteries reported that what had been given in the congregations for this cause of college aid amounted to $127,627-a hundred thousand dollars beyond the church collections, so far as this Board received them. We are aware that there were some church collections which we did not receive; still the greater part of that excess of $100,000 must have been given, not in collections, but under personal solicitation of one form or another. The individual giving goes on, then; and until there be some better arrangement, it must; for able and thoughtful Presbyterian men and women are by no means indifferent to the cause of the Christian education of American youth. Under these circumstances, is it wrong for the General Assembly to instruct the Board, and to invite pastors, to take reasonable pains to direct a good share of this individual giving to our church's new schools and colleges? And will there not be many instances in which a pastor can further that intent of the Assembly without injury to any interest, congregational or benevolent?

Yet he cannot do this without a work of discrimination that will tax his patience still further. The persons whom it can be wise to approach for gifts for the building or the endowment of a distant college cannot be numerous in most congregations. When the institution is near at hand, indeed, and the whole community is to get advantage from it, every family may properly be asked to give what help it can. But in a distant presbytery or synod there is no propriety, but rather great harmfulness, in such a sweeping canvass. A board that would en

courage it must lose by it, both in favor and in receipts. The pastors who object to it as an interference with their system of congregational benevolence are plainly in the right Yet nearly every established congregation includes one or more men or women whose personal system of benevolence is known to have a margin outside of the most comprehensive system on which the congregation unites. And every wise and zealous pastor is accustomed to have such relations with these exceptional givers, that they even desire him-not to tell them what to do-but freely to lay before their judgment the opportunities for exceptional giving in directions that appear to be good. It is well understood that a very great part of the liberal giving of individuals to all of the church's great causes grows out of just such relations between conscientious distributors of the Lord's money and their well-informed and trusted ministers.

Now, once in a twelvemonth, at the worst (with the present formality, once in a century), this Board introduces to the pastors of a given district the representative of some single institution which it knows to be worthy, promising, in need, and therefore ready to make any good gift tell at once on that double work of grace and instruction which God, by us, is extending over the land. May not a pastor be sure of recompense for all the trouble by which he shall understand the case which we thus commend, and shall consider who those are before whom he may properly suffer it to come and what endorsement he can give of its regularity and worth?

The largest and most generous consideration may leave him obliged to say, "I cannot, at this time, help you at all. I find no door that appears to be open." But that ought not to be said hastily. Often the very men whom their pastors count it very imprudent to approach in behalf of a school of the church are at the same time approached successfully from this or that independent school, whose claims they would not have compared with those which their pastors, by plainly explaining this Board's certificate, could have laid before them.

1887.]

So we confess that we are inviting good men to take trouble in behalf of our canvassers. Some of those pastors who have helped this branch of our work most effectually are men burdened, one would think, to the limit of their strength. The Board does not fail to appreciate such assistance; but there is a trustier assurance, that they "shall by no means lose their reward."

THE PRESSING NEED. Church erection and college erection are each easily distinguishable from the kindred interest to which each is inseparably related, namely, that of the support of the workmen in the same branch of work. Teaching men and teaching places are no more the same thing than are preaching men and preaching places. In the matter of church extension, so important are the separate interests of the places and the men that we have a Board for each. In the college matter, no one is likely to dream of an Erection Board; but the oneness of the Board ought not to obscure the practical distinction that lies between the interests. There is a great problem, then, which this Board is set to solve, and one that deserves the sympathetic consideration of every largeminded member of our denomination. Since an established school includes both teaching force and teaching place; since many of the most promising teaching places are unfinished or in debt; and since our income avails only, and that but in part, to maintain the teachers, what can we do effectually for school erection?

One answer might be, "Go slower. Do not take hold of more institutions than you can attend to effectually in both departments, of property and faculty." But that would, at once, be equivalent to the blank discouragement of nearly all those cominunities that can provide two-thirds of their immediate property needs, but cannot provide the whole. When such cases occur in the church extension enterprise, every one sees that it is good to throw in some prompt property help. Shall then a board intended for school extension see a dozen places in

353

which local zeal and liberality are doing their utmost, with three-quarters of success, and notify each that zeal, subscription papers and children must stand stock still till this Board can come round to them in their turn, and, with one stroke, establish them? Nothing but Minerva was ever produced that way. Things grow; and growth ought to begin when life does. Growth may require nursing. Then it must have it. It is never safe to treat a live thing like a dead thing, in the expectation of making it suddenly very lively, some years afterward. This Board is already the young mother of many live schools, widely distributed over the western part of our church. She has fed them with the common effect of feeding what is both young and healthy; they need more food. Buildings not quite finished for lack of means, buildings with debt on them, buildings needing to be supplemented with other buildings, all open their doors like lips, and cry, being hungry. Are they worth keeping alive? Who doubts it? When past investment, wisely made, at the right places, can by the addition of ten, fifteen or even twenty per cent. settle the college erection side of the problem, and allow the teaching work to go on unembarrassed while population thickens and supporters grow strong, is not here a matter that falls within good stewardship for Christ?

Well, how shall it be managed? We know what we would like; but we cannot get it, as yet at least. We would like to see the annual collection or distribution, made in the churches for this Board, so justly proportioned to our large, twofold concern for teachers and for buildings, that the Board, out of its own adequate treasury, could do such prudent things as the salvation and establishment of its various school properties should require.

Till that time comes, we would have every pastor who understands and approves our work, enter frankly and largely into our view of this great need, and, especially if he prefers to see no canvasser, do his best, some Sabbath, to kindle the thoughts and hearts of hearty and able people to their duty of touching this young work with power; that

is, of sending to our treasury personal gifts to our "property fund," out of which the Board may meet the needs where they are greatest. In this centennial year such words spoken by appreciative and sympathetic men could be spoken with great effect.

The third way is the existing way-of canvassing; some disadvantages of which we frankly confess. But guarded on our side, and aided on the pastor's side, and kindly met by the men and women to whom it is addressed, it can, on easy terms, meet present needs, and thus allow the second century of American Presbyterianism to begin with its college-planting work strong and balanced, and advanced to its right place among the foremost of our national agencies. We entreat, then, a large-minded hearing of some details.

SUMNER ACADEMY.

As yet our church has in Washington Territory two schools, far out of reach of each other. This Board helps them both in current expenses; and both need help in establishing their buildings. The need of Sumner Academy, however, is most urgent; and of that we now speak.

Sumner is twelve miles from Tacoma, and twenty-eight from Seattle; and connected with both by railroad. The pleasant valley in which it lies is likely to be reached by suburban homes. Saloons are excluded by the title deeds. The presbytery established the academy. In August, 1884, after the donation of an ample site, and a subscription of $3000, ground was broken for an adequate building, which has been contracted for at $5000. This contract provided for enclosing the whole, and finishing a part; which has since been done. Liberal addition to the subscription has been expected, but a sudden reverse befell the community, and after the outlay of about $4000 in land and money, the undertaking would have sunk but for the liberality of Mr. L. F. Thompson. Though our denomination had no claim upon him, he added to his former generous gifts of land and money, paid contractors, and has since carried a debt which in less friendly hands would have wiped out the property.

The school dates back of the building, having opened January 1, 1884. Out of its first twenty pupils, eleven were studying Latin, an indication of the incline which such a school would set up toward power and service. Early in its second year a revival came, bringing the four boarding-students into our church. In the glow of that experience, Rev. George A. McKinley, the teacher and pastor, wrote, "I think the Board can look upon this as one of its most promising fields, and that money expended here will be a permanent investment."

Since then the debt has grown, till an issue is at hand. The school is still there; and with hope in this present appeal, arrangements are making for a new term, under a loyal and competent teacher. Shall the roof of a Presbyterian school be kept over his Presbyterian head? For many

months Rev. George F. Whitworth, one of the most respected ministers of the Presbytery of Puget Sound, has been seeking, with the hearty backing of this Board, some eastern succor for his presbytery in this their thoughtful, orderly, fundamental effort to provide for their future life and power. Let any one turn to the statistics of that pres-bytery, in the Assembly's Minutes of 1887, and judge whether denominational friendliness and good policy ought to lean toward helping them. There are thirty-eight churches, which raise for their annual expenses, including pastor's salaries, an aver age of about $300 each. A presbytery of such small ability, seeing its actual investment of four or five thousand dollars sink. ing out of sight, is pleading with sympathetic men in the presbyteries of Philadelphia and its vicinity to give help enough to save its school.

Something has been said about raising a fund of twenty thousand dollars. That, indeed, would be a grand thing to do. It would clear off the debt, and complete the unfinished story, and begin an endowment. But the Board of Aid would be very happy far short of that-in saving the property. According to our reading of the documents before us, the donor or donors of $5000 could have the satisfaction of securing, free