baptized. The most who are now believers, profess to have been so for one, two, or three years, or from the time they first heard the gospel. The Lord has carried on this work, so far as human instrumentality is concerned, by native Karen assistants, and principally by Ko Thah-byu."

CHAPTER VI.

Returns to Maulmain.-Second visit to Rangoon. Returns to Maulmain again.—Goes to Aracan.—Success.—Sickness and death.

Ir would have been interesting to read the account of Ko Thah-byu's wanderings in Pegu, and his attempts to go overland to Maulmain; but it is one of the withering curses of ignorance, that all her subjects must serve in silence, without the power to record the sufferings that her minions, poverty and wretchedness, inflict. While the skillful hand of education, oft "gives to airy nothings, a local habitation and a name," the stern realities of humble life are left, like the untrodden forest, in all their native grandeur, without a hand to sketch them.

In the year 1837, he was in Maulmain, but went to Rangoon again with Mr. Abbott in April, who thus writes; "He immediately went into the Karen jungle and visited the Christian villages around and near Maubee, where he had formerly preached, and had been instrumental in Christianizing a good

many of his fellow countrymen. He remained there, at this time, about six months, preaching altogether among the Christian villages. The old man's days for itinerating had passed away. He was affiicted with rheumatism and blindness, and was conse quently unable to undertake any difficult journey. The Maubee villages being compact, and having good roads from one to the other, he was able to visit them by making a long stay at each. Another cause that deterred him from preaching among the unchristianized, was, the Burmese government had become alarmed at the fact of so many Karens having embraced a foreign religion. The Christians were oppressed, fined, imprisoned and annoyed in every conceivable manner. Every petty Burmese officer felt himself called upon to manifest his loyalty and his attachment to the institutions of his country by persecuting the Karen Christians. The land swarmed with "informers," who were the hired menials of said officers. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that old Ko Thah-byu felt himself justified in remaining quiet among the Christians. Even had he been able to travel and preach, and had he attempted it, he would soon have been apprehended. His health becoming more feeble, and war being expected between the English and the Burmese, he returned to Maulmain, in November. When I left Maulmain in February, 1840, I knew not certainly that I could obtain assistants from Burmah,

and called Ko Thah-byu, and he accompanied me to Sandoway, with his family. Immediately on my arrival I sent him to a small Karen village, a few" miles from where I live, where he remained and preached awhile, and then returned to me and commenced teaching a class of boys. The small pox breaking out in my school, and Ko Thah-byu's young children having never had it, he took his family and. went again to the village near. At this place where he spent all his time while in Arracan, four have been baptized. Several now stand candidates for the ordinance, and a good many are nominal Christians, all of whom first heard the gospel from Ko Thah-byu.”

Here, in the midst of his work, the summons came for him to cease from his labors. Here in this village, which he had so recently entered, a moral wilderness, he was called away to the world of spirits, just when it was budding and blossoming into beauty, as so many and distant regions had done before, beneath his fostering hand. And he went,

"Not, like the quarry slave, at night

Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

"His rheumatic complaint," continues Mr. Abbott, "had become distressing, so that he was many

times unable to walk or even to rise up. A few weeks after he left me, the disease settled upon his lungs, accompanied by violent inflammation, and the old man seemed to be aware that he was near his grave. As it was the rainy season, I could not go to him, but sent a boat and had him brought in, he having sent me word that he wanted to come and die near me. He came, but was unable to walk. I saw he had but a few days to live. He was perfectly willing to die; had no fears; as it pleases God,' seemed to be the frame of his spirit. He suffered severely from his rheumatic complaint, notwithstanding the constant attention of the physician whom I called. He was very irritable at times, and his old temper would occasionally show itself. He required a good deal of attention, and many a time was I awakened in the night by his calling Teacher, please come and champoo me,' which I did, as he seemed to think no one could do it so well as myself. On the whole, he was submissive under his pains, until they brought him to the grave, on the ninth of September, 1840. To the last, he had not an anxious thought as to his future destiny; his usual reply to my questions on the subject was, Teacher, God will preserve me.'

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What a glorious system of blessings is Christianity! There is not a passion, that it cannot subdue; not an evil propensity, that it cannot destroy; not a vicious habit, that it cannot eradicate. For the