It is also true that some fear that the day of LEGACIES is to come to an end.  Indeed, there are those who take a solemn comfort in bewailing and fearing that everything is to come to an end.  They mix a pound of forebodings with an ounce of faith.  If, for some unseen reasons in the movements of life and death, legacies do not appear with the regularity of insurance tables, they think the day of legacies is dead.  Nevertheless legacies will continue as long as Christians pass from earth to heaven.  There will always be faithful souls who will remember Christ and his cause in their wills.  There will always be those who may not be able to divide their estates and to dispose of portions of them while they live, who will yet provide that they may see their works following them, when they shall look down from a world redeemed, to a world for whose redemption Christ lived and died.  There will always be legacies, and the American Missionary Association, so long as it follows in the steps of Christ in such mission as it has, will not be forgotten.  The legacies will come, because they ought to come.  The people of God will remember this work in their wills because they ought to do this, and God will take care that what Christian stewards ought to do, shall be done.

We thank God for SPECIAL GIFTS.  We thank God for LEGACIES.  We also thank God for the ability and faith and sacrifices of those who cannot plant institutions or build or endow schools, but who live and give that which provides for the unceasing CURRENT EXPENSES.  Almost every one can do a little more, and it is the many littles that make the difference between a debt with a crippled work, and freedom from debt with healthful growth.  All along the lines, the calls for help are so urgent, that it is painful for us, in the name of the church, to be constantly saying “No!”

OUR RECEIPTS for the past six months (ending March 31) are as follows: 

Church contributions                       $95,843.37
Estates and legacies                        15,194.10
Tuition from schools                        18,781.58
Income from invested funds                   4,829.21
Income from the United States Government     9,540.87

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Total $144,189.13

OUR PAYMENTS for the past six
months are                                $171,237.64
OUR DEFICIT is                              27,048.51

The churches can easily take this out of the way if they will.  We believe that they will.

* * * * *

CENTENNIAL.

These pages will come before our readers amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of a great nation celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of its Constitution—­a Constitution that has been tried and found worthy.

The greatest strain to which this great charter has been subjected in the past hundred years has been occasioned by slavery.  The crisis cost untold blood and treasure.  The great strain of the next hundred years will be what slavery has left behind it—­a vast and growing black population, and an imbittered race prejudice.