I have thus dwelt a little on some of the kinds of work which it falls to a missionary opening a new station to carry out, to show, if that be still required, that, as Dr. Livingstone says: ‘A missionary is not merely a dumpy man with a Bible under his arm,’ as many good people suppose him to be. The true missionary is a many-sided man, who must be prepared, and will be, to be anything or nothing that will help forward his work, without any fear of its being beneath his dignity. My experience fully bears out Dr. Livingstone’s statement that: ‘If young missionaries for Africa would spend one-half the time they have to spend over Latin verbs, in learning how to make a wheelbarrow, or mend a waggon, it would be infinitely more useful to them afterwards.’ At the same time, it is well to keep in mind, that what may be very suitable for one part of the mission field may not be so for another. A university training would be the best preparation for some fields. If his missionary enthusiasm will not carry a young man through a university course, it cannot be of the right kind, and would not carry him far in the mission field. There is little that is sentimental or romantic about the erection of mission buildings, and yet they have a decided value of their own in showing the natives among whom he is destined to labour, that the ‘white teacher’ has come to stay, and that he means work. This most useful, necessary, and trying work is, strange to say, often one of the most thankless tasks that a missionary can take in hand. A man may be thankful if he gets off without censure for ‘erecting so many buildings at his station,’ even when he has found among his personal friends most of the money for their erection. From some fellow labourers he may incur blame for having so much to do with ‘mere secular affairs.’ Nothing which ought to be done should be regarded as merely secular, and least of all where it is to be a means of extending Christianity. ‘Christianity touches everything, or it touches nothing.’ The man who is not prepared to be anything and everything--a hewer of wood or a drawer of water--or who has not got above regarding this or that kind of work as being beneath his ‘abilities,’ ‘culture’ or ‘dignity’ to take part in or do, ought not to go to the mission field. ‘When St. Boniface landed in Britain he came with the Gospel in one hand and a carpenter’s rule in the other; and from England he afterwards passed over into Germany, carrying thither the art of building.’ It may be easy for one class of workers to look askance at another, because the circumstances of the latter may compel them for a time to be a good deal ‘among bricks and mortar.’ It is, however, quite possible to serve God and His cause even in such lowly work. In saying these things I am fighting no phantoms.