CHAPTER XII - FISHERS OF MEN

Summary

In the two and a half years after his return home at the beginning of 1835, convalescent from the dysentery of Bengal but subject to the recurrence of its jungle fever, Dr. Duff had nearly completed his work of organization. Only the fervour of his zeal, and the power of recovery from exhaustion due to a splendid physique which marked his whole life, had enabled him to visit and address seventy-one presbyteries and synods and hundreds of congregations all over Scotland. This he had done during the rigours of winter and the heats of summer, when as yet the canal boat, the stage-coach, and the post-carriage were the most rapid means of conveyance. Twice he had visited London and some of the principal cities in England on the same mission. But that mission was not merely or ultimately the establishment of associations to collect money, nor even the diffusion through the Churches of a missionary spirit. These were but means to the great end of discovering and sending out men of the highest faith and scholarship to carry on the work he had begun in Bengal, to extend it to Madras, and to strengthen Bombay. For, with his delighted concurrence, the General Assembly of 1835 had received under its superintendence the Scottish Missionary Society's stations in Bombay and Poona, then under the care of Dr. Wilson, Mr. Nesbit and Mr. J. Mitchell.