ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. 



11 



resignation, decided to divide the duties formerly fulfilled by the 

 paid secretary between three honorary officials — an Editor, a 

 Secretary for General Purposes, and a Lecture Secretary. Dr. J. W. 

 Thirtle has kindly expressed his willingness to undertake the office 

 of Editor, Mr. E. J. Sewell that of Secretary for General Purposes, 

 and I am very gratified that the Council is willing to retain me as 

 Lecture Secretary. 



The second point of special interest is the Financial Statement. 

 During this year a number of handsome donations have been made, 

 in order to help the finances of the Institute. In all, a sum of £181 

 in donations has been contributed. The result has been that, for the 

 first time for many years, we have been able to pay off all accounts 

 within the year itself, and to carry nothing in the way of debt to the 

 next year. There are one or two quite small bills, printers' bills, 

 incurred in 1916, which have not yet been presented, but all accounts 

 that have come in have been cleared off in 1916. This special fund 

 for the purpose of placing the finances of the Institute on a firmer 

 basis, was started in 1913, in which year the amount received was 

 £52 16s. U., in 1914 it was £43 12s. Od, in 1915, £14 13s. 6f/., 

 while this third year of the War we have received, as I have already 

 said, no less than £181. 



The third point to which I wish to draw attention is that one of 

 our members has made a very striking proposition. He came to me 

 some months ago and said that his business had brought him in 

 somewhat more profit than ordinary during the War. It was a 

 perfectly natural and inevitable thing that it should do so in his 

 particular business, but he felt that such profit did not belong to 

 him but should be offered to God. He had a large Bible-class com- 

 posed of a number of young working men, and he had been impressed 

 with the way in which the working population of this country had 

 lost its faith in the Scriptures ; and therefore he thought that if a 

 number of tracts could be published, bringing out the results which 

 were set forth in many volumes of the Victoria Institute, tracts which 

 would appeal to such a constituency as he was acquainted with, it 

 would be a great work, and might do something to fight that want 

 of faith in the Bible which he so much deplored. He offered, there- 

 fore, the sum of £200 for that purpose, and Dr. Schofield has kindly 

 undertaken the preparation of a series of tracts from the volumes in 

 the Victoria Institute. 



