But what is the “_penalty_” of all this? and why should there be any penalty for it? The penalty is a depleted treasury, and the reason for this is the unavoidably increased expenditure. How many of our readers know what it is to have more than $1,600 coming due, and less than $600 at command? As many as have had this experience will understand the penalty I am just now called to suffer. I _could_ not turn the dark souls away from what seemed to be for them the only possible path to light, and I could not bid them welcome without increasing our corps of laborers. I could not add new workers without adding some new bills. The increase of expense is not at all proportioned to the increase in work fulfilled, for while we have reached nearly 40 per cent. more Chinese than we did in any preceding year, the expense will be greater by only about 10 per cent. But I have been working all these years up to the utmost limit of our resources, and now, towards the close of this fiscal year—the annual appropriation from the parent society exhausted and the gifts of most of our regular contributors already used—it comes to pass that that 10 per cent. extra begins to be felt, and as the mission purse gets lighter your superintendent’s heart gets heavier with thoughts and plans and cares. “Well, what are you going to do about it?” some of my readers are asking. I answer, first of all, I mean to pray. Nothing else ever availed in my experience to replenish a depleted treasury, like appealing to the Giver of all good. He knows the work; He gave the opportunity; He has, many times before this, verified His promise, and answered my prayer. I mean to trust Him; ask His counsel and His help, and so _move on_. While His pillar of cloud and of fire goes before us, we need never be dismayed. “Difficulties will be removed, in proportion as it is necessary that they should be removed.” But I do not mean to stop with prayer. That is Müller’s way, and, in his case, it succeeds. When he was consulted as to the failure of others who wrought on his plan, it is said that he replied: “They were not so called.” Every man according to his own calling. For myself, I read the promise thus: “Ask, and it shall be given you; _seek, and ye shall find_.” And so I feel called to follow up my asking with seeking, and to enter every door that my master causes to be opened to my knock. That is just what I am doing now, in writing this paragraph. It may not reach all our readers till after our fiscal year has closed; but the books can be kept open till October 1, and gifts sent to make up what is now lacking, will be gratefully acknowledged, and most carefully used. THE CENTRAL SCHOOL.