hing. New personnel is constantly being
added, and older workers are constantly retiring. New stations are
constantly being opened. And the single worker, time and time again,
finds herself being separated from a fellow worker with whom she would
prefer to remain permanently!

Some will notice that I have been using pronouns in the feminine
gender. This is not without reason, since by far the majority of
single workers on the field are women. And, as has been said, one of
the hardest things the single woman worker must face is that she can
never say to anyone, "I'm going to stay with you."

* * * * *

"What a negative sort of outlook!" exclaims someone; and we must thank
that one for reminding us that there is a _positive_ side. There is
One whom we _may_ choose for our Companion. (How amazing that I should
be allowed to _choose Him_!) And it is just because we have already
chosen the one Companion who will not leave us that we may not choose
anyone else--not even a husband or wife--without reference to Him. As
soon as we choose Him, then He does all our choosing for us.

According to old Oriental custom, marriages were arranged by parents
with the aid of a middleman. Sometimes when things went wrong after
marriage one of the couple, or both, would blame the middleman. When
marriages are made after the Western pattern, there is no one to blame
but oneself. Before I left America I used to think that marriages
arranged by parents, through middlemen, must necessarily be unhappy.
But after I had been on the field for a time I decided that in China
the proportion of happy marriages among those outside of Christ was
greater than marriages of those of the same group in America, even
though almost all the marriages in China were made after the old
traditional style! People who choose partners for themselves do not
always choose wisely. Older people, with more experience, may make a
wiser choice than the young people themselves would have done. It
_may_ be better to have a trustworthy middleman than to try to do the
choosing oneself!

If this is true of an earthly middleman, how much more it is true of
the One who chooses for _us_! The earthly middleman may do very well
in many cases, but certainly he makes some mistakes. The One who
chooses for us makes no mistakes. So whether it be a matter of
accepting a fellow worker you would rather not have, or of letting go
one whom you would like to k