Quite a number of subscribers to the MONTHLY are in arrears for one and two years. It is hoped that all such will remit promptly and renew their subscriptions for the ensuing year. These amounts are needed to make the MONTHLY self-supporting. Please remit. Through the kindness and generosity of a friend of the Society, we are again permitted to send the MONTHLY gratuitously for a few months to a considerable number whose names are not on our subscription list. Those who receive it are asked to peruse it carefully and are invited to become subscribers. We cannot continue to send the MONTHLY free to the same persons, year after year. It is published at cost, and fifty cents per year for the MONTHLY will be found a good invest ment. During the present year the ecclesiastical record in the MONTHLY gives the names of 391 ministers ordained, 241 churches organized, and 227 church edifices dedicated. No corresponding list of these matters is found in any other Baptist journal. In the Minnesota Report on Systematic Beneficence, the list of objects for which contributions are to be made, can be adapted to In this any locality with slight changes. connection we desire to call special attention to the contribution for church edifice work. In the list is mentioned, " For church edifices in Minnesota." With their growing fields needing new houses of worship, Minnesota Baptists require in their State not only what they can raise, but help from abroad. The same is true of other western States and Territories. In each of these Mission States a similar item should be included in the list. In the older States, churches which adopt this plan should insert the words "For church edifice work in the West." This department. of the Society's work is mainly dependent upon designated contributions. For this there should be given every year not less than $50,000. Will our friends who adopt this plan bear in mind these suggestions? Rev. Fred. T. Gates, of Minneapolis, author of the report, will send it in quantities. to all persons outside of Minnesota at net cost, viz., fifty cents per hundred copies. Send also twenty cents per hundred copies for postage. The Board of the Convention has provided for free distribution in the State of Minnesota. Proportionate giving should have reference not only to the proportion of one's income, but also the proportion that should be given praise. His visit to the East has won for him many friends. It is delightful to meet one so advanced in years who still keeps" in the harness," and knows how to grow old gracefully. to the various objects for which contributions denial in this enterprise are worthy of all are asked. Good judgment and intelligence need to be exercised in this matter. The amount required to properly conduct a missionary enterprise ought to be considered, and its relative claims be ascertained. Mere feeling or impulse should not be permitted to decide this matter. In determining what should be given to the three-fold work of Society-missions, education, and church edifice-our friends are asked first to consider its magnitude and importance, and then give accordingly. The Society has emphatically stated that a full half million is required this year to properly carry forward its enterprises. This is no exaggeration whatever. Let it be borne in mind and let the gifts be made in proportion to these claims. Rev. G. W. Dallas, who writes about "Freedmen among the Choctaw Indians," and who, at much sacrifice, and in the face of many obstacles, has maintained a school at Kulli Inla, while doing missionary work, was formerly a student at Wayland Seminary. From the same institution came Miss Mary A. Rounds, assistant teacher in the school at Kulli Inla. Mr. Dallas devotes considerable attention, also, to school work. They are greatly needed among that people, whose unfortunate condition is depicted by Brother Dallas. The need of missionary work is even greater than that of educational privileges. FIELD NOTES: WESTERN CONVEN- BY REV. WM. M. HAIGH, D.D., SUP'T MISSIONS. One of the most cheering features of the recent Conventions in Wisconsin and Minnesota was the goodly number of fine looking, intelligent, earnest young pastors who have within a year or two settled in these States. Morgan Park, Rochester, Hamilton, Crozer, and Newton were all represented by men who will evidently make their mark on the religious future of these great commonwealths. Wisconsin is fast coming to the front in mission work. In spite of her enormous hindrances, she is moving on with quickened step. Even Minnesota is reaping the fruits of her care for many years in inducing the attendance of her business men and their wives at the State Con ready to take the laboring oar. Two years ago the endowment of the Pillsbury Academy was presented, and because the business men were there, the endowment was provided at once. This year "systematic beneficence" was the topic, and it was cheering, indeed, to hear from Rev. J. E. Ambrose, of La Grange, Ill., is vention. Now, when important measures are one of the very few surviving pioneer mission-introduced and discussed, her laymen stand aries who went to the far West over fifty years ago under appointment by the Society. His reminiscences in this number of the MONTHLY will be found interesting reading. Though now in his seventy-seventh year, he is in excellent health, with his faculties comparatively unimpaired and still hard at work in the ministry. Indeed, the missionary spirit in seeking to honor him with their substance. "It him burns as brightly as ever, as shown in makes one feel," they said, “as if God were a his consecration to the work of establishing partner in our business, leading us to seek His a church at La Grange, and securing for them guidance, and look for His blessing." In this a house of worship. His devotion and self-high sense, truly "work is worship." one and another how God had blessed them in business while for many years they had been By all means encourage the attendance of business men at associations and conventions. The Iowa Convention was one long to be remembered. In view of more than one difficult and delicate problem to be solved, the brethren came together with much solicitude, but also with much prayer. The first service was marked by the manifest presence of God, and each successive session witnessed a deeper devotion and a closer unity. The vexed questions seemed almost to settle themselves; the deficiency in the treasury was more than provided for, and the closing prayer meeting which continued until near midnight, and in which the Convention was literally "on its knees," was one earnest and prolonged yearning for a visitation from on high on all the pastors and churches of the State. It is a pity that Herbert Spencer did not visit the West before giving utterance to his fears about the physical exhaustion of the American people. If he could but have gone the rounds of these Baptist conventions in Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska and looked on these Baptist hosts, not a whit behind the East in their intelligence and absorbing activity, but with also the stalwart forms, and vigorous physique, which he complained he did not see; and if he had but listened to "All hail the power of Jesus' name," as sung by the Nebraska brethren at their late meeting at York, he would certainly have revised his judgments, or at least have postponed their publication to some future and unknown day. After bequeathing $200,000 to his family, and giving $5,000 to Smith College, and $1,000 to the village library, the late ex-Gov., William B. Washburn, divided the residue of his estate-the whole property being estimated at from $300,000 to $500,000-between the American Board, the Home Missionary Society of New York, and the American Missionary Association. The great debt of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions has been removed. Its receipts for the year were $730,000, or $35,000 more than last year; $248,000 was from the Women's Boards. The Los Angeles Express announces that Mr. D. Freeman has given the princely sum of $600,000 to the University of California for the establishment of a branch of the University. Other large endowments have recently been made, bringing the total up to $3,500,000, with still others in prospect. A School of Art and a Female College will form a part of the institution. At his death the late Samuel Ensworth left an endowment fund of over $150,000 to build and maintain a medical college and hospital, to be called the Ensworth Medical College and Hospital, at St. John, Mo. The grounds have already been purchased for a hospital. It will be erected and opened this winter. The hospital will have a capacity for 1,000 patients, and will be erected at a cost of $60,000. Miss Charlotte Austin, of Cairo, Green County, N. Y., who recently died, bequeathed $20,000 to the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, $5,000 to the Oak Hill Protestant Episcopal Church, and $40,000 to the Foreign and Domestic Missions of the Protestant Episcopal church. Rev. Hiram Gee, of Ithaca, N. Y., gives to Syracuse University $30,000 for the establishment of a lectureship of social ethics. NOIS Anne W. Ryeress, of Philadelphia, Pa., left PIONEER REMINISCENCES OF ILLI$75,000 to charitable purposes; $10,000 to the Home for Aged Colored Persons; $30,000 for a hospital for ill and aged animals; $10,000 for Indian work; $5,000 for the Freedmen; $5,000 to the Indian School at Carlisle, etc. Denison University, at Granville, Ohio, receives $30,000 from Mrs. Monroe, of Cleveland, this amount being the patrimony of her deceased daughter, whose expressed wish was that it should be sent to assist ministerial students in obtaining suitable education for the work of the ministry. The Clark University, the corner-stone of which was laid at Worcester, Mass., October 22, will begin with a financial foundation of unparalleled strength. Mr. Clarke devotes money as follows: For construction and equipment..... $300,000 For general endowment... Total..... $2,000,000 The last item is conditioned upon the raising of as much more for the same purpose by others. These gifts exhaust less than one-fifth of the generous donor's wealth, and as he has no children, it is not unlikely that the $2,000,000 given will prove but a beginning of his donations to this chosen project of his life. BY REV. J. E. AMBROSE, LA GRANGE, ILL. In the spring of 1834 I received an appointment from the American Baptist Home Mission Society as missionary to labor in Cook County, Ill. My salary was to be $250 a year, with an outfit of $50 to get self and wife to the field. From my salary I was to deduct what I received on the field. I left Rochester, this State, in May, took a packetboat on the canal to Buffalo. At this place we went on board a steamer for Detroit. As a matter of economy my wife and myself took deck-passage. We had saved out some quilts; with these we made our bed on some boxes for the night. At Detroit the sick| ness of my wife detained us ten days. While 100,000 detained a Brother Whitman, merchant from 600,000 the western part of Michigan, came to Detroit 500,000 after goods. He offered to take us in his 500,000 two-horse wagon to the vicinity of Niles, without charge. We accepted the offer. Our seat was a board across the wagon box, with a buffalo skin for a cushion. A dry goods box in the rear formed the back against which we leaned. Michigan was then a territory, and corduroy bridges were frequent and long. Mosquitoes were in clouds, and had long and very sharp bills. They were not slow in making the acquaintance of strangers. The shaking ague looked out from every swamp and piece of marshy ground, saying to new comers: "I will visit you soon." It took us about eight days to reach Whitmanville. Here we rested nearly two weeks. Then we were taken to Niles, and there we took a small steamer to St. Joseph on the lake. A fearful storm was on the lake, which detained us at a hotel two days. At the close of the storm we went on board the steamer Enterprize; and on the 19th day of June we landed at Chicago, anchoring in the lake. Eld. Allen B. Freeman, who had preceded me about six months, with a Baptist brother from New Hampshire, came in a small boat to the steamer and took us in to the land. Dr. T. Temple was at the shore with his carriage to take us to the house of Brother Freeman, the pastor of the first Baptist church of Chicago. This was on Thursday, and the next week on Thursday my wife was taken sick, and on the 12th day of July, with a few loving friends, we Ebenezer Weld, of Jamaica Plain, Mass., wills $35,000 in three equal parts to the American Baptist Home Mission Society. The Missionary Union, and Rev. G. W. Samson, of New York, for his Bible school work, or in case of the latter's death, to the Home Mission Society for the benefit of Roger Williams University. "He who would leave aught that shall be permanent behind him, must connect his name and work with the moral history of man. When the Christian men of wealth shall learn this truth, when they shall learn that by so much as they relieve their children from the necessity of labor, they put the strongest motives before them to become useless to society, all the wants of good learning will be cheerfully met. The questions they will be most ready to ask will be: 'How can I so invest my surplus wealth that I may best serve my day and generation ?'" PRES. M. B. ANDERSON. |