“No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven. No man having accepted trust can in honour do otherwise than continue in that trust until victory is assured. I suppose, as the note of retreat had been sounded before I left Africa, the council of the Christian Mission Society will order Mr. Mackay to withdraw now. I hope not. The expulsion of the missionaries and the dispersion of their Christian flocks would strike any one else, looking at it from a layman’s point of view, as the dawn of the day of victory. The shouts of triumph uttered by the Mohammedans now in power should not dishearten, but should inspire them to nobler and wiser efforts, to persevere patiently and unremittingly. No great cause, no great work, or great enterprise was ever successful without perfect faith that it was worthy of unwearying effort and strenuous striving. “Out of the 4,000 or 5,000 converts reported by Zachariah and Samuel now in Ankori and Uddu, let us assume as 2,000 being due to the labours of Mackay and his worthy associates. At £50,000, each convert would appear to have cost £25. I am not one of those who would always appeal to the state for help in such a crisis as this, but to those able to spare out of great wealth, and who yet answer that they must attend to those at home first, I would give the reply of the wise Gentile woman--‘True, Lord, but the dogs pick up crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ “The success of the mission to Nyanza is proved by the sacrifices of the converts, by their determined resistance to the tyrant, by their successful deposition of him. I have read somewhere that the recognition of belligerents is not permissible until it is proved that they can hold their own. If this be so the Waganda converts have proved that the mission was a success, and a most remarkable success. The missionaries were compelled to bore deep down, and after that the element sprang up spontaneously. After years of baffling and unpromising work the converts flocked spontaneously to the new church of Equatorial Africa. Princes and peasants, chiefs and warriors came forward to be instructed in the Christian religion, and to be taught the arts of reading and writing, and to be the proud possessors of printed books in their own language, treating of the Author of salvation and His sufferings on behalf of humanity.