The immediate results of this series of Jubilee Field Days were most encouraging. Nearly twenty thousand people gathered in the various audiences. Lincoln Memorial Day, celebrated at Oberlin, was most delightfully spent. Every service during the day, including Sunday-school, Mission Circle, Endeavor Society, as well as church services, was an American Missionary Association rally.
On the Sabbath large churches and towns were reached. During the week important centers were selected, and many surrounding churches sent pastors and delegates to the Jubilee Field Day services.
From a financial standpoint the result was also encouraging. More than three times as much was gathered as the campaign cost, and pastors and church members everywhere testified that the meetings were resultful in spiritual uplift and blessing, as well as in stimulating interest and greatly increased gifts.
The general feeling seemed to be that this was American Missionary Association year, and that during this Jubilee season the specials should float into this treasury and the regular contributions should be greatly increased. While en route the joyful message came to us that the Board and the Home Missionary Society were both out of debt. When announced from various pulpits by American Missionary Association speakers, this glorious fact met with cordial applause. All the more did it seem incumbent upon the churches to take hold of the American Missionary Association, still burdened with its debt, and lift it out of the slough of financial despond. This, however, is only the reflection of the feeling among the churches throughout the land. The determination to lift the debt of the American Missionary Association, and to make it possible to continue at least its depleted work, is universal. Special collections, regular contributions, and hundreds of individuals taking the fifty-dollar shares in the Jubilee fund, will accomplish this most desirable result.
The South.
THE OPENING CHURCH MISSIONS.
BY SECRETARY F. P. WOODBURY.
The Eureka Church-Arbor, shown below, sheltered the opening service of the new plantation missions in Southern Georgia. The people came under the shadows of the piney woods from every quarter. The first mission church was organized under this rude booth. There the meetings continued until the cold and rainy months of winter. Now, by the help of a grant from the Church Building Society, a small church building will speedily become the home of a beneficent church and school work.