



Produced by Free Elf, Anne Storer and the Online Distributed
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 Transcriber's Notes:
 1) Mousul/Mosul, piastre/piaster, Shiraz/Sheeraz,
    Itch-Meeazin/Ech-Miazin/Etchmiazin,
    each used on numerous occasions;
 2) Arnaouts/Arnaoots, Dr. Beagrie/Dr. Beagry,
    Beirout/Bayrout/Beyraut(x2), Saltett/Sallett,
    Shanakirke/Shammakirke, Trebizond/Trebisand - once each.
 All left as in original text.

 3) M^R = a superscripted "R".


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 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.


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INTRODUCTION.


This little work needs nothing from us to recommend it to attention.
In its incidents it presents more that is keenly interesting, both to
the natural and to the spiritual feelings, than it would have been
easy to combine in the boldest fiction. And then it is not fiction.
The manner in which the story is told leaves realities unencumbered,
to produce their own impression. It might gratify the imagination, and
even aid in enlarging our practical views, to consider such scenes as
possible, and to fancy in what spirit a Christian might meet them; but
it extends our experience, and invigorates our faith, to know that,
having actually taken place, it is thus that they have been met.

The first missionaries were wont, at intervals, to return from their
foreign labours, and relate to those 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 affectionate concern
about the individuals, and about the cause, in the narrative of Paul
and Barnabas. Nor would the states of mind experienced, and the spirit
manifested, by the narrators themselves be less instructive, than the
various reception of their message by various hearers. In these pages,
in like manner, Mr. Groves contributes to the good of the Church, an
important fruit of his mission, were it to yield no other. He had cast
himself upon the Lord. To Him he had left it to direct his path; to
give him what things He knew he had need of, and whether outward
prospects were bright or gloomy, to be the strength of his heart and
his portion for ever. The publication of his former little Journal was
the erection of his Eben Ezer. Hitherto, said he to us in England, the
Lord hath helped me. And now, after a prolonged residence among a
people with whom, in natural things, he can have no communion, and
who, towards his glad tidings of salvation, are as apathetic as is
compatible with the bitterest contempt; after having had, during many
weeks, his individual share of the suffering, and his mind worn with
the spectacle, of a city strangely visited at once with plague, and
siege, and inundation, and internal tumult; widowed, and not without
experience of "flesh and heart fainting and failing," he again
"blesses God for all the way he has led him,"[1] tells us that "the
Lord's great care over him in the abundant provision for all his
necessities, enables him yet further to sing of his goodness;"[2] and
while his situation makes him say, "what a place would this be to be
alone in now" if without God, he adds, "but with Him, this is better
than the garden of Eden."[3] "The Lord is my only stay, my only
support; and He is a support indeed."[4]

It is remarkable, that at a time when the fear of pestilence has
agitated the people of this country, and when the tottering fabric of
society threatens to hurl down upon us as dire a confusion as that
which has surrounded our brother, in a country hitherto regarded so
remote from all comparison with our own; at a time when the records of
the seasons at which the terrible voice of God has sounded loudest in
our capital, are republished as appropriate to the contemplation of
Christians at the existing crisis;[5]--this volume should have been
brought before the Public, by circumstances quite unconnected with
this train of God's dealings and threatenings to our land. The
Christians of Britain ought to consider, that there is a warning voice
of Providence, not only in the tumults of the people, and in the
terrors of the cholera around them, but even in the publication of
this Journal. It is not for nothing that God has moved Mr. Groves, as
it were, to an advanced post, where he might encounter the enemy
before them. The alarm may have, in a measure, subsided,[6] but if the
people of God are to be ever patiently waiting for the coming of their
conquering King, this implies a patient preparedness for those signs
of his coming, the clouds and darkness that are to go before him, in
the very midst of which they must be able to lift up their heads
because their redemption draweth nigh. To provide for the worst
contingencies is a virtue, not a weakness, in the soldier. That
Christian will not keep his garments who forgets, that in this life,
he is a soldier always. No army is so orderly in peace, or so
triumphant upon lesser assaults, as that which is ready always
for the extremest exigencies of war.

To those who are looking for the glorious appearing of our great God
and Saviour, Jesus Christ, this volume will exhibit indications of the
advancement of the world towards the state in which he shall find it
at his coming. The diffusion in the east of European notions and
practices; the desire on the part of the rulers to possess themselves
of the advantages of western intellect and skill; and on the side of
the governed, the conviction of the comparative security and comfort
of English domination; the vastly increased intercourse between those
nations and the west, and the proposals for still further accelerating
and facilitating that intercourse: all these things mark the rapid
tendency, of which we have so many other signs, towards the production
of one common mind throughout the human race, to issue in that
combination for a common resistance of God, which, as of old, when
the people were one, and had all one language, and it seemed that
nothing could be restrained from them which they had imagined to
do,--shall cause the Lord to come down and confound their purpose.
Already has this unity of views and aims, with marvellous rapidity,
prevailed in the European and American world; the press, the
steam-engine by land and water, the multiplication of societies
and unions, portend an advancement in it, to which nothing can
set limits but the intervention of God: and now it appears that
the mountain-fixedness of Asiatic prejudice and institution shall
suddenly be dissolved, and absorbed into the general vortex.

And to those who may have suspected, that the prospect of the return
of Jesus of Nazareth to our earth for vengeance and expurgation of
evil first, and then for occupation of rule, _under_ the face of the
whole heaven