The difficulties of various kinds which presented themselves to Mr. Martyn, could not fail of being a source of pain to him, in proportion to his fervent anxiety to benefit all around him. But it was his privilege and consolation to remember that he was in his hands, in whom are "hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; and with whom all things are possible." Had he not sought and found a refuge in the omnipotence of Christ, soon would he have sunk in despondency. To those who have not elevated their views above the feeble efforts of human agency, the conversion of the Heathen cannot but appear to exceed the limits of possibility. Mr. Martyn, who in England had met with many such disputers of this world, found that India was by no means destitute of them.—A conversation into which he was led with one of these characters, was painfully trying to him,-"but in the multitude of my troubled thoughts," he said, "I still saw there is 'strong consolation in the hope set before us.' Let me labor for fifty years, amidst scorn, and without seeing one soul converted, still it shall not be worse for my soul in eternity, nor even worse for it in time-though the heathen rage,' and the English people imagine a vain thing,' the Lord Jesus, who controls all events, is my Friend-my Master-my God—my All. On this rock of ages, on which I feel my foot to rest, my head is lifted up above all mine enemies round about me, and I sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord."

From much of the society Mr. Martyn' found at Dinapore, he received more discomfort than disappointment-some there were indeed, who treated him from the first with the utmost kindness-who afterwards became his joy, and who one day will assuredly be his crown of rejoicing. But before that happy change in them was effected by the power of divine grace, he found none to whom he could fully and freely unbosom himself. With what gladness and thankfulness, therefore, did he welcome the arrival of letters from his beloved Christian friends at Calcutta and in England, He speaks of being exceedingly comforted at returning home after a melancholy walk, and finding letters from Mr. Brown and Corrie, and on hearing from two of his friends in England, who were as dear to him as he was to them: "How sweet," he said, after perusing these memorials of affection, "are the delights of Christian friendship; and what must heaven be, where there are none but humble, kind, and holy children of God: such a society would of itself be a heaven to me, after what I feel at the ways of worldly people here." Nor was it only from the neglect, levity, and profaneness of many of his countrymen, where he was stationed, that Mr. Martyn was pained and grieved: his meek and tender spirit was hurt likewise at the manner in which he conceived himself to be regarded by the natives: by the anger and contempt with which multitudes of them eyed him in his palanquin at Patna, he was

particularly affected, observing "Here every native I meet is an enemy to me, because I am an Englishman. England appears almost a heaven upon earth, because there one is not viewed as an unjust intruder. But O the heaven of my God—the 'general assembly of the first born, the spirits of just men made perfect,' and Jesus! O let me for a little moment labor and suffer reproach!"

The observations he was compelled to hear from his Moonshee and Pundit, often present a curious and affecting display of Pagan and Mahometan ignorance. "Upon shewing," he writes, "the Moonshee the first part of John iii, he instantly caught at those words of our Lord, in which he first describes himself as having come down from heaven, and then calls himself the Son of Man which is in heaven. He said this was what the philosophers called 'nickal,' or impossible—even for God to make a thing to be in two different places at the same time. I explained to him, as soon as his heat was a little subsided, that the difficulty was not so much in conceiving how the Son of Man could be, at the same time, in two dif ferent places, as in comprehending that union of the two natures in him, which made this possible. I told him, that I could not explain this union; but shewed him the design and wisdom of God in effecting our redemption by this method. I was much at a loss for words, but I believe he collected my meaning and received some information which he possessed not before." In another place he says, “in reading

some parts of the Epistles of St. John to my Moonshee, he seemed to view them with great contempt: so far above the wisdom of the world is their divine simplicity! The Moonshee told me, at night, that when the Pundit came to the part about the angels 'separating the evil from the good;' he said, with some surprise, that there was no such thing in his Shaster; but that, at the end of the world, the sun would come so near as, first, to burn all the men, then the mountains, then the debtas (inferior gods,) then the waters: then God reducing himself to the size of a thumb nail, would swim on the leaf of the peepul tree."

The commencement of Mr. Martyn's ministry, amongst the Europeans at Dinapore, was not of such a kind as either to gratify or encourage him. At first he read prayers to the soldiers at the barracks on the long-drum, and as there was no place for them to sit, was desired to omit his sermon.

Preparations being afterwards made for the performance of divine service, with somewhat of that order and decency which becomes its celebration, the resident families at Dinapore assembled on the Sabbath, and attended Mr. Martyn's ministry. By many of these, offence was taken at his not reading to them a written sermon, and it was by letter intimated to him, that it was their wish that he should desist from extempore preaching. At such an interference on the part of his flock, he confesses that he was at first roused into anger and displeasure—

he could not but think that the people committed to his charge, had forgotten the relation which subsisted between him and them, in dictating to him the mode in which they thought proper to be addressed: on mature reflection, however, he resolved upon compliance, for the sake of conciliation:-says ing, “that he would give them a folio sermon book, if they would receive the word of God on that ao count."

Whilst the flock at Dinapore were thus overstepping the limits of respect and propriety, Mr. Martyn was informed, that one of his brethren at Calcutta, was about to transgress the rules of Chris tian charity very grievously, in publishing one of those pulpit invectives which had been fulminated against him on his arrival at Calcutta. Such an act in a brother chaplain would, in some minds, have excited vindictive feelings. In his, the chief excitement was a discomposure, arising from an apprehension, that he might be compelled to undertake a public refutation of this attack on his doctrines-an undertaking which would consume much of that precious time which he wished wholly to devote to his Missionary work.

Thus terminated the year 1806-on the last day of which, Mr. Martyn appears to have been much engaged in prayer and profitable meditation on the lapse of time: feeling communion with the saints of God in the world, whose minds were turned to the consideration of those awful things, which cannot