d hope of
ever dislodging him from this stronghold?"

"I have just said it, Mr. Dinneford. But until the churches and the
people come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty, he cannot be
dislodged. I am standing here, sustained in my work by a small band of
earnest Christian men and women, like an almost barren rock in the midst
of a down-rushing river on whose turbulent surface thousands are being
swept to destruction. The few we are able to rescue are as a drop in
the bucket to the number who are lost. In weakness and sorrow, almost
in despair sometimes, we stand on our rock, with the cry of lost souls
mingling with the cry of fiends in our ears, and wonder at the churches
and the people, that they stand aloof--nay, worse, turn from us coldly
often--when we press the claims of this worse than heathen people who
are perishing at their very doors.

"Sir," continued the missionary, warming on his theme, "I was in a
church last Sunday that cost its congregation over two hundred thousand
dollars. It was an anniversary occasion, and the collections for the day
were to be given to some foreign mission. How eloquently the preacher
pleaded for the heathen! What vivid pictures of their moral and
spiritual destitution he drew! How full of pathos he was, even to tears!
And the congregation responded in a contribution of over three thousand
dollars, to be sent somewhere, and to be disbursed by somebody of whom
not one in a hundred of the contributors knew anything or took the
trouble to inform themselves. I felt sick and oppressed at such a
waste of money and Christian sympathy, when heathen more destitute and
degraded than could be found in any foreign land were dying at home in
thousands every year, unthought of and uncared for. I gave no amens to
his prayers--I could not. They would have stuck in my throat. I said to
myself, in bitterness and anger, 'How dare a watchman on the walls
of Zion point to an enemy afar off, of whose movements and power and
organization he knows but little, while the very gates of the city are
being stormed and its walls broken down?' But you must excuse me, Mr.
Dinneford. I lose my calmness sometimes when these things crowd my
thoughts too strongly. I am human like the rest, and weak, and cannot
stand in the midst of this terrible wickedness and suffering year after
year without being stirred by it to the very inmost of my being. In my
intense absorption I can see nothing else sometimes."