Here, too, are diviners, fortune-tellers and fakirs. It is the bazaar of the capital, once seen not to be forgotten, with its twinkling candles stretching far away, its lines of squatting vendors, its hum of busy voices, its clattering, chattering, crowding thousands who throng the thoroughfare. There with his little store of stuff about him, Liu might be found each night. The day he spent picking up a few curios from house to house, when not too busy with his pipe.
One day he rambled again along the street where in former days he, with the rabble, had wrought such ruin to the cause of missions. The church, a new and larger one since those days, stood open. Numbers of people were crowding in, so he, with an uncle and two friends, sons of his former official patron, joined the stream. They listened half curiously, half carelessly, to the prayers and singing, all so strange to them. Something in the sermon, however, brought Liu to attention. The speaker said that this God of love could so fill and thrill a man with His Spirit that even the passion for opium could no longer hold him. Could it be possible?
Liu was no willing victim to the habit. He had tried all kinds of pills and strange concoctions guaranteed to cure, or recommended by friends. He had fought by his own will power till that became so weak he scarce struggled longer. But here was a new thought from the truth-telling foreigner, and a new hope. Perhaps this foreign God could help. So at invitation he, with his companions, waited for the after meeting, where all are welcomed who have questions or seek further light.
