[Illustration:  Theological Institution, Didsbury.]

To support the London Mission, appeal is made to Methodists throughout the country and the world.  The meetings held on its behalf in the provinces have greatly blessed the people, stimulating them to fresh efforts in their own localities.  Similar agencies had previously been established in various great trading centres, where the tendency is for the people who can afford it to leave the towns and to live in the suburbs.  Thus many chapels have become almost deserted.  The Conference decided that the best method of filling these chapels would be to utilise them as Mission halls, for aggressive evangelistic and social effort; which has been done with surprising success in Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Birmingham, and many other large towns.  In Manchester there are from ten to twelve thousand people reached by the Mission agencies, and already a new circuit has been formed, the members of its Society having been gathered in from the army of distress and destitution.  It would be impossible here to enumerate the thousand ways in which the Mission workers toil for the redemption of the downfallen, or to tell half the tale of their success.  But all this work could not be so well carried on without the assistance of another important department.  The Wesleyan Chapel Building Committee, instituted in 1818, was reconstituted in 1854; it meets monthly in Manchester to dispose of grants and loans, to consider cases of erections, alterations, purchases, and sales of Wesleyan trust property, and to afford advice in difficult cases.  It has also to see that all our trust property is duly secured to the Connexion.  The erection of the Central Hall in Manchester, to be at once the headquarters of our Chapel Committee and of the great Mission, marked a most important era in Methodist aggressive enterprise.  The income of the Chapel Fund from all sources last year was L9,115.  It was reported that the entire debt discharged or provided for during the last forty-one years was L2,389,073, and the total debt remaining on trust property is not more than L800,000; while L9,000,000 had been expended on chapel buildings during the thirty years preceding 1893.

[Illustration:  Theological Institution, Headingley.]

The Extension of Methodism Fund was established in 1874, to supplement the ordinary funds of the Connexion and the local resources of the people, by aiding in the increase of chapel accommodation throughout the country, and in the extension of Methodism by Home Mission and similar agencies.  At first the building of a thousand chapels was contemplated; but already 1,796 cases have been helped, with grants and loans amounting to L122,999.  In 1867 a fund was started for the relief and extension of Methodism in Scotland; a Chapel Fund for the North Wales District was instituted in 1867, and for South Wales in 1873.  There are now in Great Britain 10,000 Wesleyan chapels, which