but was brought back to the colony by Captain Piper; and died in the Sydney hospital, exhibiting Christian faith and penitence. "I mentioned to the governor," he adds, "some of these circumstances, but not with any view to create difficulties; so far from it, that I informed him that I was authorized by the Church Missionary Society to assist any plan with pecuniary aid, that was likely to benefit the natives of the colony." A mission was in fact set on foot by this Society; but from various causes, it failed, and was abandoned. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Marsden's correspondence with the London Missionary Society--Buys the brig Active--His first Voyage to New Zealand--Journal of Events. Richard Baxter, after describing his ministerial labours at Kidderminster in preaching and visiting from house to house, has these remarkable words: "But all these, my labours, even preaching and preparing for it, were but my recreations, and, as it were, the work of my spare hours; for my writings were my chiefest daily labour." Mr. Marsden had his recreations, too. Amidst the anxieties of his colonial chaplaincy he found or made opportunities to conduct a work which of itself would have been sufficient to exhaust the energies and to immortalize the memory of any other man. We devote this chapter to a short, and, of necessity, imperfect sketch of these his _recreations_ in the missionary field. On his return from England in 1810, he found disastrous tidings of the Tahitian mission awaiting his arrival. Disheartened by their utter want of success, divided amongst themselves, distracted with fears of danger from the natives, several of the missionaries had fled from their posts, and taken refuge in New South Wales. The work appeared to be on the eve of ruin, and it was owing in no small measure to the firmness and wise conduct of Mr. Marsden that it was not, for a time at least, abandoned. "Sooner," he exclaims, in one of his letters to the Society at home, "than _that_ shall be the case, I will give up my chaplaincy, and go myself and live at Otaheite." Yet it was no easy task to inspire others with his own courage, or to impart his hopeful spirit to a desponding band of men. He felt the difficulty, and acted towards them in the most considerate manner. Instead of at once insisting on their return, he received them into his family, where it is scarcely necessary to say they were treated with that patriarchal hospitality for which the parsonage of Paramatta was famed. When a few months had passed, and their spirits were cheered and their health restored, the question of their return to Tahiti was introduced and quietly discussed. Their kind and pious host had never for an instant doubted of their ultimate success. We have perused numerous letters addressed by him to the London Missionary Society, and to various friends in England; but in not one of them is the shadow of a doubt expressed as to the triumph of the gospel