‘I have had such a seven weeks at Mota, broken by a three weeks’ course in the New Hebrides, into two portions of three and four weeks.

’Last year we said in our Report, that the time seemed to be come when we should seek to move the people in Mota to do more than assent to the truth of our words and the blessings promised in the Gospel, when we should urge them to appropriate to themselves those blessings, by abandoning their ignorant heathen ways, and embracing Christianity.

’That time has come in the good Providence of God, in answer to His all-prevailing Intercession, and hastened (who can doubt it?) by the prayers of the faithful everywhere—­your Whit-Sunday thoughts and prayers, your daily thoughts and prayers, all contributing to bring about a blessed change indeed in the little island.

’In these two months I have baptized 289 persons in Mota, 231 children and infants, seventeen of the lads and boys at Kohimarama, George Sarawia’s school, and forty-one grown and almost all married men and women.

’I have tried to proceed cautiously and to act only when I had every human probability of a personal conviction and sincere desire to embrace Christian teaching and to lead a Christian life.  I think the adult candidates were all competently instructed in the great truths.

’I feel satisfied of their earnestness, and I think it looks like a stable, permanent work.  Yet I need not tell you how my old text is ever in my mind, “Thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged.”  Now more than ever are your prayers needed for dear old George Sarawia and his infant Church.

’I never had such an experience before.  It is something quite new to me.  Classes regularly, morning and evening, and all day parties coming to talk and ask questions, some bringing a wife or child, some a brother, some a friend.  We were 150 sleeping on the Mission premises, houses being put up all round by people coming from a distance.

’Scarce a moment’s rest, but the work so interesting and absorbing, that I could scarcely feel weariness.  The weather for six out of the seven weeks was very rainy and bad generally; but I am and was well, very well—­not very strong, yet walking to Gatava and back, five or six miles, on slippery and wet paths, and schooling and talking all day.

’The actual services were somewhat striking.  The behaviour of the people reverent and quiet during the infants’ and children’s baptisms; and remarkably so during the baptisms of adults.

’You can understand the drift of my teaching:  trying to keep to the great main truths, so as not to perplex their minds with a multiplicity of new thoughts.

’I think that I shall have to stay a few days at Mota on my return (D.V.) from Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands, as there are still many Catechumens.