"And after all that you have suffered--do you still persist in returning?" said I. "What a sacrifice! I can scarcely conceive any case where so great a one is called for."
"Young man--notwithstanding all I have told you, which yet falls short of the reality, I go on my way rejoicing--I may be _called_ an enthusiast, and I may _be_ an enthusiast, but I have made my election; and although I am but as the voice of one crying in the wilderness--although as yet our ministry amongst the poor benighted beings amongst whom our lot is cast, has been but as water spilt upon the barren sand, still, with the entire consciousness of the value of what I forego, I cheerfully sacrifice all the usual objects of man's ambition, and obey what I know to be the call of the Almighty, for it is borne in on my heart, and go forth, me and mine, come what may, to preach glad tidings of great joy to those who dwell in darkness; in the perfect conviction that, if we miss our reward here, we shall assuredly find it hereafter."
I know that missionaries of all classes have had their sincerity called in question, and there may be hypocrites amongst them as well as other men; but I would ask this simple question--what stronger attestation, speaking of them in the general, can they give to the purity of their intentions, than by thus devoting themselves, mind, body, and estate, to the service of their Great Master, in the fearless way in which they do? No man is a stauncher friend to the Church, as by law established, than I am, nor has a more thorough detestation of cant, in all its shades and stages, than I have; and I remember gloating over some savage articles in the Edinburgh Review, in its palmy days, when that needle of a body, wee Jeffrey, was at his best, wherein a cargo of poor missionaries were scarified most awfully; but experience and years have brought thought and reflection with them, as they often do to ancient maidens, who at forty, loup like a cock at a grosart (another bull) at the _homo_ they turned up their lovely noses at at twenty; and before I would now hold these self-devoted men in contempt, or disparage their zeal, or brand them as illiterate hypocrites, I shall wait until I see the wealthier, and more learned of our divines, gird themselves for their forty years' pilgrimage in the wilderness, with equal calmness and Christian courage, and go up in the glorious panoply of the apostle which is so often in their mouths, amidst their silken pulpit cushions, to grapple with the fierce passions and prejudices of the naked savage, and encounter the numberless perils of the desert, with the resolution and single-mindedness of these despised Moravians. As to hypocrisy--all hypocrites aim at the attainment of some worldly advantage, because they know they cannot deceive God; but I would ask their fiercest defamers, what temporal blessing blossoms around their dry and sandy path, or within the whole scope of their dreary horizon, that they could not have compassed in tenfold exuberance at home, even as respectable trades-people? And as to their being enthusiasts, that is easily settled; no man can thrust himself permanently forth from the surface of society, for good or for evil, without being an enthusiast of some kind or another--at least this is the creed of Benjie Brail.