This series of travels was the last in which John and Martha Yeardley were to be engaged as joint-laborers in their Lord’s work.  The health of the latter had been for several years seriously affected; and although she continued to take a deep interest in the spiritual condition of the countries they had visited before, and was enabled to the end to afford her husband the assistance of her strong sympathy and of her religious exercise of mind, the fatigue of constant travelling told more and more upon her enfeebled frame, and she did not long survive the accomplishment of this journey.  John Yeardley, less advanced in years, and possessing a hardy constitution, had not yet lost the fire of his earlier days.  The same spring and impulse was still strong within him which had animated him in former journeys, and which those who knew him in middle life will not fail to remember.  Some of these will have before them the mental image of his person and manner—­the fixed resolution, the concentrated mind, the ardent and devoted spirit, which shone through his impressive countenance and his whole figure, when he was engaged in his Lord’s work; and perhaps also they may call to mind the very words of faithful counsel, or of encouragement, drawn from the well-spring of gospel sympathy, which fell from his lips.

John and Martha Yeardley did not accomplish the extensive mission which now lay before them at one stroke, but in three stages, returning to England between each.  The most prominent object in the first journey was Belgium; in the second, the Rhine country; in the third, they were called to sow seeds of Christian doctrine in lands lying beyond the limit of any former travel—­viz., in Silesia and Bohemia.

This was the first time that the Roman Catholic country of Belgium had called forth the exercise of their Christian charity.  They left London in the Seventh Month, and spent about three weeks in travelling through the country, resting chiefly at Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi and Spa.  They were accompanied as far as Brussels by Robert and Christine Alsop, and through the whole journey, by an ingenuous young man whom they had engaged to assist them, named Adolphe Rochedieu.  The religious opening which awaited them at Brussels was very encouraging; few incidents which arose in the course of their numerous journeys were of a more animating character than the acquaintance which they made with the pastor Van Maasdyk and some of his flock.  We give the narrative from J.Y.’s Diary and letters.

7 mo. 19.—­H.  Van Maasdyk paid us a long visit this morning.  He was educated in a convent in Belgium, and becoming a priest, he exercised the functions which devolved upon him with much credit to himself, and to the satisfaction of his superiors, until the year 1836.  He possessed a Bible in Latin, which he never read.  He had the cure of a large parish, in which, down to the year above mentioned, there was not a single copy of