G - SOME EMINENT MISSIONARIES

Summary

Instructions.—December, 1865

You have been appointed by the Committee to the Western India Mission, and your departure is hastened by the loss of labourers in that mission through death and removal.

The particular department of labour to which the Committee designate you is that of itinerancy. This designation, however, must depend upon your health and acquisition of the language, and upon the exigencies of the mission. Your first two years will probably be devoted to the acquisition of the vernacular; and before that period has expired, the providence of God will indicate your particular sphere of labour.

The Society has, within the last few months, been deprived by death of some of its oldest and most valued missionaries. The three last—Peet, Noble, and Pfander—have fallen so recently, and their careers have been so eminently lengthened and blessed of God, that, in sending out young missionaries, we seem to be ‘baptising for the dead,’ and the mind naturally reverts to the noble examples which the dead have left behind them, and kindles with the earnest prayer that their mantle may fall upon the younger men who enter into their work.

These men represent the several classes which supply our missions—the first from Islington, the second from an English University, the third from Germany, and they illustrate at the same time the leading departments of mission work—first, the gathering of souls into the visible church of Christ; second, the Christian education of the heathen, with a view to reach the higher classes of society; third, controversy with the learned and acute supporters of the false prophet.