Francis Chisolm is a character of the same unaffected purity as the young David Copperfield or Oliver Twist in Dickens's novels of those names. Chisolm suffers extreme hazards and hardships in China while he attempts to clothe the poor around him, relieve their pain, and extend to them unprejudiced friendship. He is, despite heroic efforts, chided, and is under review by his superiors for the small number of converts he makes among the Chinese.

In contrast to Chisolm, his contemporaries, dining and drinking with the elite of England, seek to achieve high positions in the Church, where one succeeds essentially for his amiability and support of the arts. In this the reader is presented with appearances versus reality. The difference may be seen in this way. In Chisolm's superiors are the doctrinally correct words that issue from a life of uncompassionate adherence to the dogmas of the Church...