I think also that the practice of separating poor relief as much as possible from the work with enquirers helps to explain to the native our view of the Christian Church. That some explanation is necessary is undoubted. During a severe famine in Kirman, over two hundred respectable Mussulmans, chiefly shopkeepers, came into the courtyard of the Consulate, and wanted to take protection under the British flag. Major Phillott was then Consul, and they explained to him that the price of bread was so prohibitive that they could not live any longer under the regulations of the Persian officials. Their leader was a Seyid. Major Phillott tried to explain that, although he sympathised with them greatly, he could do nothing for them unless it was to give them pecuniary help. He offered them a hundred _krans_, but they explained that they were not beggars. They further said that they were quite ready to become Christians if they could only get cheap bread. The end of the whole business was that the Consul paid an unofficial visit to the Governor, and got him to promise that bread should be lowered to a more or less normal price by gradual reductions spread over a period of ten days. It is easy to understand that people who could go to a Consul in a famine and ask to be accepted as Christians in order to be able to buy bread at a fair price, thinking I suppose that Consular pressure would then be brought to bear upon the Governor on their behalf, might easily get an absolutely wrong notion of what was going on, if circumstances forced the missionary whose general business was seeing enquirers to use funds for poor relief without carefully separating these two branches of work. Even the practice of giving occasional relief to very poor enquirers from one’s own purse is liable to great misinterpretation and abuse. Men will frequently come to you and ask for support, so as to enable them to leave their ordinary trades and listen to your teaching. Myself, I think that there are occasions when poor people have come from a distance and are certainly interested, where something of this kind has to be done, the man if possible being made to work for his money; but it is easy to see how extremely dangerous it would be to encourage expectations, and how easily natives might get the idea that enquiry, and still more Christianity, entitled them to payment. Consequently, even if it could not be demonstrated that an actual saving of time was effected by making of poor relief a distinct organisation, there would be still a very great deal to be said for the practice.