One of the greatest trials some of us have to bear is that we must live in an environment so {227} unconducive to personal growth and development There is a great deal of ambition lurking about us still, and we do not like to see our own development cut short because of an unfavorable environment, while our friends and classmates at home, who were no more than our equals in former days, far surpass us in intellectual development and in influence and power. Perhaps a missionary should be above such thoughts and should be perfectly content with a life of obscurity and partial development; but missionaries are still men, and to many an ambitious one the limits placed upon his personal development are very irksome. But why are the conditions unfavorable to high personal development? Because those stimulants to prolonged, vigorous effort that exist in the West are lacking. The stimulus of competition, the contact of thinking minds, so necessary to enlist the full exercise of a man's powers, are largely wanting. One is shut up to his own thoughts and to those he gets from books, and his development, in so far as it does proceed, is very apt to be one-sided. This is the reason why so many missionaries are narrow, unable to see a subject in all its relations and to give due importance to each. The work of the missionary from beginning to end is one of self-sacrifice and self-effacement. {228} There is no future for him in the councils of the native church. As the work grows and extends he must gradually take a back seat. As the native ministry develops, the foreign minister is less and less needed, and must gradually withdraw. Again, the home land, father and mother, brothers and sisters, friends and companions, are just as dear to the missionary as to any one else. Yet it seems inevitable that he will gradually grow away from them and be forgotten by them. Prolonged absence brings forgetfulness; diverse labors and interests put people out of sympathy with one another. When the new missionary first comes out to his field, communication between him and friends is frequent. Letters pass regularly, little remembrances are sent from time to time, and he is still in touch with his friends at home. But by and by a change comes. After one or two years exchange of presents and remembrances ceases; gradually the letters cease also, and none come except those from his immediate family. Even these become less and less frequent. The arrival of the mails, which at first was looked forward to with so much joy, is now scarcely noted. An old American gentleman who has spent some forty years in the East tells me that he now receives from the home land not more than two or three letters per year. {229} After a few years of residence here one feels that he is largely out of touch with the life of the West, and that he is forgotten, by home and friends.