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INDEX.

39, 104, 168, 230, 296, 360, 422, 488, 569, 693, 762, 838

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The Northfield Schools

DWIGHT L. MOODY, Founder

We have received letters from friends contributing to The Northfield Schools, apologizing for the small amount they are enabled to give. The multiplicity of urgent appeals, and the prior claim of local needs, they explain, are reasons for the small amount of their help. There are many others, we believe, who are entirely deterred from sharing in the work at Northfield because they can make only a small contribution.

This is a mistaken view. A small contribution should be measured, not by its own monetary value, but rather, in the light of the amount which would result if the same amount were contributed by a thousand people. Five dollars may seem a small sum in itself, and yet if multiplied by five thousand, it equals the income upon half a million dollars of endowment.

Mentica the R. C. W. to advertisers.

VOL. XXXV.

Brief American Notes.

JANUARY, 1916.

The Unitarian Christian Register, after referring to the falling off in college prayers at Harvard under the "voluntary" system, asks pertinently: "Why speak of college prayers as 'compulsory'? Why not hold them and call them 'required'? Why require students to submit to any instruction whatever? But all colleges do require something, many things. Then why not 'require' religious and moral education?"

The Waldensian colony at Valdese, North Carolina, had, in its early days, a prolonged period of struggle but is now flourishing. The general report is that it has transformed a desert into a garden. But its success has not been only agricultural. It has built up two shoe factories, a cotton-spinning plant of considerable size, a gristmill, sawmill, a macaroni factory, a large bakery, and a factory for the manufacture of merletti. And other enterprises are in sight.

A Polish Baptist Seminary for the training of Polish ministers is to be opened in Chicago.

The Church is constantly vilified because of its alleged want of interest in social reform, yet we notice from time to time that the most effective social workers are usually children of the Church. Mr. John Gunckel, the "Newsboys' Friend" who died in 1915, was a Congregationalist layman who for 24 years devoted himself to the boys of Toledo. More than 8000 such were enrolled in his Newsboys' Association during its existence and received the imprint of his personality. When the casket was borne to the cemetery the newsboy band did not play the "International," but "God be with you till we meet again." And there is Margaret Dreier Robins-as Mr. Gunckel, of German ancestry, granddaughter of a German pastor-who is now the president of the National Women's Trade Union League of Amer

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ica; at twenty-one treasurer of the Brooklyn Training School for Nurses, later, cofounder of the Women's Municipal League of New York, founder of the Brooklyn Equal Suffrage Association, president of the New York Association for Household Research and co-founder with Miss Frances Kellor of the work for immigrant girls at Ellis Island. For ten years she has lived and worked with her husband in a tenement in one of Chicago's most congested wards. There are family prayers and grace before meals in the home of these two Christian social workers.

A new Y. M. C. A. Training School was opened November 9, 1915, at West Side Y. M. C. A., 318 W. 57th St., New York City. It is open, free of charge, to all who are interested in Y. M. C. A. work, and will be held Tuesday afternoons until the end of March. Lectures on various phases of Association work and the teaching of Bible classes will be given by leaders in Association work. West Side branch, the largest in the world, will be used as a sort of laboratory by the students of the Training School.

The success of the movement known as the Laymen's Missionary Movement has enlisted widespread interest and has led the leaders to organize a new Campaign, which has just begun. Reports by men from the missionary firing-line in every continent were received with much interest and inspiration, and the appeal for the enlistment of life and means in world service influenced many to accept their share of the responsibility.

The report of the Daily Vacation Bible School Association for 1915 is the best ever presented, showing a surplus instead of a deficit. In five years the number of schools has tripled: five times as many teachers have served; three times as many children were enrolled, while the expenses have only doubled, reducing the cost per child from 98 cents to 79 cents. In 1915, 75 per cent of the teaching staff gave free

service and all buildings used were free from rent.

This splendid work is designed to bring together in every community the idle children, idle churches and idle students in unsectarian Daily Vacation Bible Schools, combining worship, work and play.

The Rev. John Keller in a historical sermon in St. Paul's Church, New York, brought out certain facts which will be new to many. The address was entitled, "The Recognition of the Holy Bible by the Congress of the United States." It affirmed that in the earliest days of the Republic, Congress, through a period of five years or more, gave much consideration to ways and means for providing copies of the Scripture to destitute Americans. On account of the War of Independence the scarcity of Bibles was very great and the war risks were so high that a plan of importing types and paper for printing 30,000 copies had to be abandoned. Twenty thousand copies were therefore ordered from Scotland and Holland at public expense. When the Robert Aiken edition of the Scriptures was published at Philadelphia, Congress appointed Doctors White and Duffield to examine the work and to report on its accuracy. This having been done they passed a resolution recommending this edition of the Bible and authorizing the publication of their recommendation.

A young Mexican, Mr. Evaristo Maturino, converted from Romanism, and a member of the Moody Church in Chicago, is now active in religious work among immigrants arriving in Buenos Aires.

Mr. N. N. Aubin has been preaching the Gospel to French Canadians in Lewiston, Maine, from the band stand in the city park during the past summer. The average attendance in May was 300, in June 400, in July 500 and at times there have been over a thousand gathered, listening an hour and a half. Interest is growing and there has been a considerable distribution of New Testaments. In the village of Lorette, Quebec (the name itself is ultra clerical in its suggestions), French Protestants have in the past year

built a school at an expense of $2300 where a year ago nothing of the sort existed. Already 24 pupils have been enrolled and others are expected. Such village schools are becoming more frequent. French Canadian Protestants have also three secondary schools, or Institutes, with 600 young people in attendance. In Montreal, according to L'Aurore, they have 12 churches. French Protestants are well represented in all professions and industries of the Province and are ever becoming more so.

At Windgap, Pa., is an Italian Episcopalian church with a large Sunday school in which both Italian and American children study the Bible together. Italians from neighboring towns and villages frequent the services and bring their children thither for baptism. A branch Sunday school is to be opened at West Bangor where there are also hundreds of Italian children. Mr. Rocca, the rector, has received a Ford automobile to help him in his very extensive missionary work. His son, Louis N. Rocca, is preparing for the ministry at Lafayette College.

The wonderful educational work which the American government has built up in the Philippines has brought into being a magnificent body of 9000 Englishspeaking teachers of native stock. The fact that these are in touch with Anglo-American ideals and literature, rather than with Spanish, will have an enormous influence in bringing the Philippines into the channel of a reformed type of Christianity.

Mrs. Frances Snow Hamilton, who died last June, was, since 1905, the head of the American Bible Society's Agency in the city of Mexico. She had the oversight of a large staff of Mexican colporteurs, handled the very considerable sums of money collected in Mexico and sent from the United States and conducted the often delicate negotiations with the Mexican authorities. She was a gifted speaker in both Spanish and English and traveled in the interests of the work all over the Republic.

The followers of Swedenborg are building at Bryn Athyn, near Philadelphia, a church, The Church of the New

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