I also addressed every Religious Convention to which I was invited, or to which I could secure access. The Perth Conference was made memorable to me by my receiving the first large subscription for our Ship, and by my making the acquaintance of a beautiful type of Christian merchant. At the close of the meeting, at which I had the privilege of speaking, an American gentleman introduced himself to me. We talked and entered into each other’s confidence, as brothers in the Lord’s service. He had made a competency for himself and his family, though only in the prime of life; and he still carried on a large and flourishing business—but why? to devote _the whole profits_, year after year, to the direct service of God and His cause among men! He gave me a cheque for the largest single contribution with which the Lord had yet cheered me. God, who knows me, sees that I have never coveted money for myself or my family; but I did envy that Christian merchant the joy that he had in having money, and having the heart to use it as a steward of the Lord Jesus! Oh, when will men of wealth learn this blessed secret, and, instead of hoarding up gold till death forces it from their clutches, put it out to usury now in the service of their Master, and see the fruits and share the joy thereof, before they go hence to give in their account to God? One of the most appalling features in the modern Christian World, considering the needs of men and the claims of Jesus, is this same practice of either spending all for self, or hoarding all for self, alone or chiefly. Christians who do so seem to stand in need of a great deal of converting still!
Thereafter I was invited to the annual Christian Conference at Dundee. A most peculiar experience befell me there. Being asked to close the forenoon meeting with prayer and the benediction, I offered prayer, and then began—“May the love of God the Father——” but not another word would come in English; everything was blank except the words in Aniwan, for I had long begun to _think_ in the Native tongue, and after a dead pause, and a painful silence, I had to wind up with a simple “Amen!” I sat down wet with perspiration. It might have been wiser, as the Chairman afterwards suggested, to have given them the blessing in Aniwan, but I feared to set them a-laughing by so strange a manifestation of the “tongues.” Worst of all, it had been announced that I was to address them in the afternoon; but who would come to hear a Missionary that stuck in the benediction? The event had its semi-comical aspect, but it sent me to my knees during the interval in a very fever of prayerful anxiety. A vast audience assembled, and if the Lord ever manifestly used me in interesting His people in Missions, it was certainly then and there. As I sat down, a devoted Free Church Elder from Glasgow handed me his card, with “I.O.U. £100.” This was my first donation of a hundred pounds, and my heart was greatly cheered. I praised the Lord, and warmly thanked His servant. A Something kept sounding these words in my ears, “My thoughts are not as your thoughts;” and also, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain thee.”
During my address at that meeting three coloured girls, not unlike our Island girls, sat near the platform, and eagerly listened to me. At the close, the youngest, apparently about twelve years of age, rose, salaamed to me in Indian fashion, took four silver bangles from her arm, and presented them to me, saying,—
“Padre, I want to take shares in your Mission Ship by these bangles, for I have no money, and may the Lord ever bless you!”