together.*" And so it has been all the world over. Without citing examples or examining exceptions we may safely say that the men who have figured prominently in politics, literature, or science, have been those who excelled their cotemporaries in vigor of body. Genius, no doubt, will often by sheer force of will overcome the obstacles of weakness and disease; but the unhealthy body is too prone to act upon the abnormally developed brain, supplanting the vigorous thought by the emanations of a diseased imagination. "Ginnyus, Ginnyus, Take care of your carkuss!" Said Reade's shrewd old Dr. Sampson; and his advice is pointed by the example of our own Poe. How often have we sat in the lecture hall, of an evening during the Winter Course, waiting for the lecturer, some distinguished English author or scientist to appear, and expecting to see a slim, pale student, when there steps out on the platform a burly, broad-shouldered personage, with a commanding presence and hearty voice, who turns out to be the very man we have come to see. And then to hear people talk as though great bodily strength and robust health could not be united with a massive intellect and a brain capable of enduring a protracted strain. Why, 'tis the scholars, the hard students themselves who make the best athletes of all, as more than one hard fought race or game of ball will show. "The Royal Engineers, the select of the select,-every one of whom before he obtains his commission has to run the gauntlet of an almost endless series of intellectual contests-for years together could turn out the best foot-ball eleven in the kingdom, and within the last twelve months gained a success in cricket absolutely unprecedented in the annals of the game."+ Time and again come reports from this school or that, of complaints arising from the too great pressure brought to bear upon the scholars in their studies. At one time they come from a famous New England preparatory school; at another from some well known young ladies' seminary. But where do we hear * Saints and their Bodies, by Thos. Wentworth Higginson. complaints made against similar institutions on the ground that they are weaning the minds from study, or injuring the bodies of their students by giving too much attention to athletic exercises? In the Annual Report of President Eliot, of Harvard, for the year '73-4, in a paragraph upon physical exercises, occurs the following sentence: "Most American schools entirely neglect this very important part of their proper function. Many young men, therefore, come to the University with undevel oped muscles, a bad carriage, and an impaired digestion, without skill in outdoor games, and unable to ride, row, swim, or shoot. It is important that the University should give oppor tunity for a variety of physical exercises, because this student prefers one form and that another, and an exercise which is enjoyed will be ten times as useful as one which is repulsive." In American society with our tendency to rush at an early age into the serious business of life, weighting the immature brain and half-grown body with the duties and responsibilities of maturity, the longer time we give to both sides of our edu cation the better. The possessor of abundant health and strength has at his command a far better capital to start upon than a mine of wealth. It gives him self-possession, dignity, aplomb; qualities never amiss in trade or the professions, and which clothe their possessor with homage and esteem in every rank of society and smooth the way to success in mercantile or political life. "If I should make the shortest list of the qualifications of the orator," says Emerson, "I should begin with manliness; perhaps it means here presence of mind"-the quality of qualities which a reasonable attention to athletics tends to engender and increase. *Letters and Social Aims. p. 112. ARTICLE IX.-FIFTY YEARS OF HOME MISSIONS IN ILLINOIS.* THIS is not only the Jubilee of the American Home Missionary Society, but the fiftieth year of its operations in Illinois, "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year." When this Society was born, Illinois was only eight years old. After the founding of Kaskaskia by the French in 1707, the first American settlement was made by Kentuckians in 1788. In 1820 the census reported 55,211. In 1826 the new society came to its work in Illinois for 70,000 people; and now, after this half a century, it looks back upon what it has done in this State for 3,000,000 souls, as many as the Colonies numbered a hundred years ago. The same year in which this Society came up, the first railway was started in the United States. And to-day Illinois has 7,109 miles of railroad-1400 miles more than any other State. When, six years after this Society began its work in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln went forth as Captain of Militia in the Black Hawk war, only 3,000 men were mustered in the State for a summer campaign. But when, thirty years later, he was chosen to serve as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, his calls were responded to in Illinois by 258,217 three years men, of whom 28,842, along with him, laid down their lives for their country. At the time of that Black Hawk war, the settlers who had ventured out from Fort Dearborn twenty miles, had to flee back-one of those families being that of Judge Blodgett, of the United States Court. And now around Fort Dearborn stands Chicago. In 1826, Illinois had one Representative in Congress; in 1876, she has nineteen. In 1819 the first two Sabbath Schools were set up in this State, and now there are 6,000 of them. In 1793, the first common school in the Territory; now there are 11,648 free public schools. When this Society was born, Illinois had cast but two presidential votes; now she has furnished two double-term Presidents. * Paper read before the Illinois General Association. The first Protestant preaching in Illinois resulted in a revival of religion, and in a Baptist church organization-1796—with rules opposed to slavery. As late as 1812, Rev. Samuel J. Mills, on his tour through the West and Southwest, in behalf of the Missionary Society of Connecticut and of a local Bible Society, reported that in the Illinois Territory there was not a Presbyterian or Congregational minister-that there were five or six Methodist preachers, with about six hundred members, and five Baptist churches with one hundred and twenty mem bers. To-day the Protestant church organizations of Illinois number 4,298. Turning from these general contrasts, let us look at that spe cific missionary work in Illinois with which our churches have been associated. As there were reformers before the Reformation, so there were Puritan Missionaries in Illinois before this Society. One of the most thrilling chapters in the religious history of our country is yet to be written of the far-reaching plans and beneficent accomplishment of the old Missionary Society of Connecticut. On his first Missionary tour, in 1812, Samuel J. Mills stopped at Shawneetown, and preached, and organized a Bible Society; but he did not go across the State to St. Louis, as he had intended, because of the reported unsafety of the trip. But, upon his second visit, two years later, in company with Daniel Smith, he did risk the journey. At Kaskaskia, Governor Edwards generously entertained the object of their mission; and father Lippincott, in his historical sermon, says: "the missionaries made a deep impression upon the Governor's family." Finding only four or five Bibles among the hundred families of that old French capital, they consorted with the Governor in organizing a Bible Society there. Going over the river to St. Louis, which they found to be a village of 2,000 inhabitants, three-fourths of whom were French Catholics, they preached the first Protestant sermons on the west side of the Mississippi; they consulted with Governor Clark upon their Missionary scheme; organized a Bible Society; prepared the way for the coming of a missionary pastor for that town, and then went on down the river, to preach the first Protestant sermons, and to organize the first Presbyterian churches in Natchez and New Orleans. Dr. Palmer, in a recent commemorative dis course, candidly reported the founding of his church by Congregational enterprise. As one result of that tour of exploration, early in 1816, Solomon Giddings from Andover, a cousin of the great Commoner, Joshua, came on, located at St. Louis, developed his own first Presbyterian church there, and became a very apostle in all that region, on both sides of the river, so that, in the twelve years of his pastorate in St. Louis, he had organized a whole Presbytery of churches, six of them in Missouri and eight in Illinois. And all this time, up to the day of his death, he was under commission of that Connecticut Society, making to it stated reports, which, in the Panoplist, read like an Iliad. The churches organized by Giddings in Illinois, were those of Kaskaskia, Shoal Creek, Lebanon, Bellville, McCord's Settlement, Turkey Hill, Collinsville and Edwardsville. Up to the time of organizing the National Society, the Connecticut Society had sent to Illinois the following named missionaries: Rev. Oren Fowler, sent to Indiana and Illinois; Revs. Edward Hollister and Daniel Gould, from Andover, commissioned for Illinois and Missouri, the Society refusing to send one man to a field so limited as was either State alone; Revs. Oren Catlin and Daniel Sprague, commissioned to labor "in the United States, west of the Alleghanies;" Rev. Isaac Reed, who gave most of his time to Indiana. but who organized the church at Paris; while the eloquent Sylvester Larned had been di rected to visit Vincennes and Kaskaskia, on his way to the pastorate in New Orleans, where the good Elias Cornelius had followed with some Christian culture the planting of Samuel J. Mills. From 1820 to 1830 this society sent fifteen men to Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. These were Revs. Hezekiah Hall, Nathan B. Derrow, John Matthews, Jesse Townsend, David C. Proctor, Lyman Whiting, Samuel Bolding and Horace Smith; but the last named is the only one whose service I have been able to identify with Illinois. This society also sent to Illinois and Missouri Revs. Joel Goodell, Benjamin F. Hovey, Asa Johnson, Cyrus Nichols, George C. Wood, Alfred Wright, and Joseph M. Sadd, nearly all of whom passed on over the river, and in Missouri soon came under the care of the new National Society. In 1822 the New York Evangelical Society sent to Illinois from Andover, Rev. David Tenney; and, |