STATE AND CITY ORGANIZATION.
BY SECRETARY J. E. ROY.
The Association Building (Y. M. C. A.), in Chicago, furnishes offices for several of the National Missionary Societies, among them the American Missionary Association. In addition to these we have the depository and reception-room of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, which is also used as the headquarters of the Illinois and Chicago Union. Here the state board holds its weekly session. Here is kept the supply of Christian Endeavor literature for the varied needs of the Christian Endeavor workers, helps for missionary and temperance and good citizenship meetings, with an array of programs. Among all Endeavorers, as among all missionary society workers, the hunger for programs is great indeed. Blessed be the man or woman who has the genius for preparing such stimulating outlines of study.
In this city there are two hundred and fifty Christian Endeavor Societies. In fifteen societies in the South Division of the city the sum of $791.28 has been given to missionary work since January 1st, of which $588.43 went to foreign missions, $61.54 to home missions and $141.40 to city missions.
HEADQUARTERS Y. P. S. C. E. UNION, CHICAGO, ILL.
Nine societies of Evanston in the last year have given $688.55 to missions—$255 to foreign, $59 to home and $374 to city missions. All have given something to the famine sufferers in India. Some of the societies visit hospitals and take flowers to the sick; one society visits a crippled lady once a week and holds a little prayer-meeting with her. The First Congregational Society has given $290 to the Chicago Commons.
A member of one Chicago society, a business man who is a great Christian Endeavor worker, has a library of over sixty volumes on missionary subjects which he is loaning all the time. Our Pilgrim Church has a society which publishes its own paper, The Pilgrim's Progress, that serves all the purposes of the church in its several departments.
The Chicago Chinese Endeavor.
The Chinese school in Dr. Goodwin's church, the First, has its Christian Endeavor Society. It is conducted mainly by the Chinese in their native language. They sing our gospel songs in Chinese and are earnest in the study of the Bible, pursuing the customary order of worship and of work. The school was started in 1884, with 32 pupils and 20 teachers. The number soon came up to 80. Then, as other schools were started, this number was diminished, but from the first the work has been a success. In 1897, a Monday night school was started and it is flourishing yet. As many as forty from this school have publicly professed Christ. Four united with the church in the last year. Four have been for several years in missionary work in China, one of them, Chan Sui Chung, as assistant of Rev. Dr. C. R. Hager, M.D., has charge of a chapel in the village of Hoi Yin, and Dr. Hager reports him quite helpful in preparing native evangelists, and says that God has greatly blessed his labors. Chan Sui Chung had over fifty baptisms in his mission in 1899. They soon catch the benevolent spirit of the Gospel. Last year the members of this school gave $50 for mission work in California, $60 for aid in building a house of worship near their families in China, and one of them, from his own earnings, gave $500 for mission work in his own land.
Rev. J. A. Mack, who has been for many years secretary of the Chicago Bible Society, and who is the volunteer superintendent of this Sunday-school, is just now out in our Times-Herald with an article from which I get these statistics. He also says there are some 2,000 Chinese in this city and for them ten Chinese mission schools—the number of pupils depending upon the number of Chicago Christians who are ready to teach them.
SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, OAK PARK, ILL.
A Live Endeavor Church.
It is the Second Congregational Church of Oak Park, Dr. Sydney Strong, pastor. Its Christian Endeavor Society, besides paying $25 a year for the support of a young lady student in Dakota, and a like amount for a young girl student in a colored school at the South, has subscribed and is now paying the sum of $500 toward the erection of their magnificent meeting-house, which was dedicated only this last spring. A class in the Sunday-school of that church also subscribed a thousand dollars toward their church edifice and is paying it promptly. The capacity of this building was tested during the meetings of the General Association of Illinois, and it was found capable of seating a thousand people in its auditorium, and of feeding six hundred people at the first tables in its dining room on occasion of the banquet given by the City Congregational Club to the members of the General Association of the state. That club had made the American Missionary Association its guest along with the General Association, and so brought upon its platform as speakers, Secretary C. J. Ryder, D.D., Mrs. I. V. Woodbury, of Boston, Field Missionary Rev. G. W. Moore, and Rev. Mary C. Collins of the Dakota Mission. The Jubilee Singers discoursed their delicious music through that session, as also through those of the state body, and filled our city and its surroundings with the sincerest praise of their spiritually elevating service in song. The exploiting of the American Missionary Association thus by the club was a spontaneous and immensely hearty commendation of its mission and its work.