iv.] MISSIONARY DIFFICULTIES. 155 



usages, and modes of thought, often require in the mission- 

 ary an uprooting of his own habitudes of expression and 

 ways of thinking, in order that he may become one with 

 those whom he teaches. 



Among a nomad people difficulties are even greater. 

 The first thing is to get them to settle down. With such 

 you may have a congregation of some hundreds one day, 

 and another these may be all scattered to the winds. 



We have before seen how the Boers hindered the work : 

 and the following remarks of our traveller fairly represent 

 some other difficulties. 



" In addition to other adverse influences, the general 

 uncertainty, though not absolute want, of food, and the 

 necessity of frequent absence for the purpose of either 

 hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved a serious 

 barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. Our 

 own education in England is carried on at the comfortable 

 breakfast and dinner-table and by the cosy fire, as well as 

 in the church and school. Few English people with sto- 

 machs painfully empty would be decorous at church any 

 more than they are when these organs are overcharged. 

 Ragged schools would have been a failure had not the 

 teachers wisely provided food for the body as well as food 

 for the mind; and not only must w T e shew a friendly interest 

 in the bodily comfort of the objects of our sympathy as a 

 Christian duty, but we can no more hope for healthy feelings 

 among the poor, either at home or abroad, without feeding 

 them into them, than we can hope to see an ordinary 

 working-bee reared into a queen-mother by the ordinary 

 food of the hive. 



"Sending the Gospel to the heathen must, if this view be 

 correct, include much more than is implied in the usual 

 picture of a missionary, namely, a man going about with a 

 Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce ought 

 to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than 



