Near the close of 1884, two young men, Danish missionaries, Hans Polvsen and Hans Jansen, arrived in Burma, with the purpose of establishing this mission. On their arrival they looked the very picture of health. They had both been inured to hard work from their youth, and they were devout men, and entirely given up to work for the Master. Though receiving aid at first from home, they hoped soon to make the mission self-supporting. They therefore undertook to do all the manual labour themselves. Where others rode they would walk. Where others employed natives they would do their own work. They would cook their own food, and live in the simplest manner, even like the natives of the land. Had the sphere of their mission been the wilds of America, or any country at all similar in climate to their native Denmark, it would have been the right policy, and they might have succeeded. But they soon had painful proof that there are laws in Nature, from which even missionaries are not exempt; and one of these laws is that we cannot do with impunity in the tropics what we may do in the temperate zone. Some time after their arrival, an opportunity occurred for going into Karennee, and they prepared to start for their destination. By way of preparation they gave away all their extra goods, medicines, clothing, etc., fancying that Matthew x. encouraged such a course. We cannot but place in contrast this conduct with that of a man like Livingstone. His was a self-denying work, if ever there was one; he believed in doing the work God called him to do, no matter what difficulties stood in the way. But he was no believer in asceticism—_i.e._, needless suffering for suffering’s own sake. He relates in his “Last Journals” how, when he found his medicine chest was hopelessly lost, through the carelessness of a native carrier, he felt as if his death warrant were sealed. But these people thought it right to give away their medicines and goods on leaving the confines of civilisation. Before leaving Toungoo they were faithfully warned by experienced missionaries of the American Baptist Mission, that such a course as they were entering upon, at the beginning of the rains, was exceedingly hazardous; but their notions of trust in Providence prevented them from paying any heed to this counsel.