THE PREFACE. reasons for this condensed edition are suffi ciently obvious. Many persons who would gladly have perused the larger memoir, found it beyond their reach. It will be seen, on collation, that the abridgment has been slight, and that the narrative is scarcely touched. Especially is the autobiographical part given entire. In this place I may be allowed to repeat, that the work was one from which I would gladly have shrunk; but it was laid upon me by the highest human authority I ever knew; as he who is the subject of the narrative expressed on his death-bed the desire, that whatsoever should appear in the way of public memorial might proceed from two of his sons whom he named for this purpose. For reasons not interesting to the general reader, the task has devolved solely on me. I'girded myself for it under all the disad64253 vantages of a conviction long since formed, that in many respects a son is not the proper biographer of a father. Though his knowledge of facts and character may be supposed to be intimate, he is in danger either of writing a panegyric, or of falling below the truth in attempting to avoid it. In almost every page I confess myself to have been haunted by the apprehension of overstating, overcolouring, and giving undue importance to domestic traits. If this evil has been incurred, it has not been from wilful suppression of truth, but from the warping influence of a loving veneration. It would have been as natural as it was consonant to my feelings, to speak of my dear and honoured father under that tender appellation; but the wish to avoid obtruding my own person every where as thus connected, has led me to name him as he was known by others. One of the difficulties of the performance ought to be clearly stated. The two ordinary and most copious sources of a religious biography, are a private diary and epistolary correspondence. As it regards the former, my father, after his years of boyhood, kept no personal journal. His letters, it is true, were numerous; but they were to a remarkable extent bare let |