If few fields of missionary labour have yielded such rapid and satisfactory results, it is because in few instances indeed have the social conditions and even the very traditions of a people afforded such a conjuncture of favourable circumstances as was the case with the Karens. In the case of the Mission of the same Society to the Burmans and other Buddhist races of Burma, there has been no such striking and phenomenal success. There are to-day twenty Karen converts to one Burman, and the work throughout has been in like proportion twenty times as hard in regard to obtaining success amongst the latter as amongst the former. The question of mission work in relation to successful results, and the tractability of different races in respect to the Gospel, is a very wide and complex question, that has never yet received the patient and intelligent study it deserves. People find it difficult to understand why, in the same Mission, Burmese work should yield such different results from Karen work, and why converts should be numbered by units in Benares and by thousands in Tinnevelly; though they can see reasons, when it is brought home to them, why Cornwall should be a much better field for evangelical preaching than County Cork. And the conclusion is often too hastily reached in favour of some pet theory or method as against others. But a wider experience goes to show that though the right methods and the right men are essential to success, success on this large scale is far more than a question of methods and men. It is largely a question of _the circumstances in which the people are found_. In the prosecution of missionary labours in different lands, and even amongst different races in the same country, the utmost diversity obtains in their conditions. We meet, for instance, with nations enjoying very ancient civilisations, like the Hindus and the Chinese; some, like the Mahomedans, under the power of a religion which they hold with the utmost tenacity of enthusiasm; others again, like the Buddhists, in proud possession of a philosophy and a literature that fully satisfies them. It is in such cases that the Gospel is confronted with its greatest difficulties. In conjunction with these conditions, others of a social character are sometimes found, that greatly increase the difficulties of the situation, as, for instance, where large communities are hedged round with the restraints of caste, which, while they secure them in the exclusive enjoyment of rank, influence and privilege, greatly cripple them in respect of liberty of conscience and conduct. To win people to the Gospel from such conditions has always been a difficult task, for it usually requires them to give up all that human beings ordinarily value most.