Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, of Paramatta, Senior Chaplain of New South Wales; and of His Early Connexion with the Missions to New Zealand and TahitiMarsden, Samuel
Religion
Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, of Paramatta, Senior Chaplain of New South Wales; and of His Early Connexion with the Missions to New Zealand and Tahiti
Marsden, Samuel
Marsden, Samuel, 1765-1838; Missions -- French Polynesia -- Tahiti (Island); Missions -- New Zealand; Māori (New Zealand people)
It was observed that though always unembarrassed in the presence of
strangers whatever their rank or importance might be, he never seemed
completely happy but in the company of persons of true piety. He does
not appear to have spoken very freely in ordinary society on the subject
of personal religion, still less on the subject of his own experience;
but his emotions were deep, and out of the fulness of the heart his lips
would speak, in the midst of such a circle, of the loving-kindness of
the Lord. The sense of his own unworthiness seems to have been always
present. Of all God's servants he might have been, as he verily thought
himself to be, the most unprofitable; and when any circumstance occurred
which led him to contrast the justice of God to others who were left to
die impenitent, with the mercy shown to himself, he spoke with a
humiliation deeply affecting. With scenes of vice and human depravity
few living men were more conversant than he, yet to the last such was
the delicacy of his conscience that the presence of vice shocked him as
much as if the sight were new. "Riding down to the barracks one
morning," says the lady whose narrative we have already quoted, "to
invite Captain B---- and myself that day to dinner to meet the bishop,
he had passed what, alas! used to be too frequent an object, a man lying
insensible and intoxicated in the road. His usually cheerful countenance
was saddened, and after telling us his errand, we could not but ask the
cause of his distress. He gave us the unhappy cause, and turning his
horse's head round to leave us, he uttered with deep emotion--
'Why was I made to hear thy voice
And enter while there's room?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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