s 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: "My parents told me, that their
familiar spirit, or Torngak, lived in the water; if I wished to
consult him, I must call upon him, as the spirit of my parents, to
come forth out of the water, and remember this token, that I should
observe, in some part of the house, a vapour ascending, soon after
which, the spirit would appear, and grant what I asked. Some years
ago, when my little brother was very ill, I tried this method for the
first time, and called upon the Torngak, when I really thought