" And often, when he had
finished, the disease of sin in many a heart was cured by the
remedy of the gospel.
And so the autumn passed away happily and busily, and Mackay
entered his first Formosan winter. And such a winter! The young
man who had felt the clear, bright cold of a Canadian January
needed all his fine courage to bear up under its dreariness. It
started about Christmas time. Just when his own people far away
in Canada were gathering about the blazing fire or jingling over
the crisp snow in sleighs and cutters, the great winter rains
commenced. Christmas day--his first Christmas in a land that did
not know its beautiful meaning--was one long dreary downpour. It
rained steadily all Christmas week. It poured on New Year's day
and for a week after. It came down in torrents all January.
February set in and still it rained and rained, with only a short
interval each afternoon. Day and night, week in, week out, it
poured, until Mackay forgot what sunlight looked like. His house
grew damp, his clothes moldy. A stream broke out up in the hill
behind and one morning he awoke to find a cascade tumbling into
his kitchen, and rushing across the floor out into the river
beyond.
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