air of this Sabbath day there came a sound that never before was heard in this most ancient city of America-the sound of a Christian church bell. It seemed to me that all the memories of the past came to my mind, as I kept the bell in motion: the long history of the Aztecs, with their pagan worship; the Spanish conquest, the tyranny and profligacy of the priests, the oppression and debasement of the people, and the dawning of the better day. College lessons, too, came back to me, and I could not help but repeat the lines as I swung the bell:

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

I came down from the tower and found a crowd awaiting me. I had prepared a liberal amount of spiritual ammunition in the way of tracts, and in a little while had distributed over a thousand.

At ten o'clock the bell was again rung, and at half-past ten we had our first service in the new school-room. I had long dreaded the change. The attempt to move a congregation at any time is, as you know, a matter to cause anxiety. And we are now in the worst season of the year-streets inun. dated every afternoon. The new church, too, is distant from many of the members. But our fears, for to-day at least, were groundless. At the morning service there were "steadily" present 110 persons, a goodly number coming and going, and a crowd outside the windows. At the afternoon service there were 115 persons, all the room could hold. These are the largest congregations the Baptists here have ever had. There were many Romanists, and I preached directly to them in the morning. They listened with interest. After service I distributed another five hundred tracts.

I think I told you in my last letter but one that I expected to baptize a promising young man, who might prove to be useful in our work. I baptized him last Sunday, the last baptism in the old place. Certainly the signs to-day are very cheering; the best I have ever seen.

AGUAS CALIENTES, MEXICO.

DEAR MONTHLY: Please allow a few lines about our mission work and especially in Aguas Calientes.

And first, as to the needs of the field. Well it is as needy as it can well be. The masses are extremely ignorant, though since public schools have been established quite a large per cent. have learned to read some, and we have a goodly number of papers pub

SO com

lished, but the masses of the people are too poor to take the papers, and they are too poor to buy the books and read them, and then they are pletely under the dominion of the priests that they don't dare read anything that would do them any real benefit. And they are taught to believe that Protestants are demons incarnate and that any thing they give the people is dangerous as poison. I gave a young man a New Testament one morning and he seemed glad to get it. He went away and was gone about twenty minutes, when he came back furious and said it was "Protestante," and he would tear it up. I said if he did not want it to hand it back. No, he said he would tear it up. And sure enough he went at it and did tear about half the leaves out and scattered them in the wind. I said he would have to answer to God for that insult to His word and to Him. He seemed somewhat affected by that and stopped tearing it and walked off with his head down, and I think he put the remainder of the Testament in his pocket. This is the only case that I have known of their destroying the Scriptures. But I have learned that they tear up our tracts some times. But still there are quite a number who are reading the Bibles and Testaments and tracts, but they are many of them afraid to have it known. Several desire to come to our meetings but they dare not, for fear their business will be taken from them. Some who have become Protestants have lost their employment and often come near starving. They often go hungry because they can't get work. We have learned what Paul meant by saying: "The poor saints at Jerusalem," when he was urging the Gentile churches to send them help. If it were not for this difficulty we could have our church or rather our little rooms crowded with willing hearers. And the only way we can see to overcome these difficulties is to live them down. Keep to work. Scatter our literature and overcome their prejudices. But it is a tedious process. And zealous souls often get discouraged. But still Christ's command "Preach the Gospel to every Mexican," stares us in the face, and we have to push

on.

And then the superstitious attachment of the people to their old idolatrous worship, with the con stant promises of the priests that these acts of worship will save them, stands like a mountain barrier to our progress. When we listen to their prayers, forty-six times asking "Mary Mother of God" to save them, and only asking Christ twelve times, in a single prayer, our hearts are sickened, and discouraged. We are sad as we pass the thousands of the deluded people, who think they are going to heaven in all their sins, and then at death and in eternity to be lost. Sometimes the thought almost overcomes me and I feel like sinking down in the streets. Then again I reflect that Gospel means are their only salvation. This stimulates me again to rally to the work. Pray on, preach on, circulate books and tracts day and night, this is the only hope for Mexico.

Tuesday night the exhibition of the Academic Department was largely attended and highly enjoyed. On Wednesday morning, June 22, at 9.30 o'clock, a good audience gathered to attend the Commencement exercises of the University. Year by year the interesting and encouraging results of the year's work have been highly appreciated, but those who have attended all the closing exercises could heartily say that this one surpassed, in points of excellence, all preceding. The eleven original productions showed superior natural abilities, well trained by study and wise instruction. President Bacone and his corps of efficient teachers, a better company than whom have never been associated in Christian work in this Territory, might well feel proud of the young people whom God in his providence had sent to them for instruction. Diplomas conferring the degree of Master and Mistress of the Sciences were awarded to the two who had completed the prescribed course of study, with earnest, wise, fatherly parting words of President Bacone-words of weight and influence because uttered by one whose earnest life-aim and purpose to help young men and young women to true, earnest, noble Christian living, are so well known. During the year, sixty-nine pupils have been in attendance. Of these, six have been preparing for the ministry, one of whom graduates. Four of these have been appointed by the Home Mission Society to work as missionaries among their people during the coming vacation. Thirteen, including one who graduated, have been preparing to teach. Several who graduated from this University in former years are engaged in preaching and teaching, thus realizing the desires and anticipations of the friends of this school. The report at the meeting of the Board of Trustees, of the financial condition of the University, was a cause for gratitude and thanksgiving. The year has closed without the shadow of indebtedness, showing that there has been wise and prudential management. On the whole, the prospects of Indian University were never so encouraging and promising of grand results as at the Commencement day of 1887. Each year places it higher in the esteem of the people of the Indian Territory and confirms convictions that it is a divinely directed power for great good.

Indian Territory.

ing Lords' day, four ministering brethren being present and participating. Brother Hicks is a Cherokee Indian, a graduate of Indian University, and subsequently, also, of Rochester Theological Seminary, New York. He is under appointment by the Home Mission Society as a missionary among the uncivilized tribes in the vicinity of the Wichita Agency, Ind. Ter. Brother Hicks goes to his work with many prayers and bright prospects of usefulness. It is gratifying to know that the Lord is raising up intelligent young men in our Indian churches and preparing them by proper intellectual and religious training to go forth and preach the everlasting truths of the gospel, and that these young men have a missionary spirit. Several now at Indian University are preparing for the ministry. Brother Hicks starts at once for his field of labor. As he spent a vacation two years ago at the Wichita Agency, he is not an entire stranger to the condition and needs of the field. He will join in work there with Rev. James Edwards, a Choctaw and Caddo Indian, who has been laboring for several months under appointment of the Baptist Territorial Convention for the Indian Territory. We shall look with much interest to the work at the Wichita Agency and vicinity. good, consecrated men, with God's blessing, may bring about as a result great changes among the Indians of the plains. May God's people remember these Christian workers in their prayers and give them their sympathy and aid.

Two

Catholicism Among the Colored People in

the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Rev. A. M. Newman, who has been our General Missionary in Louisiana, and who has had excellent opportunities for judging what Catholicism is doing among his people, favors us with the following:

We Protestants are overwhelmingly in the majority in Louisiana. But whoever reposes on this statement will be startled when he is aroused; for in certain localities Catholicism is deep-rooted and it works unceasingly. Its votaries are constantly taught that the Catholic is the great mother church and that there is no religion but hers. All professors save hers are heretics. The only way to be saved is through the Pope, the church, and the priest, and

forever. We have had this kind of doctrine hurled at us more than once. It is a very dangerous doctrine, because a person who really believes it is harder to be christianized than one who makes no profession of religion at all, and the more truly he believes the more sure he is to be destroyed.

one in every county seat, operating in every part of the county. The people, as a rule, are intelligent, wide-awake citizens, and ought to be supplied with active, pushing, and intelligent pastors; and I believe none others can succeed. Would that the funds were increased abundantly, so that missionaries might be secured to labor on this promising field.

Other denominations are doing aggressive work, and are endeavoring to occupy the important towns and cities here. Means are being used to build up churches; and often ministers and members of other churches use unfair, tricky means to persuade Baptists to unite with Pedobaptist churches. In some cases they succeed, in others they meet with ignoble deeat. Oftener the latter. I have met with several amusing cases where preachers of other names have been fairly caught in their own craftiness.

May God abundantly bless the American Baptist Home Mission Society, and supply it with all needed funds, and make it a greater blessing than heretofore, and speedily give to them "North America for Christ." -The committee of the Kansas State Board on cooperation with the colored people of the State, recommend such co-operation, and that one representative of the colored Baptists be made a member of the , Convention Board. There is a large number of colored churches in the State, and this proposed arrangement gives promise of much good.

MINNESOTA.-Rev. W. D. Athearn writes:

Our little church at Waseca, Minn., is doing good work, bettering its condition continually. It has wonderfully improved since 1884, when our good brother and much loved pastor, Rev. A. M. Torbet, came. Each year shows an advance. This last year our benevolent contributions have doubled. We hope to double them again the coming year. We have repaired our house of worship to the amount of over one hundred dollars. Other improvements are much needed, and we will attempt them as soon as possible.

We need very much a new communion service. Our present set is of pewter and saw its best days years ago. Any contribution that would secure to us this much needed service would be very gratefully

received.

NORTH DAKOTA-Rev. G. W. Huntley says: Immigration into this part of the Territory has been large this spring. New settlements have been made, new lines of railway have been commenced, and unfinished roads are being extended. On the Manitoba extension west, thousands of men and teams are employed, and five miles of track are being laid every twenty-four hours. The work goes on nights with the aid of electric lights. The increase of popu lation demands an increase of Christian work and workers. Our prayer to God and the Home Mission Society is, six more men for North Dakota. The few workers on the field are meeting with encouraging success. We have trials and triumphs. God has smiled upon our efforts in bringing souls to Christ.

We are here for that purpose. In our constant personal contact with the unsaved we are more and more impressed with the necessity of urging immediate repentance, and faith in Jesus by showing the sinner that he is on the brink of the grave and the border of hell, and his only hope is in a complete surrender to, and cordial acceptance of Christ as the only Saviour. The old, old Gospel wins the people. We need more to preach it to the scattered and perishing here. While we are planting new churches we are trying to bring all the churches already established into true organized thoroughly for effective work at home and giving to aid in the work in regions beyond. Houses of worship must be built here; we must have a place for the missionary to preach and for the people to hear the Gospel.

CHURCH EDIFICE NOTES.

Almost Safe.

The proposition of Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, to give $6,000 of the $12,000 necessary to secure the erection of thirty chapels in the West, on conditions that others would contribute the other $6,000 by September 1, has not yet been fully met. Mr. W. A. Cauldwell has kindly promised $2,000; Mr. H. K. Porter, $1,000; Mr. E. Nelson Blake, $1,000; Mr. S. A. Crozer, $500, and others smaller amounts, until now we lack only about $1,000 of having the $12,000 secured. These struggling churches in the West are awaiting with anxious expectation for the reply to their earnest petitions for help. With many of them it is almost a question of church life or death. With a little help they can secure a chapel and have prayer-meeting and Sabbath schools. Shall we be forced to say to these little churches, you must not expect help? We are almost safe, only about $1,000 lacking to secure $12,000 and thirty houses of worship. Who of the Master's servants will say to us, put me down on that thirty chapel movement? The time is short. The first of September will soon be here. What you do do quickly.

-Some of our mission churches are not willing to take all that they can get. We can point to the little church at Monrovia, California, as an example. A new town was springing up rapidly and the Baptists needed a house of worship but did not see the way to obtain it without outside help. They needed $300 more than they could raise, and our Church Edifice Department made an appropriation of that amount. On the day of dedication the little church made an extra effort and with much self-sacrifice paid the whole cost and returned the money to the Society to be used on some other needy field. All honor to the Baptist Band at Monrovia.

-Rev. C. W. Gregory, of East Los Angeles, California, writes: "God bless the Home Mission So