WITH A PREFACE
BY THE REV. RALPH WARDLAW, D. D.
First American edition.
PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE UNITED FOREIGN
MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
1822.
PREFACE.
Long prefaces to Narratives have seldom, I believe, the honour of being read through. If the Narrative possess interest, a tedious recommendation only detains the reader from his enjoyment; and if it possess none, it aggravates his disappointment.—I shall, therefore, be very brief.
The subject of the following Memoir has been connected with the church under my pastoral care, nearly since its formation, in the year 1803:—and, from this, as well as from a circumstance in his religious history, which the reader will discover towards the close of the narrative, it may perhaps be thought, that my recommendations are, in some degree, dictated by feelings of partiality. I hope I shall never be so dead to Christian sensibility, as to feel nothing of the peculiar interest which the circumstance alluded to, is fitted to produce. Yet I may say with truth, that the very consciousness of this interest has made me the more jealous and scrupulous in giving the advice to publish; an advice which I never should have given, unless from a sincere conviction, that the Narrative is fitted both to please and to profit; to gratify curiosity, and, through the blessing of God, to impart instruction and spiritual benefit.