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that there will be, to please the poor creatures who are afraid lest we should be all burnt alive, some invidious and ungracious drawback, under the name and notion of “ securities "a most ridiculous notion and term-as if there could be any securities but those consisting in the goodwill of the Irish people, and the wisdom, equity, and strength of the Protestant nation and government. You will see some fine battling, fine canting, fine ratting, and fine mortification. For once you will have the delight of seeing the power on the right side, so new and exhilarating a circumstance after you have so many times heard a good cause (this one and others) vigorously advocated with the desponding, sullen reflection all the while, that it was all lost labour.

CLIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ.

April 30, 1829.

There is little to be said about the Serampore affair. My estimate of the main and substantial merits of the case remains unchanged. The modification of opinion which I have been led to admit, on apparently sufficient evidence is, that Dr. M.'s family and domestic arrangements have latterly taken somewhat too much of a stylish cast, through an indulgence of the young people's taste for the genteel. Not that I believe that this has gone at all beyond what is vastly common among our good people, and good non-cons., in this country, whose means would admit of it; but the thing is, that a quite different standard is, and resolutely will be applied to a mission family, avowedly acting, and really having acted, on a principle of entire self-devotement to the Christian cause. In consideration of the use that will infallibly and very effectually be made of any even small deviation from this high principle, by the enemies, I have urgently inculcated on Dr. M. the wisdom of excluding at his return, any real excess of show and style."*

"This is a matter not reducible to any strict rules of propriety. Our well conditioned and genteelish non-cons. would spurn at any such prescription und interdictions; but the high and devoted character assumed by the VOL. II.

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CLIV. TO B. STOKES, ESQ.

December 5, 1829.

The last time of my being at Worcester, I left you with very irksome feelings, on account of having declined even so much as one instance of compliance with the friendly requests for a public service of any kind. Not exactly that I reproached myself for not having complied, but an indistinct mingled mortification respecting it altogether, as what would appear an unfriendly thing to you personally; for as to the ministers, my acquaintance had been so small as to make it a different case from what it would be with some old familiar friend, like Coles, with whom I had had a sort of social connection for many long years continuously. . . . . It may seem strange enough, and indeed, no good symptom of character, that I should feel such extreme repugnance to such services. And I am perfectly aware that more candour than I could expect from any one but yourself and Mrs. Stokes, would be requisite for allowing any validity to my explanation ;— that, having been so long out of the practice of preaching, I have come to feel very great inaptitude, except for some such thing as an off-hand talk in some of our village meeting-houses-that, from infrequency in part, it is in such places alone that I could feel myself in any degree at ease in such off-hand work that, having next to no memory at all, it is in vain for me to make any preparation, beyond a few written sentences, of which, as suggestions, I am to make just what I can at the time, and that I can make nothing of them except where much at my ease from the pitch and quality of the auditors-and that, in addition, I have great difficulty, from failure of sight for near objects, to make out even the largely-scrawled lines on my paperthat, therefore, I have everything against me for making any thing of the exercise but a cause of mortification to myself, and, as an inevitable consequence, to my friends

Serampore fraternity, and the very invidious circumstances in which they were placed, rendered it an important and evident law of prudence, to maintain as much as possible of even a puritanic simplicity and unworldliness in their economy."-Mr. Foster to the Rev. J. Fawcett, April 24,

among the auditors. I have spoken the literal truth about preparation and memory. Even in the Bristol lectures some years back, my preparation did not go one inch beyond the bare written scheme, which might have been read in perhaps a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. I was long enough in writing those bare schemes-often as much as three days; but even then, under very considerable responsibility, I never could do any thing at all in the way of what may be called filling up. That would have far more than doubled the time, and besides, such endless labour would have been nearly useless, as I was absolutely certain that I should retain no recollection, to any purpose, of what I might have so prepared. But the consequence was, the constant hazard of failure, which sometimes did take place in a most mortifying degree. So that between such toil and such liability to failure notwithsanding, I was glad to make an end of the service. The truth is, that it costs me-or rather would cost me-more labour than any other preacher alive, to do that which, in one sense, I am able to do, able, that is to say, supposing all circumstances favourable. All this being thus matter of unpleasant experience, I have fully declined all preaching but such little village work as I have mentioned; and even that is now of rare occurrence, in consequence of there being a settled minister now at the place to which I used oftenest to go. In Bristol I believe I shall never preach again. I have told the friends so, in such honest terms, that I am now never applied to, except that I was asked to make one sermon at Broadmead, during Hall's absence, which I refused.

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CLV. TO JOHN PURSER, JUN. ESQ.

1830.

I do not know whether you saw much of Dr. Marshman in his visit (there were, I think, two visits) to Dublin. . . . . Uniformly, and in all places, we have observed him indisposed, in an uncommon degree, to magnify or dilate upon his own services. I never knew a man who had done half so much who would advert to it half so little.

I was struck with the fact, and have often mentioned it, that days and weeks might have passed away in conversational companies (in which the subject of Serampore was not formally, and by express requisition of the party, made the matter of discourse) without any person's being made aware that Dr. M. had ever done any thing in the least remarkable. He would talk largely of India, in all its relations; but what he had done there would uniformly be the very last thing of which he would speak. Often, in such companies, he would not speak of it at all, unless in answer to some direct inquiry. When he did speak of Serampore, as led to it formally and necessarily by the object and intention of the meeting, it was always in the most moderate terms as respecting himself. He habitually merged himself in the partnership-the "union;" and in all ways, and on all occasions, without the least sign of affectation, gave the precedence to Dr. Carey. One of the most marked characteristics of "pride" is high-toned contempt, or indignant reaction to imputations, reproaches, depreciation, &c. Now I never saw so little of this in any other mortal man who was the object of censure, injustice, and abuse. The contrary temper in him was so remarkable that I used to be curious to discover wherein it consisted-how much of it was a Christian patience and quietude, and how much an unsensativeness of natural constitution. I thought there must be much of the latter, from the uniformity, nearly, of the phenomenon. I have myself used more rough language to him, and quite in serious driving earnest, than I ever did to any other man in all my life, and have been amazed how he could take it all without bristling into anger, an effect which I never witnessed but in one instance; in which I doggedly, and I believe fiercely, traversed and contradicted him in a particular explanation. I have often thought exactly thisthat he had not pride enough to give him a dignified and manful bearing, to make himself be treated with any thing like the due deference and respect. Ward I know, and Carey I believe, would have allowed no such liberties as were taken by Dr. M. without reaction and with perfect impunity. Really I was sometimes ashamed for his tameness, as letting him down from the proper degree and tone of

manly dignity and respectability. And often enough I wondered, reflectively, how it could be that I could, involuntarily, be so divested of respectful feeling, and of the appropriate manners and language, toward a man whose excellence and practical services I rated, with the most perfect conviction, so eminently high. And a chief cause I still found to be, his want of a certain manly assumption, which partakes of the noli me tangere, and the nemo me impunè lacessit.

There are other things in the case certainly. His manners are somewhat uncouth; his theological language is of the humblest old school; his intellect is not vigorous or acute; and he has, in regard to the affairs and persons in a state of hostility, a dread, carried to excess, of direct, bold, uncompromising conflict. To effect things by management; to carry a purpose without firmly avowing it; to persist in a design (for he is very pertinacious) under a silence which might have led opponents to imagine he had relinquished it; to assign but in part his reasons for it; to endeavour to frustrate an opponent's design in the quietest way possible; to raise an obstacle from circumstances, rather than to make a direct, bold opposition or attack; to wear out the time, instead of putting an affair promptly to hazard; to prefer in all cases, caution to boldness; to temporize sometimes to a fault; such I can well believe to have been, in India, the policy which has brought on him such a violence. of censure and opprobrium. .. Such is the policy which Dr. Carey himself is cited as having, in a letter of old date, denominated" crooked," but with no emphasis of disapproval, as is manifest from his firm, unalterable attachment to his colleague from first to last. He did not like this policy, it was not quite agreeable to the plain straightforwardness of his own character; but he did not at all regard it as vicious in principle, only an unlucky peculiarity of character in a man who was upright in his motives and objects; a man who was devotedly and disinterestedly faithful to the great cause, and whose services to it were important, incessant, and indefatigable. In that very same letter of Dr. Carey, the paragraph describing the said "crooked policy" was immediately followed by an expression, in strong terms, to this effect:-" notwithstanding any

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