for one hour sat and thought about it?
Have we thought of it for half an hour, for a quarter of an hour, for
five unbroken minutes? I go further, and I ask you, have you ever sat
still for one whole minute and counted by the ticking of your watch,
while soul after soul passes out alone into eternity?

. . . I have done it. It is awful. At the lowest computation, sixty-six
for whom Christ died have died since I wrote "eternity."

"Oh my God! my God! Men are perishing, and I take no heed!" . . .

Sixty-six more have gone. Oh, how can one keep so calm? Death seems
racing with the minute hand of my watch. I feel like stopping that
terrible run of the minute hand. Round and round it goes, and every time
it goes round, sixty-six people die.

I have just heard of the dying of one of the sixty-six. We knew her
well. She was a widow; she had no protectors, and an unprotected widow
in India stands in a dangerous place. We knew it, and tried to persuade
her to take refuge in Jesus. She listened, almost decided, then drew
back; afterwards we found out why. You have seen the picture of a man
sucked under sea by an octopus; it was like that. You have imagined the
death-struggle; it was like that. But it all went on under the surface
of the water, there was nothing seen above, till perhaps a bubble rose
slowly and broke; it was like that. One day, in the broad noontide, a
woman suddenly fell in the street. Someone carried her into a house, but
she was dead, and those who saw that body saw the marks of the struggle
upon it. The village life flowed on as before; only a few who knew her
knew she had murdered her body to cover the murder of her soul. We had
come too late for her.

Last week I stood in a house where another of those sixty-six had
passed. Crouching on the floor, with her knees drawn up and her head on
her knees, a woman began to tell me about it. "She was my younger
sister. My mother gave us to two brothers"--and she stopped. I knew who
the brothers were. I had seen them yesterday--two handsome high-caste
Hindus. We had visited their wives, little knowing. The woman said no
more; she could not. She just shuddered and hid her face in her hands. A
neighbour finished the story. Something went wrong with the girl. They
called in the barber's wife--the only woman's doctor known in these
parts. She did her business ignorantly. The girl died in fearful pain.
Hindu women are inured to sickening sights, but this girl's death was