PREFACE. THE records of a good man's life contain only a brief selection from the interesting facts connected with his earthly course. "In looking at a biographical volume of moderate size," remarks Mr. Foster, "which contains the principal incidents of a pious, diligent, and useful life, protracted too beyond the ordinary length, it is highly gratifying to reflect how much more is implied than related. Exclusively of childhood, and the earlier part of youth, (in which stage also there might be a worthy preparation for what was to follow,) it is the story of perhaps almost sixty years of unremitting exertion, applied, day by day, to the most valuable purposes. But, in such a course, what a prodigious number there have been of distinct acts, involving the voluntary exercise of the understanding, and the different moral and physical powers, directed to objects prescribed by conscience, and performed and repeated with a resolute perseverance, from a regard to the Almighty. How many myriads of these distinct acts such a life will have included! What a multitude of them, to make up the intellectual and practical exertion of a month, or even of a week! And yet the biographical memoir can record all this only according to the scale of a paragraph of three or four sentences to the month,―hardly a single line to a day; though each one of many thousands of these days has contained, in strenuous, well-intended, and for the most part well-applied effort, in thought, speech, and practical occupation, a quantity of good agency, of which the expression, in written words, would be enough to fill the greater part of a moderate volume. So much more good has there been in a good man's life than the most prolix biographer could ever tell!" The Author has felt the full force of these remarks, in preparing an account of the leading particulars of the Life, Ministry, Writings, and Character of Mr. Hill. He has been compelled to give but a brief statement of many important events connected with his history, |