My dear Mr. Pike,-I have to thank you for several letters received since I last wrote you. This time I have been the bad correspondent; but I have had no heart to write. Illness, absence, hard work, and grievous disappointment have been ours the last few months. Your first short letter, written after the Association, found me in bed one Sunday morning, suffering the greatest agony from a violent attack of illness, and our kind doctor from Pooree by my side. The pain was too heavy for tears; but when your letter was put into my hands, and the intense excitement of reading (as I then hoped and believed) the answer to our prayers and hopes, that help was really on the way-alas! the bitter disappointment did what no amount of physical suffering could do, and my tears found a sad, sad vent. Then, too, the tone of many letters seemed so cold, so entirely lacking of all true appreciation of our position, so quiet and matter of fact, as though it would not signify-it was only the deferring of a simple benefit-no one would be the worse-and it really did not signify that we all felt bowed down and humbled. Our hearts fairly sunk within us.

With us it seemed a matter almost of life or death. Already overburdened almost beyond endurance, and the work still growing on our hands, we looked forward to an addition to our numbers with a feeling of feverish intensity. Our prayers were constant, and I for one never contemplated disappointment. The shock for me was therefore all the heavier. What object has been gained by my remaining all this time? Whilst my idolized husband lay so still and cold, ere they laid him in his last earthly resting place, I resolved, the Lord strengthening me, I would so far as I could fill his place and carry on till other hands could take his

work where he laid down. It seemed impossible to me, that one so good, so devoted, so holy and beloved, could have Ilaid down his life without his death rousing to emulation other devoted christians to walk in his steps. What I have had to contend with is known only to One above; but here nearly sixteen months have passed away-my_health has entirely failed, sometimes, I fear, beyond restoration entirely; the work has gone on; He who remembereth we are dust, and knoweth our frame,' has blessed it beyond any previous year, and is still blessing, or we must have sunk; but I must leave all I love, and the work of my heart-and yet the object for which I stayed, for which I so hoped and prayed, seems further off than ever. Do you wonder, as I look round herethe fields white to the harvest, my own loved husband's handiwork on every side, and no one to enter into his labours (at least without other stations suffering) that I feel sad at heart and depressed beyond expression? If the doctor would give me leave I would keep on, but he insists on my return as early as possible with great seriousness; and I am conscious he is right. How often do our hearts cry out-'O Lord, how long!' When shall thy people rise, and feel the high responsibility and honour of the position to which Thou bast called them, to preach the gospel to every creature, to proclaim a full and free salvation through Jesus to the millions of India? A fearful responsibility must rest somewhere. Oh! that each earnest christian man would so examine himself before God, that from his heart he may say, 'Lord, lay not this sin to my charge.' How soon we should hear the joyous sound, ‘Lord, here am I; send me!' and the feeble hands would be strengthened, the drooping hearts cheered, and the prospect of help and soldiers to carry on the fight would infuse new life and vigour into the worn and wearied, and the song of praise and thanksgiving would rise from all our hearts. Even so let it be, Lord Jesus.

We are at the end, I trust, of the trying part of the year, and fully prepared to enjoy the invigorating coolness of the cool weather. You would smile could you see us, morning or evening now as we walk up and down before the house, take every now and then long inspirations, and hear us say, 'Yes, it certainly is the scent of the cold season.'

I had written so far the other day, when I was interrupted; and since then have had a season of almost unendurable suffering, followed by the greatest exhaustion. Now I am better, but feeble; still I am about, and attending to duties pretty much as usual. But to return to where I left off. With the first breath of cold comes the restlessness of old from habit. My loved husband used to be impatient to be off, and, as I used to tell him, I wanted the house clear of him. I always live over and over again the happy times. How eagerly the coolies were looked out for! how earnestly the labours prayed for! The early part of the month in which he ceased from his earthly labours, he had been very full of plans for the season he then thought coming. A number of things requisite were sent for from Calcutta, because he said he hoped to get out so soon, and have one of the longest tours of his life. The things came the week after he had entered into rest. The bright genial weather seems to bring an extra blank. The routine of duties is the same-no extra anxieties or prayers; and this is such an unusual state with any wife in this Mission. Additional cares and anxieties, fresh toils and new pleasures, more earnest prayers and anticipations of meeting-all this has gone out of my life; and oh, so much more!

I cannot realize that the time of tearing myself from all I hold so dear here is so near. How shall I separate myself from these beloved orphans, from all the dear friends, and from my darling's grave. My heart sinks at the prospect; and unless special strength is given, flesh must fail too. My children are happily in good health now, though two of them have been the cause of much anxiety through the year. I have been offered a passage cheaper in the Shannon than in any other ship, so that if our friends give a good report on their arrival, we shall decide on that vessel.

Mr. Buckley has been very, very poorly. Both Mr. and Mrs. B. need a short change greatly, and must have it too, or sink. One of my loved husband's last comments on Mr. B. was only a few hours before his death, when he said, 'He is a dear man-worth his weight in gold.' And he is. Since my bereavement he has been everything to me. Always kind, he has been ten times more so since, if possible, and left

me to want nothing that as a most considerate father and friend he could supply. I often think if my precious one can look down, how he must bless him for his goodness to me. All, however, have been most considerate and kind. May his life be spared many years, for that day will be a dark one when he is not.

No joyous thrill warms my heart when I think of my nearness to my earthly home. Precious as the dear ones are, there will be so much of sorrow in the meeting-there is so much of bitter grief before the meeting-nearly all joyous anticipation is gone. If I could feel sure a few months would see me on my way back, then with a chastened feeling I might rejoice; but I must leave it. We are in loving hands, and the Refiner has still to purify and purge from self and sin.

I do hope to hear from you in Calcutta, though your letter must not be posted later than Dec. 14. Pray that strength may be given to both body and mind, for indeed they need it."

A TRIO OF WORTHIES; The Northamptonshire Shoemaker-the Wiltshire Weaver-and the Derby Printer.

BY THE REV. J. C. PIKE.

Our

THE reader has doubtless anticipated the honoured names of the men to whom I refer-names familiar as household words to christians of every denominationCAREY, MARSHMAN, and WARD. space would not suffice for a complete biography of these distinguished menthat would require a dozen papers rather than two or three. My aim is just to give a sketch of some of the more striking facts in the history of each, the tendency of which will be not only to make us better acquainted with the men themselves, and thus the more to glorify God in them; but also, I hope, to stir us up to steady plodding diligence in doing the work of Christ amongst men; while further teaching us never to be daunted by difficulties, and never to despise the day of small things."

66

I did not know personally any of the three, though I think it probable that when a child I may have seen Mr. Ward -at any rate I remember well going frequently to see a relative of his who lived in St. Helen's Street, Derby, not

far from our house. I merely mention this in order to explain that in these papers I shall make no pretence to originality of thought or expression; sufficient that the facts are well authenticated, no matter where or whence obtained.

For the birth of these three christian heroes we must go back more than a hundred years. Job rashly said, "Let the day perish wherein I was born." Those were bright days for the world on which these men were born, and we do well to remember them. They were born in the order by which their names are so familiar to us, viz. :

William Carey, on August 17, 1761, Joshua Marshman, April 20, 1768, William Ward, October 20, 1769. The birthplace of Dr. Carey was the village of Paulersbury, in Northamptonshire. His grandfather and father successively sustained the offices of parish clerk and schoolmaster in the village, so that he says, "My education was that which is generally esteemed good in country villages." His father testified of him that "he was always attentive to learning when a boy, and a good arithmetician." At the age of six he was known to lie awake in bed and work out sums in his mind, or in his head, as we commonly say. When twelve years old he obtained a copy of "Dyche's Latin Vocabulary," and committed nearly the whole of it to memory. An afflicted sister whom, when a student at Stepney College, I used frequently to see-(for more than forty years this sister was confined to her chamber, the greater part of the time speechless, and the hand with which she wrote being the only member of the body she could use) - says, Whatever he began he finished. His own room used to be full of insects, stuck in every corner, that he might observe their progress. Birds also he was very fond of. He would often drag his sister over the dirtiest roads to get a plant or an insect. She thinks he never walked out without observing the hedges, and carefully examining every plant and flower that he gathered. A painful disease of the skin, which though it rarely appeared in the form of an eruption, yet made the sun's rays insupportable to him, unfitted him for any out-door occupation. Accordingly, when about fourteen, he was bound apprentice to Clarke Nichols, a shoemaker of Hackleton. His master died in two years. Young Carey engaged to pay the widow a cer

As

tain sum for the remainder of his time, and henceforth worked as a journeyman with Mr. T. Old, of Hackleton. the doctor has the credit of being a very poor workman at the shoe trade, it is only fair to hear his own account of the matter. He says-"The childish story of my shortening a shoe to make it longer is entitled to no credit, though it would be very silly in me to pretend to recollect all the shoes I made. I was accounted a very good workman, and recollect Mr. Old keeping a pair of shoes which I had made in his shop as a model of good workmanship. But the best workmen sometimes, from various causes, put bad work out of their hands, and I have no doubt but I did too."

He

His master was a strict churchman; but he used occasionally to drink rather too freely, and generally employed Carey in carrying out goods on the Sabbath morning till nearly church time-two things not very creditable to an otherwise 66 worthy and respectabie man." The Rev. Thomas Scott, the Commentator, was accustomed to pay pastoral visits to the family of Mr. Old. mentions that on one of these occasions Mr. Old entered the room with a sensible looking lad in his working dress. Mr. Scott observed the rivetted attention of the lad to all that was said, and often remarked that he would prove no ordinary man. After Mr. Old's death, the shop, which was a little building apart from the house, was suffered to go to decay. While in this state Mr. Scott several times passed it, and remarked to his sons and others that were with him, "That is Mr. Carey's College." We shall agree with Mr. John Marshman's observation-"Seldom has so humble a college turned out so distinguished a graduate."

A fellow workman at Mr. Old's was the son of a dissenter. Carey and he had many discussions. Carey always had the last word in the argument, but was often convinced that he had not the right side of the question. They both became uneasy in mind, and talked with each other on the subject of personal religion. Carey determined to go regularly to three churches in the day, and attend the dissenting prayer meeting at night, thinking that this would give him ease of mind, and make him acceptable to God. He also determined to leave off lying, swearing, and other sins to which he was addicted. Sometimes he tried

to pray, but at present he was a stranger to the evil of his own heart. Divine truth dawned upon his mind very gradually. A work by the father of Robert Hall, entitled, "Hall's help to Zion's travellers," was a great help to him. He says, "I found all that arranged and illustrated which I had been so long picking up by scraps. I do not remember ever to have read any book with such rapture as I did that. If it was poison, as some then said, it was so sweet to me that I drank it greedily to the bottom of the cup; and I rejoice to say, that those doctrines are the choice of my heart to this day."

Dr. Carey began to preach when he was only eighteen. He had joined a little church at Hackleton, and was sometimes invited by the friends to deliver his thoughts on a passage of scrip

ture, which," he says, "the people being ignorant, applauded to my great injury." Soon after he attended an Association of the Baptists at Olney. He fasted all day because he had no money with which to purchase a dinner. At length he was invited to go to a house with some friends from Earl's Barton, a neighbouring village, who were lamenting their spiritual destitution to Mr. Chater, the Independent minister at Olney. There he got a glass of wine; and subsequently, on Mr. Chater's advice and the earnest solicitations of the people, went to preach at Earl's Barton, and continued to do so for three and a half years. About this time Carey's views on baptism were changed in favour of immersion. He was baptized by Dr. John Ryland, his future associate in the cause of missions, who once referred to the circumstance in a public address to this effect-"On the 5th of October, 1783, I baptized a poor journeyman shoemaker in the river Nene, a little beyond Dr. Doddridge's chapel, in Northampton." The river Nene, on its passage to the sea, runs through Wisbech, where I lived for nearly fourteen years. Often, as I walked on its banks, I used to feel that the river had been consecrated by the baptism of that poor, but afterwards illustrious, shoemaker, almost as the Jordan was by the baptism of Jesus Christ.

Mr. Old did not live very long. Upon his death, Carey took to the stock and business, and married Mrs. Old's sister, before he was twenty years of age. This too early union did not prove an aus

picious one. His wife was illiterate, and unable to sympathize with his largehearted and lofty aspirations; in fact, she was altogether unsuitable to be the companion of such a man. To his honour be it recorded, that he ever treated her with the utmost consideration and affection. After his marriage he rented a little cottage at Hackleton, the great charm of which, however, was the garden attached to it. Trade was good at the time, but soon a large order that Mr. Old had engaged to supply was returned on his hands, which so embarrassed him, that he was obliged to dispose of the goods to great disadvantage. He removed to a village called Piddington, where he lost his first child, a fine girl named Ann, by fever, and was himself dangerously ill. When the fever was removed, he suffered severely from ague, which hung about him for eighteen months. The ague and fever rendered him permanently bald. Often was he obliged in this enfeebled state to travel from place to place to sell his stock in order to obtain bread. saved from starvation by the generous conduct of a brother, who assisted him from his own scanty earnings, and by a small collection made for him by some friends in his native village of Paulersbury.

He was

The church at Earl's Barton did next to nothing for the support of their minister-in fact, not sufficient to pay for the clothes he wore. Mr. Carey was induced to take charge of the little church at Moulton, to which he seems to have been attracted by the prospect of a good school. His forte, however, was in the acquisition rather than in the communication of knowledge. He had no control over the boys, who used to take all sorts of liberties with the schoolmaster. In after life he facetiously remarked-" When I kept school, it was the boys who kept me.' They did not do this long, for the old master returned to Moulton, and Carey was obliged to fall back on his shoemaking for a livelihood. "Once in a fortnight he might be seen walking eight or ten miles to Northampton, with his wallet full of shoes upon his shoulders, and then returning home with a fresh supply of leather to fulfil his engagements with a Government contractor." Mr. Marshman mentions that thirty years afterward, when dining one day at Barrackpore Park, opposite Serampore, with the Governor-General

(the Marquis of Hastings), Mr. Carey overheard one of the guests, a general officer, making inquiry of one of the aides-de-camp whether Dr. Carey had not once been a shoemaker, on which he stepped forward and exclaimed, "No, sir, only a cobbler !"

The school at Moulton is not to be despised, for it was while teaching geography to his pupils that Carey was led to think of the wretched state of the heathen, and to cherish the design of sending the gospel to them. When he gave up the school the idea still haunted him. He could think or speak of little else. He had a large map hung on the wall of his workshop, on which he had entered every particular he could glean as to the different countries and peoples of the earth. Often when making or mending shoes did his eye look up from the last to the map, and ponder over means for the evangelization of the heathen.

At a

He did not meet with much encouragement from his own brethren. ministers' meeting at Northampton, Mr. Ryland, senr., called on the young men present to propose a subject for discussion. Mr. Carey suggested one-"The duty of christians to attempt the spread of the gospel among heathen nations." The old man was taken aback. He sprang to his feet, and thundered out, "Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine." Even Mr. Fuller, the future indefatigable secretary of the Mission, was startled at the

novelty and boldness of the proposal, and acknowledged that his feelings much resembled those of the unbelieving nobleman- "If the Lord should open windows in heaven, might this thing be!"

In 1789, when twenty-eight years of age, Mr. Carey removed to Leicester. Here he laboured diligently for four years. I have not been able to find much information about Carey as a preacher. It is pretty certain that he made no attempt at eloquence. It was

the truth in its own native simplicity that he preached. Mr. Hall, of Arnsby, when criticising one of his sermons, said, "Brother Carey, you have no likes in your sermons. Christ taught that the kingdom of heaven was like to leaven hid in meal-like to a grain of mustard seed, &c. You tell us what things are, but never what they are like." Still his preaching was not tedious, but refreshing and profitable in proportion to the seriousness of the hearer.

The Harvey Lane church was sunk in Antinomian errors. Unable to root them out, he dissolved the old church, and formed a new one, into which only those were admitted who were willing to subscribe a declaration that they would faithfully adhere to the doctrines and discipline of the New Testament. This was followed by an improved state of things; while the zealous labours of the pastor, both in the town and surrounding villages, greatly endeared him to the friends of religion.

(To be continued.)

CALCUTTA-W. Brooks, Nov. 20.

CUTTACK-J. Buckley, Oct. 28.