Ebook The Evolution of a Missionary

The efficiency and eminence of a missionary are largely determined by endowment, character, environment, method and relationship to man and to God. In most of these particulars John Hyde DeForest was abundantly gifted and happily circumstanced. God gave him a wise head, a pure hearty a sensitive conscience, a buoyancy of life and a faculty for friendship and love which were fundamental in his life of service.

His character, so faithfully portrayed in this volume, bore the marks of the divine graving tool which had fashioned it by the varied experiences of a life unusually susceptible to mental and spiritual influences. Its plasticity was linked with a paradoxical yet unusual firmness; its influence upon others was as communicative and compelling as is the spell cast upon artistic Japan by its symmetrically majestic Fujiyama.

Dr. DeForest's life could not have been lived in a more favourable environment. His eye, his brain, his soul were tabulœ rasœ ready to be impressed by paradisaic scenery, the chivalrous deeds of mediæval daimyos and their devoted samurai, the modem miracles of a speedy and victorious renaissance, and the philosophical and spiritual aspirations of his beloved adopted countrymen.