deavouring to point out Christ crucified, an aged woman present was struck with what he said, and invited him to come and hold a meeting in her house on the following Sabbath. He was overjoyed with this opening, and went on the Sabbath evening as he had agreed to do. The neighbours had gathered, and the house was full. They listened with attention to Mr. Roussy's discourse, and invited him to preach again; and thus was sown the first good seed from which has sprung the ever-progressing and increasing work of the Grande Ligne Mission.

The spiritual history of the woman who had invited Mr. Roussy to preach in her house must be recorded as one of the most striking instances of the providence of a prayer-hearing and merciful God. When still very young her parents had left Canada for the United States, where she learned to read the Bible in one of the common schools. Her parents fearing that she might become a Protestant, determined to return to Canada, in order to avert this calamity. As soon as they had reached their native land, she was forced to abandon the reading of the Holy Book; and she was singularly despised for the strange notions she had gathered from it. After a lapse of twenty years, she had again resumed the reading of her Bible; and when Mr. Roussy visited her, she had been its constant student for twenty-eight years. Perplexed by the difference between the doctrines of the Church of Rome and those of the Gospel, she had often prayed earnestly to God, and at times with anguish of soul, that he would send some one to enlighten her mind. When she heard Mr. Roussy explain the way of salvation, she exclaimed, "I thank thee Lord for having heard my prayer; this man is thy servant indeed." Very shortly after she attained to the full enjoyment of salvation; and a few months subsequently breathed her last, in the full and glorious triumph of the faith, surrounded by eight children, who all left the Church of Rome to follow the Gospel.

The meetings were sustained and attended by some forty persons. But the priests, informed of these labours, began to preach violently against Mr. Roussy -calling him a fool, an innovator, a heretic, and all the insulting names that their hatred could suggest. Through their efforts and influence, he was soon dismissed from the school. He was then fully at liberty to give himself to the propagation of the truth; and he began to travel more extensively, preaching the Gospel wherever he could get access to the people, particularly in St. John's, Sherrington, and Napierville.

During this time Mad. Feller was residing at St. John's. She had gone there after Mr. Olivier's departure, hoping to find an opportunity for usefulness; but her endeavours failed of success through the opposition of the priests, and her attention was ultimately directed to Grande Ligne. "Judging," she said, "it would be best to associate my labours with those of Brother Roussy for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord, I visited the different places where he was received, in order to fix upon one where I might station myself. In going to Grande Ligne twice a week, I soon saw that this was my place. Several families had already abandoned Popery, and the adults, as well as the children, needed a school. One difficulty was the want of a place of residence; there was not a single house where I could be lodged. The family in whose house preaching had been regularly held, offered me a garret, which I divided into two apartments, that it might serve for a bed-room and school-room."

Madame Feller became a resident at Grande Ligne in October, 1836. She immediately opened a school, with twelve children belonging to families that had left the Church of Rome. Soon the number increased to twenty. Not content with instructing the children in the day, she opened an evening school for adults, with twelve scholars. In addition to the regular pupils, a considerable number attended the concluding exercises, which comprised reading the Scriptures, conversation on the passages read, and prayer. So interesting were these services, that they were often prolonged till midnight. It was a season of arduous, yet delightful effort.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE

In the following June, 1837, the heat being insupportable in the garret, the exercises were conducted in a barn. About that time the Rev. J. Gilmour, pastor of the Baptist church at Montreal, visited the station, and, being deeply affected by the inconveniences and privations endured by Mad. Feller, undertook to provide some suitable accommodations. A small house vas erected, chiefly by means of contributions from Christian friends in Montreal, Champlain, and Platsburg. That building served for a dwelling, a school-house, and a place of worship, till the mission-house was commenced in the autumn of 1838.

A small church, organised in 1837, now numbered sixteen members, and besides these converts, many showed favourable dispositions toward the Gospel. But an hour of trial was drawing nigh. The fire of persecution was soon kindled, and they were to suffer for the truth's sake.

In the course of October the insurrection in Canada broke out. The Roman Catholics around Grande Ligne took advantage of the prevailing confusion, and commenced a series of malignant outrages. Mr. Roussy was deliberately shot at, but was providentially preserved. A mob assembled around the house of Mad. Feller at night, and with frightful yells and imprecations ordered the missionaries to leave the country, threatening to set fire to their dwelling, and murder them, if they should refuse to comply. In the same manner they went to the houses of all who had renounced Popery, and commanded them either to abandon their new religion or their country, under pain of fire or sword. Such disorder prevailed in the country, that the Govern ment could afford them no protection; and hence, after serious and prayerful consideration, they unanimously resolved to give up all and flee to the United States. To human view, nothing could be more sad and miserable than this fugitive band; but to the Christian eye, their trial had its bright side, as it was for the name of Jesus they were reduced to such a pitiable condition. Chris tians in the United States provided liberally for the urgent wants of the persecuted ones.

At the expiration of twelve months they returned, and found that their dwellings had been preserved, but nothing else. The labours of the mission were resumed with increased success during the year 1838. But in the month of November civil war again broke out around them. Mr. Roussy was made a prisoner. Through the influence of Mad. Feller, the angry rioters were appeased, and pledged themselves that neither the missionaries nor their property should be molested during the war. redeemed. While all around them were pillaged, by the kind providence of The pledge given was literally God the mission family and property were untouched.

The

The need of a normal school, to train teachers and colporteurs, was now deeply felt, as well as of a building suitable for such an institution. building was erected through the liberality of Christian friends, of various denominations, especially in the United States, for which the mission was greatly indebted to the Rev. E. N. Kirk, of Boston.

After the erection of the mission-house, the good providence of God was strikingly manifested in providing a teacher for the new institution. Mr. Normandeau, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, had been engaged as professor in the seminary at Quebec for five years. After a long season of doubt and anxiety on the subject of religion, being in the neighbourhood of Grande Ligne, he sought the aid of the missionaries, and by their instrumentality was led to receive the truth as it is in Jesus. He immediately engaged in the good work; and he has now been labouring for more than twenty years in an unassuming, humble, but most effectual way to promote the knowledge of the Gospel among his countrymen; and for the last three years he has been the pastor of a promising, though yet small, missionary church in that very city of Quebec, where he formerly taught as a priest in the Roman Catholic seminary.

The year 1841 was one of the most remarkable periods in the history of this mission. During that year a new field was opened in St. Pie and its neigh

bourhood, a parish forty-five miles east of Grande Ligne. It pleased God to kindle the light of the Gospel in that district; and Mr. Roussy had the happiness after a few days of seeing eight persons abandon the Romish Church. These formed the nucleus of a most flourishing station.

While the Lord was preparing a new field, he was also preparing new labourers in the wondrous and mysterious workings of his love,

One of the leaders of the Canadian insurrection of 1838, and for several years a member of the Canadian Parliament, Dr. Côte, was obliged to flee to the United States in order to save his life, as a price had been set on his head by the Governor-General. Being a deist, as most educated Frenchmen are, and having no hope beyond this world, Dr. Côte was a prey to great internal anguish. His chequered life appeared to him suspended on a few threads, whose frailty filled him with apprehension. Death was to him the king of terrors. Disgusted with the superstitious worship of the Romish Church, his heart yearned for something that he did not know. His mental sufferings became intolerable, and convinced him that his system of philosophy deceived him. He resolved to read the Bible, of which he was very ignorant, though he had referred to it at times to find weapons against the priests. At first it brought him no relief. His mental state so reacted on his body that his friends perceived it, and said that he was losing his sanity. While in that state of mind, he met in the frontiers of the State of New York a French Canadian family, members of the church of Grande Ligne. The expression of peace which he remarked amongst them greatly impressed him; he said that he did not possess it, and that he knew not how to obtain it. Having heard from them that Mr. Roussy had been the instrument of their conversion, he wrote to him, asking him to come and see him. In relating the memorable change which followed, Mr. Roussy says that "after days of conflict, of earnest prayer, of a crushing sense of sin and condemnation, Dr. Côte, filled with the spirit of adoption, exclaimed, Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to men."" "We wept," continues Mr. Roussy; but our tears were tears of gratitude, of happiness, and of love. All was solemn around us; the blessing of God was descending; our cup was filled. Oh! blessed moment, to all eternity blessed!

แ

A short time after his conversion, Dr. Côte was allowed to return to Canada, where he laboured in different stations, with great success, both as an eloquent preacher of the Gospel, and a Christian physician, until the autumn of 1850, when his Master called him suddenly to a better world. In the course of his missionary labours, Dr. Côte wrote both in English and in French several small works full of vigour and eloquence. In reference to the surprising effects of one of his tracts, written in French (entitled "A Word in Passing"), a missionary in Hayti, wrote, "Had Dr. Côte written nothing else, he would not have lived in vain."

In the same year, 1841, two young men, Mr. Cyr, and Mr. Lafleur, residing in a village near Grande Ligne, were gradually brought from Romanism to a saving knowledge of the Saviour. Shortly after their conversion they joined the church at Grande Ligne, and entered the missionary institution, as students for the ministry, having as a teacher one who had been a priest in the church they had left. After a few years of preparation at Grande Ligne, both were sent to the theological school of Geneva, presided over by the well-known Merle D'Aubigné; and they have been since labouring in the mission field, one as the editor of an Evangelical French paper, published in Montreal, the Semeur Canadien, the other as a pastor and a teacher, at first at St. Pie, as successor to Dr. Côte, and then at Longueil, near Montreal.

A short time after the opening of St. Pie as a missionary station, a violent persecution broke out against the converts of that place. The priests of the neighbourhood had been for some time actively engaged in exciting the enmity of their people against the Protestant Christians. A number of young persons gathered before the Mission House, and when the missionaries came out to speak to them, they were received by a shower of stones. This was the beginning of serenades with horns, pans, and other discordant instruments,

and of violent scenes, which lasted fourteen days, and which terminated with burning the house of one of our brethren. Though very reluctantly, the missionaries had to appeal to the protection of the law, and show that whilst they had suffered everything for Christ's sake, they might, when they chose, be effectually protected against these outrages. But the fire of persecution only seemed to kindle all around St. Pie a new desire for the Gospel, for the missionaries were soon constrained to establish two out-stations, which numbered at least one hundred hearers, who, with but two or three exceptions, left the Romish Church.

During the second five years of the mission's operations, some thirty persons were brought to the knowledge of the Saviour under Dr. Côte's ministry at Chazy (on the frontiers of the state of New York); and by the blessing of God upon his labours at St. Pie, many more were converted; so that upwards of one hundred persons, affording satisfactory evidence of conversion, were received into church-fellowship in that place; and these numbers added to the converts at Grande Ligne and its neighbourhood, presented a total of about three hundred souls, rescued from ignorance and sin, and introduced into that kingdom which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

PAPERS FROM MY NOTE BOOK.

BY C. H. S.

In the early volumes of the "Baptist Magazine" there appeared a series of extracts, anecdotes, and personal recollections, under the title of" Papers from the Portfolio of a Minister."

When it has been our misfortune to be confined in a remote country farm-house, in literary matters as bare as Dr. Watts's "wretched land, which yields us no supplies," we have been driven by sheer famine to ransack the dusty granary of the one or two magazines which adorned the hanging bookshelf. We have a lively recollection of the fact that, when the one portrait had failed to provide us with flesh, and the two or three articles by men of note had given us a scant supply of very mouldy bread, we have always turned with hope to the corner-cupboard of the portfolio, and have usually found either a piece of a honey-comb, a few small fishes, or some other passable provender. We have blessed the good man who had thus hidden his silver cup in the old sack, and all tha day we have esteemed antiquated magazines as being, after all, something more than venerable waste paper. By the way, whenever a new congregational library is in process of formation by donations of books, do not dozens of people present us with ancient reviews and magazines? Who will be unkind enough to suppose that our friends give for the public use volumes which they do not value themselves? Surely scandal itself would blush to accuse our benevolent brethren and sisters of turning out their worthless lumber into the vestry, in order to make a good riddance of it from the back room at home. Who will have the audacity to suggest so unworthy an explanation of the superabundance of ancient and fusty periodicals in chapel libraries? No, we venture to conjecture that the precious scraps and anecdotes which lie in the midst of worn-out information, like nuggets of glittering gold in huge lumps of worthless quartz, may possibly have so great a value in the eyes of our friends, that

for their sake alone the monthly numbers were first bound up, and then feeling that they must not hide so rare a treasure in the earth, they have, with singular self-denial, surrendered for the good of mankind what the more selfish would have retained for themselves. We cannot assert that this is the fact, but as we have no other solution at hand, and as this has served our turn, we leave it to the tender mercy of our readers, only reserving the right to draw a practical inference from it. In fifty years time, unless Dr. Cumming should turn out to be an Ezekiel, there will be other people in Farmer Higgins's back parlour, who will excavate from oblivion the "Baptist Magazine" for 1861, and who will bless us for the quaint odds and ends which we mean to cull from our Note Book. To the reader of to-day-for we intend the Magazine for January to be really read, and not laid uncut upon the table, we shall offer no apology until the year shall end, and not even then, unless we shall quote hackneyed anecdotes, and passages so trite as to be worn threadbare. If we shall find up forgotten jewels and reset them, if we shall put old spade guineas into common circulation, we shall not be ashamed, even if we be called dealers in old wares. Those learned brethren who have met with our extracts will doubtless be glad to see them again, and can prevent our becoming dull by directing us to more unquarried mines of which they may have been the fortunate discoverers.

Here follows our first scrap from the Note Book, which, for better or worse, we venture to open to-day. The author is Thomas Walkington, who talks thus wittily in a sermon upon Solomon's pleasant words, preached "before his majestie" at Thetford in 1608.

"But were Solomon the preacher's words so pleasing, so delectable, so comfortable? Then give me leave amongst a whole rout of indecent pastors to single out only four principal sorts, which both with my tongue and pen are worthy to be taxed. Which I may fitly shadow out by four manner of birds:-the Lapwing, the Bittern, the Linnet, and the Ostrich.

"First, the Lapwing, or rather lackwing, for these will needs fly before they be fledged, and sing before they have learned to tune any spiritual note; they feed the flock before they are taught to wield the shepherd's crook; they sit in Moses' chair before they have sat down at the feet of Gamaliel. These, too-forward, run with the shell on their head, crying with the poet, Ill hap light on the hindmost.' These abortive monsters, if I may so term them, have, like the giant in the battle of Gath, in their own conceits, six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, for action and motion they surpass all; when, as God knows, they are like Adonibezek, who had the thumbs of his hands and feet cut off. Pliny writes of the almond tree that it buds in January, and brings forth fruit in March; to which these worthily may be likened, being so precocious and bold. They wear Aaron's ephod and his linen garments before they be fit to put on the Christian's cloak; they touch the holy things before they wash. themselves at the brazen laver of the sanctuary, wanting both the Urim of knowledge, and Thummim of integrity; they run,' says the Spirit, but I sent them not,' and we know none can preach but he that is sent. Surely every Ezekiel should first eat the roll and then he must prophecy; first he must contain and then let flow, or else he wants the first ornament of speech, which is maturity, and so he cannot utter Solomon's pleasant words.

"The second sort is the Bittern, so bitter indeed that they preach nothing but law and judgment to distressed souls, plunging them deeper and deeper over head and ears in the pit of desperation.

"There be many indiscreet shepherds, who never whistle to their sheep, but only let loose their dog upon them, who feed with too much tart vinegar, and no pleasant food, by whose hard-hearted blows the hearers often grow more hard hearted and more obstinate in their sins. The Lord God Almighty was not in the whirlwind that rent the rock and mountains, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice, to intimate that God wins in the spirit of mildness most often.

"He is the most wise who comes nearest the nature of Noah's dove, that brings the