testify that those who give themselves to it in a climate
like that of India lead very laborious lives. I have said little of the
translation of the Scriptures, and the preparation of Christian books
and tracts. This is a department in which there has been much exhausting
effort of both body and mind, as all know well who have done even a
little in it. In the prosecution of direct evangelistic work the
missionary finds much to interest and encourage him, but also much to
grieve and depress him, especially if he has a sensitive nature, and has
no natural love for debate. Even to those who do not shrink from
discussion there is often not a little which is very trying. I have a
vivid recollection of times when I have returned from Benares to my home
in the suburbs, so wearied in body and grieved in spirit by the
opposition I had encountered and the blasphemies I had heard, that I
have felt as if I could never enter the city again. But I went again,
and perhaps the next time was much encouraged.

Missionaries at the same station are much more closely associated than
ministers at the same place at home. The management of the mission, the
policy to be adopted, and the respective places to be filled, are under
common arrangement and control, subject to the district committee, and
through them to the home directors. Many perplexing questions come
before missionaries thus associated, and human nature in them must have
parted with its usual infirmities, and put on peculiar excellence, if
difference of judgment and consequent variance of feeling had never
appeared. We cannot plead exemption from human imperfection. It cannot
be denied that at times there has been strong diversity of judgment and
painful alienation of feeling, when missionaries have too closely
resembled Paul and Barnabas in their sharp dispute at Antioch; but it
can at the same time be most truly affirmed that with very rare
exceptions discord has soon come to an end, and those who have differed
widely have become attached friends, as we know Paul and Barnabas did.
The normal state of things is that of mutual love, respect, and
helpfulness.

Missionaries have also had their differences with the Societies that
have sent them out and supported them. The respective position of home
committees and foreign missionaries are so different, that a difference
of judgment is in some cases unavoidable; but confiding as they have
done in the goodness of each other's motives,