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MONEY.

Dr. D. K. Pearsons, of Chicago, whose recent very large benefactions, especially to the Presbyterian Hospital of that city, to McCormick Theological Seminary and to Lake Forest University, are so widely and gratefully known, made, at the late commencement banquet of the last-named institution, a short personal recital, which, if allowed to stimulate other minds as it should, would do more good than even his direct benefactions, munificent as they are. He said, in effect, that seventeen years ago in a conversation with a friend he declared the purpose with which he was conducting certain promising financial enterprises: namely, to acquire ability to do some definite things, including large help to some theological seminary to be selected in the neighborhood of Chicago, and large help to some college to be selected in the same state of Illinois. The notion that they have such purposes back of their absorbing occupations is known to be very common among men; but the purpose, proving itself by its accomplishment, is something very different from that pleasant fiction. Even the purpose, however honest, never outlasts many years of successful business, except under some careful habit of mind and conscience adapted to keep such a resolution on its throne. With Christian men that will be a habit of exalting God's design in allowing such a thing as money to be. The chemistry by which the coal-fields have stored up the heat of the sun is crude in comparison with that by which the foresight, skill and energy, the strong resolves, the sustained good wishes, the devout Christian loyalty of a lifetime compact their power into the wealth which, seizing, at length, its appointed lever, puts into a stroke an entire manhood.

But we have readers, no doubt, whose purposes of useful giving were not formed so long ago or so definitely. To such we suggest an additional quality of money of which we beg them to avail themselves under our appeal. The man who in earlier life has not had even a dream of storing up his energy for some future noble use, but has followed business for its own successes, can

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lift those successes, now that he has them, as far above their own level as Christ's cause is above the world. And the transfer is so easy to make. Some things of great power and value are difficult to turn about suddenly. A ship or a railway train is meant to go on. Only a nimble animal can turn on its tracks. But money is nimbler yet. It can change front on the instant. A man may have written his check and half endorsed it: "Pay to the order of Then, with two inches of penmanship he can wheel whole years of his past achievement into line with the van of Christ's army. Those nights of scheming and days of energy that had not in them a gleam of Christian purpose can by this new choice at once take part with present days and nights which God's most consecrated and skillful servants are giving triumphantly to the spread of his kingdom!

Was the purpose by which a citizen of young Chicago gave his hoped-for wealth to the help of Christian teaching at the West mistaken or wise? It is safe to say that the men who do this very thing are to have ripening for their names such harvests of benedictions as their largest desires have not measured-harvests as much wider than those that have as yet been gathered by the revered founders of the eastern colleges as the future of the land is larger than its past, and as God's remaining work, both within the matured nation and by means of it, is to be larger than his training of her childhood. Days and things that look level now, are to be eminent by and by. For while the natural heights have been fixed by convulsion, the moral heights grow up. The great deeds are those which their results are sure to lift. The very best portent to be found within this nation is its growing Christian alertness in doing such deeds.

HOW TO MAKE A BOARD "PAY." Unless

Every board costs something. what it saves or achieves is worth more to the Church than the outlay that is made upon it, it exists by mistake; it is an excrescence on the ecclesiastical body that

1889.]

should be lopped off. But board service is a composite thing. It is expected to include more comprehensive knowledge, plan and administration than could be secured by disconnected personal efforts, however sincere and diligent. Our foremost boards conspicuously fulfill that expectation. They could not be foremost unless they did.

But they could not fulfill it just by being boards. Even if the personnel of their members and officers had been supplied out of the company of the prophets and apostles, that inspired management would never have constituted a successful board, unless it had had somewhat to manage. The recognized wisdom and efficiency of our Church's leaders in her two forms of mission work have to do perpetually with two classes of things-ends and means; the fields and the working forces that are to possess them. But the vindication of their efficiency and wisdom turns entirely on one of the two things-control of the working force. Those boards might Those boards might know all that they know to-day concerning fields and men and methods, and be just as eager to use their knowledge, and yet not do the Church enough service to be worth half the outlay on office room and salaries, if only the Church denied them means to work with. Such an administrative blunder is not likely to be made. These long-tried agencies are strong in the confidence which they have won.

Now it gets to be with this Board of College Aid an anxious question, How long shall it be before the Church will make possible the service for which she has appointed us? If the question concerned the mere comfort or credit of being trusted and made strong, the answer might well be delayed many years. The Board is young, and can afford to get reputation slowly; but the interests which the Church has put into our hands, and which turn on our ability to do our Board work, cannot wait. A property of $50,000 or $75,000 lacking moderate help at its crisis, and therefore trembling between confirmed success in the best kind of work and utter loss to our cause and Church; loyal men held by their love of

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their Church and her young institution to the work that has given them fame enough to make them sought after, but not money enough to keep literal and recent hunger away from their homes; streams of youth settling toward our ministry, but ready for causes like these to be arrested and to sink away suddenly as streams do into sandsare not such facts proper to be told by a college Board that knows them? Were we not made a Board in order that such facts should have an authoritative voice to tell them? But the mere telling will not make us an efficient Board. The men and women who respond with help make us efficient.

Some such efficiency was allowed us last year. We point with gratitude to those eleven cases of opportune aid recited in our recent report to the General Assembly. For their manifest bearing on large and enduring results of advantage to our nation and of honor to Christ, we challenge comparison of them with any other class of achievements wrought in that year by equal outlay, whether within our own Church or any other.

Yet the peculiarity of that outlay was that it was made almost entirely by responses to the appeals-not of this Board, but of the Board's officers (and chiefly of its president, Dr. Johnson)-uttered in relations far more personal than official. Private respect and kindness, appreciating the individual zeal and sincerity that took on service for these needy and imperilled institutions, paid their double tribute-chiefly to friendship, and only partly to a Board of the Church. That double leverage cannot always be used. The cause should have leverage enough. Every argument of prudence and justice backs the appeal which the Board has just made in the papers of our denomination for $30,000 to be put at once at its disposal, and by gifts quite distinct from its ordinary revenue of church collections. It is a wide appeal, made in the largest interest of the Church and the nation. Men of large thoughts and sympathies should heed it and respond to it as they are able. Give us means, and we will show, in grounds and buildings, in well-filled

class-rooms, in converted youth, in numerous alumni in theological study, and very soon in Christian leaders of all good work for the Church and the nation, how well this Board "pays."

POYNETTE ACADEMY

Is one of the most characteristic institutions under the care of the Board of Aid. In none of the rest is a more devout and intelligent piety at work. None of them have been built up with steadier success, and the success has nowhere been earned by more careful planning or more patient industry. When it first came to the Board for aid in 1885, it reported its property at less than $4000. Its last report placed it near to $12,000. Its next showing will be better still, for the Board, to clear off a pressing debt incurred in the erection of its muchneeded building, lately voted it $1000 from its general property fund. Unless we overestimate the ring of the description which this work gives of itself below, there will be hearts unable to resist the impulse to help it still more and to early strength:

Poynette Academy is located at Poynette, Wis., on the Madison and Portage Branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. It has grown out of the conviction that the Bible is, by all odds, the most important single text-book for educational purposes in existence; that the Sabbath-school, however valuable, is inadequate to insure a rounded biblical education; that nothing short of the daily study of the word gives fair promise of this important result; and that it is the imperative duty of the Church of God to provide ample facilities for the daily instruction of her children in the Holy Scriptures.

Bible study and recitation jointly occupy one hour and ten minutes daily. Pupils are first carried carefully through the Old Testament history and the Gospels; then through those prophecies concerning Christ, concerning Israel, concerning the Gentile nations and cities, which have been unmistakably fulfilled.

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When these courses are completed, the doctrines of the word, the promises which flow out of them, and the precepts for obedience to which the doctrines and promises supply nutrition, are taken up in their order. The doctrines are viewed and treated as fountains of living water, as being the only conceivable source of the glorious promises which God has spoken. The pupil is constantly warned against hiding any of these precious doctrines from his vision, or using them as mere whetstones to sharpen his logic, both of which processes are viewed as audacious and dangerous in the extreme. To drink light and life out of the doctrine, to drink consolation and hope out of the promises, and thus to be replenished with spiritual force, under the mighty quickening of the Holy Ghost, unto obedience according to the precepts of Jesus Christ-such are the ends sought throughout these studies.

In the natural sciences, mathematics and the languages it is the aim of the school to prepare students for the junior class of college.

A third and distinctive feature of the institution lies in its co-operative system. No servants are kept. The boys and girls do the indoor work, and the boys cultivate the extensive gardens, saw the wood, milk the cows, and feed the pigs and chickens. There are now 480 acres of land attached to the institution, which it is hoped will be speedily reduced to a good state of culture, and will add much to the school's domestic resources and comfort.

Pupils who have means are charged $120 per year. Those who have no means are received without charge of any kind. Churches and benevolent individuals are invited to contribute $60 each for the support of indigent students.

The present building has a basement of gray limestone, and a strong frame superstructure. It fronts east and south, and each front is 78 feet in length. The location is admirable. The Presbyterian church and manse stand just across the street from the school building.

The conviction has never been so strong and vivid within us that this institution has an important future before it, if children of God, who love the truth of God better than their lives, shall be led to widen and strengthen its foundations.

DUTIES OF THE SUPERINTENDENT

OF SABBATH-SCHOOL AND MIS-
SIONARY WORK.

In the report of the Standing Committee on this Board presented to the last Assembly there occurs the following:

Your committee has duly considered the overture sent to the General Assembly from the Presbytery of Athens, Synod of Ohio, requesting the General Assembly to order the publication, in detail, of the duties of "Superintendent of Sabbath-school and Missionary Work" for the information of the Church. The committee would recommend that the request be granted, and that the Board of Publication [and Sabbath-school Work] be instructed to make such a concise statement of his relation to the Board and his special duties as they may deem best to reach the object of this overture.

This injunction of the Assembly can be best complied with by publishing the following extracts from the By-laws of the Board:

THE SABBATH-SCHOOL AND MISSIONARY COMMITTEE.

1. This committee shall consist of nine members, and five shall be a quorum.

2. It shall meet at least once a month, and shall keep in a suitable book full minutes of its proceedings to be read at the next stated meeting of the Board.

3. It shall consider and propose the best methods of developing an interest on the part of the Church in the wise, faithful and systematic instruction of the youth of the Church in the truths of God's word; devise means to promote the organization of Sabbath-schools, and to bring into them, as far as possible, the great mass of those who are connected with the congregations of our churches, as well as those who are without fixed religious associations; consider the most useful means of interesting Sabbath-school teachers in the earnest and thorough study of the Bible, and other sources of religious knowledge; receive and act upon all applications to appoint missionaries made through the Superintendent of Sabbath-school and Missionary Work; and when missionaries

are appointed shall determine their fields of labor and fix their compensation. It shall lay the main emphasis upon Sabbath-school work and religious visitation among the spiritually destitute, the selling of books to be in all cases subsidiary to these more directly benevolent and religious labors.

4. It shall have supervision and direction of the work of the missionaries appointed by the Board.

5. Through the Superintendent of Sabbathschool and Missionary Work, it shall receive and act upon all applications for grants of the publications of the Board.

THE SUPERINTENDENT OF SABBATH-SCHOOL AND MISSIONARY WORK.

1. It shall be the duty of the Superintendent of Sabbath-school and Missionary Work to devise such measures as will tend to arouse a deeper interest in the Sabbath-school work in our denomination, to make such work more thorough and useful, to bring about a more earnest and careful study of God's word, and to awaken Christians, and especially Presbyterians, to the prime importance of bringing the gospel into the hearts and lives of the youth in our churches.

2. He shall conduct all correspondence relative to the appointment of missionaries, and shall, after their appointment, establish and maintain regular and frequent correspondence with them in regard to their duties and their performance of them. He shall require from the missionaries regularly a full report of the work which has been done by them during the preceding month in regard both to their religious and spiritual labors and the distribution and sale of books and tracts. He shall receive and engross the reports of the missionaries in a book kept for the purpose; keep accurate accounts of their pecuniary relations to the Board; execute, under the supervision of the Sabbath-school and Missionary Committee, orders received from missionaries; and report fully the state of the work, and receipts and expenditures of moneys, to the said committee at each of its stated meetings. He shall also nominate to the same committee suitable missionaries, and shall, at each stated meeting, report to the committee all cases of delinquencies on the part of missionaries.

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3. He shall receive all applications for donations of the Board's publications, and shall make suitable inquiry into the merits of such applications, after which he shall report thereon to the Sabbath-school and Missionary Committee.

4. He shall furnish the Secretary with such materials for the annual report to the General Assembly as may properly belong to his department.

5. He shall consult, in regard to all matters that come under his charge, with the Secretary, and report to the Sabbath-school and Missionary Committee.

6. He shall attend the meetings of the General Assembly; and of the Sabbath-school and Missionary Committee, and of such other committees as shall request him to attend, for consultation and information.

THE SECRETARY.

1. The Secretary, subject to the paramount authority and direction of the Board and its several committees in the matters entrusted to them respectively, shall be the chief executive officer in all departments of the work and business of the Board, and shall have general supervisory control of the officers hereinafter named, subject to an appeal to the Board itself.

A CHURCH TO BE ORGANIZED. An interesting and important communication has been received from the superintendent of Presbyterian missions in the Synod of Colorado, from which the following extract is made:

I have made the acquaintance of your Mr. McKeon, and write to thank you for sending him. I preached last Sabbath at Lamar, where he lives and where he has been at work. He has canvassed the town for a Sabbath-school, and incidentally found out that the people were sadly in need of a Presbyterian church. I went down at his suggestion, and arrangements are being made for an organization at this point. The Sabbath-school will come after the church is organized, and the same is probably true of Granada, a neighboring town. I have pointed out to him three other fields in an adjoining county where similar results may be secured.

ANSWERED PRAYERS.

"I am so glad you have come," was the greeting of a western mother to the Sabbath-school missionary who had sought out her lonely cabin. "I have been praying for

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you so long. We have lived on this prairie seven years, and you are the first Christian man that has come here. My husband is an unbeliever. My children have never attended a religious service. I take them aside every day to read the Bible and pray with them and teach them what I but can, it is little that I know. And are you very really going to open a Sabbath-school, where they can go every week and learn about God? It is too good to be true."

This is only one of many mothers to whom the news that some one cares for their children's souls is a joyful message. In their house-to-house visitation, the missionaries find many a woman whose "eyes are homes of silent prayer," and whose heart is heavy with anxiety for those she loves.

One says, "A woman on whom I called was anxious about her husband's conversion. 'I have prayed for him twenty years,' she said, sadly, but I believe the Lord will convert him in his own good time.' 'The Lord's time is now,' said I. 'Let us pray for him again now.' We knelt down and prayed together; and after I left her, she continued in prayer all day. 'I could not wash and iron,' she said; I could do noth

ing but pray.' That evening her husband sought me out to be prayed for, and we have every reason to believe that he has truly found Christ."

"Last winter," says another, "I called upon a family lately moved into that place. The husband slipped out of the back door, and went into the woods. I waited some time for him, but he did not return. I said to the wife, 'Ten years ago I called at this very house, and the man who lived here then gave me the slip in the same way; but God's Spirit found him in answer to prayer.' Two weeks since I received a message from this second family that they wanted to see me. The husband and wife had both found Christ, and they wanted their little child baptized.

"After organizing a school in the afternoon, I remained to hold a meeting in the evening. A lady invited me home to tea. On the way, she said, 'I wish you could get my husband to the meeting. He never