“Canaan is a happy place;
I am bound for the land of Canaan.”

We then returned to the dining-room with our strange guest, when he suddenly caught me up in his arms and carried me around the room.  I was so taken by surprise, that it was as much as I could do to keep myself in an upright position, till he had accomplished the circuit.  Then he set me in my chair and rolling on the ground for joy, said that he “was as happy as he could live.”  When this performance was at an end, he rose up with a face that denoted the fact, for it was beaming all over.  I invited him to take some breakfast with us, to which he assented with thanks.  He chose bread and milk, for he said, “I am only a child.”

I asked him to be seated, and gave him a chair; but he preferred walking about, and went on talking all the time.  He told us that twenty years ago, as he was walking over this very hill on which my church and house were built (it was a barren old place then), the Lord said to him, “I will give thee all that dwell in this mountain.”  Immediately he fell down on his knees and thanked the Lord, and then ran to the nearest cottage.  There he talked and prayed with the people, and was enabled to bring them to Christ; then he went to the next cottage, and got the same blessing; and then to a third, where he was equally successful.  Then he told “Father” that there were only three “housen” in this mountain, and prayed that more might be built.  That prayer remained with him, and he never ceased to make it for years.  The neighbours, who heard his prayer from time to time, wondered why he should ask for “housen” to be built in such an “ungain” place.

At last, after sixteen years, he received a letter from his brother James, to say that they were hacking up the “croft” to plant trees, and that they were going to build a church on the hill.  He was “fine and glad,” and praised the Lord.  Again he did so, when his brother wrote to say there was a vicarage to be built on the same hill, and a schoolroom also.  He was almost beside himself with joy and thankfulness for all this.

In the year 1848, when the church was completed and opened, he came on a visit to Baldhu, and was greatly surprised to see what a change had taken place.  There was a beautiful church, a parsonage, with a flourishing garden, and also a schoolroom, with a large plantation and fields round them.  He was quite “’mazed,” for he never thought that the old hill could be made so grand as that!  However, when he went to the service in the church, his joy was over; he came out “checkfallen,” and quite disappointed.  He told “Father” that that was nothing but an “old Pusey” He had got there, and that he was no good.  While he was praying that afternoon, “Father” gave him to understand that he had no business there yet, and that he had come too soon, and without permission.  So he went back to his place at once, near Bodmin, and continued to pray for the hill.