Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 52

1850.

Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.

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all French ships that have visited this. The remembrance of their many benefits to us, and the countenance given us just at a time when most needed, is to us no small ground of hope and evidence that the Lord's special care is on this mission. Strangers have taken us up; since we have been here, it has pleased the Ruler of all nations to bring us help from far; Frenchmen and Americans have visited this place compara- tively more frequently, and consequently assisted us more than our own countrymen; a plain proof that missionaries are not forsaken, though thrown into the most forgotten corner of the world. Such providences happening without human concert, go far to show that the Lord reign- eth; and as far as this mission is concerned in them, they also manifest that God is for us, and to him we cheerfully leave the further deve- lopement of his holy and acceptable will.

If we are enabled to think so at present, after years of wasted toil, how much more were our hopes likely to be strengthened by such evi- dent tokens of Divine favor, when yet in all their freshness, and quite unchecked by any disappointment; day after day we received new proofs of mercy watching over us. No sooner had the Starling trimmed her sails for leaving, than I was invited to go and look at a house in- tended for our residence. I cheerfully went, but finding it damp, dark, low, and small, if for no other reasons, I refused; and marked

my utter aversion to any similar house, by not even stopping in it, whatever my tired conductor might urge to the contrary. This decision on my part had a good effect. The next day, I was shown the temple we now in- habit, a spacious wooden building, pleasantly situated, though rotten from age. I immediately consented, even on condition of the chief bonze continuing to reside in the house as the guardian of the idols, which were to be screened off by a sliding partition, in the place they formerly occupied. To have a priest to preach to even in my house, I considered rather an excellent missionary opportunity. In short, we were soon settled in our new residence; one of its rooms was a long back pantry, which struck me at once as an eligible location for open- ing a hospital, a plan, which at that time, I imagined would be most agreeable to the authorities.

We were so happy in our minds, and our missionary hopes so vivid, that far from thinking it any restraint to have five natives quarter- ed upon us in one part of the house, under the name of todzies or interpreters, we looked upon it as the best arrangement possible to get into contact with the nation, and likewise desirable for a speedy progress in the language of the land. We had more objection to a lodge, or hut, placed in a recess within and near the entrance, and