financial despond. This, however, is only the
reflection of the feeling among the churches throughout the land. The
determination to lift the debt of the American Missionary Association,
and to make it possible to continue at least its depleted work, is
universal. Special collections, regular contributions, and hundreds of
individuals taking the fifty-dollar shares in the Jubilee fund, will
accomplish this most desirable result.

* * * * *

The South.

THE OPENING CHURCH MISSIONS.

BY SECRETARY F. P. WOODBURY.

The Eureka Church-Arbor, shown below, sheltered the opening service of
the new plantation missions in Southern Georgia. The people came under
the shadows of the piney woods from every quarter. The first mission
church was organized under this rude booth. There the meetings
continued until the cold and rainy months of winter. Now, by the help
of a grant from the Church Building Society, a small church building
will speedily become the home of a beneficent church and school work.

[Illustration: THE EUREKA CHURCH-ARBOR.]

This church of the forest took its start from the earnest convictions
of its pastor, Rev. J. B. Fletcher. After long study of the New
Testament, with the help of few other books than his tattered Greek
lexicon, he resigned his ecclesiastical connection because he had
found, as he thought, the free church polity on Bible principles. His
discovery was substantially the Congregational system. He called his
first church "Eureka." It now has nine other churches associated in
the same work. A mission preacher, a devoted man residing near, a man
who is highly respected by all the people, has immediate charge of
the Eureka work and holds the Sunday-school and other services.

[Illustration: A PASTOR'S HOME.]

The abodes of many of the plantation preachers are as simple and
humble as those of their people. We give an illustration of one of
these homes. Usually there is a division into two or perhaps three
rooms. Sometimes a small lean-to is built at the side or end, for use
as kitchen. The chimney, erected on the outside, is often constructed
of clay bound with sticks. It starts in a broad fireplace of stone,
which warms the whole building. Some of these cabins have small glass
windows; others of them have only openings for windows, with wooden
shutters. In such dwellings there reside vast numbers of the
plantation preachers, and some of our own mission preacher