104 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
trading in the Indian seas; that he had at length made 
himself known to the Baptist Missionaries at Serampore^ 
from whom they heard that he had renounced his 
erroneous sentiments, and professed his belief in the 
truth of the Christian revelation. 
The circumstances which follow, relative to the 
penitence of this unhappy man, are taken from the 
Circular Letters’’ published by the Baptist Missionary 
Society. In one of these, dated Calcutta, May, 8, 1809, 
the writer says. 
We have lately seen the gracious hand of God stretched out in a most 
remarkable manner, in the recovery of a backsliding Missionary, after 
nine years of wandering from God. This person had been chosen with 
others for an arduous undertaking; had been set apart to the great work, 
and had engaged in it to a considerable extent; having acquired a tolerable 
knowledge of the language in which he was to preach to the heathen. 
At this period, he fell into open iniquity ; and embraced a gloomy state of 
infidelity, the frequent consequence of backsliding from God.” 
Having left the Mission and gone to sea, several 
alarming incidents, particularly the breaking of his 
thigh at Madras, and a severe illness in Calcutta, tended 
to awaken him to a sense of his danger. But, although 
he held a correspondence with several serious persons, 
he studiously concealed his previous character and his 
name. At length, after writing a long letter, in which 
he describes the anguish of his mind with dreadful 
minuteness, he obtained a private interview with Dr, 
Marshman and Mr. Ward, of which the following is the 
result. 
“ At the time appointed, he called on brother Marshman, at brother 
Carey^s rooms, and, after a little conversation on the state of his soul, 
he added. You now behold an apostate Missionary, I am--, wlio 
