Many of the Czechs, as well as the Germans, adopted the Old Catholic faith in its early days because the Old Catholics permit the marriage of the clergy and hold services in Czech or German instead of in Latin. The conversion of German Catholics to Protestantism began when the Taafe Government granted the first concessions to the Czechs, especially when liberty of conscience in the schools was restricted in 1889. The manifestation was only sporadic at that time, but in 1899 it spread throughout the province, and whole villages went over to Protestantism. The action of the Government in canceling a grant of the anti-Semitic municipal council of Vienna of funds for the erection of a Catholic church, as well as the movement for emancipation from Rome, gave occasion for a conference of Catholic bishops at Vienna early in April, in which some of the lay Clerical leaders were permitted to take part. The highest administrative authority had, to the consternation of the Ultramontanes, declared grants of municipal funds for religious purposes to be illegal. The bishops at the conference requested the Government to transfer to the episcopacy the disposal of ecclesiastical funds. They also appealed to the Minister of Education to curb the school-teachers, who were alleged to have assumed an attitude of hostility toward the Roman Catholic Church. The Clericals bitterly reproached the Protestants for admitting as proselytes such converts as Herr Wolf, one of the Pan-Germanic leaders, and others of that party, whose ostentatious change of faith was only a demonstration in favor of the disruption of the empire. The Protestant movement extended even to Goritz, where numerous conversions took place among the Italian and Slovene population of the town. Roman Catholic Ruthenian students in Bukowina began to change their religion, in order to show their anti-Polish sentiments and leanings toward Russia, becoming members of the Greek Church.

In Hungary also, because the archbishop refused to employ the old Slav liturgy and many of the clergy lent themselves to the Magyarizing purposes of the Government, many Croatian Roman Catholics abandoned their traditional faith to join the Greek Orthodox community. The episcopacy, warned by the Protestant movement, became more chary in granting favors to the Czechs in the German provinces. There had been conversions even in Vienna, and when the Czechs desired to have services performed by their own priests for their countrymen in the capital the request was refused. The institution of a seminary for German priests in Silesia evoked clamorous remonstrances from both the Czechs and the Poles, although it is a standing grievance of the German Catholics that there are too few priests of their nationality. In Galicia, where the clergy assail the Social Democrats with extreme bitterness and accuse the teachers in the state schools of propagating irreligion, a Catholic congress at Lemberg was mobbed on May 14, necessitating the intervention of the military. The economic condition of Austrian Poland has long been such as to give cause for popular discontent, and it can be largely traced to negligence and nepotism in the semiautonomous provincial administration, while the slackness of the educational laws has retarded the intellectual progress of the people and the indifference of the aristocracy to their welfare has turned them into sullen revolutionists. The peasant revolt toward the end of 1898, while ostensibly directed against the Jews, was in reality a protest against the permanent poverty of

the agricultural population. The landowners themselves are deeply in debt. In the early part of 1899 the Galician savings bank at Lemberg was found to be insolvent, owing to gross mismanagement, and the Diet had to make good the deficit out of the public funds to prevent a catastrophe. The German Liberal Opposition withdrew from the Diet of Lower Austria, leaving the Anti-Semitic Clerical majority in full possession. The exasperation of the socialistic working classes at the reactionary policy of the Government and the continuance of government under the emergency paragraph of the Constitu tion led them into noisy demonstrations and violent conflicts with the police at variance with their usual respect for order. With the clergy and the feudal nobility in control of the Government and absolutism in force, it seemed to them as though the times of Metternich were come again. A meeting of the Social Democratic party at Gratz to protest against a bill restricting municipal suffrage enacted by the Clerical AntiSemitic majority of the Lower Austrian Diet having been broken up by the authorities on July 2, the audience mobbed the commissary of police and paraded noisily through the streets in defiance of the gendarmes who attempted to stop them. The Anti-Semitic burgomaster of Vienna was frequently threatened with violence, and conflicts occurred almost daily between the Socialists and the Anti-Semites. A violent conflict between Germans and Czechs took place in August at Cilli, Styria, where the Slovenes had arranged a Slav festival of fraternization, but the Germans drove out the Czechs who came to attend it. After a new Ausgleich with Hungary was concluded and promulgated in virtue of paragraph 14 and a heavy additional duty was laid on sugar the popular agitation against the Government became more incontrollable in spite of press confiscations and the suppression of public meetings. The Socialists organized demonstrations in Vienna, Gratz, and other towns, in which cries for a republic were heard. The raising of the sugar duty from 12 to 20 kreutzers a kilogramme and the prohibition of the sale of saccharine, a substitute much used by the poor, roused discontent even among the Czech working people. The Germans and Liberals encouraged and supported the Socialist demonstrations, and even the Anti-Semites echoed the outcry against this oppressive tax. In some of the manufacturing centers women took part in the street demonstrations, an unwonted spectacle in Austria. Hundreds of newspapers were suppressed because they denounced the imposition of the sugar duty without the sanction of Parliament as unconstitutional. Municipal councils and chambers of commerce gave their approbation to the agitation against the Government. In Salzburg blood was shed in conflicts between the populace and the military, which lasted sev eral days. Risings occurred in Carinthia at Klagenfurt. In northern Bohemia many Germans were wounded, and some were killed in riots at Graslitz and Asch. On Sept. 23 the ministers resolved to resign in a body.

Hungary. The Hungarian Parliament consists of a House of Magnates, in which 18 archdukes, 228 nobles, 44 archbishops, bishops, and other prelates of the Roman and Greek churches, 12 representatives of the Protestant communities, 79 life members appointed by the King or chosen by the house, 17 official members, and 3 delegates of Croatia-Slavonia, and the House of Representatives, composed of 453 members, 413 elected in Hungarian and Transylvanian towns

and rural constituencies and 40 delegates of Croatia-Slavonia. All male citizens of the age of twenty or upward who pay a certain low tax on house property, land, or income, or who have an educational qualification, are entitled to vote, the number of electors being about 1 in 18 of population.

The Cabinet of Ministers, constituted Jan. 15, 1898, was composed as follows: President of the Council and Minister ad latus, or near the King's person, ad interim, Baron Desiderius Banffy; Minister of Finance, Dr. Ladislas de Lukacs; Minister of National Defense, Baron Geza Fejervary; Minister of the Interior, Desiderius de Perczel; Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Dr. Julius de Wlassics; Minister of Justice, Dr. Alexander Erdely; Minister of Industry and Commerce, Baron Ernest de Daniel; Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Ignatius de Daranyi; Minister for Croatia-Slavonia, Emerich de Josipovich.

Area and Population.-The Hungarian dominions, inclusive of Croatia and Slavonia, have an area of 125,039 square miles, with a population of 17,463,791 at the census of 1890. The number of marriages in 1897 was 151,176; of births, 765,436; of deaths, 529,020; excess of births, 219,077. About 51 per cent. of the population are Roman Catholic, 15 per cent. Greek Oriental, 10 per cent. Greek Catholic, 13 per cent. Calvinist, 7 per cent. Lutheran, and 4 per cent. Hebrew. Buda-Pesth had 617,856 inhabitants in the beginning of 1897.

Finances. The revenue of the Government in 1897 was 556,964,000 florins, of which 511,082,000 florins were ordinary and 45,882,000 florins extraordinary receipts. The ordinary expenditure was 455,492,000 florins; transitory expenditure, 13,228,000 florins; investments, 70,019,000 florins; extraordinary expenditure, 9,392,000 florins; total, 548,131,000 florins. The total revenue for 1898 was estimated to be 498,775,291 florins, and the total expenditure 498,726,570 florins. The budget estimates for 1899 made the ordinary revenue 482,464,037 florins and the extraordinary revenue 20,839,566 florins; total, 503,303,603 florins. Of the ordinary revenue 1,502,241 florins come from the public-debt account, 1,000 florins from the Ministry ad latus, 3,641,888 florins from the Ministry of the Interior, 329,717,648 florins from the Ministry of Finance, 126,342,382 florins from the Ministry of Commerce, 18,091,211 florins from the Ministry of Agriculture, 1,820,667 florins from the Ministry of Instruction and Worship, 991,956 florins from the Ministry of Justice, and 355,044 florins from the Ministry of National Defense. The total ordinary expenditure for 1899 was estimated at 460,005,399 florins, transitory expenditure at 15,869,462 florins, investments at 27,389,585 florins; total, 503,264,446 florins. Of the ordinary expenditure 4,650,000 florins were required for the civil list, 78,307 florins for the Cabinet chancery, 1,783,966 florins for the Legislature, 28,318,076 for the matricular contribution to common expenses of the empire, 23,203 florins for the common pension fund, 9,044,927 florins for Hungarian pensions, 128,913,726 florins for the national debt, 13,671,340 florins for debts of guaranteed railroads acquired by the state, 293,028 florins for guaranteed railroad interest, 2,947,313 florins for other debts, 8,291,790 florins for the administration of Croatia, 153,135 florins for the Accountant General's office, 260,517 florins for the law courts, 482,815 florins for the Minister Presidency, 74,236 florins for the Ministry ad latus, 44,530 florins for the Ministry for Croatia,

19,600,367 florins for the Ministry of the Interior, 88,487,768 florins for the Ministry of Finance, 86,860,961 florins for the Ministry of Commerce, 19,769,585 florins for the Ministry of Agriculture, 13,111,264 florins for the Ministry of Public Instruction and Public Worship, 16,694,141 florins for the Ministry of Justice, and 16,450,404 florins for the Ministry of National Defense.

The consolidated debt of Hungary at the end of 1897 was 1,089,033,000 florins; annuities, 1,058,740,000 florins; treasury bonds, 14,891,000 florins; debts of the ministries, 65,214,000 florins; arrears unpaid, 250,067,000 florins; total indebtedness, 2,477,945,000 florins.

Cabinet Crisis.-The Clerical and Conservative Opposition in the Hungarian Parliament, supported by the dissident Liberals, prevented the transaction of any legislative business in the early part of 1899 by means of obstructive tactics with the object of forcing Baron Banffy to retire, as Dr. Wekerle, the preceding Prime Minister, had been compelled to lay down his office by machinations of the same parties. The present deadlock was not only demoralizing in a political sense and a blot on the fair fame of Hungary as one of the model parliamentary states of Europe, but it had even an injurious effect on the hitherto flourishing Hungarian trade and industry. The dissenting Liberals, under the lead of M. Szilagyi and Count Julius Andrassy, had placed themselves in opposition to the Government on account of the ler Tisza, an enactment of Parliament giving the Government some degree of arbitrary authority in the event of the breakdown of parliamentary government, but not to the extent of the emergency paragraph of the Austrian Constitution. The Clericals desired the repeal of the civil-marriage act and other religious legislation of recent Liberal Cabinets, and objected to Baron Banffy as a Protestant and the foremost exponent of the policy of which such legislation was the outgrowth. Both they and the Liberal seceders accused the Premier of having connived at electoral corruption in the last elections. A motion was presented in the Chamber of Magnates, where the Conservatives have a majority, to solicit the exercise of the royal prerogative in putting an end to the extra-constitutional condition prevailing, but even the bishops voted against such an attempt to exert pressure on the Crown. Some of the chief men in the Clerical Conservative party, as well as the dissident Liberals, were disposed to abandon the policy of obstruction and come to terms with the Liberals in order to allow useful laws to be made on an Ausgleich settled with Austria, demanding only that Baron Banffy should withdraw from the ministry. Negotiations were begun in January, and were continued until the various sections of the Opposition pledged themselves not to obstruct the passage of certain urgent measures in the ministerial programme. On Feb. 23 Koloman Szell, an ex-minister, who had stood aloof from recent political conflicts until he was called to the aid of Baron Banffy to act as mediator in effecting a compromise with the Opposition, and had, as his chosen successor, taken part in the negotiations with the Austrian Government over the Ausgleich, took his place at the head of the Cabinet. The new ministry was constituted as follows: President of the Council and Minister of the Interior, Koloman Szell; Minister of Finance, Dr. Ladislas de Lukacs; Minister of National Defense, Baron Geza Fejervary; Minister of Education and Worship, Dr. Julius de

Wlassics; Minister of Justice, Dr. A. Plosz; Minister of Commerce, Dr. von Hegedus; Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Ignatius de Daranyi; Minister for Croatia and Slavonia, Emerich de Josipovich. The Liberal party was strengthened by the accession of a part of the Nationalists, a section of the Opposition, which, without aiming at complete severance from Austria, as do the Kossuthites, would have the bond little more than a personal union. Their adhesion was the sign of a recession from the rigid secularist principles of the Tisza group, almost the last of whose representatives the Clericals, with whom the Nationalists had voted on the civil-marriage question, had now succeeded in driving out of the Cabinet. However, in a bill for the more effectual repression of electoral corruption a paragraph was inserted for the purpose of preventing the clergy from exercising illegitimate influence upon voters. Against this clause, in accordance with which the delivery of electoral addresses from the pulpit or the exhibition of the cross or other religious emblems at electoral meetings or polling places is sufficient to render an election invalid, the Ultramontane Clericals, under the lead of the Abbot Molnar, made a vigorous fight.

The Navigation of the Danube.-The Hungarian Government decided to impose a toll on the tonnage passing through the Iron Gates of the Danube. The Austrian and German merchants objected to the levying of such a toll, predicting that it would compel the grain trade to take the sea route. The Austrian Government

BAPTISTS. The statistical tables of the Baptist churches in the United States, published in the American Baptist Yearbook for 1899, give the following numbers: Of associations, 1,633; of churches, 42,893; of ordained ministers, 28,409; of church members, 4,141,995; of Sunday schools, 24,619, with 183,338 officers and teachers and 1,726,693 pupils; of meeting houses, 18,802, with seating capacity for 2,640,066 persons; of parsonages, 1,571; increase by baptism during the year, 203.296; increase by experience and restoration, 46,941. Amount of contributions (so far as reported): For church expenses, $9,160,319; for Sunday-school expenses, $524,830; for State missions, $299,536; for home missions, $325,295; for foreign missions, $446,614; for Bible and publication work, $48,308; for education, $109,027; miscellaneous contributions, $1,021,508; total amount of contributions, $11,927,851. Value of church property, $83,942,243.

The 7 theological institutions returned 71 instructors and 1,100 students: 92 universities and colleges, 1,565 instructors and 23,601 students; 80 academies, seminaries, and institutes, 604 in structors and 10,433 students. In all these institutions 2,453 persons were studying for the ministry. Incomplete reports and estimates gave the theological seminaries $2,022,662 of property, $2,360,257 of endowment funds, and 135,883 volumes in their libraries; the universities and colleges $22,728,760 of property, $14,271,818 of endowments, and 873,436 volumes in libraries; and the academies, seminaries, and institutes, $3,664,972 of property, $1,265,158 of endowments, and 85,110 volumes in libraries.

The Yearbook gives lists of 34 Baptist charitable institutions having $1,625,121 of property, and 127 weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and

and the other riparian states of foreign governments raised a protest, in consequence of which the collection of the toll, which was to begin on May 1, was postponed, and a further investigation was promised before a final decision should be taken. The decision to confirm the tariff was announced in July, and it went into force on Sept. 1, together with regulations for the passage of vessels through the Iron Gates. The tariff is 10 kreutzers per registered ton, in addition to 9 kreutzers for every 100 kilogrammes of cargo.

Bosnia and Herzegovina.-Under a clause of the Treaty of Berlin, signed July 13, 1878, the Austro-Hungarian Government occupied the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the sanjak of Novi-Bazar, and took over the civil administration of the two provinces, which is conducted in the name of the Emperor-King by the provincial government, divided into the departments of finance, internal affairs, and justice, under the direction of the Bosnian bureau of the imperial Minister of Finance. The population of the provinces was 1,568,092 in 1895, comprising 828,190 males and 739,902 females. In religion 673,246 are Orthodox Oriental, 548,632 Mohammedan, 334,142 Roman Catholic, 8,213 Jewish, 3,596 Evangelical, and 263 of various faiths. Except the Arnauts of the south and gypsies scattered through the country, the people are of the Servian race. The chief crop is tobacco, of which the Government has the monopoly. Dried prunes, beet sugar, and cattle are also exported. There are 431 miles of railroad.

special periodicals, including some in the German and Scandinavian languages.

The table of Baptists in the World gives for North America (including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies) 44,148 churches, 29,180 ordained ministers, 4,285,093 members, and 208.976 baptisms during the year; for Europe (including Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Roumania and Bulgaria, Russia and Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), 4,020 churches, 3,209 ordained ministers, 478,268 members, and 23,141 baptisms; for Asia (including Ceylon, China, India, Assam and Burmah, Japan, and Palestine), 1,602 churches, 852 ordained ministers, 119,745 members, and 8,178 baptisms; for Africa (including Central Africa and the Congo, South Africa, West Africa, and St. Helena and Cape Verde), 111 churches, 129 ordained ministers, 6,700 members, and 810 baptisms; and for Australasia, 236 churches, 169 ordained ministers, 19,261 members, and 1,252 baptisms; total for the world, 50,143 churches, 33,553 ordained ministers, 4,910,456 members, and 242,646 baptisms during the year, showing an increase over 1898 of 921 churches, 1,501 ministers, 111,332 members, and 6,312 baptisms.

Publication Society. The seventy-fifth annual meeting of the American Baptist Publication Society was held at San Francisco, Cal., May 25 and 26. The annual report showed that the aggregate of sales for the year had been $643,466, being a decrease of $26,682 from the previous year. In the missionary department the receipts from invested funds and contributions by churches and individuals had been $121,443. A deficit of $8,464 existing at the beginning of the year had

been met from the proceeds of the gift of Mrs. Mercy M. Gray, deceased; but the income of the department had not been equal to its expenses, and another deficit of $3,114 had been incurred. A review of the seventy-five years' work of the society showed that 2,788 books, pamphlets, periodical tracts, etc., had been issued, and that the total amount received by the department from the beginning had been $14,353,390. The profits accruing from publications had been applied in two directions to the creation of a reserve or sinking fund for provision against contingencies, and to the missionary department, in behalf of whose work $250,000 had been spent. Thirtyseven hundred and ninety agents, colporteurs, Sunday-school missionaries, and chapel-car workers had been engaged in the service of the society, through whose instrumentality 11,215 Sunday schools had been organized, 1,300 churches constituted, and 27,231 persons baptized. Resolutions were passed by the meeting expressing gratification at the complete agreement between this and the Home Mission Society concerning the prosecution of their respective works; rejoicing at the evidences of blessing upon the chapel-car work, urging a vigorous prosecution of the Bible work, and expressing sympathy "with all lovers of law, order, and decency" in efforts to prevent the seating of Brigham H. Roberts as member of the national House of Representatives from Utah.

Education Society. The eleventh annual meeting of the American Baptist Education Society was held at San Francisco, Cal., May 24 and 25. It was represented in the report that there had been during the year a revival of activity for the endowment and better equipment of the higher institutions of learning. Grants had been made to 6 institutions, aggregating $157,000, conditioned on their securing $415,800 additional. Acadia University, Nova Scotia, had completed its effort to secure $60,000 as a condition of the society's grant of $15,000 in the previous year. On the second day of the meeting of the society a conference was held on the establishment of a theological seminary and other educational institutions in the Pacific States. An educational policy was approved, contemplating a united effort of the whole Pacific coast for the establishment of one theological seminary, two colleges one on the north coast and one in Californiafor each of which an endowment of at least $100,000 is aimed at. The American Baptist Education Society was invited to consider a plan of co-operation under which it should for a definite term of years give one dollar for every dollar raised by an institution approved by the Pacific Coast Convention to go toward constituting an irreducible endowment; the money, if the society prefers, to be held by it as a trust until the school has an endowment fund of $100,000 if a college, or of $50,000 if an academy.

Home Mission Society. The sixty-seventh annual meeting of the American Baptist Home Mission Society was held in San Francisco, Cal., May 30 to June 1. The annual report showed that the debt of about $14,000, with which the society had begun its fiscal year, April 1, 1898, had been paid, and there was now a surplus in the treasury of $40,890, of which $35,000 had been set aside as an emergency fund. The total receipts for the year had been $461.802; the expenditures had been $415,255. One thousand and ninety-two missionaries and teachers had been employed in whole or in part by the society-viz., 43 in the New England States, 84 in the Middle and Central States, 201 in the Southern States, 722 in the

Western States and Territories, 17 in Canada, 19 in Mexico, 2 in Alaska, 2 in Cuba, and 2 in Puerto Rico. Of the whole number, 300 missionaries and 12 teachers had been employed among the foreign population; 55 missionaries and 190 teachers among the colored people; 22 missionaries and 27 teachers among the Indians; 13 missionaries and 8 teachers among the Mexicans; 2 teachers among the Mormons; and 504 missionaries among Americans. The society aided in the maintenance of 31 schools established for the colored people, Indians, and Mexicans. The missionaries returned a total church membership of 52,755, 57 churches organized during the year, 1,151 Sunday schools under their care, with an aggregate attendance of 72,968 and $87,782 of contributions.

A conference had been held in Washington, Nov. 23, 1898, between representatives of this society and those of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, respecting the relations of the two bodies in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and concerning the adjustment of sectional divisions in Oklahoma and the Indian Territory. A resolution was passed expressing the sense of the conference that there should be harmony among the Baptist workers in the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, and recommending that the secretaries of the Home Mission Board and of the Home Mission Society visit those Territories and seek a basis for such harmony, with authority to associate with themselves brethren from neighboring States as advisers. A correspond*ence was afterward had with the corresponding secretary of the Southern Home Mission Board. Doubts were expressed by him as to the value of the visit to the Territories, and he intimated that the only solution of the question was for the Home Mission Society to withdraw its mission force from the region, and that New Mexico and Arizona should be surrendered to the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Reply was made that the Home Mission Society, after fifty years' work in that region and the expenditure of half a million dollars, or about ten times the expenditure of the Southern Home Mission Board, was not prepared to consent to such an arrangement, and a plan of cooperation between the two organizations in their work in those Territories was submitted for consideration. Negotiations were terminated by the reply of the corresponding secretary of the Southern Home Mission Board that further correspondence on the subject was undesirable.

Co-operative work had been instituted with the Baptist City Mission of Chicago and with the Baptists of Detroit, Mich., with promise of excellent results; and conferences had been held with the Baptists of Buffalo, St. Louis, New York, and Brooklyn, in which definite conclusions had not yet been reached.

Missionary Union.-The eighty-fifth annual meeting of the American Baptist Missionary Union was held at San Francisco, Cal., May 29 and 30. The total receipts for the year had been $520,995, of which sum $103,389 had been contributed through the four Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Societies, and $3.014 through the conference of German Baptist churches. The financial outcome, the Executive Committee represented in its report, had again proved disappointing, although in no previous year had more strenuous efforts been put forth to increase the income of the society. The books, when they were closed, March 31, showed a deficit of $54,384. The year's work had been paid for, indeed, and the debt of the year 1897-'98 had been diminished by $14,000;

but this amount of income could not be regarded as a satisfactory basis for the maintenance of the work on the scale now existing. The missions were suffering at every point, having for six years been held back from the normal advance. Only 13 new missionaries had been commissioned during the year, and the whole number now in service was less by 20 than it was four years ago. In regard to pushing missions into new fields, such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands, an agreement had been made with the various foreign mission boards of the United States to proceed with due regard to the principles of comity. As to relations with sister Baptist societies, it had been early deemed important that a division of territory should be agreed upon. Accordingly, a joint committee of the Missionary Union and the American Baptist Home Mission Society had met in the fall of 1888, at New Haven, Conn., and agreed that the West Indies should be considered the legitimate field for home mission work, and the Philippine Islands and other fields contiguous to the Asiatic missions a legitimate field for foreign mission work. Among the noteworthy events of the year in existing missions were the addition of an Anglo-vernacular department to the Burman and Karen departments of the theological seminary at Insein and the opening of a new station among the savage people of the North Chin hills in connection with the Burman mission; continued numerous accessions to the churches in China; the prosecution of missionary work among the aborigines of Formosa by a native society recently organized at Sendai, Japan; and the acquisition of property at Sumba, on the Congo, from the Advent Missionary Society, which had retired from the region; while the station at Bolengi, on the Congo, had, in the reorganization of the mission, been transferred to the Foreign Christian Missionary Society.

Women's Societies.-The Women's Baptist Home Mission Society held its annual meeting at San Francisco, Cal., May 24. The annual report showed that 144 missionaries had been employed during the whole or a part of the year at 90 stations in the United States and 2 states of Mexico. The Baptist Missionary Training School had enrolled during the school year 49 students, of whom 14 were in the senior or graduating division. Work had been successfully prosecuted in the missionary training departments for colored workers in connection with Shaw University in North Carolina and Bishop College in Texas.

The twenty-first annual meeting of the Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society (Boston) was held in Portland, Me., May 4. The receipts for the general work had been $36,663, and the expenditures $35,733. For Alaska the receipts had been $3,675, and the expenses $4,752, the deficiency being supplied out of the general treasury.

The thirty-ninth annual meeting of the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society was held at Manchester, N. H., April 18 and 19. The treasurer reported that the total receipts of the society had been $78,917, and the expenditures $92,545. The net deficit, after supplying $3,300 of the total deficit from the contingent fund, was $10,328. The society had employed 69 missionaries in the foreign field, and had 4 young women under appointment. It sustained 390 schools, with 13.328 pupils, employed 169 Bible women, and returned 706 baptisms during the year. The report spoke of aid given to churches in Paris, France; a few stations in Burmah occupied only by women, and aggressive work carried on in all

the stations of that country; of hospital and dispensary work at Nellore and Nalgonda, India, and Banza Manteka, Africa; and of various features in the schools in India and Burmah. Kindergartens had been added to a number of mis

sion stations.

The Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West at its annual meeting in 1898 returned its total receipts for the year as having been $58,607. The report of the Home for Missionaries' Children showed receipts amounting to $2,015, and expenditures to $1,307. The society had 39 missionaries in Burmah, Assam, India, China, and Japan; 43 mission schools, with 113 teachers and 1,975 pupils; 66 Bible women; and 41 persons under training, with 264 baptisms reported during the year.

Young People's Union. The ninth annual convention of the Young People's Baptist Union of America was held at Richmond, Va., July 12 to 16. Mr. John H. Chapman presided. The report of the Board of Managers represented the society as being in the third stage of its existence the periods of the unbounded enthusiasm of a new organization and of the reaction from it having passed and the work being now to be carried on by those who are earnest and of set purpose. The past year had brought advance in some directions. The educational work was proving to be the strength of the movement. The number of examination papers in the Christian Culture Course (15,000) was larger than ever before, the increase having been mostly among the juniors, while the number of papers from seniors had fallen off. An inquiry into the subject had shown that only a limited proportion-about 180 out of 500 who pursued the course with considerable regularity and perseverance-were represented in the examination papers. A change was announced in the Bible Readers' Course," by which in the daily Bible readings the accompanying brief comments on the several books will be replaced by a careful and comprehensive analysis of the book read and a summary of its essential religious teachings. The union was laboring under financial difficulties, for, while it was meeting its expenses, it could only make slow progress in paying its debts. The receipts and expenditures for the year were balanced at $66,916.

66

Southern Baptist Convention.-A statistical table published in connection with the reports of the Southern Baptist Convention showed that there were in the region contributing to the societies of that body 18,701 churches, with 1,644,363 members; and that their contributions amounted to $109,267, or $14,982 less than in the previous year.

The forty-fourth meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was held at Louisville, Ky., beginning May 12. Judge Jonathan Haralson, of Alabama, who had presided over the deliberations of the convention for ten years, declining a re-election, the Hon. William J. Northen, exGovernor of Georgia, was chosen president. The Foreign Mission Board reported that a larger number of converts had been baptized during the past than in any previous year in its history. The total amount of contributions had been $109,267, against $124,249 in 1897-'98. All obligations had been met, and the board was out of debt. Fourteen new missionaries had been sent out, 13 missionaries had returned to their fields after visits to this country, 6 were now at home, and 9 had retired from service. The detailed reports from the fields represented 3 missions in China, where a Chinese Baptist Publication Soci