faith by their idolatry.  But would this be true?  Has Christianity anything to dread?  What impression has the Joss-House made all these years on the life of San Francisco outside of Chinatown?  None whatever, except to make the reflecting man value the Christian faith with its elevating influences and its blessed hopes all the more.  It is a mistake then to exclude Chinamen from our shores on the ground that they will do harm to Christianity.  On the contrary the Church will do them good.  The Gospel is the leaven which will be the salvation of heathen men.  Did it not go forth into the Gentile world on its glorious mission, and did it not convert many nations in the first ages?  Has it lost its potency to-day?  No!  It is as powerful as ever to win men from their idols and their evil lives.  The question of Chinese immigration is a large one.  It has its social and its political aspects.  It is found all along the Pacific coast that Chinamen make good and faithful servants.  The outcry against them as competing with white laborers and artisans is more the result of political agitation for political purposes than good judgment.  Where they have been displaced on farms, in mills, in warehouses, in domestic life, white men and women have not been found to take their places and do the work which they can do so well.  Under the Geary Act immigration has been restricted and the numbers of the Chinese in the United States have been gradually decreasing.  In the year 1854 there were only 3,000 Chinese in the City of San Francisco; but even then there was agitation against them.  It was Governor Bigler who called them “coolies,” and this term they repudiated with the same abhorrence which the negro or black man has for the term “nigger.”  They kept on increasing, however, until in 1875 there were in the whole State of California 130,000.  Of this number 30,000 were in San Francisco.  To-day there are only about 46,000 in California and there are not more than thirty thousand of these in the City of San Francisco.  There are only 110,000 Chinese altogether in the United States proper.  Even the most ardent exclusionist can see from this that there is nothing to dread as to an overwhelming influx that will threaten the integrity and existence of our civilisation.  The labour-question and the race-question and the international question, aroused by the presence of the Chinese within our borders, will from time to time cause agitation and provoke discussion and heated debate and evoke oratory of one kind or another; but the question which should be uppermost in the minds of wise statesmen is how shall they be assimilated to our life?  How shall we make them Christians?  The answer will be the best solution of the whole matter, if it has in mind the spiritual interests of the Chinaman and of all other heathen on our shores.  There is indeed a plague spot in Chinatown, the social fester, which can and ought to be removed.  But this is true of American San Francisco as well as of Chinatown.