In the midst of these incidents the actual growth of the Mission must not be overlooked. It has to be recorded that in spite of arduous and faithful labours of the increasing corps of workers and in the face of all the encouraging marks of advance in Western civilisation, Siam responded very slowly to the spiritual appeal of the Gospel. While she gladly recognised and sought after the material benefits of Christianity she continued to manifest her characteristic indifference to its more vital message. Mr. McDonald, in his book on _Siam, Its Government, Manners and Customs_, says that when he arrived in Siam in 1861 there was but one native convert in connection with the mission, whereas ten years later there was a church in Bangkok with only twenty members and another in Petchaburi with a like number. He then adds: “It is just to state that there is scarcely any other field in which modern missions have been established where the introduction of the gospel has met with so little opposition as in Siam proper.... It is equally just to say that there is scarcely any other field which has been so barren of results. Pure Buddhism seems to yield more slowly to the power of the gospel than any other false system.” The reason for this unyielding nature of Buddhism seems to lie in its ethical theories which are the result of its philosophy of life. In some measure, too, this indifference of Buddhism to a spiritual interpretation of life accounts for its non-resistance towards the preaching of an antagonistic religion. The primary fallacies of Buddhism from the Christian point of view are: “1. No Creator and no Creating: Things just happened. This conception leads to indifference to nature and to a belief that the body is vile, to be despised and disregarded. “2. No idea of a Spiritual Personality, whether human or divine. Emphasis is placed on mind and intellect to the exclusion of will and feeling. Hence Buddhism is a philosophy rather than a religion, a theory of existence rather than a motive force. “3. No true sense of relationship of man to man or of man to God, in the absence of spiritual personality. Everything is ego-centric, each for himself. Hence incomplete ideas of love, faith, sin, holiness, suffering; in the absence of hope fear dominates life. “4. The greatest fundamental error is the assertion of the Karma law as the sole principle that explains all (the law of ethical causation, by which the merit or demerit of every act in this life effects the future life). This leads to a denial of personality and to fatalism, formality, trust in the individual’s merit, denial of forgiveness and self satisfaction.”