The state of San Lieu Chia is dis

had greatly reduced our numbers. couraging, but a few of the members are in a good spiritual state, and there are several earnest candidates, one of whom I baptized. At Wu Kwan Tün three were baptized-two women and a child. God thus cheers us by bringing men and women under the influence of His truth

and grace.

All the preachers report considerable losses in their respective stations from the ravages of famine-fever during the summer, and from the immigration of the starving to other regions in search of employment and food. Some may return next year, but others, while absent from home, have gone to "that bourne from which no traveller returns."

Mr. Candlin writes, "I am doing what I can at the language, deeply immersed in a multitudinous sea of words so strangely akin in sound, yet so different and opposite in meaning. The Chungs and Chiungs taous, taos tiaous, tungs, tings, tangs, &c., many times over. It is hard work, but I am not dissatisfied with my progress. The weather continues fine-bright and not very cold. We are all in capital health. What a happy man you seem to me with a mastery of the language of this people, with free access to their books and minds, and thus able to project yourself and your energy upon the grand end for which we have come hither, while I am crippled-cabinned, cribbed, confined'; consumed by an incessant longing, which I hope my will may keep within the bounds of patience, to thread my way through this labyrinth of vocal and graphic symbols, and to make these walks of words, now so strange and bewildering, the familiar paths of that thought which God may give me, so that through them it may, with His benediction, go forth to bless."

Dr. Stenhouse writes, "Some tiny rays of light are now breaking upon my dark mind with regard to the language. I hope to progress more rapidly now that we have got settled down after a fashion."

Mr. Robinson writes, "We are all very happy here, and find abundant compensation for the want of more society. There is something very charming in the peace and quiet of life in the interior, away from cities and great centres. Our Sunday evening service is a rich spiritual entertainment. I am disposed to think it more profitable than anything we have known before."

AUSTRALIA.

ADELAIDE.—Mr. Birks writes, "Attendance at the public services is much the same, but there is a great improvement in the tone of our prayer and other meetings. The number who stayed at the Lord's Supper on the last occasion of its observance was more than double the attendance on any former occasion. We were all greatly cheered and

blessed. The Sunday school is still progressing. We lose this Christmas two young men teachers who will be greatly missed. They are Government school teachers, and have been appointed to schools in the country. We are looking out for others to take their place. The ladies' sewing meeting still holds on its way satisfactorily. Without any sale, £12 have been handed over to the Church. There is a better spiritual tone amongst us, for which we are very thankful."

The "Proceedings of the General Conference on Foreign Missions," has just been issued, from which we have culled the following facts aud appeals:

11

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA.

According to the statistics published by the Conference of Protestant Missionaries in China,' there are thirteen British Societies, represented in China by seventy-eight missionaries and their wives, by forty-four unmarried missionaries, and by twenty-two single ladies. There are two Continental Societies, represented by twenty-two missionaries and their wives, and by four unmarried missionaries. In addition to these there are eight representatives of three Bible Societies, and the wives of four of them, and six gentlemen and their wives, and one single lady unconnected with any organized society. Altogether there are 238 missionaries labouring in China, and 63 single ladies, and the wives of 172 of the mis-ionaries.

These labourers are distributed at ninety-one central stations, in connection with which there are 511 out-stations. 312 Chinese churches have been organized, the members of which, so far as reported to the Conference, amounted to 13,035; of the 312 churches eighteen are wholly self-supporting, and 243 are partly so. There are seventy-three ordained pastors and preachers, and 511 assistant preachers, besides seventy-one colporteurs and ninety Bible-women.

There are thirty boarding schools for boys, with 611 pupils, and thirty-eight for girls, with 777 pupils; 177 day schools for boys, with 299 pupils, and 82 for girls, with 1,307 pupils. There are twenty theological schools, with 231 students; and 150 Sunday schools with 290 teachers, and 2,605 scholars.

There are sixteen missionary hospitals, the in-patients in which in 1876 were 3,730, while the out-patients were 87,505. There are also twenty-four missionary dispensaries, where 41,281 cases were ministered to in the same time. The number of students being trained to practise by the medical missionaries is thirty.

In 1876 the Chinese Christians contributed for all purposes the sum of $9,272, or about £1,800.

Each of the 1,300 communicants may be considered as a centre round which are to be found others, children and dependents, related more or less closely to the organized churches. Probably I do not exaggerate in grouping the members of the 312 churches together as the nucleus of a community of 50,000 souls, approximating to the character of a professedly Christian community.

Protestant missionaries have done, and are doing, much to communicate the science and knowledge of the West to China. Their religious treatises, small and large, are numerous. Above all they have given to the Chinese people a version of the Holy Scriptures, complete, which Popery never did, and never would have done.

The statistics I have given of progress in Protestant missions are certainly calculated to encourage and strengthen our faith. The converts have multiplied during thirty-five years at least two thousand-fold, the rate of increase being greater year after year. Suppose it should continue the same for other thirty-five years, in A.D. 1913 there will be in China twenty-six millions of communicants, and a professedly Christian community of one hundred millions. The question may well rise to our lips, "Can this thing be?" We cannot believe it; but is anything too hard for God? We can at any rate make the prayer our own, "Lord, we believe; help Thou our unbelief."

INFANTICIDE AND FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.

DR. LEGGE.

I represent an institution, perhaps not known enough in England, the Foundling Hospital at Hong Kong. There is a tower to be found in one of the largest cities of China, having at the height of four feet, a hole, where you may see from time to time a Chinese woman bearing a load in her arms, and throwing it through the hole; and not regarding the cry of her own babe, running away as fast as she can. There in China the word is fulfilled, that even a mother may forget her child. But even there the other word is fulfilled, that the Lord never shall forget it. In Berlin a very pious and zealous pastor has died this summer, named KNAK, who, twenty-seven years ago, being touched by the crying of these Chinese girls, established a Foundling House in Hong Kong, in which to-day about eighty Chinese girls, once thrown away by their cruel mothers. are trained up by four Christian young ladies, the house-father being a German clergyman. A great blessing has gone out from that house for twenty-seven years; it has been the first home of all German missionaries going to China; and the grown up girls have become the wives of Christian Chinese teachers, helping them to evangelize that dark country.

Dr. WANGEMANN, Berlin.

WOMAN'S WORK IN CHINA.

As an evidence of the natural gifts and the power of faith of Chinese women, I may say that in the mission with which I am connected, its success is greatly due to the labours of Chinese women, some of these women, in regard to faith, and zeal, and patience, and self-denial, might take their place by the side of their most honoured sisters at home. Many of them, by enduring prosecution, and risking their lives unto death, have won triumphs for the gospel in villages and in towns where it would have been unsafe for men to enter first. We owe very much of the taking of many of Satan's strongholds in the district of Swatow, one of the worst in China, to the labours of native Christian women.

Women should be sent to women in China. That has to some extent been done already. The Board of Missions of the American Baptist Churches has already sent out several Christian ladies to the Swatow mission field. One of them, MISS FIELDE, whose name is doubtless familiar to many, has been labouring there for some time; and by going into the country, by training female converts as Bible-women, and setting them to work, she has within a few years increased the number of church members to about double what it was previously, after many years of constant labour, apart from such an agency. Our own mission has been smitten with the desire to follow the same example, and now the Presbyterian Church of England has decided to send out female agency. One lady has already gone forth at her own expense, and by this time I hope she has arrived.

THE DUTY OF CHURCHES.

66

REV. G. SMITH.

Napoleon laid it down as a military maxim, that the army that remains in its intrenchments is beaten. An unenterprising church is spiritually a declining one. Withholding more than is meet" never enriched a man, an association, or a nation; nor does judicious forth-putting as to men and means result otherwise than in reflex enrichment. To save Rome carry the war into Africa. If you would save Britain, carry the war into Africa, Central Africa, war upon fetishism and Islam; a war with weapons not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. The spirit of self-indulgence, of pursuing gratulation at one's comfortable surroundings, some snug little Zion of our own, is simply inviting discomfiture. When in the early part of the present century there began to be a broader evangelistic interest among the Baptists of the United States, strong opposition was elicited. Good men, it was claimed, were all needed at home. One editor made the statement, "I think it my duty to crush this rising missionary spirit." Dr. BENEDICT replied, "If it is your duty, I think you will die without

performing it." Could that gentleman of the religious press have succeeded he would have crushed not only the missionary spirit, but the body of Baptist believers. Those ministers and churches who persisted in keeping aloof from the new evangelistic movement fell into an unenviable sect by themselves, have since been dwindling in numbers, and in some sections have become nearly extinct; while the opposite is strikingly true of the great missionary wing of the denomination. It is a shameful church effeminancy that studies only its own needs and convenience; disregard of the foreign field will surely bring blight at home. The gravitation of true intelligent Christian love is toward equal distribution. Can you accumulate water in a heap otherwise than by freezing it? One sure way not to save one's own country would be to withdraw from foreign fields in order to save it. Most missionaries who go abroad, by the stimulating influence of their example, by the wider sympathies which they call forth, do more for their own land than they would by staying at home. DR. THOMPSON, Boston, U.S.

THE VALUE OF NATIVE AGENCY. Passing at once to Foochow in 1860, what would you see then? You would find but one young missionary, and he did not know the language. What had happened in the interval? There had been four there. Of that number two had died, two wives of the married missionaries besides; and others had come home invalided. Thus the mission ten years after it begun, consisted of one man still in the preliminary stage of learning the language. But how many converts were there? Not one convert, not one inquirer. There was not apparently the chance of one. The Home Committee were deliberating, "What shall we do? Let us close the mission and send Mr. Smith to the North of China, where there is more promise; and they wrote to him to that effect. But he wrote home an almost piteous letter in reply, saying: "Let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it, and if it bear fruit well, and if not- -" but he did not like to add "cut it down." That year God sent the blessing, and brought four converts out of heathenism as the first fruits of the mission. Many here will be glad to hear that it was owing mainly to the visit of Mr. Collins, who is a medical man, from the North to Foochow, that these four men came forward at last. A few more came forward shortly afterwards; but the missionary to whom it was due that the mission was continued, sickened and died. So again there was at Foochow, at the beginning of his work learning the language, one missionary, John Wolfe, a name not unknown to many here. In the year 1864, it occurred to him that the missionaries ought to go out more into the country. He opened one ontstation the next year, and some more were established at other places.