“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.”

He paused for a little while, and then said, in a quiet, business way,

“In seeking a remedy for the condition of society found here, we must let common sense and a knowledge of human nature go hand in hand with Christian charity.  To ignore any of these is to make failure certain.  If the whisky-and policy-shops were all closed, the task would be easy.  In a single month the transformation would be marvelous.  But we cannot hope for this, at least not for a long time to come—­not until politics and whisky are divorced, and not until associations of bad men cease to be strong enough in our courts to set law and justice at defiance.  Our work, then, must be in the face of these baleful influences.”