It was a peculiar pleasure to me to renew my acquaintance with the native churches of which the Society has now so many in various parts of the world. I have worshipped with our converts in many languages and in many lands. And everywhere I have admired the gentleness of that Christian life which is being developed amongst the races of the East. Our English Christian life is of a high order, full of energy, heroic, tried in its principle, self-denying in its service, ever on the watch against undesirable complications, dealing with the deepest problems of religious, social and public life. Its loftiness of principle however renders it a piety of a somewhat hard type, trammelled with the order, the stiffness, the proprieties of many, many centuries. These Eastern converts, made in our own time, are more free. They have more of feeling in their nature, more sentiment, more of the affectionate and the emotional in their life and worship. And what gentle Christians their good women become. How these Malagasy people sing: and how they enjoy their singing. An hour’s “service of song” is the ordinary prelude to the Sunday morning’s worship. They have a fine sense of time: they appreciate harmony in the highest degree: they always take four parts; and when (as in the Capital) they are well taught, they sing with a fervour, a sweetness and a plaintive tenderness, which often brought tears into my eyes. It is very refreshing to see their simple piety, their delight in worship, their strong attachment to the Word of God. This is the good side of these churches, the encouraging element in the Mission work around us. There is alas! too much which is defective, even in Imerina. In the Betsileo the people are still more backward. There the outlying congregations get almost no teaching: good preachers and competent teachers are few: the singing is poor; the schools are poor; readers are few. We are anxious to meet these things: to spread our English Missionaries more widely among them: the Normal Schools and Theological Classes will year by year increase the number of trained instructors. There is real life on all sides. We have now to build it up: to nourish, feed and strengthen it in these children in the faith, until, under God’s blessing, they grow up into the full stature of men in Christ Jesus.