phase of the question as to what the future of America shall be, will be solved.

The eye must be dim that cannot see the hand of God molding, planning, guiding all along the way, preparing America to be the great missionary field of the world. It is for this he is pouring in the floodtide of immigration. The question is, will the Church accept the responsibility, and do the work? These are wonderful years. The

Prof.

results of our faithfulness or unfaithfulness are wide as the world. Phelps said, "If I were a missionary in China, I would pray every morning for America." If America is to continue to be the base of supplies for missionaries for heathen lands, the heathen at home must not be allowed to gain the majority. The success of Foreign Missions depends upon the success of Home Missions. A distinguished foreign missionary says, "The fate of the world is to be decided in America." Every Christian is responsible for doing all he can to send the Gospel everywhere, but he is responsible for evangelization of his own community, his own State, his own land as he is not for any other. No man can be a true lover of his country who loves not the cause of Home Missions. It appeals to the zeal, and patriotic pride, and true consecration of every loyal Christian.

The children should be trained to be the workers, and prayers, and givers of the next generation. Let them be trained to build churches, and support schools here in the home-land. Let them be trained to have the same interest in Home that they now have in Foreign Missions. Let them be so educated that they will have hearts and minds and souls large enough to take in all the world, and early learn that true religion and true philanthropy belt the world with sympathies, prayers, and gifts. The future of Home Missions rests with the children of to-day, and only as they are trained to broad thinking and generous giving will the success of that future be assured. "Greater than the divinity that doth hedge about a king, is the righteousness that doth hedge about a righteous people."-Extracts from Leaflet 59. Price two cents each.

SOMETHING NEW IN MISSOURI,

A WHOLE SUNDAY-SCHOOL BECOMES AUXILIARY TO THE A. H. M. S.

THE TABERNACLE SUNDAY-SCHOOL, of its own free will and accord, two weeks ago, resolved to organize itself into an auxiliary of the American Home Missionary Society. On the third Sabbath of each month a special collection is to be taken and forwarded to the Treasurer. Yesterday the little ones had $7.13, which we remit to-day for the month of August. The superintendent gave the school a good talk on the needs and practical workings of the American Home Missionary Society. The intention is to make the September collection a good one. This

church, as you are aware, three years ago, with only thirty-five members, resolved to come to self-support. The membership is still weak, numerically, but the effort has proved successful, God has abundantly blessed us, and even the children are enthusiastically disposed, by their gifts, to express their appreciation to the Society to which they feel indebted for all that they are. A number of our scholars have been admitted to church fellowship, and our highest ambition now is to give them, with all the school, A THOROUGH PRACTICAL MISSIONARY EDUCATION. A church built of such material will be an active, aggressive, and efficient. power for good in any community. Our Sunday-school will never forget some of the kind, sympathetic, and Christian letters read in their hearing from eastern ladies, at a time when the church was needy, discouraged, and almost in despair. Now, in turn, they propose to contribute to aid other churches in their struggles. Yes, as was remarked yesterday, the children have caught the spirit, and got hold of this fellowship idea of Congregationalism, as substantially shown in their plan for raising money for the American Home Missionary Society.

We received seven into church fellowship yesterday. Our church is progressing with unusual interest even in the midst of these midsummer days. Our large Tabernacle is well filled.

I have no time for vacation this summer. Two months ago we organized a mission school under the auspices of the Tabernacle superintendent, an old Massachusetts Congregationalist. It is two miles from the city and we shall have a church there shortly.

We often talk of the kindness of friends to us as a family, when we were so needy. They can never know how much they helped us just at that particular time.-Rev. J. W. Johnson, Joplin, Mo.

ONE IN CHRIST.

DEAR HOME MISSIONARY.-IN other years you gladdened my heart as the months rolled along and you came to my post office box as regularly as time, with your encouraging reports, thrilling letters from devoted missionaries, and the columns of receipts which showed the interest. taken in both the missionaries and the missions. I have many times had my soul stirred by reading in your pages the demand for men to go forth to save souls. How the missionary spirit has arisen at times, and I have resolved to go and preach Jesus. This when I was a school-boy and teacher alternately, and before I started forth to proclaim the "glad tidings."

Circumstances peculiar to western church-life placed me where I could not have a home in the church of my choice, and I entered into fellowship with the church of the United Brethren in Christ, and in this church was licensed to preach the glorious Gospel, and where I now endeavor to gather in the sheaves.

My heart still goes out in deep sympathy with the dear brothers whose names I see on the roll of the American Home Missionary Society, aud these toilers have my earnest prayers that they may have many stars in their crowns.

I have just seen a copy of the last Home Missionary, and it rekindles the fellowship feeling toward the Congregational Church and her work, and my heart cries out "God bless these dear people, my brothers and sisters, in the Lord, who are doing so much to bring the world to the feet. of Jesus."Yours for Christ, C. E. Walker, Grey Eagle, Minn.

A JEREMIAD TURNED INTO A DOXOLOGY.

BY REV. MORITZ E. EVERSZ, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE GERMAN DEPARTMENT.

As to the German work, it is moving on, and I am most happy to report that the pledges made at Saratoga have been so far redeemed that the debts on the seminary at Crete have been canceled.

The proceeds of the remaining pledges will be applied to aid needy students for the German ministry. The annual meeting of the Board of Trust was very joyous and encouraging. The treasurer's Jeremiad had been turned into a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. The outlook for the new year is most encouraging.

Rev. J. Ramser, who taught so successfully in the seminary a year ago, was appointed its principal, and a committee appointed to secure an assistant. Now if some of our Nebraska churches would furnish a few of the students' rooms, every thing would be in readiness for the students who are applying for admission, one by one. A little more of such practical sympathy for our German work as was shown at Saratoga will surely put it on a firm basis.

A touching case of heroic but mistaken faith came to my knowledge, recently. One of our German brethren had begun work in one of our larger western towns. The people whom he was gathering for Christ were new immigrants from Russia, day laborers, paying up the debt of their long journey. Of course they had little to give, and had not been trained to look after the wants of their minister. A grant had been secured from the American Home Missionary Society, but the time for a quarter's salary was not yet. He lived without comforts and on the plainest food, preparing it himself. But, save as he would, his little store of money disappeared. His last shovel of coal was also burned about the same time. What should he do? He told his heavenly Father about it, and tried to exercise faith that he would not let his servant starve. To go and tell his brother minister about it seemed to him to be a breach of faith. So he tried to wait and endure, eating a meal occasionally when invited by some of the people. The spring was backward and cold. For

hours he walked his floor in his overcoat to keep warm. Then he feared neighbors might see him and wonder at his conduct, so he walked the streets. Again and again he hunted cupboard and cellar over to find a crust of bread that he might have overlooked. At length, after living in this way for a week and feeling himself growing weaker and weaker, he opened his heart to a brother minister and was at once provided for. But the results of these privations are as yet uncertain, except these: a sadly depleted constitution and a nervousness which makes sleep difficult, and he is able to do only half work. And yet there are those who think our home missionaries are over-ready to call for aid. Does this look so?

OUR THANKSGIVING.

My plan began away back in October. I don't know why I should have been thinking of Thanksgiving so long before, except that the pattering leaves and bare trees seemed to be speaking of the close of another year, which had been so crowded with blessings. I thought how lavishly our Father in heaven had bestowed good gifts on us, his earthly children, and so, from thankfulness I think it must have been, I began while yet the golden-rods were in blossom, to look forward to Thanksgiving and to ponder how we might, on that day, really express our thanks to Him from whom cometh every good and perfect gift. I need not tell of the various stages in the growth and maturing of my plan, but will simply show what fruit it bore in the proceedings of that joyful day.

When at length we had finished dinner-linked sweetness, long drawn out," as my younger brother, John, characteristically remarkedwe all, as requested, withdrew into the sitting-room. The grandfather then said that, though most of us had been to the services in the church some had desired to express thankfulness for the special blessings we, as as a family, had received; that, in the morning, the preacher had showed what reason we had to praise God for national blessings-civil liberty, religious toleration, educational advantages. "But," he continued, "we, as a family, have great reason for thankfulness, and let us, as a family, give expression to this feeling." After these few words, he opened the old leather-covered family Bible, and read the Thirty-fourth Psalm "O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together." "O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him." Then, with full hearts, we joined in his brief prayer.

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And now came the more practical part. Into the hat which John passed around, each one put as many cents as he was years old. How the amount so taken should be devoted was to be decided afterward. The grandfather, according, he said, to the days of the years of his pilgrimage, gave in his three silver quarters; the baby, her single penny, which was more, John thought, than any of the others had given, as she was not

yet a year old. In her joy at giving so much, she miscalculated the distance of the hat, and sent its contents flying about the room; but the children after considerable scrambling, succeeded in picking up the scattered coins, and the hat was again on its way. The clinking pennies spoke of cheerful hearts, and soon all had given. To our joy there was found to be, as our thank-offering unto the Lord, five dollars and eighty-eight

cents.

It was then asked that we express our preferences as to how the money should be employed, and that he whose proposition received the greatest number of votes should make up the even dollars. This was quickly done, for we each seemed to have some worthy cause at heart. One wished it to be applied towards paying those who are fighting for the cause of Christ in the new cities of the West; another, to Mr. Schauffler's work among the thousands of Bohemians in the city of Cleveland; another, to relieve the sufferings of the famine-stricken people of Central Turkey, and so to bring them under the influence of our Christian missionaries. Slips of paper were now distributed, upon which we voted. When these votes were counted, it was found that Home Missions had gained the day, and I gladly made up the six dollars. John declared it was from a feeling of revenge that they had so voted, that I, to whom the plan was to be charged, might have to pay this extra amount.

Then came "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," and my plan had been carried out to the letter. Was it not a success?

10,000 PEOPLE WITHOUT A HOUSE OF WORSHIP.

MODOC COUNTY, California, is much larger than the State of Rhode Island. It is a county of mountains, hills, and valleys, and has been settled but a few years. Within a radius of thirty miles there are ten thousand inhabitants, and no house of worship but the one we are now building at Adin. Most of the people are poor. A few have gained wealth, but have no God but the world. In fact, the majority of the people are given to money-making and idolatry. Our hope at present is in our Sunday-school work, which is really quite promising. We have three schools, containing sixty scholars, and some of these young people are being led to Christ. Our little church is struggling, hoping, and praying for the dawn of day. We are only three months old, and we have so much to do and so few to do it! This field is white and ready for the harvest. If there is a field in the country that needs cultivating, it is this, and we believe that with earnest, persistent work, many sheaves may be gathered in for the Lord. We have a great variety of people, from those of refinement and culture, to the Ute Indian.-Rev. E. D. Howells, Adin, California.