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night, for protection during the day, and for recovery from sickness,
appear to be futile in result.
In my work on Hereditary Genius, and in the chapter on “Divines,” I
have worked out the subject with some minuteness on other data, but with
precisely the same result. I show that the divines are not specially
favoured in those worldly matters for which they naturally pray, but rather
the contrary, a fact which I ascribe in part to their having, as a class,
indifferent constitutional vigour. I give abundant reason for all this, and
do not care to repeat myself; but I should be glad if such of the readers of
this present paper who may be accustomed to statistics would refer to the
chapter I have mentioned. They will find it of use in confirming what I
say here. They will believe me the more when I say that I have taken
considerable pains to get at the truth in the questions raised in this present
memoir, and that when I was engaged upon them, I worked, so far as my
material went, with as much care as I gave to that chapter on “Divines”;
and lastly, they will understand that, when writing the chapter in question,
I had all this material by me unused, which justified me in speaking out as
decidedly as I did then.
A further inquiry may be made into the duration of life among
missionaries. We should lay greater stress upon their mortality than upon
that of the clergy, because the laudable object of a missionary's career is
rendered almost nugatory by his early death. A man goes, say to a tropical
climate, in the prime of manhood, who has the probability of many years
of useful life before him, had he remained at home. He has the certainty of
being able to accomplish sterling good as a missionary, if he should live
long enough to learn the language and habits of the country. In the
interval he is almost useless. Yet the painful experience of many years
shows only too clearly that the missionary is not supernaturally endowed
with health. He does not live longer than other people. One missionary
after another dies shortly after his arrival. The work that lay almost within
the grasp of each of them lingers incompleted.
It must here be repeated, that comparative immunity from disease
compels the suspension of no purely material law, if such an expression
be permitted. Tropical fever, for example, is due to many subtle causes
which are partly under man's control. A single hour's exposure to sun, or
wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation, will determine an attack. Now even if
God acted only on the minds of the missionaries his action might be as
much to the advantage of their health as if he wrought a physical miracle.
He could disincline them to take those courses which might result in
