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Though I think my employment in life gives me peculiar advantages, in some respects, with regard to religious knowledge, yet with regard to having a practical sense of things on the mind, it is by far the worst of any. For the laborer, as he drives on his plough, and the weaver who works at his loom, may have their thoughts entirely disengaged from their work, and may think with advantage upon any religious subject. But the nature of our studies requires such a deep abstraction of the mind from all things, as completely to render it incapable of any thing else during many hours of the day.— With respect to the dealings of the Almighty with me, you have heard in general the chief of my account; as I am brought to a sense of things gradually, there is nothing peculiarly striking in it to particularize. After the death of our father you know I was extremely low spirited; and like, most other people, began to consider seriously, without any particular determination, that invisible world to which he was gone, and to which I must one day go. Yet still I read the Bible unenlightened; and said a prayer or two, rather through terror of a superior power, than from any other cause. Soon however I began to attend more diligently to the words of our Savior in the New Testament, and to devour them with delight: when the offers of mercy and forgiveness were made so freely, I supplicated to be made partaker of the covenant of grace, with eagerness and hope; and thanks be to

the ever-blessed Trinity, for not leaving me without comfort. Throughout the whole, however, even when the light of divine truth was beginning to dawn on my mind, I was not under that great terror of future punishment, which I now see plainly I had every reason to feel: I look back now upon that course of wickedness, which, like a gulph of destruction, yawned to swallow me up, with a trembling delight, mixed with shame at having lived so long in ignorance, and error, and blindness. I could say much more, my dear ***, but I have no more room. I have only to express my acquiescence in most of your opinions, and to join with you in gratitude to God, for his mercies to us. May he preserve you and me, and all of us to the day of the Lord!"

How cheering to his sister must it have been at a moment of deep sorrow, to receive such a communication as this, which indicated a state of mind not thoroughly instructed indeed in the mystery of faith, but fully alive to the supreme importance of religion. How salutary to his own mind to have possessed so near a relation, to whom he could thus freely open the workings of his heart! But the chief cause under God, of his stability at this season in those religious principles which, by divine grace he had adopted, was evidently that constant attendance which he now commenced on the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Simeon, at Trinity Church in Cambridge; under

whose truly pastoral instructions, he himself declares that he "gradually acquired more knowledge in divine things."

In the retrospect indeed which Henry took of this part of his life, he seems sometimes ready to suspect a want of growth, and almost a want of vitality in his religion: but though there may have been some ground for the former of these suspicions, there certainly was none, whatever his humility may have suggested, for the latter.-"[ can only account," he says, "for my being stationary so long, by the intenseness with which I pursued my studies, in which I was so absorbed, that the time I gave to them seemed not to be a portion of my existence, That in which I now see I was lamentably deficient, was a humble and contrite spirit, in which I should have perceived more clearly the excellency of Christ. The eagerness too with which I looked forward to the approaching examination for degrees, too clearly betrayed a heart not yet dead to the world.”

That a public examination for a degree in the University must be a time of painful solicitude to those about to pass through it, is obvious-especially when great expectations have been raised, and worldly prospects are likely to be seriously affected by the event. From Henry Martyn much was expected; and, had he failed altogether, his temporal interests would have materially suffered. Nor was he naturally insensible to those perturba

tions which are apt to arise in a youthful and ambitious breast. It happened however (as he was frequently known to assert,) that upon entering the Senate House, in which there was a larger than the usual proportion of able young men as his competitors, his mind was singularly composed and tranquillized, in the recollection of a sermon which he had heard not long before on the text-"Seekest thou great things for thyself-seek them not." He thus became divested of that extreme anxiety about success, which by harassing his spirit, must have impeded the free exercise of his powers. His decided superiority in Mathematics therefore soon appeared-and the highest academical honor was adjudged him in January 1801, a period when he had not completed the twentieth of his age. Nor is it any disparagement to that honor, or to those who conferred it on him, to record, that it was attended, in this instance, with that disappointment and dissatisfaction to which all earthly blessings are subject. His description of his own feelings on this occasion is remarkable:-"I obtained my highest wishes, but was surprised to find I had grasped a shadow." So impossible is it for distinctions, though awarded for successful exertions of the intellect, to fill and satisfy the mind, especially after it has "tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come." So certain is it, that he who drinks of the water of the well of this life must thirst again, and that it is the

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water which springs up to everlasting life, which alone affords never-failing refreshment.

Having thus attained that station of remarkable merit and eminence, upon which his eye from the first had been fixed, and for which he had toiled with such astonishing diligence, as to be designated in his college as "the man who had not lost an hour," and having received likewise the first of two prizes given annually to the best proficients in Mathematics, amongst those bachelors who have just taken their degree, in the month of March, Henry again visited Cornwall, where, amidst the joyful greetings of all his friends, on account of his honorary rewards, his youngest sister was alone dejected, not witnessing in him that progress in Christian knowledge which she had been fondly led to anticipate. Nor ought we to attribute this wholly to that ardency of affection, which might dispose her to indulge in sanguine and somewhat unreasonable expectations.

Those who know what human nature is, even after it may have been renewed by the Spirit of God, will not deny that it is more than possible that his zeal may have somewhat relaxed in the bright sunshine of academical honor: and certain it is that his standard of duty, though superior to that of the world, was at this time far from reaching that degree of elevation which it afterwards attained. Who can wonder, then, that a person tremblingly alive to his best interests, should be not

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