and Puerto Principe. These needs are urgent and imperative. God grant that they may be supplied at once.

The Republic of Mexico.

BY REV. W. H. SLOAN.

The greatest mission field outside of the United States, under the care of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, is the Republic of Mexico. Of vast extent, diversified climate, unlimited natural resources, and occupied by interesting races of people in need of a pure Gospel, Mexico cannot be omitted from the list of lands to which the message of salvation should be sent. If Mexico is

not to share proportionately in the gifts of Northern Baptists for Home Missions, the Society that places on its banner "North America for Christ" had better erase that motto.

MODERN MEXICO.

The modern history of Mexico is very brief, only about forty years old. She was really born in 1857, when the Reform Laws were enacted, and the new constitution adopted. All previous to that date is medieval absolutism, revolution, idolatry, priestcraft and ecclesiastical tyranny. If the masses of the people are ignorant and depraved, enervated by a religious system that has permitted the sexes to live together in unrestrained intercourse, to gain their living by their wits or by gambling, still, if they are visited and studied, they will be found worthy of much respect, confidence and love. Because lying, drunkenness, theft and impurity are common, is that any reason why the Gospel should not be given them? Rather let us say, these emphasize the need of a religion that will mold the nation into a life more in accord with the teachings of Christ's Gospel.

Mexico is our neighbor, once despoiled by us, waxing into strength and power, penetrated with new ideas and ambitions, and anxious to take her place among the principal nations of the earth. She has now a stable government, good president, wise laws, and a people as energetic and progressive as any other of the Latin races, and equal to any other in the Western Hemisphere, unless it be those of Saxon descent:

In this country, Romanism has been not only the foe of republican institutions, but of the education of the people and of their best religious development. Mexico should have a new faith taught her in this dawning era of a new life. Foreign capital, foreign

brains, foreign enterprise are creating a new Mexico out of the old. Why should not the Word of God be given to it by the country whose own history has been so glorious by the interpenetrating influence of that Word, and which is under the greatest obligation of all countries to evangelize this, her sister, so long helpless and down-trodden?

The future of the Mexican Republic. It is bound to share in the prosperity of the whole North American continent. It is planning railways over the Isthmus into South America; it is arranging for a steamship line to Canada, having already several to other countries. The material progress of the country, supplemented by the preachreligious papers and tracts, has caused an ing of the Gospel and the multiplication of

evolution in social conditions in Mexico that would otherwise have taken many years to accomplish. The inhabitants are being influenced by the new views and fresh display of energy. In the last twenty years, Mexican civilization has made greater strides forward from a social point of view than was the case in the whole period since the country became independent of Spanish rule. The influence of railroad communication with the United States has been a powerful factor in bringing about this result, and it will greatly supplement the work of Christian missionaries in the future by bringing the Mexican people in contact with the progressive ideas of their Northern neighbors. There is not a section of the country that is not feeling the throbs of the new life; the city of Aguascalientes has become a great smelting center; Monterey is the Chicago of the country; Guadalajara, over on the West side, will soon be in touch with the Pacific Ocean; the State of Guerrero is becoming filled with new activities; Oaxaca is coming into prominence as a mineral section; Tabasco is a rich field for new investments, and many Americans are making their home there; the termini of the Tehuantepec Railroad are to become great ports. From the Rio Grande to the Isthmus, from the Gulf to the Pacific, the country shows signs of healthy progress. Capitalists are coming to Mexico, and are making of it a new India, with the added advantage of having an enormous market just across its northern border. There is no "boom,” but a continual advance set in some years ago that shows no sign of cessation. The next twenty-five years will witness marvelous changes in this country. Once the spirit of progress touches the mass of the Indian population, an immense change will occur, the Gospel is bound to be hailed

as a harbinger of better things; and it will be a change for the better in every sense of the word, in spite of the feeling of antagonism that such a prospect arouses in the minds of that part of the inhabitants that now constitutes the oligarchic element.

The people and their needs. Fourteen million of deluded souls, whose idea of religion is barbaric glitter, pompous forms and ceremonial ritual, destitute alike of Christian power and saving grace. The people know little of Christ as a Saviour; the Virgin Mary and the saints are their intercessors; the Bible is blasphemed; the most exalted object of adoration is the ancient goddess of Mexico, Tonantzin, now called the Virgin of Guadalupe. They worship pictures and images with all the blind idolatry of the Hindoos. The Lord's day is for everything except Christian worship and service. On that day, drunkenness among the lower classes is rife, and reverence for sacred things is banished. The sacraments of the church, pardon of sin, release from purgatory, have their prices attached. Souls are raffled out of purgatory. The habitual disregard among the poorer classes of the marriage relation is perhaps the most notable feature, and the most pervasive evil, in the society of Mexico. A leading Mexican paper publishes statistics to show that more than one-half the children born in the city of Mexico are illegitimate. The Church of Rome is in constant conflict with the government over the establishment by the latter of public schools; gambling tables, raffle schemes and other modes of getting the people's money are set up in front of the doorways of the churches; mendicancy, in the most hideous and disgusting forms, throngs the streets, and the cruel yoke of the papal church presses with galling bondage upon the necks of the inhabitants of this beautiful land. Is there no help for a people so oppressed?

ACCOMPLISHED RESULTS.

The good accomplished by Protestant missions. We have not space for statistics. They would not tell all of it if we had. There are fifty thousand adherents of evangelical churches, who are gradually leavening for good the society about them. A new moral era has dawned upon Mexico, since the coming of the first Baptist preacher in 1862. It is often urged that Baptist missions here have been a failure. They have not been a failure. Far from it. Many foreign Baptist missions have been of as slow growth as this, and they were not on papal fields, notoriously the hard

est in the world. Then we have had the vast landed estates arrayed against us, the ignorance of the common people, and the raceprejudice against Americans. When the rich, the fashionable, the ignorant, the prejudiced and the bigoted, to say nothing of the opposition raised by some other Protestant denominations, are all to be faced, the progress of the work is bound to be slow. The Baptists have not kept pace with some others. Why? Their missionaries are as able and as devoted. Why have they been outstripped by the Northern and the Southern Methodists, by the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists? For the same reason that they have lost ground on other fields. Because their missionaries have not been sustained by Northern Baptists as they should have been.

Other denominations supplemented the preaching of the Gospel with schools for the children, training establishments for a native ministry, and church edifices in which light, air, comfort and permanency are found. When a Baptist missionary is compelled to preach in a damp, dark, ill-ventilated little room, with no human helper but an ill-taught boy, and with no school privileges for the children of his converts, and a Methodist builds an attractive chapel close beside him, establishes a training school for young men and women, puts four or five well-educated professors in it, and opens a series of schools for children, all placed in fine buildings, what can be the result? What is nearly always the result? These things have been done over and over again in Mexico, until it is a wonder that Baptists survive at all. The writer of this article is the only Northern Baptist sent by Northern Baptists to any foreign papal field in the world. One man to represent the entire Baptist brotherhood of the Northern States! How can Baptist missions in Mexico be considered a remarkable success when so little interest is shown in them by the denomination? Give us men, give us church-buildings in the principal. cities and towns, give us money for the pushing of the work into new fields, and establishing it better on the old fields, give us an educated Mexican ministry, give us good primary schools, and our missions will be equal to the best. We believe in prayer down here, and in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, but we have found that these will not be as effective as they might be, so long as our brethren of the North fail to do their duty.

City of Mexico.

Mass.

The delightful city of Springfield, Mass., has been selected as the place of meeting of our denominational anniversaries this year.

The Highland Baptist Church extended the invitation, but all the Baptist churches of the city unite in helping entertain this great annual gathering.

Springfield has the reputation of being the finest in all the country, appropriately called the "City of Homes," with unusually good hotel accommodations. In addition to the hotel facilities, the local entertainment committee is arranging for a large number of rooms in private families where excellent accommodations will be provided ranging in price from 75c. to $1 for lodging and breakfast.

Hotels, American plan:

Cooley House, $2 and upward; Hotel Russell, $2 and upward; Haynes Hotel, $2 and up; Hotel Gilmore, $2; Chandler's Hotel, $1.50 and up; American House, $1; Raymond Hotel, $1; Hotel Rowland, $1.

European plan:

The Highland, 75c. and $1; The Worthy, $1 and $1.50.

Those desiring to stop at a hotel will please address one of the hotels direct and arrange for accommodation. Those desiring to stop in private families will please address M. A. Maynard, Springfield, Mass., and he will make an assignment at once and notify you of the name and street and number so that you may go direct to your Springfield home upon reaching the city.

Work Among the Swedes-Seven Cogent

Reasons.

BY REV. A. P. EKMAN.

Being requested to give some reasons why the American Baptist Home Mission Society should maintain and enlarge its missionary work among the Swedes, and being limited to three hundred words, I shall go straight to the point and enumerate the following:

1. The souls of the Swedish people are as precious and as needy of salvation as those of any other people.

2. The records show that they have for some time been most ready to receive the pure gospel as preached by the Baptists.

3. It is well known that the ingathering would have been far greater in various parts of the country if laborers could have been sent there at the proper time.

4. The Swedes have proved themselves to be loyal Baptists when they become such, and as far as their means allow have generally been ready to co-operate with their American brethren, and become regular contributors to the great missionary enterprises of the denomination.

5. If the Home Mission Society should discontinue this work now, it would leave one of the best worked and most fruitful fields among the nationalities to other denominations who would be only too glad of an opportunity to enter in and gather that which they had not planted.

6. If the Home Mission Society does not maintain the work, the Swedish churches would feel in duty bound to carry it on as best they could, but in so doing they would need to concentrate all their resources for that one purpose, which would tend to isolate them from the larger missionary enterprises of the denomination as a whole, which would perhaps, saying the least, in the end, prove a doubtful experiment.

7. It has long been evident to this humble scribe, that if sufficient means could be had to extend the work according to present opportunities the results could be increased one-fourth annually above what they now are.

The Home Mission Society is doing nobly not only in promoting the Lord's work, but also in preserving the unity and integrity of the denomination, and our prayer to God is that it may be able to continue to do so until He comes.

"I give and bequeath to the American Baptist Home Mission Society, formed in New York in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-two, the sum of for the general purposes of said Society."

BY LEOPOLD COHN, MISSIONARY. The Lord is continuing to bless the preaching of His Word to my Jewish brethren. Since I wrote you last, five converts-four men and one Jewess-have been baptized. The Rev. W. C. P. Rhoades, D.D., pastor of Marcy Avenue Baptist Church, administered baptism to three of them, while the fourth was immersed at the Bleecker Street Mission, New York, and the fifth confessed Jesus as Lord in baptism at the Gospel Hai, Jersey City.

Let me very briefly tell you a little about each of these dear converts. One is a young man of eighteen years of age, and when he heard me preach Christ to the Jews at the Mariner's Temple, he became very mad. To put it in his own words, he said to me and others. "I felt like tearing him in pieces." It was for the first time in his life that he heard about the Crucified One to be the Son of God. But the Lord Jesus cast the devil out of him, and he not only continued coming to the meetings, but also took some of my tracts and the New Testament in Hebrew. At last, he decidedly accepted him whom he once hated so much. I told him to be baptized wherever he could, and so he was at the Bleecker Street Mission.

Next, is a young man of twenty-three years, highly educated in Hebrew literature. At first he heard about the Lord Jesus in our meetings at Brownsville. Many times he

argued with me in a most elaborate way, thinking to bring me down. But the Lord Jesus gained the victory. The young man finally came once to my house and humbly confessed that he was convinced that the Lord Jesus is the promised Messiah.

Next, is a man of twenty-seven years of age, who studied in Russia for the rabbinical office. He came in to one of my meetings at 13 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn, about a year ago, and became so much interested that he has ever since been attending those meetings. He gave a remarkable testimony to a large audience of Jews in my meeting. A large number of Jews esteem him very much because of his learning and good character. His wife, too, believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, but has not the courage to be baptized. Their parents are greatly chagrined over their conversion, especially over his baptism.

Next, is a Jewess, a mother of six children, all of whom, as well as their father, have been believers in the Lord Jesus Christ for the last three years. They live in Brownsville, and have suffered terrible persecution because of their adherence to the mission, and because they spoke a word for Christ whenever they found an opportunity. Now, only the mother had the boldness to be baptized. I hope that her husband and some of her children will soon follow her example.

Next and last, is a most highly educated Jew, a descendant of one of the most aristocratic Jewish families in my country, Austria -I mean that part of Austria where I lived. Some four years ago, this brother came in to a meeting in the Brownsville Mission, with an idea that he, with his great learning, could easily show that ignorant missionary that he did not know what he was talking about.

There was a hot time in that meeting, but the Lord enabled me to meet all his difficulties. In a few months this learned son of Abraham began to confess Christ to the Jews in Brownsville. Bitter persecution was the result, and he disappeared. I did not know of him until eight months ago, when he came to see me. I spoke with him about baptism, and last week he came to my house and told me that he was baptized in Jersey City. If there were means to employ this brother, he would be, I believe, a great power in His hand. He also told me that he hopes his wife will soon follow him in baptism.

Let us continue to labor and pray for the conversion of this people who are so dear to the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it is evident both in the Old and New Testament. LEOPOLD COHN.

Work Among Italians.

I am very glad to inform you that our Italian Mission of Newark, N. J., is going on very nicely. The Sunday-school is progressing rapidly; every Sunday we have new scholars and I am sure that the time is not far when the Mission rooms will be too small to accommodate all the children that will come.

We thank the Lord for having given us a faithful and earnest superintendent, Mr. W. W. Hoagland, who is a licentiate of the Fifth Baptist Church of this city.

The preaching services are well attended and two weeks ago I baptized two women and a man.

It is not long ago since the young people of our Mission formed a society of Christian Endeavor, which meets at 4.30 p.m. every Sunday and is attended by twenty to thirty.

Though we have a total membership of forty baptized believers, yet only half of them reside in Newark; the rest were obliged to leave the city on account of work.

The Italian Mission had great need of a Bible reader who could go among the women and read to them, in their own language, the Word of Eternal life. We thank God that He has granted our request.

The Italian brethren, notwithstanding that the majority are without work, subscribed sixty dollars toward the support of such a worker, and the American women of this city willing to "help those who try to help themselves" have given us a helping hand on this matter, so Mrs. Cristina Parente has been appointed for this kind of work.

As in our Mission we have adopted a motto, "GI' Italiani a Cristo," we are using all means to bring them "to Christ."

In fact, in the neighborhood of our chapel, there are several thousands of these people and a great number of them are boarding in the big tenement houses with from four to fifteen people in each family. Of course they do not have a comfortable home where they could spend the evening and restore themselves after a day of hard work, so we have opened a reading room for them where they can come and read sound literature, in both languages, for their moral and spiritual welfare.

The Italian Sunday School of Orange, N. J., of which Rev. Alex. Turnbull is superintendent, notwithstanding the Satanic. persecutions which it has to endure, is quite well attended and those who come there learn more and more that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." In fact, the Sun