Journal of a Residence at Bagdad

This little work needs nothing from us to recommend it to attention. In its incidents it presents more that is keenly interesting, both to the natural and to the spiritual feelings, than it would have been easy to combine in the boldest fiction. And then it is not fiction. The manner in which the story is told leaves realities unencumbered, to produce their own impression. It might gratify the imagination, and even aid in enlarging our practical views, to consider such scenes as possible, and to fancy in what spirit a Christian might meet them; but it extends our experience, and invigorates our faith, to know that, having actually taken place, it is thus that they have been met.

The first missionaries were wont, at intervals, to return from their foreign labours, and relate to those churches whose prayers had sent them forth, "all things that God had done with them" during their absence. To the Christians at Antioch, there must have been important edification, as well as satisfaction to their affectionate concern about the individuals, and about the cause, in the narrative of Paul and Barnabas. Nor would the states of mind experienced, and the spirit manifested, by the narrators themselves be less instructive, than the various reception of their message by various hearers. In these pages, in like manner, Mr. Groves contributes to the good of the Church, an important fruit of his mission, were it to yield no other. He had cast himself upon the Lord. To Him he had left it to direct his path; to give him what things He knew he had need of, and whether outward prospects were bright or gloomy, to be the strength of his heart and his portion for ever. The publication of his former little Journal was the erection of his Eben Ezer. Hitherto, said he to us in England, the Lord hath helped me. And now, after a prolonged residence among a people with whom, in natural things, he can have no communion, and who, towards his glad tidings of salvation, are as apathetic as is compatible with the bitterest contempt; after having had, during many weeks, his individual share of the suffering, and his mind worn with the spectacle, of a city strangely visited at once with plague, and siege, and inundation, and internal tumult; widowed, and not without experience of "flesh and heart fainting and failing," he again "blesses God for all the way he has led him,"[1] tells us that "the Lord's great care over him in the abundant provision for all his necessities, enables him yet further to sing of his goodness;"[2] and while his situation makes him say, "what a place would this be to be alone in now" if without God, he adds, "but with Him, this is better than the garden of Eden."[3] "The Lord is my only stay, my only support; and He is a support indeed."[4]

It is remarkable, that at a time when the fear of pestilence has agitated the people of this country, and when the tottering fabric of society threatens to hurl down upon us as dire a confusion as that which has surrounded our brother, in a country hitherto regarded so remote from all comparison with our own; at a time when the records of the seasons at which the terrible voice of God has sounded loudest in our capital, are republished as appropriate to the contemplation of Christians at the existing crisis;[5]--this volume should have been brought before the Public, by circumstances quite unconnected with this train of God's dealings and threatenings to our land. The Christians of Britain ought to consider, that there is a warning voice of Providence, not only in the tumults of the people, and in the terrors of the cholera around them, but even in the publication of this Journal. It is not for nothing that God has moved Mr. Groves, as it were, to an advanced post, where he might encounter the enemy before them. The alarm may have, in a measure, subsided,[6] but if the people of God are to be ever patiently waiting for the coming of their conquering King, this implies a patient preparedness for those signs of his coming, the clouds and darkness that are to go before him, in the very midst of which they must be able to lift up their heads because their redemption draweth nigh. To provide for the worst contingencies is a virtue, not a weakness, in the soldier. That Christian will not keep his garments who forgets, that in this life, he is a soldier always. No army is so orderly in peace, or so triumphant upon lesser assaults, as that which is ready always for the extremest exigencies of war.