The little meeting house was not a very imposing or lofty structure. It could boast nothing of the magnificence of our American churches, no doubt it would blush to be called a church at all in such a stately company, so I will call it a chapel, and even then it was an humble and unpretentious one, _but it was the best building in the place_. The poor people put into it their best wood, stones and tiles, the loving labor of their own hands, with fervent prayer. When it was finished no debt hung over it, and God, who does not see as man sees, blessed and honored it by filling it to overflowing with simple-minded, sincere, earnest people, who came with hearts ready to receive with meekness his word. [Illustration: PARTY STARTING OUT IN MORNING FROM THATCHED INN. PAGE 199] [Illustration: CHURCH AT SORAI. PAGE 124] In the early summer of 1895, Mr. McKenzie wrote, asking Mr. Underwood to go and dedicate the church and receive a number of applicants for baptism. This he promised to do, but just before he was to start, one sad day in July, when a number of us had met to hold a day of fasting and prayer, a messenger came with the news of the deadly illness of our dear brother, Mr. McKenzie. The pitiful letter, written with his own trembling fingers, showing in every sentence the evidence of terrible suffering and of a mind already unhinged, was followed immediately by the shocking news of his death. The blow fell like a thunderbolt. Such zeal, consecration and usefulness cut short so soon! It was strange, and yet there was a lesson in it for the noblest class of missionaries. And here let me say just a few words of warning to some who may have the foreign field in view, and to some who are perhaps already on the field. There are men and women, who, being John the Baptist sort of people, enter the work with such zeal and enthusiasm and allow themselves to become so overwhelmed with the awful responsibility for these dying millions (which indeed every true missionary feels only too heavily), that they forget the just demands of the body of this death. They forget that a solitary life gradually unseats the intellect, and that a body which has reached maturity, fed on plenty of nutritious food, cannot suddenly be shifted to a meagre, unaccustomed and distasteful diet of foreign concoction, and retain its power to resist disease, and to accomplish the heavy work they mercilessly exact from it, like Egyptian taskmasters demanding brick without straw. They forget that the spirit cannot remain united to the body unless the claims of the latter (in which are included those of the brain) are satisfied, and so they drop, one by one, our noblest and most needed laborers. But even so, they do not die entirely in vain, they leave an example of Christlikeness and devotion which preaches eloquently, and is an inspiration to all their brethren.