perhaps, as by prescriptive rule. The principal and immutable law of our salvation was illustrated, in the very infancy of the world, by the creation of a bright exemplar of it in the case of Abraham. Thus, too, our blessed Saviour, whilst, by his vicarious sufferings, he laid the foundation of our recovery, and paid the price of our ransom, by his holiness and his love he brightly irradiated those essential morals in which the beauty and perfection of evangelical obedience consist. Christians are exhorted to be imitators of God, as dear children; and, as they conform to their fair original, they are fitted to exert a meliorating and transforming influence upon each other and upon the world.

Faithful religious biography is a department of christian literature of acknowledged importance; and of this, no variety meets with more general acceptance among pious readers, or is of greater practical utility, than that which has been furnished of late years by the annals of christian missions. The life of Henry Martyn, in which the tenderness, simplicity, and glowing fervour of christian love are so eminently conspicuous; and that of John Chamberlain, whose devotedness to God has seldom been surpassed in modern times; who displayed a seraphic fervour, combined, as it was, with a peasant-like plainness, unabated through all the painful details of missionary labour for twenty years in succession; well deserve the diligent perusal of persons of every religious persuasion, and to become the daily manuals of all those who design to assay their principles in a similar enterprise.

The subject of the ensuing memoir has been long before the public; and his literary and religious labours have been referred to with frequent and lofty eulogy. Yet, a full and consistent view of his character and his engagements, such as cannot be collected from the occasional panegyrics of individuals, or from the documents of official bodies, may prove agreeable to many, to whom no other medium of information has hitherto been open, and not unacceptable to any class of persons who take an interest in the advancement of saving truth in the world. Much of the matter incorporated in this volume is from Dr. Carey's own hand; whilst other portions are supplied from sources which, it is presumed, cannot fail of being highly gratifying to the reader. The compiler trusts, also, that this circumstance may be allowed to exonerate him from the charge of temerity in undertaking to prepare this work for the public.

Dr. Carey had his own views upon the subject of biographical composition, and expressed to me, during my early residence in India, his wishes with respect to any record of himself. These are likely to be best complied with by allowing him as much as possible to retrace the steps of his own history, and to delineate his own character. The first document presented to the reader, addressed to Mr. Fuller, at his request, is one in which he narrates the circumstances and events of his early life, up to the period of his entrance on the ministry, and his succeeding to a pastoral charge. While it cannot but

interest, as describing the early condition and the mental predicament of a person destined to become of such ultimate service to the church of God and to mankind, and as faithfully recording the incipient movements of that Providence, which, from means and instruments of little original promise, completes the grandest issues; it yet possesses a much higher value as it incidentally pourtrays the moral features of his character. So that, from this brief sketch with which he has favoured the world, more may be known of Dr. Carey than a volume could furnish coming from the hand of another. The unvarnished plainness of this narration, and the deep compunction with which he adverts to the imperfections he supposed to attach to him through life, will commend themselves to the judgment of all those who prefer truth to fable; a picture, the just similitude of the subject for which it stands, to any finished compound of reality and fiction, which, when detected, never fails to shock and deeply to impair the moral feeling. There is no blinking of the former obscurity of his condition from a morbid apprehension of disparaging his after celebrity; nor is there any such minute detailing of unimportant circumstances as might gratify the curious, without answering any valuable purpose; and which, under the guise of humility, would subtilly derive to him additional lustre, from the contrast it would exhibit to the eminence he subsequently attained. He had too much real dignity to permit himself to feel that sensitiveness which would expose him to the former infirmity; whilst a genuine

christian simplicity, and an almost intuitive sense of moral propriety, rendered him abhorrent of the latter. During the first part of my residence in India my intercourse with him was unrestrained and intimate. I was the only surviving son of his only brother. At this time there was no circumstance of personal or relative interest that did not pass under tender and lively review. The events of his early days he related with as much freshness as though they had occurred but yesterday: and then, when he referred to the graver incidents and pursuits of advancing life, he did so with the candour and seriousness becoming the man and the christian. He has said to me, Eustace, as to the circumstances of my former life, I recur to them with humility and thankfulness. They were the allotment of Providence, and no doubt subserved a good purpose. I would not make them matter of parade, as though they were to be gloried in. If I am not esteemed the less for them, that is all I can desire. I have known the time when I wanted the necessaries of life; but I do not recollect ever to have murmured. I now have every thing in abundance, and I enjoy what God has given me. I think I can say, 'I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.''

Upon one occasion, he expressed to me his utter want of sympathy with some Christian friends in England, whose intense curiosity in little things led them to search out and exhibit sundry relics of his early days, as the 'board' which was said to adver

tize his business, and the crockery out of which he drank when at Hackleton. All exaggerated statements, moreover, of his acquirements or his labours, were unwelcome and offensive. When one of his brethren referred to the terms of commendation in which Mr. Wilberforce mentioned him in the House of Commons during the debate upon the renewal of the Company's charter in 1813, he replied, 'I wish people would let me die before they praise me.'

'MY DEAR BROTHER,

'August 14th, 1804.

'You have desired me to write you an account of the principal occurrences in my life. I will try to do it; but it is accompanied with as strict an injunction as I can give, that it may not be published as mine so long as I live. Of course if any part of it be inserted in any magazine, it ought to be so altered that places and persons may not be recognized. Having laid this injunction upon you as a christian brother, by me very dearly beloved, I give you the following particulars.

'Of my family I know nothing more than that my grandfather, who I have heard was born at Yelvertoft, was master of the school which my father now superintends. He died while my father was very young, and left two sons; Peter, who was a gardener, and Edmund, my father, who was put apprentice to a weaver, which business he followed till I was about six years of age, when he was nominated master of the small free-school in which his father died.