but we can see no one we know—­no relative, no one like ourselves—­all truly strange!  I left my little boy, my husband, my mother—­all this:  for what purpose, do you think?  It is only entirely for the sake of Christ’s Gospel that I have come.”

“It is not for the sake of seeing a new place and new people, or any beautiful thing; we have in China quite close to us new places—­beautiful places.  I have never seen them yet; so why should I come so far to see other places?  They may be very good to see, but not for this could I leave my household and people.  I cannot speak your words, I do not know any one, and your food is quite different from ours:  nothing is at all the same as that to which I am accustomed....”

“...  It was God’s Holy Spirit that led me to come.  He wanted me to do what?  Not to amuse myself, but to ask and invite you to come to China to tell the doctrine of Christ.  How could you know the needs of China without hearing them?  How could you hear unless I came to tell you?  Now you can know, for I say the harvest in China is very great, but the labourers are so few.  Now my great desire is that the Gospel of Christ may be known on earth as it is in heaven.  It is not yet known in China, and because the great houses have not yet heard the Gospel, all their money is spent on the idols, sacrifices, and burning incense.”

“In this country some help to spread the Gospel, some go to other countries to tell those who have never heard, but some (a great many) are not helping in any way:  though they have all heard themselves, they are living here only to obey their own wills, for their own pleasure in this world!  How pitiable!  We all know the Gospel of Christ; let us then not follow the heathen (who have never heard) in caring for the things of this world.  The Bible says, ’If a man receives all the riches of this world, and loses his own soul’ (and the souls of many others), ’what can it profit him?’...”

“I am only here for a very little, then I must go back to Foochow, where there are so many large houses full of ladies; the workers are so very few now.  At this time only one ku-niong is there to visit all the great city houses.  She is not enough to visit so many; and it is said that in these mandarin houses their ears have never yet heard the doctrine....  Now I pray God to cause, whether ku-niongs (unmarried ladies) or sing-sang-niongs (married ladies), quickly to go and enter these houses with the Gospel.  Now I ask you, raise up hot hearts in yourselves and quickly help us.”

    “First.  Will you come back to China with me?”

    “Second.  If you cannot, will you cause others to come, by sending
    them and doing what you can to help them to come?”

Mrs. Ahok had planned for a six months’ visit in England, but word came that her husband was ill, and she left in July, after a stay of a little less than four months, during which she had addressed large audiences in approximately one hundred meetings in England and Ireland.  The impression she had made there may be gathered from a paragraph which appeared in India’s Women and China’s Daughters, after she had left: