But it was the will of God that I should pass through the purifying fires of the greatest tribulations. On my return from Europe into my colony, in the beginning of 1861, I found everything in confusion. The ambition of the young men I had invited to preach in my place, and in whom I had so imprudently put too much confidence, encouraged by the very man I had chosen for my representative and my attorney during my absence, came very near ruining that evangelical work, by sowing the seeds of division and hatred among our dear converts. Through the dishonest and false reports of those two men, the money I had collected and left in England, (in the hands of a gentleman who was bound to send it at my order) was retained nearly two years, and lost in the failure of the Gelpeck New York Bank, through which it was sent. The only way we found to save ourselves from ruin, was to throw ourselves into the hands of our Christian brothers of Canada.
A committee of the Presbyterian Church, composed of Rev’s. Dr. Kemp, Dr. Cavan and Mr. Scott, was sent to investigate the cause of our trouble, and they soon found them.
Dr. Kemp published a critical resume of their investigation, which clearly showed where the trouble lay. Our integrity and innocence were publicly acknowledged, and we were solemnly and officially received as members of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, on the 11th of June, 1863.
We may properly acknowledge here that the Christian devotedness, the admirable ability and zeal of the late Dr. Kemp in performance of that work, has secured to him our eternal gratitude.
In 1874, I was again invited to Great Britain by the committee appointed to prepare the congratulatory address of the English people to the Emperor of Germany and Bismark, for their noble resistance to the encroachments of Popery. I addressed the meetings held for that purpose in Exter Hall, under the Presidency of Lord John Russell, on the 27th of January, 1874. The next day, several Gospel ministers pressed me to publish my twenty-five years’ experience of auricular confession, as an antidote to the criminal and too successful efforts of Dr. Pusey, who wanted to restore that infamous practice among the Protestants of England.
After much hesitation and many prayers, I wrote the book entitled: “The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional,” which God has so much blessed to the conversion of many, that twenty-nine editions have already been published. It has been translated into many languages.
I spent the next six months in lecturing on Romanism in the principal cities of England, Scotland and Ireland.
On my return, pressed by the Canadian Church to leave my colony of Illinois, for a time at least, to preach in Canada, I went to Montreal, where, in the short space of four years, we had the unspeakable joy of seeing seven thousand French Canadian Roman Catholics and emigrants from France, publicly renounce the errors of Popery, to follow the Gospel of Christ.
In 1878, exhausted by the previous years of incessant labors, I was advised, by my physicians, to breathe the bracing air of the Pacific Ocean. I crossed the Rocky Mountains and spent two months lecturing in San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and in Washington Territory, where I found great numbers of my French countrymen, many of whom received the Gospel with joy.
Under the auspices and protection of my Orange brethren, I crossed the Pacific and went to the Antipodes, lecturing two years in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. It would require a large volume to tell the great mercies of God towards me during that long, perilous, but interesting voyage. During those two years, I gave 610 public lectures, and came back to my colony of St. Anne with such perfectly restored health, that I could say with the Psalmist: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”