ns offered for our care, as well as the
provisioning of the hospitals. From daybreak in the morning till the end
of their evening Meetings, our Officers may be seen showing the people,
old and young, brotherly and sisterly love; and though they may not, as
yet, have succeeded in many places in raising up such a native force as
we should desire, the Government has found them as persevering as if
they had gained the crowd which their toils and endurances have
deserved.

The first Leper Institution placed in our charge was so rapidly
transformed from a place of despair and misery into a home of Salvation
hope and joy, that the Government naturally desired to see more such
institutions, adequate to receive the entire leper population of the
islands, which is, alas! large.

Our position in Java, and the consequent discussion of us in the Dutch
Parliament, led to our first public recognition in the world as a
Christian force. Because we do not baptise with water there has been in
Java a disposition amongst some Christian teachers to refuse to any of
our people burial in a Christian cemetery. But when in the Dutch budget
discussion this was made an objection to our receiving any grant, the
Colonial Minister simply read out the whole of our Articles of War, and
asked how any one could refuse to recognise as Christians those who had
signed such declarations.

The Governments of the various Australian Colonies must, however, have
the credit of first giving to our Officers public patronage. As has
already been mentioned, the Governors, Premiers, and Ministers have, for
some twenty-seven years past, been seen presiding over the anniversaries
of our Colonial work, speaking in no measured terms of all our
activities, and so helping us to get the means to support them.

The Queen Mother and the present Queen of Holland were the first royal
personages personally to visit our Institutions, although the present
King of Denmark, when Crown Prince, had for years used our Refuges in
that country for cases he thought deserving, and his brother, King
Haakon, of Norway, attended, as a warm friend, one of The General's
Meetings in Christiania.

Canadian and South African Governors and Ministers have acted like the
Australian ones in their public expressions of confidence in us, and
they have given us very considerable liberty in their prisons, so that
most of the criminal population comes more or less under our influence.

The greatest o