abundant fruit of his ministry in several of his sons in the Gospel being called to the Christian ministry. After some three years arduous toil the Doctor was transferred to the Tokyo station and soon entered upon a much wider sphere of missionary effort, which culminated in the celebrated Meiji Kwaido lectures on apologetics, which drew large audiences of very thoughtful Japanese and did a great deal of good in opening the minds of the people for the reception of the truth.

Dr. Eby's aim for years was to establish, right in the heart of the great city of Tokyo, a centre of evangelistic effort to some. extent commensurate with the needs of such a metropolis. This he has accomplished, in conjunction with the Missionary Society of our Church, in the erection of the Central Tabernacle in Hongo, the educational quarter of Tokyo. Already enough has been accomplished to show the wisdom of undertaking such an enterprise; and there is no doubt that as our mission-work in Japan grows and develops, the Central Tabernacle will exercise a still greater influence throughout our whole Church.

In 1882 Miss Cartmell, the pioneer missionary of the Woman's Missionary Society, arrived on the field. Miss Cartmell has the honour of establishing the celebrated Toyo Eiwa Jogakko, which has exercised such a wide influence over the women of the city of Tokyo.

In 1884 the Anglo-Japanese College was inaugurated at Ozabu, in Tokyo, with Dr. Cochran and R. Whittington, M.A., in charge. The following year the now sainted Alfred Large, B.A. (who was assassinated in 1890 by a couple of Japanese who entered his house in the dead of the night, probably on robbery intent), joined the mission and took his place on the College staff; and although the years of toil allotted were but few, yet he so gave his life in loving service to the Master that his memory lives in the heart and lives of many of his pupils.

The year 1884 also witnessed the reinforcement of the evangelistic staff in the person of C. T. Cocking, who gave five years of earnest service before returning to resume work in the home field. In 1886 a further reinforcement of two men for the evangelistic, and one for the school, came to hand with the arrival of Edward Odlum, F. A. Cassidy, and J. W. Saunby.

The lady missionaries of the Woman's Missionary Society have nobly seconded the efforts of the agents of the parent Society. In course of time flourishing girls' schools were opened in both Shidzuoka and Kofu, and evangelistic effort was begun among the women of the city with encouraging results. No one except the great Head of the Church can adequately estimate the

great amount of good that is being accomplished by these consecrated women.

The next mile-post of progress in the history of the mission. was the organizing of the Japan District of the Toronto Conference into a

sionary Secretary, visited Japan, and spent several weeks in a thorough examination into all the affairs of the mission.

Mission stations have since been opened at Nagano, Fukui, Toyama, and still another is being opened in Nügata. All these are large cities surrounded by provinces just teeming

ROYAL CASTLE, TOKYO, JAPAN.

with millions of people, the greater part of whom have never yet heard the sound of the Gospel. Out among these we are pushing our way by the means of Japanese preachers and evangelists; and already the harvest is at hand. Messrs. Dunlop, Crummy, McKenzie and Elliott came out to Japan on the self-supporting plan and did splendid service in the Government schools and

were ready to hand when the mission had need. The saddest thing about our mission work, however, is that through ill-health so many are forced to relinquish their loved employ and return to the home land again; but still the Master carries on His work and will not suffer His cause to fail of its magnificent purpose.

There is an almost continuous chain of Methodist stations all the way from one end to the other of the main islands. But the crying need is for union. We want, not five Methodist Churches, but one, in order to make ourselves felt as are the great Congregational and Presbyterian Churches.

The numerical strength of the Japan Conference of the Canadian Church is twenty-eight native ministers and probationers, twenty-four circuits and stations, and a membership of 1,981. The five bodies of Methodism have a total membership of upwards of seven thousand.

Concerning the final outcome of this grand missionary movement in the Land of the Rising Sun, there can be no doubt. The fortress of Gospel Truth has sunk her foundations and reared her battlements so firmly that the gates of hell can never prevail against her. The Sun of Righteousness is rising with healing on His wings, and the new day that knows no eventide will fill the whole land with light and blessedness.

THE day we left Baalbec, April 29th, was the festival that marked the close of the long fast of Ramadan. The whole town was abroad in gala dress, and the throbbing music of drums and tomtoms filled the air. We rode first to the fountain of Ras el Ain, on which the ancient city Heliopolis must have depended for its water supply. It was a spot of ideal loveliness. A placid pool of purest water was surrounded by ancient masonry, with stone steps leading down to its surface. In its crystal depths the springs could be seen bubbling up through the sand. A group of weeping-willows overshadowed its surface, reminding one of the Scripture, "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water." On a stone of the ruined mosque was inscribed a very devout Moslem prayer.

The whole population of the town apparently had gone on a

picnic to the top of a neighbouring hill, where was a tomb of a very holy sheikh. The Moslem idea of enjoyment seemed to be to climb on a hot day a high hill and picnic amid the rude plastercovered tombs of the shadeless, sandy cemetery. The men drank black coffee and smoked their hubble-bubble pipes apart by themselves. The women and children partook of their humble lunch also by themselves. All were dressed in their gayestcoloured robes the fair-faced Syrian women chiefly in white and pale blue, the men in yellow silk gowns with crimson girdles. The multitude looked like a great bed of tulips and poppies covering the whole slope of the hill.

As we rode up, I uttered the salutation "Neharahsaid,"_"May your day be pleasant"-and instantly a smile, half an acre in extent, passed over the entire group as they responded, May yours also, O traveller," most of them rising to their feet at the salutation. They were very courteous and made room for our horses at the best point of view, and forthwith began to feed them with leaves of lettuce from their own lunches, with an eye keenly expectant of backsheesh. A procession of dervishes on donkeys, with a rabble retinue of boys and men carrying green flags and beating drums, came up the hill, and began their chanting and dancing and weird incantation.

It was a strange sight, a perfect kaleidoscope of colour, a living bouquet of people swaying to the music like poppies in the wind. Like a map lay far beneath the village of Baalbec and the solemn ruins of the Temple of the Sun. To right and left stretched the slopes of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, covered with gleaming snow, the green valley of Colo-Syria spreading between.

Mr. Read and I lingered long after the rest of the party had descended the hill, and had to follow in a headlong gallop amid scattered ruins of half-buried capitals and columns. About half

an hour's ride from Baalbec is a rude Moslem shrine, "probably," says Dr. Thompson, "once the tomb of some great saint or sinner." An empty stone coffin served as a prayer niche. The shrine is known either as the bed of Adam and Eve or the Tomb of Darius --one legend is about as authentic as the other.

We rode on through a fertile country, clothed with vines and mulberry trees, studded with good stone farm-houses two stories in height the best we had seen in Syria. About mid-afternoon we passed the so-called Tomb of Noah. It is a low structure, one hundred and thirty-two feet long, covered with a crumbling arcade, with a dome at one end and a small mosque at the other. The Moslem tradition avers that the patriarch was so tall that even this tomb was not long enough and that his legs, from the knee