more than half the native clergy were once followers of the prophet.

-In 1892 the Beirût press printed 19,676,743 pages, of which there were 8,382,000 pages of Scripture. Since it was founded, it has printed 485,107,350. That means that for every single working hour of 1892 that press gave out 6286 pages of Christian literature. And since its founding in 1822 it has poured forth 2053 pages for every working hour of every working day in every

year.

-The American Board has in Turkey 62 men and 116 women, a total of 178 preachers, teachers, physicians, etc.

-The latest outbreak of Moslem fanaticism in some of its features was also the worst. This account of the horror is given in a letter appearing in a recent Christian Observer (Louisville, Ky.): "The Moolahs sent a Mohammedan woman to Aghajan, a Christian merchant of Oroomiah, to ask for money. He refused to give it to her. She reported to her friends that Aghajan had insulted her, whereupon a large crowd of roughs, that needed only a word from their religious leaders to rush into any crime, gathered around his store with daggers, swords, guns, and stones; they dragged him from the store and carried him to the court of their mosque, where they murdered him with fearful torture, putting his head on a rock and with other rocks beating it till his brains came through his mouth. After that his body was pierced with 35 daggers; some cut his ears, some his nose, and others pelted his body with stones. Then they put a rope around his neck, and together with a dead dog they dragged him all over the streets of the city and outside the city walls, where they threw his body into a filthy

pond."

India. There are 28 theological seminaries in this peninsula, with 350 students. Within a decade both the number and the strength of these institutions have doubled. The Americans lead, hav

ing half of all the candidates for the ministry. There are 800 native pastors in the broad field.

-The recent riots in Bombay are to be known in history as the " cow war." At the bottom of the bloody conflict was the weighty fact that the Hindu abominates beef-eating as sacrilege, in juxtaposition with the cognate fact that the Mohammedan holds pork in abhorrence. And it was over these dietary matters that they waxed furious and broke each other's heads.

-A Lutheran missionary writes from Guntur of the forlorn condition of the women: They have little conception of how to behave in church. They seldom take time to comb their heads or wash their faces. They are always accompanied by several dirty children. It is not unusual for them during service to beat their children for slight offences; and it often occurs that a neighbor outside will call to a woman in the audience about some trifling affair, and the latter will shout back. At other times one will give a child a cucumber to eat, immediately all the other youngsters will begin to clamor for the fruit, and some one will be sent out for a general supply."

-This incident occurring in the Madura field shows what it costs to come out for Christ: Four families have been influenced to return to Hinduism, which they had left two years before. First a son, then a wife and her husband, then others weakened and went back, saying: "We can stand this thing no longer. We must have friends; our lands and business and our whole living are mixed up with our Hindu relation. ships, and we cannot live alone." One man said: simply unbearable, and unless she comes 'My wife renders my life

I cannot."

-This from the Santal mission of the English Church Society gives the brighter side: "It was Handful-of Rice Sunday. At the commencement of the second service the women and

girls brought baskets of rice to the communion rails, where they were received, and as the men had previously done, each knelt for a few moments in prayer; for it had been suggested that since they had little money to give, each day, when the women take out the rice for cooking, they should put one handful aside; then once a month this should be taken to church and afterward sold, and the money should go to the support of an evangelist chosen by the people themselves. And the outcome was 700 pounds.

-Let us endeavor once more to get "a realizing sense" of the poverty of the masses. Rev. Mr. Tracy writes from South India that, according to careful estimates, taking the Christian community as a whole, one rupee (32 cents) or a little over, per individual per month, represents the average income. That means $3.84 for a year's subsistence, or $19.20 for a family of five. And then what amazing liberality is involved in his further statement that “our people have given this year in the aggregate 8585 rupees."

-The Baptist Telugu Mission has received within four years an increase of 57 missionaries, so that now there is a force numbering 85. Of natives there are 66 ordained and 175 unordained preachers, 17 colporteurs, 111 Bible women and 161 other helpers; a total of 530. There are 1979 villages containing native Christians, and 210 of them have stated congregations, with a building to meet in and a person in charge. The 65 churches report 1509 additions by baptism. The present membership is 48,829. In 17 boarding-schools 551 male and 398 female pupils are taught by a force of 60 teachers, and in 12 caste girls' schools there are 42 teachers, with 659 pupils. The village schools number 557, with 569 teachers, 4729 male and 2535 female pupils. The total number of heathen scholars in all the schools is 1432, and of Christians, 7576.

China. The people of this empire are occidental rather than oriental in

imagination. The parabolic mould of a great part of the Bible--especially of our Lord's teaching-is a puzzle to them. Thus, a Hu-peh Chinaman, st tracted to a preaching hall, and so much influenced as to destroy his idols and become a diligent student of the Bible, came to the missionary with a verse be could make nothing of. "I wish you would explain it," he said. about taking up the cross and following Christ." He seemed to have thought a great deal about it, and he said, holding out his arms, "Would that size do ?"

“It is

-A correspondent of the New York Evening Post is authority for the statement that the women of China are the very backbone of the nation, seeming to be born with a natural sense of honesty which is conspicuously absent among the men.

While the mendacity

of Chinamen is proverbial, the women are, as a rule, truthful and have great strength of character. They struggle bravely to restrain their husbands from ramshu drinking, opium smoking, and immoderate gambling, vices for some one of which most of them have a propensity.

-Hau Quay, a banker controlling a number of the largest banks in the empire, is said to be worth $1,800,000,000, and the richest man in the world. He started as a laundryman.

-Rev. Mark Williams, of Kalgan, declares that a paltry $100 will do any of these several great things in that sec tion: 1. It will maintain a boys' dayschool of 25, as it will pay the rent of the room and salary of the teacher. 2. It will maintain 3 boys in a boardingschool. 3. It will pay the salary of 2 native preachers. 4. It will pay the wages of 2 colporteurs, who not only sell but explain the Bible. 5. It will support a station-class of 20 men, who spend all their time for three months in Bible study.

-A few months ago Ng-Wanchue, a scholar and a mandarin from the province of Kwong-Si, was baptized in Can

ton. A few months before he had condemned an outbreak upon the missionaries, but was told that they were wicked wretches, and a copy of one of their "evil books" was shown him, which he took home and read. It was the Gospel of Matthew. Later he secured from a colporteur the other Gospels and the Acts, then sought out a native preacher and heard and believed.

-As yet the iron horse does not find free course among the Celestials. Thus we read that the deified dragon is still a practical obstruction to railway building. The Tartar general in command at Moukden, the capital of Manchuria, when the survey was made for a railroad by the town, had the local sages investigate the matter. They reported that the vertebræ of the dragon which encircles the holy city would be broken if the long nails of the sleepers were driven into the ground. Upon the strength of that the engineers were ordered to carry the line away from the city and over a very marshy route. When the matter was brought to Li Hung Chang, he commended the general for his interest in the dragon, but still expressed an opinion that the Moukden route was the best for both dragon and country. The affair would have to be reported to the emperor. Whereupon the general had a line laid down a few hundred feet from the former one, and the sages pronounced it all right.

-The American Baptists (Missionary Union) have recently opened a mission in the Hupeh province, with headquarters "in Hankow or one of the cities adjoining," and sent 2 men with their wives to break ground.

Japan. As an instance of Japanese liberality in the cause of evangelization, an old woman who had been scraping together for years a little money to ensure for herself a fine Buddhist funeral recently gave the whole sum toward building a Presbyterian mission in her native district.

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-A missionary tells of the devotion of a certain Japanese pastor whom she calls" one of the noblest men I ever met." Not long ago the headman of a large government school here asked him to give up his church, where he receives 20 odd yen a month, and accept a position in the school at 100 yen a month. He replied, without a moment's hesitation, I am here to teach Christianity.' The man went off and wrote him a letter, to say that if he would teach for them two hours a day they would pay him 60 yen a month and he could still retain his church. The single-hearted pastor replied, 'I have given my whole time to the work of teaching Christianity;' and that was the end of it. He has a wife, four children, and his sister to support.'

""

་

-The first building for Christian uses ever erected in Tokyo is only 25 years old, and now there are 92 churches and chapels in that city.

-Japan's railroads at present have a total locomotive equipment of 206 engines, 200 of which are of English, 4 of German, and 2 of American make. The last are of the mogul type, and were built at the Baldwin Works. The German engines are rack rail locomotives built on the Abt system.-Railroad Gazette.

-The Japanese sense of music, as the people of the West apprehend it, is almost entirely unawakened. They have, as a race, no conception of what it means, nor do they particularly care to have any conception.-Japan Mail.

--Little or no importance is attached to the religious training of Japanese children. Whether the parents be Buddhists or Shintoists it matters not, for in either case the children rarely take any part in the religious life of their parents or elders, and indeed usually grow up in blissful ignorance as to what it is all about. True, they may be occasionally taken to the temple and taught to rub their palms together, clap thrice and incline their heads toward the shrine as

they toss their offering of rin through the wooden grating of the huge money till. They may have some vague notion that there is something meritorious in all this, but nothing more.-Popular Science Monthly.

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AFRICA.

-There are said to be over 30,000 Kaffir members in the Wesleyan missions, and they are professed abstainers from intoxicating liquors. The Wesleyan Missionary Notices gives an account of the experience of one who gave up the use of both the native beer and tobacco. He had gone home that night, thrown the beer away, and destroyed the pot; heaven came down into his soul, and it was blessed (mandi kakulu!); he assembled his family for prayer, and it was mandi kakulu; he went to his place of private prayer among the rocks, and it was mandi kakulu, God Himself filling his soul with the joy of salvation. In the night he awoke-still mandi kakulu ; but turning to seek a live coal with which to light his pipe, the ubanmandi (blessedness) vanished, he knew not where or how; but there and then he fought out the matter."

-Rev. H. Richards writes from Banza Manteka, on the Congo, that he had baptized 120 since January, 1893. He says: At 3 out-stations we have preachers who live in grass huts, like the rest of the natives, and the only difference between the preacher and the heathen is, the one is clean inside and out, the other filthy; the one dressed in a clean loin cloth and shirt, the other nearly undressed; the one has a bright, shiny, intelligent, happy face, the other a sullen, dull, suspicious, unsatisfied expression. Both are Congo, but the one a Christian, the other a heathen; the one lives, the other is dead."

Beside the two graves, only a few months old, there arise hymns of praise daily, and every Lord's Day witnesses the gathering of 30 or 40 native Christians to remember the Lord's death in the little chapel. We have a church of 46 members now; when Coote died there were only 5 Christians."

ISLANDS OF THE SEA.

-Mr. Henry E. Clark, of Madagas car, writing in The Friend, says: "The Imerina Native Missionary Society has agreed to do its utmost to send out 10 new men in the next 2 years. Two of these have already gone; they are father and son. The father is one of the very few now left who were teachers when I came out in 1871. He was placed out by Joseph S. Sewell, and has only just left on his appointment as missionary to Befandriana, a large town in the northwest. Including these 2 the society supports 12 evangelists and teachers, and partly supports 4 others. The total income of the society is about £160 per annum, including £30 from the London Missionary Society, and £10 from the Friends' Foreign Missions Association."

-In 1875 a Wesleyan Mission was started in New Britain by Rev. George Brown, who had already labored 15 years in Samoa. Forty-one churches have been built, in which, with other preaching places, 6000 regularly wor ship. There are over 900 church-members, 1300 Sunday-school scholars, and 45 of the converts are local preachers. Last year these natives gave £150 to the missionary society to send the Gospel "to the regions beyond."

-In the island of Celebes are 200 Christian congregations and 125 schools. Here, too, Christianity conquered cannibalism.

-During a recent revival in Formosa more than 500 people banished idols from their homes, and a heathen temple was converted into a house of worship, dedicated to the true God.