August 31.

VOL. XCIV. AUGUST, 1898. No. VIII.

WE remind our friends that the fiscal year of the Board closes August 31, and it is deemed very important that all contributions be sent promptly to our treasurer, Frank H. Wiggin, before that date. The month of August last year was the most notable in the history of the Board in its receipts. Can it not be made as memorable this year? The necessity is as urgent and the claims upon the Board as exacting as then. By referring to the last page of the cover of this number of the Herald the readers will find notice of the next Annual Meeting to be held at Grand Rapids, Mich. A very hearty welcome is assured us from the The Annual friends in this city. The Park Congregational Church, in which the meetings will be held, is a centrally located and commodious structure. This meeting ought to be one of great interest, bringing in review the missionary outlook, especially in its relation to the Eastern world. Great interest will doubtless gather around the report of the Deputation to China and the report of the Committee of Fifteen, which was appointed to consider several questions regarding mission policy and support. We hope the Corporate Members and friends of the Board East and West will lay their plans early to attend this annual convention.

Meeting.

A Generous Contribution.

AN incident is reported to us by Miss Wilson, of our Micronesian Mission, concerning the native church on Kusaie. This native church of less than one hundred members, under the care of a native pastor, is located some ten miles from the mission premises, where are the training schools for the pupils from the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. But at one of the missionary meetings in the girls' school the topic was India, and a few members of the Kusaian church were present, and were deeply touched by the stories of starvation and suffering among our India missions. They asked if they might take the papers and pictures concerning the famine-stricken sufferers, to show them to their friends. Nothing more was heard from them until just before the sailing of the Morning Star for Honolulu, when several members of this Kusaian church appeared at the mission premises to say they had taken up a collection for India, to be sent through the American Board. They brought twenty dollars in money, and a package of tols (native cloth) which has since been sold for twenty dollars more. And so these Kusaians, self-moved, have sent this most generous contribution of forty dollars to meet the needs of the destitute on the other side of the globe. Forty years ago these people were naked savages. Surely missions to them have not been in vain.

New Quarters.

It is quite probable that before the next issue of the Herald the Board will be quartered in the new Congregational House. The new rooms will be in the rear of the seventh floor, looking out upon the old Granary Burying Ground and Tremont Street. The Woman's Board will be located upon the same floor, but in the front, facing Beacon Street. The Publishing and Purchasing Department, under Mr. Swett, will be located on the first floor, in the rear, and in the basement and sub-basement. By very satisfactory arrangements entered into with the Library Committee of the Congregational Association, the missionary library of the Board will be placed in the general library, located on the second floor. A common committee room is provided by the Association for the free use of the several societies. It would be well now for all correspondents to change our time-honored address from I Somerset Street to simply Congregational House.

Thanks to a
Missionary.

THE English government has directed that thanks be presented to our missionary at Ahmednagar, Rev. James Smith, for his services during the prevalence of the plague. These thanks were conveyed in view of statements in the "Plague Progress Report," made by government officials in the latter part of April. This report says: "The Rev. James Smith of the American Mission ceases his voluntary labors today, and the thanks of the civil authorities are due him for all he has undertaken and so satisfactorily executed. At the time when he volunteered his services the sanitation of the field encampments was in a neglected state, and he applied himself to its amelioration, and by his personal influence and vast knowledge of the inhabitants of the city induced them to improve it, and thereby, by his exertions, would seem to have warded off an attack of cholera which then appeared imminent. When the camps were cleaned up and existence therein rendered healthy, he devoted himself to the task of issuing the exemptions from detention which were granted to the inhabitants of the cleanest and best camps and dwellers in uninfected villages, and now, after granting 4,300 passes (covering roughly 20,000 persons), he finds that the necessity for his services has ended. His assistance to the Plague Administration of Nagar City has been invaluable, and his labors during the hottest weather cannot be allowed to be passed by unnoticed."

We are glad to report this action of the government in one case, and we are sure that many of our missionaries have rendered similar valuable services if not on so large a scale.

Generous
Africans.

DURING the late revolution in Central Africa the Soudanese troops devastated the district of Toro, leaving the people so poor that they said "they had forgotten what the bleating of a goat was." Nevertheless, when these Toro Christians, in their deep poverty, heard that the people of Uganda after the mutiny had not funds enough to pay their native teachers, they made a collection and sent them provisions valued at $150. And these Toro Christians never heard of Christianity until four years ago!

IT is with greatest solicitude that we report the receipts for June and for the ten months of the fiscal year. They fall far below the actual necessities of the work. There is imperative need of $200,000 more before the year closes, August 31, in order to meet the estimated expenses.

Financial.

The regular donations:

Aside from the above there was received for the debt in June $1,063.00; and within the ten months, $24,856.98.

The receipts for special objects in June amounted to $2,442.62; and for the ten months, $22,856.95.

We remind again all who have the Lord's treasure in hand that the fiscal year closes August 31, though, following the custom, the books are kept open a few days to receive moneys from a distance designed for the year's receipts. If each one of the readers of the Herald would make an offering of one, three, five, or ten dollars it would carry a blessing to every part of our work. This thought we present to the prayerful consideration of our friends. Please act upon it and pass it along to others. We have not received sufficient money to meet legitimate expenses. The money is with God's people. We pray that he may move upon all hearts, by his Spirit, to send an extra gift at once which shall cheer the hearts of all our workers and make us sharers with them in the toils and joys of the work. Everything is dependent now upon the action of the churches and friends in the next thirty days.

THE President of the Chicago University and Dr. Fairbairn of Oxford have requested Rev. R. A. Hume, D.D., of Ahmednagar, India, to make the

The Haskell
Lectureship.

general arrangements for the lectures which Dr. Fairbairn is to deliver in India on the Haskell foundation. Our readers will remember that these lectures were delivered last year by Dr. Barrows and that Dr. Hume had charge of the arrangements then. He showed such efficiency and thoroughness in his management of this lecture course that it is the unanimous judgment of all interested that he is the best man obtainable for this year. This is only another illustration of the breadth of our missionary work.

As one of the compensations for the breaking up of the homes and business of the native Christians because of the plague in India, Dr. Hume mentions

Preaching Everywhere.

the wider preaching of the gospel. The plague has almost emptied Ahmednagar city, nine out of twelve wards having been closed by the authorities. But it has happened as it did in the early church at Jerusalem when persecuted: "they that are scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word." The gospel was never so widely preached throughout that region as it has been in the past few months.

MANY of the readers of the Herald have followed with no little interest the beginning and continuance of the mission work in Mt. Silinda, East Africa. All such will be interested in a little glimpse of that farMt. Silinda. off land in two cuts which are here presented. One represents a native village

No Hospitals.

that part of

Africa.

AN English missionary in Persia, in speaking of mercy and love as the fruits of Christianity, describes the state of affairs in Persia, where there are no hospitals, no dispensaries, and no lunatic asylums. The treatment of insane people is thus described: "The poor lunatic is chained, his

this unkind care of their relative, the lunatic is given freedom in the desert. His hands are tied behind his back, and he is led out into the desert and is never heard of again. There are no homes for the blind and crippled. and none for the incurable, in this land."

FUBLIC LIBR..

THE same mail which brought the article from Rev. Mr. Kingman respecting the Commencement of the North China College, printed on

TILDEN FOUNDA

another page, brought also a letter from Secretary Smith, who TCR, LENOX The North attended this Commencement, and he writes in warmest terms China College. of praise of the institution. Dr. Smith attended the examination of twenty different classes, covering a wide range of subjects, and he was able, through interpreters, to follow the examinations, and was convinced that the teaching has been most thorough and the attainments of a high order. A scholarly air pervades the institution and marks every exercise. "I felt," he writes, "as if I were in Williston Seminary or Oberlin College; certainly I should have found in neither place greater decorum and more alert minds, or happier results." Dr. Smith speaks of the college building, Williams Hall, as really a fine structure and the college well equipped in apparatus. He speaks also in terms of admiration of the musical training in the institution and of its furnishing a distinct element of culture in the college, and he adds: "Of this college the mission and the Board may well be proud. It is, in a high sense, the center of the religious and intellectual life of the mission; its influence is felt with benefit in every station and out-station where its graduates are preaching and teaching and pressing on the work of the mission. The Christian spirit pervades it from top to bottom, and constitutes the atmosphere in which all its work is done."

THE Board has had no little solicitude in regard to its work among the Caroline Islands. Notice has already been given of the difficulties which

Islands.

surround the case. After careful correspondence with the authorities Caroline at Washington and with others greatly interested in the matter, it has seemed inexpedient to send the "Morning Star" on its usual voyage. At the time of the writing of this paragraph there is every hope that supplies, and possibly reinforcements, may be sent down by a vessel flying another flag. This vessel is connected with a German society which does a regular trading business among the islands. Opportunity has been given in the past for our missionaries to render valuable service to the commander of this vessel, and the relations between the two are every way friendly.

Dr. Riggs and the Blind.

In the last issue of the Herald we gave a brief account of the work accomplished by the venerable Dr. Elias Riggs. Though eighty-eight years of age he still rejoices in opportunities of aiding in the revision of the Bible and other publications of the Western Turkey Mission. A later letter from Dr. Riggs describes another form of work in behalf of the poor blind people of Turkey. The simple characters for the blind have only a dozen different shapes, and these, clear and easily distinguished, represent the forty characters required. A straight line, e.g.,

- \ /, may represent four letters. A semi-circle, right or acute angle do like service for other letters. The blind are thus enabled to read in a short time and greatly rejoice in the portions of the Scriptures which have been given them. Dr. Riggs has recently prepared for print the Gospel of John for the blind, and at the time of his last letter was receiving the proof sheets for correction.