THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL.

"An entire change has taken place this year in the students of this school. Seven families of catechists have gone away, and eleven families and one unmarried man have come in their place. We have good reason to hope that the class which left in March will prove useful preachers and catechists. Several of them have been placed in situations where they have shown the earnestness of their spirit and the value of their training. It is hoped that some of them may exhibit such proof of their fitness for their posts that they may become pastors of churches. Of the twelve catechists newly come, two were educated in Romanist schools and doctrines. All but one of the others have been previously trained in our seminary, or in the Vernacular Training School at Dindigul. The course of studies is essentially that adopted in 1870.

"The largest number in the theological and preparatory department of the schools has been sixty. This increased number has rendered necessary the most careful management of the boarding department, for we have never received so small appropriation for the school as last year. Though the crops of this year have only mitigated, not removed, the distress, the mission have not remitted any of the fees, and they have been paid, if anything, a little more readily than last year. It is worthy of note that thirteen of the students are sons of widows. The fathers of twelve of these thirteen were either pastors or catechists, and the families to which these boys belong are all now in straitened circumstances, and the education of the children, if educated they are to be, must be made possible by the liberality of those interested in the missionary cause. The fees required of mission students amounts to $7.50 a year, and the entire expense of a boy in the school, including books, fees, and board, is but $19. The requirements of the mission, and the opening for Christian work in the district, make us believe that we should increase the preparatory

department to sixty or sixty-five, and we trust that funds may be forthcoming to maintain the school at that point."

GROWTH IN BENEVOLENCE.

"It is the almost universal testimony of the missionaries that they have witnessed more devotion and zeal among professed Christians than ever before. Whatever may have been the effect of God's judgments on the heathen mind, which has been very marked, it is evident that Christians have been spiritually benefited by the discipline. This has borne its fruit in the greatly enlarged amount contributed by the people for benevolent purposes, being a gain of $638 upon $1,500 contributed the previous year, making a total of $2,138. In two stations the increase has been twenty-five per cent., in one thirty-five, in one seventy-five, in two others it has nearly doubled, in one it has increased threefold, and in still another fourfold.

"These contributions are made often out of deep poverty, sometimes in handfuls of grain laid aside by the housewife from the daily family allowance, sometimes in small copper coins from time to time dropped into a charity-box provided by the missionary for the purpose, sometimes in large quantities of grain, being a tenth of the reaped harvest, sometimes it is a contribution in work on mission building, and very seldom in silver coin as large as a rupee. The offerings are small, but they come from the heart, and God blesses the heart gift."

North China Mission.

THE STORY OF THE MISSION IN SHANTUNG.

THE accounts of the labors and success of our missionaries in the province of Shantung during the past year, and especially in connection with the famine-relief, and the gift of the heathen temple in Shih-Chia-Tang, have awakened wide interest, and the readers of

the Herald will welcome the following letter from Rev. Arthur H. Smith, dated December 31, 1878, giving a general review of missionary operations in that province. He writes:

"The special religious interest connected with the famine-relief began, so far as I know, on Sunday, April 7, 1878, when so many outsiders came to the morning service that we had no place for the church members, and were obliged to organize a separate meeting. From that time until the close of our relief-work, not a Sunday passed without a large attendance from the neighboring villages. During the month of May, a good-sized court-yard and dwelling-house were used for the services, and an awning was thrown over the former to protect the audience from the sun. During the month of June, even these accommodations seemed insufficient, and towards the close of our work the throngs grew larger and larger, and we could count our auditors by hundreds. The relief-work, especially in its sudden expansion in May and June, acted as an immense advertisement, and multitudes came who had never before been aware even of our existence. We were not, of course, beguiled into supposing that these crowds were assembled to receive religious instruction. They came for loaves and fishes, but some of them resembled Saul, who in seeking asses found a kingdom. At the end of June, there were scores, possibly once or twice a hundred or more women, from villages several miles distant, who came flocking in with the rest. We were not surprised to learn subsequently, that the efficient cause of this singular activity was the circulation of a rumor that a supposed unexpended balance of the relief-money was to be divided pro rata among the Sabbath attendants. During the heats of summer, after the relief-work had closed, the attendance at the Sunday services fell off, only a faithful few continuing to come to any of the meetings until we reached Shantung in October."

[May,

THE PEOPLE PERPLEXED. "The whole relief-work from its commencement has been an insoluble enigma to the recipients. At first they were too much famished and too bewildered, to do more than open their mouths. They ate and were silent. But by degrees they began to talk, and the theories advanced were unique. Some said that it was the deeply laid plan of these foreigners to purchase land, when it was to be had for next to nothing, and thus, gradually introducing the thin end of a wedge, to usurp the land, after the manner of the Egyp tian Joseph. Others supposed that the whole population, men, women, and children, were to be removed to Tientsin, and perhaps to foreign parts, where they were to be employed according to their capacities as teachers, artisans, and servants, perpetual bond servants of their far-sighted benefactors. But as month after month elapsed and no land was sold, and as no one was deported, this theory was abandoned, and many came to the conclusion that the relief was really some form of the practice of virtue of which in China we hear so much, and see so little. Some went so far as to propagate a rumor that we had come in the autumn to distribute wadded garments!"

CANDIDATES FOR BAPTISM.

"When Mr. Sprague and myself reached Shantung in October, we found lists of applicants for baptism, at the three different places where we had maintained preaching, amounting in the aggregate to about 120. Many of them had, probably, entered their names with only a vague sense of the nature of baptism, and supposing it a mere form. Aside from these, in one village, a long list had been prepared of persons who professed to be willing to 'follow Jesus,' to the number of twenty families, embracing more than 330 persons. The list was drawn out in the form of a relief-list, so many large mouths,' so many 'small mouths.'

"I supposed that out of the whole number of applicants for baptism, there might be fifteen or twenty who would be suitable candidates. These were all personally known to me, and appeared promising last spring, but I could not feel sure that there were many such. I had not visited the several centers, however, on many successive Sundays, before I discovered that I had greatly underrated both the depth and the extent of the work. Where I had expected to find here and there a hopeful inquirer, in some instances there were tens, and in others, scores. In the village of Pang-Chia itself there seemed to be no interest whatever, but many of the contiguous villages, where we have scarcely had a hearing hitherto, now presented several hopeful inquirers. At ShihChia-Tang, although they had given us their temple, there was no great interest in our teaching as such. In a village less than a mile from Shih-ChiaTang, there are a number of reading men who came over to the Jesus doctrine in a body. One of them is a literary graduate, of the lowest rank, one a schoolteacher, and others are by no means lacking in intelligence. Several of them were baptized the first Sunday after the idols were removed from the temple where they worship.

"A few weeks later one of the helpers and myself spent a large part of a day and nearly half the night with them, in endeavoring to meet their restless minds, which ran rioting among the new doctrines, like calves in a meadow. They had read some of the gospels, parts of the epistles, and portions of the Apocalypse, and had encountered snags in I. Peter, and in Revelation! One of them argued that the new birth and the day of judgment were substantially the same, on the ground that when the foreign shepherd came, he preached repentance and a new life, so that all old things had passed away, and become in a manner new. Thus they were entering a new form of existence, for the shepherd was supposed to be the same as an

angel from heaven. We advised them to follow the example of their own scholars, who, on coming to school, instead of at once plunging into the unfathomable depths of the "Book of Changes," which no one has ever yet mastered, are set to the "Trimetrical and Millenary" classics, which they take for the time on trust, until a wider knowledge expands their comprehension.

"These men appear to be quite free from the defect so often found in converted Confucianists, of placing the old system and the new in a single shrine as twin objects of veneration, and are, all of them, ready to admit that as between the classics and Confucius, the Scriptures and Christ, the latter alone are divine."

THE WOMEN IN SHANTUNG. "The demeanor of the women in Shantung is in marked contrast to that of their sisters in Tientsin, where they seem to be more inaccessible than in almost any place in the empire, and still, after eighteen years of foreign intercourse, remain as inapproachable as ever. But in Shantung it is no uncommon circumstance, since the relief, to be invited by a respectable, elderly woman to come in and drink tea, as we are passing through a village where, except as distributors of relief, we are strangers. At the service referred to, the women talked freely about the excellence of the doctrine, and although they have very little idea in what the excellence consists, they are certainly surprisingly willing to learn. Their number is remarkable, as we have no baptized women anywhere near. Some of them bought catechisms, which they said their sons could read to them, and one inquired if Mohammedan women would be allowed to attend. The church members who opened the chapel seem more desirous of doing something than ever before, and have planned to have little meetings in their own and neighboring villages, to which the women can come by themselves. No single cir

good men and women, some of the best from the mother church. They would support a pastor moderately now if they could find one. They will raise about ten dollars per month from the first,-a large sum for them. This is another light in a very dark place. We are just commencing Sabbath services at 'Joambashi,' a place of which I have spoken before, as between us and the Naniwa church, in the midst of a large, unentered district of the city. The organization at Temma' will now enable the Naniwa' church to send a band of missionaries from its own number to open work south of the city.

Monday was also the second anniversary.of the Naniwa' church organization; a happy day and a happy church to send out so strong a colony so soon. Fourteen have been added to the church during the year; one has been cut off. Three city mission centers have been occupied by the church. Money contributions for the year amounted to $240, of which about one fourth part was used outside of their own expenses. You know enough of the condition of things here to know what this means for a church which, all told, before the colony was sent off, numbered only thirty-five members, absent and present."

MR. DAVIS, under date of February 24, writes as follows:

"Kioto is the old capital of Japan. I write looking out from my window upon the old palace grounds and buildings, where, for more than one thousand years the Mikados lived and reigned, in name if not in reality. The city contains about 300,000 people, with nearly 2,000,000 within easy reach. It has, for more than a thousand years, been considered the spiritual capital of the empire. All the large sects of Buddhists in Japan have their center here, and the ashes of every believer of some of these large sects are brought from every part of the empire to Kioto to be buried. Hence the importance which attaches to the making of this city a Christian center.

"The only limit to our work here is the number of workers, and especially is this true in regard to work among the women. Our young men in the school can do something in the way of general work, but it needs female workers to enter these hundred thousand homes and reach and interest the women.

"We expect soon to organize a church at Hikone and also at Yokkaichi, and, perhaps, ordain a pastor over each at the same time. We have fifteen young men to graduate from our theological course this next summer. They are all graduates of Captain Janes' school in Kumamoto, and we hope that they will do a grand work in the evangelization of the empire. Pray for them and for

us.

"A letter came to-day from a company of teachers over six hundred miles northwest of Kioto. One of our students sent them a copy of a little book on the evidences of Christianity, and he has also sent them a copy of the paper for the last year.

They were.Confucian materialists before this; now they say that they are believers, and they plead for a missionary to come and teach and baptize them. This one result is worth more than all the paper has cost. Oh that we had the power to fill this land with the printed word!"

Micronesian Mission.

ARRIVAL OF THE "MORNING STAR."

THE "Morning Star" arrived at Honolulu, February 26, after an absence of a little over eight months. She brought Mrs. Sturges, who returns to the United States on account of her health, leaving her husband at Ponape, and also Mr. and Mrs. Maka, missionaries of the Hawaiian Board at Butaritari. Only a portion of the letters brought by the "Star" have as yet reached us, but among those that have arrived is the report of the vessel itself to its stockholders, which will be found in the department for Young People. Brief ex