" There were critical periods in the Mission history; there were dissensions that might have broken up the stations; there were questions to be decided …that concerned the welfare of God's kingdom in Java and Nagpore; there was a unity of thought and action to be maintained among many at the most opposite points, and perhaps of the most opposite opinions; an unbroken connection to be kept by letters with every settlement; the Mission paper had to be edited; the training school at home to be diligently watched; nay, the very income itself was uncertain, for it was left to the private thoughts of Christian brethren.

"Whose head would not be puzzled if left to its own wits in such a tangle ? What peculiar doctrine of chances would cover with a uniform and calculable success the venture of twenty years ? What known human power can determine that when a man receives twenty pounds he will be kept as comfortably as if he had one hundred ? Yet push forward such questions and the world will set busily to answer them. It does not believe in our day that there is anything which it cannot do; it must account for all phenomena upon its own principles. It is a monstrously clever world:steam and telegraph and photography, and planets discovered before they are seen:Great Eastern and St. Lawrence Bridges, are very fair credentials. But there is a kingdom into which none can enter but children, in which the children play with infinite forces, where the child's little finger becomes stronger than the giant world-a wide kingdom, where the world exists only by sufferance, to which the world's laws and developments are forever subjected, in which the world lies like a foolish, wilful dream in the solid truth of the day. Gossner had been brought into that kingdom; these questions were nothing to him-it was enough that he could kneel down and pray.

'' ' Here I sit,' he would say, ' in my little room; I cannot go here and there to arrange and order everything; and if I could, who knows if it would be well done ? But the Lord is there, who knows and can do everything, and I give it all over to Him, and beg Him to direct it all, and order it after His holy will; and then my heart is light and joyful, and I believe and trust Him that He will carry it all nobly out.'"-From "Praying and Working" by W. F. Stevenson.