500 00 $26,398 64

221 42

10 00

13 10

40 85

100 00

7 Beekman Street.

DONATIONS OF CLOTHING, ETC.

Leominster, Mass., Home Mission Society "Willing Workers," box and freight to South Carolina, $44.

Providence, R. I., Stewart St. Church, barrel and freight to Minnesota, $76.70.

Norwich, Conn., Baptist Church, barrel to Kansas, $100. New Haven, Conn., Home Mission Circle of Calvary Church barrel to Nebraska, $85; barrel to South Carolina, $25. Elmira, N. Y., First Church, barrel to Dakota, $50.

Albion, N. Y., Baptist Church, box and freight to Kansas, $120.35.

Sennett, N. Y., Baptist Church, box and freight to Iowa, $13.50.

New Brunswick, N. J., Women's Mission Society of First Church, box to Kansas, $150.

Jersey City, N. J., Mission Band of Bergen Church, barrel and freight to Kansas, $110.3

Dayton, O., Ladies' Missionary Society of Linden Ave. Church, box, freight and cash to Nebraska, $69.08.

North Fairfield, O., Woman's Society, box and freight to Kansas. $31.40.

Cincinnati, O., Woman's Baptist Home Mission Union, two barrels to Kansas, $120.47; barrel to Minnesota, $31.15; barrel to Iowa, $22.80.

Evanston, Ill., Woman's Home Mission Society, two barrels and freight to Nebraska, $115.

Cherokee, Iowa, Ladies' Circle of Baptist Church, barrel and freight to Nebraska, $37.80.

$200,000.

Two hundred thousand dollars are required between March 1st, and April 15, to enable the American Baptist Home Mission Society to close its books without debt.

This is about $18,000 more than was required at the same time last year. Several thousand dollars of the receipts last year during this period were special offerings to the "Emergency fund." We cannot reckon on such extras this year. The last year closed with a debt of nearly $118,000. If our receipts from March 1, to April 15, should be no more than those of last year, (leaving out the Emergency fund) the debt will be from $18,coo to $20,000 more at the end of this year, or from $135,000 to $140,000. This does not include obligations maturing after April 1. The Society therefore needs this $200,000 to meet obligations falling due in the next fortyfive days. This is at the rate of $4,444.44 on an average per day for the whole period. Shall the Society be released of this burden? If so, how? Grant that the regular contri

butions from churches and individuals will bring the amount down to $135,000 or $140,ooo, is there any hope of sweeping off the remainder, but by a concerted movement on the part of those who may be able to give their hundreds and thousands for this purpose? Are there not those who can and will come to the help of the Society in this manner? Must the Society hold its annual meeting the last of May, and enter upon another year under the shadow of such a deficiency?

As an assurance that, with this debt removed, there will not be a similar accumulation again in the near future, it may be said that the present scale of expenditures is nearly or quite on the basis of usual annual receipts, and that if the reduction determined upon nearly a year ago could have taken immediate effect over the entire field, there would have been very little if any increase of the debt. Now, good friends of the Society, what have you to say and what will you do about this? The Corresponding Secretary will be glad to receive your response, and be the medium of communication among those disposed to cooperate in this movement.

NEBRASKA: SURVEY OF THE

FIELD.

REV. J. W. OSBORN, FREMONT, GENERAL MIS

SIONARY.

We have not been successful to a large extent in securing men for destitute fields. Men who are adapted to Western work, and are willing to come to Nebraska on salaries that we can pay, are not numerous. The work of Missions in Nebraska is in a hopeful condition. Some of the features of the work that induce this statement are:

1. The harmony and unity among the brotherhood in means and measures to promote the cause in our midst.

2. An increased interest in the pastors touching the work in general. Many more of our pastors are grappling the financial question and pressing upon their churches the absolute necessity and obligation of increased giving to the cause of Christ. They are co-operating with cheerful hearts and ready hands in introducing systematic beneficence into their churches, and we are pressing this subject in all our churches. An efficient committee on systematic benevolence was appointed at our last anniversary, and they are heartily at work formulating plans that we think will be generally adopted. 3. A more general and deeper conviction among our churches, both brethren and sisters, that Christ's cause has claims upon them that they have been neglecting, that they can and ought to do more than they have been doing. When we can secure in each church a few who are on fire, who are in dead earnest to honor Christ in well-doing, they will spread the fire in the church. I have been greatly rejoiced in this advance.

4. The earnest and judicious work of our women in the churches in promoting mission work at home and abroad. Even two years ago our sisters in Home Mission work were comparatively unorganized, but when they caught the idea of supporting a missionary in whole, or in part, themselves, as our Foreign Mission was doing, it quadrupled their interest and energy in three months, and they are not only collecting funds, but furnishing mis

sionary intelligence to the people such as they need.

5. The development of our State is very much in advance of former years. Different railroad companies are pushing their roads. into the northern interior and western portions, inviting immigration, and establishing towns, indicating to the sagacious Christian worker where centres of influence are to be created. On all these new roads towns are springing up, and we are feeling the inspiration of this advancement. What we need, and what we must have, if we would meet the demands of the hour, is a "missionary evangelist," or district missionary, to labor under the direction, in a measure, of the general missionary. There is a score of fields where we meet to hold meetings from one to five weeks, winning souls and gathering the scattered and straying sheep into the fold, and preparing the way for the settlement of a pastor. A man fitted for that kind of work could raise on their fields a large portion of his salary, and from sources from which we now realize nothing. Two thousand of the folder on "Systematic Beneficence," two thousand of “The Address to the Baptists of the West," and two thousand of a circular have been distributed to our churches during the last month, and some good indications are already manifest.

Revival influences are realized in many churches, and we are hopeful of results.