Extract from a letter written by his son to the Secretary of the
London Missionary Society.
_Canton, August 17th, 1834._
"MY DEAR SIR,--How shall I tell you that my beloved father--that the
father of the Chinese Mission--Dr. Morrison, is no more! Scarce can the
announcement come to you more suddenly than the event did to me. My dear
father had, indeed, been long unwell, and was greatly debilitated by
disease; but we had not, within an hour of his peaceful end, much
apprehension that he was likely to be so soon taken away from us. The
pallid cheek and glazed eye, quickly succeeded by failure of speech,
were the first intimations to us that he had heard his Saviour say,
'This night shalt thou be with me in paradise.' At about ten at night,
on the 1st of the present month,[A] while yet in the hands of the
physicians, who in vain endeavoured to restore warmth and pulsation, he
gently breathed out his spirit, without a struggle or a groan. And oh!
the recollection of the many preceding days, spent by him in pain and
extreme weakness, compels me to rejoice, even amidst my utmost grief,
that he has been released from sin and sorrow, has rested from his
labours, and shall henceforth be for ever with the Lord. In a letter,
written not long before his death, he spoke of his apprehension that his
work was finished, expressing his gratitude to God for what he had been
permitted to accomplish for the Redeemer's cause; adding, that he knew
but of two surviving missionary seniors, Drs. Carey and Marshman. I have
this morning learned, with great sorrow, that about the time he wrote
that letter, the venerable Carey also was called home.
[Footnote A: _The First of August, 1834_, that memorable day in the
annals of our country, when the sun neither set nor rose upon A SLAVE
throughout all her vast dominions.]
JOHN BROADLEY WILSON, ESQ.
(_From the Patriot._)
Died, on Monday evening, the 16th Feb., at his house on Clapham Common,
aged 70, John Broadley Wilson, Esq. well known and universally esteemed
as an eminently devout Christian, and most liberal supporter of the
cause of the Christian religion in every section of the church. His
illness was of very short duration; an attack of paralysis on Saturday,
the 14th, the effects of which no medical skill was permitted to remove,
being the appointed messenger to convey him into the presence of the
Saviour he ardently loved, and in whose service it was his supreme
delight to spend and be spent. Mr. Wilson was connected, more or less,
with a great number of religious and charitable institutions; to the
Religious Tract Society, and the Baptist Missionary Society, he stood in
the relation of Treasurer, and each of these valuable Societies will
have to mourn, not merely the loss of his munificent donations, but also
of his judicious counsels and holy example. We trust some authentic
account of this eminent philanthropist will be prepared, to edify the
world which has sustained so great a loss by his removal; but we could
not forbear inserting this hasty tribute of immediate respect to the
memory of a man, whom to know was to love, venerate, and admire.