DIAGRAM IV-CONTRIBUTIONS PER WEALTH.-"The nation has grown rapidly in wealth, and the question whether the contributions to missions have increased in proportion is answered by 'Study No. 4. Up to 1860, wealth was largely estimated, the first wealth census, that of 1850, being also largely estimated. Hence while the black dots give the proportion of gifts, to the government estimates, the white dots give the probable actual progress.

"But leaving out the earlier records and taking the 1860 period as a starting point, the 1890 record shows that wealth had increased its proportionate contribution almost forty per cent., a truly wonderful achievement; and yet it is since 1860 that the phenomenal growth of wealth has been made.

Nor is this all. The contribution for each $1,000 of total wealth, as shown in this exhibit, is only a fractional part of the whole. In the first place, the limited number of denominations embraced in the exhibits do not include all of the organized missionary contribution of the United States. In the second place, since the close of the Civil War, and especially during the past twenty years, there has developed within some of the larger denominations a practice of sending a considerable proportion of the total contribution to foreign mission fields direct, and none of these moneys are represented in the exhibits, for they do not appear in the official reports of the missionary societies.

Besides this, there is an increasingly large fund contributed annually by Sunday schools and young peoples' societies to a very diversified range of home mission work, little of which is ever included in official reports of the regular missionary organizations. Besides this, many communities sustain by popular contribution hospitals, orphanages, and other benevolent institutions, which although wholly unrelated to mission boards and their organized auxiliaries, yet receive their contributions largely from the same individuals.

"Beyond all this, the last few years have witnessed, in all our larger cities, in the same spirit, a great development of institutional and social mission work. All these should be reckoned in, to ascertain the full measure of the missionary spirit among those whose only way of obedience is to give money, that others may give personal service.

What a magnificent total it would mean! What a marvelous record of growth it would show, especially in the fourth generation! Not only would the 1870 and 1880 records rise much further above

that of 1860; the 1890 record would tower upward so far, outstripping the increase of wealth, as to shame every pessimist.

"As a crystallization of the results of the investigation of growth, the following comparison will be helpful. From 1860 to 1890 valuations increased:

Diagrams V and VI explain themselves with a little study. Note how easily and widely mere totals may mislead.

For example, the United Presbyterian, who rank ninth in total contributions, take second place when measured by the as ye are prospered " test.-F. W. Hewes, in the Outlook, N. Y.

A RISING OR A SETTING SUN.-John Fisk in relating the story of the Federal Convention for the forming of the Constitution of the United States of 1789, a work of the greatest difficulty and importance, says that, on the back of the president's quaint, black armchair there was emblazoned

the Federal Convention.

a half sun, brilliant with gilded rays. At the close of the Franklin at session of several months, during which the Constitution was adopted, as the meeting was breaking up, and Washington arose, Franklin pointed to the chair and made it the text for a prophecy. "As I have been sitting here all these weeks," he said, "I have often wondered whether yonder sun was rising or setting. But now I know that it is a rising sun." The sun of Christianity is a rising sun, and is rapidly moving on to the perfect day.

BY

F. N. PELOUBET D.D., and

M. A. PELOUBET.

An Illustrative Illuminating Commentary on the International Sunday-School Lessons.

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