I have ever regarded it as a privilege and honour that I was born and trained within the old covenanting Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. As a separate Communion, that Church is small amongst the thousands of Israel; but the principles of Civil and Religious Liberty for which her founders suffered and died are, at this moment, the heart and soul of all that is best and divinest in the Constitution of our British Empire. I am more proud that the blood of Martyrs is in my veins, and their truths in my heart, than other men can be of noble pedigree or royal names. And I was,—in that day of the Church’s honour so distinguished for her Missionary zeal,—filled with a high passion of gratitude to be able to proclaim, at the close of my tour, and after the addition of new names to our staff, that of all her ordained Ministers, one in every six was a Missionary of the Cross. Nor did the dear old Church thus cripple herself; on the contrary, her zeal for Missions accompanied, if not caused, unwonted prosperity at home. New waves of liberality passed over the heart of her people. Debts that had burdened many of the Churches and Manses were swept away. Additional Congregations were organized. And in May, 1876, the Reformed Presbyterian Church entered into an honourable and independent Union with her larger, wealthier, and more progressive sister, the Free Church of Scotland,—only a few of the brethren, doubtless with perfect loyalty to what they regarded as duty to Christ, still holding aloof and standing firmly in the old paths, as they appeared to them. In the Deed of Union the incorporating Church took itself bound legally and formally to maintain the New Hebrides Mission staff, and also the _Dayspring_, committing herself never to withdraw, as it were, till these Islands were all occupied for Jesus. Now that the French have been constrained to abandon the scene, the field is open, and the Islands wail aloud for eight or ten Missionaries more than we at present have (1889); and then the Standard of the Cross might speedily be planted on every separate isle, and a true sense might at last come into the foolish name given to these regions by their Spanish discoverer, when he called the part at which he touched, thinking it the fabled Southern Continent, _the Land of the Holy Ghost_.