448 



LUTHERANS. 



a Lutheran college. Excellent offers were 

 made by these and other cities. The Board of 

 Education accepted the offer made by the 

 Boards of Trade of the city of Atchison, Kan- 

 sas, of 25 acres of land, $50,000, and the half- 

 interest in the sale of 600 acres adjoining, and 

 opened Midland College in September, 1887, 

 at this place. 



General Council. This body, organized in 

 1867, is composed of eleven district synods, 

 two of which, however, the Norwegian and 

 Iowa synods, are not yet in organic connec- 

 tion with the general body, but send delegates 

 to its conventions as advisory members. 



There are within the bounds of this general 

 body 5 theological seminaries at Philadelphia, 

 Pa., Kock Island, 111., Mendota, 111., Beloit, 

 Wis., and Saginaw, Mich., having 167 students, 

 14 professors, and property valued at more 

 than $200,000 ; 7 colleges at Rock Island, 111., 

 Allentown, Pa., Waverly, Iowa, Greenville, 

 Pa., St. Peter, Minn., Rochester, N. Y., and 

 Lindsborg, Kansas, having 828 students, 64 

 professors and instructors, and property valued 

 at $450,000, besides 5 academies, 1 conserva- 

 tory of music, 1 ladies' seminary, 1 deaconess 

 institution at Philadelphia, and 24 benevolent 

 institutions. The German Hospital in Phila- 

 delphia deserves special mention. The receipts 

 for 1886-'87 amounted to $71,564.03, the ex- 

 penditures to $64,108.53. During the year 

 nearly 1,500 cases were treated. John D. 

 Lankenau is the efficient president of the 

 board and the munificent benefactor of the 

 institution, having already spent $500,000 or 

 $600,000 on the buildings and grounds. The 

 hospital is under the care of trained nurses 

 and deaconesses. A mother-house of deacon- 

 esses is in course of erection which will cost 

 3,000, and is the gift of the honored 



president of the board, called the "Mary J. 

 Drexel Home and Philadelphia Mother-House 

 of Deaconesses,'' erected in memory of the 

 wife of Mr. Lankenau. The corner-stone of 

 the new building was laid Nov. 11, 1886. The 

 twentieth annual convention of the General 

 Council was held in the Church of the Holy 

 Trinity, Greenville, Mercer County, Pa.. Sept. 

 8 to 13, 1887. The convention was opened 

 with the communion service of the Lutheran 

 Church.. The opening sermon was delivered 

 by the President of the Council, the Rev. A. 

 Spaeth, D. D., on the subject, " The Doctrine 

 of the Church as Illustrated by the Life and 

 Teaching of Luther." The district synods 

 were represented by sixty-five clerical and lay 

 delegates, three synods not sending delegates. 

 Prof. Adolph Spaeth, D. D., of the Philadel- 

 phia Theological Seminary, was re-elected 

 President. The Council carries on its mission- 

 ary and benevolent operations through com- 

 mittees, the consideration of whose reports 

 constitutes the important transactions of the 

 convention. The home-mission work is in- 

 trusted to three committees English, German, 

 and Swedish which have charge of mission- 



points not under the care of the district syn- 

 ods. The English committee reported re- 

 ceipts amounting to $5,730.04 and expenditures 

 $5,055.15, with missionaries as follows : Ohio, 

 1 ; Illinois, 2 ; Minnesota, 2 ; Dakota, 1. The 

 German committee reported receipts to the 

 amount of $5,457.87. Their expenses were 

 $5,454.95 for the support of 15 missionaries 

 and 18 mission congregations in Canada, Michi- 

 gan, Nebraska, Dakota, Texas, New York, 

 Pennsylvania, and other States and Territories. 

 Fourteen young men were sent to the commit- 

 tee from Rev. Paulsen's institution at Kropp, 

 Germany, which- receives support from the 

 German committee and was established some 

 years ago for the special purpose of supplying 

 this committee with German missionaries. 

 Sixty young men have been sent to America 

 during the past six years. The Swedish com- 

 mittee reported receipts and expenditures 

 amounting to $12,200.93, with missions in 

 nearly every State and Territory. Of this 

 large number of missions nineteen were under 

 the special charge of the General Committee ; 

 the others were cared for by the conferences 

 within whose bounds they are located. Efforts 

 were made at this convention to centralize the 

 missionary operations of the district synods 

 and place them under the control of the Gen- 

 eral Committees; but no more definite conclu- 

 sion was reached than that all the committees 

 of the various synods be required to report to 

 the General Council at each meeting, and that 

 the General Committees be authorized at their 

 discretion to appoint traveling missionaries or 

 superintendents of missions in order more effi- 

 ciently to care for the ever-increasing and 

 widely-scattered members of the Church com- 

 ing to this country. For the support of the 112 

 missionaries and 179 missions, under the super- 

 vision of the General Council and its district 

 synods, $37,402.43 were expended during 

 the year. The Committee on Foreign Mis- 

 sions reported the following concerning the 

 labors of the missionaries among the Telu- 

 gus in India. This mission has : Mission- 

 aries, 5 ; wives of missionaries, 4 ; native pas- 

 tors, 2 ; evangelists and catechists (native), 

 7; teachers, 62 ; pupils, 673 ; baptized in 1886, 

 364; baptized from January to June, 1887, 

 117; number of baptized members, 1,912. The- 

 expenses for the year were $9,506.30. The- 

 German missionary at Castle Garden, New 

 York, reported the care of 10,464 immigrant* 

 during the year. Of poor immigrants 457 

 were lodged and 734 supplied with meals at a 

 cost to the mission of $879.60. The receipts 

 from all sources amounted to $17,329.26, and 

 the expenditures to $16.596.76. In order to 

 impart necessary information to German immi- 

 grants, the missionary prepared and published 

 a directory of the Lutheran Church in Ameri- 

 ca, giving in alphabetical order a list of the 

 places in the United States and Canada where 

 Evangelical Lutheran congregations exist. An- 

 other pamphlet, prepared by Prof. W. J. 



