ing, strong support of the work at home.

The Church at home should be remembered. The more instructed concerning missionary work her congregations are, the more they give and pray. The Church at home carries the whole missionary work. She furnishes the missionaries and the means for their support. Thus, prayer should be made that she be kept in the love of missionary effort, and that her readiness to give increase as the work progresses. Her pastors also should be remembered in the prayer for missions, for upon them depends, to a very great extent, the existence of the missionary spirit in the congregations.

(b) In our discussion of the prayer for the sending of the laborers, we necessarily touched frequently the prayer for the upholding of the laborers. These things can not be clearly separated. Yet a few words are necessary concerning the intercessory prayer for missionaries.

Upon four things Paul lays the most stress: First, there should be asked boldness, which can not be shaken by all sufferings and temptations of missionary life. Second, prayer should be made that unto the missionaries be opened a door of utterance, so that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified in the lands and hearts of heathens.† Third, Paul asked that prayer be made that he and his fellow missionaries give no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed, and that in all things pertaining to Christian character they might approve themselves as the ministers of God. Fourth, he beseeches Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, and other brethren to pray that he be preserved by the hand of God in all troubles and personal difficulties which were caused by unbelievers and by evil men. All these supplications have the purpose of aiding the missionaries to bring forth fruit, and fruit that shall remain.

*See Acts iv: 29 and Eph. vi: 19. + See Col. iv: 3 and II Thess. iii. + See II. Cor. vi: 3-10. See II. Cor. 1:8 12; Rom. xv:31; II. Thess. iii:2; Acts iv: 24, pp.; xii: 5.

2. Next to the laborers sent out from the home countries, the native Christians form the principal subject of prayer for missions, and I am afraid that the importance of this subject is not yet known to the friends of missions. Study the numerous intercessory prayers of Paul for missions, and you will find that he prays not for the heathen, but for those already converted from heathenism; not for the conversion of the heathen, but for the strengthening of native Christians. He had a twofold reason for this. First, he knew from his own experience that in the young converts the good work has only commenced, so that they are still babes in Christ, and that in the midst of heathen surroundings they are exposed to strong temptations. Second, he had learned how much depended on their word of testimony concerning their faith and on their consistent walk and conversation, and he knew that their labors would contribute to the spread of the Gospel more, perhaps, than those of the missionaries sent from the home land.

Spreading the Gospel in enlarged measure through native Christians, and more through the congregations formed by them, than by paid native teachers, pastors, and lay missionaries, is to be devoutly desired and to be earnestly prayed for. The greatest testimony to the grand success of the missionary labors of the apostles is that they had founded a Church which was able to extend even when the direct sending of missionaries ceased toward the middle of the second century. This was possible because congregations of Christians existed who not only preached, but lived, the Gospel, and who were strictly separated from everything heathenish, and, in brotherly love and Christian charity and benevolence, bore testimony to Christ patient admidst sufferings and persecutions.

Two things Paul asked in his prayers for the native Christians and their congregations. First, he asked that

prayers shall be acceptable unto Him. they might grow in the knowledge of the Lord and in love to Him.* Second, he prayed that their walk should be worthy of their calling.†

3. The third principal subject mentioned by Paul in I. Tim. ii: 2, is "kings and all that are in authority." This may surprise at first, but those in authority control, to a certain extent, the spread of the Kingdom of God in the world as well as the temporal wellbeing of their subjects. Therefore, they should have a prominent place in the prayer for all men. All civil government Paul would include in his petitions, the Christian as well as the heathen. He would not pray that they may use their worldly power for the spread of the Christian religion, but that they permit their subjects, especially those who are followers of Christ, to live a quiet and peaceable life. What an onward march of the

Gospel we may look for when those in authority will grant religious liberty and equality to all their subjects! What an influence prayer for kings and all that are in authority should exert in times of war and of rumors of war!

4. But the opponents of missionary effort should not be forgotten in our prayers for missions. Paul speaks of them in many places. Living men at home and abroad are the great instruments of the spread of the Gospel, and living men at home and abroad are greater hindrance to it than all resistance which is natural under the circumstances. If heathen oppose the Gospel, we need not be surprised, for they know not what they do. But if Christians oppose missionary effort we face an unnatural thing which is worse than all that Paul suffered from his opposers. The direct and indirect oppositions to missions by nominal. Christians is the greatest modern hindrance to the success of missionary effort. At home they attack the work

Eph. 1:16-23; Phil. i:9-13; Col. i:9, 11.

† Phil. i:10, ff.; Col. 1:10; II. Thess. i:11; iii:1.

etc.

1. Cor. xvi:9; Rom. xv:31; II. Thess. iii:2;

insidiously and spread calumnies without number; abroad their evil life counterworks the preaching of the Gospel directly. Selfishness is a characteristic of our commercial and political relations with other nations, and especially with less civilized ones. And infidel literature is almost like a deluge pouring into heathendom from nominally Christian lands. We must fight against all these evil influences, but still more must we pray for the tens of thousands who, nominally Christians, live to-day in heathen lands, that they become converted and thus be made friends of the missionary work.

5. One most important thing is still to be added into the prayer for missions-thanksgiving. All prayers of Paul commence with that. He has much to ask, to exhort, to denounce and reprove, but first he gives thanks. Thanksgiving keeps from being overcome by the heavy burden, and it gives wings to prayer. Thanksgiving for the good things which we see in others, preserves from critical onesidedness, and takes the sting from the reproof. Thanksgiving strengthens faith, and is the key to new benevolent acts of God; for "Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me and prepareth a way that I may shew him the salvation of God" (Ps. 1:23, R. V., margin). And for what does Paul give thanks? For the faith of the Romans; for the faith and love of the Ephesians; for the faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope of the Thessalonians; for the fellowship in the Gospel with the Philippians; for the grace of God, for increase of all knowledge, for the charity, given to the Corinthians by Jesus Christ.

Missionary work needs laborers and contributors, but it needs praying friends most; praying friends whose intercessory prayers are unceasing, are based upon faith, and thus reach God. God grant us an increase of our faith. He teaches us to pray in the secret closet, by twos and threes, and in the solemn assembly of the congregation, in such a manner that our

THE PRINTED WORD OF GOD

The celebration of a century of the history of Bible societies, has called attention anew to the remarkable progress made in the translation, circulation, and diffusion of Holy Scripture, and especially in their comparative cheapness.

In the first year of the British and Foreign Bible Society the issue did not exceed 5,000 copies; a century later it reached nearly 6,000,000. The American Bible Society, which began with an annual issue of 6,000, now puts forth 2,000,000. The National Bible Society of Scotland sends out 1,000,000 more. The aggregate from these three societies is 9,000,000 copies in a year, and nearly 300,000,000 copies during the century. Some seventy auxiliaries and nearly half a hundred other organizations help to multiply Bibles to over 10,000,000 annually.

more

Some facts, however, are remarkable than this aggregate output, such as the interest awakened by the Scriptures in heathen lands, as among the Baganda. The story of the last twenty years in Uganda is one of the most remarkable ever written. The native

Christians have built 600 churches at their own cost. Tens of thousands have bought copies of the Word of God, and hundreds of teachers and missionaries have been raised up from the leading men and women of the kingdom, even including the royal family. Perhaps even more remarkable than this are the vast numbers of "readers," socalled, who have shown such eagerness to pursue the Scriptures that great "reading houses" have been built, all through the kingdom, in which people might go to learn to read the Bible, as many as 40,000 having gathered in different places. at a single hour of the day. Meanwhile a remarkable

utter

ance has been made by the Pope of Rome. For centuries the Papal Church has opposed putting the Scriptures into the hands of the common people, on the ground that common folk are incapable of reading the Scriptures with true insight, and need, therefore, the priests of the infallible Church as interpreters. For some thirty or forty years, and preeminently since Victor Emmanuel entered Rome in 1870, and the temporal scepter fell from the hands of the Pope, there has been a change of policy in this matter, as is noticeable in a French edition of the Gospels, by Henri Laserre, issued under the sanction of the Archbishop, and the reprinting of the whole New Testament by instalments in an Italian newspaper. Excellent translations and explanations of the Gospel in the Italian language are also being printed nowadays by the authority of the St. Jerome Association. It has recently become known that the translator of these works was Professor Cleventi, and the commentator Father Genochi. Soon after the present Pope entered upon his office, these two scholars were received at the Vatican, and when they requested the Pontiff to bestow his blessing on the new work, he answered:

Gladly do I give my blessing, and that with both hands and with a full heart, for I do not doubt that this work will produce the richest fruit and is already blessed by God. The more we read the Gospels the stronger our faith becomes. The Gospels are writings that are valuable for everybody and under all circumstances. I have lived among the common people, and know what they want and what pleases them. Tell them the simple Bible stories, and you will have attentive listeners and effect blessed results. Your purpose is to spread the Gospels. You are doing a noble work. Some people think that the peasants, with their plain, every-day way of thinking, would not profit by the reading of the Scriptures. This is incorrect. The average peasant is a shrewder thinker than we may suspect, and knows how to draw the correct lessons from the Scriptures, often even better than

many of the preachers. No matter how many prayer-books and books of devotion there may be for the priests, none is better than the Gospels. This is an unsurpassed book of devotion, the true bread of life. I grant an especial apostolic blessing upon all those who preach the Gospel, who hear and read it, whether on a Sunday or a weekday. I bestow my blessing on all the members of the St. Jerome Society and all who cooperate in the sacred work of spreading the Gospel.

The Reformation, one of the most pronounced Protestant journals of Germany, comments:

No Roman ecclesiastic has ever before spoken such words. If we consider the pious and evangelical notes that have been added to this popular edition of the Bible, we must recognize the fact that a new influence is at work in the Roman Catholic Church. Not a few priests in Italy seriously doubt the wisdom of the new policy in spreading the Scriptures among the common people. They refrain from participating in the papal blessing that has been pronounced on the venture, and, in consequence, there are many thousand copies of the cheap Gospel editions left unsold. But fully 250,000 have been sold. A new era has been inaugurated since the day when a Protestant missionary reported that he had examined the book-stores in fifty Italian cities, and found only one copy of the Bible complete-and that in ten folio volumes-and one copy of the four Gospels.

Let us hope that the gift of the Written Word to the common people may at last bring light to their minds and life to their hearts, so as to drive out superstition and formalism, and bring in their stead the knowledge of God and the power of the Spirit.

ONE OF LIVINGSTONE'S BODYGUARD

A letter to the editor, recently received from Mrs. J. A. Bailey, of the C. M. S. agency, Mombasa, British East Africa, gives some interesting details in regard to the last sickness of David Livingstone and the men who bore his body to the coast. Mrs. Taylor was led to write through reading in the "New Acts of the Apostles" the account of Livingstone's body-guard. It occurred to her that she might see "Matthew," and ask him a few details of that wonderful journey which had never

been given to the public. She writes:

Matthew Wellington was one of the six boys from Nasik who came over from India to help find David Livingstone in Africa. He is still alive, a hale and hearty man, probably between fifty and sixty years of age. He is an overseer in government employment, in the Public Works Department. I have known him since 1885, and his daughter Florence is a good girl-a teacher in our C. M. S. school on the mainland, Freretown. One son, Henry, the oldest, is no good, but John, the younger, is a steady lad. Ruth, the mother, is a capable woman, a good wife and mother.

Matthew, one Sunday morning after service, came and told me about the starting and the journey; the meeting and serving his master, Livingstone; his wonderful knowledge of country and people and languages. He spoke of his weariness of body sometimes, and his trouble to get food for the porters of his camp. He dwelt on the missionary's upright, pure, clean life, his keeping the Sabbath with prayer and reading with his men, and his feast at Christmas for them. told of Livingstone's weakness and death, after journeying up to the very last, as long as he could ride a donkey or walk.

He

Matthew then described graphically the embalming and added the information that for fourteen days the body lay in the sun, then it was turned over and exposed for another fourteen days. He also told what I have never heard before: that the legs were doubled up from the knee to the body to make the burden less like a corpse in carrying it across country. This shows the ingenuity of the native mind in an emergency. The heart and viscera were all buried.

The chief thought in the boys' minds was to do everything according to their orders at Nasik, from the Royal Geographical Society's letter: "Bring him. or find him, alive or dead, to the coast." This was their duty, and they stuck to the letter of the directions.

Matthew described the first coffin made at Bagamoyo, on the coast of the French mission, and then, so natural to a native mind, spoke of the glory of a coffin of lead or tin, and the outer wooden one with brass handles, at the Consulate of Zanzibar. He said that Jacob was a clever, intelligent boy, more so than any of the others, and no one grudged him the honor of the journey to England. He was afterward a teacher for the C. M. S. for a time, but is now dead.

Matthew has lived in Mombasa or Freretown ever since. He told me all these details in Terarhili, as I felt I should get the facts more fully in a native language than in English.

AMERICA

Day of Prayer for the Students John R. Mott and Karl Fries have sent out, in behalf of the general committee of the World's Student Chris

tian Federation, a call to observe Sunday, February 11, 1906, as the Universal Day of Prayer for Students.

The Federation unites all the Christian student movements of the world, and through them embraces Christian unions and associations of students

in nearly two thousand universities, colleges, and higher schools, and has a membership of over one hundred and five thousand students and profesIt has become the exponent of the voluntary Christian forces of the students of all lands and races.

sors.

A Splendid Record for the Y. M. C. A.

These are the opening words in Association Men for January: "Sixty cents a week measured the financial output, and twelve men the numerical strength of the Young Men's Christian Association sixtytwo years ago. At the close of 1905, in North America alone, the records show a weekly expenditure of more than $110,000, or $7,000,000 yearly, contributed by the 400,000 members, and those who stand back of their organizations; many of these and of the 300,000 more members in 39 countries, in the spirit of the humble London clerk, who was laid away in St. Paul's Cathedral a few weeks ago, have been "willing to make a sacrifice" and carry the load of other

men.

"The Greatest Migration in History" The greatest migration of people in historic times has taken place within the memory of persons now living. Its principal goal has been the United States. In the years of recorded immigration, from 1820 to 1903, 21,092,614 have come, and more than one-half of them (II,395,141) since 1880. Every one has

not settled here permanently, but the vast majority have done so. If the census taker of 1900 had destroyed every one whom he enumerated in the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the total immigration noted above would. have repeopled these states and Nevada besides. It could have put two people for every one found in 1900 in the nine South Atlantic States from Delaware to Florida, and 5 for every one found in the II Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast States and Territories, with Alaska and Hawaii added. It has included more in the whole people than dwelt United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1820, when our statistics began, and almost as many as were in the whole United States in 1850 (23,191,876).-SAMUEL MCLANAHAN.

From Whence the Immigrants Come

During the year 1905, according to the annual report of the Commissioner of Emigration, the total number of alien arrivals was 1,026,499, grouped in 4 grand divisions, as follows: Slavic, 384,679; Teutonic, 221,019; Iberic, 213,801, and Keltic, 121,218. The Mongolic might also be added, with 17,921 representations. Here, certainly, is abundance of material upon which to expend all the home missionary wisdom and zeal which our churches can muster. This is the task on hand in a single city: Out of 59,196 children born in New York last year, Germans had 2,396, Irish 3,880, Italians 11,298, and Jews 16,610.

A Japanese Church by the Golden Gate

The first Japanese Congregational Church in America was organized by council in San Francisco, November 13th. Especially timely and helpful was the presence of Rev. H. Kozaki, president of the Association of Kumi-ai churches in Japan. The services of organization and recogni