Sketches from the Karen Hills

Every person who is interested in the triumphs of the gospel, and in the often thrilling experiences of the men who, in obedience to a Divine call, are giving their lives to make it known to the unenlightened, and barbarous peoples of the East, will welcome this small volume of missionary sketches from the pen of Rev. Dr. Alonzo Bunker, who for forty years has been an honoured and successful representative in Burma of the American Baptist Missionary Union. This new volume will be especially welcome to those who have read with delight and profit "Soo Thah," a book by the same author, published a few years since, and for which there is still a large demand by the reading public.
Dr. Bunker has been emphatically a pioneer missionary. The work to which he was assigned necessitated long and difficult journeys over vast mountainous regions, infested by wild beasts and untraversed by the feet of white men, to reach tribes of men grossly ignorant, and hardly less wild than their untamed neighbours of the forest. Such service demanded courage and faith in an unusual degree, and made the life a constant exhibition of Christian heroism and self-denying devotion to its supreme purpose. It also furnished experiences which are not common even in missionary service, bringing him into touch with nature in its sublimest scenes, and with human nature in its deepest degradation and ignorance. Moreover, it gave opportunities to witness the regenerating and transforming, the humanising and enlightening power of Christianity, which can take primitive and savage men, and change them into peaceable neighbours, into lovers of truth and sobriety and righteousness, into devout worshippers of the one true God, into exemplary Christian disciples, into intelligent and patriotic and law-abiding citizens.
Dr. Bunker has lived long enough and seen enough of the results of his labours and the labours of his fellow missionaries to cry out with joyful gratitude, "Behold, what hath God wrought!" The people to whom he was sent, and for whose present and eternal well-being he has devoted his long life, are the Karens, the hill-tribes of Burma, who to-day, with their hundreds of Christian schools and churches, and their thousands of sincere followers of Christ in communities of probably hundreds of thousands of people who have been brought to some extent under the influence of the Christian religion, have become an instructive and inspiring object lesson for the whole Christian world.
From a long and richly varied experience in exceptional circumstances, Dr. Bunker has selected a few chapters for publication, which cannot fail to attract both young and old, affording pleasure, imparting information, appealing to Christian sympathy, and kindling a deeper devotion to that noblest of all service, viz., the winning of men back to the life and love of God. The chapters are written in a beautifully simple and transparent style, and are like windows through which we are able to see the author's mind and heart, his intense love for the beautiful and sublime in nature, for the flowers which deck the valleys and the storm-clouds which envelop and shake the mountains, his appreciation of the sweetness and naturalness of childhood wherever found, his faith in the possibilities of the soul when touched by the quickening grace of God, his confidence in the power of Christian truth to elevate and ennoble human life and character, and in the salvability of all men whatever their character, his certain assurance that he was Christ's servant and the appointed bearer of His saving message to the lost, and his calm, unshaken trust that the God whom he served was watching over and protecting him in the midst of all exposure and peril, and that he would fulfil His every recorded promise, and would not permit His word to return to Him void. Such are the precious glimpses of the inner life and spirit of the author which the book gives to us.