, be now
sufficiently powerful to advance and attempt to dispossess this man,
we may expect dreadful scenes. Last night the contest ended in
plundering the poor Jews.

Amidst this turmoil and interminable contention, a missionary with a
family has much to try his faith, particularly in the early years of
his missionary course, when he has no power in the language to take
advantage of those opportunities which accidentally present
themselves; for I am daily more and more convinced of the difficulty
of speaking so as to be felt; at least in the first Eastern language
one learns. The association of ideas, the images of illustration, are
almost entirely different in many cases. The organs of pronunciation
require a perfect new modelling, and perhaps not the least difficulty
is to prevent one's heart from sinking at the little apparent progress
made in understanding, and being understood, out of the common routine
of daily life: the feeling will often arise, Surely I never shall
learn. The difficulty is not, however, merely in words; you have to
converse in the East generally with persons who have either no ideas
on subjects of the deepest interest, or have attached some entirely
different meaning to the terms you use to express those ideas; and
which of the two occasions the most trouble, it is difficult to say.
Notwithstanding, however, all difficulties, and all discouragements,
and we seem now in the very centre of all, my soul was never more
assured of the value of missionary labours among any people, it
matters not whom, than now. There is, I am sure, what our blessed Lord
declares, a _testimony_, in whatever measure we can proclaim his
truth, or manifest his spirit, that is felt by those even who will
not embrace it savingly. In reading Mrs. Judson's journal of the
trials of the Burman mission, how deeply I now enter into them--how
truly I can sympathize with them. It is wonderful how the Lord does
sustain the heart when the time of trial comes. When I heard the
struggle at the palace, last night, then saw it on fire, and heard the
balls whizzing over our heads, and shortly after the screams of the
poor Jews, whom they were plundering, a little way from the end of our
street, my heart felt a repose in God that I cannot describe, and a
peace that nothing but confidence in his loving care could give me, I
feel assured. At times I feel so utterly useless, so devoid of every
aptitude for the work in which I am engaged, th