I called on many of the squire-pastors and had long talks with them, and after thanking them for what they had done for their churches--and some of them had really done a great deal--I would say: ‘You are an old man now, and not able to attend the classes for the pastors, nor the “union meetings” at the capital, and might not get much good even if you did. We must also have a day-school here, the children gathered in, the people instructed, visited, and a new church built, and you are not equal to all that. Now don’t you think it would be best for you to retire from the active duties of the pastorate, and become honorary pastor, and that we should get a younger man elected in your place? You would have the honour, and he would have the work. Don’t you think that would be best?’ In some cases I got them to retire, but in others I could not get them to move. I had to accept the inevitable and make the best of it. In one distant church of eighty members I only found four whose religious knowledge seemed to fit them for fellowship; and yet, up to their light, they appeared devout. One could do little except pity and pray for such, and go on instructing them. I found the ignorance very gross in some cases. For example, in answer to the question, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ I was told in one case that we must go to church, be baptized, and receive the Lord’s Supper; in another, that we could buy salvation in the market; and in a third, that we must sin in order to be saved! I mention this to give some idea of the darkness of the heathen mind, and the density of ignorance that has often to be overcome. This was what we found even in Vònizòngo when we began work there; but we had a very different state of things by the time we left. CHAPTER VII SHADOW AND SUNSHINE ‘Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance.’--PSALM lxxxix. 15.