The cook comes in with a basket of foodstuffs fresh from the market. The young missionary spots a particularly luscious plum, picks it up, and takes a bite.

"Mary!" a scandalized senior gasps. "Whatever are you thinking of? Eating that plum without scalding it first! You'll likely get cholera or typhoid and die!"

Yes, in most mission stations the rules of hygiene are adhered to very strictly, and it would be a hardy junior worker who could come through alive without observing them.

Perhaps several years have gone by. You are in charge of the home yourself, and the "discipline" relaxes a bit. Perhaps you even resort to washing your fruit in cold boiled water instead of scalding it, because scalding does spoil it so! Then the younger workers are sent to you, and you become the head of a new family. One day, suddenly, one of them gets a violently upset stomach. Is it cholera? The nearest hospital is two days' journey away. You catch your breath, and go ahead caring for her the best you can with your limited medical knowledge, a constant cry going up from your heart to the only One who can help, to Him who is the only all-sufficient One! If you are fortunate your junior recovers. From that time on, all the fruit that appears on your table will be thoroughly scalded.


This is not a chapter on missionary health. It does not purpose to instruct you in the rules of hygiene. Rather it inquires into attitudes. Is the missionary to be as particular as he can about everything (fussy, some may call it), or should his faith be great enough so that he overlooks the rules of the doctors? Or perhaps, are there times when the one attitude is desirable, and times for the other?

The Lord of the harvest has sent us forth. A dead laborer, or even a sick one, is not much use. It is surely our duty to take all sensible precautions, and whenever possible to use the safeguards to health with which modern science has provided us. We have no right at all to disobey the rules of hygiene just because we happen to feel like it. But on the other hand, when those among whom we are ministering, people whose training is different from ours, who have no conception of modern hygiene, out of the love in their hearts provide us with things to eat and drink, surely then is the time to say with Paul, "asking no questions for conscience' sake" (I Cor. 10:27). Surely in cases where adhering strictly to the rules of hygiene would hinder the fulfilling of our commission, we can trust the One who sent us forth to look after us.