more direct missionary duties, save at "balancing up" time at the end of the financial

year.

My work for the year has been largely itinerating, book selling and preaching in country places, and I am glad to report open doors everywhere and generally a good reception is accorded.

This year the students came up for the large triennial examinations. We kept "open house" and had large numbers daily at our guest room and preaching hall. This is a radical difference from some former years, when the students have been decidedly rowdyish. Over a friendly cup of tea we discussed foreign customs and things; talked to them of our books and doctrine, and in many cases showed them about the place. They were interested in the organ, foreign cook stove, etc., and usually voted that "the foreigners loved cleanliness." They have scattered to their many homes and will be a help in talking down the empty rumors the Chinese seem bent on believing about the "outsiders." The work at one of our out-stations, Kia-Kiang, progresses nicely. We have pretty nearly made monthly visits to this point and a native evangelist has spent considerable time there. The people are very friendly, and two men, one a literary graduate, the other a business man, have openly identified themselves with us. They have read a number of Christian books and both have read through the New Testament. They have been to Kiating for instruction; were examined by the church and accepted as regular inquirers. Pray that Mr. Liu and Mr. Gi may be but the first-fruits of the harvest from Kia-Kiang. At Nu-wha-chi, a very large market town close to Kiating, and the centre of a large salt industry, we have another outpost. Here some faithful preaching has been done, and this difficult field, with its large floating population, begins to show some signs of promise.

The completion of our new chapel and its opening, the reception of three new members into our fold in December, and the medical and pastoral work of the station have all been written of by my fellow hard-worker, Mr. Bradshaw.

Mrs. Openshaw has enjoyed remarkably good health all year; is our church organist. and a fellow helper in all my labors.

Opium is slaying its thousands and is a great barrier to the advancement of Christ's kingdom. Gambling, idol worship and lying are the other national sins.

Signs are not wanting of progress along business lines in the west. The Standard Oil Company are erecting large storehouses at Chung-king, and surveyors and engineers are spying out the land for suitable railroad routes and desirable mining lands.

Now is our opportunity for aggressive forward work. May power and grace according to our need be given.

Report of Mr. Bradshaw:

Your missionaries at Kiating have to report the special goodness of God upon another year's work. When we were writing our last report this province was still under the terror of the U-Man-Tsi rebellion, chiefly directed against foreigners and Christians; today we rejoice in restored quiet and the right to worship God as we will.

While the wildest stories were still current-how the foreigner, "found out in his deeds," was going to sell out and go home-God gave us courage to rise and build our much needed house of worship and thanksgiving. Meanwhile our regular station work was carried on as usual.

For EVANGELISTIC WORK our book room is always open to all who will read or hear of

the way of life. It is most popular in the evening, when often crowds gather about the conversation table, and here hundreds hear of Jesus.

On the streets books and tracts have been sold; in the more public places sheet tracts are posted; or we engage the ones and the twos over a cup of tea in the tea-shops by the way.

The street chapel is opened every day, morning and evening in regular succession. And the story is told again and again to the many and the few who gather. Directly after the morning street chapel work only the dispensary is opened; and whoever is present needing help is seen free of charge. One there, the natives said, was "devil possessed." And certainly he knew Jesus and the Lord's servants as they did in Christ's day. This man was also a terrible opium sot. And now there he is is calling on the ascended Christ through his servants to heal him. This he did many days. At last the neighbors came pleading for him, offering to provide shelter, food and care, if I would undertake the case. So we committed the case to God, and gave him a few drops of belladonna. We were surprised to find him in two days in his right mind and without the least desire for opium. He continued daily to come to the book-room, and testify, to all that came in, of the Christ who had saved him from the devil and opium. Then he went with his former employer to An-Huei Province, to tell how great things God had done for him.

Later my own teacher and helper took sick, and I had to give him up to the doctor's hands. Dr. Corlies performed the operation and Dr. Hare (C. M. M.) has kindly taken care of him since.

THE NATIVE CHURCH has been carrying on the day school started last year, and the students proved in their half-yearly examinations that they had done good work. The number of pupils in attendance was small, and some of these were persecuted into staying at home, because the scholars are not required to worship Confucius, but are expected to attend morning prayers to the true God, and to prepare the Sunday-school lesson for Sunday. The brethren, however, are not discouraged. Their day school forms the nucleus of the SUNDAY-SCHOOL which since the opening of the new chapel has taken in the Christians, the inquirers, and whatever outsider can be reached. Mr. Openshaw now leads the Sunday-school work and, supported by the evangelist and brethren, takes the larger share of the city evangelistic work whenever he is not absent at his country work, of which he has sole care, and gives his own report.

The little church was much encouraged by the addition of three to their number. One is an old woman eighty odd years of age. She went down into the baptismal waters with several infirmities, and now she testifies that they all left her then. It is a joy to see her so cheery.

Four others asked for baptism but were requested to wait until they understood more perfectly. Still four others are making an heroic struggle to break from the opium habit before they ask for baptism. Concerning these we are in some uncertainty; but we want to hold them and others fast to the promises of God. May we ask you to remember them and the unknown number who through your missionaries have heard of Jesus?

Besides the regular church services the Christians attend a weekly Bible class led by Mr. Openshaw. And we think we see them growing daily in the knowledge of God. oebdience to his will and loving service for him. They often talk to the people of your love and self-sacrifice for them. They also pray for you; and they are confident that you pray for them as you give for them.

YACHAU-1894

Rev. W. M. Upcraft, Mrs. Upcraft.

Report of Mr. Upcraft:

Five years have passed since the work in Yachau was commenced, and the present affords a point of vantage to briefly review the past.

It was a part of Israel's education that they should "remember the way by which the Lord God had led them," not only remember it for themselves alone, but make it the theme of their discourse to others. The duty is as needful and wholesome for us as for them.

We write the name of the Lord our God upon our "stones of memory" and give him praise for his goodness.

Five years ago this past summer the raft bearing us and our goods tied up beneath the little north gate of Yachau and we entered the city strangers to everybody and everybody alike strangers to us.

Four small rooms in a quiet inn were secured, and we proceeded to make ourselves as much at home as circumstances would allow, and began our acquaintance with the people, which has continued and grown in cordiality until now.

A little medical work, a great deal of visiting and a daily parade on the main streets of the city, so that every one might see us, were our first forms of work.

After six weeks of this kind of campaigning we began to look for suitable quarters, in order to permanent work.

This roused a storm. In the inn we were "transients;" in a house, settlers.

The landlord who rented to us was threatened and the vilest placards were put up, abusing foreigners with the most malignant intent.

At this juncture one of the official's servants was bitten by a snake and was carried "pickaback" to our inn for treatment. He got well; the official noted the case, called his fellow officials to a consultation, with the result that a proclamation entirely favorable to us and our nation and work was put up in the city, and the rowdy opposition subsided as quickly as it had risen. In order to facilitate the return to normal conditions we absented ourselves for a month, making a stay on the frontiers of Tibet, and returned to find ourselves tolerated, if indeed not welcomed, our house in good shape for living, and so our life commenced in Yachau. In life and work in such a frontier station as this, where social demands are reduced to zero, the only care is to fulfil one's mission.

Reinforcements arrived from Suifu, and the spring of 1895 saw us well established and on excellent terms with the people. We lived a practically open life before them, and as they saw us in all essential respects like themselves, the old enmity died out and we found the Chinese capable of friendship, where else we had expected to find heathen. Then came the riots. Imported violence stirred up the baser sort in the city against us and we fled down river, encountering by the way things harder to bear than if we had stayed in Yachau, albeit the yamen was our only place of refuge.

With a shaken faith and sadly diminished force we at length returned to the work here, and after a prolonged absence at Shanghai in pursuit of matrimonial ends, we came to our real work in the spring of 1897, since when we have grown in love for both work and people.

The little church gathered out from the heathen has had its trials, joys and other vicissitudes, but of the number baptized the greater part remain unto this present, our joy and hope and crown of rejoicing.

At the present time there are sixteen in good standing and fellowship, all of them, so far as we know, earnest in seeking the salvation of others.

The believers are scattered over a wide area and can only meet all together at intervals, but the scattering has this advantage-a large field is occupied by Christian workmen who in their own homes and districts do the work of evangelists. Our faith is made stronger and their joy increases, as month by month they report one and another in their home districts as willing to believe and follow THE Truth.

Other some there are who have caused us pain and keen disappointment. One for evil speaking has been put away; one for opium smoking-a return to an old habit never wholly given up, we fear. The seed fell on stony ground.

"I shall worship God in my house," he said, when the church took action against him. "The brethren are not cordial to me any more." But as we expected the descent has been only too easy and too quick. It is difficult to see the face of God through the fumes of an opium pipe. The vision is clouded, love is supplanted. Other two who went astray have become softened and serious-of them there is hope.

One-Yang gway woo-is "absent, but accounted for"-he is with the Lord. And even as this is written another has been called away, leaving in both cases a clear and strengthening testimony to the divine grace and succor.

The past year has been in every sense the best year in this brief history. Events have curtailed the number of workers, so that we are down to "bare poles," but God and his truth are not straitened. This gives the necessary courage to face the growing demands of the field. The Missionary Union is the only evangelical agency at work here. The work therefore is in a very peculiar sense our own. With this comes an added responsi bility as the corollary of possession. The Yachau missionaries therefore seek the fellowship of prayer and other help for the work put into their hands.

JAPAN

The year has been an eventful one in the development of the new life in Japan. The new treaties, offering larger liberty for work in the interior, have as yet influenced our work but slightly. Two instances in the struggle between the oppos ing influences of the national life have attracted wide attention. The new school laws as interpreted by the Minister of Education, requiring complete abandoment of religious instruction by schools having government recognition, and restricting the attendance of young children to government schools exclusively, have in so far felt the influence of the protest of the liberal-minded citizens that they have been modified in their practical enforcement. Our own academy, having from the beginning refrained from seeking recognition by government, has been in no way affected by these regulations, and the work of our primary schools has been permitted to continue. The religious bill introduced in the Imperial Diet, which proposed equal recognition, with exemption from property taxation, to all religions, was at length defeated by Buddhist influence, but only through a very large expenditure of money. These agitations, while apparently resulting in triumph for the old non-Christian faiths, have served to bring Christianity and Christian institutions more prominently to public attention. The defeat of the religious bill is not regarded as altogether a misfortune. Recog nition by the government is at best a doubtful good, no peril affecting Christianity in its conflict with eastern civilizations being more acute than that of winning a

merely formal and superficial acceptance because of its position as the religion of the dominant nations of the earth.

In the quiet, continuous work of our mission real progress appears. The Gospel finds a ready hearing. The sale of Bibles and Christian literature has been phenomenal.

Duncan Academy fully sustains its prosperous development in its new home. The importance of the work of the Theological Seminary grows continually more pronounced; it is more and more apparent that the work of evangelizing Japan must be the work of native preachers, the task of the missionary being chiefly that of wise leadership.

The Inland Sea work of Captain Bickel, in the mission vessel, the Fukuin Maru, the gift of Mr. Robert S. Allan of Glasgow, Scotland, was entered upon late in the year. Remarkable favor has already attended this work, the people of these secluded islands, heretofore entire strangers to Christianity, welcoming the messenger with an eagerness which strengthens confidence in the large success of this new work.

YOKOHAMA-1872

Rev. A. A. Bennett, Mrs. Bennett, Rev. C. K. Harrington, Mrs. Harrington, Rev. J. L. Dearing and Mrs. Dearing (in America), Rev. F. G. Harrington, Mrs. Harrington, Rev. W. B. Parshley, Mrs. Parshley, Miss Clara A. Converse, Miss Mary A. Hawley. Report of Mr. Bennett:

In the opinion of some, Japan has made little religious progress during the last twelve months. Her political début as one of the great nations of the globe has seemed to spoil her for religion. Indeed there are not wanting those who even aver that Christianity, though once a seeming power in this land, has now accomplished about all that it can,has passed its meridian and is on the decline. The statistical returns from all the churches of the empire are not as a whole encouraging, and Christian schools have especially a poor showing compared with the record of previous years. In some places, too, local authorities have directly interfered in order to prevent too public a proclamation of God's truth to the unevangelized. All this looks dark, and certainly calls for prayer. There is, however, another side to the problem, even when viewed from a merely human standpoint. What is lacking in quantity is, in some cases at least, atoned for by quality. Never before were so many Christians in high office and in responsible positions. Never before did the body of the native church membership so realize the importance and, in part, the possibility of self-support. Never before has the necessity of distinctively religious instruction in our mission schools been so much brought before the public, or so ably defended before the government. Never before was Christianity so recognized officially as a lawful religion by the national lawmakers. In some quarters at least there are evidences of a deepening spirituality among believers as a whole, of an increased faithfulness in the preaching of that which God has bidden, and of a desire more and more widespread on the part of those who are not yet believers to hear a faithful presentation the truths of Christianity. Then, too, the sale of Bible and Scripture portions during the past year has been something phenomenal. If the sales made for free distribution and those made to the Scripture Union be left out of account altogether the sales of this past year have exceeded by more than twenty thousand volumes those of any previous year