A Wanderer: Donald Fraser. II.

Arriving in Canada late in 1842, Donald Fraser went to his father's house in Sherbrooke, Quebec. There he met for the first time his step-mother, Selina, the daughter of a Canadian gentleman. Donald Fraser had been eleven when he had last seen his father, and the two had a lot of catching up to do. Mr. Fraser was glad to fid that his son had not picked up any bad habits at university.
Donald Fraser began to learn 'business' in a firm near Toronto. He moved on to a firm in Montreal, where he did well, becoming a junior partner. Alas, the firm did not do so well, and it crashed, losing several hundred pounds of Fraser's own money. Thus Donald Fraser's business career came to an abrupt end.
A lover of literature, the as-yet unconverted Donald Fraser began to speak at meetings as a lecturer. He contributed some articles to a local literary magazine, in prose and poetry.
And it was then that the great change came. The great influence on him was his older brother, Alexander, who was by this time a true Christian and active in the Sunday School of the church. The death of the man with whom the two young men boarded awakened Donald to the realities of death and he realised his lost condition. At last, after many exercises of spirit, he writes: "I fell down helpless before God, and His free grace saved me through faith in the Lord Jesus." Now his life took a whole new direction, no longer centred on self, but on Christ. When Alexander had to move from Montreal, Donald took over his work in the Sunday School. He was a humble servant of Christ.
Before, he had been most unwilling to enter the gospel ministry (and rightly so, since he had been unconverted), now he found himself without a profession and longing to serve the Lord. Yet now another barrier presented itself. What if others should think he had entered the ministry to make a living? So Donald Fraser planned to edit a weekly newspaper.
It was then that Christian friends intervened and persuaded him that he ought not to consider what men would say, but consider the leadings of God, and he resolved to become a theological student in the Canadian Presbyterian Church.

God willing, next time we shall look at Donald Fraser's experiences as a student.