MISSIONARIES 
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minded, and disposed—from the fact of his having made his home there—to 
devote himself to a life-long work in Africa: in fact, a married missionary 
becomes more or less a missionary colonist, a result which the parent society 
is desirous to attain. Moreover, it is certain that a married man has far more 
influence among the natives, for to the African mind celibacy is either an 
unnatural or dishonourable condition provoking suspicion or contempt. A 
man-missionary, moreover, if he is to avoid the breath of scandal must have 
as little to do with the native women-folk as possible. Yet in the interest of 
his work it is quite as —perhaps more—important that the women should be 
CHURCH OF THE CHURCH OK SCOTI.AND MISSION, BI.ANTYRE 
instructed as the men. As mothers and wives they wield an influence for 
good and bad which it is hard to overrate. From an evangelistic point of 
view women are needed for missionaries as well as men. This need is met 
in the Roman Catholic Church and in some Anglican missions by the employ¬ 
ment of good women as nuns or teaching sisters, and many of the Protestant 
missions often have attached to them unmarried women whose usefulness in 
teaching is quite equal to that of the men. But somehow I have noticed 
that few of these unmarried vyomen helpers, if they were of British nationality, 
were rigid advocates of celibacy. Sooner or later most of them have found 
missionary husbands, or have married Europeans outside the mission. It is 
a subject on which I cannot dogmatise, having before my mind’s eye many 
examples of beautiful, pure, and most useful lives led in Eastern and Central 
Africa by devoted women who lived a nun’s life and were never married ; 
and yet I must own these were the exceptions rather than the rule, and that 
