Writing in 1861 Miss Whately said, "The reaping time is not yet." [1] Ten years later she writes: "It is a missionary's duty to sow beside all waters, and to lose no opportunity, even if his chance of doing good be but small. The sower of the seed has need of much patience; and though he need not actually be expecting and looking for disappointment, as that would paralyse his efforts for good, he must yet be prepared for it." [2] In this spirit of patience and perseverance Mary Whately carried on her work, and though her work was largely pioneering, she was not without encouragement. Her hand was the first to begin to break down the wall of ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry which had for centuries shut in the people of Egypt. She convinced thousands that the Christian book is a good book, and Christian men and women good people, despite the evidence to the contrary of so many in Egypt who bear the Christian name but do not live the Christian life. The sentiments of the people are leavened by thousands among them who in youth passed through her schools, and there acquired an acquaintance with Scripture truth. "Youths employed under Government, on the railways or in mercantile houses, who have received with the secular education which has secured their positions, a thorough knowledge of the Bible as its condition, continually greet her after they have quite outgrown her recollection." [3] The teachers in later years were chiefly composed of those who had been pupils in the schools, and of whose conversion she had no doubt. Thousands of poor sufferers were relieved by the Medical Mission, thousands of homes made happier by the visits of herself and her assistants. Many of the Scriptures distributed on her Nile journeys were kept and read, and found afterwards in most unlikely places.

[Footnote 1: More about Ragged Life, p. 199.] [Footnote 2: Among the
Huts, p. 151.] [Footnote 3: Lost in Egypt, preface.]

In 1870 Miss Whately was able to tell of the first of her scholars of whose conversion she could feel sure. In 1878 she writes of two little boys, pupils in her school, who read the Bible at home to their old nurse, a slave woman, during the illness which terminated in her death. So simply did she receive the truth, that she declined to see the Mollah or reader of the Koran, saying, "No, no, I want no one but Him whom the boys tell me about; the boys' Saviour is my Saviour." [1] In Peasant Life on the Nile Miss Whately gives several instances of Copts who through her efforts refused to turn Moslems, and of others who became Christians in deed and in truth.

[Footnote 1: Letters from Egypt, pp. 117, 118.]

Instances of blessing on the work of the Mission might be multiplied. Nevertheless the difficulty of bringing a Mohammedan to an open avowal of Christianity always remained extremely great. Converts to Christianity always incurred the risk of secret poisoning. Yet in the report for 1888, penned by Miss Whately only a few weeks before her death, she says, "The seed sown in past years is evidently taking root;" and the accounts for that year contain the significant entry, "Clothes for poor convert on his baptism, £2." She also gratefully acknowledged that the reading of the books of her lending-library, largely supplied by the Religious Tract Society, had reached more Mohammedans than any other Christian agency.