The history of these missions is yet to be made. None of them can be said to be fully established yet. Buildings are to be erected, languages are to be learned, the country is to be explored, and the ways of the people are to be studied, before much can be done in declaring the Gospel. The missions are well situated. The country around them is thickly peopled, and great opportunities are opening to them. Much good has already been done in checking the slave trade, in opening lines of legitimate commercial traffic, and in inducing the natives to cultivate the soil. Other missions will be established in due time. The English Baptists are prospecting for a new mission up the Congo, and Lake Bangweolo, west of Lake Nyassa, and south of Lake Tanganyika, called by Livingstone a paradise, will become the centre of another great mission. Thus from the South, the East and the West, Christian missions are approaching the heart of Africa. Before many years we may hope to see a chain of stations across the continent, and another from Lake Ngami to the equator. The tribes touch each other like drops of water, and when one of them is moved by the Gospel, those which surround it will be agitated. Thus will Christianity take possession of Africa. * * * * * HOW THE COLLEGE DIRECTS AND TRANSMUTES NATURAL FORCES. Address at the Annual Meeting. BY PRESIDENT EDWARD H. MERRILL, D.D., RIPON, WISCONSIN. I wish simply to emphasize a single thought, viz., that these institutions of higher learning have their chief use as being aids to direct force. When you have mentioned what these higher institutions have done for individuals--when you have followed the individuals to their work in their various fields, you have only begun to tell the story of their importance. If you go up into Wisconsin, along the lower Fox river, you will see one of the finest water-powers in the world. It is often called the Merrimac of the West. I don't know how long that water-power has been there unappropriated. It was there when the Mound builder was there. God proffered it to him with all its resources, and asked him to improve it; but failing to regard the heavenly admonition, he passed away, leaving but few traces behind; only a few rude instruments and pieces of pottery. All other marks of him are gone. After him came the Indian. He also has passed, to all intents and purposes. Then came the Anglo-Saxon in blood and the Puritan in civilization and culture, and applying his inventive ingenuity to the banks of this river, he set the water-wheel, and the wheel has converted the power of the river into product, and the product has turned into property, and the property into intelligence, and the intelligence under this same productive ingenuity of the Puritan has turned into morality, and that into religion. So we have this great native force, directed to the account of the kingdom of God, transmuted into higher forces for His glory.