such faults in my colleague, my best wish for the mission is, that it may never want a Marshman."*

But now, after all, as to Dr. M., am I pretending wholly to justify him? no; for one thing, I do not like that same which I have adverted to, as what has been denominated "crooked policy;" though I assuredly believe that nis prevailing motive in practising it has been to serve the good cause, by avoiding collisions and explosions, and getting the work quietly forward. I believe, too, that in some critical conjunctures, mischiefs and dangers have been thus evaded, when a different manner of proceeding would, in all probability, have incurred them. For another thing, I am convinced by a comparison of testimonies, that . . . . he has latterly allowed, or, more correctly, not prevented, as much as he might and should, the growth of a certain stylishness and affectation of genteel life in his domestic establishment. But, not to say how difficult parents are every where finding it to dictate discretion and taste to their young folks, and shape their habits to a primitive or philosophic standard, especially if any of them should be of the utmost use and necessity in the establishment; not to insist on this, I believe the show and stylishness in question and in accusation, to be nothing more than what is practised or aspired to by very many of our good Christian people, who are in what are called handsome circumstances. The unfortunate thing is, that this genteel style of life, being admitted into an establishment which was long maintained on a system of rigorous economy, and constituted on an avowed and permanently obligatory rule, of strictly " devoting all to God"-obligatory, that is to say, from voluntary pledge and vow-has afforded an occasion (vastly exaggerated in the representation) for making the charge of a dereliction of the original missionary spirit, and a degeneration into worldly character and habits. .. But now,

"Brother Marshman's excellences are such that his defects are almost concealed by them; and I believe him to be one of the firmest friends the mission ever had; and I hope the mission never may stand in want of one Like him."-Dr. Carey to Dr. Ryland, April 11, 1818. "In point of zeal he is a Luther, and I an Erasmus."-May 24, 1810. "Brother Marshren, who is naturally a little tortuous, but than whom a more excellent holy man does not exist.". . . May 30, 1816.-—From the same to the

same.

after all, look at all this; admit that he has the weakness of such an overweening partiality for his family, as to allow them in some things which he had much better have restrained; and that the tenor of his policy has not been frank, bold, and manly (while, as I feel the most perfect conviction, systematically and honestly intended for the best), what a trifling deduction is this from the merit of more than a quarter of a century of indefatigable labour for the service of Christianity, prosecuted in the oppressive climate of India too, with no view to either emolument or fame! Think of one item, the translation of the whole Bible into Chinese, as but a very minor portion of the quantum of his disinterested labours. I can express the more confidently my exceedingly high estimate of him from the circumstance, that he is not a man to my taste, as a matter of taste. He is not a man of taste, sentiment, imagination, discrimination, play and reach of thought, free speculation, strong understanding, literary cultivation, or manly cast of deportment; it is his substantial, faithful, Christian excellence, on which my estimate and complacency rest.

Believe me, my dear Sir, I am vexed, ashamed, and I know not how many more words I might add, to have been led into this tediousness of observation. I have no knack of dispatch. And besides I confess I did wish to contribute something in aid of what I thought a correct opinion in a man of whose judgment I have reason to think so highly as of yours, in reference to a matter which is evidently of some importance, as affecting the character. and interests of what will be by far the most memorable missionary adventure of our age. I can have no manner of interest about it, but simply as a well wisher to a good cause, under present adverse circumstances. It has consumed as much, all put together, as a whole year of my waning life, and while I had many reasons, a pecuniary one not excepted, claiming that I should be very differently occupied. Mine has been a great and gratuitous sacrifice.

I was pleased, not at all surprised, at your coincidence with me in opinion about dissenting ordinations, and also about a widely different matter, the principles of Wellington's policy in the measure so favourable to Ireland. One cannot help suspecting that one of his chief motives was a wish to have the military force of the country more

disposable for aid, under possible circumstances, to support that infernal Mohammedan domination in the east of Europe, which one earnestly wishes-all mere political calculations out of the question-to see crushed by the Russian invasion. Under sanction of that old humbug, "the balance of power," and to prevent some eventually possible inconvenience to our trade to the Levant—that is to say, reduced to plain terms, some pecuniary disadvantage -our government would not scruple to sink the nation a hundred millions deeper in debt. But Ireland again; who would have thought that the session of Parliament, commencing with the beneficial political measure, would pass off without one particle of anything done for the internal relief and improvement of your miserable population-some plan for cultivating the waste land, or providing for the ejected cottagers? Unfortunate Ireland, and England too, in having, from generation to generation, a set of statesmen and a court who care really nothing for the public good, any otherwise and further than as it may serve the production of revenue! Still the world, our part of it included, is destined to mend. The sovereign Ruler over all has declared so. And the present extraordinary diffusion of knowledge, accompanied, we may hope, by augmentation of religion; the mobility, so visible in the state of the world, the trembling and cracking of parts of the old fabric -the prostration of some of the inveterate tyrannies; these are surely signs that the changing and meliorating process is at least beginning. When our race arrive at such a state as prophecy unquestionably predicts, what will they, can they, think of the preceding ages and of ours?

I am gratified by all you express of the happiness you enjoy in your family, and especially in the merits and valuable assistance of your eldest son, whom I am again sorry not to have seen when he was here. I hope that all these satisfactions will increase with their and your advancing life, and that they will be largely shared by my old friend, for I will call her so, and should be extremely pleased and interested to see her again as now under the character and name of Mrs. Purser, to whom I request you to express my very kind regards and best wishes for her health and happiness.

And then there is my old, ever remembered, and estima

ble friend, your father, who, I dare say, is pleased with you altogether. What I am a little sorry for is, that I fear he has deserted our poor old Swift's Alley. Is there no inducing him to return ?-provided, I mean, that your people there should behave themselves well under the new settlement you are going to make. I would be remembered to him in the strongest terms of most friendly, grateful, and unalterable regard.

CLVI. TO DR. STENSON.

[Extracts from various Letters.]

1831.

Yes, my dear sir, we must be prepared to surrender to the inevitable approaches of mortality, and the more earnestly aspire to be ready to surrender the whole of what can die. How striking to realize the idea, that at a time, at the utmost comparatively not distant, this entire material frame, with all that is in it now in order and in disorder, will be under ground and dissolving into dust. I often image to myself the fact, as it will one day be, when, at the same time, all above ground will continue to be as we see it now, and are sharers of it, life and activity-a profusion of blooming youth, amusement, business, infinitely various interests and pursuits, and (as now) little thought of death. So far the anticipated, inevitable, and prodigious change, cannot but have a dreary aspect. But there is the never-dying principle, the spiritual agent, the real and imperishable being; that will be set free, and rise in sublime independence of dust, and all that can be turned to dust; let us take care of that, or rather commit it to God to be taken care of, and then never mind the insignificant loss which we are doomed to incur, of a piece of organized clay....

Let us gratefully hail the gleams that come to us from a better world, through the gloom of declining age, which is

beginning to darken before us, and give all diligence to the preparation for passing the shades of death, confident in the all-sufficiency of Him who died for us, to emerge into the bright economy and the happy society beyond.

Indeed I would regard as something better than enemies, the visitations that give a strong warning of the final and not remote beating down and demolition of the whole fraï tabernacle. A salutary impression made on the soul, even through a wound of the body, is a good greatly more than compensating the evil. In the last great account no doubt a vast number of happy spirits will have to ascribe that happiness to the evils inflicted on their bodies, as the immediate instrumental cause.

Let us take the admonition, to do what little we can for our great Master before the night shall come. That it is so little, is one of the things in which we are required to be submissive to his sovereign will. It is part of the doom of our fallen nature-respecting that miserable debility and corruption of which you can find no man to sympathize with your opinions and feelings more emphatically than I do, and the more so the longer I look at it, and especially have my own personal experience of it.

How welcome are these shortening days! The precursory intimations of winter even before the summer itself is gone, and how almost frightfully rapid the vicissitudes of the seasons, telling us of the flight of time, the consumption of life, the approximation to its end. That end; that end! And there is an hour decreed for the final one. It will be here-it will be past. And then-that other life! that other world! Let us pray more earnestly than ever, that the first hour after the last may open upon us in celestial light.