Oftentimes, while passing through the perils and defeats of my first four years in the Mission field on Tanna, I wondered, and perhaps the reader hereof has wondered, why God permitted such things. But on looking back now, I already clearly perceive, and the reader of my future pages will, I think, perceive, that the Lord was thereby preparing me for doing, and providing me materials wherewith to accomplish, the best work of all my life, namely, the kindling of the heart of Australian Presbyterianism with a living affection for these Islanders of their own Southern Seas--the binding of all their children into a happy league of shareholders, first in one Mission Ship, and finally in a larger and more commodious Steam-Auxiliary; and, last of all, in being the instrument under God of sending out Missionary after Missionary to the New Hebrides, to claim another island and still another for Jesus. That work, and all that may spring from it in Time and Eternity, never could have been accomplished by me, but for first the sufferings and then the story of my Tanna days! Never for one moment have I had occasion to regret the step then taken. The Lord has so used me, during the five-and-twenty years that have passed over me since my farewell to Tanna, as to stamp the event with His own most gracious approval. Oh, to see a Missionary, and Christian Teachers, planted on every island of the New Hebrides! For this I labor, and wait, and pray. To help on the fulfillment thereof is the sacred work of my life, under God. When I see that accomplished, or in a fair way of being so, through the organization that will provide the money and call forth the men, I can lay down my head as peacefully and gratefully as ever warrior did, with the shout of victory in his ears--"Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace!" (_For "Good News from Tanna," see Supplementary Chapter by the Editor,_ p.393.) CHAPTER XLIV. THE FLOATING OF THE "DAYSPRING." RESCUED from Tanna by the _Blue Bell_ in the Spring of 1869, I was landed on Aneityum, leaving behind me all that I owned on Earth, save the clothes upon my back, my precious Bible, and a few translations that I had made from it into the Tannese language. The Missionaries on Aneitymn united in urging me to go to Australia in the interests of our Mission. A Mission Ship was sorely needed--was absolutely required--to prevent the needless sacrifice of devoted lives. More Missionaries were called for, and must somehow be brought into the field, unless the hope of claiming these fair Islands for Jesus was to be forever abandoned. With unaffected reluctance, I at last felt constrained to undertake this unwelcome but apparently inevitable task. It meant the leaving of my dear Islanders for a season; but it embraced within it the hope of returning to them again, with perhaps every power of blessing amongst them tenfold increased.