The next day they placed a target in the sea some distance from the. ship, and they practised firing at it. As the shells went booming over the water, one of our members overheard a Moslem praying that God would destroy them, for if one of those shells would hit their mosque, it would tear it to pieces.

Our government has ordered several frigates to run along the coast during the war. They thought perhaps there would be one to visit us at least once a month. We have re-opened our girls' town school. We have about one hundred and twelve enrolled. Our rooms are all pretty well filled. We think we can see clearly that Providence is telling us to work among the Christians of this town. Christians they are only in name. Most of the children can tell who redeemed them; but many do not know who made them. do not know who made them. Yet it has been Miss Crawford's experience that they are much brighter than the Fellaheen. The country has been visited by an army of locusts. It is well nigh impoverished. There may be great suffering here before the year is out. Yesterday the soldiers were ordered out to drill; they said they could not drill, they were too hungry. They were ordered out a second time, but they utterly refused till they had something to eat. So they had to go and beg money till they could get them some bread. The villages on the plain are or will soon be in want. The locusts have eaten up most of their grain, and the people up in the mountains say there is no government, and they come at their will for plunder. You think you see distress at home, but you know nothing about it. I am glad you are having so much success in your work, and I doubt not the more you do the more you will feel that you are blessed.

Yours, &c.,

MATTIE R. WYLIE.

LETTER FROM MRS. EASSON.

LATAKIYEH, June 5th, 1877. Things look rather dark since war has been declared. The Christians are so much afraid that they hardly move out of doors. We can see no immediate danger. The town school re-opened on our return from Jerusalem, and it is filling up fast. Some come, because they think we are safe from the Moslems, and they want to get in our yard under our protection, if anything should happen. Others come because some of their friends want doctoring, and others because they want to learn.

One woman came to the Dr. and brought her daughter to school this morning. Then she wanted to bring a box of valuables over and store them with us, and to have permission to come and bring her children, if there was danger. The Dr. told them to come on whenever the trouble began, and bring guns and ammunition with them. Beckie is stronger than she was, but looks so bad yet that I sometimes fear she will have to rest before long. Mollie was quite well all winter, but the warm weather is bringing her down as usual. The Dr. is rather worn. The rest of us are as well as usual. I have been practising riding this spring and have become quite fond of it, and as that is all the change the girls have, we try to get some of them out every evening after school. The Dr. goes sometimes, and Mr.

Easson other days. We are not allowed to go without them, and have not animals enough for all, so we take turns day about. Two donkeys serve for the children, so they go every day if they like.

We have a sick man in the next room to the study where I am sitting, and he is groaning and saying, "Woe is me." The doctor is tending him, but I fear he will never be well again. He is from Kessab, and is so poor that he cannot afford to get a house, so we let him have a room, and help keep him and his wife. The people are suffering from hunger in town. All work has stopped, and those who have been well off are suffering from hunger. Summer is their best time; if they cannot live now, what will next winter be?

The men in the mountains are devouring one another. We think it unsafe to go to the mountains now, one does not know when they may meet a lot of the far-off mountaineers on a raid, and one cannot tell who is friend or foe.

One of the Greek Catholic women from town was helping us cook when the man-of-war was here, and when boasting of her great friendship to us, I told her, yes, when the earthquake came she was with us, and when war came she came for protection, but she never came to church. If we were right and God with us, why not come to our church, and if the priests were right, then why not run to them to fight for her? She said, I will come to your church, and on Sabbath she and her two sons (young men) and a daughter half-grown came in and attended services all day. Our church has been crowded ever since we came home, and is likely to be as long as things are as unsettled as they are at present. If we are not driven out ourselves, we have a great opportunity to work.

The day school has over one hundred children, the boys' school forty, the Fellaheen boarding school nearly fifty, and if we would not charge the boys tuition, we might fill all our rooms to overflowing, and as it is, we have all we can accommodate.

We have been quite anxious and fearful of late, so much so, that it is not at all pleasant. Sometimes we have thought we would like to leave the place, and then when we would think the matter over, the question of what we would do with our twenty orphans, and what the effect of our leaving would have in the city, and especially what would become of all these busy years of toil, and what the end would really be, we would decide to abide by the ship; but our fears are nearly all gone now, and we expect soon to have roads and carriages like other people. The Russians are coming, they are only about ten days away, and the Ansariyeh are all in arms, and threatening the government of Latakiyeh with destruction, but we have no fear of them, and are sure that if the Moslems undertake to do anything to us, the Fellaheen will assist us. The Moslems north are opening their city gates, and telling the Russians that they are welcome, for they are tired of their own government.

Remember us to all our friends in the two cities, and believe me ever your sister in Christ, JENNIE EASSON.

EDITORIAL.

THE fearful scenes through which our community has passed are already known to the world. The superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad had issued an order July 16th, to take effect Thursday, July 19th, affecting the labor of the men employed on the freight trains. A general reduction of ten per cent. in wages had gone into effect June 1st, and this with the second order led to revolt. Freight trains were stopped, and the road was seized. Friday, July 20th, the freight train men on the Fort Wayne road also struck. No freight was allowed to be moved east or west. The sheriff ordered the strikers to disperse, but no attention was paid to his order. He then applied to the State authorities for aid, and militia from Philadelphia were ordered on to his assistance, the home militia being also called out. At 11 P. M., the sheriff visited the Pennsylvania yards with the division commander, and some eighty men of the home militia, but without effect.

Saturday morning passed quietly. The Philadelphia troops came in in the afternoon, and at 5 P. M. the sheriff again advanced with the supporting militia. A collision ensued, in which about twenty persons were killed and thirty wounded, including some women and children. The tracks were cleared, but the trouble had only begun. An angry mob gathered in the evening, rifled stores and armories, and came on armed. A rage for revenge led the mob to desperate measures. They fired cars, running them down to the lower round-house in which the Philadelphia military were, when they abandoned it for the upper round-house. This they held till morning, when it caught fire. They then retreated out Penn street, followed by a hostile crowd, and camped at Claremont, across the Allegheny river. The incendiarism continued during the Sabbath, and the work of the mob was only complete late in the day-after a full wreck had been made of the railroad property from Thirty-second street down to Eleventh including also other property, as the grain elevator, &c. Millions of dollars have been sunk. About forty lives in all were lost, and as many more persons were wounded. Thus much has fallen on this community. Other parts of the land have their sad experience to relate, the strike having commenced at Baltimore, thence spreading to Martinsburg, then to Pittsburgh, and over the east and west.

The course of the strikers should find no defenders among Christian people. They assumed a fearful responsibility in trying to force compliance with their demand. This many of them now see. The elements of society below the industrious laborer rose and appalled him by their crimes.

We give in this issue a timely article. The minds of all are awakened now to study the questions that concern corporatious, such as these great railroad companies are. The evils in their management hitherto winked at in a great degree are now examined. Their ruinous competition, the watering of their stock, their toleration of special privileges, all are discussed. It concerns us to say that the conscience of the nation has a great complaint against the management of these roads. They are violating the laws of the

State in trampling on the Sabbath. They are violating the law of God. They are gigantic Sabbath breakers. They compel men who enter their service as trainmen, to take orders on the Sabbath, as on other days of the week. They thus rob them of the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day at home, as a day for religious exercises. They demoralize their hands. They act injuriously in the communities through which their roads run-disturbing their peace on the Sabbath, and warring against the interests of religion. Let the railroad companies observe the law of the Sabbath. The officials of the road need the Sabbath for the good of their own souls, and to teach them consideration for their employees; the men they employ need the lessons of the house of God, to teach them sobriety, patience, and the fear of God. The angry mob, with their other sins, broke the quiet of the Sabbath, yet only in a more terrible form than the busy roads have done often before, and are doing still.

-We publish in this number the history of the Second New York congregation, prepared by Rev. Dr. Stevenson, and read by him at the opening of the 39th street church, on Nov. 15th, 1875. It will be read with interest as the account of a congregation that has been honored to do much for the cause of Christ. We have curtailed the paper by omitting perhaps in all a page, but the continuity of the narrative is unimpaired. The difficulty in finding room for so long a paper is our apology for the delay in its appearance. Historical papers admit of little cutting down.

-In Wednesday's session of the Presbyterian Council, the fact was made public that Prof. Mitchell, the editor of the recently discovered Minutes of the Westminster General Assembly, was not proceeding with the second volume, relating to Church Government, on account of lack of subscriptions, and request was made for American names for the work.

In the afternoon session of Wednesday, Dr. Goold presided, and it appears remembered our country in his prayer. After prayer, Dr. Prime took it upon him to return thanks to Dr. Goold for this, which strikes us a strange act, however much the prayer affected him. In fact, it reminds us of one of Mr. Gough's stories, told at the expense of some British friends of his, that at a meeting of a society which had been opened with prayer, in which thanks were given for the prosperity the society enjoyed, the secretary, on following, before reading his report, remarked that the society was in a prosperous condition, as they had already been informed.

The Committee on Creeds and Confessions appointed by the Council consists of twenty-nine members. Forty-nine churches were represented in the Council, and twenty-nine countries. More than half of the churches are not represented on the committee, the various Covenanting churches being in this company. Several churches have two members, among them the Southern Presbyterian Church, the Northern has four. Were the committee for any other purpose than to gather information we might have some comments. Even for this purpose, it is not well made up.

HOME CIRCLE.

GOD sometimes sends an "enforced pause." It comes in the shape of a trouble, a fever, an unforeseen journey perhaps-what we call an accident-and we are taken out of our ordinary lives and obliged to stop. From the confines of the sick-room the world recedes. The cares that loomed so large to our sight yesterday, seem to have gone away indefinitely The things that we thought nobody else could do, must be done by somebody, and it seems to us strange that we felt ourselves so important. Our vacation has come-not the one we wanted or planned for, or intended, but the best for us, because God has put it into our lives-and he makes no mistakes. There are fathers who would-strange as it may seem, and wrong as it is-pever get acquainted with much but their children's faces, if they were not now and then kept at home for a few days by illness. There are mothers who, in their anxiety for their children's dress and deportment and culture, lose sight of the souls that they possess, till some sharp wind of sorrow blows the mists from their eyes, and they feel that "the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.” In hours of convalescence the Book is read that has been awaiting an interval of leisure; the song is listened to that the little daughter has learned at school; the buds on the rose-bush in the window are counted and exulted over; something kind and sweet is planned to be done for the neighbor over the way. Not in vain has the Lord sent his pause into the whirl and the hurry and the tumult in which the hours and days were passing.-Gleanings in the Presbyterian.

AMONG the passengers from Germany in the steamer Rhein, which arrived at New York port on Saturday, was Conrad Autenrielle, aged 71 years. With him were three daughters. They came to join his seven other children, who had long since come to this country and prospered. He was met by his brother, and was greatly affected with feelings of joy. One of his sons dwells in Hudson City, New Jersey, and four sons and two daughters reside in Newark. Arrangements were made to hold a family reunion in Newark yesterday, and in the meantime a visit was paid to the son in Hudson City. While there the old man became childish in his joy at having his "kinder" once more around him, and was unable to restrain his feelings. Suddenly he started his loving children by exclaiming, "Have I really seen my children!" and he fell back powerless. A doctor was sent for, but by the time he arrived the "lamp of life had fled." The old man actually died from overjoy.-Pittsburgh Gazette, May 13, 1872.

ENIGMAS.

The initials of the following form the name of one of the kings spoken of in the Old Testament:

1. A high priest in the time of Christ.

2. One of the kings that David smote.

3. One of the sons of Saul.

4. A silversmith spoken of in the New Testament.

5. One of the sons of Eliphaz.

6. A people to whom Paul wrote one of his Epistles.

7. One of the sons of Methuselah.

8. A high priest in the time of the apostles.

9. The father of Azariah.

10. The father of Gershom.

11. A high priest in the time of Nehemiah,

12. One of the sons of Israel.

J. S. H.

DIAMOND WORD.

1. The first letter of one who made Israel to sin.

2. The name of a month in the Bible.

3. A man who blew a trumpet in command.

4. One who paid four hundred shekels for a burying-place.

5. A leader of the children of Israel.

6. One whom Satan smote very sorely.

7. The first letter of the father of Michal.