ST. LOUIS, MO. REVIEW OF THE YEAR-REAL PROGRESS. REV. A. N. THOMPSON. In making this, my fourth quarterly report, I can only say that God's blessings have still been continued. Since our last report twenty-five members have been received into the church, making in all ninety-seven during the year. There has not been as much progress in the year as the pastor had hoped, and yet great changes have occurred. Our debt, which was $4200, is reduced to such an extent that within a very few weeks we hope to place it at $2000. We shall probably let it remain at that for a year or two, until we become selfsupporting. DWIGHT, KANSAS. REV. W. KENDRICK. I preach there on Sabbath morning, in the afternoon ten miles away at Toquerville, then return and preach again at night at Morris church. The next week I preach on a new field ten miles south of Manhattan, during part of the week at night, and visit from house to house in the day. Saturday night and Sabbath morning I preach at Davis county Second church. While I preach my horse eats his dinner in the buggy. After preaching I hitch up my horse, and while he travels I eat my lunch. I have to do this every other Sabbath to meet my appointments at Dwight. I travelled in my work last quarter 10,500 miles. Last Sabbath afternoon it began to rain, and it has rained every day since, so that very few could get out. Last night it rained so hard that we had no meeting. We very much need the rain, but it seems to me we much more need an outpouring of the Holy Ghost. The general failure of crops in all this region has brought with it discouragement, and consequently there is a want of an active religious faith and life. It seems to me money is as scarce as it was in the grasshopper year in 1874 and 1875. GRAINFIELD, KANSAS. HARD WORK AND LONG JOURNEYS. REV. A. T. ALLER. We have many discouragements. Remember that we are clear out on the frontier in what was hitherto known as the "American Desert." We have a sparse population, nearly all of whom are in limited circumstances or worse. The severe drought of last summer hindered our new church building, leaving us to winter in a very uncomfortable building. In the wake of the drought followed financial depression. Already merchants and other business men have discharged clerks, and in our village of two hundred or more people we have now seven houses vacant. My people pledged $300 to my support, but thus far have only paid about $30, and at this writing it seems as though the half of the pledge will not be met. A poor building in which to worship, together with a perceptible thinning of the population, leaves me small audiences. It looks discouraging, but we hope for the best. It is pleasant to make nice reports, giving account of large accessions, increased church attendance, great liberality to the Board, but I thought you would prefer an unvarnished report. No reflection on my brother missionaries. It simply does not fall to me this time to write favorably. Probably I might add this item to show how our people and the churches are scattered. I travelled two hundred and ninety-five miles to meet my presbytery in October. The synod met immediately after presbytery. I travelled then from where presbytery met two hundred and fifty-three miles farther to attend synod. When I got home again I had travelled eight hundred and twenty-five miles. WILLMAR, MINN. CHANGEABLE POPULATION-SALOON AND FREETHINKERS CLUB GONE. REV. C. T. BURNLEY. The visible results of my quarter's work are two additions to the church, one by letter and one on profession of faith. The latter is a cultured young lady reared in a hot-bed of skepticism, but now an earnest Christian and the second teacher in rank in our high school. The Sabbath morning service is always well attended, the audience comfortably filling our little church; and no minister ever enjoyed the privilege of speaking to a more attentive and intelligent people. The Sabbath evening services are attended largely by young men, who frequently overcrowd the church. They are mostly railroad employes, commercial travellers and students from the Norwegian seminary. My field at times impresses me as being full of little else than disadvantages. I can sow the seed plentifully and, as it would seem, on good soil, but the harvest is most scant. My hearers come and go. They are here a few weeks or months, and then they are off again. Only last quarter a young, intelligent woman, wife of a railroad man, was truly converted. She wanted her husband to be present when she was baptized and received into fellowship with us. So did I; for it is this churchless class that I want to reach. We therefore very cheerfully arranged that the reception service should take place any Sabbath when he was at home. It came in about two weeks. She publicly professed her faith, was baptized and duly received into the church. Her husband was visibly affected. I was glad that he was present. These two," I thought in my heart, "will have influence. They will strengthen my hold upon others." But before our next communion his work was changed, and now they are more than a hundred miles away. So it has been, so it continues, and so it will go on for some years yet in this place. I must say, however, that only a few of this ever-shifting class see or yield to their whole duty as completely as did this woman. A number have confessed to serious conviction, some to conversion, but only a few will profess and unite with the church; because, as they say, they do not know how long they can stay in the place. The railroad demoralizes. It is a necessary evil. It does both harm and good. It wrongs me by taking away those I win; it helps me by bringing strangers in their stead whom I can always hope to win. The place itself is not what it was. Up to a year ago the saloon dominated completely. Now the temperance people rule. A synagogue of Satan, a free-thinkers' club, used to hold meetings here, have speakers from abroad, and openly and industriously circulate their literature. I said nothing about these people themselves or their organization, but preached the stern old doctrines of the word tenderly, plainly, positively. What they talked against, I proclaimed in its most rugged and practical form. The free-thinkers' meetings are gone. Their organization is either dead or exists a dead secret. Several former skeptics are members of the church. One fine young fellow, with the making of a noble man in him, boasted of his infidelity not more than six months ago, but is now a member of my Bible-class. It is no longer the fashion to carp at Christian faith; the disposition now is rather to honor it. BELLEVUE, NEB. REV. W. W. HARSHA, D.D. We have witnessed a growing interest, both at Bellevue and La Platte, in our services. Our Sabbath-schools, maintained the year round in both places, are gathering in the children and youth from godless families and bringing them under the power of the truth. Through the children, too, we are reaching the parents. In Bellevue we have the pleasure of seeing parents in church who never attended before the children began to attend the Sabbath-school. In both Bellevue and La Platte -both river towns, the one on the Missouri, the other on the Platte-there are to be found some of the most abandoned of our population. Our work is among these; and now their children are found in our Sunday-schools, and the parents themselves, especially the mothers, are being reached. When I commenced preaching in La Platte two years ago, it was called one of the hardest places in the state. Methodists, Episcopalians and Congregationalists had all tried the field, and had all, in turn, abandoned it. There was no house of worship, and a gospel sermon had not been preached in the place for years. Within the last year two comfortable church edifices have been erected-the Methodist and the Presbyterian. The last named is a most beautiful and comfortable house of worship, capable of seating two hundred, dedicated in November last, free of debt, with the aid of $450 from the Board of Church Erection. The best of all is that since we have been in our place of worship our congregations have been large, attentive and solemn, and when we dispense the communion of the Lord's Supper on the third Sabbath of this month, we shall expect an encouraging addition to the membership. Our Bellevue church has made her offering to the Board of Home Missions, which is more than double that of last year. SIOUX FALLS, DAK. SOMETHING DOING AND SOMETHING DONE. REV. W. P. CRAIG. We have repaired our building to a certain extent. New people are coming into the audience. Our subscription has surpassed our expectations. A Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor has been started; also a Children's Missionary Society. A Ventura county school teacher taught seven months of school in one district and six in another, all between July 1 and June 30. Then Friday afternoons after school he would walk twenty miles to his farm, work all day Saturday, and walk back Sunday. As there are but twenty-six working days in a month, and fiftytwo Saturdays in a year, and 2 x 26=52, his thirteen months of school teaching were supplemented by two months of work on his farm; and if a twenty-miles walk is a fair day's work, since there are two months of Fridays and two months of Sundays in a year (the same as of Saturdays), he walked four months, which with the fifteen already mentioned make nineteen months work in a year; and he taught music and wrote for the school journal the rest of the time. Many destitute places and weak and struggling churches in the West are crying out for help in proclaiming the gospel and building up new branches of Christ's kingdom. Our own land must not in any case be neglected. The heathen hosts outside of the Church of Christ in this country are multiplying rapidly. Now is the time to plant home mission churches among the immigrants that are flooding the Northwest. One dollar spent to-day will go farther than ten spent a generation from now. Fields are white with the harvest. It behooves the church to send forth its laborers to reap and gather in that the Master's granary may be filled.-Extract. HOME MISSION APPOINTMENTS FOR JANUARY, 1888. Rev. J. Best, Brooklyn, 1st, Rev. J. B. Woodward, Mansfield, Rev. M. H. Bradley, Lima Main Street, Pa. Rev. N. S. Dickey, Indianapolis, Olive Street, Rev. H. M. Tyndall, Iron Mountain, Rev. J. V. N. Hartness, Cass City, Bethel and Brookfield, Rev. J. R. Crum, Euclid, Angus and Keystone, Rev. A. Armstrong, Hallock, Northcote and The Ridge, Rev. George Johnson, Red Lake Falls, Rev. I. P. Withington, St. Croix Falls, Taylors Rev. T. R. Paden, Buffalo and Rockford, Rev. Beert Vis, Goodwin, 1st Holland, Rev. M. J. Milford, Tamora and Staplehurst, Rev. S. B. Neilson, Falls City, Rev. J. R. Brown, South Sioux City and Pender, Rev. J. Creath, Florence and station, Rev. A. N. Thompson, St. Louis, Glasgow Avenue, Rev. S. Ward, Cedar Point, Clements and Walton, Rev. J. H. Byers, Arundel Avenue and Westminster, Rev. D. Kingery, Arlington, Rev. R. Dodd, Elmoro and Engle, Rev. H. K. White, Saquache and stations, Rev. G. Edwards, White Sulphur Springs, 1st, and Rev. A. A. Dinsmore, Alhambra and Lamanda Rev. W. N. Cleveland, Forestport and Alder Park, Creek, Rev. W. W. Warner, Lenox, Rev. D. T. McClelland, Gilroy, Rev. S. Dodd, Stephentown, Rev. J. M. Smith, Pleasanton, Rev. S. N. Robinson, Conewango, Rev. H. C. Gillingham, Oakdale and station, Rev. S. C. Lunn, Boston, Scotch, Mass. Rev. E. W. Long, Glen Riddle, Pa. Rev. A. Robinson, Octorara, Pleasant Grove and Marion, Rev. W. H. Schuyler, Everett, Saxton and Yellow Creek, Ore. COLLEGES AND ACADEMIES. AN EXAMPLE. THEN. The first annual report of this Board, 1884, recited the notable circumstances connected with the recent opening of our College of Montana, at Deer Lodge. By means, in part, of the discouragement that had overtaken an attempt to conduct an anti-Christian school, in part, of the very generous offer of Mr. Trask, of the Reformed Church, in Brooklyn, N. Y., to pay off the debt on the property, and in part, of the providential. erection of this Board at the right moment for aiding the current work of the proposed Presbyterian college, the transfer of property had been arranged and made; and in September, 1883, the college had been opened. Forty-seven students had been enrolled. There were prosperous Romanist schools not far away; but no institution of its own sort was within six hundred miles of it. It was, and is as yet, our westernmost Presbyterian college. Its location is beautiful. In its first year its property was estimated at about $20,000. NOW. The present property can be judged of, in a good degree, from the view of the buildings herewith given. The larger building, Dormitory Hall, is new. It contains accommodations for sixty-four students. Last fall's returns set the total of property, above all indebtedness, at $57,346. The condition of the college in other regards appears from a letter of President McMillan, dated January 10, 1888. No part of it was written for publication, and some of its hopeful contents ought not to be printed; but the tone of it may properly be heard: I desire to tell you briefly of our condition and prospects. Our enrollment has reached 112; and still they come. Our prospect of increase in patronage is all that could be desired. But, alas! our boarding accommodations are filled to the utmost. Our subscriptions have reached about $13,000, and we confidently ex pect to make them $25,000 within a month. But we shall be compelled to erect another of our faculty (God bless them all) is bending dormitory hall this year. . . . Every member to the work with energy and devotion, which insure continued and increasing growth. Our aim is high. We refuse to yield to the demand that is made for short courses of study and early graduation. . . . Our constituency uphold us in our aim to equal the best colleges of the East. . . . We may confidently expect to receive abundant endowment ultimately, but . . men do not here, any more than in the East, take money out of profitable business to give away; and yet . . . [We will not spoil his plans by proclaiming them.-SEC.] We must enlarge or burst. . . . Stand by us a little longer, and we will fully justify you, and pass on to others the blessings with which you bless us. A later letter, received after this article was written, states: Our enrollment has reached 116. I am now turning away applicants for want of room to board them. The writer of these letters has not always written in such a tone. He has not come to this outlook without hard climbing. Now that he is there, how shall his helpers regard the past history? Our Board, for example, has kept up its current aid, though diminishing its amount. Will any man tell where $9500 of Presbyterian money could have been laid out with larger promise of returns? When Williams College was five years old among the eastern mountains, had it any securer pledge of Christian usefulness than Deer Lodge now has among the western? But the Board, by itself, would never have brought Montana College to its present position. No young college grows vigorously unless it get fostering either from the state or from persons. THE PIVOT. The printed reports of this Board show that Mr. Alanson Trask, whose timely and liberal help made it possible for our church |