ches. They perceive the necessity of
keeping out the unfit, as clearly as that of admitting the fit. They do
not add to their membership by infant baptism, and they make sure that
no pecuniary considerations influence professing converts. Our Baptist
mission churches are fast becoming models of self-supporting,
self-governing, and self-propagating bodies. Missionaries find that
their only safety lies in hewing close to the line of New Testament
requirement. Their success in building up Baptist churches in Burma and
among the Telugus, keeps our missionaries faithful to the New Testament
model of church polity. They have the joy of seeing churches organized
on scriptural principles, and shedding their light upon the regions of
darkness around them.

I wish to say something also about the physical environment of our
missionaries and its influence upon them. I remember that half a century
ago I called upon Doctor Thompson of Beirut, the veteran missionary of
the American Board in Syria. I would not have been surprised if I had
found him living in a hut, for my ideas of missionary hardship were
very crude. But I was surprised to find him living in a great stone
mansion, with twice as many servants as we ordinarily have at home. It
has taken me some time to learn that in a hot country a cool and
spacious house is a primary necessity of life, if the missionary expects
to endure a climate where the thermometer at times goes up beyond a
hundred degrees and stays there. And ordinary comfort cannot be obtained
without servants to do your cooking and running. The large house can be
built for half the cost of such a structure at home, and the servants
can be obtained for only a few cents a day for each one. Remember that
in many cases the missionary has not only to be his own physician and
surgeon, but also the physician and surgeon of others; that his house is
often a hospital as well as a gathering-place of inquirers. Remember,
too, that the missionary's wife has not only to perform the household
duties of a wife at home, but in addition has probably to be the
supervisor of a girls' school and the only school-teacher and
music-teacher that her children will know until they are old enough to
go to the homeland. Remember these considerations, and you will see that
a decent home is essential to a missionary's success in a heathen land.
Our missionary work, like our diplomatic service, has been too long
discredited by our insufficient