number of principal stations is 5,571, and of other stations 26,247. There are 11,039 organized churches, with a membership of 1,317,684. The number of additions during the year was 34,186. There are 15,032 Sunday schools, with a membership of 771,928. The total native contributions toward Christian extension, chiefly, of course, in their home fields, was $1,841,757, and the entire native Christian community is 4,414,236. The women's societies are 120 in number, with an income of $2,500,117, employing 2,251 missionaries and 4,804 native helpers in 1,532 stations. The literary department shows 421 Bible translations, of which 148 are of Asiatic languages, 115 African, 60 European, 56 Australasian, 35 North American, and 7 South American. The Bible Societies report a total of 2,535,466 volumes circulated-91,761 Bibles, 226,741 Testaments and 2,216,964 portions. The annual circulation of the various Tract Societies is estimated at 14,494,098 copies. Of mission publishing houses and printing houses and printing presses there are 148, with annual issues of 10,561,777 copies and 364,904,399 pages.

These magnificent results have been accomplished by faith and prayer and toil. Faith and works have gone hand in hand. From the days of St. Paul until now the sublimest triumphs of faith have been in the missionary field. Dr. J. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, says: "I used to pray, 'Lord, increase my faith.' I have not prayed that way for many years now, and I think I shall never utter that prayer again. God has often placed me in positions in China where I had to put great trust in him-in fact, I had to trust in him, for there was no one else to whom I could look for help, and he never once failed me. He has always provided for me in his own way and time. I have been robbed in the interior of China of every cent I had, but I have never yet gone to bed hungry. Nearly a half century ago I formed the China Inland Mission, and from the day of its inception to the present time we have never taken up a collection, but deper.ded entirely upon volunteer contributions, and we have never lacked for any good thing."

But along with that faith and dependence on God has gone complete self-surrender to the divine will, a heroic consecration of the best common sense, and the most earnest toil that could be given to the Lord's cause. Prayer and faith without works, in missions. as in everything else, are as dead now as they were in the days of St. James. Bishop Candler, of the Methodist Church, South, says that several years ago he sent an article to a paper in which he said

that "We pray too loud and work too little." The compositor took a hand at it, and when the paper came out it read, "We bray too loud and work too little." "I let it go at that," said the Bishop. "The fact is, I believe the printer was right, and I never attempted. to correct it." The church of our own time is in danger of becoming arrogant and proud, falling back on its traditions and history, and failing at the crucial point of that humility and self-sacrifice which prompts the giving in full measure of time, and talent, and money to carry the cross of Jesus in triumph to the end of the earth.

This great world's conference of Christian workers can not help but do great good. As ex-President Harrison said the other day, not the least beneficent aspect and influence of this great gathering will be foui. in the Christian union that it evidences. The value of this is great at home, but tenfold greater in the misson field, where ecclesiastical divisions suggest diverse prophets. The Bible does not draw its illustrations wholly from the home or the fields, but uses also the strenuous things of life, the race, the fight, the girded. soldier, the assault. There are many fields; there are diverse arms; the battle is in the bush and the comrades that are seen are few. A view of the whole army is a good thing; the heart is strengthened by an enlarged comradeship. It gives promise that the flanks will be covered and a reserve organized. After days in the bush the sense of numbers is lost. It greatly strengthens the soldier and quickens his pace when he advances to battle if a glance to right or left reveals many pennons and a marshalled host, moving under one great leader, to execute a single battle plan. During the Atlanta. campaign of our Civil War the marching and fighting had been largely in the brush. Sometimes in an advance the commander of a regiment could see no more than half of his own line, while the supports to his right and left were wholly hidden. To him it seemed as if his battalion was making an unsupported assault. The extended line, the reserve, were matters of faith. But one day the advancing army broke suddenly from the brush into a savanna—a long, narrow, natural meadow- and the army was revealed. From the centre, far to the right and left, the distinctive corps, division, brigade and regimental colors appeared, and associated with each of these was the one flag that made the army one. A mighty spontaneous cheer burst from the whole line, and every soldier tightened his grip upon his rifle and quickened his step. What the savanna did for

that army this world's conference of missions should do for the church.

Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice that we belong to this great army of Jesus Christ, an army that not only covers the earth, but has already gathered millions of glorified veterans home to the skies. We are in the midst of the battle; our time for work is now. Whatever we are going to do to destroy the works of the devil, to cure the heartache of mankind, to help spread abroad the sweet hopefulness and good cheer of Jesus Christ, we must do to-day. Our sands of life on earth are running out rapidly, and if we are to achieve anything worth doing we must not loiter, but must be up and at work. Let the needs of the world in its ignorance and sin and sorrow, let the love wherewith Jesus Christ hath loved us, inspire our hearts with gratitude on the one hand, and with sympathy on the other, to do our utmost in the fear of God, in the power of the Spirit, and in the blessed fellowship of the Son of God!

THE SPICE MERCHANTS

"Bearing spicery and balm and myrrh."-Genesis 37:25.

We are all merchantmen in this world. No man is passing through life so lightly but he carries some freightage; no man is so poverty-stricken but he has something to give in exchange, something to sell, something to trade with as he passes on the way of his pilgrimage. These men of our text had been into Gilead, a great land for the growth of spices of all kinds, and were coming back with a caravan of camels bearing their loads of spicery and balm and myrrh. They were carrying these things to Egypt, where such fragrant merchandise would not grow. There they would find a great demand for it.

This, then, is our theme. We are to ask ourselves the question, What freight are we carrying? What kind of merchandise have we to exchange, and is it of the sort that will bless the world, and comfort and inspire those with whom we meet? My thought is that a Christian ought in moral and spiritual ways to carry the kind of merchandise suggested by these merchants from Gilead. It ought

to be a spicy, cheering, health-giving, comforting freight which Christian merchants carry on their way through the world.

This ought to be true, first of all, because to be a Christian at all we must be like Jesus in our essential character. And Christ cannot be more fittingly described, in regard to the fragrant atmosphere that surrounds him, than in the forty-fifth Psalm, where the character of the perfect King is portrayed as one that "lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." So, if we are to be like Jesus, we must go through the world bearing so much of goodness and gentleness and the fragrance of self-denying love that those who breathe the atmosphere of our conversation and life will feel that we have been with Jesus and have learned of him.

It is also important that we should carry this divine spicery with us because of its influence upon those we meet. I have read that when a spice caravan crosses the desert the traveler can often catch the fragrance wafted out on the breeze, even before the spiceladen camels come in sight. The winds carry ahead of them the promise of their coming. In those portions of France where large lavender gardens are cultivated, you can always tell those who work in them by the perfume they carry away in their clothing. So it is always true in spiritual matters. As another has well said, gifts are always inferior to graces; or at least a gift never shows its highest qualities till inlaid with grace, and a grace never reaches its highest degree till, like a June rose, it is advanced to that stage of its life where it exhales perfume.

Influences are none the less powerful because they are silent. They make themselves understood without speech. I have heard of a man who was making a loud profession of religion the while his life was very erratic, when a listener remarked, "I wish he would stop talking, for his life speaks so loud that I cannot hear what he says." So it is often true that the freight we carry speaks more eloquently of the merchandise we are dealing in than any words we can utter. Who of us has not known people the very atmosphere of whose personal presence was restful? They comforted, cheered and inspired us by simply being what they were and being near us.

It is a fact of the greatest interest and importance that moral qualities are contagious. As Dr. George Hepworth says, we cannot

come into a contact with our friends without giving a part of our character to them or receiving a part of their character from them. A dishonest man, a hypocritical man, a man whose life is on a low level, will certainly injure the moral standard of those with whom he is intimate. His meanness is contagious, and one cannot live with him and still maintain the high sense of honor which under other circumstances would be natural. Badness is as much a disease as smallpox, and those who are constantly in contact with it will become infected unless they are protected in the same way as was Jesus Christ, who by his divine sympathy and love was seeking to save sinners. The foundations of holiness become slowly disintegrated, and gradually the spiritual tone drops and the conscience loses its keen edge by contact with evil from any lower motive.

Some one has said that if he had had the making of the world he would have decreed that health rather than disease should have been contagious. But isn't that the way God made the world? No man can live in full fellowship with Jesus Christ, so that he receives the vital magnetism of his divine Lord, without being a stimulating, inspiring personality to every one who comes in contact with him. The courage, the good cheer, the goodness of such a soul is constantly contagious.

And no outward handicap of adverse conditions can hide the beauty and beneficence of a spirit whose associations are in the ivory palaces of the King. One day a boy, who was taking his first lesson down hill, found his feet in too close contact with a lady's silk dress. Mortified and confused, he sprang from his sled, and, cap in hand, commenced an apology.

in the art of sliding

"I beg your pardon, ma'am; I am very sorry."

"Never mind that," exclaimed the lady, "there's no harm done,

and you feel worse about it than I do.”

"But your dress is ruined; I thought you would be angry with me for being so careless."

"Oh, no," she replied, "better to have a soiled dress than a ruffled temper.

"Oh, what a beauty!" exclaimed the lad as the lady passed on. "Who, that lady?" said another boy who was with him. "If you call her a beauty, you shan't choose for me. Why, she is old. and her face is wrinkled."

"I don't care if her face is wrinkled," replied the other, "her soul is handsome, anyhow." And the boy was right. She had a