The Pioneer. 4 q 
Shortly after his birth, his mother’s health demanding a change 
of climate, the family crossed the Atlantic and settled in Pictou 
in Nova Scotia. There, amid the the rich fresh scenes of that 
new land, they nursed their boy; and as he grew up they 
suffered him to follow the bent which his own mind took very 
early towards the work of the ministry. He was just twenty-one 
when he presented himself before the Presbytery, and asked to 
be licensed to preach the gospel of the blessed God. Immedi- 
ately after receiving license he was settled at Cavendish, in Prince 
Edward’s Island; and having contracted marriage with Miss 
McDonald of Antigonish, he spent eight busy, useful, neDDy 
years there. 
But he was ever turning from that pleasant labour-field to the 
thick darkness that covered the earth—out of which there 
seemed to come a voice, which he could not mistake, calling 
him to enter that darkness and work there. The Church of 
Scotland was now—under Alexander Duff’s loud trumpet blasts 
—awakening to its long-forgotten evangelistic duty ; while the 
people of England were listening with startled and delighted in- 
terest to John Williams’s reports of what he had seen and heard 
in the South Seas. And so it came into the heart of this young 
minister—not indeed to offer himself for service in India or in 
Tahiti, but (which was unspeakably better) to seek to rouse his 
adopted church to engage in mission work. She might be the 
least among the thousands in Israel—yet not too little, surely, 
to serve Him who has told us that the little children are the 
great ones of the kingdom of heaven.—Then why should not 
the Church of Nova Scotia send her contingent, however small, 
into the field? He succeeded in his task, and when the question 
was raised, “Whom shall we send?” and “Who will go for 
us?” He replied, “If you count me worthy, send me.” 
Then he learned for the first time, from his widowed mother, 
of his early dedication to God’s service—a discovery which 
