at Red Cloud, in Hastings Presbytery. Rev. C. Van Oostenbrugge has taken charge of the work at Lyons, within the bounds of Omaha Presbytery. Rev. Thomas W. Leard, of Athens, Ill., has been called to the churches of Schuyler and Grandview, Rev. J. A. Hood having been laid aside by bodily infirmity. Rev. J. D. Countermine, of Albany, N. Y., has accepted a call to York and will soon move to that field. Rev. W. S. Barnes, of Corning, Iowa, has been called to Kearney, but his decision has not been made known. Rev. W. H. Miller, of Finleyville, Pa., has accepted the call to St. Paul and will begin work early in September. He will also supply the church of Turkey Creek. Rev. Clarence M. Junkin, of Allegheny, Pa., has decided to come to the churches of Burchard and Liberty, and will move to that field some time in October. Correspondence is now carried on with several ministers, some of whom we hope to secure.

The crops throughout the state are abundant, and it is hoped that the revival of business interests may be greatly helpful in pushing forward our church work. Our constant cry is for more men. The students will soon leave us, and we must have their places filled or the churches will suffer. We shall do the best we can to hold the ground now possessed, and at the same time push forward into the regions beyond.

A CALM STATEMENT.

We have been greatly interested in the following letter. It is a report of four years of labor, in which every department of the missionary's work has been prosperous; and yet he is in one of the largest cities in the West, and in the midst of a population in which many think it is only necessary to build a church edifice to have it speedily filled with a great and devout congregation. How clearly he states the difficulties! How confidently he hopes in the future!

The following is the report of the South Chicago Church for the quarter ending August 16, 1889:

This quarter closes the fourth year of my ministry in this place. When I came here, I found an organization of about fifty members,

[November,

scattered and in a demoralized condition by reason of being long without a pastor, and the congregation numbering on the Sabbath from fifteen to twenty. The society was deeply in debt for a house of worship, as yet bare of conveniences and poorly supplied with the necessary equipments for public worship. Today the congregation is out of debt, the church has been made comfortable and pleasant and provided with many of the appliances of the modern type. The congregation has grown in numbers. In the four years I have been privileged to receive into the church 74 members, our present membership being 103. The organization is strengthened by numbers of good men. It has four excellent and pious elders, two young and two a little past middle life. It has a board of five trustees, all but one members of the church. There are two missionary societies, one among the ladies and one among the children. The Sabbath-school is not large, but is excellently managed by two efficient superintendents. The average attendance is seventy-two, a number which could largely be increased if we had proper facilities and sufficient room. There is a good young people's society, which maintains a prayermeeting in addition to the regular weekly prayer-meeting of the church. The attendance at the church prayer-meeting ranges from fifteen to twenty-five, and has this excellent and unusual feature, that it is about one half made up of men. The attendance upon public worship on the Sabbath is not as large as it should be, ranging anywhere from fifty to one hundred. Perhaps sixty would be a fair average. It may seem strange that, when the church membership is over one hundred and there is a population of at least ten thousand in the legitimate field of the church, the attendance should be so small. Well, I think so myself sometimes on the Sabbath when I stand before so many empty seats, and perhaps I cannot do any better in this report than to enlarge upon this feature of the work here.

As a kind of relief to the shock of being charged with dullness or inefficiency, and to relieve Presbyterianism of the charge of being unadapted to meet the wants of a miscellaneous and pioneer population, it may be well to note that the same is true of all our other Protestant American congregations. The three large Roman Catholic churches are thronged, and the same is true of the various Lutheran churches. Several other denominations, as the German Baptists and Swedish Methodists, have flourishing organizations; but the four Prot

estant English-speaking pastors have little grain to thresh. Neither the Methodists nor Baptists nor Congregational churches can boast of congregations any larger than our own. Neither is this because we come into competition or rival each other. There are enough Methodists and Baptists in town to make strong churches if they could only be reached or brought out; and the same is true of Presbyterians. The fact is that here in this cosmopolitan, manufacturing, tenement district we are faced with that much-talked-of problem of reaching the masses, and this too with very inadequate means.

But even in the midst of difficulties it may seem strange that, with a membership of one hundred and three, the average attendance falls to about sixty. And in regard to this, I may say first that there are many church members who have very inadequate conception of their duty in this respect. Our membership is not made up, much of it, of those who have been brought up and educated into church going. They come from all parts of Europe, and entertain very often very loose views of the sanctity of the Sabbath. Again, these loose views are emphasized by the fact that many of the men are obliged to labor on the Sabbath in our iron industries and upon the railroads, preventing them and their wives more or less regularly from attendance upon the sanctuary. If they are not there in the morning, we look for them in the evening; or if absent one Sunday, we expect to see them there the next; so that it is almost impossible to get the whole congregation together at once. Again, few of the female members have servants, and any domestic cares detain them necessarily. So much for the membership. I like to make excuses for them, though they

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may be poor enough, and it may be in your minds will appear to demand discipline rather than sympathy.

But how about the great numbers of people about us? Why can we not obtain a congregation from them? To this I do not know what answer to make, but it just seems impossible. They are respectful, they are kind and generous, but sermons and prayers and sacred songs seem to have no attraction for them. I wish I knew how to draw them, but the tenor of life and tendency here is away from such things. Casinos and ball games and excursions and the parks and theatres are more likely to occupy their attention. And now that we are annexed to the city, we have an added evil to contend with which hitherto we have been spared-the Sunday saloon.

But little by little we grow in strength. For a year I preached to a congregation that I verily believe would not average over twenty souls, while now I feel pretty bad if it comes short of seventy-five; and there is prospect of still larger growth in the two years now to come, a prospect which denotes the wisdom of the Chicago Presbytery in starting and sustaining this mission. The Illinois Steel Company has commenced work on a new plant, which when completed will employ, it is said, two thousand men. This means a large addition to our population and the arrival of many new Presbyterians and a large increase of that miscellaneous unevangelized population to whom it is our duty to give the gospel, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear. We have great hope for the future. What growth we have already made has been achieved without any addition to the population of the place, no new industries having come here in four years.

From El Paso, Texas, Rev. H. M. Whaling writes:

To-day I shall send in my report for the first quarter of my second year's work as home missionary to the Presbyterian church and congregation of El Paso, Texas.

During this quarter our work progressed very

satisfactorily until about the 1st of June, when my strength began to give way under the intense heat and the enervating effect of this southern climate. For the past month I have been able to preach but once on the Sabbath; but I have kept up my pastoral work as well as possible, and have found several good families who will identify themselves

with our church. Last summer I was the only minister in El Paso who did not take a vacation, and this summer it is my intention to remain steadily at my post if I can do so without detriment to my health. In these Rocky Mountain towns, even this far south, strangers are continually coming in, and they usually connect themselves with the church that looks them up first. Only yesterday my wife found an excellent family who had come in from the North. They were Congregationalists, and they promised to cast in their lot with us. Our congregations are not as large as they were during the winter and spring, because so many of our people have gone up into the mountains to get away from the heat; but they are larger than those of any other church in the city.

During the quarter we have only had one addition on profession of faith and only one or two by letter, but there are others who have expressed a desire to come before the session, and doubtless will at the first opportunity. On the whole the outlook is promising; and if our town is as prosperous as we have every reason to expect it to be, we will, with God's blessing, be self-supporting in another year.

The United States has appropriated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build a customhouse here. It is now being rapidly constructed. There are many other buildings going up. The White Oaks Railroad, which has been in a tangle for several months, will soon be in process of construction again, and with the completion of it, so that we can get cheap coal, El Paso will continue to be the most prosperous town in the mountains south of Pueblo.

Although the weather is very warm-yesterday the thermometer was 110-I enjoy my work intensely. I love to put in the gospel sickle in this glorious West, which is destined one day to exert such tremendous influence upon the destinies of our republic. If the Lord will speedily bestow upon me the honor of bringing this church up to self-support, my cup of happiness will be full.

From Lowell, Mass., Rev. Robert Court writes:

I beg to present my last quarterly report, for the three months ending July 1, which, I trust, will be the last quarter of this church's need of support from your Board. Indeed, I am most thankful

[November,

that it is likely to be so, although I would not shut out the possibility of applying for like aid in a like emergency, as the very transient character of a home mission congregation in New England is a phenomenon in church life for which some allowance must be made.

Church services and three prayer-meetings every week are now in regular order. At the communion services last Sunday, July 7, we received thirteen members, of whom seven were heads of families. Again I draw the attention of your Board to the fact that Presbyterianism in New England is not a propaganda to obtain proselytes from Congregationalism or any other form of evangelical Christianity, but chiefly a gathering in of our own people and of those most intimately connected with them. To prove this I beg to present the following account of those admitted last Sunday:

1. The head of a family from the church of Innerleithen-Sir Walter Scott's "St. Ronan's Well" -come to work in woollen cloth, at which he worked by the banks of the Tweed, in Scotland. 2. Husband and wife from United Presbyterian church, Lawrence, only about two years from Glasgow, Scotland.

3. A young woman reared a Presbyterian in Nova Scotia, by letter from a Congregational church, which she joined in Dorchester in lack of a Presbyterian church.

4. A newly-married man united to one of our Presbyterian women, whose piety and sweet practical Christianity have won her husband to go with her, leaving in this case a Congregational church-surely a beautiful instance of Presbyterian propaganda, which I at least cannot frown

upon.

5. A young woman whom we sent to the Congregationalists, who went home to Nova Scotia, and now returns, though weak, to earn her living here, and who naturally comes to the church of her childhood, the Presbyterian.

6. A Presbyterian woman from Nova Scotia, who waited for years to bring with her her husband, trained an Episcopalian, but who with her has been attending our ministry for more than ten years. Both joined last Sunday-exemplary Christian people, truly Presbyterian.

7. A Scotchman, named after Scotland's great church leader, follows his daughter in professing Christ.

8. A Scotch mill girl professes Christ.

9. An aged Nova Scotian woman, that had lost

1889.]

her church relations, renews them with us, and finds her heart satisfied in the faith of her fathers.

10. An American girl attends our services and prayer-meetings and professes her faith in Christ. Could we refuse to admit her?

11. A Presbyterian youth from the county Armagh.

Dear brethren, what I have told you several of our home mission ministers in New England might have told you. Yet when we hear so much about the value of the souls of Hindus and. Chinese, of freedmen and Indians, surely the souls of Scotch mill girls and operatives, of Nova Scotian hired girls and Ulster laborers and carpenters, are worth looking after. And who can so well provide for them, and whom will they so well trust, as the ministers of the dear old Presbyterian faith, in which as children they were trained?

Rev. George Edwards writes from White Sulphur Springs, Montana:

As far as regular services are concerned there is little noticeable change since my last report. Everything considered, the interest and attendance are encouraging. One sign of life is found in the fact that for some weeks the Christian young people have maintained a young people's prayermeeting on Sabbath afternoons.

Children's Day, which we observed on June 16, was a season of peculiar interest. The whole day was given to children's services. The attendance was not far from two hundred and fifty, which taxed the capacity of our chapel to the utmost. The offerings at the two services amounted to $36, which is to be devoted to the Sabbath-school work of our church, and a part of it to securing new hymn-books. We now have a full supply of "Laudes Domini" abridged, which will take the place of the gospel hymns which we have used for two and a half years. It does us good to sing the hymns of our fathers again.

The whole of the quarter has been spent at the springs and vicinity, except two weeks, which was recently devoted to a tour through the Judith country. Though I do not visit them regularly, I am still chairman of that session. We are still without a supply in that valley, or in fact in the whole of Fergus county. The field is ours if we will occupy it. The Methodists are making the most of their opportunity to possess the field. The conference has just sent an additional man to

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Philbrook to act as Brother Bennet's assistant. Both men are Scotchmen, and formerly Presbyterians. There are a good many Scotch Presbyterians in that section whom they wish to win over. In reference to the development of that valley, one of the finest in the territory, a surveying party of the Northern Pacific Railroad is now in the field setting the grade stakes.

During July I baptized six children, one of them at Philbrook. Since the pastor has a home of his own in a new manse at the springs there is less desire and perhaps need of a summer's vacation. My present intention is to remain at my post till time for meeting of presbytery at Missoula in Oc tober.

Rev. E. J. Thompson, D.D., of Corvallis, Oregon, writes:

The third quarter of my year's labor with the churches of Corvallis and Oak Ridge closed yesterday. With sincere gratitude to the great Head of the Church I am able to report substantial progress not only in attendance upon all the services and work of the church, but in valuable improvements upon our church building.

Our building at Corvallis, erected thirty-five years ago (one of the first on this North Pacific coast), has come to need repair. Our people are just now financially weak, and at first the work seemed impossible; but with a determined purpose and an unwavering faith in the sure promises of God, we set to work to rebuild the "house of the Lord," and to the glad surprise of all we have finished, free of debt, our improvements, and are enjoying virtually a new church home.

Of course it has made large drafts on our limited resources, and as is always the case, the pastor must make large sacrifices, which he has been more than willing to do. The future is more promising than ever, and we feel to "take courage and go forward" with the kind help of our noble Board of Home Missions a little longer, and the church of Corvallis hopes and expects to be self-supporting.

From Barre, Vt., Rev. E. W. Cummings writes:

Herewith I respectfully present my second quarterly report.

The work has gone on quietly, steadily and with an encouraging degree of success. All our

services have been well attended; every week has found us better organized and equipped in some

way.

At the beginning of the quarter, in the good providence of God we were enabled to secure a desirable lot on very favorable terms. It is centrally located, only a short distance from Main Street. The first installment of the purchase money was raised at the congregational meeting which decided to buy the lot.

We think that $6000 will pay the balance due on the lot and build us a church suitable not only for present needs, but for some time in the future. We shall build just as soon as circumstances will warrant. Our present accommodations are very poor indeed.

Our Sabbath-school is growing finely. When formally organized, April 7, it had a membership of sixty-two. At the end of the first quarter ninety-one were reported, with an average attendance of sixty. Last Sabbath seventy-one were present. We are much favored in our superintendent, whose devout Christian character and exceptional ability are supplemented by experience gained in mission work in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The church now has eighty-seven members, and there is every prospect of steady enlargement. Barre is still booming. New families are constantly arriving. Everything that can be used as a dwelling is full and running over. Scarcely a family in the place allows itself the luxury of a "spare room." New houses are going up on all sides, and are engaged before half completed. A wide door is open here for God's people. May they have grace to enter in and improve the opportunity. Arrangements have been about completed by the Congregational, Methodist Episcopal and Presbyterian churches for the services of an approved evangelist in the fall. We are hoping and praying that we may receive an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Rev. John Reid, Jr., writes from Great Falls, Mont.:

Three years this month since I came 110 miles by coach from Helena, packed on the top with other freight, being gridironed in the blazing sun, which with relentless force poured its fierce rays down into the canon of the Prickly Pear, whilst the inside passengers slowly cooked below, and the

[November,

horses, "puir beasties," had a Turkish bath, for which I fear they paid too much. I was assured by "the oldest inhabitant" that "it (1886) was the hottest and dryest summer ever known," but this season has beaten the record of 1886 altogether. A rainless spring following upon the track of a snowless winter (some six inches probably fell all through), and, to cap the climax, the greatest heat and fewest breezes within the memory of man, have made this summer a most extraordinary one; 102 in the shade and 80 at 8 o'clock at night has at times been the record of this open country; with closely-packed buildings it would, of course, have been much higher. I suppose that since last June only some eight or ten inches have fallen in snow or rain, yet, wonderful to relate, wheat ("No. 1 Hard") has come to perfection and been harvested without irrigation on the benches or table-lands near this city; and although the drought has been hard upon stockmen, and if a severe winter is before us they may suffer heavy losses, yet it has demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt the great vitality of our native grasses-our “blue joint” being probably the most nutritious in the world— and the fact that the sandy loam of the bench-lands is good land for wheat-raising without irrigation, and that in ordinary years it will yield a handsome return; in fact the "benches" have in most cases done better this year than the "bottom-lands," for this reason that there is more or less clay found in the "bottoms," and in dry seasons, unless irrigated, the ground cakes" or hardens. It is, however, necessary, to ensure a full crop, to get the grain into the ground in February, which is, with extremely few exceptions, one of the pleasantest months of our year. The snows of December are usually melted by the friendly "Chinook” winds, which come from the "Syro Kyro" or Japanese Gulf Stream, and "make the winter of our discontent glorious" with a foretaste of spring. It must be distinctly understood, however, that all the bench-lands in Montana are not good, some being stony and others covered with gravel; such are only fit for stock ranges, etc. I do not wish any one for a moment to think that I am trying to cover up the fact that the present drought is a most unfortunate happening to our country; but "there is never a muckle loss but there is a wee profit," and when easterners and westerners know that they can in a good season get dual crops to tide them over a bad or dry year it will make them more favorably disposed toward this mountain