knelt in prayer again and again before his Father in heaven. His
quarterly allowance had been withheld, and want stared him in the face.
Constrained by urgent need, and shut up to God for help, he pleaded
repeatedly for a supply of his temporal wants. Now see how extraordinary
was the plan of the Lord to send relief.

"In one of the lovely homes of Massachusetts, while the snow was falling
and the winds were howling without, a lady sat on one side of the
cheerful fire, knitting a little stocking for her oldest grandson, and
her husband, opposite to her, was reading aloud a missionary paper, when
the following passage arrested the attention of the lady and fastened
itself in her memory.

"'In consequence of failure to obtain my salary when due, I have been so
oppressed with care and want, as to make it painfully difficult to
perform my duties as a minister. There is very little prospect,
seemingly, of improvement in this respect for some time to come. What I
say of my own painfully inadequate support, is substantially true of
nearly all your missionaries in this State. You, of course, cannot be
blamed for this. You are but the almoners of the churches, and can be
expected to appropriate only what they furnish. _This, however, the
Master will charge to somebody as a grievous fault;_ for it is not His
will that his ministers should labor unrequited.'

"This extract was without name or date. It was simply headed 'from a
missionary in Northern Indiana.' Scores of readers probably gave it only
a passing glance. Not so the lady who sat knitting by the fire and heard
her husband read it. The words sank into her mind, and dwelt in her
thoughts. The clause, '_This, however, the Master will charge to
somebody as a grievous fault_,' especially seemed to follow her wherever