I suppose there is no community of any extent that has not unworthy members, persons that may be called its excrescence and blots, who have increased its size, as a tumour increases the size of the body, but are actually its weakness and disgrace. Such were the unworthy persons of whom I have been speaking. Very different is the general character of the native Christians connected with the various missions in Northern India. Some of our converts have made sacrifices, by avowing themselves the followers of Christ, to which persons in our country are never called. They have literally left father and mother, houses and lands, wife and children, for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever may have been the position of our converts, they have, as a rule, parted with much which is highly valued by their people. Caste standing, even when the caste is not considered high, secures many advantages, and is greatly prized. Its loss is deemed a dire calamity, and this loss our converts are called to endure. They join a despised and hated community, are called vile apostates, and are charged with the most sordid motives. I have heard the charge advanced against converts who, to my knowledge, had left their place in native society under the power of the profound conviction that Christ was entitled to their hearts and lives, though the conviction required of them the most painful sacrifices, and exposed them to the bitterest reproach. During my first years at Benares, one of the catechists of our Mission was a Brahman, who had been baptized by Mr. Ward of Serampore. He was stripped of the property to which he was the heir, of which the annual rental, according to an official document, was 5,000 rupees (£500), because he could not perform the funeral rites of his father. His income as catechist was small, but I often heard him charged with the lowest mercenary motives by those who knew not, and did not wish to know, anything about his antecedents. He bore the charge patiently, deeming it an honour to be reproached for his Master. He was far from being a perfect character, but no cloud ever seemed to come over his belief that Jesus was the Saviour of the world. When he was on his death-bed I asked him if he regretted the life of comparative poverty and of great reproach he had led because he had become a Christian. He tried to raise himself on his pillow, and said with an energy that startled me, "If I had a thousand lives, I would give them for Him who died for me." In reference to him and others, the remark was often made by our hearers, "We are willing to listen to you--you are a good man and have kept to your religion; but we do not wish to hear these, for they are apostates."