when their history shall be written. Perhaps this volume may furnish some dates and materials for such a history. It will certainly serve as a mile-stone to mark progress. Scarcely four years have elapsed since these pages were written, and yet the intensely interesting letters of Bishop Kingsley, which the reader has most assuredly read, and which ought to be given in book form without delay, will show a marked advance, not only in the progress of religion in the East, but in the condition of the world. Now one can circumnavigate the globe with much more ease and safety than he could in 1864; and, go where he will, he will find society advancing, and in the great centers where the Christian religion is permeating the minds of men. It is a matter of profound regret that the Methodist Episcopal Church has not done more for her missions than she has. The Centenary, the vast field opened at home, and the results of the war will naturally be referred to as accounting for our want of enlargement abroad, but we must not plead any excuses hereafter. Let us look forward, not backward. If this

book shall in any measure contribute to awaken the interest of the Church in our foreign missions the writer will have no occasion to regret its publication.

It is hoped the reader will not read with a critical eye. One on a journey can not write carefully; and he who knows what is required of a preacher in the relation in which the writer stands must know that he can give no time to authorship. He has attempted nothing but a plain statement and the natural reflections thereon.

EVANSTON, ILL., March, 1870.

E. T.