We thought it right to attend their worship on First-day morning at La Tour.  The congregation consisted of about 900 clean and well-dressed peasants, many of whose countenances looked serious.  The short discourse of Pastor Peyron was orthodox, and the application impressive and edifying.  He afterwards dined and spent the afternoon with us at the widow Best’s, with several branches of her interesting and pious family.  I humbly trust this day was spent to mutual comfort.

They were disappointed to find that strangers were forbidden by law to hold public meetings, or preach in the assemblies of the Protestants; and although they met with many pious individuals, they thought the life of religion on the whole at a low ebb, and deplored the prevalence of the forms and ceremonies used by the Church, of England.  The schools, too, they found to be in a very poor state; the masters deficient in education and badly paid, and the schools conducted without system.  The ministers showed them great kindness, and on their quitting La Tour, Pastor Best encouraged them by the expression of satisfaction with their visit.  They returned to Turin on the 28th.

Passing over Mont Cenis, they directed their course to Geneva, where they arrived on the 3rd of the Eighth Month, rejoiced to be once more on the English side of the Alps.  On their outward journey their sojourn in this city had been short, but now they found it needful to make a longer visit, and were thankful in being permitted to mingle again in intimate communion with those who understood the language of the Spirit.  They paid and received many visits, and held two religious meetings at their hotel, at the latter of which about fifty persons were present.

One of the most interesting occasions of which they speak was a Missionary Meeting, in which the minister Olivier unfolded his experience of a divine call to leave his country, and go abroad on the service of the gospel.  The voice which he described as having been sounded in his spiritual ear, and the manner in which he received it, must have struck John Yeardley as singularly in accordance with the call to a similar service which he himself had heard so distinctly in his younger days, and which, like Olivier, he had for a long time hidden in his heart.

8 mo. 4.—­In the evening I attended the Missionary Meeting in the Chapel de l’Oratoire.  Pastor Merle [d’Aubigne] opened the meeting by a short prayer, and singing, and then gave a narrative of the liberation of the slaves in the English colonies, according to the account received from England.  Pastor Olivier, from Lausanne, was present.  He is about to depart for Lower Canada, and he spoke in a very touching manner of the way in which the mission had first opened on his own mind.  When the concern was made known in his heart, he kept it there in secret prayer to the Lord for direction, and whenever he heard what he believed to be the same voice, it was always—­Go, and the Lord will go with thee.  A real unction attended while he gave us this account; the way in which he spoke of it resembled the manner of one of our Friends laying a concern before a meeting:  many hearts present felt the force of his words.  His exhortation to the young persons was excellent.  Pastor Gaussen concluded the meeting with an address and lively prayer.