always hosts of people so eager to make money that they bite eagerly at any floating bait, there are thousands of people who wish that the mines had never been discovered. What they should wish is that they had had sense enough to refrain from buying stock in mining companies which were brought into existence, not to dig money out of the earth, but to fish it out of foolish people. The days of the wily promoter and unscrupulous stock manipulator are pretty well over. But the real mines are still there and they are producing an immense amount of silver and gold, with their several by-products. I was through some of the mines and works the other day both at Cobalt and Porcupine, and, in addition to the actual work I saw done, feel assured from the enormously expensive plants being erected at these points that the camps are likely to abide for many years. Hence there will continue to be, as now, large communities to be ministered to at the mining points. And the work is of great importance. It demands strong men. Many of the men who are in the mining business have travelled the world over, are widely read, and some of them, through meeting certain forms of church life, are disposed to be sceptical, and some are hostile to the work of organized Christianity. Many of these men have been won to the Church by the

strong personality of our ministers in Northern Ontario, as in the Yukon country. And it is well known that our ministers have so commanded the confidence of mine-owners and mine workmen alike that they have been more than once asked to arbitrate in matters of dispute. This is a fine tribute to the respect in which our Church is held and to the impartial way in which the ambassadors of Christ have presented the Gospel with its message for all sorts and conditions of men. The work of our ministers in mining districts is often very trying. There is a great deal of fluctuation in the population and, on account of their occupation, there is not very much opportunity of meeting the miners personally. One cannot get down a mine to make pastoral calls or speak in work hours to men whose occupation needs their closest attention. But no men in the world need more of the comfort and hope of the Gospel than those whose work is fraught with constant possibilities of danger to life and limb and whose natural love for social fellowship leads them into temptation during their leisure hours. To meet this desire for social fellowship, our ministers and missionaries in the mining districts ought to be backed by the whole Church, so that suitable places for reading and recreation should be provided. Every Christian

should be a prospector looking amid the mines of earth for the precious jewels of human souls to be set in the sparkling diadem of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who spoke about agriculture in the newest North of Ontario a few years ago would run the risk of being considered by the uninformed as mentally deficient. But it ought to be remembered that the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway was built because it was known to some that great areas of fine farming land lay in the hinterland of the old Province. And what some knew then the many begin to know now. A few days ago I had the pleasure of driving some forty miles amongst the farms in the New Liskeard neighborhood, and I was struck by the exceeding fertility of the soil, by the luxuriousness of vegetation, by the excellence of the crops, and by the comfort of settlers who had only been a few years in the country. There are in the North some eighteen million acres of land much like that, and it is very accessible to the settler. The ground is easier to clear than in Old Ontario, the settlers have the advantage of modern machinery, the railways afford easy transportation, and the Ontario Government is spending five millions of dollars in opening colonization roads through the fertile belt. This means that the popula

tion of the farming communities will increase rapidly and that our work, now so well carried on amongst the settlers, will have to be extended from time to time with zeal and devotion. We have a splendid lot of people in the North Country. They are keeping alive the regular services of the Church, the Sunday Schools, the missionary organizations and young people's societies, with a fine spirit of devotion. They are now in the home-making stage. They are clearing their farms and building their houses and barns. They are maintaining their schools at considerable cost. The older and wealthier parts of Canada should help them in their church life at this stage with open and generous hand. And from no quarter of the Dominion will come in the future larger spiritual dividends on the investments that may be made now in the name of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER IX.

FAITHFUL WOMEN.

CHRISTIANITY with us has done so much for women, who in the non-Christian lands are for the most part but slaves or toys, that one is not surprised to find women in Canada engaged in gratefully doing work for Jesus Christ. They who were last to leave the Cross and first to reach the grave have not failed in the successive generations to exhibit devotion to the cause of Him who lifted them into their proper place in the social life of the world. There are actually nations in some of the Latin lands where religion is being kept alive by the faithfulness of the wives and mothers, and in our own country the recently-aroused activity of men in the affairs of the Church is due in large measure to the manner in which the women amongst us have kept religious and missionary interest vivid in homes and congregations. Back as far as 1876, when missionary interest in this country was not by any means strong, and when fields abroad were the only spheres of operation because immigration had not started