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The Central Student Conference this year was opened on Friday evening, August the twenty-second, by Miss Edith M. Dabb, sent by the National Board as executive officer.

The morning hours were given to the Bible classes taught by such leaders as the Rev. James Beebe and Dr. William C. Covert of Chicago, Miss Ethel Cutler of New York, and Rev. Thomas R. White of Bloomington, Indiana, and to the study of Missions under the direction of Mrs. Dwight E. Potter of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, Miss Jessie Field of the national staff by reason of her work in the small town and in the country, Miss Ida V. Jontz, lately head of the Department of Associated Charities of Omaha, Miss Margaret Burton, who taught a class, using as a text her own book, "Notable Women of Modern China," and others.

Following this came the technical hour when presidents and council council members met to discuss the problems which they must meet and solve in their local Associations, and to listen. to addresses on the relation of Association work to that of Student Government, the Student Volunteer Movement, Missions and other allied interests.

The fourth hour of the morning, devoted to a series of lectures on "A Working Faith," by the Rev. Harris Franklin Rall of Denver, was one of the outstanding features of the conference. Dr. Rall is a keen, analytical thinker, and his message could not fail to help those who had experienced an element of dissatisfaction or of doubt. in their faith.

The afternoons, with the exception of "quiet hour," were given to recreation and amusement. A visit was made to the Yerkes Observatory, whose forty-inch telescope is the largest of its kind in the world, and a launch trip around the lake was taken by the entire conference. A reception was held for the purpose of meeting the leaders and the secretaries, and a real Chinese tea was given by the

members of the foreign delegation. Boating, bathing and tennis were never neglected, and the many walks about the lake offered pleasures to those not caring for the more strenuous exercise. The great event of interest was College Day, on which occasion each school presented a stunt, and from the suffragette episode presented by the conference leaders to the pageant by the North Central Field, the afternoon was one of continuous enjoyment.

The evening services during the week were given over to the leaders of the different departments of Association work, such as Mr. J. Lovell Murray of the Student Volunteer Movement, Miss Blanche Geary, who has charge of the economic work, and Miss Eva Morris, who addressed the delegates on "Student Problems." On both Sundays services were held in the large Auditorium, the first week in charge of the Rev. James W. McDonald and the second led by Dr. Charles R. Adams. The last day vespers were held on the north hill, with Miss Dabb as leader.

The last service was held on the second Sunday evening, leaving with the delegates a feeling that they had gained new power and inspiration from the quiet strength of the leaders of the twenty-second Geneva ConferEDITH R. Powell.

ence.

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to learn more about how to be country leaders enjoyed camp life together as well as studying together.

In the evening they gathered around the camp fire and with Dean Bailey in charge told of their experiences and deep desires for their work with country folk. There were country pastors who were fitting their churches to the needs of country life, grange lecturers, county agricultural agents, deeply interested in making "two blades of grass grow where one grew before," county teachers and superintendents of schools who believed in country schools for country children, country Sunday school school teachers, Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Association county secretaries, afire with the great need of abundant life in the country where there has been starved life before, and there was one strong, promising young man training to go as an agricultural missionary to China and one young man from South Africa learning to farm well, so he could go back and show his people how to use the methods of scientific agriculture.

From over half the States of our country and from foreign lands they were gathered, and when one saw their zeal and their passionate love for the open country and devotion to its people, one felt very sure that the Country Life Movement is a religious movement and that the time will come when "those that dwell among plants and hedges will dwell with the King for his work."

The School for Country Life Leadership is held annually, a three-year course being offered for which a certificate is issued by Cornell University. It is filling a very real need and its growth and the way it is drawing students demonstrates its efficiency. It is interesting to note that there were as many women enrolled as men. The country needs leadership for its girls and women, and that leadership is available. JESSIE FIELD.

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The Southern Conference was larger this year than ever before in the eighteen years of its history, and the Eastern Student, the Central City, the Central Student, and the Western Student Conferences, all taxed to the utmost capacity the accommodations provided.

There were 2,426 student delegates, 1,200 city delegates, 504 leaders, guests, etc.; 553 different schools and colleges were represented, 191 city Associations, 2 mill villages, and 7 counties. Among the students were 280 normal school students. There were also present 77 faculty members from various schools. The city delegates were divided among 58 occupations; 8 National Board members, 28 field committee members, and 87 local Board members were in attendance.

Twenty-four guests from the World's Student Christian Federation were

entertained.

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Graded Bible Study

1913-1914

COURSE I. (For secondary school girls and younger women.)

First Year.

Jesus, the Man of Galilee. Elvira J.
Slack.

Second Year.

Studies in the Life of Paul. A. G.
Leacock.

Third Year.

reader to know that the information blanks sent to the National Board by the local Associations showed that 48 city Associations offered some sort of graded Bible study last year. How many of these used the courses suggested by the National Board the reports do not reveal, but in 13 Associations where the National Board examinations were given, over 450 students were enrolled in the classes and 108 tried the examinations. These

The Message of the Earlier Prophets figures are all very encouraging, but

to Israel. Margaret G. Brooke.

COURSE II. (For adult classes.)
First Year.

Studies in the Gospel According to St.
Mark. H. W. Oldham.

The Social Message of Jesus. Edward

S. Parsons.

Second Year.

Bible Studies on the Book of Acts.

H. W. Oldham.

The Epistles of Paul.
Nourse.

Third Year.

Edward E.

Women of Ancient Israel. Charlotte
H. Adams.

it is earnestly hoped that they will be much larger another year.

Every Association in the land ought to offer a graded course of Bible study, because it ought to give every possible encouragement to the girl who is anxious for a thorough knowledge of her Bible, and should strive in every way to create a desire for such knowledge. Good results have come from all sorts of Bible study. But we want the best results, and

Work and Teachings of the Earlier surely these come, in Bible study as

Prophets. Kent & Smith.

Statistics are sometimes really interesting. It was of interest to the writer and doubtless will be to the

in everything else, only from the work which is planned with a large vision and a long reach into the future. The examinations offered by the National Board at the end of the year's work

are not, of course, essential. There will always be many in the classes who cannot take them. But they are very valuable. They serve to standardize the work throughout the country, they give the student an opportunity to round up her study and they supply to both teachers and students and to the Association itself the tangible evidence that the work has been faithfully and seriously done.

The examinations in all courses will be offered this year during the week of April 27 to May 2, 1914, and will be open to any class that has held at least twenty sessions. The number of lessons in the text-books for the courses varies somewhat, but most of them are so arranged that the class may spend a longer time on the course than the text requires if desired.

Some Associations have classes which have already completed the work of the first and second years; these will notice that a third year's work is now added. For both the younger and older students this new course is in the Old Testament. The period of the earlier prophets has been chosen because it is one around which much of the most important history of Israel's development centers, and above all because the ringing cry for civic righteousness and social justice of these prophet-statesmen has a very special message for us to-day. Course II this work in the prophets is prefaced by a course on the Women of Ancient Israel which deals with various steps in the growth of the

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At this time of year when Bible study plans are being laid it is again brought to the notice of all who are officially or personally interested in such plans that the National Publication Department has many reasonable and specially prepared Bible study texts for class or individual use. Copies are sent for inspection, and discounts are given for class orders. in quantity. In addition to those mentioned by Miss Rice there are such texts as Lessons in the Gospel by John, by Charlotte Adams (20 cents), The Parables of Jesus, by Elbert Russell (20 cents), The Manhood of the Master, by Harry Emerson Fosdick (50 cents), and Outdoor Bible Studies, by Ethel Cutler (15 cents). These are published pre-eminently for Association use, which is something for every Bible study, chairman and teacher to remember in making her plans.

IMMINENCE

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:

Yea! on the glancing wings

Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet

Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet

Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes

That peep from out the brake, I stand confest,

On every nest

Where feathery Patience is content to brood

And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood-

There doth My Godhead rest.

-Evelyn Underhill.

The Associations

Working Together
An Open Letter

A

VISITOR to headquarters last winter, in enumerating several ways in which she thought the local Association helped the National organization, mentioned the summer conferences, asking how they could be supported if the local Associations did not send people to them. Another Association visitor came to discuss the reason for the suggested four per cent basis of support, which she felt was all wrong, since she thought that it had been asked from local Associations because of the new headquarters building which had to be supported. Still another had the idea that a local Association could pay by the piece, as it were, for whatever help was given to it from headquarters. The whole mental attitude back of such expressions is so remote from the thought of the inhabitants of the headquarters building, who have never thought of the National work as anything but a creature of the local Associations, formed of them and by them to serve them, that any argument or answer which suggests itself is almost sure to fall wide of the mark. And yet, are we at headquarters not taking too much for granted? Or should we assume that even every Board member in the country knows how the National Association came to be that the local Associations started it, formed it, compose it? Or that the summer conferences are conducted for the local Associations, and that they are not an enterprise of the National Board which the Associa

tions help to support by sending delegates? Or that in the measure as the help given from the National organization is really national help, it cannot be paid for by the piece with a resulting freedom from any further obligation, since what is given is in a real sense the best experience of all the Associations, and not advice and counsel of an outside body?

Since the National Board is the instrument of connection, are there more ways in which it can help, in the first place, to set us straight in our thinking, and then by a continuous effort to make the fact of the Associations working together more self-evident-not only, or first, for what they can get out of it, but that they may spread the Association and increase its values? It has been suggested that a discussion in this magazine might be carried on with profit, unfolding to the newcomer, to Boards, to cabinets and to Associations the fundamentals of our organizationsuch things as how there came to be a National organization, what the National Board is, what its work is, what the departments do, the relations between the National organization and other national organizations, what things are coming to the Board from time to time for consideration. It is true that the very friends who are not well informed on these things are those who do not read THE ASSOCIATION MONTHLY, but we should at least have erected a guide post; it would be there to point the way. Suggestions and advice will be welcome from readers of THE MONTHLY as to what is least understood, what is being misunderstood, and what special features of the National work would be valuable for such discussion.

Mabel Cerattly

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