Here again there arises the difficulty that there is no common agreement as to the purpose of the medical work of the missionary societies.  What are the doctors there for?  What does the hospital exist to do?  Who can tell?  So diverse are the ideas of different men on this subject, so little thought out, that a man of unusual experience told us that he had met few missionary doctors who could answer the question:  “On the basis of what facts ought the question of the establishment of a hospital to be decided?” Few could tell him whether in sending doctors the missionary societies ought to consider the duty of caring for the health of their missionaries first or last.  Few could tell him whether the care of the health of the children in schools and institutions was the first duty, or the last, or any duty at all, of the medical missionary.  Yet obviously, those two points if they were once admitted would influence largely the location of doctors and hospitals.  Again, we hear it argued that missionary societies ought to establish medical schools, hospitals, and institutions of the finest possible type in order to show how the thing really ought to be done, to demonstrate the very best example of western medical work, and to train natives to a western efficiency.  That would not only influence the location of doctors and hospitals, it would also affect the character of the buildings and would demand a special type of medical missionary.  Or again, we hear it argued that medical missions are the point of the missionary sword; but if it is the point of the sword then it ought to be in front of the blade.  That, too, would direct the location of the doctors and hospitals.  It would also affect the character of the building unless the missionary sword is to become an immovable object, which having once cleft a rock remains fast in the breach until a God-sent hero, like King Arthur, appears to pull it out and set it to work again.  We cannot state all the different aims.  They are not simple and formulated; they are complex and confused.  Very often the establishment of a medical mission turns upon no more thorough examination of the facts of the situation than the conviction of a capable missionary that there is need for medical work in his district, and that he must supply it if he can, and that he must persevere in appeals till he can supply it.  When a man asks:  “On the basis of what facts ought this or that to be done in the mission field?” he has got a long way into the complexity of the problem, and the need for survey, if a society is to act with wisdom, is already apparent to him.  But most men in the past have acted simply, without much argument:  they said, “Here is a need; I can supply it,” and the societies were the feeders of such men.  Naturally.  So one hospital and a doctor was the point of a sword which in twenty years’ time was stuck fast in the rock; and then the hospital was enlarged and became a medical school under the fervent direction of a