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DONATIONS RECEIVED FOR EUPHRATES COLLEGE, HARPOOT, EASTERN TURKEY.

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

ANOTHER BASKET OF CHIPS FROM JAPAN.

PICKED UP BY THE SAME MISSIONARY.

A FRIEND has wittily said of my former " Basket of Missionary Chips”: “If I could pick up chips like those, I'd stay out by the woodpile all the time." So I am encouraged to try another basketful, if one can be said to gather chips on a trip of 500 miles. And to start with, I confess to have stolen some of these chips from the woodpiles of my friends who did n't seem to want them.

On my journey to Osaka, to attend the annual meeting of the Kumi-ai churches in connection with the American Board, I went through the earthquake region where last October over 8,000 people perished in a few minutes, and where whole villages and towns were thrown down. It is over six months since the terrible disaster, yet every day and night lesser shocks occur, so that only recently has it been possible to sleep there all night without being awakened by the restless earth. I planned to stop there a night in order to get one little shock as a memento of this woful region, and I was indeed well favored. About three in the morning I was awakened by the deep rumbling of the coming earthquake, and before my eyes were fairly opened the hotel was going like a ship in a storm, the walls cracking with an ominous sound. Just as I began to wonder if this was n't rather more of a souvenir than I really desired for my happiness, the awkward motion ceased. Its business ability can be somewhat estimated from the fact that it extended over a hundred miles and shook up a dozen large cities.

At the meeting of the churches in connection with the American Board the largest church in Osaka was well filled with the delegates and evangelists, who gathered to represent the 10,000 Christians who are already members of our Kumi-ai churches. The faith of the pastors and evangelists in the progress of Christianity was conspicuously seen in this, that although the year has been rather disastrous in several of our educational institutions, and although, as one of the speakers vividly said, " two thirds of our churches are in a perilous condition," yet it was planned to stretch up north to the Hokkaidō (Yezo), down south to the Loochoo Islands, and east to the Sandwich Islands. In all these directions there are very providential leadings.

The story of the work in the Sandwich Islands is peculiarly interesting. A Japanese who had recently come from the Sandwich Islands was introduced to the meeting at Osaka and said: "There are 20,000 Japanese there on sugar plantations; there are over a hundred Christians in my church. I have come here for two or three pastors and evangelists to go over there with me and help in this unusual field. The laborers there are largely ignorant, and being away

from their native land and from the restraints of our national customs, are drifting into gambling and drinking and all sorts of low living. Now is the time to do something grand for our brothers. We can save them if we go now. Hundreds of them will become good Christians, and when their three years' contract is up they will return here and will be the means of opening scores of villages to Christian teaching. We shall help all Japan if we help those 20,000 brothers over there."

This is good doctrine, and there is no doubt that before you read this some steamer will be on her way to Hawaii with the first band of Japanese missionaries who have ever gone to work in a foreign land.

This Christian worker from Hawaii delighted his audience with many a stirring story, one of which I will try to narrate: "Not long ago a foreigner was making his first visit to Japan. After spending several days in seeing the sights of Yokohama and Tokyo, one of his friends inquired, 'Have you seen it?' 'What?' he replied. 'Oh, it. When you see it, you will know it; nobody will have to tell you.' So every time the newly arrived foreigner went out he kept his eyes open for it, but saw nothing so superlatively above all other things. One day, however, as the clouds and mist that sometimes hang on the Japanese horizon for weeks were breaking away, he saw before him high up in the heavens the snow-capped peak of peerless Fujiyama flashing the light from its glorysheeted sides and looking like some mighty fairy castle floating on a broad bank of clouds. 'Oh, I've seen it! I've seen it now!' he exclaimed when he met his friend. "Now every country has an it that it's worth while to seek, and when I went to the United States I began to look sharp for it, for I wanted to see whether America's it was as good as our it. Well, I saw their grand houses and stores from five to twenty stories high, and the vast wealth of their cities, but I did n't think that could be it. I visited their wonderful factories filled with yet more wonderful machinery that seemed to work as if it had brains, yet after all this inventive power did n't seem quite worthy to be called it. Then I crossed their high Rocky Mountains and saw the grandeur of American scenery, but I did n't see it anywhere. Gradually I got into the homes of the people and began to see the moral power that controls so much of the life of the nation. I witnessed their worship of the invisible God and learned the story of Christ. Ah! now I have seen it!' I said. It is Christianity! it is

Christ!'"

If all the homes of our beloved native land were so full of the joy and peace and hope and love of Christ that our brothers from these great nations of Asia

would always find it whenever they visit our shores, and would go back saying with enthusiasm to their friends, "Oh, I 've seen America's it, it is Christ!" then

this mighty missionary problem, over which we are stumbling and at which skeptics are laughing, would be solved once for all in this our day and generation.

At the Osaka meeting they set apart two evenings in which the leaders who

had gathered from the north, south, east, and west might freely tell their experiences in the work. Among them was one young evangelist who is said to be doing first-rate work in an inland town. I know his father well, and think I baptized him about fourteen years ago. At any rate when the father became a Christian he told me how, when his children were increasing too rapidly for his limited means, he determined to drown his little baby boy. "So one morning," said he, "I took him in my arms early and went to the canal. I was just about to throw him in, but thought I'd take one more look. Just then the baby smiled and cooed at me, and it took all the heart right out of me for the bad deed. I carried him back home, and now that I've become a Christian I hope my boy will grow up to be one too." The boy has grown up, and the grateful father, whose bad heart was smiled out of him by his baby boy, now hears his son telling the old, old story that has taken the bad heart out of so many tens of thousands in every age and in every land. I must add here that the power of parents over the lives of their babies was done away with by vigorous laws many years ago.

As soon as I returned from this long trip a Christian student called, whose face showed signs of deep trouble. He had been for two years a successful worker in Sunday-schools, and besides that he had started a Christian club in the school where he was studying. He had carefully saved up from his allowance enough to give him the hope of entering our theological school in Kyoto. He belongs to an ancient family and his house holds the proud rank of being the first in all that region. But all of his relatives are bitter against Christianity, and when they found out his determination to study theology and be a Christian minister, their disappointment deepened into anger that would not listen to reason. The mother, with the fearless decision of a Samurai, at last gave her best beloved boy to understand that if he persisted she would wipe out the disgrace by suicide. The boy of eighteen well knew the spirit of his mother, and after a week of struggle, such as young men are seldom called to pass through, he yielded and promised to study medicine. His tried face told of the mental pain he has suffered. "But," said he, "I do not waver in my determination to use my life for Christ. If I must study medicine, I will use medicine as a means of extending the knowledge of Christ's gospel."

The student's call was followed by a visit from the wife of an evangelist from the large island in the north that used to be called Yezo, now Hokkaidō. This lady told me that some of the Christians in Sapporo sent two telegrams to the annual meeting in Osaka inquiring whether the American Board would at once establish a station in this northern island. It was a great delight to hear her tell about different individuals whom I well knew but had not seen for a long time. One was an army officer whom I baptized several years ago, and who with his wife is doing excellent Christian work. Another was a young evangelist with whom I have often preached, and who has given up his office as evangelist to become a farmer, for the noble reason that he cannot win the poor farmers without himself becoming one with them in daily toil. 'You are paid to tell us these things," said a skeptical farmer to him last year; ' and you get twice as much doing that as we can by farming." So the evangelist wrote me