department. This was the year which included the large sums paid to colleges by Mrs. Stone, of Malden.

For the year ending April 30, 1882, the total amount received was $92,815.13, of which $64,228.95 belonged to the college department, and $28,586.18 belonged to the young men's department.

For the year ending April 30, 1883, the whole sum received into the treasury was $176,182.03, of which $135,294.11 belonged to the college department, $20,000 to the permanent scholarship fund, and $20,887.92 for the current expenses of the young men' department. This was the year which included the large gift from the John C. Whitin estate.

It will be noticed that the three years intervening between the last meeting of the National Council and the present have been years of uncommon success in the collegiate department of our work. No three years since the College Society was organized in 1844, have been so productive. Of the small and insufficient income in the other department a word needs to be said before we close.

Of this money contributed during the three years past, the sums given to the several colleges on our list by the designation of the Eastern donors were as follows:

On the other hand, the sum total of the money contributed to the young men's department for current use during the last three years has been only $74,591.26. Of this amount the sum of $57,992.33 has been paid to young men in quarterly appropriations, and the balance, $16,598.93, has been used in defraying the expenses of the Society. It will be remembered that these expenses are paid wholly from the young men's department. Since the College Soci

ety was incorporated with the American Education Society, all money designated for colleges has been paid intact to the colleges. Almost no money, intended for colleges, comes to our treasury which is not distinctly designated for that purpose by the givers themselves. It is true, that any contribution not named for either department may be given to the one or the other at the discretion of the directors; but experience has taught us that the college money comes to us as such, whi'e the general contributions of the churches are meant usually for the young men.

The whole amount, therefore, received for the three years, including the $20,000 for the permanent fund, and excluding the $1,200 which passed through our hands by request of donors to outside objects, is $523,965.69.

We desire to call special attention to the weakness of the Educational Department in this showing, and to state some of the reasons why the tendency has been and is in this direction.

1. By the union of the American Education and the College Society, so called, into one, it became very natural for Eastern churches to say to agents of Western colleges, we will give our contributions this year to you. And so it happens now, year by year, that a large number of contributions, some of them from the rich and strong churches, which used to come directly for the helping of young men, go to Western colleges. This is done more often than otherwise by the suggestion of pastors of churches, rather than by the request of college agents, because it is generally understood by them that their help comes more naturally in large sums from wealthy individuals, while the church contributions are desired for the assistance of young men studying for the ministry. The Society has no power to forbid the use of church contributions for the colleges. Our churches stand in their liberty in this respect, and as both departments of the work are here brought together, such an arrangement, in many cases, becomes very natural. If, during the last year, we could have had all the church contributions for the help of young men, which would formerly have come in for that purpose, we could probably have made our four appropriations instead of three.

2. Another fact, which has tended of late years to diminish the contributions directly for young men, has been the wide-spread activity in gathering funds for the cause of Christian education in every form and variety.

The last twenty years, reaching back into the war of the Rebellion, has been a period unparalleled in the history of our country for such an ingathering of money for educational purposes. All the older academies, colleges, and theological schools of the Eastern and Middle States, the newer and numerous institutions of the rapidly spreading West, and the still newer schools and colleges which have been planted by the North for the education of the freedmen at the South, have, during the period above named, drawn out and stored up funds, which, in the aggregate, will amount to many millions. Besides this home work, our Congregational churches have, during the same period, been helping to build colleges on our foreign-missionary fields. Amid these busy and multiplied agencies, it has been difficult for a society like this, with no paid agents outside the central office, to hold the churches firmly and systematically to their old-time habit of contributions. Fifty or sixty years ago this work was unique and novel, and there was a great natural enthusiasm in its behalf among Christian people generally. That novelty has ceased, and the whole matter has come to rest back upon the absolute necessities of the case. in this connection many are disposed to reason that the large funds now stored up in our older institutions for the use of students can supply the place of those funds which were formerly gathered directly for this purpose. But it should be remembered, as the country grows older, that the expenses of life increase, the students become more numerous, and there still remains the pressing need of help outside of all that these public funds can do.

And

3. The New West Education Commission is engaged in a work which is very important, and which is naturally popular. It is drawing its contributions from the same churches from which our money for the aid of young men studying for the ministry has all along been drawn, and this makes another diversion in the case. Very many of our churches, if they have taken a contribution for one of these objects, do not feel that they can take another under the general head of educationai, the same year.

These are some of the reasons that tend to keep our treasury for the aid of candidates for the ministry in a low and inadequate state.

But, in conclusion, it deserves to be most seriously considered whether our churches can afford to let this agency languish, especially in the present condition of the denomination. The work is

not less important because its novelty has ceased. It is not less important because other forms of educational work have come up. Novelty and enthusiasm are good, but long experience is better. There was far greater loss by the way in connection with this work fifty years ago, when the whole land was full of excitement in its behalf, than there is now. It deserves to be considered that this is an organized work, lying very near the heart of the Christian church, and throwing out its life-giving streams to the extremities. Other forms of educational work may come and go, but this, in some form or other, is likely to abide while the church itself continues.

A distinguished lawyer of Boston, now deceased, who had much to do in shaping the work and the fortunes of the American Education Society, said, in substance, many years ago: "There may come a time in the history of this country when we shall need to build no more colleges, and when those which have been built shall be sufficiently endowed. But there never will come a time when a young man, starting from humble life to obtain a full and thorough education for the ministry, will not need the helping hand of the churches." If the National Council shall see fit to utter an earnest word of exhortation to the churches, East and West, on this subject, it will be timely and helpful.

During the year which has just passed, Washburn College, Topeka, Kansas, Olivet College, at Olivet, Mich., and Pacific Theological Seminary, at Oakland, Cal., have closed their connection with the Society, having reached a condition of self-support.

As these institutions have retired, Whitman College, of WallaWalla, Washington Territory, has been admitted and placed upon our list, and Yankton College, of Yankton, Dakota, is expected soon to make formal application for admission.

AMERICAN CONGREGATIONAL UNION.

Statement of REV. L. H. Cobb, D. D., Secretary.

No nation, since Joshua led Israel into Canaan, has been led into a more glorious inheritance than that into which we have been led. It was an inheritance chiefly of potentiality, possibility, prophecy. From 1620 to 1883 the work of the Pilgrims and their descendants has been to turn early prophecy into continuous his

tory. Our history is a fulfilment of the prophecy of that early day.

It is said that necessity knows no law. But under laws of the sternest necessity, our fathers were led out of spiritual bondage into emergencies of both physical and spiritual necessity, such as the founders of no other nation have ever been subjected to. They must clear a howling wilderness and coax a sterile soil or starve. They must be on guard against barbarous savages or die. Meantime they must keep their hearts with a diligence rarely if ever before required of men, because out of them were the issues of a nation's life.

How we entered into the work of actually making the land ours for Christ, how far we have moved on toward complete moral and spiritual conquest of the whole land, we are not at this time to inquire. We are concerned with the present, and with the immediate future of our personal part of this work. We are organized and established. Our picket line reaches from ocean to ocean. Our rear guard is strong. Our advance is full of courage and conquering energy. We have organizations, subsidiary to the local and national work of the individual church, that are the peers of any. I am to speak of one of these organizations, not inaptly called the commissary department of our national evangelism,— the American Congregational Union. What are its animus, attitude, retrospect, prospects?

As to animus, onward, right onward, is the motto and watchword of the American Congregational Union.

This is the key-note of our times. Business, pleasure, trade, travel, every form of enterprise, religious or secular, are on the move. We are daily looking for a strike with steam because it does not carry us and our freight faster.

Men can talk ten miles in a second and think a thousand. They can get news of events three thousand miles away an hour or more before they actually occur. Christian enterprise that takes no note of these things may as well lie down on the dust of the patron saint of Manhattan Island.

Cogent reasons urge the Union to the adoption of this motto.

1. There is an urgency of demand that tolerates nothing less than intense activity. Communities are springing into life, that frequently live five years in a day. By this we mean that the moral character of the community is often so firmly set in a single