EDITORIAL NOTES

VERY BAPTIST PASTOR in the Northern States will receive a copy of this number of the BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE so far as the addresses are known.

The pastor of every church where there is not a club for the MAGAZINE is invited to look at the advertisement on the back of the frontispiece. Will you not act on its suggestions and join the multitude of your brethren who have so easily given

their people this best way to come into touch with Baptist work abroad?

The attention of all pastors is called to the statement issued as a supplement with this number of the MAGAZINE setting forth the financial condition and needs of the Missionary Union. Read it. It speaks for itself.

WHEN

THEN CLUBS FOR THE MAGAZINE EXPIRE pastors and others who formed them are requested to kindly collect the money for renewals and forward it in one sum. It is of course impossible for us to accept single remittances for renewal at club rates, as we would have no means of knowing whether all of the club would do the same and so entitle all the members to the club rates.

Kindly make up the club the same as last year, and send the money in one remittance if possible. Can you not enlarge the club?

Hearty thanks and appreciation are again extended to all those who have formed clubs for the MAGAZINE. It is a labor of love and a work for the Lord. We trust that all have felt repaid for their labor by the satisfaction of bringing to such a large number of new readers the greatly improved MISSIONARY MAGAZINE. This year it will be better than last. It will be a satisfaction to those who have done so much to promote the circulation of the MISSIONARY MAGAZINE to know that their efforts have been successful. The circulation has increased very largely, and is still growing.

THE

HE MOST STRIKING ILLUSTRATION of self-support is found in the very beginning of modern missions. Not a support furnished by the gifts of the native converts, for their numbers were few, but a support supplied by the labors and devotion of the missionaries themselves. The great Serampore trio, William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward with their associates, contributed the large sum of four hundred thousand dollars to the mission before it passed from their hands. Dr. Carey earned the money he gave by his literary labors as translator to the Government and as Professor in the College of Fort William. Mr. Marshman and his talented wife conducted a very successful and profitable school, and gave the proceeds to the mission, and Mr. Ward made the Serampore Mission Press a source of large profit as well as a great power for Christ.

OMMERCE ON THE CONGO is rapidly fulfilling the most sanguine expectations. The total value of the exports and imports in 1896 was $6,200,000, an increase over the previous year of $1,400,000. The export of rubber was 1,116 tons, and it ranks in quality with the best. It is pleasing to note that the imports of alcoholic liquors have largely decreased. All governments interested in the development of Africa have become convinced that alcohol among the natives is the foe of legitimate trade, and are taking active measures to suppress the rum traffic. It is announced that the railway will be completed to Stanley Pool by this spring, and with that will come an increase of the commerce of the Upper Congo valley which can hardly be estimated.

A

LARGE BEQUEST to foreign missions has been made by the late Mr. J. F. Morton of Aberdeen, Scotland. Mr. Morton was a member of the Society of Friends, but deeply interested in all movements for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. By his will, recently made known, the Moravian Church is to receive £250,000, two-thirds of which is to be used for missions, and the China Inland Mission will receive about $750,000, all of which must be expended in advance mission work in China. This munificent total of about $2,000,000 is thus all to be used for the advance of the kingdom of God, and more than $1,500,000 directly for foreign missions. Payments of both these bequests are to be extended over a period of from ten to twenty years, and the conditions are such that almost no aid is afforded to the operations of the Moravian Missions or the China Inland Mission as they now exist.

YE Christians of great Christian America! absorbed in your farms, your merchandise, your stocks, your families, and in responding to the claims of "society"; ye who are engrossed with the architecture of your churches, the music, the sermons, and all the proprieties and elegancies of public worship in these modern days, know ye that the populations of the pagan world, sixteen times more numerous than the entire population of your own enlightened land, are perishing for lack of the gospel which you can give them to your own unspeakable advantage. They, God's men and women, for whom our Lord and Savior died, are going down to the starless, eternal night of the idolater and the devil-worshiper, with no hope. Your Karen allies on heathen shores are in the forefront of the battle, eager for service, but half-armed and undisciplined. They cry for arms; they cry for leaders. Is not Jesus Christ your King? Has He not laid this great work upon you? Awake! The King's business requires haste. "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent ?"— Conclusion of "Self-Support in Bassein," by Rev. C. H. Carpenter.

HE GROWTH OF MISSIONS IN SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS is given by Dean

published in the

Missionary Review. A simple examination of this table gives courage for the future. So much has been accomplished; how much more can be done in the next seventy-five years.

£121,756 £226,440 £632,000 £918,000 £2,130,000 £2,807,000

HE ATTACK ON REV. A. C. FULLER OF PODILI, INDIA, has been fully

THE

reported in this MAGAZINE, and also the decision of the court condemning thirteen of the rioters to imprisonment. This means security of all the other missionaries from similar hostile demonstrations. A missionary writes in a private letter to Mr. Fuller:

"This is an accomplishment by which you have benefitted the whole mission, and not only for the present, but for years to come. It has been pretty hard on you, but I doubt whether you or any one else could have conferred a greater blessing upon this mission and the country where it is carried on, than you have by seeing this case through the several courts as you have done."

66 IN the fear of God, and with un

"IN

feigned respect and love for my brethren at home and abroad, I have earnestly endeavored to ascertain the exact facts with reference to the progress of self-support in our Asiatic missions. All that I have and all that I am is devoted to this sacred cause. I long with an inexpressible longing to see my countrymen, and especially my own denomination, more generally enlisted in this immense work of foreign missions. Five hundred picked men for preaching mainly, as many chosen. women for teaching and for religious labor among their own sex, and a million dollars annually for their support, would be all too meagre an offering from the Baptist churches of these Northern States."-REV. C. H. CARPENTER, author of "Self Support in Bassein."

TO A MISSIONARY" has been re-
January MAGAZINE. Of this affecting

people to How any

article by Mr. Hankins, a pastor writes: "My heart was stirred within me as I read it. How a pastor can read this plea wrung from the very heart of a man who stands in the van of the advance of God's kingdom, and not be faithful in giving of his own substance, and tremendously in earnest in urging his maintain these brave soldiers of the cross, passes comprehension. Christian can read this article with any sympathetic response of the heart, and then fail to contribute for the support and enlargement of missionary activity in accordance with conviction instead of convenience, is not easy to see. I can imagine no more heart-stirring and contribution-producing piece of literature."

Supplies of this tract for use in Baptist churches can be obtained free from the Mission Rooms, Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., or from any of the District Secretaries of the Missionary Union.

G

OSPEL TRACTS IN CHINESE. Teachers of the Chinese who want help to win your scholars to Christ, send United States five-cent postage stamps to G. L. Mason, I Seward Road, Shanghai, for Chinese sheet tracts, assorted. Postpaid, ten cents a hundred.

ENG YUEH CHAU, in the province of Yunan, the most southwestern of the

declared a treaty-port, and consul

appointed there. The city has been known in our Baptist missionary literature by its Burman name, Momein, and is only eight days' journey from Bhamo, Upper Burma, and twelve days from Talifu, China. The way to Western China via Burma may now be considered as fully opened.

A

NATURAL MISTAKE. The editor of the Indian Witness prepared a statement of the urgent needs of the missionary work at the present time under the title "A Financial Stringency." The typewriter in making a copy for the printer made the heading read "A FINANCIAL STINGENCY." The editor writes that he felt like allowing the amendment to stand, as “The financial stringency from which all American missionary organizations are at present suffering is directly due to the stingency of professing Christian people who in this materialistic age find it difficult to rise to a spiritual apprehension of the kingdom of God, and their inestimable privileges relating thereto."

VOTES.-Selections from the juvenile department of the Missionary Herald have

numerous illustrations which accompanied the sketches when first printed. This will prove an entertaining and instructive volume for children. Published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at $1.25.- We are glad to say that funds have been provided to illustrate the "Life of Uncle John Vassar," and the illustrations add greatly to the interest of this remarkable book. The price. remains the same, $1.00 to the general public and 60 cents to missionaries, postpaid. Address Rev. Walter B. Vassar, Hamilton, N. Y.

HE LITERATURE OF MISSIONS has received a valuable contribution in the

THE LITERATURE OF MIS Clemens Good, Ph.D.,'" by Ellen C. Parsons, M.A.,

editor of Woman's Work for Woman. Dr. Good was a missionary of the American Presbyterian Board to Gabun, West Africa. Able, unselfish and devoted, he gave himself freely to the Lord's work in an unpopular field, and in a short term of service did a work for salvation, for science and for glory, which places his name among the immortals. Published by the Fleming H. Revell Company at $1.25.

THE

HE NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE] LIBRARY is very desirous of obtaining the following numbers of the BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE: Vol. 2, No. 10; Vol. 3, No. I ; and of the BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE, Vol. 12, Vol. 16, Nos. 1 to 4, and 7 to 12: Vol. 25, No. 9; Vol. 26, No. 8; Vol. 29, Nos. 1 to 3; Vol. 35, No. 2; Vol. 65, Nos. 11 and 12. Will anyone who has these numbers to spare kindly communicate with the Librarian at Concord, N. H.?