American Missionary Association.

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FINANCIAL.

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY presents its greetings for the month of May. Six
months of our fiscal year are now in the past. The half year which we
anticipate includes the summer time, when many of the friends of the
ignorant millions to whom we are sent, are absent from their churches.
The months of May and June ought to swell the stream of love and service
against the season when the demand will continue and income will be
small.

We appealed last month for an increase of the contributions in _church_
collections. We renew and emphasize that appeal, for these collections
are the steady streams on which we rely to keep in motion the wheels of
the large and ever enlarging work of the Association. We believe that
the interest in this great work is on the increase. We rejoice that "the
most prolific missionary field ever opened to any Christian people--
right here at our doors," is gaining upon the interest and benevolence
of the churches year by year. Never were the friends of the cause mote
responsive; never was the work more hopeful. The work enlarges, and the
people's faith enlarges. Their gifts to Christ for his poor were never
freer.

We have been greatly favored with special gifts. Every one of them is
needed. It is a blessed thing that one can plant his benevolences in
some special institution or feature of work, and know that the
influences are to follow on after the giver has gone to a higher world.
But we do hope that the CHURCHES OF CHRIST, AS CHURCHES, will not fail
to keep step with the providences of God in their church contributions.

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