God's gift of grace. Now over into
Spain--far, far afield, as distances then were gauged--the eager eyes of
the Apostle looked and longed for a crown of rejoicing from that land
also in the day of Christ. In him we see the faithful exposition of the
missionary idea."

By this time Hubert was looking at the speaker very intently, with
widened, almost startled, eyes that were opening to a new idea. Winifred
also sat with riveted gaze, her cheeks slightly paling beneath the
deepening conviction of a tremendous truth. True worshiper that she was,
to know the truth must be to shape her life in consonance with it, and a
voice at her heart gave warning that to be conformed to this newly
revealed will of God would be pain. But where was the theory that had
seemed so clear and sensible to both Hubert and herself when they came to
the meeting? Hubert always had clear ideas. What would he say to this?
Now Mr. Carew was saying:

"I have frequently heard it objected to foreign missions that there are
works of philanthropy still to be done here. The objection is absolutely
irrelevant. The work of missions is not an indefinite 'doing good.' It
is the bearing of a _specific good_ to those who have not received it.
It is not, _per se_, the bettering of temporal conditions. It is the
securing to those who believe its message the _best eternal conditions_.
It is not a matter of 'elevation'--it is a matter of translation. Not
into a bettered life, but into a _new_ life with an eternal outlook--into
a new realm altogether, and that divine--the Gospel we carry ushers its
believers! How would the poor, irrelevant argument I have quoted have
affected Paul? Looking across the sea to Spain, and to Rome by the way,
he was leaving behind him in Judea, in Asia--in all the region unto
Illyricum, hungry people still unfed and the naked still unclothed. Want
and misery still stretched out their hands to be relieved. But they
could not stay the feet of the Apostle. He had heard _the supreme call_!
God had a supreme gift to bestow; the world had a supreme need; and to
bring the need and the gift together was his absorbing, constraining
zeal. Would God it were ours also! Friends, my plea for China is not
for its temporal needs; it is not that its women's feet are bound, that
its men are opium-stupefied, or that it needs our Western ideas, as it is
waking from its Eastern way. It is this: _God has an unspeakable gift
for its people, a