Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/173

161 CHARACTER OF THE MISSIONARIES. 1G1 faith by which they were animated, and their boundless devotion to the interests of the Church, and the salva- tion of souls, made them entirely forgetful of self, and intent only on the sacred object of their mission. Am- bassadors chosen from any other class would not have offered, perhaps, at that period, the same guarantee of skill and self-abnegation, of zeal and fidelity. vol. i. m