While then we have the right to thank God and his people, and reason to take courage, we should be false to the churches and to ourselves should we fail to accentuate the necessities of our work, and the demand upon those in whose name we stand. Brethren, is not ours the appeal of Christ to you for his neglected and his needy ones? Bring your thank offerings to God and make enlargement for this enlarging work. * * * * * We are thankful for our receipts from legacies. They are testimonies that speak, from those whose lips are sealed in death, for the gospel of Christ and its elevating and saving power when it is applied to the low-down and the poor and the wronged. In these legacies, those who are dead yet speak the word of life to those whom they have remembered. Our work, however, should be planned, not upon the uncertainties of legacies, but upon the ability and faith of those who live and give. It cheers us to know that our living donors are increasing and are entering with us the doors of opportunity which God has so manifestly opened and which no man can shut. * * * * * We congratulate the American Home Missionary Society that it closes its year, not having realized its fears even if it has not absolutely compassed all its hopes. We are grateful, for its success. Our congratulations also are hearty that our great Foreign Missionary Society, the A.B.C.F.M., reports itself at the end of its fiscal half-year $78,000 in advance of what was received for the same period last year. * * * * * But do not forget the great work which the churches have put upon us. See nearly eight millions who went from barbarism into slavery, and from slavery came out the poorest of the poor, the most ignorant of the ignorant, the most dependent of the dependent, without true religion and with no opportunity to know what true religion is unless we tell them. Africa is in America, China is in America, the barbarous heathen Indian is in America, and two millions of white people in the mountain region in four hundred counties, where ignorance is solid, are in America. These all look to the American Missionary Association. Will it not be our turn next to receive from the churches their increasing Godspeed on this work in such measure that we may carry the truth and the life to those who ought to have it. * * * * *