BAD MEN AS INDIAN AGENTS.

It affords us no pleasure, but rather sorrow, to record the fact that the Indian service at the agencies is far below the standard that formally prevailed when the government appointed men carefully nominated for agents. by the missionary organizations of the country. Politics have wrought no favorable changes in this respect. When it is remembered how great for good or evil is the influence of an agent upon the Indians with whom he is in constant contact, and what a

It is a disgrace to our government that such unfit agents should be appointed. If half that is told is true, this is far from being an exceptional case.

help and a hinderance he can be to religious efforts in their behalf, the importance of pointing proper men can hardly be overestimated. We are led to make these observations by the perusal of a letter at hand from one of our missionaries who has the religious oversight of our work at one of these Reservations. He says:

"It seems as though the devil has taken this people captive. Aside from their own low native condition and tendencies, they have the influence and example of the whites to help them on in their downward course. Even at the Reservation, the agent, or head man is a professional gambler, and I am not sure but that every man on the ground, holding office, is a gambler or at least a drinker. These men often come to town and spend their time drinking and gambling. The saloon is their place of resort. This is the example of their teachers. The Sabbath is not regarded here. It would be difficult for me to give you any idea of it.

"The question is, what are you going to teach the poor Indian about keeping the Sabbath and cheating one another, in the midst of all this? Gambling with them is regarded as honorable as working, and it is hardly possible to convict them of any wrong doing in that direction. They don't understand you when you intimate that there is anything wrong in it. Both men and women gamble, and they do it in plain sight of everybody, as a matter of course. It makes my heart sick when I try to teach them anything about morals."

NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION.

Is it really needed? Many think so. We are free to say that we have regarded the matter as one concerning which much misinformation has been published. The school system of the South has been improved wonderfully in the past decade, and there is reason to expect greater progress in the next decade.

There are indeed more illiterates in the South in proportion to population than in the North, but it should be remembered that in these is included a large number of elderly persons, formerly slaves, who will never learn to read though Congress were to spend millions to do away with illiteracy. Deducting these, the disparity between the North and the South, in respect to illiteracy is not so alarming as advocates of this measure would make it appear by their figures. Legislators should hesitate before voting seventy-seven millions for such a pur pose. Let the States which are growing in wealth attend to this, their own proper concern.

The Brooklyn Eagle has compiled facts on this subject which are worthy of consideration and which go far to show that such an appropriation should not be made. It says:

"Texas is the largest and most thinly settled State in the Union, Florida alone excepted. Texas has six inhabitants to the square mile, and Florida five. A comparison of New Hampshire,

one of the oldest States, with Texas, one of the youngest, shows that the percentage of children of a school age enrolled in the free schools of Texas is seventy-nine, while in New Hampshire it is sixty-four. In the New England State the population is thirty-eight to the square mile. In both States the length of the school year is the same--100 days. The cost per capita of educating a child in New Hampshire is $9.63 yearly, and in Texas $6.78. The Northern State would therefore appear to have a stronger claim upon the benevolence of Congress than the Southern State, and yet Senator Blair insists that illiteracy in the South is as bad to-day as just after the war.

"These are all reliable data to be found in public records, and they seriously weaken the position taken by Senator Blair in defiance of the advice of his fellow Senators from the South and contrary to their convictions. True there were 4,715,395 illiterate persons over ten years of age in the sixteen old slave States in 1880, but more than two-thirds of that number were hopelessly so, because exactly that proportion were too old to attend school. The total number of adult illiterates of both races in those States in 1880 was nearly 3,000,000. The entire national surplus might be appropriated to educate them, but in vain. Subtract 2,961, 371 from 4,715,395 and the remainder is 1,754, 024, which was the number of illiterates between the ages of ten and twenty-one years at the time the last census was taken. It is not reasonable to suppose that the number of illiterates in the South to day is even approximately as great as it was seven years ago.

MISSIONARY DEPARTMENT.

Of its material resources I need not speak, though these, as the basis of population and prophecy of the future, are most vitally related to our mission work. Our religious force is represented approximately by 446 pastors, of whom at least 130 are missionaries of the Society, and 920 churches reporting a membership of 43,360. Of these 920 churches nearly two-thirds have no abiding habitation, and a large proportion have no regular services and no pastoral oversight. When Jesus was upon earth, as He saw the multitudes that gathered about him He was moved with compassion. He could find no fitter emblems of their spirual condition than "Sheep without a shepherd," a plenteous harvest with few to gather it. Such is the picture ever before our eyes as we cross the Missouri River and journey westward.

Let me call your attention to the complex character of our work. It has three departments, distinct somewhat, but so closely related that each is indispensable to the others and to the progress, of our work. The first aim is to gather the scattered believers into Gospel churches, which shall be centres of life and light. These churches must be supplied with ministers who shall combine the work of pastor and evangelist. We seek to evangelize the people through the ministry of the Word and the influences of the church.

But the church and pastor together, without a house of worship, can accomplish but little. What the thumb is to the hand the meetinghouse is to the Gospel church. It completes the grasp. In the years past we have frittered away thousands upon thousands of dollars in sustaining missionaries where there were no houses of worship and none in prospect. The church edifice work of the Society is the right arm of its missionary work.

But in the building up of the kingdom of

OF THE WEST.

Address of Rev. H. C. Woods, D.D., Supt. of

Missions at Washington, D. C.

I have been requested to speak upon the condition and necessities of our work in the West, especially in the district in which I have served the Society as Superintendent of Missions during the last year. That district includes Kansas, Nebraska, Southern Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. It covers an area of 557,800 square miles in the very heart of the continent.

Christian school is an essential factor. This, to you of the East, may seem to be a side issue. It is not so, either theoretically or practically, in the policy of other denominations or in the judgment of their wisest men. Unless we would discount our future as a denomination we must not remand it to the rear. Pressed by considerations which they cannot resist without disloyalty to Christ, our people in the newer States, and even in the Territories, are moving, at great personal sacrifice, in the establishment of Christian schools of higher grade.

ual darkness is denser. No cities in the land present finer opportunities for aggressive mission work than Denver and Pueblo.

In New Mexico, scarcely less pagan than Old Mexico, shrouded in a darkness almost as dense, we have but three missionaries, recently appointed, where we should have a score, and one house of worship where we need twenty. Wyoming Territory seems to have been almost forgotten in our counsels, but her time has come at last, and her "Macedonian cry" must be heard. The Territory obviously stands upon the threshold of a grand development that will attract the attention of the whole country.

In the judgment of many, Wyoming is to be the "land of promise" for the coming year. A generous portion of its area yields harvests without irrigation. Its pasture lands rival those of Gilead, Bashan and Midian on the east of Jordan. But its mineral resources constitute its untold and undeveloped wealth. Its supply of coal is practically unlimited; its oil fields are the richest in the world; its soda deposits can only be roughly estimated. One group of deposits covering an area of 56 acres, located near Laramie City by Government surveys, is estimated to contain 50,000,000 cubic feet of pure, solid, crystallized sulphate of soda. There are other soda lakes that cover nearly 1,000 acres, and have a supply of bicarbonate of soda rated as high as 10,000,000 tons. In the more precious metals the Territory promises to rank with any of her sister States and Territories.

But

A territory with such unlimited resources has been so long arrested in its development, simply because its area of 100,000 square miles has been crossed by only one railway, and that running within 40 miles of the southern boundary. Its population does not exceed 90,000. three great railway systems are now pushing their lines into the territory to compete for its trade. Capitalists are organizing for the development of its resources. Immigration is already swelling its population. Many centers are even now created where mission stations should at once be planted. In the whole territory we have but three churches, with a total membership of 200. In aggressive mission work we are doing nothing. The most piteous appeals have come to me from these new towns where golden harvests are wasting. The hour for Wyoming has struck. We want at least a dozen men for that field, and help to build

houses of worship wherever we are organizing churches.

One of the most notable events of the year in its bearing upon mission work is the opening of the Indian Reservations. The three bills which have virtually passed both Houses of Congress will add to the public domain and open to settlement some 32,000,000 acres of land. This land lies in Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and Nebraska. The great Sioux Reservation in Dakota comprises some 22,000, ooo acres. The opening of this Reservation is an event of momentous interest to Dakota. It places at the disposal of actual settlers some 12,000,000 acres of land. It permits and ensures the extension of railways westward to the Black Hills, and opens communication with the 60,ooo people of that section. It brings to the people of Dakota a supply of coal, lumber, salt, petroleum and other products which they sorely need. Already the towns along the Missouri river began to feel the thrill of a new life. A vast immigration is sure to set in as soon as these bills become operative. The time has obviously come for a great advance in our mission work in this section of the country. We have churches along the Missouri river at Chamberlain, Pierre and other places, but not a single pastor. In the Black Hills district, we have but one missionary to work among its fifty towns and cities.

I can not say that the field which I have so hastily reviewed is more urgent in its needs than those that lie still farther West. But in view of the exigencies of the case in all the West there is but one word to define the true policy of the coming year, but one that has the ring of true loyalty to Christ, and that word is "enlargement."

It is told that Michael Angelo on examining the work of one of his students took his pencil and wrote the one word "Amplius." As I look out upon these fields already white unto harvest I cannot refrain from writing the word "Amplius" upon our home mission work.

Let us consider a moment the means at our command for the prosecution of this ever enlarging work. Simple justice requires that a word should be said in respect to the resources of the West. The visit of our Eastern brethren last year to Minneapolis was a revelation to them. The West has been a more substantial reality ever since. Not a few, as we have reason to suspect, from what they saw, have drawn the inference that the West is "rich and in