LETTER FROM BISHOP WILSON

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I felt obliged by your extreme kindness and hospitality, and how delighted I was with my visit to your mission. It was, indeed, an unexpected and most gratifying event. We reached this place at 5 P.M. on Saturday, and we found Sir J. Brooke had arrived on the Monday, but still a good deal out of health, though rather improving. I am greatly interested in your labours, my dear friend, but God will help you if you simply cleave to his blessed Gospel, and this I am fully persuaded you will do. The bitter taste you have had of Mr. Newman and Archdeacon Manning and Bishop Wilberforce (a lady here found one of your sermons in Manning, and a gentleman in Penang one in Wilberforce) will, I am sure, lead you to reject them altogether in your divinity studies. Pray consult Scott's capital and most original commentary as the best practical guide in the English language; also Calvin (calumniated as his name is, and avoided as he justly may be in his extreme opinions) is incomparable as an expositor. But the Bible itself, with the marginal references, readings, headings, and dates, forms an excellent commentary. Prayer for the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and meditation will strengthen your mind daily, and comfort and sanctify you more and more. Your post is most honourable and most difficult. Your secular and necessary duties tend to dry up the missionary's soul. I hope a missionary of true and sterling piety will be sent to join you from home. Two things I would venture to suggest. Don't tie yourself to any book of prayer in your family devotions; no form can meet the wants of your mission. You have a copious utterance, and could easily command words in uttering your desires to God. I assure you that when I was at home my soul was quite impoverished by the cold forms of written petitions from the Liturgy in family prayer. So it was at Archbishop Howley's, Bishop of London's, Bishop of Exeter's, and elsewhere. The other is, make one sermon out of your own heart every week, using large notes, as I have done these fifty years, but not straiten

ing your mind by a strict manuscript. In public prayer our Liturgy is incomparable; there must then be a form to preserve our 20,000 clergy from the effects of incapacity, error, enthusiasm, &c.; but where the Church does not confine you, don't put yourself into a voluntary state of penance. I am delighted more than I can express with the good sense, tact, modesty, and amiable bearing of dearest Sir J. Brooke. When you send home for books, get some judicious friend to choose a few models of sermon-writing for you-Archbishop Leighton, and J. Milner, and Dean Milner, Mr. Blunt, late of Chelsea, Bradley of Clapham, Cooper, seven volumes. Many volumes in the Religious Tract Society's publications are cheap and good. My dear Mrs. McDougall, I regret that I had not time to talk over matters more with you and get into the bottom of your soul, but your uncle, the late Mr. Bickersteth, will have led you aright I am persuaded. Farewell.

'I am yours most affectionately,

'D. CALCUTTA.'

The Bishop had brought Mr. Fox with him, and shortly after he was joined by Mr. Nicholls, another Bishop's College student, and the Rev. Walter Chambers, who eventually became Bishop McDougall's successor. On April 26, Mrs. McDougall writes again from Sarawak : 'On Thursday, the 17th, Frank set off on a long month's excursion into the interior of the country with Captain Brooke, Messrs. St. John, Crookshank, Crymble and a host of Malays. They took the Rajah's "Jolly Bachelor" yacht and three large covered boats besides the Datus' war boats, their object being to visit the powerful tribes up the Kanowit river and make a treaty with the Kyans, who wish to put themselves under Sarawak protection and settle near the mouth of the Rejang, 20,000 strong under one chief. Also they are to build another fort at the mouth of the Linga river (I think) to prevent the Sarebas and Sakarrans slipping up the neighbouring rivers as they do now.

EXCURSION INTO THE INTERIOR

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All this is very important not only to the peace of the country but to trade, and has long been under contemplation. Frank's object in going is to see whether a missionary may be safely sent among the Kyans and to visit the Sakarran Dyaks, where Mr. Chambers is ultimately to be fixed. He could not have gone in any other way on account of the expense of hiring thirty or forty men for a boat; but this being a Government business, the men are obliged to give their service free, at least for their food only: this is the kind of feudal service they give instead of taxes to Government. All Frank had to furnish was the fitting up of his boat, in which he had a little mat house built and painted blue and white, just large enough to hold a small couch and his luggage; some food and wine he also furnished, though he need not have done this, but it is more agreeable to be independent even of your friends. For two days before they went Elizabeth and I were busy making biscuits, cakes, and rusks, a huge tin full, that they might have something to eat when the bread was stale. My poor Frank was in a sad condition for such a long journey: he had been suffering for a fortnight before from acute inflammation of his knee, the one which gave him so much trouble once before; it completely laid him up and I feared would prevent his going, but he put his leg into gutta percha splints and had a crutch made, and set off as lame as any Chelsea pensioner. His general health, thank God, has not suffered much from it, except that the necessity of living low and the wear of the pain, which was at times very great, had pulled him down and made him both thin and pale for him. My heart ached to see him go without his wife to nurse him, but it was, I believe, as much my duty to stay at home as his to go if possible. Our large family wants a mistress, and now I have three gentlemen to provide for and make a home for, which is no small addition to my business. Mr. Nicholls arrived last Saturday from Calcutta; he, Fox, and Mr. Chambers seem very happy together and I like them all, though I some

times wish I had my dear husband to look at and listen to amidst so many strangers. The house goes on, however, very much like a clock, and the two services in church, the two meals, a Malay lesson from two to four, a stroll after evening church before dinner, and chess in the evening and some hymn-singing fill up the day pretty well, and all this you may fancy does not leave me long to myself. I am trying to persuade them that they do not want me for their Malay lesson, but can use Ayoon, the Chinese teacher, for I have so much sewing before me the next three weeks that I shall certainly not get it done if I give them my afternoons.' Of the services she says: Frank cuts them very short, only one lesson, the Psalms, and prayers; Wednesdays and Fridays only the Litany in the morning. It is so pleasant; everyone comes in the afternoon, and it is such a bond of union for us all. I ride to and fro on Frank's pony, for go I must to play the chants, and going thus I am not fatigued.' We had our four new children baptised on Easter Sunday, making our number twenty-five-there we stop for the present as we cannot afford more-also a Chinese man formerly a Roman Catholic was received into the bosom of our Church. He had been long ill in the hospital, and Frank had taken pains to teach him. We have several Chinese candidates for baptism now under instruction our own servants. I should be very glad if all our servants were Christian; there seems something disgraceful in a family of missionaries not having sufficient influence with their own household to make them wish to embrace the true faith, and I was never more struck with it than in the instance of the Bishop's servants, all Mohammedans. If the light does not shine in the house how can it glimmer into the thick darkness beyond?'

In another letter written by Mrs. McDougall about this time, she refers to the financial difficulties of the committee. 'They refuse to sanction or support the Chinese school, so that we have the children and their heavy expenses thrown upon our

FINANCIAL HAMPERINGS

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hands, for give them up we cannot. We are pledged to their parents to educate them; we have baptised them, and cannot leave them uninstructed, so that we are in no small perplexity. I have no doubt that a few months' patience will set all to rights, for the Rajah is extremely interested in this school, and when he reaches England his influence with the members of the committee will lead them to see things differently. Until then we must rub on as we can. A month ago before he left he desired Captain Brooke to set apart 50l. a year from Government money for Frank, to compensate him for the loss on the exchange on remittances from England. This was just like our Rajah, but we, being stopped by the committee from finishing the church, devoted the twenty dollars a month to that purpose. This kept two carpenters at work, for the exterior aisles have not yet the doors up, and we want to use them as soon as they are ready for day schools, Malay and Chinese. Now we must take our twenty dollars for our home schools until times mend, and that will scarcely pay half its expenses.' As already mentioned, she had given up her mourning dresses to save money for this object. The committee were greatly hampered by want of funds at that time, and until the S. P. G. undertook the support of the mission, and no doubt felt that they had no alternative to that of reducing their outlay. The school was not abandoned. On June 10 Mr. McDougall writes to the honorary secretary: 'I have had a very nice letter from the good Bishop of Calcutta promising to do what he can to help in the support of the increased number in the school, which, he says, must not be given up by any means, and he adds most urgent remonstrances against any such step. "I look," he says, " upon this school as the one great fact that has resulted from our labours in Sarawak, as the nucleus of an institution which will one day supply a native ministry for Borneo, and in the meantime as a point of attraction which fixes the attention of the natives upon the mission and causes them to regard it favourably. It is, more