It is idle, however, to urge as a reason for increasing the salaries of Chinese ministers that a qualified Asiatic can earn more in commercial life than in the ministry. Such arguments often come to mission boards. But religious work cannot compete with business in financial inducements either at home or abroad. It is notorious that in America, ministers and church workers generally do not receive the compensation which they could command in secular employments or professions. The qualities that bring success in the ministry are, as a rule, far more liberally remunerated in secular life. The preacher who can command $6,000 or $8,000 in the pulpit could probably command three or four times that amount in the law or in business. Men who are as eminent in other professions and in the commercial world as the most eminent clergymen are in the ministry usually have incomes ranging from $20,000 to $100,000 a year and have no ``dead line'' of age either. As for others, the Rev. Dr. B. L. Agnew, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Ministerial Relief, is authority for the statement that the average salary of Presbyterian ministers is $700 and that for all denominations it does not equal the wages of the average mechanic. A missionary writes:--``Practically all our native pastors are underpaid.'' The same thing might be said of all the home missionaries and of most of the pastors of non-missionary churches at home, one-third of whom receive only $500 or less. The churches of America cannot, or at any rate will not, do for the native ministers of Asia what they are not doing for their own ministers. The world over, the rewards of Christ's service are not financial. Those who seek that service must be content with modest support, sometimes even with poverty. This is not a reason for the home churches to be content with their present scale of missionary giving, nor does it mean that mission boards are disposed to refuse requests for appropriations. The boards are straining every nerve to secure a more generous support and they will gladly send all they can to the missions on the field. But it is a reason for impressing more strongly upon the young men in the churches of Asia that they should consecrate themselves to the Master's service from a higher motive than financial support and that while the boards will continue to give all the assistance that is in their power, yet that the permanent dependence of the ministers of China must be in increasing measure upon the Christians of China and not upon the Christians of America. Hundreds of native pastors are already realizing this and are manifesting a self-sacrificing courage and devotion that are beyond all praise. Said Mr. Fitch of Ningpo to a Chinese youth of fine education and exceptional ability:--``Suppose a business man should offer you $100.00 a month and at the same time you had the way opened to you to study for the ministry, and after entering it, to get