We respectfully suggest to all such friends of our Chinese work that they remain in the East, and do not at present visit California; for Christ, as found in the souls for whom we labor, has no halo round his head—indeed, He had none when He wrought in that carpenter’s shop at Nazareth; when He walked, with dust-worn raiment and with weary feet, the ill-wrought trails of ancient Palestine; nor even when He hung upon the cross. There was no external beauty to make men desire him; and to many who at this distance are almost filled with envy at the high privileges Peter, James and John enjoyed of seeing his face and hearing his voice, and walking in his companionship, He might have seemed a “root out of dry ground, having no form nor comeliness.” At any rate, He abides to-day in souls that are very dark, that are very little sanctified—saints that by no means answer to the ideal saintliness—He abides in them; and while with patient love we bear with them, and while we hope on and work on, though faith feels like fainting and hope seems long deferred, we are _assured that we are serving_ HIM. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” This is the period of the year when our work has least of what is outward and visible to stir enthusiasm. The weather is often stormy. The nights are often very dark. At some of the factories, work having broken across the boundary line which fading daylight fixed, holds on under gas-light till it is too late for our pupils to get to school. At any rate, many of them drop off; the average declines, and our hearts droop a little. It would be so much easier to work, if we could all the time be expanding, increasing, harvesting. Then, often, the pupils seem specially dull, and this one or that one in whom we have become deeply interested, and whom we supposed to have become somewhat enlightened, discloses a depth of darkness which we do not like to fathom, and shows that he has understood far less than we supposed. Among those whom we believe to be true followers of Christ, there crop out littlenesses of envy or jealousy or ill-humor, that perhaps would call down on them swift condemnation, did not all this remind us so much of what has stained our own Christian life. Now if our romantic friends should drop in upon us at such times, they might be sorely disappointed; might feel that we had drawn on our fancies for some of our facts; might possibly go away and add their own “Amen” to the scornful taunts of Godless newspapers upon “converted Chinamen.” And yet just such experiences of difficulty and discouragement belong to Christian work everywhere. If they do not form a necessary part of the discipline and training of the church, they certainly are unavoidable in the healing of sin-poisoned souls—in the education, the _leading out_ of men from darkness into light.