Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by William Briggs,
at the Department of Agriculture.
PREFACE.
We are in the habit of referring to the heroic deeds of our fathers, whether English, Scottish, Irish or French, in the struggles they endured and the sacrifices they made for country or religion. The service rendered to liberty and religion by Cromwell and his Ironsides at Marston Moor or Naseby, by Hamilton and his Covenanters at Drumclog, by King William and his followers at Boyne and Londonderry, or by Henry and his Huguenots at Ivry, may well stir our bosoms with emotion.
But this century has, in the piping times of peace, developed a new and, perhaps, greater heroism in the army of Christian adventurers going to all lands, and proclaiming under King Jesus a war against sin and idolatry, in which battles for the truth are fought against "principalities and powers" as real as those against Prince Rupert, or the bloody Claverhouse. Even the quieter life of a pioneer missionary like Carey or Livingstone requires the highest daring and the sublimest perseverance.
To this class belongs the career of Rev. John Black, the Apostle of the Red River of the North. To leave home and friends at the call of duty, to cross the trackless prairies of the north-western States in order to reach the northern and secluded plains of Rupert's Land, to bury himself in obscurity, albeit he was engaged in laying the foundation of a spiritual empire of the future, was to give John Black a true claim to the honor of self-sacrificing fame and highest patriotism.