In writing of this to his friend Watt, he used words
almost prophetic: "Whatever way my life may be spent so as but to
promote the glory of our gracious God, I feel anxious to do it.... _My
life, may be spent as profitably as a pioneer as in any other way_."
In his next letter to the London Missionary Society, dated Kuruman, 23d
September, 1841, he gives his impressions of the field, and unfolds an
idea which took hold of him at the very beginning, and never lost its
grip. It was, that there was not population enough about the South to
justify a concentration of missionary labor there, and that the policy
of the Society ought to be one of expansion, moving out far and wide
wherever there was an opening, and making the utmost possible use of
native agency, in order to cultivate so wide a field. In England he had
thought that Kuruman might be made a great missionary institute, whence
the beams of divine truth might diverge in every direction, through
native agents supplied from among the converts; but since he came to the
spot he had been obliged to abandon that notion; not that the Kuruman
mission had not been successful, or that the attendance at public
worship was small, but simply because the population was meagre, and
seemed more likely to become smaller than larger.
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