The life and remains of the Rev. Robert Housman

Front matter

Glass .. BX5"(3 9 Book

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Preface

The following pages contain a somewhat extended memoir of the life and opinions of one, to whose faithful and long-protracted ministry of the Gospel of the grace of God, unusually abundant measures of divine favour were awarded. They possess but little of what is popularly understood by the word incident ; nor is it necessary, to a fulfilment of the proper end of biography, that they should possess more. The real object of biography, as distinguished from general history, is to enlarge our acquaintance with specific modifications of our common nature, by laying before us, with as much minuteness and fidelity as may be, the inner movements, the essential principles, the whole moral progress, and the whole moral portraiture, of an individual mind. In comparison with this object, and if separated from it, mere facts and events, however startling or attractive, shrink into utter and absolute insignificance. Facts and events have nothing but a relative importance. They are important, only in proportion as they tell upon the invisible and deathless being within us; in

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proportion as they help to create or consolidate habits, to mould and establish character, and to put upon it the final seal of its eternal destiny. How awfully momentous, when the delusive mists of time are dissipated, may the smallest occurrences be discovered to have been! — how perfectly trivial and how transitory the dominion of the greatest!

Lune Bank, Lancaster, 18th Jan. 1841.