every one-do not forget the children and youth. They are trying to put themselves in correspondence with all our Sabbathschool superintendents, that all our schools may take up an annual collection for our work. A great deal of money is voted to miscellaneous objects that would materially help our boards if contributed to them. This effort of the elders, we hope, will be helpful in that direction. ROBERT LENOX KENNEDY. The following is the minute adopted by the Board of Home Missions in regard to the late Mr. Robert Lenox Kennedy: It is the unanimous wish of the Board to preserve in its records a memorial of Mr. Robert Lenox Kennedy, who long consecrated to the Master, in connection with it, his knowledge of public affairs, his experience in many forms of business, the cautious prudence which made him useful in so many business and benevolent organizations, and the strength of character and rare gentleness which won affection while it inspired confidence. The members of the Board draw consolation from the fact that while his generous and wise co-operation can no longer be with them, he has entered on that perfect service in the Master's presence, the hope of which gave to his aims while here both earnestness and elevation. It is not easy to add anything to these few but well-chosen and comprehensive words. They briefly but fully suggest the finest traits of a choice character and the various well-doing of a worthy Christian life. Mr. Kennedy impressed all with whom he came in contact as being quite above the common average of men. Early training and education and culture and business experience had given him a varied equipment which fitted him for unusual efficiency and success; and divine grace supplied the impulse and inspiration which lifted and incited him, more notably in his later years, to a consecrated Christian activity. He was one of those to whom the world naturally turns when it wants important work well done; and so he became the centre of large interests and grave responsibilities. And yet from all worldly ambitions and exactions he reserved time and taste and temper for notable and invaluable service to his church and to his Master. His counsel was always available and wise. His gifts were nobly large and generous. He had a keen sense of Christian stewardship. He felt that the time was short, and was in haste to do what his hand found to do with his might. Time and strength lasted him just long enough to round and crown his long and helpful service by plans and gifts to which the Boards of Home and Foreign Missions, with that of Church Erection and the Woman's Boards, will be mainly indebted for a new and noble home. Mr. Kennedy himself gave fifty thousand dollars toward the purchase of these fine and commodious premises, and a large additional gift for alterations and repairs. He has left a memory which will be widely prized and tenderly preserved, and an example which many who might emulate his beneficence would do well to ponder and follow. JOHN D. DIX. This brother, an elder in one of the churches on Staten Island, and who has recently died, was a good man and a warm friend of home missions. His business was prosperous during the war, when many others were suffering in worldly matters, and he delighted to help specially needy cases. He used to send for us and inquire for such, and then sit down and draw his check to send to each one of them. Sometimes it was a missionary who was sick or had a sick wife, sometimes a missionary's widow or motherless children, and sometimes some one who was in extremities for means to build a church. I have sat beside his desk and read letters till he had written checks to the amount of $400 for their relief. A missionary in Michigan wrote to me in distress at one time, saying, "I must settle with the builders of our little church edifice two weeks from next Tuesday, and I want $130, and do not know where it is to come from; but as I began the work with $5 only, I think the Lord will provide." Mr. Dix gave $50 for that purpose. Meanwhile the missionary had been trying to raise the PROGRESS IN LOS ANGELES. The marked success and large result of the Board's work in Los Angeles is a fair though favorable specimen of the work in southern California, and even in still wider fields. In 1874 there was a church there which reported twenty members. It had little power and less promise. More than one missionary found the place hard, the work trying, and the prospect discouraging. They did good service in laying the foundations; but there seemed small assurance of early or large success. To-day we have in Los Angeles the First church, with 564 communicants, the Second, with 75, the Third, with 87, the Boyle Heights church, with 51, the Chinese (under the Foreign Board), with 32, and the Spanish school under the Woman's Executive Committee. The first three named are selfsupporting. The First church has a record for its thirteen years as creditable to itself as to the Board. For the first three years the Board expended on it $1000 per year. In 1883 the church, then served by Rev. J. W. Ellis, and receiving $800 from the Board, boldly assumed self-support and set up for itself. Last year it the Board gave $180, which was certainly a large and generous contribution. But a few weeks ago, at an appeal from its pastor, Rev. W. J. Chichester, who forcibly presented to his people their indebtedness to the Board for its early help, as well as the claims of the work at large, the congregation took a collection for home missions amounting to $1161. In view of growing numbers, the people are already talking of a new church. building. Such combined enterprise and beneficence are most admirable and gratifying. Nothing could encourage the Board of Home Missions more than to find, in a church fostered by the Board through early weakness to assured prosperity, such handsome public recognition of this aid by the pastor, and such grateful and hearty response by the people. By the kindness of a friend we are enabled to furnish our missionaries a limited number of new Caligraph type-writers, to be used only in their work, for $50 each, freight prepaid. Address Board of Home Missions, 280 Broadway, New York. A GOSPEL TEAM. In response to the appeal in the November number for a team for a missionary in the "Pan-handle," Texas, a good lady in Orange, N. J., has sent us the equivalent for a span of ponies, harness, buggy, whip and robes, which was forwarded at once, thus greatly enlarging the sphere of usefulness of the missionary recipient. "Fly abroad, thou mighty gospel! SECOND-HAND NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES. Many people write to know if the missionaries can make any good use of newspapers and periodicals that have been received and once read. We are obliged to say they ought to be useful, they ought to be, probably are, desired, they ought to do good, but we do not know where or to whom to send them. This is to say that if any missionaries or any teachers desire to have any such religious papers sent to them for their own reading, or that they will distribute among their congregations or pupils, and will let us know, we shall be glad to supply them as far as it lies in our power. SCHOOLS! SCHOOLS! The schools among the "exceptional populations" are now in full blast and full of encouragement, and full to running over with pupils. W. L. Squier, at the old Dwight Mission, in the Indian Territory, says, "Dwight Mis sion can have a hundred girls just as soon as there is room for them." 66 Rev. Mr. Adams, at the Sisseton Agency, Dakota, says, "Our mission school has opened with more than usual interest and hopefulness. Already there are upwards of eighty pupils enrolled, with more to follow." Miss Ufford, of the new Asheville Home Industrial School," N. C., says, "We have now sixty boarders and thirty day scholars. We can accommodate quite comfortably seventy-five boarders, and by Christmas we shall have the home filled." We learn that there are a hundred and sixty pupils at "Scotia Female Seminary," and many more are seeking admittance for whom there is no room. Professor Millspaugh, of Salt Lake City, says, "Quite a number of Mormon children have sought admission to the school this year, and many children are now in our Sabbath-school classes who never before were present at a Christian service." Rev. James Fraser, of Las Vegas, speaking of the school at Mora, New Mexico, says, "We had a delightful service. I received twenty-four of the pupils into the church there." We might go on piling up such testimony indefinitely. What shall be done? God is giving over into our hands—the hands of our Christian teachers-more ignorant and needy children than we can care for. The children of Alaska and the Indian Territory, everywhere, the Mexican children, the uneducated children of the South, white and colored, are turning to our schoolsour teachers have won their confidenceand the startling fact is that more, far more, than we can accommodate are knocking at the doors of our schools. What does this mean? Is not God at the foundation of this movement? What shall we Christians say? What shall we do? Is not this our opportunity? Does it not indicate our duty? SPECIAL CONTRIBUTIONS. THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE REV. GEORGE C. NOYES, D.D. The theme is one to stir the heart of every Christian and of every lover of his country. It reveals a work to be done which lays claim to the sympathies, the active efforts and the liberal sacrifices of all who value home or country. It is a work of home evangelization, the doing of which is essential to the security and peace of our homes. "There is no place like home." As applied to our dwellings, what security, shelter, comfort, peace, precious fellowships, the word suggests! As applied to our country, how vastly the range of its meaning is widened! What boundless domain, diversified scenery, material resources, treasures of literature and of character, history, institutions of religion, of learning and of charity, laws, government, destiny, it brings before our minds! But to perpetuate our great heritage and to augment its value it is indisputable that the great West should be evangelized. And this work must be done speedily if it is done at all. Throughout all this vast section of our country character reaches its maturity in vice, if not in goodness, more quickly than it ever did in early New England, or than it does now in the older rural portions of our land. Chief among the causes which combine to change taste, character and habit is the intermingling of population from every quarter of the globe. Even the sturdy old Puritan character yields to the prevailing godless influences unless it is reinforced and strengthened by the institutions and ministries of religion. Consider the greatness of the work as shown in the greatness of the region to be evangelized. "The great West" is a phrase often used, but is rarely if ever adequately understood. As commonly used in our day, though its meaning has changed greatly from one decade to another, it is employed to designate that portion of our country which lies west of the Mississippi river. In his recent travels through portions of our country, Dr. Joseph Parker confesses himself to have been quite worn out by his long journeys, and perhaps also by his vain efforts to adjust his small insular conceptions of magnitude to the immense distances over which he travelled. But he did not enter the great West, and touched its eastern limit at Minneapolis. He simply crossed along one line, the eastern section of the country, compared with which the great West, not including Alaska, is nearly four times larger. And though this immense territory has increased its population more than fivefold during the last thirty years, growing from two millions to nearly eleven millions of people, and increasing more rapidly than any other section, yet only a very small beginning has so far been made toward developing the vast natural resources of this region. Its agricultural and mineral resources, though they have been worked so as to yield already large results, have yet scarcely begun to be developed. Its extensive woods and forests, which skirt lakes and rivers and mountain ranges, and which are composed of the choicest timber of almost every variety and inexhaustible supply, still remain largely uncut. Its vast water power for mills and factories is as yet but little applied. Its rocks, seamed with ores which are inexhaustible, and the wealth of which cannot be computed, have as yet hardly been opened. It has millions upon millions of richest acres which still lie untilled, and other millions which, though yielding the most nutritious grasses, are not occupied by grazing herds. The area of the great West contains one billion three hundred and sixty-eight million of acres. The census of 1880 shows that less than two hundred millions of these acres have been brought under cultivation, or less than oneseventh of the whole number. Deducting forty per cent. for waste land-and this is a large estimate-it is safe to say that not one-fourth of the arable land of the great West is yet brought under cultivation. Much of this land is now inaccessible to market, though the quantity is growing less every month and every day by reason of the continual extension of railroad lines and the building of new lines, and of that which is now open to settlement and to the markets much remains unoccupied, though new settlers, like the march of an innumerable army, are pouring in along all the thoroughfares of travel which are now open. The railroad development of the great West is something almost to stagger belief. Less than twenty years ago there was no communication between the cities of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards except by ocean voyage, or by an overland route which involved more than a thousand miles of stage or wagon travel through a desert region, and uninhabited save by hostile Indians. Now there are four, and, if we count the Oregon Short Line as one, five, trunk lines connecting the two oceans, while a sixth runs through the Dominion of Canada. Besides these, the Chicago and Northwestern has already extended one of its lines more than eleven hundred miles west from Chicago; it will soon be in Ogden, and thence push westward to meet the Oregon Pacific coming eastward from Yaquina Bay; while there are not wanting indications that ere long the Rock Island, and very likely also the Burlington, may find their way by new and independent lines to the Pacific Ocean. Keeping pace with this rapid construction of trunk lines running east and west has been a similar work of building roads north and south. Thus we have continuous railroad lines running from Manitoba down through St. Paul to New Orleans, on both sides of the Mississippi river, and from its source almost to its mouth; from Bismarck on the Missouri through Omaha and Kansas City to the Gulf; along the eastern part of the Rocky Mountain range, whose battle line of lofty and often snow-capped peaks the traveller may survey from the cars for hundreds of miles in length; on the western slope of the Rockies from Garrison on the Northern Pacific to southern Utah, a distance of nearly a thousand miles; and west of the Cascade Range bordering the Pacific Ocean from Seattle on Puget Sound to National City at the extreme southern end of California, a distance of sixteen hundred and fifty miles. This latter road is not quite finished, but it will be before the reader sees these words, and trains of cars will leave daily from its far-sundered termini. Now capitalists have not built these continental lines at an expenditure of many hundreds of millions simply for the purpose of affording people afflicted with ennui, and curious travellers, an opportunity to traverse inhospitable deserts and look upon rugged and majestic mountains. Capitalists, "wiser in their generation than the children of light," are able to see in these deserts what will ere long be converted into fruitful fields and gardens, and in these mountains untold wealth of the precious and of the useful metals. Capitalists are awake to the grand possibilities which lie before the great West as vast and exceedingly rich Oriental empires once lay before resistless Roman armies. It is time for the church of God to be awake to these possibilities, and also to the dark and threatening perils which attend them as a shadow its substance. Capitalists have shown and are showing their faith by their works. It is time that the church should show a grander faith by mightier works. It Let no one think that this exhibition of the greatness of our inheritance in the great West is exaggerated. "But, Mr. Turner, I don't see these things in nature," said a lady once as she was looking at one of the masterpieces of the great artist. "Don't you wish you did?" Mr. Turner replied, with pardonable naiveté. needs neither the vision of faith nor any exalted sense of patriotism to enable men to see how vast in material wealth and power the great West is destined to become, and that at an early day. The capitalists can easily see this. But it needs both the large and clear vision of faith and the highest patriotism to urge men to put forth those efforts and to make those sacrifices which will be necessary to make the power of this region, growing so fast to be imperial, to be as beneficent as the light, and to prevent its becoming as destructive as the lightning. Consider the chief perils which beset the rapid development of this section of our country. They are not peculiar to this section, except Mormonism, but are such as are found in all parts of our land, though some of them may be found here in aggravated form. They are (1) ignorance; (2) avarice, covetousness, or consuming greed for money; (3) intemperance; (4) Sabbath breaking; (5) profanity; (6) national pride which exalts itself on account of a rich and splendid material civilization; and (7) Mormonism. The last is not the least of the perils here named, but is indeed one of the greatest in the whole list. The Pacific railroad, whose construction it was thought, by bringing it into contact with the civilized world, would put it upon a course of ultimate extinction, has seemed only to contribute to its malignant growth, as an artery, by feeding with fresh blood a cancerous growth, serves at the same time to diffuse and extend the poison of that growth. Acts of Congress, so far, have done little or nothing to limit the power or arrest the spread of Mormonism. Like its twin evil, intemperance, it mocks at legislative enactments and fulminations, while both, like the man in the tombs, break all bonds which bind them, and defy all attempts to cast them out by force. For the evil of Mormonism, as well as for all the evils which afflict our land and threaten to convert the growing power of the great West into an engine of destruction, the only sure cure is to be found in a Christian school, an organized church, and a preached gospel. For the church or for Christian people to resort to other agencies, and to seek to build the republic with other tools in the hope of making it a beautiful and an enduring structure, is to waste or misapply effort and to lose precious time. To dwell upon the evils which have here been enumerated is neither necessary nor possible within the limits of this brief article. It is hoped, however, that every reader will seriously reflect upon each one of them, try to measure, as accurately as possible, their present force and potency. Reflect how, if they are not checked and counterworked, they must each grow more and more powerful and threatening, and then, in view of these evils and of the destruction which, if not removed, they surely portend, let him solemnly ask himself, as in the presence of God, whether he does not owe a duty to the cause and the Board of Home Missions which he has never yet half performed. |