Alicia’s greatest anxiety regarding her young cousin was in matters more important than her style of dress, education, or family relations. Harold’s wife, when once Miranda was safe under her roof, had calculated on her conversion to Christianity as a sure and probably an easy thing to be accomplished. Separated from all heathen influences, placed under the daily instruction of devoted and gifted spiritual pastors, constantly with a friend like herself whose kindness the orphan repaid with clinging affection, how could Miranda fail to become a Christian? The once oppressed widow could not but see the difference between a religion of love and one of fear, the difference between loyalty to a Saviour and dread of a demon, between freedom and bondage, darkness and light. But those who, like the elder Hartley, have laboured long amongst those who have been from childhood brought up in superstition and error, know how strangely, it seems unaccountably, the heart clings to its idols. Spiritual work is not like a sum in arithmetic—given so much time, so much labour, so much prayer, and then a certain visible result. We must toil and pray and seek to persuade, but the work of grace is, like life which is its symbol, something beyond the ken and the wisdom of man. In missionary work we must reverently accept, as if addressed to ourselves, the Saviour’s answer to His apostles, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power.” We can see, even with our half-blind eyes, reasons why this should be. Our insufficiency to do anything of ourselves throws us on the power of Him who is all-sufficient. We are humbled, God is exalted. We can but remove the swaddling bands from the spiritually dead; the voice of Omnipotence alone can say, “Come forth from the tomb!” We preach as it were to dry bones; the Spirit of God must breathe on them, or they will never revive and stand up. It is grace that opened our lips; it is grace that must wing our words, or they will fall short of the mark. It was with such reflections that Harold tried to cheer his young wife, when with tears she spoke of the deadness of Miranda’s soul. “She drops asleep even when father is preaching in the native tongue. She only, I fear, listens to the Bible in order to please me. Miranda loves me, tenderly loves, but it seems as if she would not love the Saviour.” “Patience, my love,” said Harold. “Remember the words, ‘Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.’ That blessed rain may be coming now, like the little cloud no bigger than the hand of a man which was seen rising above the sea, in answer to the prayer of Elijah.” Robin, laying his hand on Alicia’s, quoted, not quite correctly, favourite lines,—