OF A MISSION ΤΟ NOVA SCOTIA, NEW BRUNSWICK, AND THE SOMERS ISLANDS; WITH A Tour to Lake Ontario. TO WHICH IS ADDED, THE MISSION, AN ORIGINAL POEM, WITH COPIOUS NOTES. ALSO, A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF MISSIONARY SOCIETIES, And much interesting Information on Missions in general. BY JOSHUA MARSDEN, LATE MISSIONARY TO NOVA SCOTIA, NEW BRUNSWICK, AND THE BERMUDAS. O send out thy light and thy truth. PSALM xliii. 3. O let thy word prevail, to take away Throughout all lands. Let every nation hear WORDSWORTH. PLYMOUTH-DOCK: Printed and sold by J. Johns, 53, St. Aubyn-Street; sold also by Thomas Kaye, And at all the Methodist Preaching Houses in Town and Country. 1816. NEW YORK PREFACE. THE Narrative of a Mission should possess peculiar claims to public notice; it should be entertaining as a book of travels, and instructive as a natural history. It is supposed to combine some of the excellencies of both these kinds of writing, together with subjects of a much higher order; even the prosperity of the inneffable Redeemer's kingdom in Heathen lands, and the diffusion of truth, righteousness and felicity amongst the most forlorn and miserable portion of the human family. A Christian Missionary is supposed to hazard his life by associating with Savages and Pagans; whose language he has to learn, and to whose manners he must, in some degree conform, that he may preach more effectually the unsearchable riches of Christ: such were Elliot, Brainard, Vanderkemp and Kircherer; such also were many of the Moravian Missionaries, both in North America, and likewise in Greenland; and this is, in truth, the noblest and most arduous career of Missionary zeal. A second class of Missions are those established among nations partly civilized, but still Pagan, whose language must be learned, and whose Idolatrous practices the Missionary will expose, though at no eminent risk of either persecution or life. On such a Mission, all the comforts, and even the luxuries of civilized states may be obtained, and the preacher may be esteemed and venerated both by the Natives and others. Such is a. Mission to the East Indies, or Ceylon. A third kind of Missions, and much inferior to these, is when a labourer is sent to a friendly colony or distant part of the Empire, which gave him birth, to instruct in the doctrines of salvation a race of men, deplorably ignorant and cruelly degraded, but who, nevertheless, possess considerable docility, have some knowledge of the language of their teacher; and who having no previous religion of any kind, and being withal the abjects, and least esteemed in society, require only zeal and diligence to bring them to the knowledge of divine truth. Such a state of things answers to a West India Mission. A still inferior order of Missions is as follows: when a preacher is sent to a friendly colony, among those of his own nation and colour, and language, whose affairs having called them to a distant climate, still require the word of life and teachers from the parent country. A ministry of this kind has few things to elevate it to the dignity of a Mission, besides a sea voyage, a change of climate, and a few supernumerary hardships and privations; such as poor accommodations, difficult and often dangerous travelling, absence of many literary and ministerial comforts, together with such a separation from his brethren and the Christian world, as often renders him like a partridge upon the mountains, or a sparrow upon the house top. Such is a Mission to Nova Scotia, Canada, Newfoundland, and many other places, in which the most essential features of an arduous and genuine Mission are not known; there is no strange language to learn---no fabric of Idolatry and Pa |