LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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232 .!riiSSIONARY WORK IN JAPAN. Mr. Neesima had been for some years looking for­ward with "a great delight" to a visit from Mr. Hardy. "It would seem to me a dream," he says, "to be permitted to shake your hand on this side of the water." He was also anxious that Mr. Hardy, then chairman of the Prudential Committee of the Board, should see for himself the exact need of the country. When he learned that his visit, so long an­ticipated, was deferred, he says : "I cannot speak to you of this disappointment; it is too great." He was then in the province of Hyiiga, in Kyushu, the most southerly of the four large islands of Japan, where he had gone at the request of a native physician to en­gage in missionary work. In the fall of this year his sister died of hemorrhage of the lungs, and on October 27th he writes:-" Five weeks ago I went to Imabari, Shikoku, to organize a church and install a pastor. I was preach­ing to a large audience in the evening when I received a telegram from home. I J.turried back to find my sister dying. ·we tried our best to save her. She gathered all her relatives about her and told them she might doubtless depart very soon from this world, and her best wish to them all was that they should walk with God and live on Christ daily as we live on food. "\Vhen I was obliged to attend the annual meeting of our Home Mission Board at Osaka she knew I was hesitating to go there, and told me not to stay away from that important meeting on account of her illness, but to do the Lord's business first. By these brave words I felt much encouraged to go. During the past two weeks she talked and dreamed much of heaven. Her mind was full of it. One day she said to me : 'What free grace it is that I, a poor sinner,

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