OUR FIFTH YEAR will begin with our next number. At the recent meeting of the committee earnest consideration was given to all the questions which have been referred to it by the General Assembly, and to all suggestions which have been made in the large correspondence of the chairman of the committee and of the editor.

It was pleasant to find that the number of subscribers has continued steadily, though not rapidly, to increase, and is now larger by about 800 than one year ago. This is a gratifying assurance that those who read our magazine regard it as useful, and are gradually making it favorably known to others. We confidently expect that this will continue, and we renew our assurance of continued faithful endeavor for continual improvement. Various suggestions have been frankly made, for all of which we are sincerely thankful. Some of them we confidently expect to be able to put in practice, to the increased satisfaction not only of those who have made them but of all our readers.

tion of THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD, and, with some frank and fraternal suggestions for improvement, have spoken kindly of that "whereunto we have already attained." We give only one sample-the first that reached us.

The stated clerk of the Synod of New Mexico has sent us a transcript of that synod's minute, as follows:

This synod heartily endorses our magazine, and urges the presbyteries to take the necessary action to have it subscribed for to a greater extent in the churches within our bounds; believing that the increased circulation will greatly tend to the enlightenment of our people in the work of the various boards of the Church, and hence result in that deeper interest in the same which always accompanies increased knowledge.

The following letter has been received from Emporia, Kan.:

Enclosed please find $1 for THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD for one year for

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month. It contains a volume of information, and what is more, is infused with a spirit of lofty enthusiasm by which one's soul is truly refreshed. I speak thus frankly and as freely, inasmuch as I have the privilege of seeing the best missionary literature published either in the United States or the Old World.

We think it right to publish these pleasant testimonials, that the writers who have made such valuable contributions to our pages may know that they have not labored in vain, and that those who are endeavoring to extend the circulation of our magazine at home may be encouraged by intelligent testimony that it is not wholly unappreciated

abroad.

We do not think it wise to publish many such testimonials, but we do think it right to say that from no other class do such pleasant messages come to us more often than from home and foreign missionaries, and from mothers and teachers of children and young people.

DR. DE PRESSENSÉ, having received the expression of brotherly regard and sympathy from the Presbyterian ministers of Philadelphia, which we inserted in our November number, page 386, has sent, through Rev. J. C. Bracq, the following touching

response:

I have been profoundly touched and honored by the precious testimony of sympathy that I have received from the Presbyterian pastors of Philadelphia. Nothing could make me feel in a better way the beauty of Christian solidarity and Christian fraternity

which does not know distance. I would add that this testimony of fraternal interest, coming from a Church for which I have the greatest admiration, has been to me of inestimable worth.

Will you, dear sir, transmit to these hon

[December,

ored brethren the expression of my gratitude? My greatest desire now is to be able still to uphold the great cause that is dear to me, and which may be summed up in the two words "Gospel" and "Liberty." But the important thing for each one is to be able to say from the depth of his heart, "Thy will be done."

Our readers will be glad to learn that Dr. Pressensé sends word to us that he is so far recovered from his recent severe illness that he undertakes to furnish us with four articles on the religious condition of France and the Christian agencies and work in that great republic, in the course of the next year. We hope for the first to be in our January or February issue-the others to follow at intervals of about three months.

DR. PROCHET also writes explaining the long deferring of his articles promised many months ago. The exceeding pressure of his work in superintending the Waldensian mission is a full and satisfactory apology, and we are very thankful for his assurance that he has now made such arrangements as seem to justify his expectation of "having time next winter for many such works, among which," he says, "I shall put in the first rank the promised articles on the evangelization of Italy."

THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY CALENDAR FOR 1891 comes to us from Chicago, but may be ordered from the headquarters of either of the Woman's Boards of Foreign Missions. It differs from its predecessors in style and arrangement, but, like them, it will be helpful as a daily companion for the coming year, increasing familiarity with the names of our missionaries and encouraging specific and personal prayer for them and their work. Price, 35 cents.

1890.]

The trustees and professors of Lafayette College have united in the urgent request to Dr. Cattell that he will resume the presidency of that institution, which he held so honorably and usefully for twenty years until his health broke down under the stress of its cares and labors.

Although his health is fully restored and is now excellent, he has become so strongly attached to the work now entrusted to him, and has such an estimate of its importance, that he deliberately decides to give the rest of his life to it. This decision will gladden many aged ministers and many widows and orphans, and will unite their hearts and many others in the prayer that God will give that college a president worthy of its noble history.

PRESBYTERIANS AT CHAUTAUQUA.-The handsome Presbyterian club house which has been built at Chautauqua is a tangible evidence of the interest which members of the Presbyterian Church are taking in this summer educational community. In 1890 the College of Liberal Arts registered more Presbyterians than Methodists, and the new C. L. S. C. class of 1894 now being enrolled is receiving a very large proportion of Presbyterian members. It may not be known generally that Miss Kate F. Kimball, office secretary of the Chautauqua Circle, is a most active member of the Presbyterian Church.

The committee of the General Assembly on revision of the Confession of Faith has had one meeting, and is to have a second in February. They properly refrain from making public their deliberative proccedings until they shall have reached the conclusions which they will present to the next General Assembly. We are assured, however, by competent and reliable testimony that the meeting at Pittsburgh was as re

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markable for frank utterance of opinions and for the spirit of brotherly love and harmony as that of the General Assembly at Saratoga. One member of the committee has said: "The thought of the magnitude and far-reaching influence of our work grew upon me day by day, and my conviction that God is in this movement was so keen at times as to be almost overpowering. We separated in a mood of harmony as marked as that of the Assembly itself."

Rev. H. Van Vranken, of Peotone, Ill., writes us that the statistics of Christian Endeavor societies in our November number, page 391, were of the 1889. He says: year

In June, 1890, the national convention at St. Louis reported societies 11,013; membership, 660,000-an increase in one year of nearly 4000 societies and 175,000 members.

Exception has been taken to some earnest words of Secretaries Allen and Gibson, printed on page 427 of our November issue, as if they disparaged or censured the work which the women of our Church are doing for the Indians, Mexicans and Mormons. We did not so understand what we there printed. We understood our brethren to point to that noble womanly work only in order to emphasize the appeal which they desired to make for the larger work with which they are officially connected, and which seems to them to be greatly neglected.

We are glad to have occasion to recall attention to this. None of our readers will say that less ought to be done for the Indians, Mexicans and Mormons. Will any reader deny that manifold more ought to be done for the vastly greater number of Negroes than is done? But most emphatically and most solemnly we are ready to ask, Must the women do all that needs to be done? Where are the men?

That which is widely known and observed as the monthly concert was originated a little more than one hundred years ago in an attempt of Jonathan Edwards and some kindred spirits in both hemispheres "to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the advancement of Christ's kingdom on earth."

So successful was this attempt, and so blessed of God, that what was begun as an attempt for extraordinary prayer was very extensively adopted as an ordinary and regular observance, and became known and loved throughout Christendom almost as if it were a divine ordinance.

When the monthly concert had thus be come established in the practice and the hearts of God's people, they came gradually and not slowly to emphasize, in their thought and prayer, not so much "the revival of religion" as "the advancement of Christ's kingdom on earth." Thus insensibly and naturally the monthly concert came to be a concert of prayer for foreign missions. This is not to be censured as a deviation from the original idea, for that original idea had no express divine authority. We believe it to have been a product of divine agency, even the agency of the Holy Spirit abiding and inworking in the heart of Christ's people; and because we believe in his perpetual abiding and inworking we accept the natural development of that

happy idea in this nineteenth century as reverently as we accept its origination in the eighteenth.

It has had further development. A monthly concert of prayer has not satisfied the yearning of devout souls for "explicit agreement and visible union of God's people" in prayer. A signal proof of this is the ready adoption throughout evangelical Christendom of the week of prayer suggested by missionaries in India. This soon attained as wide observance as the monthly concert, and has now as strong a hold upon the heart of Christ's praying people. Its development or modification has been in the other direction. Beginning in a specific attempt to unite God's people in prayer for foreign missions, it soon became an annual week of prayer for the revival of religion, and most of those who observe it accept a program which makes foreign missions only one of many great subjects for united study and prayer.

We accept all this as a normal development in the mind of the Church, under the inworking of the indwelling Spirit. We do not affirm his infallible guidance herein as we affirm it for what he caused to be written by holy men in his holy Scriptures; but we understand those Scriptures to have promised such abiding presence of the divine Spirit in Christ's people that we reverently refrain from criticising such great movements and measures, so commending them