evangelists. We support as many evangelists as the special gifts that come to us will permit, always with the understanding that such support is temporary, and may fail at any time. These men are kept on the move from point to point opening up new cities, and caring for the converts made at places not quite so new for two weeks or a month at a time. When a Church asks for a pastor, they must be willing to unite with others in a circuit, so that his support may come wholly from them. Against almost inconceivable pressure coming from many quarters, God has helped us to keep from spending one penny of the regular appropriations from New York for the support, traveling expenses, or rent of any native preacher, or for the erection of any building for the use of the native people. Special gifts have been used in that way as need demanded. Marriage fees from the something like 2,475 weddings that our staff has conducted, nearly all in Manila, have been used in this form of work, and in printing as need arose; but self-support is absolutely the rule as to pastoral service. We do not claim to have solved the question, but we are determined to continue the attempt, and avoid, if possible, mistakes that cost us dearly in fields in which our workers were forced to the use of methods which we do not need to employ. It costs from $200 to $300 annually to support a good Filipino evangelist. We shall need the services. of these men for many years to come. Their lot is a hard one. They live on the circuit. They are in very truth "traveling preachers." But their work breaks new ground, and pioneers the way for Churches which spring up in their tracks wherever they go. The statistics Our growth has been phenomenal. which will appear in the Missionary Report for 1903-4 are as follows: Foreign missionaries. Assistant missionaries Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, missionaries.... Native unordained preachers Other helpers... Members..... Probationers.... Adherents....... Average attendance on Sunday. Conversions during year...... Adults baptized. Children baptized Number day schools Number day scholars Collected for church-building and repairing Number Sabbath-schools Number Sabbath-school scholars. 797 Number churches and chapels 35 Estimated value of churches and chapels $24.410 Number halls and other rented places of worship 7 Value of parsonages or homes.. $21,000 Collected for missionary society... $210 Collected for other benevolent societies... $86 Collected for self-support...... $3,220 Collected for other local purposes $1,477 This gives us 6,842 members and probationers, with 4,180 adherents, all of whom consider themselves as fully admitted to our membership. Comparing this total of members and probationers with the totals of last year in other mission fields solely for the purpose of emphasizing the ripeness of this field, and showing how urgent is the need that wise counsels shall prevail in conserving and extending the work to the utmost possible extent we find the following: *One missionary, Rev. R. V. B. Dunlap, with his wife and child, have arrived since these statistics were sent forward. CHAPTER XXVI. PRESBYTERIANS AND BAPTISTS. NO ONE of the six Churches now at work in the Philippines showed greater foresight than the Presbyterian. In the promptness and wisdom of its action it set an example to all the Boards. Rev. James B. Rodgers was transferred from their work in Brazil after years of successful experience, and was enabled to enter upon his work with the Spanish language at his command, and with a thorough familiarity with the difficulties and weaknesses of work in Catholic countries. He arrived in Manila, April 21, 1899, with Mrs. Rodgers and their family. It is interesting to note the coincidence of his arrival with the first anniversary of the declaration of war against Spain. While Bishop Thoburn, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was the first regularly-authorized appointee of a Missionary Society to visit the Islands and open work, the unique honor of being the first regularly-appointed, permanent missionary belongs to Mr. Rodgers. Within one month these workers were Joined by Rev. David S. Hibbard and wife. At the end of their first year they reported one Church organized, and services held semi-weekly in four places in Manila, with English-speaking services among soldiers and such others as cared to attend. The Board had already decided that Iloilo would be one of the cities occupied, and Dumaguete, on the island of Negros, was chosen as another point in the southern islands during the summer of 1899. In December the Philippine Mission of the Presbyterian Church was formally constituted. In January, Dr. J. Andrew Hall arrived to take up medical and evangelistic work in Iloilo. Rev. Leonard P. Davidson came in February to give himself to evangelistic work. By the tentative allotment of "spheres of influence" to the several missions which was one part of the excellent work of the Evangelical Union, the Presbyterians were given a free hand with all other missions in Manila, and all Southern Luzon, with the work in Negros and Panay divided between them and the Baptists, as those two missions might agree. This gave the Presbyterians a compact territory in Luzon with but two languages, and one of those-the Bicol-spoken by but a small fraction of the whole population in their Luzon field. It also gave them portions of the fertile islands of Negros and Panay, with centers at the two largest cities in each island. By later action Cebu was added, and work in the entire Visayan group was tentatively assigned to the Baptists and Presbyterians. This gave them a population in Cebu alone of six hundred and fifty thousand, all homogeneous people, speaking one dialect of Visayan, and in Leyte and Samar which they have occupied since, an added population of about two hundred and fifty thousand, whose dialect is sufficiently like that prevailing in Cebu to enable the workers from the former island to be fairly well understood from the first in the latter large islands. The fighting line of the Presbyterian Church is thus flung out over four hundred miles in length, and holds positions on eight islands. Its work is in three main languages, though the Visayan of Panay and Occidental Negros differs almost as sharply from the Visayan of |