and time to pray for the workers, the Lord will continue to use and bless you.

Two days before the close of the year Mr. Taylor returned to London, the great work accomplished which, though wrought in faith and deep heart-rest, had taxed both him and those associated with him to the utmost.

"I have assured the friends," he wrote in his last letter of the year to Mr. Stevenson, "that there will be a big Hallelujah when they, the crowning party of the Hundred, reach Shanghai ! It is not more than we expected God to do for us, but it is very blessed; and to see that God does answer, in great things as well as small, the prayers of those who put their trust in Him will strengthen the faith of multitudes."

Twelve months previously a veteran missionary in Shanghai had said to Mr. Taylor, then on the point of leaving for home :

"I am delighted to hear that you are praying for large reinforcements. You will not get a hundred, of course, within the year; but you will get many more than if you did not ask for them.”

Thanking him for his kindly interest Mr. Taylor replied : "We have the joy beforehand; but I feel sure that, if spared, you will share it in welcoming the last of the Hundred to China."

And so it proved. For among those who gathered to receive that last party with thanksgiving, no one was more sympathetic than the white-headed saint who a few weeks later was called to his reward.

PART VII

WIDER MINISTRY

1888-1895. AET. 56-63.

CHAP. 30. FEW KNOW WHAT IS BETWIXT CHRIST AND ME

THE CROSS DOES NOT GET COMFORTABLE.

31.

"

Among the different ways of helping in the present world crisis, there is none which will compare in vital importance with that of wielding the force of prayer. More important than the most earnest thinking upon a problem, more important than a personal interview to influence an individual, more important than addressing and swaying an audience-far more important than these and all other forms of activity is the act of coming into vital communion with God. Those who spend enough time in actual communion with God to become really conscious of their absolute dependence on Him, shall change the mere energy of the flesh for the power of God.

It is indeed true that he that saveth his time from prayer shall lose it. And he that loseth his time, for communion with God, shall find it again in added blessing and power and fruitfulness.”JOHN R. MOTT.

"

I Wishes, cares, anxieties prepare the heart for prayer, but are not prayer until they are converted into direct address, supplication, and cry unto God."-ADOLPH SAPHIR.

The promises are not given to our wants, but to our petitions." WHATELEY.

CHAPTER XXX

FEW KNOW WHAT IS BETWIXT CHRIST AND ME

1887-1888. AET. 55-56.

AMONG many visitors to Pyrland Road toward the close of the year of the Hundred came one who in a special way was to be identified with the enlargement of Mr. Taylor's influence and the sphere of the Mission. Finding Mr. Taylor still away in Scotland, he took a room near by, and quietly gave himself to studying the work of which he had heard enough to bring him across the Atlantic. In spite of the pressure of those days, Mr. and Mrs. Broomhall welcomed the young stranger almost as a member of their household, giving him every opportunity to become acquainted with the inner life of the Mission, and all he saw did but deepen, by the blessing of God, the desire with which he had come. Of this he was writing to Mr. Taylor in the middle of December (1887):

About five months ago I began correspondence with Mr. Broomhall from America, my home, concerning going to China. As the result of that correspondence I am now at Pyrland Road, and have been here long enough to satisfy myself concerning the spiritual standing of the China Inland Mission, and to confirm my own desire of connecting myself with it. . . . But I came to London with a larger purpose in view. . . . It has been laid on my heart for many months past to talk with you and Mr. Broomhall about the establishment of an American Council that might work as a feeder of men and money for China, on the same principles of faith that have made the China Inland Mission so favourably known. Meeting Mr. Forman in Glasgow I found that he, too, had been praying for something of the same