The Moravians in Labrador eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 249 pages of information about The Moravians in Labrador.

The Moravians in Labrador eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 249 pages of information about The Moravians in Labrador.
the baptized Esquimaux learn his determination, than they immediately went, took it down, and set it up in the midst of their own dwellings, with such demonstrations of welcome, that he exclaimed, he had never met with any thing like it before; nor could he understand why they should shew such disinterested love to him, a stranger.  In visiting the sick, the missionaries had much satisfaction; there was now no horror at the thought of death—­no disposition to return to their sorcerers; but calm, peaceful resignation to the Divine will, or holy joy in the prospect of soon seeing their Redeemer, face to face.  Magdalene, in the view of departure, said, “I weep not over the pain I feel, though that is very great, but for joy that my Saviour is near my heart.  O would but Jesus come and take me to himself!  I long to go to him, as a child longs for its parent, to behold him, and to embrace his feet.  I feel no gloom; my heart is filled with joy in believing on him.”  Benigna, upon her recovery from a dangerous illness, thus expressed herself:  “I think that it pleased the Lord to afflict so many in our house with illness, and to restore them again, that he might prove us, to know whether we could place all our hopes in him, even in perplexity and pain; and I have now found that he is able, not only to bring us safe through the most distressing circumstances, but to establish us more and more in full reliance upon his help alone.  During this illness, the Lord has given me to feel his presence so sweetly, that if it had been his will, I should have rejoiced to go and be with him for ever; but since it has pleased him to restore me to health, my heart is filled with gratitude towards him.”  Among the strangers, the power of God was no less wonderfully displayed in awakening them from the deep sleep of sin and death:  they came and confessed their sins and their crimes, which, though formerly deemed light matters, now heavily burdened their consciences.  “Human nature shudders and starts back,” says the missionary diary, “on hearing the horrid detail of the abominations practised among the heathen;” and they themselves would often exclaim, “O! how shocking the way in which we lived in sin; but we were quite blind, and chained down by the fetters of Satan; we will serve him no longer, but belong only to Jesus.”

One instance deserves more particular notice, that of a young man named Angukualak, the son of a most noted sorcerer, Uiverunna.  His parents had instructed him in all the secrets of their art, and his confession gives at least plausibility to the opinion, that the influence of Satan is permitted to be sometimes visibly exercised, in the dark places of the earth, though, while the effects of that influence are palpable in the perpetration of the grossest vices and most barbarous cruelty, it is very immaterial whether it assumes a perceptible form, or merely acts upon the imagination.  His own account to the missionaries, was as follows: 

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Moravians in Labrador from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.