Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/85

Rh not change incumbents with successive administrations, and he might have enjoyed its honors and emoluments for life, as did his predecessors. Many a rising lawyer would have preferred this post to the Presidency, But when called to be Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, he gave up all hopes of worldly distinction, and devoted himself to a life of most faithful and self-denying labor. When asked why he had given up a post so honorable and so lucrative, he answered that he “chose the place in which there would be the most sacrifice and the best prospect of usefulness for Christ.”

Mr. Carter writes of him:—

“There was another friend to whom I owed much, the Hon. Walter Lowrie. When he came to New York, in 1837, I was glad to welcome him. I was then poor, and could contribute little to the cause of Foreign Missions; but it gave me great pleasure to aid him in any way I could to commence his blessed work. He had resigned a high position in Congress to devote his life to the work of our blessed Lord in foreign lands. He sent one son to India, another to China, and when the latter was murdered by pirates in the China Seas, he sent a second son there. I remember well the morning when the tidings came that Walter, a most promising missionary, had gone to visit Bishop Boone to confer with him on the translation of the Bible into Chinese. On his return a piratical band attacked the ship in which he sailed. Walter was reading his Bible on deck. They seized him and cast him overboard. He sank and rose again more than once, and then sank to rise no more. The ripe scholar, the devoted missionary, the eloquent preacher, was no more on earth. When the letter was read before our Board, we sat in silence,