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1896.] 8.-8. MISSIONS AMONG MEXICANS IN COLORADO-IN WEST VIRGINIA.

SABBATH-SCHOOL MISSIONS

AMONG THE MEXICANS IN

COLORADO.

Rev. C. K. Powell, our Synodical Missionary in Colorado, writing from San Juan, Colo., says:

I am convinced that the best way for us to do work among the Mexicans is by supplying the Mexican Home Mission Evangelists with literature and letting them do the work. Whenever a mission school is opened a Sabbath-school is always started too, and a preaching point established. Last Saturday, Rev. Mr. Sanchez and I went to La Luz, where I visited the Mexican school, and through an interpreter preached on Sunday. We were met by a deputation of Mexican Roman Catholics, who proceeded to ask for the establishment of a Mexican school in their midst, knowing that it meant excommunication and persecution by the priests and their fellow-religionists. They furnish the school equipment and pay $10 per month, or one-half, toward a teacher's salary. I agreed to raise the balance, and this morning secured a Mexican girl to teach. She is well educated in both English and Spanish, and both languages are taught. I also secured the loan of a kodak, and will have some interesting views for Dr. Bromfield, whose share in this work I ever bear in mind. This will mean

one more Mexican Sabbath-school and preaching appointment. The gospel is finding its way rapidly and surely into these fastnesses of antiChrist. The domestic conditions here are the same as were prevalent 250 years ago, the same adobe houses, food cooked in chile, and tortillas an item of luxury.

SABBATH-SCHOOL MISSIÓNS IN WEST VIRGINIA.

C. Humble, M.D., Synodical Sabbathschool Missionary, writes:

How to make our Sabbath-school Missionary work in the needy districts of our great southern mountain region at once efficient and permanent is now clearly demonstrated. A Sunday-school, which had died and died again after reorganization, is now alive, largely attended, full of interest and busily engaged in memorizing and studying the Word of God.

The General Assembly having authorized the commissioning of women to do home and Sundayschool work among these mountaineers, one began

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work in West Virginia in October. She conducts two Sunday-schools, a Christian Endeavor Society, a Mothers' meeting, two children's meetings and one general prayer meeting, each week, besides doing much visiting of the people in their homes and much aggressive personal soul-winning and soultraining work.

Both schools are largely attended by both old and young, and the singing and recitations of the children and young people, as well as the opening up of the Scriptures by the Missionary Home Helper, are a wonder, delight and benediction to the older

ones.

"Nothing like this was ever seen or heard in this valley before," is the testimony of one of the Mothers in Israel, an old lady who has been a Christian forty years, but never a member of any church. She it was who said to the Sabbathschool Missionary more than a year ago: "Stranger, what we want in our country is some one to start a light and keep it a burnin'." And truly the Lord has rewarded her, for her heart was overjoyed and her eyes overflowed as two of her sons, with their wives, publicly confessed Christ and united with our church, three of them being baptized. These are a part of the twenty-eight who have come out on the Lord's side and joined our church, the first fruits of this plan of work.

At one of our house prayer meetings, an old lady, member of the Mormon Society, arose and praised God that her two daughters had confessed Christ and united with us. Many difficulties between families have been settled and the Spirit of the Lord is brooding over those communities.

Other of the Missionary Home Helpers are on their way to take up this work, and many of our churches would do well to set apart $300 a year for the support of a trained consecrated woman to do such work where it is so greatly needed and where no other kind of work exactly meets the peculiar and dire demands.

This is the beginning of the "Settlement" plan proposed a year ago.

This year two more churches have grown out of the work of Missionary R. H. Rogers; one of these in the country has fifty-eight members, the other in a mining town is housed in a thousand-dollar building, fully furnished. Missionary W. W. Hunter's work, in connection with our pastors, is being greatly blessed. He has under way two chapels, one to cost about $2000, for which the money is provided.

Missionary William Henry keeps his schools alive and in good spirits by frequent visitations. He is now beginning his evangelistic meetings, which are always full of the quickening power of the Spirit through the Word.

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Young People's Christian Endeavor.

O. P. J.

A man who afterwards became an eminent and successful man of business, early in his career, directed his bookkeeper to open an account with "0. P. J." After this he would frequently name a sum which the bookkeeper was to credit to that account. The sums thus credited to O. P. J. were one-tenth of all net income of the business.

At length the bookkeeper asked his employer: "Who is O. P. J. ?"

"Old Patriarch Jacob," was the answer.

He referred to Jacob's vow, recorded in Gen. xxviii: 22, that he would give to God one-tenth of all that God should give him. He had made the same vow, and that book account with O. P. J. was a convenient way of fulfilling it. Crediting to that account one-tenth of all his net income and charging to it whatever he gave to the poor, or for the support or spread of the gospel, or in any form of charity which he approved, that account, carefully kept, would always show how much of the Lord's money he held in custody to draw upon for call any that commended itself to his judgment as a real call for any of God's uses. For a man doing a large business this is a good way.

ANOTHER WAY.

Many persons working for wages or receiving money in small or large sums for what they produce, find it more convenient to have a box or drawer, or some other convenient receptacle, into which they put one dime for every dollar and one dollar for every ten dollars which they receive, and then always hold that as the Lord's treasury, and its contents sacred to religious and charitable uses. When they take money from that to give to the poor, or to support a church or a mission, or for any similar purpose, they do not think of themselves as giving their own money, but as applying the Lord's money as they think that the Lord would have them apply it.

We do not now propose to discuss the question, whether we are required to set apart one-tenth of our earnings, or gains, in this way, but to ask our readers to recall the Bible narrative of Jacob, which led that countryman of ours to make that rather droll use of the initials O. P. J.

BACK TO LUZ.

If we can just think ourselves back to Luz, which was afterwards named Bethel, we shall see a sturdy young man lying on the ground in an open field, asleep. He left the home of his childhood this morning, where he said "Good-bye" to his old

father and his too indulgent mother, and started out into the wide, wide world to enter upon the labors and enterprises by which he is to make his way in life. He bade an affectionate farewell to his parents and received their pious blessing. But he left his only brother with no kind “Good-bye”. left him an enemy.

This is so by Jacob's own fault and his mother's. We may account for Rebekah's partiality for the younger of her twin sons, but we cannot justify her indulgence of it. More sacred and precious than the equal right of citizens to the protection and guardianship of the State-a thousand times more sacred and precious-is the equal right of brothers and of sisters in their mother's love and their father's.

THE TWINS NOT ALIKE.

The younger of Rebekah's sons was the fairer of the two, probably, also, the brighter in mind— more tractable, perhaps, to the mother's influence, more winning and graceful in manners.

The older and rougher brother retained the affection of his father, and held that superior place in his regard which, in those early days as now in the older lands, was held to belong rightly to the firstborn.

Quite likely, also, Esau had personal qualities which pleased the old father better than Jacob's smartness. The bold and adventurous spirit of Esau may have won Isaac's respect, and probably Esau's resolution and courage made his father feel that he was a son fit for a father to lean on when age should make him feeble and dependent.

GOD'S PROMISE AND GOD'S LAW.

Jacob was the subject of a divine purpose and promise, the fulfillment of which would set him far above Esau. But it was a blunder and a sin for Rebekah to try to hurry God's fulfillment of that promise and purpose by a trick and lie. God does not need nor allow his creatures to break his laws to help him fulfill his promises. Rebekah's attempt to do this has made it necessary for Jacob to flee from his home to be safe from his brother's anger. He has thus fled by his mother's advice, and with his father's concurring counsel and benediction. We view him now with the uncertainties of life before him, and subject to the fears and hopes natural to a manly heart just entering upon the work and the struggle of life away from those who have hitherto guided him. In that healthy sleep in the open air under the sky, he dreams a wonderful dream-rather, he has a wonderful vision, in which God renews to him the promise made before to his grandfather and father: "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee."

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How cheering must it be to a man in such circumstances-with so much behind him to regret and be ashamed of-to receive such a direct assurance from God of his kind purpose to keep him in all the way he is to go! Is he lonely to-night, separated from all who love him? Jehovah says to him, "I will be with thee." Does he feel that unknown difficulties and dangers are before him? "I will keep thee," saith God, "whithersoever thou goest." Is he home-sick and sad at the thought of going away from the land of his birth and which God has promised to give to his promised offspring? God says, "I will bring thee again unto this land."

MANIFOLD ENCOURAGEMENT OF GOD'S PROMISE.

There is no direction in which his troubled and anxious mind can turn that it does not meet some assuring and encouraging aspect of the divine promise, the most assuring and encouraging of them all being this, which really includes all the others, that God himself will be with him.

Is it any wonder, when Jacob woke from that sleep and realized how the God of his fathers had revealed himself to him-when he felt the divine promise girding him with strength for whatever might be before him-is it any wonder that he set up a stone on that sacred spot, a monument of that wonderful experience, and named the place Bethel, House of God.

And was it any more than a fitting expression of his thankful love, thus distinctly, thus deliberately, to devote to God one-tenth of all the earthly substance that God would enable him to earn or honestly get?

Dear Christian Endeavorer, has God done less for you than he had done for Jacob? Are you content, in an age when money can do so much more directly for God than it could in Jacob's day-are you content to offer God less than Jacob did? Can any true Christian Endeavorer stand dickering with God whether a tenth is not too much to give him?

There are thousands of young men and women who have already made Jacob's vow, and are finding great comfort in keeping it. Yes, and there are thousands of men and women, who are not young now, but who made Jacob's vow when they were young, and have faithfully and happily kept it.

That O. P. J. story dates away back to the middle of the century now so near its close, and we commend the practice which it illustrates to our young readers as a good one to take with them into the century soon to begin.

REINDEER IN ALASKA.

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The Secretary of the Interior has approved and forwarded to Congress the recommendation of the Commissioner of Education that the sum of fortyfive thousand dollars should be appropriated the present year for the purchase of reindeer, the same to be furnished by the lowest bidder and delivered at suitable points on the Alaskan coast. Fifteen hundred to two thousand reindeer would, it is thought, be secured by this sum. Added to the nine hundred or more deer already in the herd kept at Port Clarence, near Bering Strait, there will be a stock of twenty-five hundred or more. The natural increase of a herd of reindeer, judging from the experience of the last four years in Alaska, amounts to upwards of fifty per cent. increase of the entire herd. With three thousand reindeer the annual increase would be at least fifteen hundred, and the Bureau of Education could distribute in the first year a sufficient number to each missionary station and white settlement to provide herds of from one to two hundred each. These under the care of Lapland herdsmen and with additions from the central herd in following years, would soon grow to be large herds. Through the efforts of the missionary schools and the government schools the natives would learn to breed and train the reindeer and the native population would thus be raised from the savage state of mere hunters and fishermen to the higher condition of nomads, or herdsmen. Whereas now intercommunication between the villages in Alaska is very precarious in the winter time because the dogs that draw the sledges have to creep along from village to village in order to procure their necessary food, on the other hand the reindeer can procure his food immediately from the moss under the snow at any point where he is turned loose. The dogs travel at the rate of thirty-five miles a day, while the reindeer travels ninety miles a day. It would be possible to have communication with all of the settlements scattered through Alaska once in two weeks during the long winter season. When large herds of reindeer are established in Alaska a plentiful supply of the best food will become everywhere available. The danger to miners and other settlers who run the risk of coming short of provisions, in case of mishaps to their annual stores, would be removed, as well as the danger to those natives who have been deprived of their food by the destruction of the walrus and whale. There is no reason why a large population of hardy people should not live and find profitable industries in Alaska. The one food supply that amounts to anything is the long white, fibrous moss (Cladonia rangifera), which exists in such abundance that ten million of reindeer can subsist upon it within the

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CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR IN CHINA-THE VOYAGE OF LIFE.

Territory of Alaska, judging by the experience of countries like Lapland and Finland where similar conditions exist.

The main argument used by the Commissioner of Education for this appropriation on the part of Congress is not chiefly the one based on the Christian sentiment of the people, an appeal to prevent starvation, although all missionaries and other authorities report numerous cases of death by starvation. The object of the introduction of reindeer is not merely to afford a temporary relief by furnishing food to the natives, but rather the transformation of a people from the savage employments of hunting and fishing into a higher grade of civilization, that of herdsmen and teamsters. In the condition of herdsmen and teamsters these people at once come into profitable business relations with the rest of the world. They furnish deer skins and meat for commerce, and they furnish the rapid transportation needed to make safe and prosperous the settlements in that Territory.

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR IN CHINA.

Rev. J. P. Leyenberger, pastor of the Island Creek Presbyterian Church, in Ohio, sends us the following letter lately received by the C. E. Society of his congregation, but addressed to Christian Endeavorers of "The Great Western Country." We gladly give it to our readers, and thank Pastor Leyenberger for the suggestion.

CANTON, CHINA,

The eleventh day of the twenty-first year of the Emperor Kwong Sui (December 26, 1895.)

TO THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR SOCIETIES OF THE GREAT WESTERN COUNTRY:

Dear Fellow-workers:-We unite to send you, our brethren in Christ, our greetings and love.

It was four years ago that we first formed our Society in Canton, and through the grace of God everything has flourished and prospered. Since that time we have placed between fifty and sixty names on our roll, all of which have been admitted to the Society. Thus we have been blessed in sowing the seed. There are more than ten C. E. Societies now existing in Canton and the neighboring districts, all started after ours was begun, and on account of the benefits which they saw being derived from our Society. The funds that have been subscribed in these four years to be spent in useful purposes, amount to three hundred dollars, and the Society has thus taught its members the importance of giving.

We have been surprised at the results of our Society's work and that they have appeared so soon, but these results are but the outcome of the real interest manifested in the meetings, as well as the good resolutions in force.

During our meetings, members and non-members

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are encouraged to speak their thoughts and experiences, and where there are discussions, they are free and open to all. Any actions taken by the Society are ruled by the majority.

We pray that God will continue to bless you and us with his presence and grace, and that whatever is done may be done in the best way possible. Pray for the prosperity of the Christian Endeavor work in China. THE COMMITTEE, on behalf of the Members of the C. E. Society of the Second Presbyterian Church, Canton, China.

(Signed)

THE VOYAGE OF LIFE.

Mrs. George A. Paull, who went to the heavenly home a few months ago, was remarkable for her love of boys and the zeal and diligence with which she worked for them and with them. Some of our readers will doubtless remember articles which she wrote for THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD (see August number, 1894, page 158, and February number, 1895, page 160). We are glad to recall her to the recollection of our boys and their mothers by the following, which we find in The Life-Boat-Children's Work for Seamen, published by the American Seamen's Friend Society:

One of the lasting monuments to Mrs. Paull's usefulness is the Paull Mission Band of Bloomfield, N. J. One of the boys of that band, Edward N. Teall, made the following remarks to it. This dear boy long ago taught his little sister never to forget pray for sailors.

to

Our life may be compared to a long sea voyage. When we join the church and profess our faith in God, we are starting on a pleasant summer day on the long voyage. Just as no ship could cross the sea and reach port safely without a pilot who thoroughly knows the way, no Christian can cross the sea of life without the guidance of Christ. At first we sail along smoothly enough, but soon, perhaps, we experience calms, when all our interest flags, and we drift helplessly to and fro. But after some time of this we revive again, and the voyage is continued. After some days of sailing, low clouds appear in the sky, gradually getting nearer and nearer, and more and more threatening, till at last the storm breaks upon us with all its fury. But during the storm, when our strength seems almost exhausted, and it seems as if we must give up the struggle, the fearful cry of 'breakers ahead!' is heard. Then all our hope is in the strong anchor, firm rocks for it to hold to, and a good stout cable to prevent us from drifting on the dreaded shore. Well, just as a ship in such an emergency depends on these to enable her to ride out the storm, so do we depend on Jesus the anchor, on God the rock to which it holds, and on our faith, the strong cable holding us to the anchor.

"Some ships escape without accident from such storms, some are slightly injured by the passage through them, and some are totally destroyed. Just so some Christians pass through the evils with which our path through this world is beset without

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