A friend has sent us the following which we gladly insert: “Nine or ten years ago he (Dr Broughton) visited a district in the mountains of S.W. Virginia, holding a three days’ mission for the deepening of spiritual life. The people were exceedingly poor, but living pure, wholesome lives. He was entertained by a family living in a house of only three rooms, where his deepest interest was awakened by one whom he took to be a daughter of the family.
“She was indeed the most remarkable girl in all that country. She had never had more than three months’ schooling in her life, and was not the daughter but only the servant, in receipt of four dollars (16s. 8d.) per month. Out of this she gave every month one dollar to her church (being the largest contributor), one dollar to Foreign Missions (being again the largest contributor), two dollars to her family, her father being very poor and the family very large. How, then, did she clothe herself? By taking in work and sitting up far into the night.
The room occupied by Dr Broughton was this girl’s, and there he found her Bible. It was marked on every page, and almost at every verse, but it was at Mark 16:1515And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15) that he found, as he believed, the secret of her life. Over against the― ‘Go ye into all the world,’ &c., was written in a firm, clear hand, ‘Oh, if I could!’
“He felt he must follow this up, and so he spoke to her about it, whereupon she broke into crying. ‘Don’t cry, come to business,’ said he; but the crying went on all the same, and he had to try again later on, when she told him her story.
“At fourteen she was converted at a meeting, and when she reached home she found a tract lying there entitled, ‘China’s Call for the Gospel.’ Nobody knew anything about it―whence it came, who brought it, or how long it had been there. Yet it was that that shaped all her afterlife. She showed Dr Broughton the tree where for ten years she had prayed the Lord to send her to China.
“But a great change had come over her recently. Exactly two weeks before Dr Broughton’s coming she had come to the conclusion that she had misunderstood the Lord’s purpose for her, that, after all, His plan for her was that she should be a missionary for Him in the kitchen. At once her prayer became, ‘Make me willing to be a missionary for Thee in the kitchen!’ She told how the Lord had answered that prayer.
“But now Dr Broughton’s first sermon had brought back the old longings stronger than ever. ‘I have been so miserable that I almost wish you hadn’t come,’ she said. His reply was that she must come off at once with him and be trained. He felt so sure that God had sent him to help this chosen servant of His into her true path that he must do it even if he had to sell his own clothes. For seven years she did good work in China, came home on furlough, and has now just returned for her second term of service.
“The point to be noted specially is this: For ten years she had longed for the big thing. Then she was brought to willingness to accept the little thing—to shine for God in that narrow home as kitchen maid; and as soon as she reached that point, God Himself sent her out to China. ‘He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’”