t us
silently, certainly, until it seems almost a sacrilege to think of
leaving it.

Hubert went at once to his room, to the spot where questions were wont
to be settled, and when dinner was announced he begged to be excused.

Winifred and her father sat alone at the table. He inquired concerning
the missionary meeting, and she rehearsed to him much of what Mr. Carew
had said.

"Ah, very good--very good," Mr. Gray said. "Very conclusive, I should
think."

But it did not occur to him how a conclusive argument and a life action
might stand related. Theories cost nothing when only the mind assents
to them. But wrought in the heart, they mold lives after them.

In Hubert's room a painful heart process was going on. Sunk in a deep,
capacious chair, with head resting upon his hand, he set in order
before himself the axiomatic truths he had heard.

"God's supreme work is salvation," he meditated. "The field for this
work is the world--the whole world. Salvation is wrought--as to man's
part--through faith in a message preached. The message requires a
messenger. In vast proportions of the field the messengers are
wanting. What should be done about it? Clearly, the messengers should
rally at the command of God. But it must be at His command. Men
cannot go self-sent."

This thought gave a brief respite to the haunting sense of a
responsibility.

"_Whom shall I send and who will go for us_?" The double questions
heard by Isaiah in the temple repeated itself now in Hubert's mind.

"There are two questions there," he said. "'Whom shall _I send_, and
who will go for us?' A man can only answer, finally, the second. God
must answer His own first query,--although Isaiah did suggest, 'send
me.' Must not any loyal child _if he hear_ his Father's appeal say,
'Here am I'?"

Hubert's head sank lower upon his hand.

"Have I heard the voice of His need?" he asked, but hesitated to answer
his own question. "Yes," he said finally, aloud, in a strained voice,
"I have heard. I can never un-hear His words. I may disregard them,
make myself forget them, but I can never go back to the place of twelve
hours ago and be as though I had never known His mind. I have been in
His temple--I, a worshiper purged by His infinite grace, I have seen a
vision of His will, and have heard the voice of His need. I can never
undo the fact."

Lines that somebody had written repeated themselves in his mind:

"Light obeyed increas