Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 107

24

Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.

FEE.

teeth are set on edge." Here they won't bite into any fruit which China has declared to be sour. To this must be added, that Lew- chew, unlike China and Japan, never stood in any connection with foreigners, has had no relation whatever with a Christian nation, nor sent her ships to distant ports. They have "settled on their lees, they have not been emptied from vessel to vessel, therefore their taste re- maineth in them, and their scent is not changed." God has now sent them wandering, and they shall wander; they must submit to his divine discipline, and eventually enter the ranks of his tributary kingdoms.

But the Gospel, since the age of miracles closed, has worked its way by means and effects, and its progress has been proportionate to the means employed, and their adaptation to the various modifications the several localities offer. Now, in this respect this mission is left in unparalleled destitution. It would have been much better not to have begun it, than to carry it on in such a heart-breaking way. For though the want of success is certainly much owing to my un- worthiness and incapacity, still, in a great measure it may also be accounted for by the want of adequate machinery to carry forward such an arduous undertaking. For what can a single naked hand do towards breaking up all this hard fallow-ground? What am I before this mountain? Not only did the study of these languages— the Chinese, the Lewchewan, and the kindred Japanese, fall on me, and the harassing opposition we experience, retard both myself and Mrs. B., but a great amount of domestic labor, so that often time and strength failed for prosecuting that labor, for which alone it is worth while to suffer these daily hardships and vexations. In this land, "where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile," the difficulty is not to live and work as a missionary, but to live at all, to live and move about as a man. I am persuaded a merchant or a mechanic would be as much opposed here as I am. The means used by government to rid themselves of us are all directed against the animal man; they beat, they pelt, they starve us, when they please; they send us bad provisions, and abridge our locomotion, and knowing we possess a modicum of human feeling, they harass and vex us in endless methods.

Driving off the people from before me is not done so much that they shall not hear religion, as to show that the government can master a foreigner, disgrace him publicly, and teach the people to fly before him as from a wild beast. Of this intention they make no secret, and drive them off when my wife, or the children walk through the streets. When I complain of wrongs, the natives tell me, we must obey the