JOURNAL

OF A

RESIDENCE AT BAGDAD,

&c., &c.

LONDON:
DENNETT, PRINTER, LEATHER LANE.

JOURNAL

OF A

RESIDENCE AT BAGDAD,

DURING THE YEARS 1830 AND 1831,

BY

M^R. ANTHONY N. GROVES,

MISSIONARY.

LONDON:
JAMES NISBET, BERNERS STREET.
M DCCC XXXII.

INTRODUCTION.

This little work needs nothing from us to recommendit to attention. In its incidents it presentsmore that is keenly interesting, both to thenatural and to the spiritual feelings, than it wouldhave been easy to combine in the boldest fiction.And then it is not fiction. The manner in whichthe story is told leaves realities unencumbered, toproduce their own impression. It might gratifythe imagination, and even aid in enlarging ourpractical views, to consider such scenes as possible,and to fancy in what spirit a Christian might meetthem; but it extends our experience, and invigoratesour faith, to know that, having actuallytaken place, it is thus that they have been met.

The first missionaries were wont, at intervals,to return from their foreign labours, and relate tothose 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 affectionateconcern about the individuals, and about thecause, in the narrative of Paul and Barnabas.Nor would the states of mind experienced, and thespirit manifested, by the narrators themselves beless instructive, than the various reception oftheir message by various hearers. In these pages,in like manner, Mr. Groves contributes to thegood of the Church, an important fruit of hismission, were it to yield no other. He had casthimself upon the Lord. To Him he had left itto direct his path; to give him what things Heknew he had need of, and whether outwardprospects were bright or gloomy, to be thestrength of his heart and his portion for ever.The publication of his former little Journal wasthe erection of his Eben Ezer. Hitherto, said heto us in England, the Lord hath helped me. Andnow, after a prolonged residence among a peoplewith whom, in natural things, he can haveno communion, and who, towards his glad tidingsof salvation, are as apathetic as is compatible withthe bitterest contempt; after having had, duringmany weeks, his individual share of the suffering,and his mind worn with the spectacle, of a citystrangely visited at once with plague, and siege,and inundation, and internal tumult; widowed,and not without experience of “flesh and heartfainting and failing,” he again “blesses God forall the way he has led him,”[1]tells us that “theLord’s great care over him in the abundant provisionfor all his necessities, enables him yet furtherto sing of his goodness;”[2]and while his situationmakes him say, “what a place would this be to bealone in now” if without God, he adds, “but withHim, this is better than the garden of Eden.”...