That the first biography of the Belgian missionary priest who devoted his life to the lepers at Molokai should be written by a Scots freethinker, a grandson of the manse, is curious. That it should be the cause of a controversy which made Father Damien’s name known throughout the world, and which may yet make it even better known and venerated, is an indication of the often seemingly round-about way in which God chooses that his will be done on earth. No two men with less in common and with less possible mutual sympathy than Father Damien and Robert Louis Stevenson could easily be imagined. The one a Belgian peasant who only just managed to qualify academically for ordination, and who took the ceremony of being covered with a funeral pall at his profession so seriously and so literally that he promptly volunteered to be exiled to a living death in the leper colony at Molokai: the other a brilliant young Scots writer whose one object in life appeared to be to achieve a reputation as a wit and conversationalist. Their paths never crossed even. But Stevenson landed at Molokai a month after Damien’s death, and was possessed shortly afterwards by a religious determination to defend Damien’s reputation. The story is well known but what is not generally realized is that: (1) Stevenson had little time for missionaries in general, either Catholic or Protestant (he was associated in South Sea politics with the anti-missionary faction); and (2) his first impressions of Damien (based on what observers in Molokai told him) were not too favourable —it was only after reaching Australia some weeks later that he became a fervent admirer of Damien.