I opened my Indian Bible at that wonderful chapter of disinterested love, the fourteenth of John, and preached unto them Jesus, in His two natures, Divine and human. While emphasising the redemptive work of the Son of God, I referred to His various offices and purposes of love and compassion, His willingness to meet us and to save us from perplexity and doubt, as well as from sin. I spoke about Him as our elder Brother, so intimately allied to us, and still retaining His human form as He pleads for us at the throne of God. I dwelt upon these delightful truths, and showed how Christ’s love had so brought him to us, that with the eye of faith we could see Him, and in Him all of God for which our hearts craved. “Whom having not seen, we love; in Whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
For many days I needed no other themes. They listened attentively, and the holy Spirit applied these truths to their hearts and consciences so effectively that they gladly received them. A few more visits effectually settled them in the truth. They have cut down their idols, filled up the dog-ovens, torn away the conjurers’ tents, cleared the forest, and banished every vestige of the old life. And there, at what is called “the Meeting of the Three Rivers,” on that very spot where idols were worshipped amidst horrid orgies, and where the yells, rattles, and drums of the old conjurers and medicine men were heard continuously for days and nights, there is now a little church, where these same Indians, transformed by the glorious Gospel of the Son of God, are “clothed and in their right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus.”
My visits to Nelson River so impressed me with the fact of the necessity of some zealous missionary going down there and living among the people, that, in response to appeals made, the Reverend John Semmens, whose heart God had filled with missionary zeal, and who had come out to assist me at Norway House, nobly resolved to undertake the work. He was admirably fitted for the arduous and responsible task. But no language of mine can describe what he had to suffer. His record is on high. The Master has it all, and He will reward. Great were his successes, and signal his triumphs.
At that place, where I found the stumps carved into idols, which Brother Semmens has so graphically described, the church, mainly through his instrumentality and personal efforts, has been erected. In the last letter which I have received from that land, the writer says: “The Indians now all profess themselves to be Christians. Scores of them by their lives and testimonies assure us of the blessed consciousness that the Lord Jesus is indeed their own loving Saviour. Every conjuring drum has ceased. All vestiges of the old heathenish life are gone, we believe for ever.”
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
Grandly has this prophecy been fulfilled, and dwarfs into insignificance all the sufferings and hardships endured in the pioneer work which I had in beginning this Mission. With a glad heart I rejoice that “unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”