d villages. They give the most attractive report of the
multitude of people who crowd to hear their preaching and receive
their tracts, and it might reasonably be thought that, according to
their representations, at least half of their hearers would become
converts to Christianity; but unfortunately the listening and
receiving tracts is as good as no proof at all. Would not Chinese,
Indian, or Persian priests have just as great troops of hearers if
they appeared in their respective national costume in England or
France, and preached in the language of those countries? Would not
people flock round them? would they not receive the tracts given out
gratis, even if they could not read them?

I have made the minutest inquiries in all places respecting the
results of missions, and have always heard that a baptism is one of
the greatest rarities. The few Christians in India, who here and
there form villages of twenty or thirty families, have resulted
principally from orphan children, who had been adopted and brought
up by the missionaries; but even these require to be supplied with
work, and comfortably attended to, in order to prevent them from
falling back into their superstitions.

Preaching and tracts are insufficient to make religious doctrine
understandable, or to shake the superstitions which have been
imbibed in infancy. Missionaries must live among the people as
fathers or friends, labour with them--in short, share their trials
and pleasures, and draw them towards them by an exemplary and
unpretending mode of life, and gradually instruct them in a way they
are capable of understanding. They ought not to be married to
Europeans for the following reasons:--European girls who are
educated for missionaries frequently make this their choice only
that they be provided for as soon as possible. If a young European
wife has any children, if she is weak or delicate, they are then
unable to attend any longer to their calling, and require a change
of air, or even a journey to Europe. The children also are weak,
and must be taken there, at latest in their seventh year. Their
father accompanies them, and makes use of this pretext to return to
Europe for some time. If it is not possible to undertake this
journey, they go to some mountainous country, where it is cooler, or
he takes his wife and family to visit a Mela. {287} At the same
time, it must be remembered that these journeys are not made in a
very simple manner: