Mr. Boardman’s life was now fast ebbing away.  In September, 1830, he had written a sort of farewell to his parents, brothers and sisters, from which it appears that even then he was daily looking for the summons—­“Come up hither.”  He says of this letter that it is his last farewell.  He thanks God that he has his complaint—­consumption—­in its mildest form.  He enumerates many circumstances of mercy with which he is favored; and adds:  “But most of all for outward comfort, I have my beloved wife, whose most untiring assiduity has mitigated many of my pains, and who is ever prompt to render all the services that the purest affection can dictate, or the greatest sufferings require.  And it deserves to be mentioned that she has never been so free from missionary and family cares, or from attacks of illness, as during the last three months, while I have most needed her kind and soothing attentions.  Bless the Lord oh my soul, and praise his name!”

“In thinking,” he adds, “on the probability of dying soon, two or three things occasion considerable unwillingness to meet the solemn event.  One is, the sore affliction I know it will occasion to my dear family, especially my fond, too fond wife.  Her heart will be well-nigh riven.  But I must leave her with Him who is anointed to heal the broken-hearted and to bind up their wounds.  My dear little son is too young to remember me long, or to realize his loss.  I have prayed for him many times, and can leave him in my Heavenly Father’s hands....  Then there are the perishing heathens around me....  During the last ten years, I have studied with more or less reference to being useful to the heathen.  And now, if just as I am beginning to be qualified to labor a little among them my days are cut short, much of my study and preparation seems to be in vain.  But I chide myself for saying so or thinking so.  If I had done no good whatever here in Burmah, I ought to submit and be still under the hand of God, ... but I trust He has made me of some service to a few poor benighted souls, especially among the Karens, who shall be my glory and joy in the day of the Lord Jesus.”  “As to my hope and my confidence of acceptance with God, if any man has reason to renounce all his own righteousness, ... and to trust entirely and solely to grace, sovereign grace, flowing through an atoning Saviour, I am that man.  A perfectly right action, with perfectly right motives, I never performed, and never shall perform, till freed from this body of sin.  An unprofitable servant, is the most appropriate epitaph for my tombstone.”

Thus appeared a life of self-denying sacrifices for Christ, when shone upon by the pure light of eternity.  Happy then that the dying man could say, “NOT by works of righteousness which we have done but by his mercy he saves us!”

CHAPTER XI.

LETTER FROM MRS. BOARDMAN.—­ILLNESS AND DEATH OF GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN.