Church since that date. Ontario, which this study specially deals with, is now the stronghold of Presbyterianism in Canada. From this Province the general funds of the Church draw their largest support. There are now thirty Presbyteries in Ontario alone. In the most of the Presbyteries in the older part of Ontario there are now few mission fields; but there are some, and there are a good many augmented charges. The drain of population to the West and the trek of people towards the cities have told on the rural charges of the old Province. These mission fields and augmented charges should be carefully shepherded and supported. They are of immense importance. And there are no men in any mission fields in the world more worthy of honor than the men in some of the older parts of Ontario whose congregations have dwindled through the above causesmen who, like the prophet of old, have sat beside brooks that have been drying up. These men have done and are doing service of high importance. They are moulding the lives of people where, without the distraction of city streets, lives can be really moulded. And from these rural charges in large measure are coming the recruits for the ministry as well as the fresh blood which keeps the cities from dying of pernicious anemia. Eighty per cent. of the

Northern Ontario.

men who are leaders in all the walks of life in
Canada to-day are from the country districts.
Let the rural minister take courage.
He is a

nation-builder.

But our study of Ontario as a sphere for activity in Home Missions will lead us especially into the northern part of the Province. Here four Presbyteries, Barrie, Algoma, North Bay and Temiskaming, furnish a large field for missionary efforts, there being here over 100 mission fields, some of them with two, three and even four appointments. The number of self-supporting charges is few, because the centres are not numerous and most of the territory outside the Presbytery of Barrie is comparatively new ground. Barrie has a few mission fields, some of them being summer resorts, but there is no condition of affairs here that differs materially from work in other of the older parts of the Provinces, so that our main study will be amidst the conditions that prevail in the other three Presbyteries. This portion of the Province is known as Northern or New Ontario. Here for years Dr. Findlay was the devoted superintendent, succeeded by Mr. Childerhose, whose sad death in a railway wreck shocked the whole Church. Mr. Childerhose was specially fitted in body and mind and spirit for the task to which he was called, and

was passionately attached to the people of the North, to whom he desired to bring all the blessings of the Gospel message. His mantle has fallen on a worthy successor in Mr. J. D. Byrnes. His superintendency is a large undertaking, and this doubtless can be said of all the superintendencies of the Church.

Broadly speaking, the territory in this superintendency can be divided into the lumbering, mining and farming districts. This is not in the order of the importance of these industries, but it is, generally speaking, as regards the newer parts of the North, the order of their discovery. Lumbering is an old industry in Algoma and North Bay districts. Mining is only a few years in the lime-light in the Temiskaming, while farming, though here and there attempted, is only beginning to come to its own as people are finding out the extraordinary productiveness of the great clay belts of the north country. To these three more or less permanent industries, as we may call them, we can add railway construction through all the new parts. The Grand Trunk Pacific, the Canadian Northern, the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario, the Algoma Central and Hudson Bay Railways are all carrying forward their construction undertakings, and thousands of men