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.
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