missionary life in their congregations and in the Church at large.1

Young people's mission study courses. One of the great problems in the Church today is that of caring for, safeguarding, training and retaining the young people in our churches. Many ways have been suggested, and many expedients are being tried. There is a good deal of aimless experimentation and much discouragement in the efforts. One thing is certain: there must be a definite aim and patient labor to attain it. The Student Volunteer Movement, and the Missionary Education Movement, have adopted the noble and worthy aim of definite work in behalf of world-wide evangelization. Plans to this end have been carefully worked out. They include the systematic study of missions in mission study classes and otherwise. Textbooks are prepared for this purpose. Under the joint auspices of the Annual Conference of Foreign Mission Boards, the Home Missions Council, the Laymen's Missionary Movement, and the Missionary Education Movement (formerly known as the Young People's Missionary Movement), a joint commission has been at work for several years upon a unified plan of missionary education and giving.

If it is not deemed desirable in congregations to form mission study classes, it might be found profitable to arrange for mission study courses in connection with the work of the young people's society. In selecting the books that are listed in the Bibliography" we have aimed to keep this purpose, too, in view. The not infrequent

'Fine articles and helpful suggestions will be found in Morris's At Our Own Door, ch. X.; Clark's Leavening the Nation, ch. XIX.; and Grose's The Incoming Millions, chapters V. and VII.

2See Appendix.

requests which have come to the author from young pastors, asking for suggestions with reference to suitable literature for this purpose indicate that there is a field to be worked in this sphere. And it is a sphere that clamors for attention, while it opens a most hopeful outlook to the wide-awake and enthusiastic leader.

Interest among the men. The conviction has grown upon many churches that their missionary interests have engrossed the attention of only a small part of their membership, and that, for the most part, confined to the women and children. The women in their missionary societies, and the children and young people in Sundayschool, have for years, in fact from the very beginning of nineteenth century missions, been interested and zealous workers in the cause. Gradually it has been left to fall upon them, almost exclusively, for direct support and work.

In recent years there has been an awakening along this line in many churches, and it has issued in the Laymen's Missionary Movement, which has very speedily developed in the enlistment of the men in counsel and work in behalf of the missionary enterprise. It has served to stimulate interest and advance in many churches. The plans inaugurated aim to provide not merely for immediate enlargement of contributions and funds, but for the cultivation of permanent interest.

The form of effort is not the essential thing. The forms of activity may vary according to needs and opportunities. But wherever the want of interest and co-operation on the part of the men of the congregation is felt, there is a call for earnest thought with a view to remedying what must be regarded as a great evil and source of weakness.

e. System in the gathering of offerings. It is certainly time that the haphazard, irregular, and spasmodic "methods" of many congregations be displaced and superseded by regularity and system in the matter of giving and gathering of offerings for the Lord's work. The basket collections at special services and mission festivals are too incomplete and partial, allow too many members to be overlooked, and are wholly inadequate to the demands of the cause. Some of the most successful missionary leaders, among whom Pastor Louis Harms, the founder of the Hermannsburg Mission in Africa and India, is a notable example, never took up collections at missionary meetings, but left it to the impressed hearts of their hearers to give from a sense of awakened conviction and according to the needs presented.

To this effect is the remark of the secretary of one of the larger mission boards, who writes: "We insist, too, that missionary operations have gone about as far as they can go in dependence upon the passing-the-hat method among those who happen to be present at a given service."1 No system should be introduced that will interfere with the fundamental principle: "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." But neither does insistence upon free will offerings eliminate the propriety or the necessity of system in the highly organized society of our day. There is need of system in the gathering of missionary offerings not only for the purpose of raising our apportionments in full, year after year, and of aiding in the work of getting all the members to take part and begin to do their duty, but in order to cultivate liberality, to educate and train ourselves in benevolence,

'Arthur J. Brown, The Foreign Missionary, p. 226.

to exercise and develop the grace of giving. Unity and regularity and the contagious influence of good examples are important and weighty elements in this direction.

It is high time that we were realizing the imperative need of a higher conception of Christian stewardship and a higher standard of Christian giving. Let there be, first of all among the pastors and teachers, a quickening in this respect, an enlargement of view, an elevation of aspiration and hope, an enhancement of expectation, of urgency, of requirement upon ourselves and upon those to whom we minister in holy things. There are examples around us that should stimulate us to expect and attempt greater things in this regard. We are inclined to be too easily satisfied with a pittance, whereas we should give and solicit according to a large measure.

The fear of some timid pastors and congregations that the raising of missionary offerings will impoverish them and reduce their ability to meet their home expenses is certainly unfounded. It has been disproved times without number, not only on the ground of the spirit and principles of the Gospel, but also by numerous actual examples. "The plea that they are small and weak," writes Secretary Brown, "reminds one of some little home missionary churches, mere handfuls of poor people, who send offerings for every one of the boards of the Church. A feeble congregation is made stronger by doing what it can." Jacob Riis, who is known as an enthusiastic and indefatigable worker in behalf of the poor of New York, declared that "for every dollar given to those in need abroad, the spirit that gives it provides ten for home use." And again he is quoted as saying that "for every dollar you give away to convert the

heathen abroad, God gives you ten dollars' worth of purpose to deal with your heathen at home."

We cannot here enter upon particulars with respect to methods in the raising of offerings. The "en-velope system," in various forms, offers many advantages. The boards in most of the churches provide for all needful supplies that are furnished ready to hand.

We are glad to find in American missionary literature such sound and sensible advice as this: "Avoid raising money by indirect means, such as fairs and festivals. These often belittle the dignity of the missionary enterprise in the minds of Christians, provoke scorn among unbelievers, and dishonor Jesus Christ."

f. A missionary library for pastor and people. This is a topic that deserves special attention among the ways and means of fostering and furthering missionary life in the congregations. It was mentioned under the head of missionary services. It is more fundamental, because it is required as a working basis for other needful endeavors. Public libraries are increasing, indeed, and many of them are well supplied with books on missions. They cannot always be depended on, however, to supply the books that are the most needed and the most reliable. Many pastors find it practically impossible, out of their meager salaries, to supply themselves with all the books they need in order to continue their studies and grow in knowledge and efficiency. Now, with respect to a missionary library it is our decided conviction that no investment that the average congregation can make

'John R. Mott, The Pastor and Modern Missions, p. 122. His entire chapter on "The pastor as a financial force in the world's evangelization," is full of suggestive points. On "special object giving," its advantages and difficulties, read Brown, The Foreign Missionary, p. 57 ff.