Page:They're a multitoode (1900).djvu/16

 in this country, three-quarters of a lifetime of work would probably be before him. One can't help remembering it. But—I can accept the logic of missions."

He took the little cardboard box from the drawer into which he had thrust it and read every Scripture verse on all its sides.

"Yes, the arguments are strong. I don't pretend to gainsay foreign missions. But yet it can't be denied that thousands of the holiest of saints have lived their lives out within the limits of Christendom and found more than their hands could do with their might. However, that sort of incompatibility between the two sides of a truth is the commonest thing in the world. It does not shake the claim of the missionaries."

"I wonder," he meditated, "how much genuine missionary spirit there is in the church of to-day. I don't mean among the specialists, the experts, like Jim (and me)"—Christy had the grace to laugh a little—"but in the rank and file."

He lifted the contribution box and regarded it with a new expression. By-and-bye he smiled broadly.

"It will be an interesting experiment," said Christy. "Let us try it."

He put the box up again on the mantelpiece, where Jim had first set it, clearing a space about it that it might stand unshadowed in a small rim of black marble.

Another hour of the afternoon passed as many other hours had done. Christy had returned to his habit of absorption in what was in hand.