ial emergency. My dear friend, Dr. J. Hood Wilson, kindly wrote
also to a number of them, on my behalf, but with a similar result;
though at last other two Services were arranged for with a collection,
and one without. Being required at London, in any case, in connection
with the threatened Annexation of the New Hebrides by the French, I
resolved to take these five Services by the way, and immediately return
to Scotland, where engagements and opportunities were now pressed upon
me, far more than I could overtake. But the Lord Himself opened before
me a larger door, and more effectual, than any that I had tried in vain
to open up for myself.

The Churches to which I had access did nobly indeed, and the Ministers
treated me as a very brother. Dr. Dykes most affectionately supported my
Appeal, and made himself recipient of donations that might be sent for
our Mission Ship. Dr. Donald Fraser, and Messrs. Taylor and Mathieson,
with their Congregations, generously contributed to the Fund. And so did
the Mission Church in Drury Lane--the excellent and consecrated Rev. W.
B. Alexander, the pastor thereof, and his wife, becoming my devoted
personal friends and continuing to remember in their work-parties ever
since the needs of the Natives on the New Hebrides. Others also, whom I
cannot wait to specify, showed a warm interest in us and in our
department of the Lord's work. But my heart had been foolishly set upon
adding a large sum to the fund for the Mission Ship, and when only about
L150 came from all the Churches in London to which I could get access,
no doubt I was sensible of cherishing a little guilty disappointment.
That was very unworthy in me, considering all my previous experiences;
and God deserved to be trusted by me far differently, as the sequel will
immediately show.

That widely-known and deeply-beloved servant of God, Mr. J. E.
Mathieson, of the Mildmay Conference Hall, had invited me to address one
of their annual meetings on behalf of Foreign Missions, and also to be
his guest while the Conference lasted. Thereby I met and heard many
godly and noble disciples of the Lord, whom I could not otherwise have
reached though every Church I had asked in London had been freely opened
to me. These devout and faithful and generous people, belonging to every
branch of the Church of Christ, and drawn from every rank and class in
society, from the humblest to the highest, were certainly amongst the
most open-hearted and th