1892.]

THE DISCOURAGING DRAWBACK.

The writer has, at the urgent solicitation of the Church, returned to his old place in the Home Board. It cost him a protracted and severe struggle to reach the conclusion that it was his duty to leave a most honorable and useful position in the educational for a more perplexing and difficult one in the ecclesiastical world.

But he did reach it, and he has cheerfully entered upon his new, old work.

Upon entering this, he was confronted with the discouraging sight of a debt amounting to $67,000. The contrast between an institution that had no debt, and a board struggling under a heavy one is very great. I have an instinctive dislike for debt.

May I not hope that the Church will wipe out forthwith the Board's present indebtedness, and let us have the opportunity to try to conduct Home Mission affairs free from that greatest conceded impediment to its progress? Since I have responded to her call, is it more than right that the Church should furnish us with a clear path and a fair chance at success? I care not whether this is done by special contribution, or by an additional percentage to the Churches' yearly collections and individual gifts. I have no fondness for special contributions, because they do injustice to the other boards and usually create a prejudice against us in the minds of contributors.

What I ask, beloved, is that you remove the debt-remove it in your own way,in any way.

Secretary Roberts sailed on June 28 for Europe, where he will spend his vacation. -July and August.

A TOUCHING SCENE!

At one of the small stations on the Utah Northern Railroad, a plain, but earnest looking woman, with a baby in her arms, asked a number of the Commissioners to

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the late General Assembly, how to secure a home missionary for her God-forsaken town. The brethren addressed went immediately in search of one of the Secretaries of the Home Board who was on the train, but he could not be found. They personally promised her to do all they could to furnish the town with an acceptable preacher. Their first impulse was to pledge their churches for a sufficient amount of money to support a missionary for at least a year. All this they communicated to the Secretary, who was sorry not to have seen himself the seeker after truth.

His first impulse would have been to But, the heavy accede to her request. debt of the Board that had prevented for a year the undertaking of new work, kept him from taking any steps in that direction. It makes one's heart sad to think that that poor woman's hope is to be dedeferred and that her excited expectations are, for a time, to be blighted. She is doubtless looking earnestly for a man to baptize her baby and to tell her neighbors "the old, old story of Jesus and his love."

She has probably led many of the town's people to hope for religious services on the coming Sabbaths and perhaps for a church

of their own.

Shall these people be disappointed? Shall they look for the water of life, and find that spiritually as well as physically, they must content themselves with looking for some months or years to come, over a dry and depressing waste?

That town, Alas! is not the only one through which the Commissioners to the General Assembly passed, that is without a church, a Sabbath-school, or a preacher of the Gospel.

Everett is the latest phenomenal "booming" town in Washington. It is thirty-three miles north of Seattle, on the Great Northern Railroad. Its site is a peninsula, over a mile wide, one water front being on a

noble harbor of Puget Sound, which will one day be a smaller Mediterranean-and the other, the Suohomish river, with thirteen or fourteen feet of water. Last September the big trees of the "forest primeval" were growing there undisturbed.

Last New Year's Day there were only a few buildings erected. Now, a mile square has been cleared, from bay to river; there is a population of twenty-five hundred, mostly men; broad avenues and streets, one hundred, eighty, and sixty feet wide, have been laid out and paved or paving with two inch plank. Hundreds of houses, hotels, and several handsome public and business buildings have been erected; hundreds of men are at work grading, draining, paving and building; a big steel nail mill, a steel barge foundry, a paper mill, and other industrial plants, at a cost of several millions, already are, or soon will be, completed and running; a railroad is to be built forty miles to iron mines in the mountains at a cost of nearly two millions; large piers and wharves are ready for ships and steamers; a neat Presbyterian church and several other churches are finished, ours having a most satisfactory pastor in Rev. Thomas MacGuire, whose service at La Grande, Ore., and Tacoma assures his good work at Everett. Eight miles up the river at Suohomish we have another, and older, church under the faithful care of Rev. John W. Dorrance. The whole thing is a typical American phenomenon of the last decade of the nineteenth century. In this case it seems as if it had "come to stay." Some "booms" die out from inanition and almost all have inevitable and natural interims of slackening and stagnation;

but one with so much industrial stuff and financial strength can hardly fail to have a future. And if so, the Everett church will have a future also. The sketch here given is from personal inspection.

[August,

THE GOOD work and tender spirit of our teachers has an admirable illustration in the following extract from a recent report:

I can never forget the last day of school. The higher department had closed, and so the little ones were alone. I proposed to them to march for a little time and sing the songs we have learned together. In the midst of the singing, one by one they broke down crying, and at last I gave up myself. I told them to take their seats and soon dismissed. My prayer that morning before them was that although we were to separate from each other God's kind and watchful care would ever be around about each one of us; and much more that I could not express. Surely God will bless my feeble efforts to help those dear children of his.

I have felt encouraged in many ways during the last quarter from the fact that many

with whom I have been associated have told me personally that I had been a help to them. I have loved them dearly, because God loved them. One of our patrons whose children have always attended our school, took me with my baggage to the station. I offered to pay him, when he said, "No indeed, I couldn't think of taking a cent, when you have done so much for Parowan and for my children. I'm sorry I cannot do more."

The Rev. R. H. Hartley writes thus pleasantly from Riverside, Cal. :-- "For three years this church has had the help of the Home Board. At the beginning of that time we had a membership of sixty, now it is ninety-three. Then, we had no property; now, we have a church seating comfortably five hundred in the auditorium and eight hundred in the parts all thrown together, costing, all told, twentysix thousand dollars. Then the usual attendance at Sabbath morning service was from ninety to one hundred; now, it is from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty. Last year we gave two hundred and eighty-five dollars to Home Mission work.

Our gratitude for the great, helpful wing of the Church cannot be told in words.

Henceforth we will need no help from the Board, and will earnestly try to return to it, within a few years, more than we have received."

The writer has just travelled from San Francisco to New York by the "Overland Flyer" over the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, Chicago and Northwestern, and Pennsylvania railroads, three thousand two hundred and seventy-one miles, in four days and seventeen hours. This is at the rate of very nearly twenty-nine miles per hour for the whole distance, including the crawl over the mountains at twelve or fifteen miles an hour, and the many stops, from a minute to an hour long. The train arrived at Jersey City on the minute.

One car went through from San Francisco to Chicago. It is pretty safe to say that, distance and difficulty and speed included, there is no other such train or travel in the world; and the comfort and convenience, with berth and dining cars and every pleasant appliance imaginable, make the whole transit most notable.

Flying at forty to fifty miles per hour down the long easy slope of five hundred miles or so from Cheyenne to Omaha, in which space one descends some six thousand feet, or about twelve feet to the mile, going almost as straight as the crow flies, and discussing, meanwhile, a good meal, one cannot help thinking how many good and brave men have tramped and fought and starved over the same ground, and how differently Marcus Whitman, the pioneer missionary and patriot, toiled across those plains to carry the Gospel beyond the Rockies, and save Oregon to the United States. All this heightened speed, haste and tension means added speed and

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pressure and clamorous call for home missions. We must work hard and give hard to keep up.

A letter just received from Utah-for obvious prudential reasons we withhold the name of the town has the following suggestive sentences:

"In view of much that has been said about the Mormon question of late, I believe it wise to distinguish between the question of the propriety of statehood and the question of Mormon progress in patriotism.

"There can be no doubt that statehood at the present time is inexpedient, unnecessary and reactionary.

other hand, we ought to recognize the marvellous change that is manifested in public sentiment. We have here an eld liberal of the liberals, one who abominates Mormonism and has slept with a gun at his side for thirty five years. I asked him the other day what proportion of the Mormon people could, in his opinion, be influenced by the church in opposition to the National authority. He replied, 'Not forty per cent.' I afterwards mentioned this opinion to one of our leading liberals who knows the Mormons as no missionary ever comes to know them, and he said, 'It is a fair statement.' It is also significant that in this community of 3,500 souls there is but one man left who ever had any known connection with the Danites or kindred organizations. This is not much because of the law, which is really a farce, as because of the change in public feeling. The atmosphere is no longer congenial to them. The change may be realized when I say that the leading Mormons here are now ready to help us to an advantageous site, on moral grounds. They say, 'Churches help to keep out the saloons.'

80

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THE BOARD'S DEBT.-The announcement at the last Assembly of a remaining debt amounting to $67,000 was most depressing. A shadow could be seen passing over the faces of the commissioners and visitors. It so wrought on the mind of one of the noble California elders that he offered at once $5,000 toward its extinction, if the rest could be raised within ninety days. The Chicago delegates pledged the churches of their Presbytery for $2,500, on the same condition. At the popular meeting, in the evening, a husband and wife, friends of the cause from Cortlandt, New York, subscribed $600, and "a lover of his country" added on the same condition $250. Shall these generous offers prove unavailing to the Board? May we not find a sufficient number of friends to cancel the remaining $58,750? This must be done by September 1st, if we are to secure the subscribed $8,250. The sum is not alarming, if we can only convince the friends of Home Missions of the untold importance of paying it at once.

Nine years ago Rev. J. H. Potter went to South Florida utterly broken down in health. His physician had told him he could do nothing more for him. He met Dr. Kendall at Jacksonville, Fla., who told him to go and select a field and the Board would support him. He went to Eustis and began there with not so much as one human being to count on or consult with. There was not a church then in our connection in all South Florida and there

were few in the Presbytery of East Florida.

We now have over forty churches in Florida and an entirely new presbytery of South Florida where we had not one church then.

Three new churches are being built. Our young people's societies afford us ground of great encouragement. Some three of our churches have had blessed ingatherings last winter, many coming in

[August,

from our Sabbath-schools. I know one of our churches has four or five young men and boys studying with the ministry in view. In Eustis we have an Academy doing a grand good work in this direction.

No saloon can exist in our town and there is no place where we even suspect that liquor is sold in town. Quietly, steadily continuously the germinative influence of righteousness is being exerted.

SIGNIFICANT FACTS.

FROM REV. T. M. GUNN.

Over four hundred miles of new railroad will be completed in the Synod of Washington by January 1, 1893, and not one new missionary has yet been placed on it. Two places, of vital importance, have been undertaken. Shall they be maintained or shall they be ignobly forsaken?

A strong agricultural field in east Washington, where the Presbyterians had spent seven years' labor, has been taken possession of by the United Brethren and Methodist churches. Why? Because the field expanded so as to demand additional laborers, and thus became new work.

Wide reaches of the finest agricultural country in the world are now awaiting occupancy by the Presbyterian Church in northern Idaho. The pioneer has taken up his land, made his improvements, raised his harvest, has orchards in full fruitage, and perhaps children half-grown

who have never heard a sermon or been in a Sabbath-school. Is not that a Macedonian cry to the Presbyterian Church?

Our needs? Two home missionaries in the Presbytery of Spokane; three in the Presbytery of Walla Walla; three for Presbytery of Olympia, and eight for the

Presbytery of Puget Sound. The majority of these should be sent out at the expense of the Board with support guaranteed, that they may go untrammelled, reporting what they find and what they receive from the field. Twenty such fields could be profitably occupied in west Washington.

EMPORIA COLLEGE.-Rev. Samuel Ward writes: The Ministers of Emporia, and other Kansas Presbyteries, are exerting themselves in behalf of the College.

We are deeply concerned for the continued life and usefulness of the institution;

Dr. Kirkwood in presenting its claims has said, "The college is now worth more than any three of the largest churches in Kansas, and, if properly, cared for, in twenty years will be worth to Presbyterianism as much as any fifty of our best churches.

The year closed very favorably for Park College, and its future appears invested with larger promise of success than at any previous commencement. So writes one of its trustees, an intelligent layman of Kansas City, Mr. J. W. Byers. Nothing bodes better for Home Missions than the prosperity of such colleges.

We are often asked if polygamy in Utah is not dead, and Mormonism itself so nearly dead, and Utah so thoroughly Americanized as to relieve us of the necess

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ity of supporting mission work longer in that territory. The following extract from a sermon recently delivered by a Mormon elder in one of the Utah villages is a sufficient answer. A little reflection will make it plain that in order to obey the elder's admonition many of the girls would have to go into polygamy. The elder's argument is one of the stock arguments for polygamy:

"For the husband is the head of the wife." He commented on these words as follows: "See? The husband is the head of the wife. Therefore the woman who has no husband has no head. Imagine the women of this town running around without any heads! What an awful calamity that would be. Yet that is the way it will be in the next world.

Every woman who lives in this world and dies without being married, so as to have a husband to call her up on the resurrection day, will have no head in the next world. Let all the sisters take warning, and see that they are prepared to avoid this awful Remember that this is the calamity. word of God. It is not the word of man. Whether the truth is what we would like to have it to be or not, it does not matter. In dealing with questions of such great importance, it does not make any difference what we would like; but it is all important to know the facts; and the fact in this case is, God's Word plainly teaches woman can not be exalted in the world to come unless she is married in this world."