Priest Of The Congregation Of St. Paul. 
With A Memoir Of His Life


Preface

In offering the Memoir and Sermons of this volume to the friends of F. Baker, and to the public, propriety requires of me a few words of explanation. The number of those who have been more or less interested in the events touched upon in the sketch of his life and labors is very great, and composed of many different classes of persons in various places, and of more than one religious communion. I cannot suppose that all of them will read these pages, but it is likely that many will; and therefore a word is due to those who are more particularly interested, as well as to the general class of readers. I have to ask the indulgence of all my readers for having interwoven so much of my own history and my own reflections on the topics and events of the period included within the limits of the narrative. They have woven themselves in spontaneously, without any intention on my part, and on account of the close connexion between myself and the one whose career I have been describing; and I have been unable to unravel them from the texture of the narrative without breaking its threads.

In narrating events connected with F. Baker's varied career, I have simply related those things of which I have had either personal knowledge, or the evidence furnished by his own correspondence with a very dear friend, aided by the information which that friend has furnished me. I have to thank this very kind and valued friend, the Rev. Dwight E. Lyman, for the aid he has given me in this way, which has increased so much the completeness and interest of the Memoir. I am also indebted to another, still dearer to the departed, for information concerning his early history and family.