If American Christians do not evangelize Mexico, that land will not be evangelized, for no missionary society of Europe is doing any work there as in heathen lands.

Mexico is our neighbor in need of our Christian sympathy, love and generous aid.

American Baptists are not doing half what several other denominations are doing for Mexico. Why is it? Is there less missionary interest among us for a people who have first claims upon us?

Where are the capable young men in our theological seminaries who will go to Mexico?

No. 6.

Where is the money required to send them?

Who will give $25,000 for the establishment of a girls' boarding school in the City of Mexico?

Who will give $15,000 for the establishment of a theological school with an aca demic department for the training of native preachers?

Who will give $5,000 for the

IN THE ALAMEDA.-CITY OF MEXICO..

purchase of mission property in San Luis Potosi, Aguas Calientes, or Puebla ?

We invite correspondence on any of these matters which are vital to the successful prosecution of our work in Mexico.

WHAT SHALL WE DO?

The Society is confronted by a very serious state of things in the prosecution of its work the coming year. The Board has made its annual review and forecast with the following result:

1. A large addition to the debt was averted mainly because of the unusual sum of nearly $100,000 received from legacies.

2. The present debt of $108,000 will probably be paid by two legacies before July 1.

3. A careful estimate made of the amount that may be received from other legacies applicable to current expenses the coming year shows only about half that of last year.

4. With this decrease in legacies, and with only the same amount in contributions from churches and individuals, if the Society's work is maintained without curtailment, the prospect is that a debt of $66,000 will be accumulated by April 1, 1896.

5. Now, what shall we do? Calls for enlargement come from many quarters-for the new plan of co-operation at the South, for educational work there, for the stricken States and Territories in the West, for Mexico, for city mission work. To all these must we say, No? And must further retrenchment be made?

Brethren of the churches, we give you the facts in the case now, early in the year, asking your prayers, your influence, and your enlarged offerings for the maintenance. of these great Home Mission enterprises at a time when abridgment seems impossible.

In calculations for the coming year account must be taken also of the Church Edifice work, which is carried on principally by designated offerings, and for which about $25,000 are needed.

WHAT WE OUGHT TO HAVE. 1. The Society ought to expend $10,000 more than last year on Western fields.

2. It ought to have, at least, $10,000 more for a beginning in city mission work. 3. It ought to put $7,000 more into the strengthening of its educational work in the South.

4. It ought to have, at least, $5,000 more for work among foreign populations. 5. It ought to have, at least, $5,000 more for missionary work in Mexico.

6. It needs $10,000 more for co-operation with Southern Baptists, white and colored, in the new plan of missionary work for the colored people.

This makes $47,000 more that ought to be expended this year.

It is agonizing to stand face to face with these needs, and then to be unable to take a step in advance because of inadequate resources and the prospect of a great debt. May the Lord send deliverance out of Zion.

Ho, watchman! what further of Mexico?

I hear the noise of a host astir,

The sound of a going whose meaning we know,

A stirring of souls, as the boughs of the fir
Are vibrant when heavenly breezes blow;
I hear the lament of tyrants who quake

At the doom of their merited overthrow, And the jubilant tones of heroes who break The bonds from the old for a new Mexico.

And what of the future of Mexico?

Our faith responds: It will not be long

Ere we wrest the land from the hand of the foe,

And strongholds of error erected on wrong
Shall fall like the walls of Jericho ;
While the moral deserts of briar and thorn
Shall bloom as the rose; and fountains shall
flow;

And a nation refashioned, redeemed, reborn,
Shall unfold from the old, a new Mexico.

MEXICO IN 1870 AND IN 1895.

MISSIONARY IN

BY REV. T. M. WESTRUP, A
NORTHWESTERN MEXICO DURING MOST

OF THE TIME SPECIFIED.

Were the Romanistic phase of society here in 1855 and that of to-day the subjects of comparison, the contrast would be more remarkable than the one I have to present. Only forty years! Yet a greater revolution never served as a writer's theme. Of course, the disturbing, undermining, enlightening causes had been at work long before the rotten structure fell, in 1859, at the battle of Calpulalpam.

By 1870, Romanism, though still influential in politics and strongly entrenched in religious thought, had lost beyond hope the principal gauges for which its champions had

REV. THOMAS M. WESTRUP.

fought so fiercely, so barbarously, even to treason against their native land. Two years before that I had objected to a magistrate that he must not send a Protestant minister to the army, as he wanted to, unless he sent the Padre with him, and my man was released. The poor Padres were minus their mortmain property, minus processions in public, minus any marriage fees other than voluntary ones, minus convents of both sexes, minus many churches, minus the right to toll the bells, minus meddling with the public schools, and minus many other things they claim the right to abuse to other people's detriment.

But a Protestant in 1870 was still a fearful enemy to precious souls. Loud the wails, and incessant the prayers to Blessed Mary, in view of the intolerable fact that preaching and teaching that way to hell was allowed by a criminal government, and was actually on the increase! Landlords everywhere preferred even immoral tenants to heretical ones. Employers never had any work for Protestants, and seemed to telegraph to each other when a Protestant was out of work. Kinsfolk and old acquaintances would make a formal and severely admonitory visit to a new "convert to the devil," and if that failed would have nothing further to do with him, except those who could placidly cheat him out of his last dollar, and think it no sin. A

favorite method of expressing their utter contempt for these blackhearted emissaries was to spit on the ground close to them, repeating to themselves an exorcism which, astonishing to tell, never had the least effect on the other party. Once the effect was rather startling the other way. The Protestant knocked the spitter down, and then gave him a dollar to keep him from suing.

It is quite safe to assert that soon after our Bible and mission work began to attract attention, Catholics who cared a button for Catholicism learned more of their creed and its so-called reasons than they ever heard before. We not only stirred up thousands to think, inquire, discuss; but we drove our friends the enemy to most unwonted exertions in behalf of their threatened cult, and the efforts since then have not slackened.

Protestant children, though legally protected from persecution, suffered severely in the public schools; many still remember how bitter it was. The Catholic catechism was prohibited in these schools by the Reform laws, but the authorities connived at the nullification of those laws, not only in school, but in many other matters, and parents could not easily bring themselves to consent to the banishment of the revered mixture of truth and balderdash. Consequently, the children of Protestants were expected to swallow without a murmur their dose of spiritual treacle and brimstone, and if objection was made it had to be made under very uncomfortable circumstances.

Very reassuring were the greetings we often received; stones, opprobrious epithets, sometimes softer but by no means welcome odoriferous substances testified to the esteem in which we were held. At Cadereita a party of Mariolaters resolved to make short work of the maligners of their great Mediatrix, as the Padres called us. A number of them mounted their horses, swung their lassoes, and proceeded to hunt up the miscreants. We managed to convince them of their error, read to them about Mary from the Bible, told them we were taught to honor every woman as a sister of Mary, and that they would do well to hold Mary's sisters in higher esteem than they did.

I could multiply to weariness such instances of ignorant, unthinking zeal for tradition, met, modified and frequently eradicated by our labors in those years of mingled gloom and gladness. But it is time to say a

word as to the present status of our work under the criticism of those around us. A Great Change,

It is an undoubted fact that we have conquered prejudice to a surprising extent. No one now is more welcome than a Protestant to tens of thousands of homes: Romanism is purely on the defensive here. We are constantly meeting persons who excuse themselves when pressed to accept the Gospel by saying that the religion taught them was that of their fathers and mothers, and they cannot give it up; not a word now, as a general thing, about its being the truth, far superior to the surmises of an insubordinate monk, etc., referring to Luther and Calvin, whose names are rarely brought out in discussion, people knowing quite well that we do not swear by either of them, and that we always have enough in the Bible to prove our say.

The Bible is read to an extent that promises much for the future. Since so many have come to scorn the confessional as an unnecessary and debasing process, they ceased to fear the excommunication hurled at those who read the Bible as we publish it. What great good a few devoted Bible-women, going from house to house, might do by pressing on the attention of the women, more susceptible than men by far to religious teaching, both the true and the skillfully adulterated, the claims of the Word of God! We do not claim that the great and encouraging changes in public opinion regarding us and our opponents which have taken place in the past twenty-five years are due wholly to our labors. Sensible people are not such a rarity in Mexico; they began long years ago to subject the Roman priesthood to tests that showed them as they are: later they began to do the same with their doctrines in the light of the Bible. Our part in this is evident.

Not long ago two gamblers who were travelling overtook a lad ill-dressed and very rustic in appearance. Riding together, they questioned him as to residence, parents, etc. They were much surprised to hear him say that he had no near friend but God. The conversation continuing, he told them about the Bible, saying things that made a deep impression on at least one of them, such as the doings of Elijah on Mt. Carmel. This so interested the gambler that on arriving at home he got a Bible and searched for the account of said doings till he found it,