“There I agree with you, Swinton,” replied Alexander; “but what are the objections raised against them? for now that I have seen them with my own eyes, I can not imagine what they can be.”

“The objections which I have heard, and have so often attempted to refute, are, that the generality of missionaries are a fanatical class of men, who are more anxious to inculcate the peculiar tenets of their own sects and denominations than the religion of our Saviour; that most of them are uneducated and vulgar men—­many of them very intemperate and very injudicious—­some few of them of bad moral character; and that their exertions, if they have used them—­whether to civilize or to Christianize the people among whom they are sent—­have not been followed by any commensurate results.”

“And now let us have your replies to these many objections.”

“It is no doubt true that the missionaries who are laboring among the savages of the interior are, many, if not most of them, people of limited education.  Indeed, the major portion of them have been brought up as mechanics.  But I much question whether men of higher attainments and more cultivated minds would be better adapted to meet the capacities of unintellectual barbarians.  A highly-educated man may be appreciated among those who are educated themselves; but how can he be appreciated by the savage?  On the contrary, the savage looks with much more respect upon a man who can forge iron, repair his weapons, and excite his astonishment by his cunning workmanship; for then the savage perceives and acknowledges his superiority, which in the man of intellect he would never discover.

“Besides, admitting that it would be preferable to employ persons of higher mental attainments, where are they to be found?  Could you expect, when so many laborers are required in the vineyard, a sufficient number of volunteers among the young men brought up at the universities?  Would they be able to submit to those privations, and incur those hardships, to which the African missionaries are exposed?  Would they be able to work hard and labor for their daily bread, or be willing to encounter such toil and such danger as must be encountered by those who are sent here?  I fear not.  And allow me here to remark, that at the first preaching of Christianity it was not talented and educated men who were selected by our Saviour; out of the twelve, the Apostle Paul was the only one who had such claims.

“If we had beheld the Galilean fishermen mending their nets, should we have ever imagined that those humble laborers were to be the people who should afterward regenerate the world?—­should overthrow the idolatries and crumble the superstitions of ancient empires and kingdoms?—­and that what they—­uneducated, but, we admit, divinely inspired and supported—­had taught should be joyfully received, as it is now, we may say, from the rising to the setting of the sun, to the utmost boundaries of the earth?”