like methods? If system is "half the battle" in business, why is it not the same in church work? In fact some system is a pre requisite to success in mercantile pursuits, and we claim it is as indispensable in successful benevolent operations.

Let us now give a few facts from a recent experience in the line of this movement toward something systematic and definite. The writer, who has the honor of being the "undershepherd" of a noble little church, placed before said church a thoroughly thought-out plan. It was a scheme of giving, very carefully worked up, after numberless experiments in tabulating givers and gifts, and was thus the last, best outcome of mature thought, yet capable of indefinite enlargement and improvement, susceptible of various modifications which would be found necessary in adapting it to peculiar situations and circumstances. It was roughly put on a large sheet of printer's paper and placed as an object lesson before the people, and so pleased the committee of the society that they desired it printed and published. Here it is, suggesting to the eye of every fairminded beholder one of the easiest, pleasantest, most practical, and feasible plans for a very small congregation in contribut ing regularly and persistently for religious purposes.

If 5 children give 10 cts, each, a Sabbath, in one year it amts. to $26.00 "25 young persons

25

66

66

325.00

give 5 cents each, a Sunday, in 1 year amounts to $13.00

Total 100.

The figures alone carry the proof of the feasibility of the plan almost anywhere. It seems well-nigh incredible that only 95 persons filled with the grace of moderate generosity can raise nearly $2500.00 in one year. Some will be so skeptical of this that they will proceed to multiply for themselves, and work out this simple sum in multiplication and addition. In

proof of this, let me ask you, my reader, if you have not been already computing thus and verifying the figures above? I certainly hope you have, and that you have thus more than satisfied yourself. The second table is designed for a greater variety in the amounts to be voluntarily pledged as in the Harris plan of envelope collections; the estimate being a more moderate one even than the other; the givers being 100 and their gifts aggregating $2041.00, a sum large enough to pay all the expenses of most churches with less than three hundred in its average congregations, and to have a little surplus for mis

sions elsewhere.

Now such schedules of giving are designed simply to show what can be done and very easily done by even our weak and struggling churches. It does not, however, presume to rely entirely on a system and not upon converted men, nor does it suggest any such sanguine ideas, as to make us suppose that even such an attractive scheme will create the grace of charity in niggardly breasts. No, it does not anticipate the instant and total transformation of money-loving Judases into beautiful and bountiful Marys of Bethany, all eager to break their costliest alabaster cruses of spikenard at the feet of the Lord.

The collection committee of a church need not be surprised that some rich nabob or two and some other indescribables in every congregation of large size refuse to be counted in, in any scheme whatever that any angel or archangel might propose. Nevertheless every such committee may be assured and every true pastor's heart be made glad that there are to be found those who will enter into every such matter with a hearty and zealous coöperation. The spiritually-minded and progressive people will almost invariably help on the plan by prayer and purse, heart and will, especially so if the leaders of the movement are thoroughly judicious and with the pastor are ready to lead as well in the actual giving even to the point of genuine sacrifice, and with promptness. This exactly describes the case in Pilgrim Church, to which we made an earlier reference.

Of course it is to be understood that such figures as are proposed are merely suggestions and can be varied as much as it is possible, and are designed especially to work with the Harris system of envelope collections, which we are glad to see is be

ing adopted in an increasing number of churches, some of the suburban churches, about Boston, commencing with the current month. Such a schedule may therefore prove exceeding timely and add an important link in the chain of facts and proposals in that excellent and already well-tried Harris plan. Perchance the simplest plan for an average congregation of the sons of Agur (Prov. xxx. 1-8), who are neither poverty-stricken nor rich, would be for 150 givers giving thus:

But surely 150 should be found out of a congregation of 300 souls.

What will such a plan effect?

Besides many incidental advantages we have left ourselves. time to speak of only two or three things.

1st. The givers become self-disciplined in a very important matter. A sense of personal responsibility in the conduct and welfare of a church is awakened in each individual soul; and the right idea and complete idea of worship, personally and practically, is thus inculcated; the more definitely so as this method places it definitely before each.

2d. The church finances (whether in the matter of its expenses or its benevolences, as each church shall decide) will be far better and more clearly administered, business-like, and reliable ways. The church becomes assuredly known as the practiser of the wholesome doctrine of paying, promptly, one hundred cents on the dollar; and thus it puts the credit of the church as high as that of the best business man in it.

3. Last and best we believe it is exceedingly pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head and Founder of the Church, who said "them that honor me I will honor;" "Bring ye all the tithes into the store house," etc. (Mal. iii. 10.)

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CLXXVII.

NOVEMBER, 1883.

ARTICLE I.-A CHAPTER OF CONNECTICUT REMINISCENCES.

WHEN one in advanced life looks back into the past, to recall the persons and events of the earlier times, the field of his survey seems to divide itself naturally into two parts. There will first come up before him what may properly be called his primary memories, covering the ranges of his individual knowledge and experience-the times, events, and persons, which have fallen within the circle of his own direct observation and recollection. In the next place there will open before his mind's eye that world of interests and activities covered by the memories of the men of the older generation with whom he, in his early years, was wont to converse frequently and familiarly. What he thus learned is and always must be to him something very different from the information gathered out of books. He projects his own personality into this remoter past, where his immediate ancestors lived and acted, as if it were in some sense his own rightful domain.

The elderly men and women now living in New England do not remember when people generally made their journeys on

horseback, riding two by two, the women and girls on pillions behind their husbands and brothers. In some remote localities this custom may have lingered until it came within the memory of some persons now living. But almost every one beyond sixty years of age must have known and conversed with men and women who were entirely familiar with this horseback age, and who were well supplied with stories and quaint incidents illustrating that period.

The man is well along in life who can personally remember the opening of the war of 1812. But this same man, doubtless, in his youth listened to the conversation of those who, out of their own knowledge and experience, told him of the war of the American Revolution, its reverses and successes, its days of brightness and its days of gloom. Yea, more, this same man may have been fortunate enough to have had a great-grandfather or some ancient neighbor who took delight in telling him all about the actual services and experiences of the old French and Indian war of 1755.

The people who remember La Fayette as they saw him in his joyous and triumphant progress through the country in 1824 must be now more than sixty years old. But these same people have heard their fathers or grandfathers or other elderly men tell of La Fayette as they saw him about the time when he joined the army of America in 1777 in the freshness and radiance of a youth of twenty years.

So we might go on and enumerate any number and variety of instances, all tending to the same end. A man who lives to great age, when he joins his primary and secondary reminiscences together, can often sweep, with this double memory, over a range of a hundred and forty or fifty years, and even This is a period that does not stand to him like the ages of history that went before, and is not like any portion of contemporary history that lies afar off, and outside of this charmed circle.

more.

When the writer entered Yale College in the year 1835, many of the elderly men who came up year by year to the annual feast of the Commencement, were graduates of the college under the presidency of Dr. Ezra Stiles (1777-1795). Their public and class-meeting talk was about times and events