His voice sank to a whisper. Hubert felt a little convulsive movement beside him and Winifred's hand was shading her eyes. Mr. Carew recovered from the emotion that nearly mastered him, and remembered his hearers and their probable wishes. He began again:
"But perhaps I am neglecting to tell you that which you came especially to hear--some details concerning the actual work of God in China. You will pardon me, but I cannot forbear speaking wherever I go concerning the principles underlying our work, as well as of the work itself. One might describe the people and their ways--and all that is valuable in making them more real to us--and might present a score of curious things which would perhaps beguile an hour very pleasantly, but still leave an indifferent heart unchanged as to the real motive of missions. However, all that I have said will gain and not lose by our turning attention for a time to the practical outworking of the theory."
Then the speaker gave illustrations of the way lost souls are found in China. Very pathetic were some of the incidents, and again and again Winifred's eyes were dim, and an unspeakable pain gnawed at Hubert's heart. Fervently he thanked God for those whose darkness He had turned to light, but sad beyond expression seemed the repeated instances which had occurred in Mr. Carew's experience of earnest pleadings for missionaries to be sent to various places and his absolute inability to answer the cry. But broader than the fact of the _wish_ of some stood the _need_ of all! Populous cities without one witness to the grace of God! Wide regions untraversed by the feet of His messengers! Hubert had thought New Laodicea a place of desperate need; and so it was in the matter of vital, fruit-bearing piety. But as he thought of the inky darkness in which China's millions dwelt this seemed a place of light.
The meeting came to an end. But first the President expressed the thanks of those who had listened to the lecture, and hoped all had been stirred to greater zeal and effort for the future in helping so good a cause. She suggested that the mite-boxes should be redistributed.
"'Mite-boxes!'" thought Hubert and squirmed in his seat impatiently. Then an inward voice reproved him for his contempt of small things. He thought of the poor that might deposit from time to time small coins that meant much from their slender incomes. Yes, "mites" were all right, if they were like the "widow's," and not the meager drippings from a selfish superfluity. But suppose _he_ take a mite-box? How many of them would be required to hold the hoarded, unnecessary, unused wealth at his command? He could not insult the Lord and the "dearest object of His heart" by an offering unworthy of his resources.