tian colleges fifty years ago. In fact, many of the central western colleges are still soliciting aid from the Eastern states, for endowment and enlarge ment. The great Northwest, the last frontier, has been sadly neglected in Christian education. In the two great states of Montana and Wyoming, with nearly one million of population, there are only two weak struggling Christian colleges. Neither of them would be recognized in the East or Middle West as first class academies. The same territory in the eastern part of the United States has a hundred well equipped and splendidly endowed colleges. The same population in Ohio, Iowa, or Illinois could turn to a dozen fine colleges and universities for the higher education of their boys and girls. The East and Middle West are depending upon the great Northwest for the strong, virile blood needed in lealership. Twenty-five years ago when the East was helping institutions in the Middle West it did not understand to what extent it would make use of the products of those colleges in later years. What would the United States and the world have done without a John R. Mott, a General Pershing, and scores of other strong men of the present day? Yet without the aid of Eastern friends of these frontier colleges of the Middle West these men would never have had the opportunity of training. Hundreds of young men and women of the Northwest ask for a chance to have their place in the world's work of the next su generation. The greatest need of the period of reconstruction is Christian leadership. The Polytechnic's preme desire is to be able to train these young people of the Northwest.. Is there a cause more necessary or more worthy? The present year must witness the raising of at least $100,000 for the Polytechnic. After careful consideration it has been decided to make this a Memorial Fund for the boys of the Polytechnic who offered their all to their country. The fund is to be raised in their memory because it is the sort of a memorial which those who are living, and those who can not tell us of their wishes would certainly want. One hundred and twenty-six Polytechnic heroes offered themselves, and six of the boys who paid the price belonged to the self-help department while in school. They would not want showy monuments, or triumphal arches, or memorial gates built in their memory, but they would want the money used in a practical way to do the greatest good to the school that helped them to an education, and that will give the largest number of the young people of the region a similar chance of training for life. The board of trustees has released Director Lewis T. Eaton from his active duties in charge of the teaching forces of the Institute, and he will spend several months in the Middle West and East. He plans to visit the friends of the Polytechnic and to carry on a general campaign for the Memorial Fund. The CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL EXTENSION SOCIETY A Happy New Year to the friends of the Sunday School Extension Society. We have indeed many things for which to be thankful at this time. The year 1919 has been one of steady progress. The work has been carried on enthusiastically and with unabated zeal in all parts of our country. This is due partly to the very encouraging condition of our finances, which has made possible an enlargement of the work. We have now fifty-one on our field force. Everywhere emphasis has been given to improving the quality of the work, and therefore the things accomplished have been of paramount value. We again ask for the loyal support which has been ours in the past, that nothing may interfere with future development. In the training of the child lies the foundation for character, so the Sunday School, which proves so large a factor in this work, must produce the leaders from this generation. We must look ever to the future, and it is most helpful to find that Sunday School activities are becoming more and more largely recognized all the time. Calls are coming for greater service in literature both at home and abroad, and for material and spiritual help along all lines. There is a multitude already being ministered unto, but there are many yet to be reached. So we pray that it may indeed be a New Year in the growth and development of those things which make for Christian fellowship and love, for peace on earth and good will among men. South Dakota is to be congratulated on its fine progressive work of this past year. As recorded before in these columns, this state is in the lead with the greatest number of newly organized Sunday Schools. Several interesting reports have recently come in from South Dakota workers. One writes as follows: "Several times through the year it has been a pleasure to hear of those who may possibly give their lives to the ministry. On one day in a single parish three families expressed to me a desire that one of their sons might be led into the work of the pastor. One of our our University boys preached for us a few times during the summer and has about determined to study in the seminary after this year. Upon telling his story in a nearby farm church a few weeks ago a farmer was moved to come to me after service and offer himself for work. Since he had always felt drawn to the work and had proven very effective in Sunday School, Young People's Society, and community work, I arranged for him to begin as soon as he could settle his other affairs. Last Sunday he opened his new life by preaching three times, visiting two Sunday Schools, and driving his Ford thirty miles. At another time, I was in a home where a young son of the family was for some minutes busily engaged in calling up the members of the Sunday School orchestra to arrange the practice. Later he had it all to do over again, as the leader must have a change of hour. The beauty of it was he was getting just the training in that way that would make him not only more interested in that school but would help to teach him as well to be a Sunday School executive. Once I tried using the stereopticon in a county convention, and found it very easy indeed to get the people to talk right out in meeting. And sometimes we got some very real opposition to plans shown which were being used elsewhere satisfactorily. In the dark they seem to lose their fear of speaking up. It is worth trying further. A GLIMPSE OF LIFE ON THE FRONTIER N the heart of the frontier coun IN try, several miles from the nearest railroad, stands a small pioneer town. It is not unlike hundreds of other small towns of the Middle West, except perhaps that it is more progressive. At the beginning of its history it was over thirty miles from a railroad, and stood stood quite alone on the vast gray-blue prairie which stretches for miles and miles, until it seems to merge into the cold, clear sky. The little homes of this village do not nestle up close to one another in the neighborly fashion of our larger towns and cities, but stand out distinctly each from the other, separated oftentimes by a large tract of farming land. So sometimes one has to travel three or four miles without passing a human dwelling of any kind, and then when a house is reached, it is often just a small log cabin or even a sod hut which is made of logs and earth. The town's population is made up of many nationalities, each with its own language and form of religious. service. There were not enough people to support several churches, so an English speaking union Sunday School was started, in which all the children of the village were privileged to join. Those of our children who have always lived within easy reach of some church or Sunday School can have no conception of the treat these services were and are to those little children of the frontier, even though they were held, not in a beautiful building erected especially for the purpose, but in the little log schoolhouse-just such a school as we have always imagined that Abraham Lincoln trudged to and from when he was a lad out in the backwoods of Kentucky. Oftentimes these mission Sunday School services are held in a sod hut with a dirt floor. We all realize, I think, that after all it is the spirit that counts, and if the spirit is there it doesn't matter so very much where a service of worship and prayer is held, but nevertheless we like to think of communing with the Father in a house which is consecrated to Him, and kept sacred to his worship alone. You can just imagine the eager questioning of the children when the work was started. "Oh, are we to have a Sunday School?” “And will it meet every week, and will we have Sunday School papers with stories and pictures in them?" The young people for miles around came to this little Sunday School, and as time went on it grew and grew, and finally became Congregational in its thought and ways, the older people feeling that in Congregationalism there was the true spirit of America which they had not found before in their religious life the spirit which our Pilgrim fathers brought with them from across the seas three hundred years ago, and for which they self. were ready to sacrifice even life it Under competent leadership, more and more children were gathered together from all the country side, and at the same time the parents became interested until they began to plan for a community church. About that time, however, there was a general failure of crops, and then the great world war put a temporary end to their plans. But the good people of the community are still working and praying for their church which must surely come to them before long. It is a worthy cause, and it is for just such communities that our missionaries are devoting their lives. May the New Year speed our work to greater victories! T CONTRIBUTIONS FOR NEW SCHOOLS HROUGHOUT the past year we have received many special contributions for organizing for organizing and maintaining new schools in our mission field. This is a most interesting form of giving, and those aiding are thereby enabled to keep in touch with their adopted school and watch its development and progress. We are telling here the story of one of these little schools of the Middle West which has recently been assigned to a progressive set of young people here in the East. The school The school is in the little village of Strool. Strool is an inland village in the northwest part of South Dakota. The nearest station is that of Hettinger, forty-five miles to the north. It is connected up to the place with a stage which runs daily, and it takes only three hours for passengers to go from Hettinger to Strool. There is also a truck line, running two trucks nearly every day, draying back and forth. Strool is in the heart of the ranching country. The farmers have come and proved up on much of the land, but a great deal of it has gone back to pasture, and one sees large herds of cattle, horses and sheep wherever one goes. The new state highway is being built near the town, which will add not a little to its importance, being next to that of building a railroad through it. When on a trip to Thrall Academy, while our missionary was stopping at the hotel in Strool, a couple of ladies, one the landlady, asked him why he did not start a Sunday School in Strool. He said that he understood that there was other work in the town, but was told that there was none, and that the children were running wild and knew nothing about Jesus Christ. And the landlady he knew was a Catholic. By the assistance of this lady he was finally able to organize that Sunday School. It was organized with about twenty-five members, and not a little interest, and with the postmistress as superintendent. THE CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OF MINISTERIAL RELIEF A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 1919 CHRISTMAS FUND T HE methods used for securing the Christmas Fund for 1919, consisted in sending about 3,000 letters to pastors suggesting pastors suggesting four plans by which a gift might be secured without greatly increasing the pastor's or the church's burden. These were as follows: (a) "Speak of it from the pulpit and ask for voluntary gifts to be made through you or your Treasurer of Benevolences. (b) Devote a Prayer Meeting to the subject of "Our aged ministers-what they did for us and what we are doing for them," or some other subject, and take a special offering for the Christmas Fund. (c) Ask your Young People's Society or Sunday School, or both, to make an appropriation. (d) Would your Board of Deacons be pleased to vote a special gift from their funds, so often gathered for the poor of the church? Let the term "the church" include the old preachers, poor in this world's goods, but rich toward God. We also sent out about 10,000 general letters of appeal to individuals. We wrote a number of very personal letters. We used the Ministerial Relief pages in THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY and three half pages, and three full page illustrated advertisements in six issues of The Congregationalist, The appeal was strengthened by cordial editorial comments in The Congregationalist. All of these methods were well worth while and bore rewarding fruit. Their aim was to be informing, to tell the story to convince the Congregational people that the weary marchers on the last lap of "the long, long trail" needed and deserved their help and good cheer. We knew that when they realized this fact they would quickly and gladly extend the helping hand. And they have. In behalf of the several hundred homes into which the Christmas checks brought light, warmth and gladness, we extend hearty thanks to the pastors and churches, the Young People's Societies, the Sunday Schools, the Bible classes, the women's organizations and the hundreds of individuals who made this beautiful ministry possible. We have never had anything more upon our heart, for we knew the need. Every gift was like the pure manna which falling from heaven would nourish and strengthen the wayworn pilgrims passing through the wilderness of need toward the Promised Land. We sometimes tell the old people that we have more joy in sending them the Christmas checks than they have in receiving them. As a rule they disagree with us. the Anyway, it is a blessed ministry. It is Christlike. It must please the Angels in Heaven. It makes the donors' Christmas all the sweeter. It gives the cup of cold water to weary traveler. It helps to reward lives well spent. It smooths the pathway toward the setting sun. It is as a beacon light for those who trudge merrily on through the thickening' shadows. |