Missionary timber should be thoroughly tested at home before sent abroad. The sensational and romantic soon wears off, and the missionary is confronted with grave and complicated problems sufficient to test him to the core. The mere enthusiasm often seen in a “rousing” missionary meeting is no proof that the participants therein are equipped for the field. A. T. Pierson's daughter, a missionary in India, shortly before her death wrote the following weighty words to a prospective missionary, and we commend them to our readers: “My Dear Brother: I write words for you to ponder and pray over. Do not go to any foreign field until you know beyond a doubt that God has Himself sent you to that particular field at that particular time. If you marry any mission field in haste, you will repent it at leisure. There is a romance or halo about being a missionary which disappears when you get on the field, I assure you. And, believe me, from the first moment you step upon shipboard upon your way to the field, the devil and all his agents will attack, and entice, and ensnare you, or try to do all these, in order to defeat the purpose for which you cut loose, and launched out. Nothing but the fulness of the Holy Spirit will carry any one through; and if you do not know that you have received this, do not fail to obey the command to tarry until you be endued with power from on high. Believe me, the foreign field is already full enough of prophets that have run, and He did not send them. Because of this, things are in a sad state in India, in the missions themselves. “If you know beyond a doubt—and you may—that God is empowering and sending you there, and now, go, and fear not; and when, through the days, months, and years of suffering that are sure to be in the cross-bearing life, the question arises again and again, ‘Why is this? Am I in God's plan and path?’ the rock to which you will hold in this sea of questionings and distresses is, ‘God sent me here, I know beyond a doubt; therefore I may go on fearing nothing, for He is responsible, and He alone.’ “But if you have to admit, ‘I do not know whether He sent me or not,’ you will be thrown into an awful distress of mind by the attacks of the great adversary, not knowing what will be the outcome, and you will find yourself crying out, ‘O, that it were time to go home! What a fool I was to run ahead of the Lord.’ Do not think, my brother, that God sends us to the field to sweetly tell the story of Jesus, and that is all. He sends us there to do what Jesus came into this world to do—to bear the cross—but we will be able to trudge on, tho bowed under the weight of that cross of suffering, and even of shame, if our hearts are full of Him, and our eyes are ever looking upon One who is invisible, the One who sent us forth, and therefore will carry us through. Forgive me for writing thus plainly. I pray that this message may shake in you all that can be shaken, and that that which can not be shaken may remain as firm as the Rock of Ages.”—Selected.