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Rh CHAPTER III. HE missionary authorities of the Methodist Episcopal Church resolved, in the year 1854, to found a mission in India, and they advertised during that year and the next for a man to go forth and commence the work. The writer, after waiting in the hope that some one else, better suited for the duty and less cumbered with family cares, would answer to the call, offered himself for the service. This involved one of the keenest trials through which himself and wife had ever passed—no less than a separation from their two elder boys. The necessity for this, in the case of children over the age of seven years exposed to the climate and moral influence in India, as well as the educational need, are all understood.

Having no personal friends to whose care they could be intrusted, they had to be placed at a boarding-school in the hands of strangers. God only knows the feelings with which we resigned them, fearing (what proved too true in the case of one of them) that we might see them no more on earth; but, so far as we could understand, it was either this, or for our Church to fail of her duty to perishing men in India. We understood that such sacrifices were contemplated by the Head of the Church when he instituted a missionary ministry for the salvation of the world. He was well aware what this would involve to the souls of many parents in the future, and therefore, to sustain them under the peculiar cross, he had put on record one of his most glorious promises. There can be no mistake as to the circumstances contemplated. “Peter said, Lo, we have left all and followed thee And He said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or