“Often we hear people say how excellent it is, and how they never worship idols now, but only the true God; and even a heathen mother will make her child repeat its texts to you, and a father will tell you how it tells him Bible stories; and, if you are quite new to the work, you put it in the Magazine, and at home it sounds like conversion. All this goes on most peacefully; there is not the slightest stir, till something happens to show the people that the doctrine is not just a creed, but contains a living Power. And then, and not until then, there is opposition. In one village there was a little Brahmin child who often tried to speak to us, but was never allowed. One day she risked capture and its consequences, and ran across the narrow stream which divides the Brahmin street from the village, and spoke to one of our band in a hurried little whisper, ‘Oh, I do want to hear about Jesus!’ And she told how she had learned at school in her own town, and then she had been sent to her mother-in-law’s house in this jungle village, ‘that one,’ pointing to a house where they never had smiles for us; but her mother-in-law objected to the preaching, and had threatened to throw her down the well if she listened to us. Just then a hard voice called her and she flew. Next time we went to that village she was shut up somewhere inside.”[93] [Sidenote: “After many days.”] Sometimes God grants that bread cast on the waters with loving, lavish hand, is found again after many, many days. Often a Bible verse or the words of a hymn, or the recollection of what was seen and heard in a missionary home, has not been forgotten, and has borne fruit in after life. “A rich Japanese silk merchant sent for the missionaries in his town, and entertained them most hospitably. He told how as a child he had attended a Sunday-School. ‘Very often,’ he said, ‘right in the midst of my business the words of the hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” come to me, and, try as I may, I can’t get them out of my mind.’ He then repeated the hymn from beginning to end, and added, ‘Though I have lived my life without religion, I feel that it is the most important thing there is, and I want my little girl to be a Christian; and it is for that purpose,’ he added emphatically, ‘that I have placed her in the mission school, that she may become a Christian.’” [Sidenote: Ours is the greater privilege.]