fully watch that relief is promptly because the appliances are too expengiven from time to time as needed. sive for the individual churches. Large There are now more than three hundred well-situated buildings, with all possible and fifty of these paid secretaries. Now, right attractions, are simply necessary to look back over the whole history of the success in this work. These things are associations, and can you doubt that so expensive that the united church he who meets the wants of his only can procure them. That in

eighty buildings, worth more than most conspicuous has been that at the $3,000,000, while as many more have land or building-funds. Third, how blessedly this sets forth the vital unity of Christ's church, "that they may all be one," and also distinguishes them from all other religious bodies. "Come out from among them and be ye separate."

West and South. In 1868, the convention authorized the employment of a secretary for the West. This man, Robert Weidansall, a graduate of Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, was found working in the shops of the Pacific Railroad Company at Omaha. He had intended entering the ministry, but

This association work is divided into his health failed him. To-day there local (the city or town), state or home mission, the international and foreign mission.

The local is purely a city or town work. The "state," which I have called the home mission, is thoroughly to canvass the State, learn where the association is needed, plant it there, strengthen all existing associations, and keep open communication between all. This is also the international work, but its field is the United States and British Provinces, under the efficient management of this committee.

As has been said, the convention of 1866 appointed. the international committee, which was directed to call and arrange for state and provincial conventions. This

is the result: in 1866, no state or provincial committee or conventions. Now, thirty-three such committees, thirty-one of which hold state or provincial conventions, together with a large number of district and local conferences.

In 1870, Mr. R. C. Morse, a graduate of Yale College, and a minister of the Presbyterian Church, became the general secretary of the committee and continues such to-day. Of the missionary work of the committee the

is no question as to his health - he has a superb physique, travels constantly, works extremely hard, and has been wonderfully successful. When he began there were thirty-nine associations in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, and Tennessee. There was only one secretary, and no building. Now there are nearly three hundred associations, spending more than one hundred and

ten thousand dollars; twenty general not only harmony prevailed, but it secretaries, and five buildings. Nine seemed as though each were trying to States are organized, and five employ prove to the other his intenser brotherly state secretaries. The following words love. The cross truly conquered. No from a recent Kansas report sound one who was present can ever forget strangely, almost like a joke, to one who those scenes, or cease to bless God for remembers the peculiar influence of what I truly believe was the greatest Missouri upon the infant Kansas: step toward the uniting again of North "Kansas owes much of her standing and South. Mr. T. K. Cree has had to-day to the fostering care and efforts charge of this work since the beginof the Missouri state executive com- ning. Not only has sectional spreading

mittee." In 1870, two visitors were sent to the Southern States. There were then three associations only between Virginia and Texas. There are now one hundred and fifty-seven.

Previous to the Civil War the work was well under way, but had been almost entirely given up. Our visitors were not at once received as brethren, but Christian love did its work and gradually all differences were forgotten by these Christians in the wonderful tie which truly united them, and when, in 1877, the convention met at Richmond,

of associations been done by the committee, but, in the language of the report already quoted: "Special classes of young men, isolated in a measure from their fellows by virtue of occupation, training, or foreign birth, have from time to time so strongly appealed to the attention of the American associations as to elicit specific efforts in their behalf." Thus, in 1868, the first secretary of the committee was directed. to devote his time to railroad employees. For one year he labored among them. The general call on his time then be

came so imperative that he was obliged they have no doubt as to the propriety to leave the railroad work. This work of the investment. had been undertaken at St. Albans, Vermont, in 1854, and in Canada in 1855. The first really important step in this work was at Cleveland in 1872, when an employee of a railroad company, who had been a leader in every kind of dissipation, was converted. He immediately began to use his influence among his comrades, and such was the power of the Spirit that the Cleveland Association took up the work and began holding meetings especially for these men. In 1877, Mr. E. D. Ingersol was appointed by the international committee to superintend the work. There has been no rest for him in this. A leading railroad official says: "Ingersol is indeed a busy man. Night and day he travels. To-day a railroad president wants him here, to-morrow a manager summons him. He is going like a shuttle back and forth across the country, weaving the web of railroad associations." When he entered on the work there were but three railroad secretaries; now there are nearly nearly seventy. There are now over sixty branches in operation; and the work is going on besides at twenty-five points; almost a hundred different places, therefore, where specific work is done for railroad men. They own seven buildings, valued at thirtythree thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.

The expense of maintaining these reading-rooms is over eighty thousand dollars, and more than two thirds of this is paid by the corporations themselves; most of the secretaries are on the regular pay-rolls of the companies. How can this be done? Simply because the officers see such a return from this expenditure in the morals and efficiency of their men that

Mr. William Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes: "This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "Few things about railroad affairs afford more satisfactory returns than these readingrooms." Mr. J. H. Devereux, of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railway, writes: "The association work has from the beginning (now ten years ago) been prosecuted at Cleveland satisfactorily and with good results. The conviction of the board of superintendents is that the influence. of the room and the work in connection with it has been of great value to both the employer and the employed, and that the instrumentalities in question should not only be encouraged but further strengthened." Mr. John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, says: 66 A secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, for the service of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, was appointed in 1879, and I am gratified. to be able to say that the officers under whose observation his efforts have been conducted informed me that this work has been fruitful of good results." Mr. Thomas Dickson, president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, writes: "This company takes an active interest in the prosperity of the association, and will cheerfully co-operate in all proper methods for the extension of its usefulness." Mr. H. B. Ledyard, general manager of the Michigan Centrai Railroad Company, writes: "I have taken a deep interest in the work of

the Young Men's Christian Association tendent of another, and other officials, among railroad men, and believe that, are serving on the railroad committee leaving out all other questions, it is a of the Young Men's Christian Associa

paying investment for a railroad com- tion, and it is hoped that at every

pany."

These are a few out of a great number of assurances from railroad men of the value of this organization. In Chicago, the president of one of the leading railroads, the general superin

railway centre there may soon be an advisory committee of the work. Such a committee is now forming in Boston. This work should interest every individual, because it touches every one who ever journeys by train.