_Religious Work._—Difficult as it is to be a Pioneer of Civilisation, it is still more so to be a Pioneer of Religion. Christians in Central Africa find it easier to make the forest a farm than to make the savage a Christian. These Europeans were confronted with the delicate and difficult problem of evangelising, and they most realised their powerlessness when Sunday came round. As the natives pressed about them on the day of rest, they felt in their hearts “we must do something”. But what could they do? Absolutely nothing. They had no interpreters. Unable to speak to the natives, they might try to show good feeling by looks and gestures, but after all, these appeared to the savage as nothing better than ridiculous grimaces. But they happened to have a musical box, and on a Sabbath afternoon, they judged it better to turn this on than to do nothing! The Livingstonia Mission fortunately possessed interpreters, one of whom was ultimately lent to Blantyre. Still unless interpreters are educated, and understand something of Christianity, they cannot be relied on. They may assist a missionary in learning the language, but they will not do for preaching. On one occasion a European missionary of much experience was delivering an able, and as he thought, a solemn address to these natives through an interpreter, when all at once the whole audience burst into a fit of laughter. Everyone appreciated the joke intensely except the speaker himself. Now an accident like this may happen even where the interpreter is rendering most literally. Indeed if a clergyman were suddenly introduced into the heart of these tribes, able himself to speak their words, he would find that many vocables he used, have very different associations in their tongue from what they have in his own. In order to benefit the natives one must be able not merely to speak their words, but to understand their mode of thought. _Civil Jurisdiction._—It would clearly be no light task for men to perform all these duties, even where left to work without interruption, and under a settled government. But the missionaries discovered that life and property were not so secure as in Britain, for soon they suffered much from thieves. They had good cause to be watchful, as if their clothes were all carried off, they had no chance of getting more for a whole year. In that remote land there were no clothiers and tailors, and through a successful theft, or a fire, a man might be reduced to the primitive fig leaves. A European superintending road-making at a distance from his colleagues, awoke one night to find that his wardrobe was—nothing to boast of!