Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher | Page 2

His hair was dark,
--his eye beneath Flashed like falchion from its sheath.
His bright, quick glances, alternating with a full and steady gaze, betokened a mind keenly sympathetic with emotions both of sorrow and of joy. His dress and accoutrements were those of a travelling Methodist preacher of the period. He wore a suit of "parson's grey," the coat having a straight collar and being somewhat rounded away in front. His buckskin leggings, which descended to his stirrups, were splashed with mud, for the day had been rainy. He was well mounted on a light-built, active-looking chestnut horse. The indispensable saddle-bags, containing his Greek Testament, Bible, and Wesley's Hymns, and a few personal necessaries, were secured across the saddle. A small, round, leathern valise, with a few changes of linen, and his coarse frieze great-coat were strapped on behind. Such was a typical example of the "clerical cavalry" who, in the early years of this century, ranged through the wilderness of Canada, fording or swimming rivers, toiling through forests and swamps, and carrying the gospel of Christ to the remotest settlers in the backwoods.
Our young friend, the Rev. Neville Trueman, afterwards a prominent figure in the history of early Methodism, halted his horse on a bluff jutting out into the Niagara River, both to enjoy the refreshing breeze that swept over the water and to admire the beautiful prospect. At his feet swept the broad and noble river, reflecting on its surface the snowy masses of "thunderhead" clouds, around which the lightning still played, and which, transfigured and glorified in the light of the setting sun, seemed to the poetic imagination of the young man like the City of God descending out of heaven, with its streets of gold and foundations of precious stones, while the rainbow that spanned the heavens seemed like the rainbow of the Apocalypse round about the throne of God.
Under the inspiration of the beauty of the scene, the young preacher began to sing in a clear, sweet, tenor voice that song of the ages, which he had learned at his mother's knee among the green hills of Vermont--
Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation, Sink heart and voice opprest,
I know not, oh! I know not What joys await me there; What radiancy of glory, What bliss beyond compare.
They stand, those walls of Zion, All jubilant with song, And bright with many an angel, And all the martyr throng.
With jasper glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze, The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays.
Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced;
The saints build up its fabric, The corner-stone is Christ.
[Footnote: We cannot resist the temptation to give a few lines of the original hymn of Bernard of Clugny, a Breton monk of English parentage of the 12th century--"the sweetest of all the hymns of heavenly homesickness of the soul," and for generations one of the most familiar, through translations, in many languages. The rhyme and rhythm are so difficult, that the author was able to master it, he believed, only by special inspiration of God.
Urbs Syon aurea, patria lactea, cive decora, Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora, Nescio, nescio, quae jubilatio, lux tibi qualis, Quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.]
For a moment longer he gazed upon the broad, flowing river which divided two neighbouring peoples, one in language, in blood, in heroic early traditions, and the common heirs of the grandest literature the world has ever seen, yet severed by a deep, wide, angry-flowing stream of strife, which, dammed up for a time, was about to burst forth in a desolating flood that should overwhelm and destroy some of the fairest fruits of civilization in both countries. As he gazed northward, he beheld, on the eastern bank of the river, the snowy walls and grass-grown ramparts of Fort Niagara, above which floated proudly the stars and stripes.
As he gazed on the ancient fort, the memories of its strange eventful history came thronging on his mind from the time that La Salle thawed the frozen ground in midwinter to plant his palisades, to the time that the gallant Prideaux lay mangled in its trenches by the bursting of a cohorn--on the very eve of victory. These memories have been well expressed in graphic verse by a living Canadian poet--a denizen of the old borough of Niagara. [Footnote: William Kirby, Esq., in CANADIAN METHODIST MAGAZINE for May, 1878.]
Two grassy points--not promontories--front The calm blue lake--the river flows between, Bearing in its full bosom every drop Of the wild flood that leaped the cataract. And swept the rock-walled gorge from end to end. 'Mid flanking eddies, ripples, and returns, It rushes past the ancient fort that once Like islet in a lonely ocean stood, A mark for half a