The illness which Mr. Corrie mentions in the foregoing letter, as having ‘obliged him to desist from all labour, except the Sunday duty,’ now continued to increase upon him; so that, in the beginning of July he was not only laid aside from duty, but confined to the house. From his Journal it appears, also, that he suffered greatly from the exhaustion consequent on fever; and that he was much harassed by impatience and a nervous irritability of temper. Added to this, Mr. C., states himself to have been distressed by the ‘mournful view,’ which his mind took ‘of the desolate state of professing Christians in India, scattered as sheep upon the hills.’ With the hope, therefore, of recruiting both health and spirits, he spent a fortnight or more on the river. His correspondence at the same time, shews that the pressure of bodily sickness did not prevent Mr. C., from occupying his mind with plans for the permanent welfare of India. TO THE REV. D. BROWN. “Cawnpore, July 11, 1811. “Since I wrote to you, I have been entirely laid aside. A fever seized me, and I thought I was following Des Granges;[76] but after some days, through divine mercy, it left me, exceedingly weakened, so that although now, in my own opinion, able to officiate in public, those about me will not let me. “I had a letter from Martyn, dated 24th. April, at Muscat. He gets no stronger, I fear; but you will have heard from him yourself: I begin greatly to wish him back again. Since I have been confined to the house, Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Harrington have, in turns, read to the people in church of an evening. I am much gratified by this help; it relieves my mind greatly. At the same time the numbers fall off. The _preaching_ of the Cross is the usual means of salvation. I am well aware that none of my sermons can be compared with those they read, in point of composition, &c. and yet the people go to sleep under them; and those who shewed some love begin to ‘wax cold.’ I wish, therefore, to renew my public work, that ‘through the foolishness of preaching,’ some may believe and be saved.