3. The monthly missionary concert of prayer. This is of vital importance, because here the missionary spirit of the church finds devotional expression. The pastor makes a serious mistake who fails to maintain this or allows it to be regarded as of minor moment. No meeting is capable of being made more effective for his home work than the monthly concert, properly conducted. In regard to this I offer the following hints: (1.) It is not necessary to restrict the sphere of the meeting to foreign missions, but there are important advantages in allowing it to embrace all departments of evangelization, home and foreign, through the different branches of work--in the pulpit, the school, and the press. Thus one evening might be devoted to the condition of the freedmen at the South and the work in progress among them, educational and missionary; another to the work of home missions on the frontiers of civilization at the West, developing the leading facts respecting the vast immigration into those new regions, the needs of Christian workers there, and the kind of work there to be performed; and another to the Karens or Assamese or Chinese, or other division of the foreign work. The meeting would thus be highly educative by the whole range of its information, and would promote a broad intelligence in the membership, while the breadth of the field would afford an unfailing variety of vital subjects to interest and hold the people. (2.) In opening, the pastor might present a brief survey of the whole field, selecting only events of special interest and incidents adapted to impress them. This might be followed by one or more papers or statements, from selected members of the church or congregation, on the special field chosen for the evening, or on some prominent laborer in it, the time of the speaker or reader being carefully limited. This would leave ample time for prayer, which is the main purpose of the meeting, and for such spontaneous utterances as might be made by the assembly. The hints above suggested are necessarily imperfect and general, for every church has its peculiarities, and the pastor must often adapt his methods to theirs. But the object to be attained, the missionary development of the church, is of the highest moment, and he should study methods with the fixed purpose of reaching, in some way, that end. +SECTION XIII.+ THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS.