Mr. E. A. Lawrence has stated so clearly the possibilities and opportunities of the missionary home that he is worth quoting at length. There is an element of missionary life which is seldom presented, yet most important. It is the mission home.... It underlies the whole of the work, and discloses the ideal of Protestant missions more clearly than any other point.... The first thing the Protestant missionary does among the heathen is to establish a home. He approaches them not as a priest, not simply as a man, but as the head of a family, presenting Christianity quite as much in its social as in its individual characteristics. This Christian home is to be the transforming centre of a new community. Into the midst of pagan masses, where society is coagulated rather than organized, where homes are degraded by parental tyranny, marital multiplicity, and female bondage, he brings the leaven of a redeemed family, which is to be the nucleus of a redeemed society.... It is on this mission home that everything else is founded--the school, the college, the kingdom itself.... When they are at their homes, this new institution, with its monogamy, its equality of man and woman, its sympathy between child and parent, its co-operative spirit of industry, its intelligence, its recreation, its worship, is at once a new revelation and a striking object-lesson of the meaning and possibility of family life. Whether they come to his church and school or not, the natives seem always ready to visit the missionary’s home, and to remain there so long, and to conduct themselves so familiarly, that it sometimes becomes necessary to teach them by object-lesson another feature of the Christian home--its privacy.... If the family in its very existence is an important missionary agent, having a distinct work to do, not only for its own members, but for the natives, ... then there must be a distinct acceptance of this office by its members, and it must play its part in the outreaching work of the missionary. The natives must be brought in contact with this domestic sphere. The walls of the home should be at least translucent, that its light may continually shine through to them; its doors should be often open, its table often spread for them; a distinct social as well as Christian fellowship should be cultivated.[26] [Sidenote: At the missionary’s table.] “Given to Hospitality” might be the true epitaph on the headstone of most missionary wives, and untold lessons in love and deference between husband and wife, obedience of children, interesting and profitable table conversation, self-control, and courtesy, are taught in the missionary dining room as they could never be taught in church or school room. [Sidenote: Planning the day’s work.]