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TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE-WHICH?

ARE our churches giving disproportionately to foreign missions? So some affirm. What are the facts?

The Congregational Year Book for 1897 presents the reports received from 4,837 of our 5,546 Congregational churches. In these churches the amount reported for home expenditures was $6,871,128, and for benevolent contributions $2,129,456, a total of $9,000,584.

Of the benevolent contributions $469,731 are under the heading, "foreign missions," and $1,659,725 are under other societies working in the home field. These figures may not be exact, but they are the best obtainable from the reports of our State associations, and while they are doubtless under the truth they may be regarded as fairly correct as to the proportion devoted to the several objects. It may be said, however, that since gifts for foreign missions are more readily traced than others, they probably are more fully reported, and hence the percentages which we give below on the foreign missionary side are quite as high, if not higher than they should be. It should be remembered, moreover, that these figures do not include the gifts, amounting to millions of dollars, which are made to educational institutions in our own land. Neither do they include the income from invested funds, applicable to such institutions, a large proportion of which comes from Christian sources and is applied to Christian ends.

But taking the figures as they stand, it appears that of the $9,000,584 reported as raised last year, 76.4 per cent was used for home expenditures, while 23.6 per cent went for benevolent objects. We spend, therefore, in our churches, for what may be classed as parish expenses, a little more than three fourths of all we contribute for Christian purposes.

Of the $2,129,456 for strictly benevolent objects, 22 per cent, or a fraction over one fifth, was credited to foreign missions in care of our Board, and 78 per cent to home missionary work in its various forms, under the care of several societies.

On the aggregate amount raised for home expenses and all benevolent work the percentage given to foreign missions was 5.2. That is, for every dollar given to the support of our own churches and for all Christian work in our own and other lands, nearly five and one quarter cents were given to foreign missions.

In view of these facts who will venture to say, Too much? Will not every one who professes to believe in the authority of Christ's great commission say rather, Too little?

A letter recently received from a secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which combines in one both home and foreign missions, says that of the sum they raise "45 per cent will be expended for the home work and 55 per cent for foreign." Is the proportion too great?

And whatever may be thought of the relative amounts contributed to the different branches of the one great work is the sum of all our benevolences proportioned to our abilities? If the gifts of the enrolled members of Congre

gational churches should average one cent a day, they would amount to $116,000 more than the receipts of all our benevolent societies, home and foreign, during the past year. Is this too much or too little?

THE GREAT HOKKAIDO.

BY REV. J. H. DEFOREST, D.D., OF SENDAI, JAPAN.

AFTER twenty-three years in Japan, it was my privilege this summer to see for the first time this great northern island, the name of which means North Sea Road. From maps, and from the vast part volcanoes and earthquakes have

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played in the formation of the empire generally, I had supposed this island was perfectly ragged with wild upheavals, between which were little valleys where farmers could scratch a tolerable living. But the first sight of the southeast coast from the deck of the steamer revealed a long marine terrace, averaging some fifty feet in height, and which seemed to reach far inland to the foot of low mountains. One glance at the excellent geological map in the Sapporo Agricultural College shows that the larger part of this 40,000-square-mile island has scores of miles of these broad terraces of tertiary formation, which make the land look very much like our rolling prairies. There are about a dozen huge volcano peaks, most of which are deadheads, and the rest are too sleepy to do more than take a quiet smoke. Earthquakes are still pegging away pretty much everywhere in the whole empire; but volcanoes and earthquakes do not make great, broad plains like those in Hokkaido.

Then there is a wide, long valley running north and south and cutting the island quite in two, though not in halves. In the southern part of this valley is the capital of the island, the most Christian city of all Japan-Sapporo. Just south of this is a huge group of six volcanoes, bunched close together; and farther south yet is the beautiful and capacious harbor of Hakodate, in which the battle ships of the world can peacefully anchor, and where commerce with the nations is carried on. In the last ten years the general price of building land has multiplied there over sixfold, which is four times the advance of similar prosperity in Tōkyō. In like manner the most western port, Otavu, the name of which is known to few Westerners, has advanced over fourfold. When Russia shall have completed her Siberian railroad, then all the world will know perfectly well the names of these two splendid harbors just opposite Vladivostoc, Otavu and Hakodate.

The population of this island some twenty years ago was about 100,000. Now it is 600,000, and it can support six times that number of men, women, and children. Emigrants from all parts of the south are moving up at a most opportune time, when representative government and personal rights are supplanting feudal customs, and when the worth of Buddhism and Shintoism is being widely questioned, and their defects mercilessly exposed. Breaking away from the more conservative south, these pioneers naturally make for themselves a freer atmosphere. The tendency to immorality is greater, and, at the same time, the opportunity for pushing Christianity, without encountering the obstacles of conservatism and prejudice, is correspondingly great.

I visited three centres during the summer, and what I saw leads me to think that Hokkaido is one of the most promising fields of Japan, so far as a rapid extension of Christianity is concerned. Not that the kingdom is coming with observation, for there are very few self-supporting churches, and the audiences which the pastors and evangelists have do not probably average over thirty. But it is an encouraging fact that you can hardly go to a village of any size that does not have one or more Christians in it. Another favorable thing is, there are Christians among all classes, officials and scholars, merchants and farmers, in the great coal mines and among the thousands of fishermen along the coast, as well as in the large government prisons.

Nemuro is the first place I visited. It is a city of some 15,000, on a tiny peninsula at the extreme east. It was in July, and it was so cold that often police and soldiers were seen tramping the streets with overcoats on. The whole region in summer is buried under a dense fog that is most exasperating to the sailors who want to get through the rocky reef at the entrance of the wide harbor. Here is the centre of the fisheries of that part of the island, and if the little fish are as abundant proportionately as the big ones, fishing ought to be a most prosperous business. I saw schools of huge whales outside the harbor, and. watched them by the hour as they blew their noses freely, unobstructed by any use of handkerchiefs. But never mind the whales; it is the people I was fishing for, and they seemed to me to be a dangerously fast people. The spirit of speculation runs high, and family life is perilously loose.

In this city, and especially among the fishermen of the region, the Baptists are doing a good work. The Kumi-ai Christians, so far as figures go, are few,

but their influence is widely felt for good. The earnest, spiritual life of the pastor, and the prosperous kindergarten of his wife, have brought their work into prominence and favor. I spent a delightful week there, meeting all kinds of people and addressing audiences in the Baptist church as well as ours. It is seldom my privilege to have so earnest and serious a hearing as at Nemuro. The deepening interest cannot fail to result in additions soon to the little flock of twenty now gathered there.

The next place I visited is 500 miles from Nemuro, as I had to go by way of Hakodate. The name of the place will be disagreeable to readers who do not fairly love missionary literature. It is Iwa-mi-zawa, and means "Rock-SeeSwamp." That is, it is a wide, swampish old river bottom, from which you can see some rocks, if you look clear over to the low hills on either side. Being such a soil, they keep chills and fever in stock there, and so it resembles our Mississippi lowlands. Indeed, the Mississippi of Japan runs through this long valley from north to south, a surprise to everybody that the longest river of the empire should be tucked off into a corner of this northern island.

No other denomination is at work in this city, which is the railroad centre. I spent a week with the pastor in this most unique parish of his, which extends fifty miles east and ten north, and which contains five groups of Christians, wholly unlike each other in their make-up. The smallest group consists almost entirely of one family, whose home was 1,000 miles south. When they removed to Hokkaido they built for their new religion as well as for themselves. On the side of their house is a chapel room, where they hold regular services, and where they furnish a bed to the visiting pastor and missionary. Another group is close to one of those great prisons of which Rev. W. W. Curtis has written so hopefully in his able monograph on "Applied Christianity in Hokkaido," as well as in the Missionary Herald for December, 1892. Another is a group of farmers, scattered over six or eight miles of this semi-swamp. Still another is a band of miners working in the rich coal mines of Yubari, where I saw one bed of coal fourteen feet thick sticking out of the side of the mountain. Then the Iwa-mi-zawa group contains railroad men and officials, with their families. We had interesting meetings with all these bands, and some of the meetings were more than interesting. There seemed to be candidates for baptism in every one of these places.

The last centre is Sapporo, a name that Americans ought to be pretty familiar with, for here is the Agricultural College where so many Americans have taught scientific farming, and have explored the mineral resources of the island. A list of the names of these professors is enough to explain why the sights in Hokkaido remind us of the United States. As early as 1862, Professor Pumpelly, of Harvard, examined the geology of this island. But it was not till General Capron came, in 1872, that the college was started for "scientific, systematic, and practical agriculture." Then came President Clark, Professors Wheeler, Penhallow, Brooks, Cutter, Peabody, Lyman, Stockbridge, Haight, Brigham. Besides these, several Japanese professors, Sato, Watase, and Nitobe, are graduates of Johns Hopkins; Miyabe, of Harvard; Sugi, of Cornell; and Hivoi was long in America. So the barns, plows, mowing and threshing machines, harrows, drills, reapers, and the large corn and wheat fields, with rail

fences around them, the railroad engines with real cowcatchers, the herds of cows and horses waiting to be caught, the cars with doors in the ends so that you can walk through a train, the clapboard houses with doors and windows and chimneys, the busy manufactories, the stores and mining camps, all smack of America. None the less noticeable is the Christian atmosphere, created in large part by these same Americans and American-educated Japanese. The huge linen mills rest on Sunday. Many stores hang out their Sunday sign, Rest Day, and four or five little church buildings show the sure beginnings of Christian life. Of course the capital of the island is by no means a Christian city yet, but it is the nearest to it of any I have so far seen in Japan.

Here seven pastors and evangelists gathered for a week of meetings with Mr. Rowland, Dr. Gordon, and myself. There were lectures, preaching services, consultation meetings, and most interesting reports from the fields. Perhaps the most noticeable point in the meetings was the earnest desire of the native workers that we should vastly enlarge our work. "This is only playing at missions," they said. But when they were told from the monthly figures in the Missionary Herald, as well as from Secretary Barton's letters to the mission, that the financial condition of the Board prevented any such enlargement, they were at first greatly discouraged. But on thinking it over they decided to send a letter to the Board, telling about their fields and their hopes, recognizing the kind help of the Board and churches hitherto, and believing that there are many who will help in so promising a work. At the same time they may be led into new methods as the doors open before them.

It is, indeed, a privilege to visit such a field. "It is more blessed to give than to receive " is a truth. It is just as blessed to receive as to give is also a truth; and the missionary surely gets from contact with these earnest, self-sacrificing Christians a blessing as great as he gives.

TRUE GIVING IS LIFE-GIVING.

BY REV. C. F. GATES, LL.D., HARPOOT, TURKEY.

Christianity is life; it is the divine life-the Christ life. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," and still dwells among us, for Christianity is simply the Christ life actualized in men. Every Christian is a new incarnation of Christ, and Christianity is the Christ life realized again in many lives. The Christian is living the life of Christ over again in the world, filling up what is behind of Christ's sufferings, manifesting Christ's love, and completing his mission.

Christianity is a temple built of lives. Jesus Christ himself is the corner stone (Eph. 2:20). His gift to this temple was his life. Christianity is not builded on doctrines or philosophy or any system of teaching, but on the person — the life of its Founder. The stones that have been added to this corner stone and have raised the building to its present height are the lives of the followers of Christ. There is a sense in which we may say that they are all the life of Christ, for they are the Christ life manifested anew in the lives of successive generations. "Becoming a Christian" is yielding our lives to Christ's control and receiving

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