Our lesser work at home among the Indians and Chinese will demand the same moderate but constant share of our attention as before. Our connection with the six Indian Agencies, through the Interior Department, is not a matter of expense, but mainly of time and care. If we shall be relieved from that, our missionary work will still remain and may be enlarged. And though the immigration of Chinamen has been checked to some degree, and their interest in learning English has been abated by the abuse they have received, the work has been, and is yet, too fruitful of good to be given up. Our African mission has passed through one year under its new organization, with apparent prosperity and success. We shall need to strengthen its forces before long. We shall want both the men and the means. There is work enough in our outlook and encouragement to do it. We would remind our readers as well as ourselves, that the year which is most full of sacrifice and service for the Master, is most sure of all to be _A Happy New Year_. * * * * * OUR APPEAL FOR 1879. Our friends are thoroughly informed of the fact that our debt of late has been rapidly diminishing. We are sorry to say that _the same thing is true of our income_. That, too, has been growing less. We learn that this is true, also, of our sister societies. They, also, have noticed a falling off in their revenues. We do not like to make much ado over our troubles; but we have been very frank in acknowledging our mercies, and we owe it to the work, and to those who sustain it, to tell them our perplexities as well. Our receipts for the last two months have been very inadequate for the work we have in hand. What does this mean to us with this outlook for 1879? Does it signify withdrawal from fields already under cultivation? Already the Executive Committee have had under serious advisement two cases, in which it was necessary either to stop fruitful work at important points or spend a little more money. Retrenchment is easier to talk of than to accomplish. It costs as much sometimes to stop as to go on. A temporary suspension is sometimes more expensive than continuous work. Our teachers are engaged and our buildings are prepared for the year. Shall we stop the whole machinery of a great factory to save the price of the gas which lights it? That would be ruinous economy indeed. But we do not seriously believe that the friends of the three most needy races on our continent have lost heart, or hope, or means, to carry out the generous plans they have devised. These last months of 1878 have been trying alike to them and to us. Our plea is only this, that, with the new year (if the debt be not by that time altogether a thing of the past), there may be a fresh and final attack upon that enemy of our peace; and more even than this, that there may be a fuller and a steadier flow of the Lord’s money into our treasury for the wants of the work of 1879.