r as if in the dominions of the prince
of darkness. Hearing the hymn, 'Before Jehovah's awful throne,' it
excited a train of affecting thoughts in my mind."

"Wide as the world is thy command. Therefore it is easy for Thee to
spread abroad Thy holy name. But oh, how gross the darkness here! The
veil of the covering cast over all nations seems thicker here; the
friends of darkness seem to sit in sullen repose in this land. What
surprises me is the change of views I have here from what I had in
England. There my heart expanded with hope and joy at the prospect of
the speedy conversion of the heathen; but here the sight of the
apparent impossibility requires a strong faith to support the
spirits." Ah, how vividly this describes missionary experiences! After
great peril from storm and illness, passing up the Hoogly from Madras,
Mr. Martyn arrived at Calcutta, May 14. In this city for years had
been a band of English Christians faithfully praying for the coming of
the kingdom in that dark land, and into the home of one of these, Rev.
David Brown, was Mr. Martyn received with much affection. A pagoda in
one end of the yard on the river bank was fitted up for him, and the
place where once devils were worshiped now became a Christian oratory.
The first experience here was of severe illness from acclimating
fever, from which he was kindly nursed into convalescence. He then
applied himself earnestly to the study of the Hindoostanee, having
engaged a Brahmin as a teacher. Here he witnessed with horror the
cruel and debasing rites of heathenism. The blaze of a funeral pile
caused him one day to hasten to the rescue of a burning widow who was
consumed before his eyes. And in a dark wood he heard the sound of
cymbals and drums calling the poor natives to the worship of devils,
and saw them prostrate with their foreheads to the ground before a
black image in a pagoda surrounded with burning lights--a sight which
he contemplated with overwhelming compassion, "shivering as if
standing in the neighborhood of hell."

Mr. Martyn's plain and pungent preaching was a great offense to some
of the easy-going formalists of the English church at Calcutta, and
some of the ministry attacked him bitterly from their pulpits,
declaring, for instance, that to affirm repentance to be the gift of
God and to teach that nature is wholly corrupt, is to drive men to
despair, and that to suppose the righteousness of Christ sufficient to
justify is to make i