the competition was founded. The first bursary (£6) was gained by Mr. Robert Morton, Wester Moffat, Airdrie; the second (£5) by Mr. George Anderson, Pollockshaws; and the third (£4) by Mr. William Hamilton, Carluke.

In closing this report, your Committee have to acknowledge with gratitude that the hopes they ventured to express last year, in regard to the Bursary Fund, have been fully realised. Congregations and members in various parts of the body have responded most liberally to their call for increased contributions, and so have manifested the depth of their interest in the welfare of the students, and in the ordinance of a standing ministry in the Church.

In the removal, in the adorable providence of God, of Mr. Roger, one of our ablest and most respected members, we have sustained a great loss; but, as we look at the way in which the Hall has been conducted, and the funds supplied, we have cause to thank God and take courage; and in praying the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into His harvest, to look up and expect the fulfilment of the precious promise, "I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding."— By order of Committee.

THOMAS HOBART, Convener.

REPORT OF HOME MISSION COMMITTEE FOR THE YEAR ENDING MAY, 1870.

THE need of home missionary work is every year growing more urgent and alarming. The rapid increase of pauperism throughout the country has recently excited much and anxious attention. There can be no doubt that the spiritual destitution of the country is increasing in equally rapid ratio, for both originate to some extent in the same causes, and the one always tends to aggravate the other. Thirty years ago, there were in the city of Glasgow, 40,000 persons living in neglect of ordinances. At this moment, it has been ascertained there are 130,000 who belong to no section of the Church of Christ, in addition to the 100,000 adherents of the Church of Rome. In the district of the Wynd Church, out of which so many have been reclaimed from heathenism, it was stated not long ago that in 1,335 families which may be held to represent more than 6,000 individuals, there are only 121 communicants. Now, admitting that in this vast and crowded centre of population there are causes operating to produce this fearful state of things which do not operate with the same intensity elsewhere, there is only too sad evidence that all over the country the same causes are producing more or less the same effects,

and that the number of those who are abandoned to open ungodliness, without the shadow even of a profession of Christianity, is increasing at a rate sufficient to excite the deepest solicitude and apprehension on the part of every patriot and of every Christian.

But that is not all. Our home heathenism is not only rapidly increasing in extent. It is getting worse and more hopeless in character. By a natural law of deterioration, the lapsed masses are sinking into lower depths, out of which it is becoming, humanly speaking, a more difficult task to raise them. There are still among them many who have fallen into heathenism out of the communion of the Church, who look back remorsefully on what they once were, and whose consciences retain some impression of what they learned in better days. But a generation is rising who have been born in heathenism. Their godless parents never took them by the hand to lead them to the house of God, never spoke to them about God or their duty to Him, never taught them anything but their own profanity and vice. A few religious ideas may have been got into their darkened and perverted minds at the Sabbath school, but too often to be swept away by the powerfully contaminating influences to which they have been exposed all the week. They are as ignorant of God and the way of salvation, as utterly regardless of the Sabbath and of all the duty which God requires of man in His Word, as abandoned to present sensual gratification, more sophisticated and debauched in heart and conscience, more hardened against religion from being surrounded by those who know and profess it and too often dishonour it, than the blinded Pagans of Africa or Japan. What an unlikely soil this into which to cast the seed of the kingdom! What a valley of dry bones to which to prophesy!

And while the class your mission is designed to benefit are thus sunken, the social and religious degeneracy pervading all society adds to the difficulty of doing anything hopefully to elevate them. The moral evil existing in society, like the impurities floating in a liquid, has an inevitable tendency to descend and settle thickest and foulest at the bottom. And when we think how irreligion and selfish addiction to earthly pleasure and gain, and Sabbath desecration, and infidelity, and uncleanness are increasing among all classes of society, we cannot wonder that what we may call, though in no contemptuous spirit, its dregs and lecs, should be growing fouler and more feculent, so that to all but simple faith in Almighty grace and power, it seems impossible to purify them.

But while all this shows the growing magnitude and difficulty of home missionary work, it shows at the same time the growing obligation under which we are, as a part of Christ's Church, to prosecute

it. As the plague spreads and grows in virulence, we are the more bound to supply, as we can, the only remedy which can ever stay it. If Satan is gaining an advantage in the great battle that is waging for Christ's supremacy and the souls of men, the more as good soldiers of Christ are we called on to stand to our colours, and ply the weapons that are not carnal but spiritual and mighty through God. We may be ready to faint when we contrast the smallness of the means at our disposal with the vastness of the work to be done; but the work is ours only instrumentally, it is God's efficiently; and He who delivered Israel from the myriad host of Midian by Gideon's three hundred men, with their lamps and pitchers and trumpets, can with equal ease employ our few agents to deliver no small number of the poor hapless captives of Satan and sin. At all events we are bound alike by love to God and love to man to do all we can for their rescue, and if God in His holy sovereignty is pleased to grant little apparent success, let us remember how little success He granted to Moses when he first carried His message to the Israelites, and when they hearkened not for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage, how little success He granted to His holy prophets when pleading with the apostate nation during the long dark days of degeneracy which preceded its captivity, how little success He granted to His own Incarnate Son and Servant who came unto His own and His own received Him not.

Such are the considerations which press upon the minds of your Committee in laying their annual report upon your table. Through the want of men, rather than of means, they have not been able to extend their operations during the past year. Nor is it their privilege to record any great visible results from existing operations. But they feel the necessity and duty of the work more than ever, and they are not left without some tokens of blessing in carrying it on.

Your Committee deeply regret that they have been able to do nothing during the past year in KIRKCALDY. The grant you voted them for the employment of a preacher for a few months to make trial of evangelistic work in connection with the congregation there they have been unable to avail themselves of, for the simple reason that, owing to the demands of our many and multiplying vacancies, it was found impossible to spare a preacher for the necessary time. So far as can be seen, the difficulty is one which is likely to continue for some time. This is a great trial to the faith and patience of the friends in Kirkcaldy who have longed and prayed through so many years that their eyes might see their teacher. But they are still adhering to their principles and to one another. Let them remember that the tribulation of the Church of Smyrna was to be for "ten days," a fixed and limited time. And let them take comfort from the words that follow

the intimation of it-" Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life."

The Committee need scarcely say that the arduous and honourable post which their brother, Mr. M'Clenaghan, occupies in KILMARNOCK continues to be zealously and effectively filled. The reports which are regularly sent through the Presbytery to your Committee show that, in addition to his pastoral labours, he continues to do a large amount of work in the outlying and destitute field around his Church. From his last report we find that he had been spending no less than eleven hours weekly in visitation in the district, was holding two meetings weekly for the special benefit of its inhabitants, had a class for teaching the young belonging to it, and superintended a staff of tract distributors, besides giving away tracts at the meetings. These abundant labours have not been without gratifying results. Some have been added to the fellowship of the Church. Others have been brought out to hear the Word. The cases quoted from his journal show that a blessing has followed the visits of our brother to the sick and the dying. We have had to sympathise with him, however, in other cases in which those, over whose rescue he was beginning to rejoice, have been caught again in the deadly vortex of temptation and sucked back out of the reach of help. Such cases show what the experience of every minister confirms, that it is all but a hopeless thing to try to reclaim the victims of intemperance while the temptations to its indulgence continue so rife and powerful on every side. Alas! how many a brand seemingly plucked from the fire has been drawn into it again to perish, because of the facilities which a professedly Christian Government licenses for the indulgence of this accursed vice. Still, as we have said, there is encouragement to our brother to labour on, and encouragement to the Church to contribute to the Home Mission Fund which aids so materially in his support. It is much to be keeping aloft the banner of the Secession Testimony in such a large commercial town-much to be bringing the Gospel of salvation through a commissioned Ambassador of Christ to many for whose souls no man might have cared-and much to have the prospect, through the Lord's blessing on His servant's labours, of gradually building up by accessions from these an otherwise sinking congregation into self-sustaining strength and vigour. We have only to add, that some changes have been suggested by Mr. M'Clenaghan as to the mode of conducting the missionary department of his labours, to which your Committee have not seen their way to consent, chiefly because they interfere with the terms on which he was originally settled as laid down by the Synod, and regarding them, therefore, they would solicit the Synod's instructions before the close of its meeting.

As the reports of the Student Missionaries are subjoined and will be published, your Committee do not judge it necessary to enter into any analysis of them.

That from AYR they put first, as being from the oldest of our mission stations, and the only one which is in the honourable position of being supported by the unaided liberality of the congregation. The mission there has now existed for sixteen years, and the tone which pervades the report shows that the congregation are as far as ever from being weary in welldoing, and neither, it will be seen from the work done, is their excellent missionary, Mr. Gray.

The report from GLASGOW will be read with interest. It is matter of thankfulness to have the testimony of Mr. M'Vicar, who now knows the district so thoroughly that its moral condition has improved and is improving much. He also mentions some cases which show that both among Protestants and Romanists his conscientious and earnest labours are telling with effect. We are sure the Synod will reciprocate the earnest wish of your Committee that, in conjunction with the congregation, they could begin a strictly territorial mission in Glasgow. When we consider that the chief hindrance to this is the want of licentiates, it gives urgency to the call so loudly addressed to us at present to pray the Lord of the harvest that He may thrust forth labourers into His harvest.

The mission in POLLOCKSHAWS continues to be prosecuted with energy and zeal, and a measure of visible success truly gratifying by your missionary, Mr. Anderson. During the past year he has not only succeeded in bringing out a number of the careless to hear the Word, but several from the district have been received into the fellowship of the Church. He notes the interesting fact, that "some of these had the ordinance of baptism publicly administered to them previous to their admission, as they had not been baptised in infancy." This fact shows how literally many of those outside the Church among us deserve the name of "Pagan," the term anciently applied to the unbaptized villager; it brings before us with new vividness the scenes of primitive Christianity and of the first triumphs of the Gospel; and it supplies encouraging evidence, though we had none other, that our Home Mission work is at least worth all its cost.

In conclusion, your Committee would stir up themselves, and, with all respect, yet with all earnestness, would stir up their brethren to more interest and zeal in this work in which they so closely follow Him who came to seek and to save that which is lost. All around us the feet of the lost sheep are stumbling on the dark mountains, and we are dying who possess the only means by which they can be brought back to God. Since last meeting of Synod one member of your Com