already made. We sat together one evening in a shady spot
adjoining our premises, sharing our home letters; we opened one to find
it contained a cheque from a friend who could know nothing of our need,
marked: "For use in any necessary buildings." The very spot on which we
sat, later on proved to be the site of the John Holt Skinner Memorial
Court in the new school buildings. By the next term Chinese rooms,
providing for the accommodation of sixty, were erected; the old
school-court was given over to women's station classes, and we saw scope
for the realisation of our wildest dreams. The work amongst the men was
increasing in a similar proportion. Mr. Wang, who was in charge when we
arrived at Hwochow, was now appointed Deacon of the Church, and
afterwards Elder. We soon recognised in him a man of no ordinary
influence. Like Barnabas, he was "a good man filled with the Holy
Spirit," and like him might well be called the "Son of Consolation."

The large numbers who were baptized upon profession of faith each year
entailed many responsibilities--new families to be visited, more
visitors to be received, marriages and funerals to be attended. Cases of
persecution, real or supposed, called for many hours of patient
listening, and, withal, the constant stream of city women who desired to
inspect all that was going on, parents to see children in the school,
friends and relatives of opium patients, who lost no chance of visiting
the member of the family under treatment, changed the once quiet house
into a beehive of activity.

In many Shansi houses there is a large, well-built room, open to north
and south, which is set apart for the observance of the prescribed
family rites connected with ancestral worship. Here are the wooden
ancestral tablets, image of the soul and tangible symbol, erected to the
memory of the deceased, affording thereby a fixed object for filial
piety. This room on our compound was dedicated as a church for public
worship; enlarged once, and again the second time, it still proved too
small for our growing congregation.

The strain attendant on such a rapid development was severe, but each
year found us supplied with increasingly able help from our Chinese
co-workers. We found ourselves driven to the practical testing of the
principle: "When the pressure of the work is too heavy, then extend the
work," and we found it to be sound and workable. Each term some extra
responsibility was thrown off on to the sh