The special interest of the year centres in the evangelistic work that was commenced early in the winter. Of our 39 workers reported, fourteen are Chinamen, who have been converted in our schools. Two of these brethren were set apart last December as special evangelists, one going to our missions in Southern California, and the other to our more Northern missions. Subsequently another one entered the field. The intention was to give one month of service at each mission, and the gratifying experience has been that at no point has this one month been deemed sufficient. At the end of five months the harvest reported was forty souls brought to repentance.
Three new missions are upon our list this year; those at Los Angeles, San Buenaventura, and Tucson. At Los Angeles no less than 75 pupils [pg 313] were enrolled the first month, and at all these places Christian Associations have been formed.
A minister on the Pacific Coast not in connection with our schools, after giving a sketch of work accomplished which could not be tabulated, says: "Socially, intellectually, spiritually, the Chinese mission school does its beneficent work. But everything is made but the means to the spiritual end. The whole drift of the teaching, the songs, the pictures, the Scripture text, is to make known Christ. Every evening's lesson ends with worship. In no year, may I add, have there been so many conversions among the Chinese on this coast as in the one just passed."
WOMAN'S BUREAU.
There are thirteen Woman's State Organizations which co-operate with us in our missionary work. These are in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota. Other States, also, not yet organized, are assisting in definite lines, as Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Our Bureau of Woman's Work has for many years proved its wisdom. The state of black womanhood and girlhood taken together is pitiful. The permanent and uplifting Christianization and civilization to be engrafted on the Negro race in this land, can come only as the womanhood of that people is imbued with right principles and led to right practices. Unless the life of the woman is reached and saved, there can be no true religion, family life, or social status. Hence our industrial and boarding schools for the training of girls in domestic work, in the trades of dressmaking and such like, in the art of cooking, the cultivation of small fruits and flowers, so that the sacred influences of Christianity shall circle around the thousand firesides where now everything is coarse, and ignorant, and senseless. With our large corps of lady teachers, the Woman's Bureau, as an intermediary between the Woman's State Association and their sisters who are teaching in the field, and the women and girls to whom they are sent, has proved during the year its increasing efficiency.
FINANCES
The receipts have been, $320,953.42, which with the balance on hand, September 30th, 1887, of $2,193.80, makes a total of $323,147.22. We have received in addition to this $1,000 for an Endowment Fund. The total disbursements for the year have been $328,788.43. The churches through the National Council have asked us to keep abreast with the providence of God. "It is our duty," said the Ohio State Association, "to see that this great work in which we have borne so large and honorable a part, halt not, nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and supported by our gifts and our prayers."
[pg 314]
Said our good friend, the Congregationalist, in an editorial after our inspiring meeting at Portland in October last: "Never did the magnitude of the field, and the complex character of its labors, appear in such startling lines. Either of the four departments of labor demands the money and the force which is distributed among all. But, in the providence of God, this society is called upon to prosecute this fourfold work. It cannot abandon a single field and must not be asked to. It can do in the next five years a work for Christianity and for Congregationalism in the South and West which will tell on the coming century. As Christians, and as Congregational Christians, we must see to it that it be not obliged to pinch its workers and to turn away from promising openings in order to keep free from debt the coming year."