A Worthy Cause

As is well known in literary circles, Berlin is the great center of learning and art in continental Europe. lts fa" mous university contained last year 6,626 students and 324 professors and instructora. Of tliis munber 600 came from American Uni versities and Colleges to purgue post-graduate and special courses. Our students go there as strangers in a strange land, they fiud the customs, the moráis and the manner of living all different from the refined Chriatian homes they have left in their native land. Prof. Christleib, of Bonn, has truly said "That our young men and women coming as perfect strangers among foreigners, and finding the customs and views of the people unknown to them are apt to feel lost, bewildered, and forsaken. Lonely and homesick they of ten flnd themselves coming in contact with persons who ridicule the Christian view of morality and religión, treat Sunday as a mere holiday, and laud their own license in thought and practice as the essence of true freedom and the crown of modern culture. Men prominent in literature and science sneer at religión, treat Christianity as obsolete, and ignore] and openly deny God and immonality. Materialism, fatalism, and pessimism meet the student in the laboratory, in the university, in literature and in society. As a consequence those most earnest in their search for truth, may be called to pass through the agony of doubt. A fearful crisis here awaita many a soul, and some learn after the saddest of all experiences that moremay be lost than is gained, and that one may return to his native land poorer than when he left it. There are but few churches in Berlin compared with the number of inhabitants, and they take no interest in the welfare of the American student and in fact have no room for them, and there is but one English church - the church of England, and that is always crowded. For the past thirty years a few devoted ones f rom American i-hurches have held union religious services which lias resulted in forming an unsectarian American church on a small scale. The)1 have no church building but rent a room of the Germán Methodists. For the past eight years this little church has had for its pastoT the Rev. Dr. Stuekenberg, formerly professor of Theology in Springfleld, Ohio, who has done noble work in not onlv conducting a home-like church for the large number of students but also for the many American tourists who who sojourn in Berlin. Some iw years since it was decided to send Mre. Stuckenberg, his excellent coworker, to America to solicit funds for jrecting a suitable church edifice. On Feb. 5, 1890, a meeting was held inBoston and a national association to collect fuuds for building an American Unitarian ehurch in Berlin was organized. A plan was adopted by which the entiresum needed $100,000, wasto be divided among the States most interested ; a president to be appoiuted in each state to promise and take charge of collections there. A gift of $1,000 will endow a pew, and of $200 a sitting, which may be made memorial to an individual or an institution, a church, a city or State. The names of the donors will be inscribed on the pews - that is a State - an individual - or institution of learning, but all the pews will be free. The presidenta will send the amounts collected in the various States tothe tional ireasurer, Mrs. (jroverCleveland, No. 816Madison Avenue, New York, )y whom it will be turned over to the Anierican and Foreign Christian Union, Rev. Dr. L. ï. Chamberlain, chairman, No. 489 Classon avenue, Brooklyn, New York. This body will hold the title to theproperty. f40,000 has already been raised, and a good prospect tor securing tln balance in the aear future. Mrs. Newberry, of Detroit, has charge oL the collections in Michigan, and Mrs. Prof. Carhart, of tliis city. Our church workers have raised $1 10.00, for Ann Arbor, and the State $1,000 for the benefit, we learn, of our University. Prof. Eelsey who has been verv active in this matter, is quite anxious to have the calialistic emblems of the University of Michigan inscribed on one or more of the pews.