“On Friday, June 3d, Rev. D. McGilvary of the Lāo mission left Chiengmai by boat for a tour southward, taking attendants and all necessary equipments, accompanied by a raw recruit, and three efficient native helpers. We arrived at our first station about the middle of the afternoon, and before bed-time held religious conversation with as many enquirers as time would permit. Our audience chamber was the house of one of our newly-received members. Our ‘outward and ordinary means’ of attracting an audience was a watch, two mariner’s compasses, a magnifying glass, a stereoscope with an assortment of views, and a violin. The raw recruit played the violin, and thus called the audience together. We used both the other attractions to hold them and to gain their confidence and interest; and afterwards Dr. McGilvary easily and naturally drew them into religious conversation. Soon the conversation became a monologue of instruction in the religion of the great God. The violin was no longer needed to arouse or sustain an interest. Every day, and late into the evening, the Doctor and the three assistants conversed; sometimes to quite an audience, sometimes to individual enquirers. “The religious attitude of the people was a revelation to the newly-arrived missionary, and doubtless would be to most of God’s people in the United States. Nearly all of these people had heard of the ‘religion of the great God,’ but knew nothing about it, since the district had never before been visited by a missionary.... But their receptivity was marvellous.... Without exception these Buddhists confessed at the outset, or were soon brought to concede, the immeasurable superiority of Christianity. Many said, ‘It is of no use to argue. Your books tell the beginnings of things; ours do not.’ On one occasion when Dr. McGilvary had finished reading and explaining the first chapter of Genesis, one of his auditors remarked to his fellows, ‘There is more real information on that one page than in all Buddha’s writings.’ The sense of sin is universal, so too is the insufficiency of the works of merit. Many sad souls confessed that they had long been dreading the penalty for sins for which they feared that ‘merit-making’ could not atone.