member, it is as true for you as it was for Paul to say,
'Through Christ I can do all things.'

"There are a few native Christians here who are earnestly striving to
be holy. But around them all is darkness--blacker than you can even
conceive. Where the Sun of righteousness has shined, there the golden
beams of Fiji's morning lie; it is a bright spot here and there; but
our eyes long for the day. We know and believe it is coming. But when?
I understand out here the meaning of that recommendation--'Pray ye
therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers
into the harvest.' You can hardly understand it in England. Do you pray
that prayer, Eleanor?

"Before I left England I wrote you a note. Amid the exquisite pleasure
and pain of which lurked a hope--without which it would not have been
written, but which I now see to have been very visionary. It is
possible that circumstances may be so that the note may have been read
by you; in that case Mrs. Caxton will give you this; but at the
distance of space and time that intervenes now, and with cooler
thoughts and better knowledge, I feel it to be scarcely possible that
you should comply with the request I was daring enough to make to you.
I do not expect it. I have ceased to allow myself to hope for it. I
think I was unreasonable to ask--and I will never think you
unreasonable for refusing--so extravagant a demand. Even if you were
willing, your friends would not allow it. And I would not disguise from
you that the difficulties and dangers to be met in coming here, are
more and greater than can possibly have been represented to you.
Humanly speaking, that is; I have myself no fear, and never have felt
any. But the evils that surround us--that come to our knowledge and
under our very eyes--are real and tangible and dreadful. So much the
more reason for our being here;--but so much the less likely that you,
gently reared and delicately cared for, will be allowed to risk your
delicate nurture in this land of savages. There is cannibalism here,
and to the most dreadful extent; there is all the defilement of life
and manners that must be where human beings have no respect for
humanity; and all this must come more or less under the immediate
knowledge and notice of those that live here. The Lord God is a sun and
shield; we dwell in him and not in the darkness; nevertheless our eyes
see what our hearts grieve over. I could not shield you from it
entirely were yo