Christ came to save sinners. He has saved me, the vilest of all, and He can save you. Only believe.'"

After his conversion, Liu accepted the post of cook in a hospital for opiumsmokers, where he thought he could do a good spiritual work. Subsequently he returned to his native village and preached Christ so effectually, both in word and life, that the people actually threw their idols into the flood. The place was visited by Mr. John and some native helpers, and not only in the Liu village but in the surrounding towns it was evident that the spirit of God was working. Of a still later visit in that section, Mr. John says: "Our presence at the place was widely known; scores from other villages came to see us, and hear what we had to say; and our whole time was taken up with talking, preaching, and exhorting. On Thursday afternoon four adults and two boys were baptized. There were others who expressed a desire to join us, but we thought it best to postpone their baptism. When we left the village, nine whole families had joined the church, over whose doors red slips of paper had been pasted, bearing the inscription, JeSú-Sheng-Kiau, "The Holy Religion of Jesus;" a large number of those that remain had fully resolved to join us, and were only waiting the removal of certain temporary obstacles in order to take the final step. Not a particle of ill-will was manifested to us by any one, whilst the bearing of most was very cordial. The neighboring villages were beginning to manifest an interest in our message, and the entire prospect looked bright and promising. In this one village there are between sixty and seventy families, containing from 300 to 400 souls. The entire population con

AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY.

THE London Daily Telegraph contains these warm words of commenda

tion of our brethren and the work they are doing in the Ottoman Empire :

"These missionaries, Protestants and

Evangelists to a man, have labored in Turkey without let or hindrance for above forty years; they have stations, colleges, and schools all over Asia Minor, as well as European Turkey; they proselytize, necessarily, by the mere fact of their giving a liberal education; yet they are left unmolested to leaven masses of the people here and there with opinions which condemn Mohammedanism as an imposture and superstition. The reason of their immunity is on the surface. They have been peaceful, industrious, and loyal; no friends to political intrigue against the Sultan, and, therefore, no tools of Russia; not patronized by the Czar under false pretenses, and therefore not suspected by the Porte. They have, however, done a large amount of good in an unobtrusive way, as centers of civilizing and refining agencies, which worked for the material as well as moral benefit of the people. The labors of these worthy men have a special interest at present from the fact that they throw light on prospects of success for those reforms in Asia which English influence is bent upon accomplishing. They have three colleges, four theological seminaries, twelve seminaries for girls, normal schools, high schools, and common schools, with a present attendance of about ten thousand pupils, an educational and religious literature in English, Armenian, Turkish, and Arabic; and from the great central colleges at Constantinople, Aintab, and Harpoot, in Armenia, missionaries are constantly issuing, who evangelize districts around the provincial stations. Apart from all religious or sectarian opinions, our American friends claim, in fact, to be engaged in laying the foundation of a new and improved civil service in the Ottoman Empire, and, having seen the need of this at home, they are not likely to undervalue its importance in a country where corruption and place-seeking are fully as rife as in the United States It is to be hoped that, when the reorganization of Asia Minor begins in real earnest, the assistance of the excellent

Aintab and Harpoot missionaries will not be ignored."

A JAPANESE STUDENT. PRESIDENT CLARK, who established the Japanese Agricultural College at Sapporo, has received a letter from an undergraduate, whom he has never seen, from which we are permitted to make an extract. After expressing the profoundest gratitude to President Clark for his agency both in establishing the college and in instructing the students in the religion of Christ, the writer says:

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"When we entered college, many of us knew very little about Christianity, and through our ignorance were prejudiced against it. Our minds were shut up from the light of the gospel, and our souls were benighted. Doubts crept in and hardened our hearts. The more we were told that we must repent and believe in the Son of God, the more we hated his religion. But through the constant efforts of the Juniors, our doubts were gradually removed, our hearts were opened by their benign influence, and at last we became deeply convinced of our sinfulness, and sensible of our need of a Saviour. Ah! how great a change the religion of the Cross has brought upon us. Once we scoffed at it, but now we kneel down before God, - not before idols which are of human design, — and we ask pardon for the sins which we have committed. We were once Sabbath-breakers, studying our daily lessons or engaging in idle pleasure, but now we devote Sundays to the reading of the Bible, to prayer, and to whatever things may tend to glorify God and to draw us nigh to Him.

"On the 2d of July, 1878, Rev. M. C. Harris, of Hakodate, organized a church in this city, and admitted seventeen of us as members. We do not regret that we are Christians, but we feel very happy that we can inherit the life eternal and escape from the wrath to come; and though our faith is very weak, we are very glad that amid various temptations, by God's help, we have

READ the History of the Sandwich Island mission by Dr. Anderson, and see how sorry a failure modern missions can be.

These cannibals, who erewhile would cook and carve a merchant or mariner,

and discourse on the deliciousness of a "cold slice of missionary" these semi-devils — have now $250,000 worth of church property built with muscular Christianity and pious self-denial, which shame us out of all self-complacency. Think of it, 150 persons dragging each timber for a church eight miles; diving for coral ten to twenty feet, reducing it to lime and carrying on their shoulders seven miles, to cement stones, carried one by one an eighth of a mile; women subscribing $200 to a church erection, payable and paid by making mats at eight cents a week; and subscriptions by men payable and paid by the profits on fire-wood sold at eight cents a stick, after ferrying seven sticks in a canoe across the twenty-mile-wide channel; then 2,000 miles away beginning a "foreign mission" on the Micronesian islands-why if this were not fact it would be counted the silliest of all possible romances, the improbable of the improbable, the impossible of the impossible, compared with which Jules Verne's expeditions would be stale sobriety itself. — Northern (Methodist) Christian Ad

vocate.

ALMSGIVING WITH THANKSGIVING.

WE may be called upon to give even to the extent of great self-denial. The first money that I ever earned by the pen was paid to me by a publisher in

:

one sum- a $50 bill. It was all the money I had, and just then I was called on for a donation to foreign missions, and with great cheerfulness I gave it all. It did not cost me a pang, though it left me penniless. And I never regretted it for a moment. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver: not one who feels "annoyance" on giving up something for his sake. Penance may exact suffering self-righteousness may prescribe a hair shirt instead of linen: but God has said there is nothing better than that a man should eat and drink and enjoy the good there is under the sun. Thanksgiving makes alms-giving. God rejoices in giving to God accordThe heart rejoicing in the good gifts of ing to the abundance wherewith he has crowned our lives. Scrimping in order to give shrivels the heart. The liberal

soul is made fat. The more we learn will enjoy, as one of the highest luxuries the right use of money, the more we of existence, the privilege of giving. It is better than getting. -New York Ob

server.

NEW CREATURES IN CHRIST.

A FEW years ago a countryman, living far from Canton, came to the city, and by unfortunate illness, as well an as an alliance with a dishonest man, he lost his entire fortune before he had been very long in the place. When in perplexity and poverty, he was one day passing the Mission Chapel, and went in. What he heard arrested him. was brought to Christ; he became a most efficient colporter; and supported himself by the sale of books, chiefly in

He

the Chinese hotels of Canton. He was a man full of faith, and he cherished a burning desire to go back and preach the gospel among his own people, but the journey was much more than his means would afford. By a curious providence the way was opened through a mandarin, not a professing Christian at all; and the man has now reached his own home, and is there busy proclaiming the gospel of Christ. I may

mention, again, that there is a preacher in Canton, a paralytic, a most earnest man. He is a man who has a wonderful gift of prayer, a man most mighty on his knees. Being unable to walk he is carried out every day to a different place to preach the gospel; and this paralytic heard of Christ for the first time in one of the chapels of the city. The last instance I shall mention is from Tien-tsin, a city of the greatest importance in the north. A small peasant proprietor had made his way to it on business, and having been in the Mission Chapel more than once, when he returned after some months, he placed himself under instruction, and was ultimately baptized. He determined that he would become a minister, but after considerable study he was forced to admit to himself that he had not the necessary ability, and being more honest than many men who are not Chinese, he determined to give it up. But he had a younger brother who had also received the truth, and who had the brightness of parts that he lacked, and he solved the difficulty by saying to him, "I shall go back to the farm, and you must go the Mission; I will pay for your education, and you must take my place." Work like that is worth spending thought on, and worth interceding for in prayer. - Rev. W. F. Stevenson.

field can call to his aid, our proportion must fall short of expressing the relation of inequality between Home missions and Foreign missions as a whole. Must not this relation of inequality become one of equality, before our Lord's commission is fully obeyed, and the prophecies concerning the progress of Messiah's kingdom on the earth receive their complete fulfillment? We believe that more ought to be accomplished at home. But we cannot resist the conviction that if many of the efforts now put forth and much of the money spent at home, were better applied, and more wisely distributed, we could accomplish much more with fewer men and less means, and have a large surplus of men and means for the foreign field. We have another conviction, that if all the moral and spiritual power that is held in reserve, unused, and therefore useless, were brought into action; if also all the wealth that is wasted by professing Christians were consecrated to Christ, we should have another surplus, and a very large one too, of men and means to be employed in sending the gospel to those who have never heard of the remedy for sin.- The Baptist Missionary Magazine.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL.

Jonas King: Missionary to Syria and Greece. By F. E. H. H. American Tract Society. 1879. pp.

372.

Ten years after the death of Dr.

EIGN MISSIONS.

WE are told that there is one evangelical minister to every eight hundred, more or less, of our home population, and only one to every three hundred thousand of the inhabitants of India, one of the most favored portions of heathendom. The comparative number of ministers in the home and foreign field is three hundred and seventy-five at home to one abroad. But when we take into the comparison less favored foreign fields than the one we have mentioned, and consider also the superiority of the helps which the minister in the home

The volume is drawn largely from his own voluminous manuscript journal in which he recorded in detail the incidents of his long and varied life. Many of these incidents are of great interest, especially the story of his student life, of his interviews with eminent men and women in France, of his conflicts and successes during his missionary labors in Greece. Nothing in the record has impressed us more than the remarkable power Dr. King had in conversation with individuals of all classes on matters of personal religion. With dukes and barons and kings, as well as with

lowly people, he would talk of the things of Christ, and even those who counted him a heretic would listen kindly, and often tearfully, to his faithful admonitions. While it is pleasant to have these notes from Dr. King's journal, we cannot help feeling that a man of such striking qualities should have a memorial not merely for the relation of detached incidents of his life, but one that should trace the great movements of Providence in the conflict for Christian truth and liberty, which he not merely witnessed, but in which he had such a prominent and noble part.

missionaries and men who administer missionary operations, there was no sign of doubt either of the fitness of their instrument or of ultimate success. We wish this volume could be placed in the library of every minister,1 for it would be to him not only a storehouse of facts but a source of inspiration. He could read it, when he would kindle faith or quicken endeavor, just as for these purposes he might read the book of the Acts of the Apostles.

This report of the London Conference, valuable as it is, is not complete. It has no summaries and no tabulated statements. Perhaps it was impossible to present such tables in view of the

Missions, held at the Conference Hall, in Mildmay Park, London, in October, 1978. Edited by the Secretaries to the Conference. London. 1879. pp.

434.

This volume, which we had begun to fear we might never see, has come to hand, and we welcome it as a positive and valuable addition to missionary literature. The London Conference was, in the number and character of its members, the most important assembly of the kind ever held, though it was by no means ecumenical. Thirty-four Missionary Boards of Great Britain, the continent, and the United States, were represented by their secretaries or some prominent members, and the papers presented by these various officials reveal the wide work undertaken by Christ's church in modern times. According to the plan of the Conference missions were considered geographically, and so nearly all parts of the world came in turn under review. We get a glimpse of the scope, the obstacles to, and successes of, missionary operations, and we rise from the perusal of the volume with a profound conviction that the gospel of Christ is God's remedy for human sin and woe, and that it can save and is saving men of every race and rank and clime. In this gathering of