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Church South, the sum paid for the bishops' salaries and traveling expenses, dividends to the Annual Conferences, deficiencies in expenses of delegates to the General Conference, local papers established by the General Conference, and other bills ordered paid by that body. This whole sum has been paid out of profits of the business, which would otherwise have been added to the capital. We have, however, this summary to present for fifty-two years, that is, since 1836: Net gain in capital, $1,371,547 02; paid outside of the business, by order of General Conference, over $2,000,000. Total profits, $2,371,547 02.

The gain in assets in Cincinnati is nearly equal to its present net capital. This amount, $739,169 18, added to amounts paid for purposes above specified in connection with the New York house, will increase the figures which represent the profits of two publishing houses to over $4,000,000.

Other houses add their profits to their capital for the purpose of increasing their facilities for business, or divide them among the proprietors; but the Book Concern has paid out its profits for Church interests from year to year. It will appear from these figures that the Methodist Book Concern, under the management of officers selected by the General Conference, shows a clear profit of over $4,000,000 since 1836. If the world has a parallel in the history of religious or benevolent publishing establishments we have never seen the record!

We submit that those who criticise the methods employed by the Methodist Book Concern are bound to acknowledge these results of its work. The fruitage proves the tree sound and prolific.

The question has been raised whether it would not be an advantage to the Church for the Book Concern to dispose of all real estate used in the manufacturing part of the business, and have all the work done by contract. We submit the foregoing facts and figures are a sufficient answer to any suggestion of this kind. All the assets which are made up of buildings and machinery have been acquired and paid for by our pres

*It is difficult to ascertain the exact sum paid out years ago for these purposes. It is not difficult to show that the total is above rather than under $2,000,000 for New York alone. Dr. James Porter, in the Methodist Quarterly Review in 1867, and Dr. W. H. DePuy, in the Centennial Year Book, 1884, place the amount quite above this figure.

ent system of manufacturing our own publications. All this would have gone into the hands of outside parties who did our work. The Church now owns the valuable plants which would otherwise have become the property of jobbers.

With this review of the past it perhaps ought not to occasion surprise that the last General Conference advised that special services be held throughout the Church during the year, in commemoration of the success with which Providence had crowned the history of the Methodist Book Concern during the one hundred years of its existence. The following is the text containing the action of that body:

Whereas, The Book Concern of the Methodist Episcopal Church will complete its Centennial year in 1889; and,

Whereas, God has favored this agency of the Church with wonderful success, crowning the century with a quadrennial term of unprecedented prosperity, enabling the Agents to make a dividend and thank-offering of $100,000 for the Centennial year; therefore,

Resolved, 1. That the year 1889 be observed with such special services for thanksgiving to God for the prosperity vouchsafed to this oldest institution of the Church as shall inaugurate a new epoch in the history of the Book Concern, and insure from our people a more intelligent and hearty co-operation in promoting our publishing interests; and to this end let every pastor preach during the month of January at least one sermon appropriate to this anniversary, embracing the following points:

(a) The origin and growth of our publishing houses.

(b) Their relation to the spread of Methodism and practical Christianity.

(c) Their relation to the support of our disabled ministers, their dependent widows and children.

2. At each Annual Conference during the year let an evening be set apart for the observance of the Centennial of the Book Concern, with addresses from the Agents and others. Let the Bishops, as far as possible, give special encouragement to these anniversary exercises by their presence and exhortations.

3. Let the Presiding Elders provide for anniversary exercises at their District Conferences, devoting at least one session to this subject.

4. Let our Church periodicals of every grade join to promote the success of this jubilee.

5. Let the people every-where unite to make this a glad year for the worthy claimants upon the Book Concern by purchasing from our houses every needed supply of books, periodicals, and Sunday-school supplies.

6. To stimulate all to hearty co-operation and enthusiastic 15-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. V.

effort let it be understood that the largest per cent. of the net profits consistent with the demands of the business shall be distributed as dividends to the Annual Conferences during the year 1890 for the benefit of the claimants on this fund.

Such services as are contemplated by this action would prove of incalculable benefit to the Church and largely increase the business of the Book Concern, with whose operations the people would become familiar.

It would seem at first view that the owners of publishing houses would need no arguments to convince them that in all their relations to the Church as pastors, they should aid in maintaining such houses by giving to them their first and most hearty patronage. The additional fact that these houses are maintained for the same purpose that the ministry is sustained by the people, should deepen the sense of obligation.

Although it is not the highest motive, yet it is not a dishonorable one, that would lead our ministers to provide for their necessities when sickness, or the infirmities of old age, shall have laid them aside from active duties.

The question of cheapness is a secondary one. Cheapness should not be a more prominent element in regard to books and papers than in regard to the pulpit. The services of the centennial year will undoubtedly turn the attention of the Church to all these important questions, and promote our publishing interests.

During the history of the Book Concern committees have been appointed to supervise the work of the Agents. In the early periods these committees were appointed by Conferences in the immediate vicinity. Since 1848 the General Conference has appointed a General Book Committee from the different portions of the Church. Since 1872 local committees of three laymen, who form part of the General Committee, have had special supervision of the business in New York and Cincinnati, and the Church is largely indebted to these men for the important, though gratuitous, services which they have rendered.

For some years past those in charge at New York have felt the need of a building specially adapted to the publishing business. A valuable house was purchased under the authority of the General Conference in 1869, known as 805 Broadway. This elegant building was erected for a dry-goods store, and it was

found impracticable to adapt it to the peculiar demands of a publishing house. Ever since the purchase, the larger part of it has been leased to the original owner for mercantile purposes. For ten years past, our retail store has occupied the basement; the manufacturing business has been carried on in the old factory at 200 Mulberry Street, one mile and a half away, and while this factory was quite adequate to our work fifty years ago it is neither large enough for our present demands nor adapted to the improved machinery of modern times. Where a large number of papers are published, the editors should have their offices in the same building. Hence, at the request of the Agents, the Book Committee authorized the sale of both properties, then free from debt, and the erection of a building in connection with the Missionary Society, to which all the business and offices should be transferred. No more appropriate time could be selected for these changes than the Centennial year of the Book Concern. In pursuance of this plan, a solid building of granite, brick, and iron will be opened in New York during the year, which it is hoped will stand in all its symmetry and beauty for the hundred years to come. Into this building it is proposed to transfer all the manufacturing business and offices of that house. With the increasing facilities which will then be furnished the largest demands can be met both in quantity and quality for long years to come. From its presses shall be borne day after day a literature pure, elevating, and saving to every part of this earth.

As we now place this record upon the pages of the Methodist Review, we are well assured that the review of the coming hundred years from the height of the second centennial year of the Methodist Book Concern will be one of satisfaction to the Meth. odist Episcopal Church which shall then cover the land. Our devout prayer is that the business of the Book Concern may be so conducted during the next hundred years that the blessing of God may rest upon it. Then shall it fulfill its important mission in educating, elevating, and saving this world.

S. Hunt

ART. V.-THE ROYAL GIFT OF IERMAK, THE ROB BER, TO CZAR IVAN GROSNUI.

THE reign of Ivan Grosnui (1533-1584), the Awful One, commemorated in the bylinas or ballads of his people, and in the descriptive music of Rubenstein, stands alone in history for inventive cruelty and for wide devastation. In these achievements but two other characters can compare with him; both of them linked with his lineage and race-Tamerlane and Genghis, devastators whose wandering careers, filled with wanton destruction, cannot be dignified by the name of reigns, although their influence over the wild hordes of northern Asia has impressed itself with permanence on the customs and traditional laws of these latter. But as compared with any Asiatic or Roman throned tyrant, bearing rule over a country of defined boundaries, Ivan, the autocrat, sovereign over the second largest empire of the globe, has a horrible preeminence as the destroyer of his "children," according to the Russian conception of the relation of the subject to the sovereign-the powerful maniac endowed with a Caucasian brain, and a moral nature perverted to the pattern of that of the Tartar ancestors of his mother; a being to whose eyes nothing was so beautiful as the convulsive writhings of his victims, and whose very fingers, dark and contorted, took on the shapes of the pincers and prods with whose use upon living, quivering flesh, in his hours of relaxation, he delighted to divert himself.

Yet in the promise of his youth-for, like most of his kind, the opening of his career was hopeful of strength and thought applied to beneficent ends, even as Lucifer was beautiful and dutiful, before overcome by his monstrous self-exaltation-this powerful, appalling figure in the declining dynasty of Rurik appears as a high-hearted paladin of Christ, a crusader for the orthodox faith, incorporating into his empire the great khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, putting to flight the armies of aliens, "infidels "--pausing, too, to weep at the spectacle of their dead laid low by the hard necessities of war-and causing the Moslem powers to tremble from the Bolor-Tagh, the easternmost mountains of Turkestan, to the Straits of Gibraltar.

Inspired by these achievements, prodigious for a young mou

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