Never were these feelings more present with me than when I was called upon to tell the story of our Mission before the learned Professors and eager Students, at so many Universities, Colleges, Theological Halls, and similar Institutes. I have a note of at least sixty-three Seats of Learning, including Princeton and the most famous Colleges in America, as well as Oxford and Edinburgh, Cambridge and Glasgow at Home, where some of the greatest living Masters in every department, such as my own world-famous Professor, the now venerable Lord Kelvin, listened to my testimony as to the power of the Gospel to make new Creatures of the South Sea Cannibals and build them up into the likeness of Jesus Christ. I trespassed not into _their_ spheres, where I would have been a child and an ignoramus compared with them; and they, on the other hand, treated _me_ with profound respect, and even occasionally with demonstrative appreciation, in that sphere of the moral and spiritual, the work of the Christ-Spirit and its influence on the lowest and most degraded of human beings, wherein I had some right to speak with authority. This was my “one” talent, in the presence of such men; and I “traded” with it, that the Name of my Saviour might be honored more and more, in the Halls of Letters, and in the Temples of Art and Science. By the general desire of my fellow Missionaries on the New Hebrides, I had visited Britain ten years before, for the express purpose of raising if possible £5,000 for a new _Dayspring_, larger than the old, and with Steam Auxiliary Power. By the blessing of God on my humble pleading, and very largely in direct answer to prayer, for I called on no one privately for donations, there came to us in twelve months the large sum of £10,000, of which more than one half reached us by post. My Church in Victoria, to whom I rendered an account of all, set apart £6,000 for the new Mission Vessel, the interest to be added to capital till such time as she might be built; while the remaining £4,000 were devoted to the obtaining and supporting of additional Missionaries for the New Hebrides. But a new difficulty had emerged, and created not only delay all these years, but no small measure of regrettable dissension; and that was how to maintain the Ship, and keep her floating in the service of the Mission; for the _Dayspring_, not being allowed to trade, had been wholly maintained by the Sabbath Schools of the Churches having Missionaries on the New Hebrides. The sum which they had raised annually, each Church in its allotted proportion, amounted to £1,500, or rather more; and it was manifest that the Steam Auxiliary would cost at least £1,000 extra per annum. Unfriendly critics doubled that charge, and some prophesied even treble; but level-minded experts limited it to £1,000, and the actual facts of experience, as to cost of maintaining the _Morning Star_ and the _Southern Cross_, in these same Pacific Seas, tallied with their estimates.