, educational, and social effort. A home for women, in which
about ten ladies reside, is connected with the settlement, which is
in special connexion with Wesleyan schools throughout the country.
The programme of work is extensive, and in addition the settlement
takes an increasing part in local administration and philanthropy,
many non-resident workers assisting.

[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