and by He sent a flood and drowned all men except Noah and seven other people, because men would not be good; that afterwards there was a very good man, named Abraham, who believed all about Jesus Christ, and God chose him, and his son Isaac, and his son Jacob, and his twelve sons, to be the fathers of a people called Jews; that those people alone knew about God, and had teachers and praying men:  and that they killed lambs and offered them (gave them to God as a sign of Jesus Christ being one day slain and offered to God on a cross) but these very men became wicked too, and at last, when no man knew how to be happy and good, Jesus Christ came down from heaven.  His mother was Mary, but He had no father on earth, only God the Father in heaven was His Father:  the Holy Ghost made Mary to be mother of Jesus Christ.

’Then I take two books, or anything else, and say, This one is God, and this is man.  They are far apart, because man is so bad and God is so good.  But Jesus Christ came in the middle between them, and joins them together.  He is God and He is Man too; so in(side) Him, God and Man meet, like the meeting of two men in one path; and He says Himself He is the true Way, the only true Path to God and heaven.  God was angry with us because we sinned; but Jesus Christ died on the cross, and then God the Father forgave us because Jesus Christ gave His life that we might always live, and not die.  By and by He will come to judge us; and He knows what we do, whether we steal and lie, or whether we pray and teach what is good.  Men of Bauro and Gera and Santa Cruz don’t know that yet, but you do, and you must remember, if you go on doing as they do after you know God’s will, you will be sent down to the fire, and not see Jesus Christ, who died that you might live.

’I think that they know all this, and much in the exactly equivalent words.  Of course I find difficulty in rendering religious ideas in a language which contains scarcely any words adequate to express them, but I am hopeful enough to believe that they do know so much at all events.  How far their hearts are affected, One alone knows.  It is indeed but little after they have been with us four months; but till I had them on shore, I could get very little work done.  The constant boat work took me away, and anywhere in sight of islands, of course they were on deck in eagerness to see the strange country.  Then I could not work with energy while my leg would not let me take exercise.  But it is now beginning to be a real pleasure as well as duty to teach both Nengone and Bauro people.  Enough of the language to avoid most of the drudgery has been got over, I hope, though not near enough for purposes of ‘exact and accurate translation.’