I have been accused by Grand Vicar Mailloux of having killed a man and thrown his body into a river to conceal my crime. I have been accused of having set fire to the church of Bourbonnais and destroyed it. Not less than seventy-two false witnesses have been brought by the priests of Rome to support this last accusation.
But thanks be to God, at every time, from the very lips of the perjured witnesses, we got the proof that they were swearing falsely, at the instigation of their father confessors. And my innocence was proved by the very men who had been paid to destroy me. In this last suit, I thought it was my duty as a Christian and citizen, to have one of those priests punished for having so cruelly and publicly trampled under his feet the most sacred laws of society and religion. Without any vengeance on my part, God knows it, I asked the protection of my country against those incessant plots. Father Brunet, found guilty of having invented those calumnies and supported them by false witnesses, was condemned to pay $2,500 or go to gaol for fourteen years. He preferred the last punishment, having the promise from his Roman Catholic friends that they would break the doors of the prison and let him go free to some remote place. He was incarcerated at Kankakee; but on a dark and stormy night, six months later, he was rescued, and fled to Montreal (900 miles). There, he made the Roman Catholics believe that the blessed Virgin Mary, dressed in a beautiful white robe, had come in person to open, for him, the gates of the prison.
I do not mention these facts here, to create bad feelings against the poor blind slaves of the Pope. It is only to show to the world that the Church of Rome of to-day is absolutely the same as when she reddened Europe with the blood of millions of martyrs.
My motive in speaking of those murderous attacks is to induce the readers to help me to bless God who has so mercifully saved me from the hands of the enemy. More than any living man, I can say with the old prophet: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” With Paul, I could often say: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair: persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed: always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus, might be manifest in our body.”
Those constant persecutions, far from hindering the onward march of the evangelical movement to which I have consecrated my life, seem to have given it a new impulse and a fresher life. I have even remarked that the very day after I had been bruised and wounded, the number of converts had invariably increased. I will never forget the day, after the terrible night when more than a thousand Roman Catholics had come to stone me, and on which I had received a severe wound, more than one hundred of my countrymen asked me to enroll their names under the banner of the Gospel and publicly sent their recantation of the errors of Rome to the bishop. To-day, the Gospel of Christ is advancing with an irresistible power among the French Canadians from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. We find numbers of converts in almost every town and city from New York to San Francisco. Rallied around the banners of Christ, they form a large army of fearless soldiers of the Cross. Among those converts, we count now twenty-five priests, and more than fifty young zealous ministers born in the Church of Rome.
In hundreds of places, the Church of Rome has lost her past prestige, and the priests are looked upon with indifference, if not contempt, even by those who have not yet accepted the light.
A very remarkable religious movement has also been lately inaugurated among the Irish Roman Catholics, under the leadership of Rev’ds. O’Connor and Quinn, which promises to keep pace with, if not exceed the progress of the Gospel among the French.
To-day, more than ever, we hear the Good Master’s voice: “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.”
Oh! may the day soon come when all my countrymen will hear the voice of the Lamb and come to wash their robes in his blood! Will I see the blessed hour when the dark night in which Rome keeps my dear Canada will be exchanged for the bright and saving light of the Gospel?
At all events, I cannot but bless God for what mine eyes have seen and mine ears have heard of his mercy towards me and my countrymen. From my infancy he has taken me into his arms and led me most mercifully, through ways I did not know, from the darkest regions of superstition, to the blessed regions of light, truth and life!