been or will be opened in the near future. We now have sixteen places where the gospel is preached, either daily or three or four times a week. Besides this work we have had eleven schools, with about two hundred and fifty pupils, and five hundred patients who have received treatment. Surely the Lord has blessed us abundantly. In Hong Kong our congregations are literally overflowing, and soon we shall have to seek larger quarters. A little over a year ago we started with about thirty hearers, but now we often have more than one hundred listeners, while there have been baptisms at every one of the four communions held, and a number are waiting to be received in the near future.

"Chik Shui, which was opened during the latter part of last year, has been signally blessed of God. Twenty-three additions in a single half year is a record that has not been equalled by any other outstation of the Mission. It commands a good position, and already the impression made upon some of the literati is bearing fruit, and the work is widening in every direction. At Min Pin, where last year we were pelted

with dirt and stones, we had the pleasure since the opening of the chapel to consecrate nine persons in baptism, four of whom were women. At the hands of women we received a most shameful treatment, but the women were also the first to accept the gospel.

"At Wa On, Beautiful Rest,' where we opened a new station after the visit of the deputation, we have already received a few who had been instructed for some time in the gospel. For all these tokens of divine favor we are extremely thankful, but the Lord calls us to sow and reap in still larger measure. After many days the heroic and noble work of Bridgman, Parker, and Williams is beginning to bear fruit, not so much in the capital city of Canton, but in the surrounding country. We have only entered into their labors, 'our work is but theirs; but since the doors in China are now wide open, why does not the Christian church go forward to possess the land? There are many places calling for the gospel if we only had the means to send it to them. Money, winged with the prayers of faithful souls, is the need of the hour."

AN ORDINATION. SINCE the ordination service alluded to by Dr. Goodrich in the article on another page another ordination has taken place at the North Chapel, Peking, on May 23. The council called included missionaries and native laborers connected with the Methodist, Presbyterian, and the London Missions in Peking. The examination of Mr. Jên was most satisfactory. Mr. C. E. Ewing reports that Mr. Jên came from a heathen home a hundred miles from Peking. After graduating from college and theological. seminary, he labored for some time in a country village, but he has found his place in Peking. "He has been grow

promise now seems even better than before. I think we may properly look for large harvest in the near future.

"At Ping Ching the same good report can be given as before. Less than a year has the helper opened the chapel there, but the hearers are so many as to tax his strength. The earnest inquirers are not a few, and there are five whom I hope to baptize on July 24, just about a year after the opening of the chapel. This may not sound like a large number, but in reality such results are seldom achieved in a single year. We pray for God's continued blessing on the work here. For this summer, one of the college students on the whole, the one from whom we may hope most is with Lihsien Sheng to help him in his zealous labors.

"At Shun I Hsien I learned that the

new chapel, which is in a more favorable location than the one where we used to be, has been attracting crowds of hearers on every market day. The church members, too, are much pleased, and have been coming with even more regularity than heretofore. The day that I was there the helper was especially interested in the case of a man who had come in the day before. When asked if he had come for some ordinary purpose, he replied, No; do you suppose I would walk ten miles for that?' . Well, then, why have you come?' To learn more about Christian truth.' This man had never talked with Christians before; but he had read the Gospels, Pilgrim's Progress, Martin's Christian Evidences and other books; he believed them, and the helper thinks he is a Christian already."

6

DIFFICULTIES IN MEDICAL WORK.

DR. ROSE BOWER, of Sakanjimba, writes under date of June 24:

"As to news of the medical work here, there is not much that I can write. While I have a few patients, for the most part these people have not learned to use our medicines. They think one dose should make an instantaneous cure, and when it don't they conclude that it is of no use. Some take the medicine given them and are very particular to learn how to take it; in a few days they come back and say that it did them no good. They were afraid to swallow it, so they rubbed it on the skin of the part affected — with a negative result, of course. Many come with sores, and after time and medicine have been spent on them, suddenly they do not come, and perhaps after a few weeks they return worse than ever, and say they went off to some village to visit, now they have come back for us to finish; others, after trying all their doctors and spending all

their cloth, goats, pigs, and chickens on fees to their doctors, and from six months to three years have passed and the sore has become a malignant ulcer, come back to us and want to stay. But even then many think they do us such an honor that we should find them in food and all the necessaries, for the pleasure we have in treating them.

"But one of the greatest hindrances here is the fact that we ask that each one that comes for medicine bring something in payment, be it ever so small. Many of them will endure any amount of sickness rather than give anything. They say Mr. Woodside gave them the medicine free, and it is my meanness.' I trust that by another year or so I may have better reports to make. As it is, it is discouraging, hard work, and not much to show for it. Only this week a man came for medicine for a woman in childbirth. I told him I must see the case and know the condition. He was willing for me to go, and I went

I

with him. It was quite a walk to his village. I found that there was no medicine that would meet the case, but that it was a very difficult case and required instruments and patience and skill. I wanted to undertake the case but was plainly told if I had no medicine that would do it, then they did not want me and I was told to go home. told them that white people did so, and they told me that that might do for white people but would not do for them. I assured them that the woman would die if they did not let me help her. They told me that that was their business and not mine. So of course I could only come away and leave her to her fate; she died in the night. So you see what I have to contend with to get medical work started with these people."

A NEW VILLAGE- A TEMPERANCE

MOVEMENT.

MR. SANDERS wrote from Kamundongo in June last of a plan which was then in process of execution for transferring the village in which the young people lived to a new site, so that the mission compound shall be between this village and the Kamundongo villages. This will help in the discipline of the schools, and save the young people from many temptations connected with the native towns. The young men, under Dr. Wellman's leadership, have undertaken to put up houses for themselves on the new site, and at the time Mr. Sanders wrote (June 22) everyone was most busily occupied in the work of building. The movement is regarded as one of great promise, and it well illustrates the hold obtained by the mission upon the young people that they are willing thus to change their habitations and put themselves to so much labor and expense in reconstructing their homes. Another matter to which Mr. Sanders refers is a movement in the interest of temperance. He writes:

"The beer-drinking season is with us. Funerals of important personages have been numerous. When a person is regarded as important, if he dies when corn is scarce, they keep his corpse till corn is plenty and beer can be made in large quantities, otherwise not many will come to the funeral. Almost all of our people have been going to these funerals, only some of the more advanced Christians keeping away. Though they said they kept within bounds, one of our evangelistic class got drunk, but one reproof sufficed to make him confess and stop going. We know that they get no good, and going to beer drinks is a glaring case of running into temptation. The mind is filled with evil thoughts; the heart is thrown off guard and causes the utterance of evil speech; and the temptations to brawling and licentiousness are great. Yet to give up beer entails hardship. Often the only breakfast offered to a boy by his mother is a small gourd of beer, and nothing more can be expected until anywhere from 3 to 6, P.M. Refuse your beer and you take the consequences, consequences very disagreeable to young fellows and boys, however cheerfully borne by Thomas à Kempis and Dr. Tanner. The hardships here at Kamundongo, where food seems to be scarcer than at most places about us, are such that I have never been willing to urge total abstinence from beer. Dr. Wellman last Saturday talked with every young man who is a church member, and in the evening, after prayers, all on the place, male and female, men and boys, women and girls, staid with us to consider the subject. The result of that meeting, and one called by themselves next day, was that at their houses they will use ocisangua (said to be more like gruel than beer, though really neither the one nor the other); all beer drinks they will shun; they will not visit for beer; they will not take beer at funerals. They will take beer only in cases of ex

But

treme hunger and then in moderation. At weddings they feel they must supply some because of the relatives and friends who attend and who will not be otherwise contented. Some of the young fellows take a more advanced stand. In view of the fact that all agree to the things enumerated - non-church members as well as church members - it is a most

encouraging and hopeful stand. The credit for putting it through is, for the most part, Dr. Wellman's."

There is great need at this station of a hospital building. Dr. Wellman cannot do his best work without such a building, though it be of the simplest character. The cost of it would not be great.

THE CARE OF A SCHOOL.

ON the second Sabbath of May seven persons were received to membership of the church at Mt. Silinda, one of them, a Matabele girl, who had been at the station for two years and a half. Of the special labors incident to the maintenance of her school Miss Gilson writes: :

cares

"This is by far the busiest life I have ever led. If civilization makes life more complicated, it certainly, on the other hand, relieves one of numerous that consume the time. It is one thing to supply a family of twelve with bread when a barrel of flour is simply ordered from the grocer's and there is a stove in which the bread can be baked, and quite another when all the baking is done in a pot, when the mgoza is obtained by the slow and patience-trying process of bartering with heathen natives, who usually bring from one to twelve quarts at a time, after which the grain must be washed, stamped in a wooden mortar, dried, heated, ground on a stone, and then, before making the bread, in order to save the wheat flour, manioc must be dug, peeled, washed, cut into small pieces, dried, and pounded. You will have an idea how we husband our flour when I tell you that I am making one hundred pounds last my European family eleven boys and girlsten weeks. This quantity cost nearly nine dollars. We never go hungry, but there is often some uncertainty regarding

the source of tomorrow's dinner. There are some novel experiences.

"In a boarding-school at home it would seem very strange to say at dinner, Well, children, will you have a second helping of meat today and none tomorrow, or shall we save a part of this?' That the children of this land are forming the habit of taking due thought for the morrow is evident from their always deciding most cheerfully and unanimously to save for the coming day. I have learned how to make a two-pound tin of canned meat serve very well for two dinners.

"Last August there was in the boarding department one European, but no native girls. Now there are eleven Europeans and seven native girls. My pupils come from the very best families among the settlers - people who are willing to make sacrifices for the education of their children. One family, where there is seldom anything used for coffee except some native grain, and much of the time neither sugar nor flour, has two very bright children here. A mother came, last October, seventy miles on horseback to bring her little boy of nine. In April she came down in an ox-cart-five days on the road- bringing her only daughter, eight years old. I never taught more earnest, enthusiastic pupils. I find this department a great aid and incentive to the natives in school work. The three most advanced girls are rendering valuable

assistance as pupil teachers. The two races are learning to live together in a Christian way.

"It was a very great joy two weeks

A CONFERENCE.

ago to see one of my native girls publicly confessing her faith in Christ the first, I trust, of a large number of King's Daughters.""

DR. FARNSWORTH, of Cesarea, reports that, on account of the condition of the country, no conference of the preachers connected with that station has been held for the past six years. The ninth annual conference was held in April, 1892. In May last the conference was reorganized and a notable and encouraging meeting was held. With a single exception, all the preachers were present, numbering twenty-five, but there were ten less than six years ago. A number of papers were presented by the pastors, followed by discussions. Dr. Farnsworth says:

6

except the new interest among the women. The people are able to raise some ninety dollars a year for a preacher, but this is less than half the sum necessary for such a man as they ought to have. We are urging them and the people of Nev Schehir to unite in the support of a man who may serve both congregations.

On Monday, in company with several of our friends, we visited that wonderful rock-hewn city, Grarémé. As we stood before the seats and the tables where the priests and theological students took their meals five hundred or a thousand years ago, and looked at the sacred pictures, still fresh and perfect except so far as they have been defaced by iconoclasts, we almost expected some of the old denizens to walk in and reprove us for intruding on their solitude. But times have changed. It is no longer necessary to live in the caves of the earth, and our friends spread an enjoyable picnic for us in front of one of the indestructible monuments of an age of terror."

At Nev Schehir the most encouraging feature is an opening work among the Greeks. The teacher, supported by the people, is doing as well as he can. Much time was spent in efforts to settle a quarrel among the church members. At this place the Greek community has large schools, one for three hundred girls and one for eight hundred boys, supported at an expense of some $2,500. large manufacturing establishment, quite new and as yet but partially furnished with looms and other machinery, where we saw a large number of girls at work on rugs, towels, etc., showed a most encouraging spirit of progress.

A

At Ak Serai the work was found to be