strengthen our weak faith. Fill our hearts with the spirit of heaven, and make us burn as flaming fires in thy service. Does not your soul respond 'amen, even so, Lord Jesus'?

"The Lord be with you and give you great success in the wide vineyard where you now are. Lay down your life in Jesus' service. Oh! how delightful it will be to go to heaven amid the prayers and penitential tears of those whom you have just been instrumental in saving from death;-to carry as it were the tidings of their repentance. It is enough to make one's soul leap for joy.

"Brother S. what a time it is in heaven now! What rejoicing! In the dark ages of the church, ministering spirits could find but here and there a solitary instance of conversion with which to reanimate the heavenly hosts, if indeed they can be reanimated. But now myriads of such instances are daily celebrated with anthems of praise.

"Mr. Beecher has just received most enlivening intelligence from Long Island. You remember he paid the people of his former charge a visit last fall, and God made him instrumental of great good. There are now hundreds converted to God; seventy in Sag Harbor, seventy in East Hampton, and several in Bridghampton. On Shelter Island, God has come down gloriously.

"I have just had a letter from Mr. N. of Weston. He mentions revivals of religion in Norwalk, where seventytwo have already joined the church; in Wilton, one hundred are awakened and the whole town apparently shaken. Some tokens of good in his own society; some in Ridgefield, and a blessed work in New Canaan. On Litchfield Hill, and especially near the boundaries of the society, the Spirit is continually descending. It may be said with truth, that God is blessing us with a perpetual revival,

In Kent to the west, and New Preston to the

southwest, God is pouring out his Spirit. Oh, what a time we live in! Rejoice ye heavens and earth, for the day of his power and glory and grace is come, and who will not bow before him?"

The correspondent of Mr. Cornelius, to whom many of the foregoing letters were addressed, was at that time residing in New York, engaged in labors of a highly important character in that city. This circumstance will explain some of the allusions in the following paragraphs.

"Litchfield, March 17, 1816. "We weep and rejoice on your account. Could you be witness, you would hear many prayers put up to God, in the social concert, at the family altar, and in the closet, for that great city where thousands are perishing in a mass-for those dear ministers of Christ who are spending their strength in his cause. It would exceedingly gratify you, dear brother, if you could witness the interest which is excited in the breasts of Christians in this place for New York. I do not now remember to have heard a family prayer offered for some days, in which special mention was not made of New York, and often it is the principal part of the prayer. I received your letter on Friday evening. It gave great joy in the first place to this family. Next day I was at judge R.'s, and disclosed the contents of it. Mrs. R. melted into tears. She wept profusely for joy. 'Oh,' said she, how good God is.' It would have afforded you equal pleasure to have seen the eyes of the venerable judge sparkling with joy. We all said, 'What shall be done to help them?' On the afternoon of the day, we held a concert of prayer principally on your account, and before we separated, agreed to set apart the hour before sunset on the Sabbath, for the same object."

6

Among the plans in which Mr. Cornelius was interested, while residing in Litchfield, was the formation of a society in the female school in that place "for doing good." Once a week he delivered a lecture to this association. The members of the school belonged to various parts of the northern States, and some of them were natives of regions which were very destitute of religious instruction. Facts were collected from many towns on the subject of instituting societies for benevolent purposes, a small library was formed, and other means for doing good devised. In this way a number of individuals were prepared to engage intelligently, and with zeal, in various enterprises in behalf of their suffering fellow-creatures.

In nearly all the letters of Mr. Cornelius, which were written during this period, allusion is made to the Hawaiian youth, and the Foreign Missionary School. It was a subject in which his benevolent heart was most thoroughly engaged. We think that the evidence is decisive that to him, as much as to any other man, the deep interest which was felt in that object, is to be attributed.

His mind had been for some time greatly interested as the reader has already learned from one of his letters, in a plan for exploring the Atlantic States, after the manner in which the regions west of the Alleghany mountains had been surveyed by Messrs. Mills and Smith. The objects, which his comprehensive mind had sketched, were the following: To furnish candidates for the Christian ministry with the necessary information respecting those districts of country which were in the greatest need of religious instruction; to form Sabbath schools in every city or considerable village through which the tour should be made; to aid the American Bible Society, by learning the facts in regard to the destitution of Bibles, and by establishing auxiliaries; to circulate religious intelligence by preaching missionary sermons, conversing on the

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MEMOIR OF CORNELIUS.

subject, obtaining subscribers for religious newspapers, with a view to awaken Christians to exertions demanded by the present state of the world; to raise a fund by direct solicitation for the liberal support of the heathen school; to ascertain the condition of the slaves in the southern States, in respect to their want of religious instruction; and in general to execute a commission of the most enlarged character, as preparatory to specific labors.

SOUTHWESTERN INDIANS-RESIDENCE IN NEW ORLEANS-MARRIAGE-AGENCY FOR RAISING A FUND FOR CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE BOARD

THE

STUDIES AT ANDOVER.

On the fourth of June, 1816, Mr. Cornelius was licensed to preach the gospel by the South Association of Congregational ministers, in Litchfield county, Connecticut. The readers of this memoir will be gratified to learn the opinions which were entertained of him at this time by an individual who had every facility for forming a correct judgment. "I have forborne to say all I think of Mr. Cornelius and his prospects as a popular preacher in the best sense of the term, and as a missionary of great enterprise and prudence, lest, upon experience, some deficiency, unperceived by me, might be discovered. But the successful manner in which he has conducted the enterprise in which he is now engaged, (that of raising funds for the support of heathen children in the schools at Bombay,) and the influence he has exerted upon all classes of people, young and old, good and bad, and the confidence reposed in him by all the ministers and churches around us, make me feel as if it was safe and as