his tastes and feelings and affinities, intellectual and moral, made him at home here. Moreover, through the notice into which his graduation brought him, it came about that a very inviting opportunity was opened to him to remain and have his career here if he chose to. On the other hand, China was like a strange land to him. He had even almost entirely forgotten his native tongue. And there was nothing in China for him to go to. Except among his humble kindred, he had no friends there; nothing to give him any standing or consideration, no place, so to speak, to set his foot on. Not only so, but considering where he had been and what he had become, and the purpose he had in view, he could not fail to encounter, among his own people, prejudice, suspicion, hostility. A cheerless, forbidding prospect lay before him in that direction. The thought of going back was the thought of exile. He wanted immensely to stay. But there was one text of Holy Scripture that, all this while, he says, haunted him and followed him like the voice of God. It was this: “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” And by the words “his own” and “his own house,” it meant to him the nation of
