to knowledge. One of the reasons why such illy-prepared men, deficient in personality and training, are admitted to our ministry is because our churches pay such small and impoverishing salaries that better men are not to be had. Now, these things ought not so to be. Untrained, illiterate men, by virtue of ⚫enthusiasm, or a facile piety, or their youth, can often win a widespread if temporary popular allegiance. But neither they nor their parishes can progress, and they are not competent for permanent service in a great Christian church.

Finally, the seminary has a right to expect the church to furnish its human material. It is an indictment which the theological schools can bring against the churches to-day that the main reason why the number of students is so small is because the churches themselves have lost their hold upon educated youth. I am increasingly impressed, as a college preacher, that more and more the moral guidance of this nation, its ethical and spiritual inspiration, is issuing not from our churches but from our schools of learning. The surest point of contact with choice youth to-day is not through the parish, whose hold upon choice youth is slight. It is through the college pulpit and the fraternity conference. This ought to give us food for thought. If the educated youth believes that the average church is remote from vital human issues and is the protector of vested interests and the stronghold of a bourgeois aristocracy, the church ought to ask, Why? If the youth believes that intellectual freedom and ecclesiastical progress are not desired by the church, it is time for the church to ask, Is this so? There are certain grave disadvantages under which the seminaries labor because churches rather than colleges send us our material. The men came to their decision as to the ministry late in their academic career, and often their previous training has led away from the professional equipment they need if they are to be with us. If they come to us ardent with humanitarian sympathies, they must frequently come without that spiritual culture, that capacity for an insight into mystical and religious things, which is only the product of a godly home, a fireside instruction, and a long-continued allegiance to the ministries of the church. It is easy enough to tell from the deficiencies in personality in the men who come to our seminaries that their church training has been inadequate, that the accent in their religious life has been

too much on men, and too little on the mystery of God in Christ. The seminary, then, has a right to demand of the church that she gird herself for the task of holding her youth, that she cease to merely preach about our Lord, that she cease to stop short of the point where they who hear His name forget themselves and sink down in worship and allegiance before Him. That is my last word this evening. The seminary pleads with the church in the name of our great partnership in a noble cause, that the church deal with the mysteries of religion so that under her teaching men shall advance in reverence and devotion as well as in ethical stature; and that the recent impoverishment of the doctrine of the Person of Christ, the attempt to resolve the whole content of Christian truth into the ethics of Jesus, be exchanged for a teaching and preaching which shall rest back upon the human need of God, the psychological necessity of worship as a part of life, and the redemption and mediatorial office of the risen and perpetually existent Christ.

STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN BOARD.

REV. WILLIAM E. STRONG, EDITORIAL SECRETARY.

The three years since the meeting of the National Council in Cleveland in 1907 have been in many ways a period of significant growth for the American Board.

The policy of making the organization of the board more immediately representative of the Congregational churches has been steadily pursued. Previous to 1907 almost all the members who represented district or state associations of the churches did so by assignment of the Board itself rather than upon nomination by those bodies. In 1907, 29 members were elected, 20 of them by the new method of nomination by organizations of churches. During the last three years, 290 members have been elected, 163 in accordance with this new plan, 127 being chosen "at large" by nomination of the Board itself. The ratio of "at large" members would have been much smaller in these recent elections were it not that in 1909, in the readjustments involved in adopting the new method, and as its time limit would have swept from the Board a large proportion of those who were its experienced and devoted members, the Board elected 98 members at large besides 84 upon nomination from the churches, that its governing body might not be suddenly and heavily depleted. The ratio of additions this year is 10 new members "at large" to 51 repre senting districts of churches and nominated by them.

Notwithstanding these large additions, the total number of corporate members has not grown. It is now (November 1) 396, against 409 in 1907. The figures given above thus indicate the large increase in the ratio of direct representation during the period; already the churches determine for the greater part the make-up of the Board. The new method of election has not yet resulted in steady devotion to the Board on the part of many of these newer members, so far at least as the register of the annual meeting indicates. The records for the past three years reveal the fact that the members chosen upon nomination

from the churches are not in so regular attendance at the annual meeting as are the members chosen upon nomination of the Board. It is to be hoped that means may be found to improve this showing.

The growth in the financial strength of the Board has been gratifying during the period, though as special features affected the financial campaigns of each of the years it is impossible to make any precise comparison. The record of gifts from churches and individuals, which is perhaps the most significant item of the Board's receipts, as marking any growth of interest in the Board's work and the prospect of its material advance, shows for 1907 the sum of $310,803, and for 1910, $341,703. These figures, it is hoped, do indicate a substantial gain made during these years in the level of current receipts to the Board's treasury.

The Twentieth Century Fund, by which the Board steadies and regulates its legacy receipts, has grown from $143,156.90 in 1907 to $273,130.76 in 1910; the Conditional Gift Fund from $582,903.41 to $742,353.85. Other funds have also been somewhat enlarged during the period, so that the treasurer's report of this year records total funds of the Board amounting to $2,486,164.84. If there be added to this amount the value of the Board's property on its mission fields, as based upon actual or estimated valuations, the total property thus held or operated by the Board in its work amounts to the substantial sum of at least $4,500,000.

One new fund, that for the Endowment of the Higher Educational Institutions of the American Board, projected in 1907, has within the past year received promises of gifts amounting to over $1,200,000; it is hoped that long before the next meeting of the Council, the sum of $2,000,000, set as the minimum amount of this endowment, will be secured. To provide for the holding of these and other trust funds that may come into its care, the Board secured from the Massachusetts Legislature of 1910 an amendment to its charter authorizing it to hold $10,000,000 of personal property and $3,000,000 of real property.

In a review of the financial growth of this period, grateful mention must be made of some factors of influence that are of more than financial value. The so-called "Together Campaign" of 1909, in which the national missionary and benevo

lent societies of the denomination united, not only succeeded in wiping out the debts of three of these societies,—that of the American Board amounting to $80,000 being of this number,and moreover in carrying a substantial balance to the general treasuries of the seven societies, but was perhaps even more serviceable in promoting the spirit of coöperation between these societies and in impressing the denomination with the fact that its missionary enterprises are one.

The growth of the Apportionment Plan, a new and little-tried device when the last National Council met, has during these years become a strong and increasingly important factor in the financial life of this Board, as of the other denominational societies. Wisely and earnestly pressed by the advisory committee of the National Council, brought to the fore in the Together Campaign, this plan has been carried to every part of the country, approved by state bodies of churches, and endorsed by leading pastors and laymen, until it has come to be the recognized and practical method of the denomination for financing its missionary organizations. The American Board has felt to its vast advantage and encouragement the aid of this plan, even though it be yet but partly adopted.

The service of the Laymen's Missionary Movement in attracting attention to missionary work and quickening the sense of responsibility therefor among the men of the churches, and closer yet the growth of the Congregational Brotherhood and its prompt and hearty endeavor, during the present year, to promote the adoption of the Apportionment Plan and the putting of missionary giving upon a substantial basis, are factors deserving of special recognition in the present outlook.

There have been few changes in the organization of the American Board during the period. Associate Secretary Harry Wade Hicks withdrew from the care of the Department of Young People and Education in 1908, to take the general secretaryship of the Young People's Missionary Movement. To carry on the lines of work which he had instituted with notable success Rev. D. Brewer Eddy was called from a pastorate in New Jersey in the early summer of 1909 to an assistant secretaryship in the Home Department. Rev. C. C. Creegan, D.D., withdrew from the secretaryship of the Middle District in 1909 to accept the presidency of Fargo College, whereupon Rev.