After the merchants of China, the missionaries next claim attention as an important element of foreign society. In approaching this part of my subject, I wish to premise that I have no sympathy with those who, for want of consideration or from mere prejudice, think lightly of the work and character of the missionary. The man who honestly devotes his life and energies to the instruction of the poor and ignorant at home, or to the conversion of benighted heathen abroad, must always merit the profound respect of every right-minded individual. It does not need my feeble testimony to sustain the assertion that there have been and now are many such devoted men of all denominations of the Christian Church labouring in China, and if I venture in any way to criticise the body, it is not from any lack of appreciation of its high and sacred objects, but simply because missionaries are human, and there cannot but be many things in which those who look at their proceedings from another standpoint than their own, must find occasion for dissent or remark.

Missionaries in China, like their co-religionists in the West, are divided into two principal sections, Romanist and Protestant; and the latter are again subdivided, unhappily, into denominations numerous enough to puzzle their fellow-Christians, let alone the heathen to whom they are accredited.