Letters for } Rev. N. G. CLARK, D. D., Corresponding Secretaries, LANGDON S. WARD, Treasurer, Rev. E. E. STRONG, Editor of Missionary Herald, should be addressed No. 1 Somerset Street, Boston. Communications relating to the pecuniary affairs of the Board should be sent to the Treasurer; subscriptions and remittances for the MISSIONARY HERALD, to the Publishing Agent. REV. RUFUS ANDERSON, D. D., may be addressed Cedar Square, Boston Highlands. MRS. ELIZA H. WALKER, having care of Missionary children, may be addressed Auburndale, Mass. WOMAN'S BOARDS OF MISSIONS. W. B. M., Boston. MRS. ALBERT BOWKER, President. MRS. BENJ. E. BATES, Treasurer. MISS EMMA CARRUTH, Assistant Treasurer. W. B. M. of the Interior. MRS. MOSES SMITH, Jackson, Mich., President. MRS. E. W. BLATCHFORD, 375 No. La Salle St., Chicago. MRS. J. K. MCLEAN, President, Oakland, Cal. Secretaries. All communications to officers of the Woman's Board, Boston, should be sent to No. 1 Congregational House, Boston. Checks and drafts should be made payable to Miss Emma Carruth, Assistant Treasurer. Letters relating to "LIFE AND LIGHT" should be addressed" Secretary W. B. M.” DISTRICT SECRETARIES. New York City and the Middle States, including Ohio, Rev. Charles P. Bush, D. D., No. 39 Bible House, New York City. Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, Rev. S. J. Humphrey, Prairie State Bank Building, 112 West Washington St., Chicago, Ill. HONORARY MEMBERS. The payment of $50 at one time constitutes a minister, and the payment of $100 at one time constitutes any other person an Honorary Member of the Board. LEGACIES. "The Ameri In making devises and legacies to the Board, the entire corporate name can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" should be used; otherwise the intent of the testator may be defeated. Form for Bequest to the Woman's Board. I give and bequeath to the WOMAN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS the sum of to be applied to the mission purposes set forth in its Act of Incorporation, passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts in the year 1869. THE MISSIONARY HERALD. VOL. LXXV.-APRIL, 1879. — No. IV. THE letters from the missions in this issue will be found to be of a specially encouraging character. Since these pages were filled, a full report, covering the year 1878, has been received from the Madura mission, which says that probably not less than sixty thousand idolaters in Southern India have cast away their idols, and have embraced Christianity, in the year 1878. Our own missions report larger accessions "and more general prosperity than we have realized in any previous year." This report, together with a letter just received from Rev. Arthur H. Smith, confirming and adding to the late tidings from North China, will be given in our next issue. Two or three friends, living near the Missionary Rooms, having privately heard these tidings, have been moved to make a special thank-offering, one of $250 and another of $1,000. Who will join these generous friends in a grand thank-offering to Him who sends these rich results, while our offerings to Him have been comparatively so small? A GOOD EXAMPLE FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. The American Home Missionary Society is able to present the following splendid record as given in its magazine for March: "It is matter of sincere gratitude to God that in the dark and troublous times through which the country has been passing, the receipts of this society, in its latest five full years, exceed by nearly $151,000 those of the five most prosperous years that the society had previously known." By way of contrast, it is somewhat humiliating to report that the receipts of the American Board, in its latest five years, are less than those of the five most prosperous previous years to the amount of $245,538. As the result of this sad decline our missionaries have been obliged to retrench below the necessities of the work, to the amount of an annual average of nearly $50,000. How long shall foreign missions be obliged to "live at this poor, dying rate"? THE London journals report that a project is on foot for constructing a telegraphic line from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope through the heart of Africa. The Royal Geographical Society is promoting the scheme, which is pronounced feasible by its Exploration Committee. It is said to be cheaper to connect Northern and Southern Africa by way of the interior than to do so by a submarine cable along the coast. But would not a line across the continent need to be defended after it was built? THE following note from a generous contributor deserves to be put in print for future reference: "I am always glad to see a word of appeal in the Herald. I like to have you urge us readers to larger contributions. There is a ring of earnestness and truthfulness that gives them force, and I always feel they will not - cannot be disregarded. Whether it be the voice that allures, the appeal to our sympathies and our love, or, if need be, the [affectionate] whip, I hope it will come now and then. It seems to me you always hit the mark. Excuse this gratuitous opinion." No apology is necessary. We are glad that this department of the Herald is becoming attractive. We fear, however, it may grow monotonous as long as regular donations decline. We should like to try our hand in a new direction, and "ring" forth a few congratulations upon rapidly advancing receipts. Our readers do not know what we might be inspired to write if we only had the opportunity to utter forth our long pent-up hallelujahs. Please help, dear friends, in the same method illustrated by the good friend whose note, from which we have quoted above, was accompanied by another kind of note, which meant "business." A few more such notes and you shall have a song instead of a sermon. THE Commercial prosperity of the Sandwich Islands is indicated by the Annual Report of Exports for 1878. The total value of all domestic exports from the port of Honolulu, for the year, was $3,247,879.49. This is an increase of $884,012.83 as compared with the exports of 1877. REV. DR. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR has been visiting a theological seminary, where he finds the students greatly exercised on the subject of foreign missions. He has given an admirable paper in the Christian at Work, containing his answers to some questions presented him by the students. It would be well if not only theological students but pastors would ponder the answers given, especially such sentences as these: "The missionary enterprise is no merely accidental outgrowth of the gospel. Wherever, therefore, it is neglected in the ministrations of the pulpit, the temple of truth lacks its cope-stone; the presentation of the responsibility of the Christian is wanting in one of its most vital aspects, and the preacher is untrue to his function. We cannot help recording our conviction that the ministry which virtually ignores foreign missions is in a moribund condition, if, indeed, it be not already dead." It is not only when the husbandman sleeps that the enemy sows tares. By the side of the active messengers of Christ in Japan there are teachers of materialism in the Imperial College, coming from Christian lands, yet assaulting Christianity. A call recently came from Kioto, for the volumes of Rev. Joseph Cook's lectures, as being well adapted to meet the skepticism which was showing itself in certain quarters. On hearing of the call, Mr. Cook generously forwarded twenty copies of his published volumes to Rev. Mr. Davis. THE Journal des Missions Evangéliques has a report from the heart of Africa, of one of the most remarkable incidents in the history of missions. A year or more ago Mr. Coillard, one of the French missionaries who had been laboring among the Bassutos, set off with a small party of native Christians to begin labor at some point further to the north, not yet occupied. Thwarted in one plan after another, often in great peril, and driven on further and further to the north, he has at last come to a people on the upper waters of the Zambesi, in the heart of Central Africa, nearly a thousand miles away from his starting point, who speak the Bassuto language! The missionaries have met with a cordial reception, and are already engaged in preaching the gospel and teaching them Christian hymns. "Man proposes, but God disposes." These Bassutos, called Makololo in their present location, emigrated some fifty years ago from their old home in Southern Africa. Thus marvelously has the way been prepared for the establishment of a Christian mission nearly four hundred miles to the west of the Scotch missions on Lake Nyassa, and as far to the Southwest of Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. The readers of Stanley's volumes will remember his allusion (vol. 1., p. 502) to a tribe of Bassutos on the Zambesi, the same now found by Mr. Coillard and party. MISSIONARY meetings are not often expensive, but it is a notable fact that the total cost to the Woman's Board of Missions for the Interior, for its last annual meeting, amounted to just $8.75. THE Presbyterian mission in Central and Southern Mexico, after less than seven years of labors, can report the organization of twenty-two churches, with an aggregate membership of more than three thousand. Thirty native Christians, eleven of them ordained, are constantly engaged in preaching and teaching in more than sixty different cities and towns. At the present time a special religious awakening is manifest, so that many are saying, "This is Pentecost for Mexico." THE Rev. Mr. Slater, of the London Missionary Society, at Madras, has been giving lectures in a public hall of that city upon religious themes. The lectures were well attended, and prominent native gentlemen, one of them a learned Hindu, judge of the Madras High Court, consented to preside at the meetings. A native newspaper, The Hindu, deplores the conduct of these gentlemen, and says, "Mr. Slater can now boast of having succeeded to a considerable extent in infusing into natives a spirit of love and respect for Christianity. The last days of Hinduism are evidently fast approaching. When a Christian goes on discoursing on Christ being the only Mediator, and the immorality of Kristna and the wicked teachings of the Puranas, our worthy fellow-countrymen keep nodding their heads, and after the lecture is over whisper a few words into the lecturer's ear and sit down. Such thoughtless proceedings of our countrymen cannot but be interpreted by missionaries as a secret conviction of the truth of Christianity, at least of the falsehood of Hinduism." |