“All we ought to ask”; missionary life with its labours, cares and anxieties, often in an exhausting climate; its frequent and sore disappointments, its loneliness, the separation from friends and children, and the special call sometimes to new and untried spheres of duty; its sense of heavy responsibility in having to stand practically alone, at the head of a band of native helpers, and to be expected to supply enthusiasm for everybody about him—these, the necessary and unavoidable trials, are the legitimate means of denying himself; and they afford infinite scope for useful, holy service, and they are quite enough, without going further afield, like Don Quixote, in search of more. I trust my readers will bear with me whilst I give the details of some cases I have known, where honoured brethren and sisters have felt moved to attempt the ascetic method, in order that we may observe how it works. I knew a pious devoted missionary of another Society. He was a man of decidedly ascetic life. One of the ordinary diseases of the country, not generally fatal, assailed him. His constitution, in the opinion of those best able to judge, was so weakened by his ascetic life that he could not rally, but died in the prime of life. Humanly speaking, he died before his time, and one fails to see that his death constitutes any adequate object lesson, to compensate for the loss of his active usefulness. A missionary’s continued and useful life ought to be a much greater benefit to a country than the deposit of his remains in the soil, and the example of a living worker is surely more influential than the memory of one departed. I knew a missionary and his wife, earnest, devoted, exceedingly kind to the people, and successful. From the first of their settling in the country, their asceticism was so marked that their friends, who saw it, pleaded with them to eat more food and better food, but in vain. Being new to the country, they did not know the risks they ran. After barely two years of earnest work, ill health compelled their retirement from the field, with scarcely any prospect of ever returning. And yet there was no kind of necessity for them to live thus. They appeared to think there was some virtue in self-denial of this type, merely for its own sake. Another case of the same kind was that of an unmarried missionary lady, with a strong natural tendency to asceticism. She was an able and diligent missionary, and well acquainted with the language. After some years of missionary life, the tendency grew upon her to such an extent, that she withdrew more and more from association with her own people, lived with none but natives, on native food, and broke off one comfort after another, until even bread was too much of a luxury! After a year or eighteen months of this ascetic life, her health broke down so completely that she had to return home to America or die.