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present. But careful inquiries were made on all points, and several of the rajalis showed themselves friendly to their proposed mission. Leaving Nyas, they made their way to Tappanooly, where they arrived, June 17th, having suffered not a few hardships and privations. From this point they set out on the 23d, to explore the Batta country, with guides, interpreters and servants, in all a company of fourteen persons. On the second night after their departure, a rajah who hospitably entertained them advised them to remain a few days, while he sent forward to ascertain the disposition of the people towards them. But conceiving that they were not likely to be disturbed in a peaceable errand, they went forward. Their journey was difficult, passing over steep hills and through abrupt ravines, covered with forests and dense thickets. The people of the villages they passed treated them with a familiarity approaching to rudeness, but with no demonstrations of violence. But on the 28th they found themselves unexpectedly within a hundred yards of a fort, occupied by a number of men, armed with muskets and other weapons. The interpreter went to the fort to parley with the garrison, when they were partially surrounded by an armed company of about two hundred men. Most of the servants threw down their baggage, and made their escape. The interpreter and a servant who was with him, seeing the aspect of affairs, managed to effect their escape. The missionaries were armed, for their protection against wild beasts, but that their pacific intentions might not be misinterpreted, they immediately gave up their arms. To use them, would have been of no avail against such a host, even had they been disposed to repel force by force. But their interpreter was gone, and the multitude were too eager for blood to mind the significant gestures that supplied the place of unutterable words. Mr Lyman fell by a musket shot, and Mr. Munson was thrust through with a spear. One of their servants was also killed; the rest of the company returned to tell the sad tidings.

In communicating the fatal issue of their expedition, the Dutch post-holder at Tappanooly took special pains to represent that they went into the interior against urgent warnings from himself and others, and were thus guilty of rashness. The worthy magistrate was undoubtedly solicitous, lest blame should be attached to him,—of which there was not much likelihood, and may have made these warnings somewhat more fervent in the recapitulation at this juncture, than at first. But the missionaries acted on their best judgment on the representations of different parties; the tenor of which,

and the circumstances under which they were made, are very imperfectly known to us. When the people of the country learned that the men slain were Americans, who had come to do them good, they fell upon the inhabitants of the village to which the murderers belonged, and inflicted a bloody retaliation for their crime. Far other was the return meditated by the friends whom the sad event wounded. "I am so far from sorry, that I parted with Henry to be a missionary," said the widowed mother of Mr. Lyman, "that I never felt so strong a desire that some of my other children should engage in the same cause. O, how much do those poor creatures who mur. dered my son, need the gospel!"

From the view which has been given of the brief missionary career of these men, there is seen enough to justify the sorrow which their early removal caused. They were persons of unusual promise, each, by a peculiar discipline, fitted for great usefulness. The one active and ardent, taught by bitter experience the evil of his own nature, and driven by the memories of the past to more vehement exertion; the other deliberate, thoughtful, thorough, decided, never idle, never in haste; both consecrated with no common measure of zeal to the work of missions, and profoundly interested in the field they were exploring; their death was not only a blow to their respective circles of friends, but to churches that hoped much from their life. But He who called them to go up higher, had a different service for them to undertake, and reserved their earthly field for others.

JOHANNES THEODORUS VANDERKEMP.

JOHANNES THEODORUS VANDERKEMP, the son of a clergyman of the Dutch Church, was born at Rotterdam, in the year 1748, and at an early period of his life, was entered a student at the university of Leyden, in which his brother was afterwards Professor of Divinity. Here he made extraordinary attainments in the learned languages, philosophy, divinity, medicine, and military tactics, and on the conclusion of his university course entered the army, where he served for sixteen years, and rose to the rank of Captain of Horse, and Lieutenant of the Dragoon Guards. He quitted the army in consequence of a quarrel with the Prince of Orange, and, resigning the prospects of distinction which he there enjoyed, he resolved to devote himself to the medical practice, for which he had already no inconsiderable qualifications, but spent two years at the university of Edinburgh, to perfect himself in his profession. At the conclusion of his studies, having received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, he returned to Holland, and settled as a physician in Middleburg, where he practised for a time with great success, and gained a wide reputation for science and skill. He afterwards removed to Dort, where he engaged chiefly in the pursuits of literature and rural amusements.

Soon after entering the army he had imbibed infidel sentiments, then prevalent in Europe, especially on the Continent, and, the restraints of a religious education once broken through, he became addicted to habits of vice. These evil courses affected his pious father with such grief, that it is believed to have shortened his life. Marriage and subsequent retirement from the army, reclaimed him from some of his irregularities, but at Edinburgh he became a confirmed deist. He says of his views at that time:

"Christianity appeared inconsistent with the dictates of reason,the Bible, a collection of incoherent opinions, tales, and prejudices. As to the person of Christ, I looked at first upon him as a man of

sense and learning, but who, by opposition to the established ecclesiastical and political maxims of the Jews, became the object of their hatred and the victim of his own system. I often celebrated the memory of his death, by partaking of the Lord's Supper: but some time after, reflecting that he termed himself the Son of God, and pretended to do miracles, he lost all my former veneration. I then prayed that God, by punishing my sins, would prepare me for virtue and happiness; and I thanked him for every misfortune. But the first observation which I made was, that although oftentimes severely chastised, I became neither wiser nor better. I therefore again prayed to God that he would show me, in every instance, the crime for which I was punished, that I might know and avoid it. Finding this also vain, I feared that I should perhaps never be corrected in this life by punishment; still I hoped that I might be delivered from moral evil after death, by a severer punishment. Yet, reflecting that punishment had proved utterly ineffectual, to produce even the lowest degree of virtue in my soul, I was constrained to acknowledge that my theory, though it seemed by à priori reasoning well founded, was totally refuted by experience; and I concluded that it was entirely out of the reach of my reason to discover the true road to virtue and happiness. I confessed this my impotence and blindness to God, and owned myself to be like a blind man who had lost his way, and who waited in hope, that some benevolent person would pass by, and show him the right path; so I waited upon God, that he would take me by the hand, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Dr. Vanderkemp was thus brought to see the real result of skepticism that instead of light, it brought darkness; instead of higher truths, the denial of all knowledge; instead of better hopes than those of religion, a hopeless narrowing of sight to the present, and total ignorance in points where certainty is most necessary to the mind. It was hardly possible that a mind so ingenuous should long remain in this state of doubt, but he was roused by an event that gave a shock to all worldly enjoyment, and concentrated his powers in the contemplation of Him, whose wise and sovereign providence inflicted the blow. On the 27th of June, 1791, as he was sailing with his wife and daughter on the river, near Dort, a sudden and violent squall upset the boat. Mrs. and Miss Vanderkemp instantly perished, and the doctor, who clung to the boat,

was carried down the stream nearly a mile, no one venturing from the shore to his relief. A ship in the port being driven from her moorings, was drifted towards that part of the channel of the river where the doctor was ready to sink, and the sailors rescued him.

This memorable affliction, and equally memorable deliverance, it would seem, gave a decided shock to his skeptical views. His mind, exhausted in the vain endeavour to resolve by unaided reason the problem of his moral life, was quickened to the investigation of the claims and offers of Christianity with new interest. The truths he had before rejected with scorn, now commended themselves to his judgment and to his heart. In a letter referring to this period of life, he says: "I am compelled to admit, that in many instances my knowledge was very imperfect:-taken up with the love of Christ, I had little or no experience of the strugglings of unbelief, of the power of sin, of the assaults of Satan, of the depth and extent of the misery in which I had been, of the guilt from which I had been delivered, of my natural enmity against God, nor even of my own ignorance." But in proportion as his mind was enlightened, his heart was but the more settled in the obedience of faith.

During the war between Holland and France, in 1793, a large hospital was erected near Rotterdam, of which Dr. Vanderkemp was appointed director. Here his skill and benevolence united to win for him a large measure of esteem. Nor, while studious of the order of the hospital and the comfort of the patients, did he neglect the advancement of piety there. A catechist was employed to instruct the inmates twice or thrice a-week, and on every Sunday they were regularly led to public worship. But the subsequent invasion by the French, put an end to his usefulness by breaking up the hospital, and he returned to his literary pursuits at Dort. Here he was particularly engaged in the study of oriental literature, and in composing a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans

The formation of the London Missionary Society, in 1795, attracted his attention, and excited in him a warm interest for their great enterprise. He procured a copy of the discourses preached at the organization of the Society, with a view of publishing a Dutch translation, to excite a missionary spirit in the churches of his own country. The reading of these productions awakened a desire to undertake some direct personal service in this cause.

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