could a like sum be put? It would furnish a home for a church and Sunday school till Jesus comes.

VIII. If the money could be furnished we could build one of these churches every month of 1887.

IX. The money is to be paid to the American Baptist Home Mission Society in New York, and paid the church under the rules governing their Church Edifice Work. J. C. BAKER.

-Rev. T. K. Tyson, Valparaiso, Neb., writes as follows:

"I hardly know what we will do for a meeting place, as the hall in which we hold services is engaged for weekly club dances for the winter, thus breaking into our plans. Oh, that the hearts of God's treasurers might be open to replenish your Church Edifice Fund, that you might be able to grant us aid in build. ing a house of God, where dances, shows, nor political meetings will ever enter to pollute the atmosphere and besmirch the floor. I never before felt so keenly the disadvantage of having to meet in a public hall. We must build in order to live; but I confess I cannot see how we can complete a house at all adequate to our needs without help. "

--Rev. J. Sunderland, our very efficient General Missionary for Minnesota, is putting forth all his energies in planting gospel churches in that rapidly growing State. He is striving to bring the older churches in the more settled portions of the State up to their full duty in the work of church extension. He says, "Just look at these facts. Nine meeting houses have been dedicated in Minnesota during 1886. Fourteen more are under way, and five more churches have bought lots and are moving towards buildingtwenty-eight in all, and several other churches are sure to build this year. Most of these are on our mission fields. We cannot hold them back. Many of these must have help. Our Board hopes to raise in the State for Church Edifice work not less than $2,000 the present conventional year, aside from any aid given to churches in our two cities. Our needs press us to do it. We must either do it or fail to meet the crisis which is upon many of our churches. We shall cling to the hope that you will be able to help us more than the $1,000 during the year 1887." We wish every one of our Western Conventions would give special attention to raising funds for church edifice work.

-A colored brother whose church has been strug. gling with a debt for some time writes: "A church debt is the devil's saddle and he never fails to ride in it." A church debt may be necessary under some circumstances, but when the church neglects all common business principles in carrying the debt, and seems to feel under no obligations to pay or reduce the debt, it often proves a great stumbling block in the way of church prosperity. Churches should be careful of their credit financially if they wish to retain the

respect of the world. Churches should transact their business according to business principles, as well as individuals.

-Our Loan Fund is doing a good work in helping the colored people to obtain houses of worship. As a general rule these people never have large sums of money at one time, but where they have steady work their money comes to them in small amounts, and they are free to give in small amounts at each meeting for worship. By making loans to them for the completion of a house, and allowing them to pay the loan off in small installments for several years, they carry the burden easily, and have the satisfaction of feeling that they have a house paid for by their own earnings. The money thus returned is used to help other churches in the same way. Our records show that the colored churches have been far more prompt in repaying their loans than the white churches. They cannot pay large amounts at once, but, little by little, they grind it off, and thus meet their obligations.

Our Continent.

-The salt product of Michigan this year will probably reach 3,700,000 barrels.

-Over 3,000,000 acres of land in Texas are said to have been burned over by prairie fires the past year.

-Mexico has about 10,000,000 inhabitants; of these, 5,000,000 are full-blood Indians, 3,000,000 half-caste Indians or Mexicans, 1,500,000 whites of Spanish descent, and perhaps half a million Spaniards, other Europeans, Americans, negroes and others.

-The production of gold and silver in the world during the calendar year 1885 was: gold, $101,580,000; silver, calculated at its coining value, nearly $125,000,000. Notwithstanding the large depreciation in the value of silver, the production of silver in the world has steadily increased. The United States still preserves first rank among the nations of the world as the largest producer of the precious metals, its production of gold and silver during the year having reached the sum of $83,400,000, or about two-fifths of the production of the whole world.

-In an article in the Cosmopolitan magazine for April, under the title of " Uncle Sam's Book Case," Mr. Frank G. Carpenter gives many interesting facts concerning the National (Congressional) Library. We have only room for three or four items:

And first, of its number of literary treasures. During Mr. Spofford's administration of twenty-three years the library has largely outstripped all the other great libraries of the country, having now 560,000 bound volumes, 200,000 pamphlets, 350,000 pieces of music, and tens of thousands of works of art, maps, and photographs. Its annual increase from copyright alone amounts to from 20,000 to 30,000 volumes.

Its vast collections have long since overflowed its capacity, and now every available inch of space is utilized and every room in the vicinity is stocked with books. The very floors of the library are piled up with overflow, and the shelves seem almost bursting with their tightly packed contents.

The library proper, which is also the reading room, consists of a long, hall-like room with wings at each end, jutting off like the head of a T. The reading room is 91 feet long, 34 feet wide, and 34 feet high. Its walls are made up of rectangular alcoves, each about the size of a small hall bedroom, and shut off from the room by a door of lattice-work. The walls of these alcoves are filled with books, and there are three galleries of them rising one above another. In the front of the upper galleries are balustrades, and these have also been lined on the inside with bookshelves. The wings at the ends (dimensions not given) are also filled up with similar alcoves, and the whole looks like an immense bee-hive with hundreds of cells of as many colors as you will find in bookbindings.

The library is almost always full of readers.

Of the character of the contents of this great library not much is said. It cannot be well displayed till the great library building which Congress has been so tardy in ordering shall be completed and there is room enough to arrange it so as to make all its treasures easy of access.

While it has many of the most valuable books known to scholars, there must be, on the copyright side, much that is trashy and of small value. It is particularly rich in newspaper files, both of our own and foreign countries. The great and unique collection of the late Peter Force is only one of its many treasures of this kind. Complete files of the London Gazette, the oldest of English newspapers, and still the Court paper, as well as the other great English papers, and files equally complete of the French Moniteur and the Journal des Debats are in its collection.

Here are found, too, a complete file of the Allgemeine | Zeitung, the noted German paper, and many thousands of others, American, Spanish, Mexican, French, Japanese, and other papers in all languages. The collection of Bibles is very large and many of the copies are rare and curious. Here is the first American Bible printed in a European tongue, a German Bible printed at Germantown in 1743. What is still more rare, is John Eliot's Bible, printed in the Indian tongue at Cambridge in 1663. But two copies of this Bible at all perfect are known to exist, and but one man can read it. Some of these Bibles are in manuscript, with the illuminated initials and titles which the monks of the middle ages bestowed on them.

The collection of theological works is very large.

The report of the Agricultural Department for March, 1887, gives the following statistics of the corn

Totals.....

$2,365,159,862 $2,400,586,938

The total value of all the farm animals of the country is placed at $2,400, 586,938, an increase of $35,427,076 over this time last year. The greater share of the increase is due to the increased number and value of horses. The decline in the value of cows has been charged chiefly to the low price of butter.

Our denominational statistics as shown by the Baptist Year Book for 1887, just issued, are:

Number of Baptist Churches in the States and Territories, 30,522, an increase of 498 since last report; total membership, 2,732,570; baptisms during the past year, 155,378; added by experience, 10,049; decrease by exclusion and erasure, 46,529; ordained ministers, mostly pastors, 19,377; 7 Theological

543 students, holding endowments of $2,02c,283, and having received gifts and bequests in 1886 amounting to $128,536; 27 universities and colleges for males exclusively, with 251 instructors and 3,660 students, endowed to the amount of $5,107,544, of which $265,075 was given in 1886; female seminaries and colleges 30, with 73 male and 208 female instructors, and endowments of $671,000, of which $113,000 was received in 1886. There were 43 co-educating institutions with 126 male and 132 female instructors, and 4.757 students; endowments, $602,250; gifts in 1886, $156,224. Our own pages give the statistics of our | colored institutions. Students preparing for the ministry, 1,681: total endowments, $8,552,077; total gifts in 1886, $713,735 There are 10 Baptist charitable institutions holding property valued at $553,000. Number of Baptist periodicals, 105, of which 4 are in German, one in Swedish, and one (two ?) conducted by colored Baptists.

-Rev E. Nisbet, D.D., gives the following statistics of Denver, Colorado, in the Examiner:

This beautiful and picturesquely situated city has grown up from the desert in twenty-seven years to a population of 65,000. It is the State capital-has now in process of erection a million dollar capital building and a United States building of one-half million; and many elegant residences. She boasts of her school buildings, her magnificent opera house and fine business blocks. She has an extensive car system-horse and electric-hospitals, water-works, gas, streets lighted by electricity. The aggregate projected buildings of 1886 value at $2,000,000, real estate transfers, $11,000,000, business in 1886 very active, with great expectations in all departments for 1887. It is said that few of our great cities have such an excellent school system and thorough organization. The Baptists have the finest church edifice in the city-cost, exclusive of furnishing, $85,000; the Episcopal cathedral is fine, the Methodist built an edifice this summer costing (including site, organ, furnishing) $125,000. has over sixty churches.

WOMEN'S BAPTIST

Denver

HOME MISSION

SOCIETY.

GENERAL OFFICERS.

President-MRS. J. N. CROUSE, 2201 Prairie Ave., Chicago,
Ill.

Corresponding Secretary-MISS M. G. BURDETTE, 2338 Mich-
igan Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Treasurer-MRS. R. R. DONNELLEY, 2338 Michigan Ave.,
Chicago, Ill.

TENTH YEAR.

The history of the tenth year is written, and its close is marked by another Ebenezer. During the whole or some portion of the year there have been employed seventy missionaries and helpers, paid entirely from the funds of the Society. Of this number nine have been teachers in the schools of the American Baptist Home Mission

Society; there have also been supported in these schools by specific contributions from our auxiliaries eighteen pupils. The cash receipts for the year have been in excess of any previous year, aggregating with the balance $39,896.64, besides "much goods." We shall not take space for farther specifications, as an abstract of the report will be published in Tidings for June, and the full report in pamphlet form may be obtained after July 1, by addressing the Corresponding Secretary.

NEW YEAR IN CHINATOWN.

The New Year was in January, but it may be refreshing to read about it in June. The story was told by Miss Electa J. Booth in a letter written January 19, from which we glean the following presentation of the subject. This was Miss Booth's second New Year's in Chinatown. The first had occurred simultaneously with the beginning of her work in San Francisco, and she attributes, partially, her greater enjoyment this year to the fact that she has learned to know the people better and to feel a greater personal interest in many of them. She speaks gratefully of the kindness and politeness with which Mrs. Sanford and herself were received in the homes which they visited during this Chinese holiday season. She says: "We were generally met either at the door or in the hall-way when we went in, accompanied thither when we came out and invited to come again. Usually the women put away their work or whatever they were doing and sat down to entertain us. For one reason, if no other, I am glad that the Chinese celebrate their New Year, as at that time they take a general cleaning up of houses, floors, windows, children, in fact everything about the place; so that everywhere we found bright, clean faces, pretty, new clothes, and nice, tidy rooms. There is one mother whom we visit who keeps her house in order all the time, and this in spite of difficult circumstances. She has but one room about six feet by ten, in which she and her husband and two children live; this means cooking, eating, sleeping, washing, and ironing. The room serves, besides, as woodshed, coal-house, and storeroom. Yet it is kept in such order and is so sweet and pure that I always like to go there when I am in Chinatown.

"In all the homes, during this season, the worship of burning incense wood or sticks is kept up all the time, so that the houses are always full of smoke, so stifling that you can scarcely breathe; and by the time you have done a day's visiting you find your eyes red and swollen from the effects of the smoke. How dreadful it seems to live in it all the time! and yet we visited a woman to-day who has lived eight years in the house where she now is and has never been on the street all that time. This case is an exceptional one. The women are at liberty to come and go as they please. However the real virtuous women are seldom seen on the street. The children seemed especially glad to see us, and came running to meet

us, saying: 'We're glad you've come, and we like you very much.' At one home a little boy ran out on the street to spread the news of our whereabouts; and Chinese children come pouring in to meet us and wish us a Happy New Year.' I have been greatly encouraged to see several of the young men in our night school, who are not members of the church, take a decided stand, in remaining with the Christians to receive New Year's callers in the chapel, and in attending the church services during the holidays."

Here, as elsewhere, the missionaries must confront the terrible evil of intemperance; and Miss Booth refers with sadness to the fact that in a number of instances they were unable to see members of their night school at whose homes they had called. On asking for one they would be told that he had taken too much wine and was in bed. Fathers and mothers were found giving the vile stuff to their children to drink; perhaps but a little, and yet enough to impart a taste for it.

In other homes, they found the father stretched on an opium mat, his opium outfit at his side, and he snoozing from the effects of his smoke. What can be expected from children born and reared in such homes, whose daily atmosphere is pregnant with opium smoke and liquor, and where gambling is a part of the daily life? And yet Miss Booth tells us that one of the sweetest and best boys in her school comes from one of these homes. She says: "I am thankful to see how firmly Christian teaching is taking hold of these children. One boy told me about his going to worship the idols. I asked, 'Do you think it is right, Ah Huen?' 'No,' he replied, but my mother makes me do it.' There are homes where both mothers and children have so far accepted our teaching as to profess their belief that their religion is false and ours is true, and yet, even in these homes, during the New Year's holidays, we find altars erected, the gods set up, and the incense burning." But the work is begun, and we believe it will go on until the Christian chapel will replace the Joss-house.

Miss Booth thus refers to another trait of Chinese character, which is more than usually apparent during the holiday season.

"Of all people, these are the greatest ones I have known for theatre going. Every night every Chinese theatre is crowded with men, women, and children; rich and poor, high and low, good and bad mingling without respect to class or condition. There are in Chinatown two large Chinese theatres, and as if these were not enough during the New Year season, some Americans must set up another. Here throngs of Chinese spend their time and their money, and get such ideas of American people as do not go far toward impressing the truths taught by the missionaries. There is so little to help and so many things to hinder that it is no wonder that the Gospel makes but slow progress here. Do you think I am discouraged? No! a thousand times, no! I am only the more convinced of the need of Christian work among them, and the more determined to do all I can to dispel the darkness and lead them to Him who is the Light, the Life, the Way."

The

The Ninth Annual Meeting of the Woman's Ameri. can Baptist Home Mission Society was held in the First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I., beginning at 9:30 A. M., with a prayer and praise service, led by Mrs. M. H. Bixby. At 10 o'clock the business ses. sion was opened by the singing of the hymn Sover. eign of Worlds, Display Thy Power," followed by Scriptural readings by Mrs. Thomas Nickerson, of Newton Centre, Mass., the President of the Society, and prayer offered by Rev. T. Edwin Brown. hymn, Sing to the Lord, Ye Distant Lands," was sung, and then an address of welcome was made by Mrs. Samuel Richards, who said that twenty-six years ago there was formed the Woman's Missionary Soci ety of America for heathen women in foreign lands, the first organization for the work of women for From that organization there had been growths in every denomination, not only for work in the foreign lands, but in the home fields. There were no associations for the work of wome omen which reached so high and broad a plane of Christian endeavor as the missionary societies. They touched and thrilled the human soul and led those walking in darkened paths to enter into the light. Mrs. Richards then spoke of the rich fields of labor in the South, and of the abundant harvest which awaited the workers there.

woman.

The President returned thanks on behalf of the Society. The organization was already under deep obligations to the women of Providence, and now the members felt doubly thankful. Referring to the work of the coming year, she said that the Society could not

abate one atom of the work in the South.

The colored girls who had been taken from degraded homes had been educated, and were very anxious to enter the missionary fields of Africa. The Mexican fields were also to receive desired attention. That country was destined to be prominent in the near future, and the work should be pressed. Utah is pressing for attention. The school house in Salt Lake City had been burned down and the insurance money, $1,500, had been paid to the Society. It was doubtful whether another small wooden building would be put up, certainly not on the site of the old one, for the authorities had demanded that it should be of brick. The importance of the work there was great, and there should be no hesitancy in contributing to the fund for the school.

Mrs. Mary C. Reynolds, of Wallingford, Conn., the Corresponding Secretary, read an abstract of the ninth annual report, showing the work that had been done in the several fields, schools, and colleges, supported in whole or in part by this Society.

Mrs. Margaret McWhinnie, of Boston, the Treasurer, read her annual report. The receipts were $23,573 41; expenditures, $20,025.25; balance to new accounts, $3,548.14.

Miss Virginia Dox, a missionary and teacher among the Mormons, gave an interesting account of her educational work among the people of Oxford, Utah. When she arrived in that town there was not

a school in the place. At one time the Mormons had run what they called a school for a few weeks in each year, but it was so far from what it should be that it was closed. The missionary school was the first regularly organized institution of that kind in the town, and before it was opened the Mormons were warned by the Church not to send their children to it, but after it had been in operation a few weeks more than one-half of the children in the school came from Mormon families. This led the Mormons to see the inferiority of their school system, and they were now endeavoring to secure a better system of instruction.

Miss Dox was soon made a welcome guest in all the Mormon families, and as a result of what she saw could not condemn the believers in the faith of the Mormon Church; she pitied them all and deeply. | They were industrious and sober people, but they were bound by infatuation to the tenets of the Church, and would suffer even martyrdom for the cause they were so blindly supporting. Polygamy was causing much misery, yet some of the wives of the polygamists believed in the dual marriages, and said that they were happy in it because it was a part of their creed. So far as the children were concerned, she had no trouble in controlling them, making no rules, but trusting to their sense of honor. Under that system the school was a happy one for the three years she was in it. Her pupils ranged from a girl four years old to a man forty-five years of age. Several of them were cowboys, and from them she

One pupil

received the most courteous treatment. was a young mother with her babe in arms. When the school first opened every boy brought one dog, and some brought two; but rather than lose the pupils she kept both boys and dogs, and very fortunately she managed to maintain order with both boys and dogs. One other pupil was an uncouth, overgrown girl, eighteen years of age, who was noted as the best trainer of horses in that part of the country, in whose hands the wildest bronchos were speedily subdued. On Saturdays this girl spent her time in felling huge trees, and stripped them for the market. And yet that girl was influenced by the work of the school, and had developed into a kindhearted, intelligent woman.

Miss Dox, through a serious accident and sprained ankle, ascertained the true sympathy which dwelt in the hearts of those simple-minded people, and could truly say that while suffering from lameness, which prevented her from walking, she experienced happiness such as she had never felt before. In conclusion, she said that while there was not a Christian in that town when she entered it, there was now a regularly established school with two Christian teachers, a church edifice with a zealous pastor, and a congregation of worshipers at the foot of the Cross. Many Mormons are being converted, and many have become members of the Christian Church.

Mrs. S. A. D. Sheppard, of Boston, called the attention of the ladies to a most beautiful piece of needle-work, on which was laid in harmoniously blended colors and tones silk representations in stitch-work of flowers and leaves.

It was the work