important
edification, as well as satisfaction to their affectionate concern
about the individuals, and about the cause, in the narrative of Paul
and Barnabas. Nor would the states of mind experienced, and the spirit
manifested, by the narrators themselves be less instructive, than the
various reception of their message by various hearers. In these pages,
in like manner, Mr. Groves contributes to the good of the Church, an
important fruit of his mission, were it to yield no other. He had cast
himself upon the Lord. To Him he had left it to direct his path; to
give him what things He knew he had need of, and whether outward
prospects were bright or gloomy, to be the strength of his heart and
his portion for ever. The publication of his former little Journal was
the erection of his Eben Ezer. Hitherto, said he to us in England, the
Lord hath helped me. And now, after a prolonged residence among a
people with whom, in natural things, he can have no communion, and
who, towards his glad tidings of salvation, are as apathetic as is
compatible with the bitterest contempt; after having had, during many
weeks, his individual share of the suffering, and his mind worn with
the spectacle, of a city strangely visited at once with plague, and
siege, and inundation, and internal tumult; widowed, and not without
experience of "flesh and heart fainting and failing," he again
"blesses God for all the way he has led him,"[1] tells us that "the
Lord's great care over him in the abundant provision for all his
necessities, enables him yet further to sing of his goodness;"[2] and
while his situation makes him say, "what a place would this be to be
alone in now" if without God, he adds, "but with Him, this is better
than the garden of Eden."[3] "The Lord is my only stay, my only
support; and He is a support indeed."[4]

It is remarkable, that at a time when the fear of pestilence has
agitated the people of this country, and when the tottering fabric of
society threatens to hurl down upon us as dire a confusion as that
which has surrounded our brother, in a country hitherto regarded so
remote from all comparison with our own; at a time when the records of
the seasons at which the terrible voice of God has sounded loudest in
our capital, are republished as appropriate to the contemplation of
Christians at the existing crisis;[5]--this volume should have been
brought before the Public, by circumstances quite unconnected with
this train of God's