ly when the compulsion of
circumstances left no alternative, and then accepted most reluctantly?
With every desire to think of others as favourably as possible, without
any breach of charity, it must be acknowledged there have been cases of
departure, where I think a more resolute spirit would have kept persons
at their post. This I trust holds true of only a few. I know some who
soon left to whom the abandonment of the work was a bitter trial.
Nothing but the thought that to remain would have been to fight against
Providence took them away. To go back to the cases of failure during my
early period at Benares, I may mention that the departure of Mr. and
Mrs. Lyon was absolutely necessary; and those who know the subsequent
career of my friends, Messrs. Watt and Budden, need not be told that if
health had permitted Benares would have been for many years the sphere
of their labours.

[Sidenote: CELIBATE OR MARRIED MISSIONARIES?]

As the withdrawal of missionaries has often been caused by the failure
of the health of their wives, some have thought it would be well to have
celibate missionaries in a country which has so severe a climate. To
this there is the obvious reply that missionaries, like others, are
human beings, and a restriction on them which wars with human nature
would be found very pernicious, as it has ever been. Then, the wives of
missionaries, when they are what they ought to be, are very efficient
and, indeed, necessary missionary workers, and in many cases their
labours are as useful as those of their husbands. In well-ordered
missionary families the people see what a happy Christian home is, and
they are assured of a sympathy in their trials and cares which they
could not expect from unmarried missionaries. Some Societies, our own
among the number, have accepted as missionaries to India persons engaged
to be married, but they have required them to remain for a year or two
unmarried after going out to test their fitness for the climate; and, in
the event of the test being successfully stood, to give them an
experience which will enable the newly married wife to enter with less
strain on her Indian life. This may be a wise arrangement, and yet there
is often a restlessness till the marriage takes place, and time spent in
going to the port of debarkation, which carries with it some
disadvantages.

We dare not retreat from this great work of evangelizing India on
account of the vicissitudes of which I have