"Why, then," I said, "do you not worship the good Spirit? I came
through your sacred grounds, and I saw where you had cut down some
trees. Part you had used as fuel with which to cook your bear or deer
meat; out of the rest you had made an idol, which you worship. How is
one part more sacred than the other? Why do you make and worship
idols?"
I can never forget his answer, or the impressive and almost passionate
way in which the old man replied:--
"Missionary, the Indian's mind is dark, and he cannot grasp the unseen.
He hears the great Spirit's voice in the thunder and storms. He sees
the evidences of His existence all around, but neither he nor his
fathers have ever seen the great Spirit, or any one who has; and so he
does not know what He looks like. But man is the highest creature that
he knows of, and so he makes his idols like a man, and calls it his
`Manito.' We only worship them because we do not know what the great
Spirit looks like, but these we can understand."
Suddenly there flashed into my mind the request of Philip to the Lord
Jesus: "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us;" and the wonderful
answer: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known
Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest
thou then, Show us the Father?"
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."