st of China, clasping the crucifix to
his breast and praying for those who had cast him out.

Cecil's face, though pale, was calm and noble. All his nature
responded to the moral grandeur of the occasion. It would be difficult
to put into words the reverent and tender exaltation of feeling that
animated him that day. Perhaps only those upon whose own heads the
hands of ordination have been laid can enter into or understand it.

The charge was earnest, but it was not needed, for Cecil's ardent
enthusiasm went far beyond all that the speaker urged upon him. As he
listened, pausing as it were on the threshold of an unknown future, he
wondered if he should ever hear a sermon again,--he, so soon to be
swallowed by darkness, swept, self-yielded, into the abyss of
savagery.

Heartfelt and touching was the prayer of ordination,--that God might
accept and bless Cecil's consecration, that the divine presence might
always abide with him, that savage hearts might be touched and
softened, that savage lives might be lighted up through his
instrumentality, and that seed might be sown in the wilderness which
would spring up and cause the waste places to be glad and the desert
to blossom as the rose.

"And so," said the old minister, his voice faltering and his hands
trembling as they rested on Cecil's bowed head, "so we give him into
Thine own hand and send him forth into the wilderness. Thou only
knowest what is before him, whether it be a harvest of souls, or
torture and death. But we know that, for the Christian, persecutions
and trials are but stepping-stones leading to God; yea, and that death
itself is victory. And if he is faithful, we know that whatever his
lot may be it will be glorious; that whatever the end may be, it will
be but a door opening into the presence of the Most High."

Strong and triumphant rang the old man's tones, as he closed his
prayer committing Cecil into the hands of God. To him, as he listened,
it seemed as if the last tie that bound him to New England was
severed, and he stood consecrated and anointed for his mission. When
he raised his face, more than one of the onlookers thought of those
words of the Book where it speaks of Stephen,--"And they saw his face
as it had been the face of an angel."

A psalm was sung, the benediction given, and the solemn service was
over. It was long, however, before the people left the house. They
lingered around Cecil, bidding him farewell, for he was to go forth