Note 5 — Chapter XXX · THE BURIATS.

He does, indeed, afterwards allow that what is impossible with man is possible with God; but goes on to insinuate that the missionaries knew of the uselessness of their work, but that they had “too comfortable a berth to be given up,” and then he thinks, forsooth, that justice is not done to the people of England in so squandering money, etc., etc. Mr. Atkinson contented himself with a passing compliment to the character of the missionaries, and said that they were unable to make converts among the Buriats; whilst Mr. Hill, who visited Selenginsk, records that, “notwithstanding all their labours, not a single Buriat had been converted by them”; and then he quotes the testimony of a lady living on the spot, who said, “The missions only failed because the undertaking was beyond the power of man to accomplish unaided by more than his own genius. The missionaries had all the zeal and perseverance of the Apostles, but they wanted their power of working miracles, or the aid of some such startling circumstances as the history of religious revolutions has often presented to us, and without which all efforts at all times to convert the Buriats will be equally fruitless.”