We have, in two articles immediately preceding this, called attention to some conditions of the speedy evangelization of the world, viz.: a grand council of all evangelical disciples, representative in character, at which the mission-fields of the world shall present their history, condition, needs and prospects; and at which the world-field shall be mapped out and distributed, so that every part shall have its place on the scheme of labor. Secondly, we have strenuously insisted that we must not expect to depend entirely upon fully trained and highly educated workmen to do this great work. The numbers needed are so great, and the work so varied and so urgent, that we must encourage willing and consecrated souls to enter the harvest-field, even though they may lack a classical training

Another suggestion should be added, germane to this, viz.: that Christian colonies should be sent out to conduct the work of evangelization in connection with any honest and laudable calling.

Rev. G. F. Dale, of Syria, emphatically says that those who cannot preach but are willing to work, may find plenty of work closely linked with the direct work of preaching, and necessary to the proper prosecution of missions. Teaching, distribution of Bibles and tracts, editing, translating, printing, and not a little merely manual labor, are an essential part of the great missionary work. Dr. Crummell, after twenty years in the Dark Continent, puts great stress on the need of industrial training. He shows how the rescued slaves in Sierra Leone, being taught trades and industries, became Christian mechanics, merchants and manufacturers, and founded Christian families, whose sons and daughters have gone to England for

scholarly training; and to this sanctification of the common callings of life, he attributes the superior prosperity and self-dependence of Sierra Leone, building its own churches, sustaining its own ministry, and even contributing largely to missions.

Many who have not the fitness nor the faculty for preaching, may consecrate the calling in which they are found, whatever it be, to God's service in saving souls. Salt Lake Valley needs nothing more to-day than colonies of Christian tradesmen. Mormonism should be confronted with the witness of a Christian community, consecrated workmen in all the learned professions and departments of industry; Christian families free from the taint of polygamy and full of the rich blessing of the normal household.

What greater blessing could be given to the Free State of the Congo, than to plant it all over with similar colonies of Christian men and women, who go there expressly to build up Christian homes, and illustrate Christian trades in the midst of heathen hovels, mud idols, and licentious idleness!

Possibly the Christian colony is the most important factor in the solution of this great missionary problem. Let the carpenters and blacksmiths, the farmers and the mechanics, the lawyers and the doctors, go with their families to be living epistles of the truth and grace of God. Let the young man who desires to preach as his life work, and cannot afford time and money for a long, hard course of study, go abroad to work as he may, while he carries on study, applying himself not, perhaps, to Latin, Greek and Hebrew, but to the languages of the people among whom he wishes to labor. Some of the foremost missionaries of the world have declared that

the time and labor of extensive preparation for mission work can best be expended on the field where the work is to be done. College life at home, and even seminary life, with the temptations to absorption in books, erection of literary standards, and long withdrawal from active, aggressive work, are not favorable to ardent fervent zeal. Many a young man comes out of his course with his early missionary zeal hopelessly chilled.

Converted natives, set at once to work, do not lose their first love, except for a new and stronger one. Work for souls is the best education for work. Lectures on projectiles never made a good artilleryman or sharpshooter; it is practice in the field that makes a skillful marksman, and if candidates for the missionary field, whose piety, intelligence and soundness in the faith are assured, could complete their studies on the field, under the guidance of experienced missionaries, while they are putting to practical use their growing knowledge and capacity, we might have a new generation of missionary workers, greatly multiplied in numbers, and greatly increased in efficiency and consecration.

The whole church of Christ must give fresh thought, earnestness and vigor to the question of the world's redemption. Something beyond what is now doing needs to be done; some new clew must be found to the mazes of this missionary question, and what we are to do we must do at once. The generation is fast passing away, and we with it, and at the bar of God these unsaved millions are to confront us. While we are asking what we can do to save them, it would be well to ask what we can do to save ourselves from the responsibility of their ruin! What blood guiltiness' is that which is found in leaving immortal souls to die of hunger, while we have the bread of Life'

PART II.

MISSIONARY TEXTS, THEMES, ETC. The whole secret of the missionary spirit and method is unveiled in Matt. ix: 36-38: I. Compassion for humanity.

1. The vast multitude of the lost. 2. Their scattered, shepherdless condition. II. Conception of the work: 1. The abundance of harvest. 2. The paucity of laborers. III. Prayer to God: 1. As Lord of the harvest. 2. As alone able to supply laborers.

What one man can do in the ordinary life-time of a generation is shown in the history of Paul. From the time of his conversion to his martyrdom, it was just about thirty-three years, according to the most careful calculation. Three years of his time seem to have been passed in holy retirement, in prepararation for the subsequent thirty. Yet during that brief period he traveled largely a-foot over the greater part of the entire country, from the golden Horn to the Pillars of Hercules, and, as some think, the Irish Sea; the breadth of the districts he covered in missionary journeys was limited only by the mountains on the north and the Mediterranean south. He preached and taught, he gathered converts and organized churches, he wrote epistles even in prison, and proclaimed the gospel even in chains, to the soldiers who were his guard. No man has probably ever reached results as great; and yet he lived when there were no facilities for travel, no printing-presses, no modern auxiliaries to missionary labor. Moody says he never thinks of Paul without being ashamed!

PART III.
MONTHLY BULLETIN.

INDIA. The people have lost faith in the ideas and idolatries of Brahminism. Max Muller said to Norman McLeod that he knew of no people as ripe for Christianity to-day as the East Indians. Chunder Sen, the leader of the Brahmo Somaj, confessed that the power that is overturning India is not political power, not the power of civilization, but the power of Jesus Christ. In India, during the year 1878 to 1879, there was the greatest turning to God that has ever been known since the Pentecostsixty thousand people, in Southern India, passing over from their idolatries to identify themselves with Christian.

communities within the space of twelve months! And India is the Malakoff of the modern missionary campaign; the very key of all Oriental missions. The bones of six hundred missionaries lie on the shores of the East Indies, and the social firmament is studded thickly with Gospel stations as the heavens are studded with stars.

JAPAN.-Missionaries are beginning to use with effect the argument from the changed lives and happy deaths of Christians. They affirm openly that heathen religions have no such power. Many instances are occurring to confirm this statement. One woman, whose home was in the house of the head man of the village, sickened and died, and her death was so serene and happy as to have made quite an impression on the community. "How is this," people asked, "that without even naming an idol, one can have such a splendid way of dying?" The Buddhist priest protested against the introduction of the "foreign religion," into the very house of the head man. The latter replied that he was not a Christian, but that a religion which did so much for one in this life and gave such a promise for the life to come, could not be very bad.

WE THINK OF MOHAMMEDANISM as being utterly unapproachable by the Gospel; but look at these three facts: In the first place, the Mohammedan religion is iconoclastic; it overturns and destroys idols wherever it goes, and so far, it is in sympathy with our simple Protestant worship and with the spirit of our missionary cause. In the second place, it is monotheistic; it teaches the doctrine of one God, and a large portion of its sacred teachings are derived from the Old Testament Scriptures. In the third place, God is using it as an evangelistic agency; for the Arabic is the sacred language of the Koran. Believers everywhere, whatever their own tongue, are expected to be able to read the Koran, and hence to understand the Arabic; consequently our Arabic Bibles are circulated among Mohammedans everywhere and read,

JOHN ELIOT, ON THE DAY OF HIS DEATH, in his eightieth year, was found teaching the alphabet to an Indian child at his bedside. Why not rest from your labors?" said a friend. 66

Because," said the venerable man, "I have prayed to God to make me useful in my sphere, and He has heard my prayer; for, now that I can no longer preach, He leaves me strength enough to teach this poor child his alphabet." Eighty years of age, and bedridden, yet still at work for others!

OVER FIFTY YEARS AGO, a young man landed alone upon an island in the Pacific, the only object of civilization to the cannibalism around him; he grasped a Bible and wrote upon the beach two words-Jehovah, Jesus. To-day that island is the centre and source of a high Christian life, aids in advancing the Gospel, and sends money to our missionary societies.

DR. HERRICK JOHNSON says: "Many a 'sent one' is now in the fish's belly needing to be promptly deposited on a foreign shore to preach a self-experienced Gospel of repentance, faith and consecration."

A BUDDHIST TEMPLE has been opened in Paris. The priest comes from Ceylon to enlighten the French. Buddhists assert that Roman Catholicism is a counterfeit of their religion, invented by the devil. There certainly are remarkable points of similarity.

THE GROWTH OF RELIGIONS, as shown by the following table, covers the last century, which is practically the whole era of modern missions. The figures of 1784 are from Dr. Carey's "Enquiry into the State of the Heathen World":

one-half is from Great Britain, onequarter from America, and the remainder from the Continent of Europe, etc. The ordained missionaries number 2,900, and all the European and American laborers about 5,000; while 30,000 native converts of different lands are engaged in Christian missionary work. Those not Christians still outnumber the Christians more than two to one; the non-Christians being 1,000,000,000, the Christians 444,000,000.

THE FIRST SHIP that brought slaves to this land is said to have been named "The Jesus." Dr. Gordon beautifully refers to this strange fact. What a desecration of the name! Yet what a return voyage, if The Jesus" bear back their descendants to evangelize Africa!

THE ENTRANCE to the Zenanas of India was by the needle of woman. A pair of embroidered slippers sent to a woman in a Zenana, and there exciting the admiration of the husband, who desired his wife to learn the art-the missionary woman came and taught embroidery while she taught also the religion of Christ.

A GRADUATE OF VASSAR went to Japan to teach-herself a gifted daughter of a judge in western New York. She was offered a fine government position as teacher, if she would consent to teach secular branches only. Three times the offer was made, and each time with greater concessions. She would not accept, however, until full permission and protection were given her in teaching the faith of her Lord and Savior. plus grace!

SHORT PASTORATES.

Grit

BY REV. A. MCELROY WYLIE. THOUGH the fact may be conceded, yet to examine some of the many causes will help us in suggesting some (at least) partial remedies.

1. Rushing, challenges our attention as among the foremost causes. The American temper, superinduced upon the spirit of the age, intensifies this tendency to rush things. Young men

rush to their conclusions; they rush through their preparation for college; they rush through their college curricu lum; they rush through seminary; they rush into inviting fields; they rush into parishes too large or too exacting upon youthful strength and inexperience; they rush into sermonizing upon too exhausting conditions. This seems to necessitate rushing into extemporizing before the youthful pulpiter has command of either material or experience or training to venture upon such a method of utterance. One of the greatest preachers of the land declared he wrote for seven years before he ven tured to deliver one sermon without the MS. before him. The habit of rushing is fixed upon the young man, and he rushes at families, and too often finds (when too late) he is incubating eggs with a hammer. He offends; he stumbles over ill-judgments. He discovers in due time that rushing is the unwise method; but, in most cases, it has done the business and the man must move on.

2. Pastors are often made the victims of false and unreasonable judg ments, and are killed beneath the blows of absurd critical standards. Every winter our village hall echoes often to the voices of the foremost lecturers of the land, and packed audiences are tickled into ecstasies by the platform flights of our peripatetic orators, who spend six months of the year perfecting a single oration, amid tropical scenes of a cultured imagination. Follow ing these weekly exhibitions are sundry Sabbath corollaries. One is in empty pews, especially if the lecture be on Saturday evening. Another is in morbid criticisms, induced by apply. ing the lyceum standard to the pulpit. The magazine and the daily press mul tiply the instruments of examination within this modern inquisition. What wonder is it, if many a sensitive soul retires before the thickening array of animadversions, turned loose upon their victims by the spirits called and commissioned by the universal platform and the all-penetrating press? And

where is there an influential spirit, in even a remote country congregation, who has not heard the eloquent and powerful Dr. Boanerges, of the Metropolitan pulpit; and straightway the hearer returns and enters upon the self-imposed task of criticising his own pastor by the imported standard?

3. Absurdly inadequate salaries must rank as a potent factor in a moving ministry. While I write, a not distant church, which, with aid from the Home Missionary Society, can promise but $700, is in arrears not less than $1,200, and were it not for the quiet exertion of friends, the numerous parsonage flock would actually suffer from cold and hunger. Here the unwisdom of dividing our smallest villages, through the rival sects bidding for patronage, is a fruitful cause of moving the clergy through inadequate support.

4. Candidating comes before us as an encouragement to short pastorates. There is a church giving a salary of a $1,000. The pulpit is vacant, and within three months scores of candidates press their claims for a hearing. The people are greatly flattered. They grow hyper-critical. They become more exacting, and harder to please, and more easily offended, until, under this process, multitudes of churches become chronic hot-beds of disturbing causes, and the Apostle Paul himself could not expect a five years' course among such a people.

5. Another cause is found in the too common tendency to drift away from sympathy with the young. The children rule in most of American households-let the pastor remember that. We may complain that parents do not exert more authority, but we are compelled to meet facts as they are.

Close upon the heels of the preceding is the want of respect for age in our land. William Pitt, in his famous reply to Walpole, spoke of "the atrocious crime of being a young man." Were Walpole now living and in the American ministry, he might move the indictment further along and hold up

the "atrocious crime of being an old man," and the crime deepening with every advancing day of life. Old men, and men who are not old, are daily being broken upon this American wheel of irreverence for gray hairs.

6. We name, also, divided energies as another cause. Preachers are compelled to teach, to farm, to take agencies for books, deal in life insurance, write for the press the latter, perhaps, not a hindrance, but a help, if it be on the line of ministerial thought, study and experience.

7. Still another fruitful cause is infirm or irregular health. While it is true that the average of life in the ministry is the greatest, it is also unfortunately true that a considerable proportion of the profession are not of robust health. Many are overworked on the road to the ministry. Others are delicate by nature, and many permit themselves to be overtasked in their fields of duty. They never know how to say no. Here is a day's work by one, who adventured beyond his vital reserve: Three preaching services, two Sunday-schools, eight miles' drive (including two crossings of a wide river), then at 10 P. M. visiting the dying. Result: Monday, exhaustion, so that he was scarcely capable of digesting food; Tuesday, tired; Wednesday, dull; and Thursday, energies hardly recuperated. Is it needful to add that even a young man had to leave his field or break down hopelessly?

8. Another fruitful cause is responding too generously to what are termed "outside calls." The platform! how much that means! All manner of societies, associations, clubs, schemes of benevolence, hospitals, schools and institutions, rush to put their banners into the hands of the clergy, assured that such hands can lift them higher and wave them with more effect than those of any other class. We are flattered by the honor or by the plea of effecting greater good, and then our over-taxed powers demand a change and our under-provided-for sheep demand the same.