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Life of William Carey

George Smith

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The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary

by George Smith

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This Etext was created by John Bechard, London, England

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{Note: I have had to insert a view comments mainly in regards to

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The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary

by George Smith

This Etext was created by John Bechard, London, England

(JaBBechar[email protected])

{Note from the preparer of this etext: I have had to insert a view

comments mainly in regards to adjustments to fonts to allow for some

of the characters in the Indian names; you will find any of my own

notes enclosed in these brackets--{}. I have also renumbered the

footnotes and placed them at the end of this e-text, removing them

from within the document where they fell at the end of each

corresponding page.}

PREFACE

On the death of William Carey In 1834 Dr. Joshua Marshman promised

to write the Life of his great colleague, with whom he had held

almost daily converse since the beginning of the century, but he

survived too short a time to begin the work. In 1836 the Rev.

Eustace Carey anticipated him by issuing what is little better than

a selection of mutilated letters and journals made at the request of

the Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society. It contains one

passage of value, however. Dr. Carey once said to his nephew, whose

design he seems to have suspected, "Eustace, if after my removal any

one should think it worth his while to write my Life, I will give

you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he

give me credit for being a plodder he will describe me justly.

Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can

persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything."

In 1859 Mr. John Marshman, after his final return to England,

published The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, a

valuable history and defence of the Serampore Mission, but rather a

biography of his father than of Carey.

When I first went to Serampore the great missionary had not been

twenty years dead. During my long residence there as Editor of the

Friend of India, I came to know, in most of its details, the nature

of the work done by Carey for India and for Christendom in the first

third of the century. I began to collect such materials for his

Biography as were to be found in the office, the press, and the

college, and among the Native Christians and Brahman pundits whom he

had influenced. In addition to such materials and experience I have

been favoured with the use of many unpublished letters written by

Carey or referring to him; for which courtesy I here desire to thank

Mrs. S. Carey, South Bank, Red Hill; Frederick George Carey, Esq.,

LL.B., of Lincoln's Inn; and the Rev. Jonathan P. Carey of Tiverton.

My Biographies of Carey of Serampore, Henry Martyn, Duff of

Calcutta, and Wilson of Bombay, cover a period of nearly a century

and a quarter, from 1761 to 1878. They have been written as

contributions to that history of the Christian Church of India which

one of its native sons must some day attempt; and to the history of

English-speaking peoples, whom the Foreign Missions begun by Carey

have made the rulers and civilisers of the non-Christian world.

CONTENTS

I. CAREY'S COLLEGE

II. THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS

III. INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT

IV. SIX YEARS IN NORTH BENGAL--MISSIONARY AND INDIGO PLANTER

V. THE NEW CRUSADE--SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD

VI. THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

VII. CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO AMBOYNA

VIII. CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS

IX. PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI

X. THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST--BIBLE TRANSLATION

XI. WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY

XII. WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE--FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA

XIII. CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA

XIV. CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR--THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN THE EAST

XV. CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA

XVI. CAREY'S LAST DAYS

APPENDIX

LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.

CHAPTER I

CAREY'S COLLEGE

1761-1785

The Heart of England--The Weaver Carey who became a Peer, and the

weaver who was father of William Carey--Early training in

Paulerspury--Impressions made by him on his sister--On his

companions and the villagers--His experience as son of the parish

clerk--Apprenticed to a shoemaker of Hackleton--Poverty--Famous

shoemakers from Annianus and Crispin to Hans Sachs and

Whittier--From Pharisaism to Christ--The last shall be first--The

dissenting preacher in the parish clerk's home--He studies Latin,

Greek and Hebrew, Dutch and French--The cobbler's shed is Carey's

College.

William Carey, the first of her own children of the Reformation whom

England sent forth as a missionary to India, where he became the

most extensive translator of the Bible and civiliser, was the son of

a weaver, and was himself a village shoemaker till he was

twenty-eight years of age. He was born on the 17th August 1761, in

the very midland of England, in the heart of the district which had

produced Shakspere, had fostered Wyclif and Hooker, had bred Fox and

Bunyan, and had for a time been the scene of the lesser lights of

John Mason and Doddridge, of John Newton and Thomas Scott. William

Cowper, the poet of missions, made the land his chosen home, writing

Hope and The Task in Olney, while the shoemaker was studying

theology under Sutcliff on the opposite side of the market-place.

Thomas Clarkson, born a year before Carey, was beginning his

assaults on the slave-trade by translating into English his Latin

essay on the day-star of African liberty when the shoemaker, whom no

university knew, was writing his Enquiry into the Obligations of

Christians to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens.

William Carey bore a name which had slowly fallen into forgetfulness

after services to the Stewarts, with whose cause it had been

identified. Professor Stephens, of Copenhagen, traces it to the

Scando-Anglian Car, CAER or CARE, which became a place-name as

CAR-EY. Among scores of neighbours called William, William of

Car-ey would soon sink into Carey, and this would again become the

family name. In Denmark the name Car e is common. The oldest?

English instance is the Cariet who coined money in London for

?thelred II. in 1016. Certainly the name, through its forms of

Crew, Carew, Carey, and Cary, still prevails on the Irish

coast--from which depression of trade drove the family first to

Yorkshire, then to the Northamptonshire village of Yelvertoft, and

finally to Paulerspury, farther south--as well as over the whole

Danegelt from Lincolnshire to Devonshire. If thus there was Norse

blood in William Carey it came out in his persistent missionary

daring, and it is pleasant even to speculate on the possibility of

such an origin in one who was all his Indian life indebted to

Denmark for the protection which alone made his career possible.

The Careys who became famous in English history sprang from Devon.

For two and a half centuries, from the second Richard to the second

Charles, they gave statesmen and soldiers, scholars and bishops, to

the service of their country. Henry Carey, first cousin of Queen

Elizabeth, was the common ancestor of two ennobled houses long since

extinct--the Earls of Dover and the Earls of Monmouth. A third

peerage won by the Careys has been made historic by the patriotic

counsels and self-sacrificing fate of Viscount Falkland, whose

representative was Governor of Bombay for a time. Two of the heroic

Falkland's descendants, aged ladies, addressed a pathetic letter to

Parliament about the time that the great missionary died, praying

that they might not be doomed to starvation by being deprived of a

crown pension of 80 a year. The older branch of the Careys also?

had fallen on evil times, and it became extinct while the future

missionary was yet four years old. The seventh lord was a weaver

when he succeeded to the title, and he died childless. The eighth

was a Dutchman who had to be naturalised, and he was the last. The

Careys fell lower still. One of them bore to the brilliant and

reckless Marquis of Halifax, Henry Carey, who wrote one of the few

English ballads that live. Another, the poet's granddaughter, was

the mother of Edmund Kean, and he at first was known by her name on

the stage.

At that time when the weaver became the lord the grandfather of the

missionary was parish clerk and first schoolmaster of the village of

Paulerspury, eleven miles south of Northampton, and near the ancient

posting town of Towcester, on the old Roman road from London to

Chester. The free school was at the east or "church end" of the

village, which, after crossing the old Watling Street, straggles for

a mile over a sluggish burn to the "Pury end." One son, Thomas, had

enlisted and was in Canada. Edmund Carey, the second, set up the

loom on which he wove the woollen cloth known as "tammy," in a

two-storied cottage. There his eldest child, WILLIAM, was born, and

lived for six years till his father was appointed schoolmaster, when

the family removed to the free schoolhouse. The cottage was

demolished in 1854 by one Richard Linnell, who placed on the still

meaner structure now occupying the site the memorial slab that

guides many visitors to the spot. The schoolhouse, in which William

Carey spent the eight most important years of his childhood till he

was fourteen, and the school made way for the present pretty

buildings.

The village surroundings and the country scenery coloured the whole

of the boy's after life, and did much to make him the first

agricultural improver and naturalist of Bengal, which he became.

The lordship of Pirie, as it was called by Gitda, its Saxon owner,

was given by the Conqueror, with much else, to his natural son,

William Peverel, as we see from the Domesday survey. His

descendants passed it on to Robert de Paveli, whence its present

name, but in Carey's time it was held by the second Earl Bathurst,

who was Lord Chancellor. Up to the very schoolhouse came the royal

forest of Whittlebury, its walks leading north to the woods of

Salcey, of Yardley Chase and Rockingham, from the beeches which give

Buckingham its name. Carey must have often sat under the Queen's

Oak, still venerable in its riven form, where Edward IV., when

hunting, first saw Elizabeth, unhappy mother of the two princes

murdered in the Tower. The silent robbery of the people's rights

called "inclosures" has done much, before and since Carey's time, to

sweep away or shut up the woodlands. The country may be less

beautiful, while the population has grown so that Paulerspury has

now nearly double the eight hundred inhabitants of a century ago.

But its oolitic hills, gently swelling to above 700 feet, and the

valleys of the many rivers which flow from this central watershed,

west and east, are covered with fat vegetation almost equally

divided between grass and corn, with green crops. The many large

estates are rich in gardens and orchards. The farmers, chiefly on

small holdings, are famous for their shorthorns and Leicester sheep.

Except for the rapidly-developing production of iron from the Lias,

begun by the Romans, there is but one manufacture--that of shoes.

It is now centred by modern machinery and labour arrangements in

Northampton itself, which has 24,000 shoemakers, and in the other

towns, but a century ago the craft was common to every hamlet. For

botany and agriculture, however, Northamptonshire was the finest

county in England, and young Carey had trodden many a mile of it, as

boy and man, before he left home for ever for Bengal.

Two unfinished autobiographical sketches, written from India at the

request of Fuller and of Ryland, and letters of his youngest sister

Mary, his favourite "Polly" who survived him, have preserved for us

in still vivid characters the details of the early training of

William Carey. He was the eldest of five children. He was the

special care of their grandmother, a woman of a delicate nature and

devout habits, who closed her sad widowhood in the weaver-son's

cottage. Encompassed by such a living influence the grandson spent

his first six years. Already the child unconsciously showed the

eager thirst for knowledge, and perseverance in attaining his

object, which made him chiefly what he became. His mother would

often be awoke in the night by the pleasant lisping of a voice

"casting accompts; so intent was he from childhood in the pursuit of

knowledge. Whatever he began he finished; difficulties never seemed

to discourage his mind." On removal to the ancestral schoolhouse

the boy had a room to himself. His sister describes it as full of

insects stuck in every corner that he might observe their progress.

His many birds he entrusted to her care when he was from home. In

this picture we see the exact foreshadowing of the man. "Though I

often used to kill his birds by kindness, yet when he saw my grief

for it he always indulged me with the pleasure of serving them

again; and often took me over the dirtiest roads to get at a plant

or an insect. He never walked out, I think, when quite a boy,

without observation on the hedges as he passed; and when he took up

a plant of any kind he always observed it with care. Though I was

but a child I well remember his pursuits. He always seemed in

earnest in his recreations as well as in school. He was generally

one of the most active in all the amusements and recreations that

boys in general pursue. He was always beloved by the boys about his

own age." To climb a certain tree was the object of their ambition;

he fell often in the attempt, but did not rest till he had

succeeded. His Uncle Peter was a gardener in the same village, and

gave him his first lessons in botany and horticulture. He soon

became responsible for his father's official garden, till it was the

best kept in the neighbourhood. Wherever after that he lived, as

boy or man, poor or in comfort, William Carey made and perfected his

garden, and always for others, until he created at Serampore the

botanical park which for more than half a century was unique in

Southern Asia.

We have in a letter from the Manse, Paulerspury, a tradition of the

impression made on the dull rustics by the dawning genius of the

youth whom they but dimly comprehended. He went amongst them under

the nickname of Columbus, and they would say, "Well, if you won't

play, preach us a sermon," which he would do. Mounting on an old

dwarf witch-elm about seven feet high, where several could sit, he

would hold forth. This seems to have been a resort of his for

reading, his favourite occupation. The same authority tells how,

when suffering toothache, he allowed his companions to drag the

tooth from his head with a violent jerk, by tying around it a string

attached to a wheel used to grind malt, to which they gave a sharp

turn.

The boy's own peculiar room was a little library as well as museum

of natural history. He possessed a few books, which indeed were

many for those days, but he borrowed more from the whole

country-side. Recalling the eight years of his intellectual

apprenticeship till he was fourteen, from the serene height of his

missionary standard, he wrote long after:--"I chose to read books of

science, history, voyages, etc., more than any others. Novels and

plays always disgusted me, and I avoided them as much as I did books

of religion, and perhaps from the same motive. I was better pleased

with romances, and this circumstance made me read the Pilgrim's

Progress with eagerness, though to no purpose." The new era, of

which he was to be the aggressive spiritual representative from

Christendom, had not dawned. Walter Scott was ten years his junior.

Captain Cook had not discovered the Sandwich Islands, and was only

returning from the second of his three voyages while Carey was still

at school. The church services and the watchfulness of his father

supplied the directly moral training which his grandmother had

begun.

The Paulerspury living of St. James is a valuable rectory in the

gift of New College, Oxford. Originally built in Early English, and

rebuilt in 1844, the church must have presented a still more

venerable appearance a century ago than it does now, with its noble

tower in the Perpendicular, and chancel in the Decorated style,

dominating all the county. Then, as still, effigies of a Paveli and

his wife, and of Sir Arthur Throckmorton and his wife recumbent head

to head, covered a large altar-tomb in the chancel, and with the

Bathurst and other monuments called forth first the fear and then

the pride of the parish clerk's eldest son. In those days the clerk

had just below the pulpit the desk from which his sonorous "Amen"

sounded forth, while his family occupied a low gallery rising from

the same level up behind the pulpit. There the boys of the free

school also could be under the master's eye, and with instruments of

music like those of King David, but now banished from even village

churches, would accompany him in the doggerel strains of Sternhold

and Hopkins, immortalised by Cowper. To the far right the boys

could see and long for the ropes under the tower, in which the

bell-ringers of his day, as of Bunyan's not long before, delighted.

The preaching of the time did nothing more for young Carey than for

the rest of England and Scotland, whom the parish church had not

driven into dissent or secession. But he could not help knowing the

Prayer-Book, and especially its psalms and lessons, and he was duly

confirmed. The family training, too, was exceptionally scriptural,

though not evangelical. "I had many stirrings of mind occasioned by

being often obliged to read books of a religious character; and,

having been accustomed from my infancy to read the Scriptures, I had

a considerable acquaintance therewith, especially with the

historical parts." The first result was to make him despise

dissenters. But, undoubtedly, this eldest son of the schoolmaster

and the clerk of the parish had at fourteen received an education

from parents, nature, and books which, with his habits of

observation, love of reading, and perseverance, made him better

instructed than most boys of fourteen far above the peasant class to

which he belonged.

Buried in this obscure village in the dullest period of the dullest

of all centuries, the boy had no better prospect before him than

that of a weaver or labourer, or possibly a schoolmaster like one of

his uncles in the neighbouring town of Towcester. When twelve years

of age, with his uncle there, he might have formed one of the crowd

which listened to John Wesley, who, in 1773 and then aged seventy,

visited the prosperous posting town. Paulerspury could indeed boast

of one son, Edward Bernard, D.D., who, two centuries before, had

made for himself a name in Oxford, where he was Savilian Professor

of Astronomy. But Carey was not a Scotsman, and therefore the

university was not for such as he. Like his school-fellows, he

seemed born to the English labourer's fate of five shillings a week,

and the poorhouse in sickness and old age. From this, in the first

instance, he was saved by a disease which affected his face and

hands most painfully whenever he was long exposed to the sun. For

seven years he had failed to find relief. His attempt at work in

the field were for two years followed by distressing agony at night.

He was now sixteen, and his father sought out a good man who would

receive him as apprentice to the shoemaking trade. The man was not

difficult to find, in the hamlet of Hackleton, nine miles off, in

the person of one Clarke Nichols. The lad afterwards described him

as "a strict churchman and, what I thought, a very moral man. It is

true he sometimes drank rather too freely, and generally employed me

in carrying out goods on the Lord's Day morning; but he was an

inveterate enemy to lying, a vice to which I was awfully addicted."

The senior apprentice was a dissenter, and the master and his boys

gave much of the talk over their work to disputes upon religious

subjects. Carey "had always looked upon dissenters with contempt.

I had, moreover, a share of pride sufficient for a thousand times

my knowledge; I therefore always scorned to have the worst in an

argument, and the last word was assuredly mine. I also made up in

positive assertion what was wanting in argument, and generally came

off with triumph. But I was often convinced afterwards that

although I had the last word my antagonist had the better of the

argument, and on that account felt a growing uneasiness and stings

of conscience gradually increasing." The dissenting apprentice was

soon to be the first to lead him to Christ.

William Carey was a shoemaker during the twelve years of his life

from sixteen to twenty-eight, till he went to Leicester. Poverty,

which the grace of God used to make him a preacher also from his

eighteenth year, compelled him to work with his hands in leather all

the week, and to tramp many a weary mile to Northampton and

Kettering carrying the product of his labour. At one time, when

minister of Moulton, he kept a school by day, made or cobbled shoes

by night, and preached on Sunday. So Paul had made tents of his

native Cilician goatskin in the days when infant Christianity was

chased from city to city, and the cross was a reproach only less

bitter, however, than evangelical dissent in Christian England in

the eighteenth century. The providence which made and kept young

Carey so long a shoemaker, put him in the very position in which he

could most fruitfully receive and nurse the sacred fire that made

him the most learned scholar and Bible translator of his day in the

East. The same providence thus linked him to the earliest Latin

missionaries of Alexandria, of Asia Minor, and of Gaul, who were

shoemakers, and to a succession of scholars and divines, poets and

critics, reformers and philanthropists, who have used the

shoemaker's life to become illustrious.1 St. Mark chose for his

successor, as first bishop of Alexandria, that Annianus whom he had

been the means of converting to Christ when he found him at the

cobbler's stall. The Talmud commemorates the courage and the wisdom

of "Rabbi Jochanan, the shoemaker," whose learning soon after found

a parallel in Carey's. Like Annianus, "a poor shoemaker named

Alexander, despised in the world but great in the sight of God, who

did honour to so exalted a station in the Church," became famous as

Bishop of Comana in Cappadocia, as saint, preacher, and

missionary-martyr. Soon after there perished in the persecutions of

Diocletian, at Soissons, the two missionary brothers whose name of

Crispin has ever since been gloried in by the trade, which they

chose at once as a means of livelihood and of helping their poor

converts. The Hackleton apprentice was still a child when the great

Goethe was again adding to the then artificial literature of his

country his own true predecessor, Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of

N rnberg, the friend of Luther, the meistersinger of the?

Reformation. And it was another German shoemaker, Boehme, whose

exalted theosophy as expounded by William Law became one link in the

chain that drew Carey to Christ, as it influenced Wesley and

Whitefield, Samuel Johnson and Coleridge. George Fox was only

nineteen when, after eight years' service with a shoemaker in

Drayton, Leicestershire, not far from Carey's county, he heard the

voice from heaven which sent him forth in 1643 to preach

righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, till Cromwell

sought converse with him, and the Friends became a power among men.

Carlyle has, in characteristic style, seized on the true meaning

that was in the man when he made to himself a suit of leather and

became the modern hero of Sartor Resartus. The words fit William

Carey's case even better than that of George Fox:--"Sitting in his

stall, working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin,

swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had

nevertheless a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique

Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look

upwards and discern its celestial Home." That "shoe-shop, had men

known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or

Loretto-shrine...Stitch away, every prick of that little instrument

is pricking into the heart of slavery." Thirty-six years after Fox

had begun to wear his leathern doublet he directed all Friends

everywhere that had Indians or blacks to preach the Gospel to them.

But it would be too long to tell the list of workers in what has

been called the gentle craft, whom the cobbler's stall, with its

peculiar opportunities for rhythmic meditation, hard thinking, and

oft harder debating, has prepared for the honours of literature and

scholarship, of philanthropy and reform. To mention only Carey's

contemporaries, the career of these men ran parallel at home with

his abroad--Thomas Shillitoe, who stood before magistrates, bishops,

and such sovereigns as George III. and IV. and the Czar Alexander I.

in the interests of social reform; and John Pounds, the picture of

whom as the founder of ragged schools led Thomas Guthrie, when he

stumbled on it in an inn in Anstruther, to do the same Christlike

work in Scotland. Coleridge, who when at Christ's Hospital was

ambitious to be a shoemaker's apprentice, was right when he declared

that shoemakers had given to the world a larger number of eminent

men than any other handicraft. Whittier's own early experience in

Massachusetts fitted him to be the poet-laureate of the craft which

for some years he adorned. His Songs of Labour, published in 1850,

contain the best English lines on shoemakers since Shakspere put

into the mouth of King Henry V. the address on the eve of Agincourt,

which begins: "This day is called the feast of Crispin." But

Whittier, Quaker, philanthropist, and countryman of Judson though he

was, might have found a place for Carey when he sang so well of

others:--

"Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet,

In strong and hearty German;

And Bloomfield's lay and Gifford's wit

And patriot fame of Sherman;

"Still from his book, a mystic seer,

The soul of Behmen teaches,

And England's priestcraft shakes to hear

Of Fox's leathern breeches."

The confessions of Carey, made in the spiritual humility and

self-examination of his later life, form a parallel to the Grace

Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the little classic of John Bunyan

second only to his Pilgrim's Progress. The young Pharisee, who

entered Hackleton with such hate in his heart to dissenters that he

would have destroyed their meeting-place, who practised "lying,

swearing, and other sins," gradually yielded so far to his brother

apprentice's importunity as to leave these off, to try to pray

sometimes when alone, to attend church three times a day, and to

visit the dissenting prayer-meeting. Like the zealot who thought to

do God service by keeping the whole law, Carey lived thus for a

time, "not doubting but this would produce ease of mind and make me

acceptable to God." What revealed him to himself was an incident

which he tells in language recalling at once Augustine and one of

the subtlest sketches of George Eliot, in which the latter uses her

half-knowledge of evangelical faith to stab the very truth that

delivered Paul and Augustine, Bunyan and Carey, from the

antinomianism of the Pharisee:--

"A circumstance which I always reflect on with a mixture of horror

and gratitude occurred about this time, which, though greatly to my

dishonour, I must relate. It being customary in that part of the

country for apprentices to collect Christmas boxes [donations] from

the tradesmen with whom their masters have dealings, I was permitted

to collect these little sums. When I applied to an ironmonger, he

gave me the choice of a shilling or a sixpence; I of course chose

the shilling, and putting it in my pocket, went away. When I had

got a few shillings my next care was to purchase some little

articles for myself, I have forgotten what. But then, to my sorrow,

I found that my shilling was a brass one. I paid for the things

which I bought by using a shilling of my master's. I now found that

I had exceeded my stock by a few pence. I expected severe

reproaches from my master, and therefore came to the resolution to

declare strenuously that the bad money was his. I well remember the

struggles of mind which I had on this occasion, and that I made this

deliberate sin a matter of prayer to God as I passed over the fields

towards home! I there promised that, if God would but get me

clearly over this, or, in other words, help me through with the

theft, I would certainly for the future leave off all evil

practices; but this theft and consequent lying appeared to me so

necessary, that they could not be dispensed with.

"A gracious God did not get me safe through. My master sent the

other apprentice to investigate the matter. The ironmonger

acknowledged the giving me the shilling, and I was therefore exposed

to shame, reproach, and inward remorse, which preyed upon my mind

for a considerable time. I at this time sought the Lord, perhaps

much more earnestly than ever, but with shame and fear. I was quite

ashamed to go out, and never, till I was assured that my conduct was

not spread over the town, did I attend a place of worship.

"I trust that, under these circumstances, I was led to see much more

of myself than I had ever done before, and to seek for mercy with

greater earnestness. I attended prayer-meetings only, however, till

February 10, 1779, which being appointed a day of fasting and

prayer, I attended worship on that day. Mr. Chater

[congregationalist] of Olney preached, but from what text I have

forgotten. He insisted much on following Christ entirely, and

enforced his exhortation with that passage, 'Let us therefore go out

unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.'--Heb. xiii. 13. I

think I had a desire to follow Christ; but one idea occurred to my

mind on hearing those words which broke me off from the Church of

England. The idea was certainly very crude, but useful in bringing

me from attending a lifeless, carnal ministry to one more

evangelical. I concluded that the Church of England, as established

by law, was the camp in which all were protected from the scandal of

the cross, and that I ought to bear the reproach of Christ among the

dissenters; and accordingly I always afterwards attended divine

worship among them."

At eighteen Carey was thus emptied of self and there was room for

Christ. In a neighbouring village he consorted much for a time with

some followers of William Law, who had not long before passed away

in a village in the neighbourhood, and select passages from whose

writings the Moravian minister, Francis Okely, of Northampton, had

versified. These completed the negative process. "I felt ruined and

helpless." Then to his spiritual eyes, purged of self, there

appeared the Crucified One; and to his spiritual intelligence there

was given the Word of God. The change was that wrought on Paul by a

Living Person. It converted the hypocritical Pharisee into the

evangelical preacher; it turned the vicious peasant into the most

self-denying saint; it sent the village shoemaker far off to the

Hindoos.

But the process was slow; it had been so even in Paul's case. Carey

found encouragement in intercourse with some old Christians in

Hackleton, and he united with a few of them, including his

fellow-apprentice, in forming a congregational church. The state of

the parish may be imagined from its recent history. Hackleton is

part of Piddington, and the squire had long appropriated the living

of 300 a year, the parsonage, the glebe, and all tithes, sending?

his house minister "at times" to do duty. A Certificate from

Northamptonshire, against the pluralities and other such scandals,

published in 1641, declared that not a child or servant in Hackleton

or Piddington could say the Lord's Prayer. Carey sought the

preaching of Doddridge's successor at Northampton, of a Baptist

minister at Road, and of Scott the commentator, then at Ravenstone.

He had found peace, but was theologically "inquisitive and

unsatisfied." Fortunately, like Luther, he "was obliged to draw all

from the Bible alone."

When, at twenty years of age, Carey was slowly piecing together "the

doctrines in the Word of God" into something like a system which

would at once satisfy his own spiritual and intellectual needs, and

help him to preach to others, a little volume was published, of

which he wrote:--"I do not remember ever to have read any book with

such raptures." It was Help to Zion's Travellers; being an attempt

to remove various Stumbling-Blocks out of the Way, relating to

Doctrinal, Experimental, and Practical Religion, by Robert Hall. The

writer was the father of the greater Robert Hall, a venerable man,

who, in his village church of Arnsby, near Leicester, had already

taught Carey how to preach. The book is described as an "attempt to

relieve discouraged Christians" in a day of gloominess and

perplexity, that they might devote themselves to Christ through life

as well as be found in Him in death. Carey made a careful synopsis

of it in an exquisitely neat hand on the margin of each page. The

worm-eaten copy, which he treasured even in India, is now deposited

in Bristol College.

A Calvinist of the broad missionary type of Paul, Carey somewhat

suddenly, according to his own account, became a Baptist. "I do not

recollect having read anything on the subject till I applied to Mr.

Ryland, senior, to baptise me. He lent me a pamphlet, and turned me

over to his son," who thus told the story when the Baptist

Missionary Society held its first public meeting in

London:--"October 5th, 1783: I baptised in the river Nen, a little

beyond Dr. Doddridge's meeting-house at Northampton, a poor

journeyman shoemaker, little thinking that before nine years had

elapsed, he would prove the first instrument of forming a society

for sending missionaries from England to preach the gospel to the

heathen. Such, however, as the event has proved, was the purpose of

the Most High, who selected for this work not the son of one of our

most learned ministers, nor of one of the most opulent of our

dissenting gentlemen, but the son of a parish clerk."

The spot may still be visited at the foot of the hill, where the Nen

fed the moat of the old castle, in which many a Parliament sat from

the days of King John. The text of that morning's sermon happened to

be the Lord's saying, "Many first shall be last, and the last

first," which asserts His absolute sovereignty in choosing and in

rewarding His missionaries, and introduces the parable of the

labourers in the vineyard. As Carey wrote in the fulness of his

fame, that the evangelical doctrines continued to be the choice of

his heart, so he never wavered in his preference for the Baptist

division of the Christian host. But from the first he enjoyed the

friendship of Scott and Newton, and of his neighbour Mr. Robinson of

St. Mary's, Leicester, and we shall see him in India the centre of

the Episcopal and Presbyterian chaplains and missionaries from

Martyn Wilson to Lacroix and Duff. His controversial spirit died

with the youthful conceit and self-righteousness of which it is so

often the birth. When at eighteen he learned to know himself, he

became for ever humble. A zeal like that of his new-found Master

took its place, and all the energy of his nature, every moment of

his time, was directed to setting Him forth.

In his monthly visits to the father-house at Paulerspury the new man

in him could not be hid. His sister gives us a vivid sketch of the

lad, whose going over to the dissenters was resented by the formal

and stern clerk, and whose evangelicalism was a reproach to the

others.

"At this time he was increasingly thoughtful, and very was jealous

for the Lord of Hosts. Like Gideon, he seemed for throwing down all

the altars of Baal in one night. When he came home we used to

wonder at the change. We knew that before he was rather inclined to

persecute the faith he now seemed to wish to propagate. At first,

perhaps, his zeal exceeded the bounds of prudence; but he felt the

importance of things we were strangers to, and his natural

disposition was to pursue earnestly what he undertook, so that it

was not to be wondered at, though we wondered at the change. He

stood alone in his father's house for some years. After a time he

asked permission to have family prayer when he came home to see us,

a favour which he very readily had granted. Often have I felt my

pride rise while he was engaged in prayer, at the mention of those

words in Isaiah, 'that all our righteousness was like filthy rags.'

I did not think he thought his so, but looked on me and the family

as filthy, not himself and his party. Oh, what pride is in the

human heart! Nothing but my love to my brother would have kept me

from showing my resentment."

"A few of the friends of religion wished our brother to exercise his

gifts by speaking to a few friends in a house licensed at Pury;

which he did with great acceptance. The next morning a neighbour of

ours, a very pious woman, came in to congratulate my mother on the

occasion, and to speak of the Lord's goodness in calling her son,

and my brother, two such near neighbours, to the same noble calling.

My mother replied, 'What, do you think he will be a preacher?'

'Yes,' she replied, 'and a great one, I think, if spared.' From

that time till he was settled at Moulton he regularly preached once

a month at Pury with much acceptance. He was at that time in his

twentieth year, and married. Our parents were always friendly to

religion; yet, on some accounts, we should rather have wished him to

go from home than come home to preach. I do not think I ever heard

him, though my younger brother and my sister, I think, generally

did. Our father much wished to hear his son, if he could do it

unseen by him or any one. It was not long before an opportunity

offered, and he embraced it. Though he was a man that never

discovered any partiality for the abilities of his children, but

rather sometimes went too far on the other hand, that often tended a

little to discourage them, yet we were convinced that he approved of

what he heard, and was highly gratified by it."

In Hackleton itself his expositions of Scripture were so valued that

the people, he writes, "being ignorant, sometimes applauded to my

great injury." When in poverty, so deep that he fasted all that day

because he had not a penny to buy a dinner, he attended a meeting of

the Association of Baptist Churches at Olney, not far off. There he

first met with his lifelong colleague, the future secretary of the

mission, Andrew Fuller, the young minister of Soham, who preached on

being men in understanding, and there it was arranged that he should

preach regularly to a small congregation at Earls Barton, six miles

from Hackleton. His new-born humility made him unable to refuse the

duty, which he discharged for more than three years while filling

his cobbler's stall at Hackleton all the week, and frequently

preaching elsewhere also. The secret of his power which drew the

Northamptonshire peasants and craftsmen to the feet of their fellow

was this, that he studied the portion of Scripture, which he read

every morning at his private devotions, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

This was Carey's "college." On the death of his first master, when

he was eighteen, he had transferred his apprenticeship to a Mr. T.

Old. Hackleton stands on the high road from Bedford and Olney to

Northampton, and Thomas Scott was in the habit of resting at Mr.

Old's on his not infrequent walks from Olney, where he had succeeded

John Newton. There he had no more attentive listener or intelligent

talker than the new journeyman, who had been more influenced by his

preaching at Ravenstone than by that of any other man. Forty years

after, just before Scott's death, Dr. Ryland gave him this message

from Carey:--"If there be anything of the work of God in my soul, I

owe much of it to his preaching when I first set out in the ways of

the Lord;" to which this reply was sent: "I am surprised as well as

gratified at your message from Dr. Carey. He heard me preach only a

few times, and that as far as I know in my rather irregular

excursions; though I often conversed and prayed in his presence, and

endeavoured to answer his sensible and pertinent inquiries when at

Hackleton. But to have suggested even a single useful hint to such

a mind as his must be considered as a high privilege and matter of

gratitude." Scott had previously written this more detailed account

of his intercourse with the preaching shoemaker, whom he first saw

when he called on Mr. Old to tell him of the welfare of his mother:

"When I went into the cottage I was soon recognised, and Mr. Old

came in, with a sensible-looking lad in his working-dress. I at

first rather wondered to see him enter, as he seemed young, being, I

believe, little of his age. We, however, entered into very

interesting conversation, especially respecting my parishioner,

their relative, and the excellent state of her mind, and the wonder

of divine grace in the conversion of one who had been so very many

years considered as a self-righteous Pharisee. I believe I

endeavoured to show that the term was often improperly applied to

conscientious but ignorant inquirers, who are far from

self-satisfied, and who, when the Gospel is set before them, find

the thing which they had long been groping after. However that may

be, I observed the lad who entered with Mr. Old riveted in attention

with every mark and symptom of intelligence and feeling; saying

little, but modestly asking now and then an appropriate question. I

took occasion, before I went forward, to inquire after him, and

found that, young as he was, he was a member of the church at

Hackleton, and looked upon as a very consistent and promising

character. I lived at Olney till the end of 1785; and in the course

of that time I called perhaps two or three times each year at Mr.

Old's, and was each time more and more struck with the youth's

conduct, though I said little; but, before I left Olney, Mr. Carey

was out of his engagement with Mr. Old. I found also that he was

sent out as a probationary preacher, and preached at Moulton; and I

said to all to whom I had access, that he would, if I could judge,

prove no ordinary man. Yet, though I often met both old Mr. Ryland,

the present Dr. Ryland, Mr. Hall, Mr. Fuller, and knew almost every

step taken in forming your Missionary Society, and though I

sometimes preached very near Moulton, it so happened that I do not

recollect having met with him any more, till he came to my house in

London with Mr. Thomas, to desire me to use what little influence I

had with Charles Grant, Esq., to procure them licence to go in the

Company's ships as missionaries to the British settlements in India,

perhaps in 1792. My little influence was of no avail. What I said

of Mr. Carey so far satisfied Mr. Grant that he said, if Mr. Carey

was going alone, or with one equally to be depended on along with

him, he would not oppose him; but his strong disapprobation of Mr.

T., on what ground I knew not, induced his negative. I believe Mr.

Old died soon after I left Olney, if not just before; and his shop,

which was a little building apart from the house, was suffered to go

to decay. While in this state I several times passed it, and said

to my sons and others with me, that is Mr. Carey's college."

This cobbler's shed which was Carey's college has been since

restored, but two of the original walls still stand, forming the

corner in which he sat, opposite the window that looks out into the

garden he carefully kept. Here, when his second master died, Carey

succeeded to the business, charging himself with the care of the

widow, and marrying the widow's sister, Dorothy or Dolly Placket.

He was only twenty when he took upon himself such burdens, in the

neighbouring church of Piddington, a village to which he afterwards

moved his shop. Never had minister, missionary, or scholar a less

sympathetic mate, due largely to that latent mental disease which in

India carried her off; but for more than twenty years the husband

showed her loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed,

over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own

hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand

Shoes Bought and--,"2 we can realise the low estate to which Carey

fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which

he was called to become the apostle of North India as Schwartz was

of the South.

How was this shed his college? We have seen that he brought with

him from his native village an amount of information, habits of

observation, and a knowledge of books unusual in rustics of that

day, and even of the present time. At twelve he made his first

acquaintance with a language other than his own, when he mastered

the short grammar in Dyche's Latine Vocabulary, and committed nearly

the whole book to memory. When urging him to take the preaching at

Barton, Mr. Sutcliff of Olney gave him Ruddiman's Latin Grammar.

The one alleviation of his lot under the coarse but upright Nichols

was found in his master's small library. There he began to study

Greek. In a New Testament commentary he found Greek words, which he

carefully transcribed and kept until he should next visit home,

where a youth whom dissipation had reduced from college to weaving

explained both the words and their terminations to him. All that he

wanted was such beginnings. Hebrew he seems to have learned by the

aid of the neighbouring ministers; borrowing books from them, and

questioning them "pertinently," as he did Scott.3 At the end of

Hopkins's Three Sermons on the Effects of Sin on the Universe,

preached in 1759, he had made this entry on 9th August

1787--"Gulielm. Careius perlegit." He starved himself to purchase a

few books at the sale which attended Dr. Ryland's removal from

Northampton to Bristol. In an old woman's cottage he found a Dutch

quarto, and from that he so taught himself the language that in 1789

he translated for Ryland a discourse on the Gospel Offer sent to him

by the evangelical Dr. Erskine of Edinburgh. The manuscript is in

an extremely small character, unlike what might have been expected

from one who had wrought with his hands for eight years. French he

acquired, sufficiently for literary purposes, in three weeks from

the French version of Ditton on the Resurrection, which he purchased

for a few coppers. He had the linguistic gift which soon after made

the young carpenter Mezzofanti of Bologna famous and a cardinal.

But the gift would have been buried in the grave of his penury and

his circumstances had his trade been almost any other, and had he

not been impelled by the most powerful of all motives. He never sat

on his stall without his book before him, nor did he painfully toil

with his wallet of new-made shoes to the neighbouring towns or

return with leather without conning over his lately-acquired

knowledge, and making it for ever, in orderly array, his own. He so

taught his evening school and his Sunday congregations that the

teaching to him, like writing to others, stereotyped or lighted up

the truths. Indeed, the school and the cobbling often went on

together--a fact commemorated in the addition to the Hackleton

signboard of the Piddington nail on which he used to fix his thread

while teaching the children.

But that which sanctified and directed the whole throughout a

working life of more than half a century, was the missionary idea

and the missionary consecration. With a caution not often shown at

that time by bishops in laying hands on those whom they had passed

for deacon's orders, the little church at Olney thus dealt with the

Father of Modern Missions before they would recognise his call and

send him out "to preach the gospel wherever God in His providence

might call him:"

"June 17, 1785.--A request from William Carey of Moulton, in

Northamptonshire, was taken into consideration. He has been and

still is in connection with a society of people at Hackleton. He is

occasionally engaged with acceptance in various places in speaking

the Word. He bears a very good moral character. He is desirous of

being sent out from some reputable church of Christ into the work of

the ministry. The principal Question was--'In what manner shall we

receive him? by a letter from the people of Hackleton, or on a

profession of faith, etc.?' The final resolution of it was left to

another church Meeting.

"July 14--Ch. Meeting. W. Carey appeared before the Church, and

having given a satisfactory account of the work of God upon his

soul, he was admitted a member. He had been formerly baptised by

the Rev. Mr. Ryland, jun., of Northampton. He was invited by the

Church to preach in public once next Lord's Day.

"July 17.--Ch. Meeting, Lord's Day Evening. W. Carey, in

consequence of a request from the Church, preached this Evening.

After which it was resolved that he should be allowed to go on

preaching at those places where he has been for some time employed,

and that he should engage again on suitable occasions for some time

before us, in order that farther trial may be made of ministerial

gifts.

"June 16, 1786.--C.M. The case of Bror. Carey was considered, and an

unanimous satisfaction with his ministerial abilities being

expressed, a vote was passed to call him to the Ministry at a proper

time.

"August 10.--Ch. Meeting. This evening our Brother William Carey

was called to the work of the Ministry, and sent out by the Church

to preach the Gospel, wherever God in His providence might call him.

"April 29, 1787.--Ch. M. After the Orde. our Brother William Carey

was dismissed to the Church of Christ at Moulton in Northamptonshire

with a view to his Ordination there."

These were the last years at Olney of William Cowper before he

removed to the Throckmortons' house at Weston village, two miles

distant. Carey must often have seen the poet during the twenty

years which he spent in the corner house of the market-square, and

in the walks around. He must have read the poems of 1782, which for

the first time do justice to missionary enterprise. He must have

hailed what Mrs. Browning calls "the deathless singing" which in

1785, in The Task, opened a new era in English literature. He may

have been fired with the desire to imitate Whitefield, in the

description of whom, though reluctant to name him, Cowper really

anticipated Carey himself:--

"He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame,

His apostolic charity the same;

Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas,

Forsaking country, kindred, friends and ease;

Like him he laboured and, like him, content

To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went."

CHAPTER II

THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS

1785-1792

Moulton the Mission's birthplace--Carey's fever and poverty--His

Moulton school--Fired with the missionary idea--His very large

missionary map--Fuller's confession of the aged and respectable

ministers' opposition--Old Mr. Ryland's rebuke--Driven to publish

his Enquiry--Its literary character--Carey's survey of the world in

1788--His motives, difficulties, and plans--Projects the first

Missionary Society--Contrasted with his predecessors from

Erasmus--Prayer concert begun in Scotland in 1742--Jonathan

Edwards--The Northamptonshire Baptist movement in 1784--Andrew

Fuller--The Baptists, Particular and General--Antinomian and

Socinian extremes opposed to Missions--Met by Fuller's writings and

Clipstone sermon--Carey's agony at continued delay--His work in

Leicester--His sermon at Nottingham--Foundation of Baptist

Missionary Society at last--Kettering and Jerusalem.

The north road, which runs for twelve miles from Northampton to

Kettering, passes through a country known last century for the

doings of the Pytchley Hunt. Stories, by no means exaggerated, of

the deep drinking and deeper play of the club, whose gatehouse now

stands at the entrance of Overstone Park, were rife, when on Lady

Day 1785 William Carey became Baptist preacher of Moulton village,

on the other side of the road. Moulton was to become the birthplace

of the modern missionary idea; Kettering, of evangelical missionary

action.

No man in England had apparently a more wretched lot or more

miserable prospects than he. He had started in life as a journeyman

shoemaker at eighteen, burdened with a payment to his first master's

widow which his own kind heart had led him to offer, and with the

price of his second master's stock and business. Trade was good for

the moment, and he had married, before he was twenty, one who

brought him the most terrible sorrow a man can bear. He had no

sooner completed a large order for which his predecessor had

contracted than it was returned on his hands. From place to place

he wearily trudged, trying to sell the shoes. Fever carried off his

first child and brought himself so near to the grave that he sent

for his mother to help in the nursing. At Piddington he worked

early and late at his garden, but ague, caused by a neighbouring

marsh, returned and left him so bald that he wore a wig thereafter

until his voyage to India. During his preaching for more than three

years at Barton, which involved a walk of sixteen miles, he did not

receive from the poor folks enough to pay for the clothes he wore

out in their service. His younger brother delicately came to his

help, and he received the gift with a pathetic tenderness. But a

calling which at once starved him, in spite of all his method and

perseverance, and cramped the ardour of his soul for service to the

Master who had revealed Himself in him, became distasteful. He

gladly accepted an invitation from the somewhat disorganised church

at Moulton to preach to them. They could offer him only about 10 a?

year, supplemented by 5 from a London fund. But the schoolmaster?

had just left, and Carey saw in that fact a new hope. For a time he

and his family managed to live on an income which is estimated as

never exceeding 36 a year. We find this passage in a printed?

appeal made by the "very poor congregation" for funds to repair and

enlarge the chapel to which the new pastor's preaching had attracted

a crowd:--"The peculiar situation of our minister, Mr. Carey,

renders it impossible for us to send him far abroad to collect the

Contributions of the Charitable; as we are able to raise him but

about Ten Pounds per Annum, so that he is obliged to keep a School

for his Support: And as there are other two Schools in the Town, if

he was to leave Home to collect for the Building, he must probably

quit his Station on his Return, for Want of a Maintenance."

His genial loving-kindness and his fast increasing learning little

fitted him to drill peasant children in the alphabet. "When I kept

school the boys kept me," he used to confess with a merry twinkle.

In all that our Lord meant by it William Carey was a child from

first to last. The former teacher returned, and the poor preacher

again took to shoemaking for the village clowns and the shops in

Kettering and Northampton. His house still stands, one of a row of

six cottages of the dear old English type, with the indispensable

garden behind, and the glad sunshine pouring in through the open

window embowered in roses and honeysuckle.

There, and chiefly in the school-hours as he tried to teach the

children geography and the Bible and was all the while teaching

himself, the missionary idea arose in his mind, and his soul became

fired with the self-consecration, unknown to Wyclif and Hus, Luther

and Calvin, Knox and even Bunyan, for theirs was other work. All

his past knowledge of nature and of books, all his favourite reading

of voyages and of travels which had led his school-fellows to dub

him Columbus, all his painful study of the Word, his experience of

the love of Christ and expoundings of the meaning of His message to

men for six years, were gathered up, were intensified, and were

directed with a concentrated power to the thought that Christ died,

as for him, so for these millions of dark savages whom Cook was

revealing to Christendom, and who had never heard the glad tidings

of great joy.

Carey had ceased to keep school when the Moulton Baptists, who could

subscribe no more than twopence a month each for their own poor,

formally called the preacher to become their ordained pastor, and

Ryland, Sutcliff, and Fuller were asked to ordain him on the 10th

August 1786. Fuller had discovered the value of a man who had

passed through spiritual experience, and possessed a native common

sense like his own, when Carey had been suddenly called to preach in

Northampton to supply the place of another. Since that day he had

often visited Moulton, and he thus tells us what he had seen:--

"The congregation being few and poor, he followed his business in

order to assist in supporting his family. His mind, however, was

much occupied in acquiring the learned languages, and almost every

other branch of useful knowledge. I remember, on going into the

room where he employed himself at his business, I saw hanging up

against the wall a very large map, consisting of several sheets of

paper pasted together by himself, on which he had drawn, with a pen,

a place for every nation in the known world, and entered into it

whatever he met with in reading, relative to its population,

religion, etc. The substance of this was afterwards published in

his Enquiry. These researches, on which his mind was naturally

bent, hindered him, of course, from doing much of his business; and

the people, as was said, being few and poor, he was at this time

exposed to great hardships. I have been assured that he and his

family have lived for a great while together without tasting animal

food, and with but a scanty pittance of other provision."

"He would also be frequently conversing with his brethren in the

ministry on the practicability and importance of a mission to the

heathen, and of his willingness to engage in it. At several

ministers' meetings, between the year 1787 and 1790, this was the

topic of his conversation. Some of our most aged and respectable

ministers thought, I believe, at that time, that it was a wild and

impracticable scheme that he had got in his mind, and therefore gave

him no encouragement. Yet he would not give it up; but would

converse with us, one by one, till he had made some impression upon

us."

The picture is completed by his sister:--

"He was always, from his first being thoughtful, remarkably

impressed about heathen lands and the slave-trade. I never remember

his engaging in prayer, in his family or in public, without praying

for those poor creatures. The first time I ever recollect my

feeling for the heathen world, was from a discourse I heard my

brother preach at Moulton, the first summer after I was thoughtful.

It was from these words:--'For Zion's sake will I not hold my

peace, and for Jerusalem's sake will I give him no rest.' It was a

day to be remembered by me; a day set apart for prayer and fasting

by the church. What hath God wrought since that time!"

Old Mr. Ryland always failed to recall the story, but we have it on

the testimony of Carey's personal friend, Morris of Clipstone, who

was present at the meeting of ministers held in 1786 at Northampton,

at which the incident occurred. Ryland invited the younger brethren

to propose a subject for discussion. There was no reply, till at

last the Moulton preacher suggested, doubtless with an

ill-restrained excitement, "whether the command given to the

Apostles, to teach all nations, was not obligatory on all succeeding

ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying

promise was of equal extent." Neither Fuller nor Carey himself had

yet delivered the Particular Baptists from the yoke of

hyper-calvinism which had to that hour shut the heathen out of a

dead Christendom, and the aged chairman shouted out the rebuke--"You

are a miserable enthusiast for asking such a question. Certainly

nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of

miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will give effect to

the commission of Christ as at first." Carey had never before

mentioned the subject openly, and he was for the moment greatly

mortified. But, says Morris, he still pondered these things in his

heart. That incident marks the wide gulf which Carey had to bridge.

Silenced by his brethren, he had recourse to the press. It was

then that he wrote his own contribution to the discussion he would

have raised on a duty which was more than seventeen centuries old,

and had been for fourteen of these neglected: An Enquiry into the

Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the

Heathens, in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of

the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the

Practicability of Further Undertakings, are considered by WILLIAM

CAREY. Then follows the great conclusion of Paul in his letter to

the Romans (x. 12-15): "For there is no difference between the Jew

and the Greek...How shall they preach except they be sent?" He

happened to be in Birmingham in 1786 collecting subscriptions for

the rebuilding of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr. Thomas Potts, who

had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering that he had

prepared the manuscript, gave him 10 to publish it. And it?

appeared at Leicester in 1792, "price one shilling and sixpence,"

the profits to go to the proposed mission. The pamphlet form

doubtless accounts for its disappearance now; only four copies of

the original edition4 are known to be in existence.

This Enquiry has a literary interest of its own, as a contribution

to the statistics and geography of the world, written in a cultured

and almost finished style, such as few, if any, University men of

that day could have produced, for none were impelled by such a

motive as Carey had. In an obscure village, toiling save when he

slept, and finding rest on Sunday only by a change of toil, far from

libraries and the society of men with more advantages than his own,

this shoemaker, still under thirty, surveys the whole world,

continent by continent, island by island, race by race, faith by

faith, kingdom by kingdom, tabulating his results with an accuracy,

and following them up with a logical power of generalisation which

would extort the admiration of the learned even of the present day.

Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to His disciples

is still binding on us, having reviewed former undertakings for the

conversion of the heathen from the Ascension to the Moravians and

"the late Mr. Wesley" in the West Indies, and having thus surveyed

in detail the state of the world in 1786, he removes the five

impediments in the way of carrying the Gospel among the heathen,

which his contemporaries advanced--their distance from us, their

barbarism, the danger of being killed by them, the difficulty of

procuring the necessaries of life, the unintelligibleness of their

languages. These his loving heart and Bible knowledge enable him

skilfully to turn in favour of the cause he pleads. The whole

section is essential to an appreciation of Carey's motives,

difficulties, and plans:--

"FIRST, As to their distance from us, whatever objections might have

been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's

compass, nothing can be alleged for it with any colour of

plausibility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much

certainty through the Great South Sea as they can through the

Mediterranean or any lesser sea. Yea, and providence seems in a

manner to invite us to the trial, as there are to our knowledge

trading companies, whose commerce lies in many of the places where

these barbarians dwell. At one time or other ships are sent to

visit places of more recent discovery, and to explore parts the most

unknown; and every fresh account of their ignorance or cruelty

should call forth our pity, and excite us to concur with providence

in seeking their eternal good. Scripture likewise seems to point

out this method, 'Surely the Isles shall wait for me; the ships of

Tarshish first, to bring my sons from far, their silver and their

gold with them, unto the name of the Lord, thy God.'--Isai. lx. 9.

This seems to imply that in the time of the glorious increase of

the church, in the latter days (of which the whole chapter is

undoubtedly a prophecy), commerce shall subserve the spread of the

gospel. The ships of Tarshish were trading vessels, which made

voyages for traffic to various parts; thus much therefore must be

meant by it, that navigation, especially that which is commercial,

shall be one great mean of carrying on the work of God; and perhaps

it may imply that there shall be a very considerable appropriation

of wealth to that purpose.

"SECONDLY, As to their uncivilised and barbarous way of living, this

can be no objection to any, except those whose love of ease renders

them unwilling to expose themselves to inconveniences for the good

of others. It was no objection to the apostles and their

successors, who went among the barbarous Germans and Gauls, and

still more barbarous Britons! They did not wait for the ancient

inhabitants of these countries to be civilised before they could be

christianised, but went simply with the doctrine of the cross; and

Tertullian could boast that 'those parts of Britain which were proof

against the Roman armies, were conquered by the gospel of Christ.'

It was no objection to an Eliot or a Brainerd, in later times.

They went forth, and encountered every difficulty of the kind, and

found that a cordial reception of the gospel produced those happy

effects which the longest intercourse with Europeans without it

could never accomplish. It is no objection to commercial men. It

only requires that we should have as much love to the souls of our

fellow-creatures, and fellow-sinners, as they have for the profits

arising from a few otter-skins, and all these difficulties would be

easily surmounted.

"After all, the uncivilised state of the heathen, instead of

affording an objection against preaching the gospel to them, ought

to furnish an argument for it. Can we as men, or as Christians,

hear that a great part of our fellow-creatures, whose souls are as

immortal as ours, and who are as capable as ourselves of adorning

the gospel and contributing by their preachings, writings, or

practices to the glory of our Redeemer's name and the good of his

church, are enveloped in ignorance and barbarism? Can we hear that

they are without the gospel, without government, without laws, and

without arts, and sciences; and not exert ourselves to introduce

among them the sentiments of men, and of Christians? Would not the

spread of the gospel be the most effectual mean of their

civilisation? Would not that make them useful members of society?

We know that such effects did in a measure follow the

afore-mentioned efforts of Eliot, Brainerd, and others amongst the

American Indians; and if similar attempts were made in other parts

of the world, and succeeded with a divine blessing (which we have

every reason to think they would), might we not expect to see able

divines, or read well-conducted treatises in defence of the truth,

even amongst those who at present seem to be scarcely human?

"THIRDLY, In respect to the danger of being killed by them, it is

true that whoever does go must put his life in his hand, and not

consult with flesh and blood; but do not the goodness of the cause,

the duties incumbent on us as the creatures of God and Christians,

and the perishing state of our fellow-men, loudly call upon us to

venture all, and use every warrantable exertion for their benefit?

Paul and Barnabas, who hazarded their lives for the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, were not blamed as being rash, but commended for

so doing; while John Mark, who through timidity of mind deserted

them in their perilous undertaking, was branded with censure. After

all, as has been already observed, I greatly question whether most

of the barbarities practised by the savages upon those who have

visited them, have not originated in some real or supposed affront,

and were therefore, more properly, acts of self-defence, than proofs

of ferocious dispositions. No wonder if the imprudence of sailors

should prompt them to offend the simple savage, and the offence be

resented; but Eliot, Brainerd, and the Moravian missionaries have

been very seldom molested. Nay, in general the heathen have showed

a willingness to hear the word; and have principally expressed their

hatred of Christianity on account of the vices of nominal

Christians.

"FOURTHLY, As to the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of

life, this would not be so great as may appear at first sight; for,

though we could not procure European food, yet we might procure such

as the natives of those countries which we visit, subsist upon

themselves. And this would only be passing through what we have

virtually engaged in by entering on the ministerial office. A

Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his

own; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly

devoted to him. By entering on that sacred office he solemnly

undertakes to be always engaged, as much as possible, in the Lord's

work, and not to choose his own pleasure, or employment, or pursue

the ministry as a something that is to subserve his own ends, or

interests, or as a kind of bye-work. He engages to go where God

pleases, and to do or endure what he sees fit to command, or call

him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell

to friends, pleasures, and comforts, and stands in readiness to

endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord, and Master.

It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts

of a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilised country, legal

protection, affluence, splendour, or even a competency. The

slights, and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy

prisons, and tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech,

miserable accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger, and

thirst, nakedness, weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but

little worldly encouragement, should rather be the objects of their

expectation. Thus the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and

endured hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; and though we,

living in a civilised country where Christianity is protected by

law, are not called to suffer these things while we continue here,

yet I question whether all are justified in staying here, while so

many are perishing without means of grace in other lands. Sure I am

that it is entirely contrary to the spirit of the gospel for its

ministers to enter upon it from interested motives, or with great

worldly expectations. On the contrary, the commission is a

sufficient call to them to venture all, and, like the primitive

Christians, go everywhere preaching the gospel.

"It might be necessary, however, for two, at least, to go together,

and in general I should think it best that they should be married

men, and to prevent their time from being employed in procuring

necessaries, two, or more, other persons, with their wives and

families, might also accompany them, who should be wholly employed

in providing for them. In most countries it would be necessary for

them to cultivate a little spot of ground just for their support,

which would be a resource to them, whenever their supplies failed.

Not to mention the advantages they would reap from each other's

company, it would take off the enormous expense which has always

attended undertakings of this kind, the first expense being the

whole; for though a large colony needs support for a considerable

time, yet so small a number would, upon receiving the first crop,

maintain themselves. They would have the advantage of choosing

their situation, their wants would be few; the women, and even the

children, would be necessary for domestic purposes: and a few

articles of stock, as a cow or two, and a bull, and a few other

cattle of both sexes, a very few utensils of husbandry, and some

corn to sow their land, would be sufficient. Those who attend the

missionaries should understand husbandry, fishing, fowling, etc.,

and be provided with the necessary implements for these purposes.

Indeed, a variety of methods may be thought of, and when once the

work is undertaken, many things will suggest themselves to us, of

which we at present can form no idea.

"FIFTHLY, As to learning their languages, the same means would be

found necessary here as in trade between different nations. In some

cases interpreters might be obtained, who might be employed for a

time; and where these were not to be found, the missionaries must

have patience, and mingle with the people, till they have learned so

much of their language as to be able to communicate their ideas to

them in it. It is well known to require no very extraordinary

talents to learn, in the space of a year, or two at most, the

language of any people upon earth, so much of it at least as to be

able to convey any sentiments we wish to their understandings.

"The Missionaries must be men of great piety, prudence, courage, and

forbearance; of undoubted orthodoxy in their sentiments, and must

enter with all their hearts into the spirit of their mission; they

must be willing to leave all the comforts of life behind them, and

to encounter all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, an

uncomfortable manner of living, and every other inconvenience that

can attend this undertaking. Clothing, a few knives, powder and

shot, fishing-tackle, and the articles of husbandry above mentioned,

must be provided for them; and when arrived at the place of their

destination, their first business must be to gain some acquaintance

with the language of the natives (for which purpose two would be

better than one), and by all lawful means to endeavour to cultivate

a friendship with them, and as soon as possible let them know the

errand for which they were sent. They must endeavour to convince

them that it was their good alone which induced them to forsake

their friends, and all the comforts of their native country. They

must be very careful not to resent injuries which may be offered to

them, nor to think highly of themselves, so as to despise the poor

heathens, and by those means lay a foundation for their resentment

or rejection of the gospel. They must take every opportunity of

doing them good, and labouring and travelling night and day, they

must instruct, exhort, and rebuke, with all long suffering and

anxious desire for them, and, above all, must be instant in prayer

for the effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the people of their charge.

Let but missionaries of the above description engage in the work,

and we shall see that it is not impracticable.

"It might likewise be of importance, if God should bless their

labours, for them to encourage any appearances of gifts amongst the

people of their charge; if such should be raised up many advantages

would be derived from their knowledge of the language and customs of

their countrymen; and their change of conduct would give great

weight to their ministrations."

This first and still greatest missionary treatise in the English

language closes with the practical suggestion of these

means--fervent and united prayer, the formation of a catholic or,

failing that, a Particular Baptist Society of "persons whose hearts

are in the work, men of serious religion and possessing a spirit of

perseverance," with an executive committee, and subscriptions from

rich and poor of a tenth of their income for both village preaching

and foreign missions, or, at least, an average of one penny or more

per week from all members of congregations. He thus concludes:--"It

is true all the reward is of mere grace, but it is nevertheless

encouraging; what a treasure, what an harvest must await such

characters as Paul, and Eliot, and Brainerd, and others, who have

given themselves wholly to the work of the Lord. What a heaven will

it be to see the many myriads of poor heathens, of Britons amongst

the rest, who by their labours have been brought to the knowledge of

God. Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth aspiring to.

Surely it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our might,

in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ."

So Carey projected the first organisation which England had seen for

missions to all the human race outside of Christendom; and his

project, while necessarily requiring a Society to carry it out, as

coming from an "independent" Church, provided that every member of

every congregation should take a part to the extent of fervent and

united prayer, and of an average subscription of a penny a week. He

came as near to the New Testament ideal of all Christians acting in

an aggressive missionary church as was possible in an age when the

Established Churches of England, Scotland, and Germany scouted

foreign missions, and the Free Churches were chiefly congregational

in their ecclesiastical action. While asserting the other ideal of

the voluntary tenth or tithe as both a Scriptural principle and

Puritan practice, his common sense was satisfied to suggest an

average penny a week, all over, for every Christian. At this hour,

more than a century since Carey wrote, and after a remarkable

missionary revival in consequence of what he wrote and did, all

Christendom, Evangelical, Greek, and Latin, does not give more than

five millions sterling a year to Christianise the majority of the

race still outside its pale. It is not too much to say that were

Carey's penny a week from every Christian a fact, and the prayer

which would sooner or later accompany it, the five millions would be

fifty, and Christendom would become a term nearly synonymous with

humanity. The Churches, whether by themselves or by societies, have

yet to pray and organise up to the level of Carey's penny a week.

The absolute originality as well as grandeur of the unconscious

action of the peasant shoemaker who, from 1779, prayed daily for all

the heathen and slaves, and organised his society accordingly, will

be seen in the dim light or darkness visible of all who had preceded

him. They were before the set time; he was ready in the fulness of

the missionary preparation. They belonged not only to periods, but

to nations, to churches, to communities which were failing in the

struggle for fruitfulness and expansion in new worlds and fresh

lands; he was a son of England, which had come or was about to come

out of the struggle a victor, charged with the terrible

responsibility of the special servant of the Lord, as no people had

ever before been charged in all history, sacred or secular. William

Carey, indeed, reaped the little that the few brave toilers of the

wintry time had sown; with a humility that is pathetic he

acknowledges their toll, while ever ignorant to the last of his own

merit. But he reaped only as each generation garners such fruits of

its predecessor as may have been worthy to survive. He was the

first of the true Anastatosantes of the modern world, as only an

English-speaking man could be--of the most thorough, permanent, and

everlasting of all Reformers, the men who turn the world upside

down, because they make it rise up and depart from deadly beliefs

and practices, from the fear and the fate of death, into the life

and light of Christ and the Father.

Who were his predecessors, reckoning from the Renascence of Europe,

the discovery of America, and the opening up of India and Africa?

Erasmus comes first, the bright scholar of compromise who in 1516

gave the New Testament again to Europe, as three centuries after

Carey gave it to all Southern Asia, and whose missionary treatise,

Ecclesiasties, in 1535 anticipated, theoretically at least, Carey's

Enquiry by two centuries and a half. The missionary dream of this

escaped monk of Rotterdam and Basel, who taught women and weavers

and cobblers to read the Scriptures, and prayed that the Book might

be translated into all languages, was realised in the scandalous

iniquities and frauds of Portuguese and Spanish and Jesuit missions

in West and East. Luther had enough to do with his papal antichrist

and his German translation of the Greek of the Testament of Erasmus.

The Lutheran church drove missions into the hands of the Pietists

and Moravians--Wiclif's offspring--who nobly but ineffectually

strove to do a work meant for the whole Christian community. The

Church of England thrust forth the Puritans first to Holland and

then to New England, where Eliot, the Brainerds, and the Mayhews

sought to evangelise tribes which did not long survive themselves.

It was from Courteenhall, a Northamptonshire village near

Paulerspury, that in 1644 there went forth the appeal for the

propagation of the Gospel which comes nearest to Carey's cry from

the same midland region. Cromwell was in power, and had himself

planned a Protestant Propaganda, so to the Long Parliament William

Castell, "parson of Courteenhall," sent a petition which, with the

"Eliot Tracts," resulted in an ordinance creating the Corporation

for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New

England. Seventy English ministers had backed the petition, and six

of the Church of Scotland, first of whom was Alexander Henderson.

The corporation, which, in a restored form, Robert Boyle governed

for thirty years, familiarised the nation with the duty of caring

for the dark races then coming more and more under our sway alike in

America and in India. It still exists, as well as Boyle's Society

for advancing the Faith in the West Indies. The Friends also, and

then the Moravians, taught the Wesleys and Whitefield to care for

the negroes. The English and Scottish Propagation Societies sought

also to provide spiritual aids for the colonists and the

highlanders.

The two great thinkers of the eighteenth century, who flourished as

philosopher and moralist when Carey was a youth, taught the

principles which he of all others was to apply on their spiritual

and most effective side. Adam Smith put his finger on the crime

which had darkened and continued till 1834 to shadow the brightness

of geographical enterprise in both hemispheres--the treatment of the

natives by Europeans whose superiority of force enabled them to

commit every sort of injustice in the new lands. He sought a remedy

in establishing an equality of force by the mutual communication of

knowledge and of all sorts of improvements by an extensive

commerce.5 Samuel Johnson rose to a higher level alike of wisdom and

righteousness, when he expressed the indignation of a Christian mind

that the propagation of truth had never been seriously pursued by

any European nation, and the hope "that the light of the Gospel will

at last illuminate the sands of Africa and the deserts of America,

though its progress cannot but be slow when it is so much obstructed

by the lives of Christians."

The early movement which is connected most directly with Carey's and

the Northamptonshire Baptists' began in Scotland. Its Kirk,

emasculated by the Revolution settlement and statute of Queen Anne,

had put down the evangelical teaching of Boston and the "marrow"

men, and had cast out the fathers of the Secession in 1733. In 1742

the quickening spread over the west country. In October 1744

several ministers in Scotland united, for the two years next

following, in what they called, and what has since become familiar

in America as, a "Concert to promote more abundant application to a

duty that is perpetually binding--prayer that our God's kingdom may

come, joined with praises;" to be offered weekly on Saturday evening

and Sunday morning, and more solemnly on the first Tuesday of every

quarter. Such was the result, and so did the prayer concert spread

in the United Kingdom that in August 1746 a memorial was sent to

Boston inviting all Christians in North America to enter into it for

the next seven years. It was on this that Jonathan Edwards wrote

his Humble Attempt to promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union

of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion

and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth.

This work of Edwards, republished at Olney, came into the hands of

Carey, and powerfully influenced the Northamptonshire Association of

Baptist ministers and messengers. At their meeting in Nottingham in

1784 Sutcliff of Olney suggested and Ryland of Northampton drafted

an invitation to the people to join them, for one hour on the first

Monday of every month, in prayer for the effusion of the Holy Spirit

of God. "Let the whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately

remembered," wrote these catholic men, and to give emphasis to their

?cumenical missionary desires they added in italics--"Let the spread

of the Gospel to the most distant parts of the habitable globe be

the object of your most fervent requests. We shall rejoice if any

other Christian societies of our own or other denominations will

join with us, and we do now invite them most cordially to join heart

and hand in the attempt." To this Carey prominently referred in his

Enquiry, tracing to even the unimportunate and feeble prayers of

these eight years the increase of the churches, the clearing of

controversies, the opening of lands to missions, the spread of civil

and religious liberty, the noble effort made to abolish the inhuman

slave-trade, and the establishment of the free settlement of Sierra

Leone. And then he hits the other blots in the movement, besides

the want of importunity and earnestness--"We must not be contented

with praying without exerting ourselves in the use of means...Were

the children of light but as wise in their generation as the

children of this world, they would stretch every nerve to gain so

glorious a prize, nor ever imagine that it was to be obtained in any

other way." A trading company obtain a charter and go to its utmost

limits. The charter, the encouragements of Christians are exceeding

great, and the returns promised infinitely superior. "Suppose a

company of serious Christians, ministers and private persons, were

to form themselves into a society."

The man was ready who had been specially fitted, by character and

training, to form the home organisation of the society, while Carey

created its foreign mission. For the next quarter of a century

William Carey and Andrew Fuller worked lovingly, fruitfully

together, with the breadth of half the world between them. The one

showed how, by Bible and church and school, by physical and

spiritual truth, India and all Asia could be brought to Christ; the

other taught England, Scotland, and America to begin at last to play

their part in an enterprise as old as Abraham; as divine in its

warrant, its charge, its promise, as Christ Himself. Seven years

older than Carey, his friend was born a farmer's son and labourer in

the fen country of Cromwell whom he resembled, was self-educated

under conditions precisely similar, and passed through spiritual

experiences almost exactly the same. The two, unknown to each

other, found themselves when called to preach at eighteen unable to

reconcile the grim dead theology of their church with the new life

and liberty which had come to them direct from the Spirit of Christ

and from His Word. Carey had left his ancestral church at a time

when the biographer of Romaine could declare with truth that that

preacher was the only evangelical in the established churches of all

London, and that of twenty thousand clergymen in England, the number

who preached the truth as it is in Jesus had risen from not twenty

in 1749 to three hundred in 1789. The methodism of the Wesleys was

beginning to tell, but the Baptists were as lifeless as the

Established Church. In both the Church and Dissent there were

individuals only, like Newton and Scott, the elder Robert Hall and

Ryland, whose spiritual fervour made them marked men.

The Baptists, who had stood alone as the advocates of toleration,

religious and civil, in an age of intolerance which made them the

victims, had subsided like Puritan and Covenanter when the

Revolution of 1688 brought persecution to an end. The section who

held the doctrine of "general" redemption, and are now honourably

known as General Baptists, preached ordinary Arminianism, and even

Socinianism. The more earnest and educated among them clung to

Calvinism, but, by adopting the unhappy term of "particular"

Baptists, gradually fell under a fatalistic and antinomian spell.

This false Calvinism, which the French theologian of Geneva would

have been the first to denounce, proved all the more hostile to the

preaching of the Gospel of salvation to the heathen abroad, as well

as the sinner at home, that it professed to be an orthodox evangel

while either emasculating the Gospel or turning the grace of God

into licentiousness. From such "particular" preachers as young

Fuller and Carey listened to, at first with bewilderment, then

impatience, and then denunciation, missions of no kind could come.

Fuller exposed and pursued the delusion with a native shrewdness, a

masculine sagacity, and a fine English style, which have won for him

the apt name of the Franklin of Theology. For more than twenty

years Fullerism, as it was called, raised a controversy like that of

the Marrow of Divinity in Scotland, and cleared the ground

sufficiently at least to allow of the foundation of foreign missions

in both countries. It now seems incredible that the only class who

a century ago represented evangelicalism should have opposed

missions to the heathen on the ground that the Gospel is meant only

for the elect, whether at home or abroad; that nothing spiritually

good is the duty of the unregenerate, therefore "nothing must be

addressed to them in a way of exhortation excepting what relates to

external obedience."

The same year, 1784, in which the Baptist concert for prayer was

begun, saw the publication of Fuller's Gospel Worthy of all

Acceptation. Seven years later he preached at Clipstone a famous

sermon, in which he applied the dealing of the Lord of Hosts (in

Haggai) to the Jewish apathy--"The time is not come that the Lord's

house should be built"--with a power and directness which

nevertheless failed practically to convince himself. The men who

listened to him had been praying for seven years, yet had opposed

Carey's pleas for a foreign mission, had treated him as a visionary

or a madman. When Fuller had published his treatise, Carey had

drawn the practical deduction--"If it be the duty of all men, when

the Gospel comes, to believe unto salvation, then it is the duty of

those who are entrusted with the Gospel to endeavour to make it

known among all nations for the obedience of faith." Now, after

seven more years of waiting, and remembering the manuscript Enquiry,

Carey thought action cannot be longer delayed. Hardly was the usual

discussion that followed the meeting over when, as the story is told

by the son of Ryland who had silenced him in a former ministers'

meeting, Carey appealed to his brethren to put their preaching into

practice and begin a missionary society that very day. Fuller's

sermon bore the title of The Evil Nature and the Dangerous Tendency

of Delay in the Concerns of Religion, and it had been preceded by

one on being very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, in which

Sutcliff cried for the divine passion, the celestial fire that

burned in the bosom and blazed in the life of Elijah. The Elijah of

their own church and day was among them, burning and blazing for

years, and all that he could induce them to promise was vaguely

that, "something should be done," and to throw to his importunity

the easy request that he would publish his manuscript and preach

next year's sermon.

Meanwhile, in 1789, Carey had left Moulton6 for Leicester, whither

he was summoned to build up a congregation, ruined by antinomianism,

in the mean brick chapel of the obscure quarter of Harvey Lane. This

chapel his genius and Robert Hall's eloquence made so famous in time

that the Baptists sent off a vigorous hive to the fine new church.

In an equally humble house opposite the chapel the poverty of the

pastor compelled him to keep a school from nine in the morning till

four in winter and five in summer. Between this and the hours for

sleep and food he had little leisure; but that he spent, as he had

done all his life before and did all his life after, with a method

and zeal which doubled his working days. "I have seen him at work,"

writes Gardiner in his Music and Friends, "his books beside him, and

his beautiful flowers in the windows." In a letter to his father we

have this division of his leisure--Monday, "the learned languages;"

Tuesday, "the study of science, history, composition, etc;"

Wednesday, "I preach a lecture, and have been for more than twelve

months on the Book of Revelation;" Thursday, "I visit my friends;"

Friday and Saturday, "preparing for the Lord's Day." He preached

three times every Sunday in his own chapel or the surrounding

villages, with such results that in one case he added hundreds to

its Wesleyan congregation. He was secretary to the local committee

of dissenters. "Add to this occasional journeys, ministers'

meetings, etc., and you will rather wonder that I have any time,

than that I have so little. I am not my own, nor would I choose for

myself. Let God employ me where he thinks fit, and give me patience

and discretion to fill up my station to his honour and glory."

"After I had been probationer in this place a year and ten months,

on the 24th of May 1791 I was solemnly set apart to the office of

pastor. About twenty ministers of different denominations were

witnesses to the transactions of the day. After prayer Brother

Hopper of Nottingham addressed the congregation upon the nature of

an ordination, after which he proposed the usual questions to the

church, and required my Confession of Faith; which being delivered,

Brother Ryland prayed the ordination prayer, with laying on of

hands. Brother Sutcliff delivered a very solemn charge from Acts

vi. 4--'But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the

ministry of the word.' And Brother Fuller delivered an excellent

address to the people from Eph. v. 2--'Walk in love.' In the

evening Brother Pearce of Birmingham preached from Gal. vi. 14--'God

forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus

Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the

world.' The day was a day of pleasure, and I hope of profit to the

greatest part of the Assembly."

Carey became the friend of his neighbour, Thomas Robinson,

evangelical rector of St. Mary's, to whom he said on one occasion

when indirectly charged in humorous fashion with "sheep-stealing:"

"Mr. Robinson, I am a dissenter, and you are a churchman; we must

each endeavour to do good according to our light. At the same time,

you may be assured that I had rather be the instrument of converting

a scavenger that sweeps the streets than of merely proselyting the

richest and best characters in your congregation." Dr. Arnold and

Mr. R. Brewin, a botanist, opened to him their libraries, and all

good men in Leicester soon learned to be proud of the new Baptist

minister. In the two chapels, as in that of Moulton, enlarged since

his time, memorial tablets tell succeeding generations of the

virtues and the deeds of "the illustrious W. Carey, D.D."

The ministers' meeting of 1792 came round, and on 31st May Carey

seized his opportunity. The place was Nottingham, from which the

1784 invitation to prayer had gone forth. Was the answer to come

just there after nine years' waiting? His Enquiry had been

published; had it prepared the brethren? Ryland had been always

loyal to the journeyman shoemaker he had baptised in the river, and

he gives us this record:--"If all the people had lifted up their

voices and wept, as the children of Israel did at Bochim, I should

not have wondered at the effect. It would only have seemed

proportionate to the cause, so clearly did he prove the criminality

of our supineness in the cause of God." The text was Isaiah's (liv.

2, 3) vision of the widowed church's tent stretching forth till her

children inherited the nations and peopled the desolate cities, and

the application to the reluctant brethren was couched in these two

great maxims written ever since on the banners of the missionary

host of the kingdom--

EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD.

ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD.

The service was over; even Fuller was afraid, even Ryland made no

sign, and the ministers were leaving the meeting. Seizing Fuller's

arm with an imploring look, the preacher, whom despair emboldened to

act alone for his Master, exclaimed: "And are you, after all, going

again to do nothing?" What Fuller describes as the "much fear and

trembling" of these inexperienced, poor, and ignorant village

preachers gave way to the appeal of one who had gained both

knowledge and courage, and who, as to funds and men, was ready to

give himself. They entered on their minutes this much:--"That a

plan be prepared against the next ministers' meeting at Kettering

for forming a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the

Heathen." There was more delay, but only for four months. The

first purely English Missionary Society, which sent forth its own

English founder, was thus constituted as described in the minutes of

the Northampton ministers' meeting.

"At the ministers' meeting at Kettering, October 2, 1792, after the

public services of the day were ended, the ministers retired to

consult further on the matter, and to lay a foundation at least for

a society, when the following resolutions were proposed, and

unanimously agreed to:--

"1. Desirous of making an effort for the propagation of the gospel

among the heathen, agreeably to what is recommended in brother

Carey's late publication on that subject, we, whose names appear to

the subsequent subscription, do solemnly agree to act in society

together for that purpose.

"2. As in the present divided state of Christendom, it seems that

each denomination, by exerting itself separately, is most likely to

accomplish the great ends of a mission, it is agreed that this

society be called The Particular [Calvinistic] Baptist Society for

Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.

"3. As such an undertaking must needs be attended with expense, we

agree immediately to open a subscription for the above purpose, and

to recommend it to others.

"4. Every person who shall subscribe ten pounds at once, or ten

shillings and sixpence annually, shall be considered a member of the

society.

"5. That the Rev. John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, William Carey, John

Sutcliff, and Andrew Fuller, be appointed a committee, three of whom

shall be empowered to act in carrying into effect the purposes of

this society.

"6. That the Rev. Reynold Hogg be appointed treasurer, and the Rev.

Andrew Fuller secretary.

"7. That the subscriptions be paid in at the Northampton ministers'

meeting, October 31, 1792, at which time the subject shall be

considered more particularly by the committee, and other subscribers

who may be present.

"Signed, John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, John Sutcliff, Andrew Fuller,

Abraham Greenwood, Edward Sherman, Joshua Burton, Samuel Pearce,

Thomas Blundel, William Heighton, John Eayres, Joseph Timms; whose

subscriptions in all amounted to 13:2:6."?

The procedure suggested in "brother Carey's late publication" was

strictly followed--a society of subscribers, 2d. a week, or 10s. 6d.

a year as a compromise between the tithes and the penny a week of

the Enquiry. The secretary was the courageous Fuller, who once said

to Ryland and Sutcliff: "You excel me in wisdom, especially in

foreseeing difficulties. I therefore want to advise with you both,

but to execute without you." The frequent chairman was Ryland, who

was soon to train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The

treasurer was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his

office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need

now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of

Birmingham, who went home and sent 70 to the collection, and who,?

since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to him dearer

than even Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed parlour in the

house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back garden, which many a

pilgrim still visits, and around which there gathered thousands in

1842 to hold the first jubilee of modern missions, when

commemorative medals were struck. There in 1892 the centenary

witnessed a still vaster assemblage.

Can any good come out of Kettering? was the conclusion of the

Baptist ministers of London with the one exception of Booth, when

they met formally to decide whether, like those of Birmingham and

other places, they should join the primary society. Benjamin

Beddome, a venerable scholar whom Robert Hall declared to be chief

among his brethren, replied to Fuller in language which is far from

unusual even at the present day, but showing the position which the

Leicester minister had won for himself even then:--

"I think your scheme, considering the paucity of well-qualified

ministers, hath a very unfavourable aspect with respect to destitute

churches at home, where charity ought to begin. I had the pleasure

once to see and hear Mr. Carey; it struck me he was the most

suitable person in the kingdom, at least whom I knew, to supply my

place, and make up my great deficiencies when either disabled or

removed. A different plan is formed and pursued, and I fear that

the great and good man, though influenced by the most excellent

motives, will meet with a disappointment. However, God hath his

ends, and whoever is disappointed He cannot be so. My unbelieving

heart is ready to suggest that the time is not come, the time that

the Lord's house should be built."

The other Congregationalists made no sign. The Presbyterians, with

a few noble exceptions like Dr. Erskine, whose Dutch volume Carey

had translated, denounced such movements as revolutionary in a

General Assembly of Socinianised "moderates." The Church of England

kept haughtily or timidly aloof, though king and archbishop were

pressed to send a mission. "Those who in that day sneered that

England had sent a cobbler to convert the world were the direct

lineal descendants of those who sneered in Palestine 2000 years ago,

'Is not this the carpenter?'" said Archdeacon Farrar in Westminster

Abbey on 6th March 1887. Hence Fuller's reference to this

time:--"When we began in 1792 there was little or no respectability

among us, not so much as a squire to sit in the chair or an orator

to address him with speeches. Hence good Dr. Stennett advised the

London ministers to stand aloof and not commit themselves."

One man in India had striven to rouse the Church to its duty as

Carey had done at home. Charles Grant had in 1787 written from

Malda to Charles Simeon and Wilberforce for eight missionaries, but

not one Church of England clergyman could be found to go. Thirty

years after, when chairman of the Court of Directors and father of

Lord Glenelg and Sir Robert Grant, he wrote:--"I had formed the

design of a mission to Bengal: Providence reserved that honour for

the Baptists." After all, the twelve village pastors in the back

parlour of Kettering were the more really the successors of the

twelve apostles in the upper room of Jerusalem.

CHAPTER III

INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT

1793

Tahiti v. Bengal--Carey and Thomas appointed missionaries to

Bengal--The farewell at Leicester--John Thomas, first medical

missionary--Carey's letter to his father--The Company's "abominable

monopoly"--The voyage--Carey's aspirations for world-wide

missions--Lands at Calcutta--His description of Bengal in

1793--Contrast presented by Carey to Clive, Hastings, and

Cornwallis--The spiritual founder of an Indian Empire of Christian

Britain--Bengal and the famine of 1769-70--The Decennial Settlement

declared permanent--Effects on the landed classes--Obstacles to

Carey's work--East India Company at its worst--Hindooism and the

Bengalees in 1793--Position of Hindoo women--Missionary attempts

before Carey's--Ziegenbalg and Schwartz--Kiernander and the

chaplains--Hindooised state of Anglo-Indian society and its reaction

on England--Guneshan Dass, the first caste Hindoo to visit

England--William Carey had no predecessor.

Carey had desired to go first to Tahiti or Western Africa. The

natives of North America and the negroes of the West Indies and

Sierra Leone were being cared for by Moravian and Wesleyan

evangelists. The narrative of Captain Cook's two first voyages to

the Pacific and discovery of Tahiti had appeared in the same year in

which the Northampton churches began their seven years' concert of

prayer, just after his own second baptism. From the map, and a

leather globe which also he is said to have made, he had been

teaching the children of Piddington, Moulton, and Leicester the

great outlines and thrilling details of expeditions round the world

which roused both the scientific and the simple of England as much

as the discoveries of Columbus had excited Europe. When the

childlike ignorance and natural grace of the Hawaiians, which had at

first fired him with the longing to tell them the good news of God,

were seen turned into the wild justice of revenge, which made Cook

its first victim, Carey became all the more eager to anticipate the

disasters of later days. That was work for which others were to be

found. It was not amid the scattered and decimated savages of the

Pacific or of America that the citadel of heathenism was found, nor

by them that the world, old and new, was to be made the kingdom of

Christ. With the cautious wisdom that marked all Fuller's action,

though perhaps with the ignorance that was due to Carey's absence,

the third meeting of the new society recorded this among other

articles "to be examined and discussed in the most diligent and

impartial manner--In what part of the heathen world do there seem to

be the most promising openings?"

The answer, big with consequence for the future of the East, was in

their hands, in the form of a letter from Carey, who stated that

"Mr. Thomas, the Bengal missionary," was trying to raise a fund for

that province, and asked "whether it would not be worthy of the

Society to try to make that and ours unite with one fund for the

purpose of sending the gospel to the heathen indefinitely." Tahiti

was not to be neglected, nor Africa, nor Bengal, in "our larger

plan," which included above four hundred millions of our fellowmen,

among whom it was an object "worthy of the most ardent and

persevering pursuit to disseminate the humane and saving principles

of the Christian Religion." If this Mr. Thomas were worthy, his

experience made it desirable to begin with Bengal. Thomas answered

for himself at the next meeting, when Carey fell upon his neck and

wept, having previously preached from the words--"Behold I come

quickly, and My reward is with Me." "We saw," said Fuller

afterwards, "there was a gold mine in India, but it was as deep as

the centre of the earth. Who will venture to explore it? 'I will

venture to go down,' said Carey, 'but remember that you (addressing

Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland) must hold the ropes.' We solemnly

engaged to him to do so, nor while we live shall we desert him."

Carey and Thomas, an ordained minister and a medical evangelist,

were at this meeting in Kettering, on 10th January 1793, appointed

missionaries to "the East Indies for preaching the gospel to the

heathen," on " 100 or 150 a year between them all,"--that is, for? ?

two missionaries, their wives, and four children,--until they should

be able to support themselves like the Moravians. As a matter of

fact they received just 200 in all for the first three years when?

self-support and mission extension fairly began. The whole sum at

credit of the Society for outfit, passage, and salaries was 130, so?

that Fuller's prudence was not without justification when supported

by Thomas's assurances that the amount was enough, and Carey's

modest self-sacrifice. "We advised Mr. Carey," wrote Fuller to

Ryland, "to give up his school this quarter, for we must make up the

loss to him." The more serious cost of the passage was raised by

Fuller and by the preaching tours of the two missionaries. During

one of these, at Hull, Carey met the printer and newspaper editor,

William Ward, and cast his mantle over him thus--"If the Lord bless

us, we shall want a person of your business to enable us to print

the Scriptures; I hope you will come after us." Ward did so in five

years.

The 20th March 1793 was a high day in the Leicester chapel, Harvey

Lane, when the missionaries were set apart like Barnabas and Paul--a

forenoon of prayer; an afternoon of preaching by Thomas from Psalm

xvi. 4; "Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another

God;" an evening of preaching by the treasurer from Acts xxi. 14,

"And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, the will of

the Lord be done;" and the parting charge by Fuller the secretary,

from the risen Lord's own benediction and forthsending of His

disciples, "Peace be unto you, as My Father hath sent Me, even so

send I you." Often in after days of solitude and reproach did Carey

quicken his faith by reading the brave and loving words of Fuller on

"the objects you must keep in view, the directions you must observe,

the difficulties you must encounter, the reward you may expect."

Under date four days after we find this entry in the Church

Book--"Mr. Carey, our minister, left Leicester to go on a mission to

the East Indies, to take and propagate the Gospel among those

idolatrous and superstitious heathens. This is inserted to show his

love to his poor miserable fellow-creatures. In this we concurred

with him, though it is at the expense of losing one whom we love as

our own souls." When Carey's preaching had so filled the church

that it became necessary to build a front gallery at a cost of 98,?

and they had applied to several other churches for assistance in

vain, he thus taught them to help themselves. The minister and many

of the members agreed to pay off the debt "among ourselves" by

weekly subscriptions,--a process, however, which covered five years,

so poor were they. Carey left this as a parting lesson to home

congregations, while his people found it the easier to pay the debt

that they had sacrificed their best, their own minister, to the work

of missions for which he had taught them to pray.

John Thomas, four years older than Carey, was a surgeon, who had

made two voyages to Calcutta in the Oxford Indiaman, had been of

spiritual service to Charles Grant, Mr. George Udny, and the Bengal

civilian circle at Malda, and had been supported by Mr. Grant as a

missionary for a time until his eccentricities and debts outraged

his friends and drove him home at the time of the Kettering

meetings. Full justice has been done to a character and a career

somewhat resembling those of John Newton, by his patient and able

biographer the Rev. C. B. Lewis. John Thomas has the merit of being

the first medical missionary, at a time when no other Englishman

cared for either the bodies or souls of our recently acquired

subjects in North India, outside of Charles Grant's circle. He has

more; he was used by God to direct Carey to the dense Hindoo

population of Bengal--to the people and to the centre, that is,

where Brahmanism had its seat, and whence Buddhism had been carried

by thousands of missionaries all over Southern, Eastern, and Central

Asia. But there our ascription of merit to Thomas must stop.

However well he might speak the uncultured Bengali, he never could

write the language or translate the Bible into a literary style so

that it could be understood by the people or influence their

leaders. His temper kept Charles Grant back from helping the infant

mission, though anxious to see Mr. Carey and to aid him and any

other companion. The debts of Thomas caused him and Carey to be

excluded from the Oxford, in which his friend the commander had

agreed to take them and their party without a licence; clouded the

early years of the enterprise with their shadow, and formed the

heaviest of the many burdens Carey had to bear at starting. If,

afterwards, the old association of Thomas with Mr. Udny at Malda

gave Carey a home during his Indian apprenticeship, this was a small

atonement for the loss of the direct help of Mr. Grant. If Carey

proved to be the John among the men who began to make Serampore

illustrious, Thomas was the Peter, so far as we know Peter in the

Gospels only.

Just before being ejected from the Oxford, as he had been deprived

of the effectual help of Charles Grant through his unhappy

companion, when with only his eldest son Felix beside him, how did

Carey view his God-given mission? The very different nature of his

wife, who had announced to him the birth of a child, clung anew to

the hope that this might cause him to turn back. Writing from Ryde

on the 6th May he thus replied with sweet delicacy of human

affection, but with true loyalty to his Master's call:--

"Received yours, giving me an account of your safe delivery. This

is pleasant news indeed to me; surely goodness and mercy follow me

all my days. My stay here was very painful and unpleasant, but now

I see the goodness of God in it. It was that I might hear the most

pleasing accounts that I possibly could hear respecting earthly

things. You wish to know in what state my mind is. I answer, it is

much as when I left you. If I had all the world, I would freely

give it all to have you and my dear children with me; but the sense

of duty is so strong as to overpower all other considerations; I

could not turn back without guilt on my soul. I find a longing

desire to enjoy more of God; but, now I am among the people of the

world, I think I see more beauties in godliness than ever, and, I

hope, enjoy more of God in retirement than I have done for some time

past...You want to know what Mrs. Thomas thinks, and how she likes

the voyage...She would rather stay in England than go to India; but

thinks it right to go with her husband...Tell my dear children I

love them dearly, and pray for them constantly. Felix sends his

love. I look upon this mercy as an answer to prayer indeed. Trust

in God. Love to Kitty, brothers, sisters, etc. Be assured I love

you most affectionately. Let me know my dear little child's

name.--I am, for ever, your faithful and affectionate husband,

"WILLIAM CAREY.

"My health never was so well. I believe the sea makes Felix and me

both as hungry as hunters. I can eat a monstrous meat supper, and

drink a couple of glasses of wine after it, without hurting me at

all. Farewell."

She was woman and wife enough, in the end, to do as Mrs. Thomas had

done, but she stipulated that her sister should accompany her.

By a series of specially providential events, as it seemed, such as

marked the whole early history of this first missionary enterprise

of modern England, Carey and Thomas secured a passage on board the

Danish Indiaman Kron Princessa Maria, bound from Copenhagen to

Serampore. At Dover, where they had been waiting for days, the

eight were roused from sleep by the news that the ship was off the

harbour. Sunrise on the 13th June saw them on board. Carey had had

other troubles besides his colleague and his wife. His father, then

fifty-eight years old, had not given him up without a struggle. "Is

William mad?" he had said when he received the letter in which his

son thus offered himself up on the missionary altar. His mother had

died six years before:--

"LEICESTER, Jan. 17th, 1793.

"DEAR AND HONOURED FATHER,--The importance of spending our time for

God alone, is the principal theme of the gospel. I beseech you,

brethren, says Paul, by the mercies of God, that you present your

bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your

reasonable service. To be devoted like a sacrifice to holy uses, is

the great business of a christian, pursuant to these requisitions.

I consider myself as devoted to the service of God alone, and now I

am to realise my professions. I am appointed to go to Bengal, in

the East Indies, a missionary to the Hindoos. I shall have a

colleague who has been there five or six years already, and who

understands their language. They are the most mild and inoffensive

people in all the world, but are enveloped in the greatest

superstition, and in the grossest ignorance...I hope, dear father,

you may be enabled to surrender me up to the Lord for the most

arduous, honourable, and important work that ever any of the sons of

men were called to engage in. I have many sacrifices to make. I

must part with a beloved family, and a number of most affectionate

friends. Never did I see such sorrow manifested as reigned through

our place of worship last Lord's-day. But I have set my hand to the

plough.--I remain, your dutiful son,

"WILLIAM CAREY."

When in London Carey had asked John Newton, "What if the Company

should send us home on our arrival in Bengal?" "Then conclude," was

the reply, "that your Lord has nothing there for you to accomplish.

But if He have, no power on earth can hinder you." By Act of

Parliament not ten years old, every subject of the King going to or

found in the East Indies without a licence from the Company, was

guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour, and liable to fine and

imprisonment. Only four years previously a regulation had compelled

every commander to deliver to the Hoogli pilot a return of the

passengers on board that the Act might be enforced. The Danish

nationality of the ship and crew saved the missionary party. So

grievously do unjust laws demoralise contemporary opinion, that

Fuller was constrained to meet the objections of many to the

"illegality" of the missionaries' action by reasoning, unanswerable

indeed, but not now required: "The apostles and primitive ministers

were commanded to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to

every creature; nor were they to stop for the permission of any

power upon earth, but to go, and take the consequences. If a man of

God, conscious of having nothing in his heart unfriendly to any

civil government whatever, but determined in all civil matters to

obey and teach obedience to the powers that are, put his life in his

hand, saying, I will go, and if I am persecuted in one city I will

flee to another'...whatever the wisdom of this world may decide upon

his conduct, he will assuredly be acquitted, and more than

acquitted, at a higher tribunal."

Carey's journal of the voyage begins with an allusion to "the

abominable East Indian monopoly," which he was to do more than any

other man to break down by weapons not of man's warfare. The second

week found him at Bengali, and for his companion the poems of

Cowper. Of the four fellow-passengers one was a French deist, with

whom he had many a debate.

"Aug. 2.--I feel myself to be much declined, upon the whole, in the

more spiritual exercises of religion; yet have had some pleasant

exercises of soul, and feel my heart set upon the great work upon

which I am going. Sometimes I am quite dejected when I see the

impenetrability of the hearts of those with us. They hear us preach

on the Lord's-day, but we are forced to witness their disregard to

God all the week. O may God give us greater success among the

heathen. I am very desirous that my children may pursue the same

work; and now intend to bring up one in the study of Sanskrit, and

another of Persian. O may God give them grace to fit them for the

work! I have been much concerned for fear the power of the Company

should oppose us...

"Aug. 20.--I have reason to lament over a barrenness of soul, and am

sometimes much discouraged; for if I am so dead and stupid, how can

I expect to be of any use among the heathen? Yet I have of late

felt some very lively desires after the success of our undertaking.

If there is anything that engages my heart in prayer to God, it is

that the heathen may be converted, and that the society which has so

generously exerted itself may be encouraged, and excited to go on

with greater vigour in the important undertaking...

"Nov. 9.--I think that I have had more liberty in prayer, and more

converse with God, than for some time before; but have,

notwithstanding, been a very unfruitful creature, and so remain.

For near a month we have been within two hundred miles of Bengal,

but the violence of the currents set us back when we have been at

the very door. I hope I have learned the necessity of bearing up in

the things of God against wind and tide, when there is occasion, as

we have done in our voyage."

To the Society he writes for a Polyglot Bible, the Gospels in Malay,

Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and Sowerby's English Botany, at his

own cost, and thus plans the conquest of the world:--"I hope the

Society will go on and increase, and that the multitudes of heathen

in the world may hear the glorious words of truth. Africa is but a

little way from England; Madagascar but a little way farther; South

America, and all the numerous and large islands in the Indian and

Chinese seas, I hope will not be passed over. A large field opens

on every side, and millions of perishing heathens, tormented in this

life by idolatry, superstition, and ignorance, and exposed to

eternal miseries in the world to come, are pleading; yea, all their

miseries plead as soon as they are known, with every heart that

loves God, and with all the churches of the living God. Oh, that

many labourers may be thrust out into the vineyard of our Lord Jesus

Christ, and that the gentiles may come to the knowledge of the truth

as it is in Him!"

On the 7th November, as the ship lay in the roads of Balasore, he

and Thomas landed and "began our labours." For three hours the

people of the bazaar listened with great attention to Thomas, and

one prepared for them a native dinner with plantain leaf for dish,

and fingers for knives and forks. Balasore--name of Krishna--was

one of the first settlements of the English in North India in 1642,

and there the American Baptist successors of Carey have since

carried on his work. On the 11th November, after a five months'

voyage, they landed at Calcutta unmolested. The first fortnight's

experience of the city, whose native population he estimated at

200,000, and of the surrounding country, he thus condenses:--"I feel

something of what Paul felt when he beheld Athens, and 'his spirit

was stirred within him.' I see one of the finest countries in the

world, full of industrious inhabitants; yet three-fifths of it are

an uncultivated jungle, abandoned to wild beasts and serpents. If

the gospel flourishes here, 'the wilderness will in every respect

become a fruitful field.'"

Clive, Hastings (Macpherson during an interregnum of twenty-two

months), and Cornwallis, were the men who had founded and

administered the empire of British India up to this time. Carey

passed the last Governor-General in the Bay of Bengal as he retired

with the honours of a seven years' successful generalship and

government to atone for the not unhappy surrender of York Town,

which had resulted in the independence of the United States. Sir

John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, who had been selected by

Pitt to carry out the reforms which he had elaborated along with his

predecessor, had entered on his high office just a fortnight before.

What a contrast was presented, as man judges, by the shy shoemaker,

schoolmaster, and Baptist preacher, who found not a place in which

to lay his head save a hovel lent to him by a Hindoo, to Clive,

whose suicide he might have heard of when a child; to Hastings, who

for seventeen years had stood before his country impeached. They

were men described by Macaulay as of ancient, even illustrious

lineage, and they had brought into existence an empire more

extensive than that of Rome. He was a peasant craftsman, who had

taught himself with a skill which Lord Wellesley, their successor

almost as great as themselves, delighted publicly to acknowledge--a

man of the people, of the class who had used the Roman Empire to

build out of it a universal Christendom, who were even then turning

France upside down, creating the Republic of America, and giving new

life to Great Britain itself. The little Englishman was about to do

in Calcutta and from Serampore what the little Jew, Paul, had done

in Antioch and Ephesus, from Corinth and Rome. England might send

its nobly born to erect the material and the secular fabric of

empire, but it was only, in the providence of God, that they might

prepare for the poor village preacher to convert the empire into a

spiritual force which should in time do for Asia what Rome had done

for Western Christendom. But till the last, as from the first,

Carey was as unconscious of the part which he had been called to

play as he was unresting in the work which it involved. It is no

fanatical criticism, but the true philosophy of history, which

places Carey over against Clive, the spiritual and secular founders,

and Duff beside Hastings, the spiritual and secular consolidators of

our Indian Empire.

Carey's work for India underlay the first period of forty years of

transition from Cornwallis to Bentinck, as Duff's covered the second

of thirty years to the close of Lord Canning's administration, which

introduced the new era of full toleration and partial but increasing

self-government directed by the Viceroy and Parliament.

Carey had been sent not only to the one people outside of

Christendom whose conversion would tell most powerfully on all Asia,

Africa, and their islands--the Hindoos; but to the one province

which was almost entirely British, and could be used as it had been

employed to assimilate the rest of India--Bengal. Territorially the

East India Company possessed, when he landed, nothing outside of the

Ganges valley of Bengal, Bihar, and Benares, save a few spots on the

Madras and Malabar coasts and the portion just before taken in the

Mysore war. The rest was desolated by the Marathas, the Nizam,

Tipoo, and other Mohammedan adventurers. On the Gangetic delta and

right up to Allahabad, but not beyond, the Company ruled and raised

revenue, leaving the other functions of the state to Mohammedans of

the type of Turkish pashas under the titular superiority of the

effete Emperor of Delhi. The Bengali and Hindi-speaking millions of

the Ganges and the simpler aborigines of the hills had been

devastated by the famine of 1769-70, which the Company's officials,

who were powerless where they did not intensify it by interference

with trade, confessed to have cut off from ten to twelve millions of

human beings. Over three-fifths of the area the soil was left

without a cultivator. The whole young of that generation perished,

so that, even twenty years after, Lord Cornwallis officially

described one-third of Bengal as a jungle inhabited only by wild

beasts. A quarter of a century after Carey's language was, as we

have seen, "three-fifths of it are an uncultivated jungle abandoned

to wild beasts and serpents."

But the British peace, in Bengal at least, had allowed abundant

crops to work their natural result on the population. The local

experience of Shore, who had witnessed the horrors he could do so

little to relieve, had united with the statesmanship of Cornwallis

to initiate a series of administrative reforms that worked some

evil, but more good, all through Carey's time. First of all, as

affecting the very existence and the social development of the

people, or their capacity for being educated, Christianised,

civilised in the highest sense, there was the relation of the

Government to the ryots ("protected ones") and the zameendars

("landholders"). In India, as nearly all over the world except in

feudalised Britain, the state is the common landlord in the

interests of all classes who hold the soil subject to the payment of

customary rents, directly or through middlemen, to the Government.

For thirty years after Plassey the Government of India had been

learning its business, and in the process had injured both itself

and the landed classes, as much as has been done in Ireland. From a

mere trader it had been, more or less consciously, becoming a ruler.

In 1786 the Court of Directors, in a famous letter, tried to arrest

the ruin which the famine had only hastened by ordering that a

settlement of the land-tax or revenue or rent be made, not with mere

farmers like the pashas of Turkey, but with the old zameendars, and

that the rate be fixed for ten years. Cornwallis and Shore took

three years to make the detailed investigations, and in 1789 the

state rent-roll of Bengal proper was fixed at 2,858,772 a year.?

The English peer, who was Governor-General, at once jumped to the

conclusion that this rate should be fixed not only for ten years,

but for ever. The experienced Bengal civilian protested that to do

that would be madness when a third of the rich province was out of

cultivation, and as to the rest its value was but little known, and

its estates were without reliable survey or boundaries.

We can now see that, as usual, both were right in what they asserted

and wrong in what they denied. The principle of fixity of tenure

and tax cannot be over-estimated in its economic, social, and

political value, but it should have been applied to the village

communities and cultivating peasants without the intervention of

middlemen other than the large ancestral landholders with hereditary

rights, and that on the standard of corn rents. Cornwallis had it

in his power thus to do what some years afterwards Stein did in

Prussia, with the result seen in the present German people and

empire. The dispute as to a permanent or a decennial settlement was

referred home, and Pitt, aided by Dundas and Charles Grant, took a

week to consider it. His verdict was given in favour of feudalism.

Eight months before Carey landed at Calcutta the settlement had

been declared perpetual; in 1795 it was extended to Benares also.

During the next twenty years mismanagement and debt revolutionised

the landed interest, as in France at the same time, but in a very

different direction. The customary rights of the peasant

proprietors had been legislatively secured by reserving to the

Governor-General the power "to enact such regulations as he may

think necessary for the protection and welfare of the dependent

talookdars, ryots, and other cultivators of the soil." The peasants

continued long to be so few that there was competition for them; the

process of extortion with the aid of the courts had hardly begun

when they were many, and the zameendars were burdened with charges

for the police. But in 1799 and again in 1812 the state, trembling

for its rent, gave the zameendars further authority. The principle

of permanence of assessment so far co-operated with the splendid

fertility of the Ganges valley and the peaceful multiplication of

the people and spread of cultivation, that all through the wars and

annexations, up to the close of the Mutiny, it was Bengal which

enabled England to extend the empire up to its natural limits from

the two seas to the Himalaya. But in 1859 the first attempt was

made by the famous Act X. to check the rack-renting power of the

zameendars. And now, more than a century since the first step was

taken to arrest the ruin of the peasantry, the legislature of India

has again tried to solve for the whole country these four

difficulties which all past landed regulations have intensified--to

give the state tenants a guarantee against uncertain enhancements of

rent, and against taxation of improvements; to minimise the evil of

taking rent in cash instead of in kind by arranging the dates on

which rent is paid; and to mitigate if not prevent famine by

allowing relief for failure of crops. As pioneering, the work of

Carey and his colleagues all through was distinctly hindered by the

treatment of the land question, which at once ground down the mass

of the people and created a class of oppressive landlords destitute

for the most part of public spirit and the higher culture. Both

were disinclined by their circumstances to lend an ear to the

Gospel, but these circumstances made it the more imperative on the

missionaries to tell them, to teach their children, to print for all

the glad tidings. Carey, himself of peasant extraction, cared for

the millions of the people above all; but his work in the classical

as well as the vernacular languages was equally addressed to their

twenty thousand landlords. The time of his work--before Bentinck;

and the centre of it--outside the metropolis, left the use of the

English weapon against Brahmanism largely for Duff.

When Cornwallis, following Warren Hastings, completed the

substitution of the British for the Mohammedan civil administration

by a system of courts and police and a code of regulations, he was

guilty of one omission and one mistake that it took years of

discussion and action to rectify. He did not abolish from the

courts the use of Persian, the language of the old Mussulman

invaders, now foreign to all parties; and he excluded from all

offices above 30 a year the natives of the country, contrary to?

their fair and politic practice. Bengal and its millions, in truth,

were nominally governed in detail by three hundred white and upright

civilians, with the inevitable result in abuses which they could not

prevent, and oppression of native by native which they would not

check, and the delay or development of reforms which the few

missionaries long called for in vain. In a word, after making the

most generous allowance for the good intentions of Cornwallis, and

conscientiousness of Shore, his successor, we must admit that Carey

was called to become the reformer of a state of society which the

worst evils of Asiatic and English rule combined to prevent him and

other self-sacrificing or disinterested philanthropists from

purifying. The East India Company, at home and in India, had

reached that depth of opposition to light and freedom in any form

which justifies Burke's extremest passages--the period between its

triumph on the exclusion of "the pious clauses" from the Charter of

1793 and its defeat in the Charter of 1813. We shall reproduce some

outlines of the picture which Ward drew:--7

"On landing in Bengal, in the year 1793, our brethren found

themselves surrounded with a population of heathens (not including

the Mahometans) amounting to at least one hundred millions of souls.

"On the subject of the divine nature, with the verbal admission of

the doctrine of the divine unity, they heard these idolaters speak

of 330,000,000 of gods. Amidst innumerable idol temples they found

none erected for the worship of the one living and true God.

Services without end they saw performed in honour of the elements

and deified heroes, but heard not one voice tuned to the praise or

employed in the service of the one God. Unacquainted with the moral

perfections of Jehovah, they saw this immense population prostrate

before dead matter, before the monkey, the serpent, before idols the

very personifications of sin; and they found this animal, this

reptile, and the lecher Krishnu {u with inverted ^ like } and his?

concubine Radha, among the favourite deities of the Hindoos...

"Respecting the real nature of the present state, the missionaries

perceived that the Hindoos laboured under the most fatal

misapprehensions; that they believed the good or evil actions of

this birth were not produced as the volitions of their own wills,

but arose from, and were the unavoidable results of, the actions of

the past birth; that their present actions would inevitably give

rise to the whole complexion of their characters and conduct in the

following birth; and that thus they were doomed to interminable

transmigrations, to float as some light substance upon the bosom of

an irresistible torrent...

"Amongst these idolaters no Bibles were found; no sabbaths; no

congregating for religious instruction in any form; no house for

God; no God but a log of wood, or a monkey; no Saviour but the

Ganges; no worship but that paid to abominable idols, and that

connected with dances, songs, and unutterable impurities; so that

what should have been divine worship, purifying, elevating, and

carrying the heart to heaven, was a corrupt but rapid torrent,

poisoning the soul and carrying it down to perdition; no morality,

for how should a people be moral whose gods are monsters of vice;

whose priests are their ringleaders in crime; whose scriptures

encourage pride, impurity, falsehood, revenge, and murder; whose

worship is connected with indescribable abominations, and whose

heaven is a brothel? As might be expected, they found that men died

here without indulging the smallest vestige of hope, except what can

arise from transmigration, the hope, instead of plunging into some

place of misery, of passing into the body of some reptile. To carry

to such a people the divine word, to call them together for sacred

instruction, to introduce amongst them a pure and heavenly worship,

and to lead them to the observance of a Sabbath on earth, as the

preparative and prelude to a state of endless perfection, was surely

a work worthy for a Saviour to command, and becoming a christian

people to attempt."

The condition of women, who were then estimated at "seventy-five

millions of minds," and whom the census shows to be now above

144,000,000, is thus described after an account of female

infanticide:--

"To the Hindoo female all education is denied by the positive

injunction of the shastru {u with inverted ^ like }, and by the?

general voice of the population. Not a single school for girls,

therefore, all over the country! With knitting, sewing, embroidery,

painting, music, and drawing, they have no more to do than with

letters; the washing is done by men of a particular tribe. The

Hindoo girl, therefore, spends the ten first years of her life in

sheer idleness, immured in the house of her father.

"Before she has attained to this age, however, she is sought after

by the ghutuks, men employed by parents to seek wives for their

sons. She is betrothed without her consent; a legal agreement,

which binds her for life, being made by the parents on both sides

while she is yet a child. At a time most convenient to the parents,

this boy and girl are brought together for the first time, and the

marriage ceremony is performed; after which she returns to the house

of her father.

"Before the marriage is consummated, in many instances, the boy

dies, and this girl becomes a widow; and as the law prohibits the

marriage of widows, she is doomed to remain in this state as long as

she lives. The greater number of these unfortunate beings become a

prey to the seducer, and a disgrace to their families. Not long

since a bride, on the day the marriage ceremony was to have been

performed, was burnt on the funeral pile with the dead body of the

bridegroom, at Chandernagore, a few miles north of Calcutta.

Concubinage, to a most awful extent, is the fruit of these

marriages without choice. What a sum of misery is attached to the

lot of woman in India before she has attained even her fifteenth

year!

"In some cases as many as fifty females, the daughters of so many

Hindoos, are given in marriage to one bramhun {u with inverted ^

like }, in order to make these families something more respectable,?

and that the parents may be able to say, we are allied by marriage

to the kooleens...

"But the awful state of female society in this miserable country

appears in nothing so much as in dooming the female, the widow, to

be burnt alive with the putrid carcase of her husband. The Hindoo

legislators have sanctioned this immolation, showing herein a

studied determination to insult and degrade woman. She is,

therefore, in the first instance, deluded into this act by the

writings of these bramhuns {u with inverted ^ like }; in which also?

she is promised, that if she will offer herself, for the benefit of

her husband, on the funeral pile, she shall, by the extraordinary

merit of this action, rescue her husband from misery, and take him

and fourteen generations of his and her family with her to heaven,

where she shall enjoy with them celestial happiness until fourteen

kings of the gods shall have succeeded to the throne of heaven (that

is, millions of years!) Thus ensnared, she embraces this dreadful

death. I have seen three widows, at different times, burnt alive;

and had repeated opportunities of being present at similar

immolations, but my courage failed me...

"The burying alive of widows manifests, if that were possible, a

still more abominable state of feeling towards women than the

burning them alive. The weavers bury their dead. When, therefore,

a widow of this tribe is deluded into the determination not to

survive her husband, she is buried alive with the dead body. In

this kind of immolation the children and relations dig the grave.

After certain ceremonies have been attended to, the poor widow

arrives, and is let down into the pit. She sits in the centre,

taking the dead body on her lap and encircling it with her arms.

These relations now begin to throw in the soil; and after a short

space, two of them descend into the grave, and tread the earth

firmly round the body of the widow. She sits a calm and

unremonstrating spectator of the horrid process. She sees the earth

rising higher and higher around her, without upbraiding her

murderers, or making the least effort to arise and make her escape.

At length the earth reaches her lips--covers her head. The rest of

the earth is then hastily thrown in, and these children and

relations mount the grave, and tread down the earth upon the head of

the suffocating widow--the mother!"

Before Carey, what had been done to turn the millions of North India

from such darkness as that? Nothing, beyond the brief and impulsive

efforts of Thomas. There does not seem to have been there one

genuine convert from any of the Asiatic faiths; there had never been

even the nucleus of a native church.

In South India, for the greater part of the century, the Coast

Mission, as it was called, had been carried on from Tranquebar as a

centre by the Lutherans whom, from Ziegenbalg to Schwartz, Francke

had trained at Halle and Friedrich IV. of Denmark had sent forth to

its East India Company's settlement. From the baptism of the first

convert in 1707 and translation of the New Testament into Tamil, to

the death in 1798 of Schwartz, with whom Carey sought to begin a

correspondence then taken up by Guericke, the foundations were laid

around Madras, in Tanjore, and in Tinnevelli of a native church

which now includes nearly a million. But, when Carey landed,

rationalism in Germany and Denmark, and the Carnatic wars between

the English and French, had reduced the Coast Mission to a state of

inanition. Nor was Southern India the true or ultimate battlefield

against Brahmanism; the triumphs of Christianity there were rather

among the demon-worshipping tribes of Dravidian origin than among

the Aryan races till Dr. W. Miller developed the Christian College.

But the way for the harvest now being reaped by the Evangelicals

and Anglicans of the Church of England, by the Independents of the

London Missionary Society, the Wesleyans, and the Presbyterians of

Scotland and America, was prepared by the German Ziegenbalg and

Schwartz under Danish protection. The English Propagation and

Christian Knowledge Societies sent them occasional aid, the first

two Georges under the influence of their German chaplains wrote to

them encouraging letters, and the East India Company even gave them

a free passage in its ships, and employed the sculptor Bacon to

prepare the noble group of marble which, in St. Mary's Church,

Madras, expresses its gratitude to Schwartz for his political

services.

It was Clive himself who brought to Calcutta the first missionary,

Kiernander the Swede, but he was rather a chaplain, or a missionary

to the Portuguese, who were nominal Christians of the lowest

Romanist type. The French had closed the Danish mission at

Cuddalore, and in 1758 Calcutta was without a Protestant clergyman

to bury the dead or baptise or marry the living. Two years before

one of the two chaplains had perished in the tragedy of the Black

Hole, where he was found lying hand in hand with his son, a young

lieutenant. The other had escaped down the river only to die of

fever along with many more. The victory of Plassey and the large

compensation paid for the destruction of Old Calcutta and its church

induced thousands of natives to flock to the new capital, while the

number of the European troops and officials was about 2000. When

chaplains were sent out, the Governor-General officially wrote of

them to the Court of Directors so late as 1795:--"Our clergy in

Bengal, with some exceptions, are not respectable characters." From

the general relaxation of morals, he added, "a black coat is no

security." They were so badly paid--from 50 to 230 a year,? ?

increased by 120 to meet the cost of living in Calcutta after?

1764--that they traded. Preaching was the least of the chaplains'

duties; burying was the most onerous. Anglo-Indian society, cut off

from London, itself not much better, by a six months' voyage, was

corrupt. Warren Hastings and Philip Francis, his hostile colleague

in Council, lived in open adultery. The majority of the officials

had native women, and the increase of their children, who lived in a

state worse than that of the heathen, became so alarming that the

compensation paid by the Mohammedan Government of Moorshedabad for

the destruction of the church was applied to the foundation of the

useful charity still known as the Free School. The fathers not

infrequently adopted the Hindoo pantheon along with the zanana. The

pollution, springing from England originally, was rolled back into

it in an increasing volume, when the survivors retired as nabobs

with fortunes, to corrupt social and political life, till Pitt cried

out; and it became possible for Burke almost to succeed in his

eighteen years' impeachment of Hastings. The literature of the

close of the eighteenth century is full of alarm lest the English

character should be corrupted, and lest the balance of the

constitution should be upset.

Kiernander is said to have been the means of converting 209 heathens

and 380 Romanists, of whom three were priests, during the

twenty-eight years of his Calcutta career. Claudius Buchanan

declares that Christian tracts had been translated into Bengali--one

written by the Bishop of Sodor and Man--and that in the time of

Warren Hastings Hindoo Christians had preached to their countrymen

in the city. The "heathen" were probably Portuguese descendants, in

whose language Kiernander preached as the lingua franca of the time.

He could not even converse in Bengali or Hindostani, and when

Charles Grant went to him for information as to the way of a

sinner's salvation this happened--"My anxious inquiries as to what I

should do to be saved appeared to embarrass and confuse him

exceedingly. He could not answer my questions, but he gave me some

good instructive books." On Kiernander's bankruptcy, caused by his

son when the father was blind, the "Mission Church" was bought by

Grant, who wrote that its labours "have been confined to the

descendants of Europeans, and have hardly ever embraced a single

heathen, so that a mission to the Hindoos and Mohammedans would be a

new thing." The Rev. David Brown, who had been sent out the year

after as master and chaplain of the Military Orphan Society, for the

education of the children of officers and soldiers, and was to

become one of the Serampore circle of friends, preached to Europeans

only in the Mission Church. Carey could find no trace of

Kiernander's work among the natives six years after his death.8 The

only converted Hindoo known of in Northern India up to that time was

Guneshan Dass, of Delhi, who when a boy joined Clive's army, who was

the first man of caste to visit England, and who, on his return with

the Calcutta Supreme Court Judges in 1774 as Persian interpreter and

translator, was baptised by Kiernander, Mr. justice Chambers being

sponsor.

William Carey had no predecessor in India as the first ordained

Englishman who was sent to it as a missionary; he had no predecessor

in Bengal and Hindostan proper as the first missionary from any land

to the people. Even the Moravians, who in 1777 had sent two

brethren to Serampore, Calcutta, and Patna, had soon withdrawn them,

and one of them became the Company's botanist in Madras--Dr. Heyne.

Carey practically stood alone at the first, while he unconsciously

set in motion the double revolution, which was to convert the

Anglo-Indian influence on England from corrupting heathenism to

aggressive missionary zeal, and to change the Bengal of Cornwallis

into the India of Bentinck, with all the possibilities that have

made it grow, thus far, into the India of the Lawrences.

CHAPTER IV

SIX YEARS IN NORTH BENGAL--MISSIONARY AND INDIGO PLANTER

1794-1799

Carey's two missionary principles--Destitute in Calcutta--Bandel and

Nuddea--Applies in vain to be under-superintendent of the Botanic

Garden--Housed by a native usurer--Translation and preaching work in

Calcutta--Secures a grant of waste land at Hasnabad--Estimate of the

Bengali language, and appeal to the Society to work in Asia and

Africa rather than in America--The Udny family--Carey's summary of

his first year's experience--Superintends the indigo factory of

Mudnabati--Indigo and the East India Company's monopolies--Carey's

first nearly fatal sickness--Death of his child and chronic madness

of his wife--Formation of first Baptist church in India--Early

progress of Bible translation--Sanskrit studies; the Mahabarata--The

wooden printing-press set up at Mudnabati--His educational ideal;

school-work--The medical mission--Lord Wellesley--Carey seeks a

mission centre among the Bhooteas--Describes his first sight of a

Sati--Projects a mission settlement at Kidderpore.

Carey was in his thirty-third year when he landed in Bengal. Two

principles regulated the conception, the foundation, and the whole

course of the mission which he now began. He had been led to these

by the very genius of Christianity itself, by the example and

teaching of Christ and of Paul, and by the experience of the

Moravian brethren. He had laid them down in his Enquiry, and every

month's residence during forty years in India confirmed him in his

adhesion to them. These principles are that (1) a missionary must

be one of the companions and equals of the people to whom he is

sent; and (2) a missionary must as soon as possible become

indigenous, self-supporting, self-propagating, alike by the labours

of the mission and of the converts. Himself a man of the people yet

a scholar, a shoemaker and a schoolmaster yet a preacher and pastor

to whom the great Robert Hall gloried in being a successor, Carey

had led the two lives as Paul had done. Now that he was fairly in

Calcutta he resumed the divine toil, and ceased it not till he

entered on the eternal rest. He prepared to go up country to Malda

to till the ground among the natives of the rich district around the

ruined capital of Gour. He engaged as his pundit and interpreter Ram

Basu, one of the professing inquirers whom Thomas had attracted in

former days. Experience soon taught him that, however correct his

principle, Malda is not a land where the white man can be a farmer.

So he became, in the different stages of his career, a captain of

labour as an indigo planter, a teacher of Bengali, and professor of

Sanskrit and Marathi, and the Government translator of Bengali. Nor

did he or his associates ever make the mistake--or commit the

fraud--of the Jesuit missionaries, whose idea of equality with the

people was not that of brotherhood in Christ, but that of dragging

down Christian doctrine, worship and civilisation, to the level of

idolatrous heathenism, and deluding the ignorant into accepting the

blasphemous compromise.

Alas! Carey could not manage to get out of Calcutta and its

neighbourhood for five months. As he thought to live by farming,

Thomas was to practise his profession; and their first year's income

of 150 had, in those days when the foreign exchanges were unknown,?

to be realised by the sale of the goods in which it had been

invested. As usual, Thomas had again blundered, so that even his

gentle colleague himself half-condemned, half-apologised for him by

the shrewd reflection that he was only fit to live at sea, where his

daily business would be before him, and daily provision would be

made for him. Carey found himself penniless. Even had he received

the whole of his 75, as he really did in one way or other, what was?

that for such a family as his at the beginning of their undertaking?

The expense of living at all in Calcutta drove the whole party

thirty miles up the river to Bandel, an old Portuguese suburb of the

Hoogli factory. There they rented a small house from the German

hotel-keeper, beside the Augustinian priory and oldest church in

North India, which dates from 1599 and is still in good order.

There they met Kiernander, then at the great age of eighty-four.

Daily they preached or talked to the people. They purchased a boat

for regular visitation of the hamlets, markets, and towns which line

both banks of the river. With sure instinct Carey soon fixed on

Nuddea, as the centre of Brahmanical superstition and Sanskrit

learning, where "to build me a hut and live like the natives,"

language recalled to us by the words of the dying Livingstone in the

swamps of Central Africa. There, in the capital of the last of the

Hindoo kings, beside the leafy tols or colleges of a river port

which rivals Benares, Poona, and Conjeeveram in sanctity, where

Chaitanya the Vaishnaiva reformer was born, Carey might have

attacked Brahmanism in its stronghold. A passage in his journal

shows how he realised the position. Thomas, the pundit, and he

"sought the Lord by prayer for direction," and this much was the

result--"Several of the most learned Pundits and Brahmans wished us

to settle there; and, as that is the great place for Eastern

learning, we seemed inclined, especially as it is the bulwark of

heathenism, which, if once carried, all the rest of the country must

be laid open to us." But there was no available land there for an

Englishman's cultivation. From Bandel he wrote home these

impressions of Anglo-Indian life and missionary duty:--

"26th Dec. 1793.--A missionary must be one of the companions and

equals of the people to whom he is sent, and many dangers and

temptations will be in his way. One or two pieces of advice I may

venture to give. The first is to be exceedingly cautious lest the

voyage prove a great snare. All the discourse is about high life,

and every circumstance will contribute to unfit the mind for the

work and prejudice the soul against the people to whom he goes; and

in a country like this, settled by Europeans, the grandeur, the

customs, and prejudices of the Europeans are exceeding dangerous.

They are very kind and hospitable, but even to visit them, if a man

keeps no table of his own, would more than ten times exceed the

allowance of a mission; and all their discourse is about the vices

of the natives, so that a missionary must see thousands of people

treating him with the greatest kindness, but whom he must be

entirely different from in his life, his appearance in everything,

or it is impossible for him to stand their profuse way of living,

being so contrary to his character and so much above his ability.

This is a snare to dear Mr. Thomas, which will be felt by us both

in some measure. It will be very important to missionaries to be

men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to

suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will

be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an

inconstancy of mind being quite injurious to it."

He had need of such faith and patience. Hearing of waste land in

Calcutta, he returned there only to be disappointed. The Danish

captain, knowing that he had written a botanical work, advised him

to take it to the doctor in charge of the Company's Botanic Garden,

and offer himself for a vacant appointment to superintend part of

it. The doctor, who and whose successors were soon to be proud of

his assistance on equal terms, had to tell him that the office had

been filled up, but invited the weary man to dine with him.

Houseless, with his maddened wife, and her sister and two of his

four children down with dysentery, due to the bad food and exposure

of six weeks in the interor, Carey found a friend, appropriately

enough, in a Bengali money-lender.9 Nelu Dutt, a banker who had lent

money to Thomas, offered the destitute family his garden house in

the north-eastern quarter of Manicktolla until they could do better.

The place was mean enough, but Carey never forgot the deed, and he

had it in his power long after to help Nelu Dutt when in poverty.

Such, on the other hand, was the dislike of the Rev. David Brown to

Thomas, that when Carey had walked five miles in the heat of the sun

to visit the comparatively prosperous evangelical preacher, "I left

him without his having so much as asked me to take any refreshment."

Carey would not have been allowed to live in Calcutta as a

missionary. Forty years were to pass before that could be possible

without a Company's passport. But no one was aware of the existence

of the obscure vagrant, as he seemed, although he was hard at work.

All around him was a Mohammedan community whom he addressed with

the greatest freedom, and with whom he discussed the relative merits

of the Koran and the Bible in a kindly spirit, "to recommend the

Gospel and the way of life by Christ." He had helped Thomas with a

translation of the book of Genesis during the voyage, and now we

find this in his journal two months and a half after he had

landed:--

"Through the delays of my companion I have spent another month, and

done scarcely anything, except that I have added to my knowledge of

the language, and had opportunity of seeing much more of the genius

and disposition of the natives than I otherwise could have known.

This day finished the correction of the first chapter of Genesis,

which moonshi says is rendered into very good Bengali. Just as we

had finished it, a pundit and another man from Nuddea came to see

me. I showed it to them; and the pundit seemed much pleased with

the account of the creation; only they have an imaginary place

somewhere beneath the earth, and he thought that should have been

mentioned likewise...

"Was very weary, having walked in the sun about fifteen or sixteen

miles, yet had the satisfaction of discoursing with some

money-changers at Calcutta, who could speak English, about the

importance and absolute necessity of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

One of them was a very crafty man, and tried much to entangle me

with hard questions; but at last, finding himself entangled, he

desisted, and went to his old occupation of money-changing again.

If once God would by his Spirit convince them of sin, a Saviour

would be a blessing indeed to them: but human nature is the same all

the world over, and all conviction fails except it is produced by

the effectual working of the Holy Spirit."

Ram Basu was himself in debt, was indeed all along a self-interested

inquirer. But the next gleam of hope came from him, that the Carey

family should move to the waste jungles of the Soondarbans, the

tiger-haunted swamps south-east of Calcutta, and there cultivate a

grant of land. With a sum of 16 borrowed from a native at twelve?

per cent. by Mr. Thomas, a boat was hired, and on the fourth day,

when only one more meal remained, the miserable family and their

stout-hearted father saw an English-built house. As they walked up

to it the owner met them, and with Anglo-Indian hospitality invited

them all to become his guests. He proved to be Mr. Charles Short,

in charge of the Company's salt manufacture there. As a deist he

had no sympathy with Carey's enterprise, but he helped the

missionary none the less, and the reward came to him in due time in

the opening of his heart to the love of Christ. He afterwards

married Mrs. Carey's sister, and in England the two survived the

great missionary, to tell this and much more regarding him. Here,

at the place appropriately named Hasnabad, or the "smiling spot,"

Carey took a few acres on the Jamoona arm of the united Ganges and

Brahmapootra, and built him a bamboo house, forty miles east of

Calcutta. Knowing that the sahib's gun would keep off the tigers,

natives squatted around to the number of three or four thousand.

Such was the faith, the industry, and the modesty of the brave

little man that, after just three months, he wrote thus:--"When I

know the language well enough to preach in it, I have no doubt of

having a stated congregation, and I much hope to send you pleasing

accounts. I can so far converse in the language as to be understood

in most things belonging to eating and drinking, buying and selling,

etc. My ear is somewhat familiarised to the Bengali sounds. It is

a language of a very singular construction, having no plural except

for pronouns, and not a single preposition in it: but the cases of

nouns and pronouns are almost endless, all the words answering to

our prepositions being put after the word, and forming a new case.

Except these singularities, I find it an easy language. I feel

myself happy in my present undertaking; for, though I never felt the

loss of social religion so much as now, yet a consciousness of

having given up all for God is a support; and the work, with all its

attendant inconveniences, is to me a rich reward. I think the

Society would do well to keep their eye towards Africa or Asia,

countries which are not like the wilds of America, where long labour

will scarcely collect sixty people to hear the Word: for here it is

almost impossible to get out of the way of hundreds, and preachers

are wanted a thousand times more than people to preach to. Within

India are the Maratha country and the northern parts to Cashmere, in

which, as far as I can learn, there is not one soul that thinks of

God aright...My health was never better. The climate, though hot,

is tolerable; but, attended as I am with difficulties, I would not

renounce my undertaking for all the world."

It was at this time that he drew his strength often from the

experience of the first missionary, described by Isaiah, in all his

solitude:--"Look unto Abraham your father, for I called him alone

and blessed him and increased him. For the Lord shall comfort Zion;

He will comfort all her waste places." The sun of His comfort shone

forth at last.

Carey's original intention to begin his mission near Malda was now

to be carried out. In the opening week of 1794 the small English

community in Bengal were saddened by the news that, when crossing

the Hoogli at Calcutta, a boat containing three of its principal

merchants and the wife of one of them, had been upset, and all had

been drowned. It turned out that two of the men recovered, but Mr.

R. Udny and his young wife perished. His aged mother had been one

of the godly circle in the Residency at Malda to whom Thomas had

ministered; and Mr. G. Udny, her other son, was still the Company's

commercial Resident there. A letter of sympathy which Thomas sent

to them restored the old relations, and resulted in Mr. G. Udny

inviting first the writer and then Carey to become his assistants in

charge of new indigo factories which he was building on his own

account. Each received a salary equivalent to 250 a year, with the?

prospect of a commission on the out-turn, and even a proprietary

share. Carey's remark in his journal on the day he received the

offer was:--"This appearing to be a remarkable opening in divine

providence for our comfortable support, I accepted it...I shall

likewise be joined with my colleague again, and we shall unitedly

engage in our work." Again:--"The conversion of the heathen is the

object which above all others I wish to pursue. If my situation at

Malda should be tolerable, I most certainly will publish the Bible

in numbers." On receiving the rejoinder to his acceptance of the

offer he set this down:--"I am resolved to write to the Society that

my circumstances are such that I do not need future help from them,

and to devote a sum monthly for the printing of the Bengali Bible."

This he did, adding that it would be his glory and joy to stand in

the same relation to the Society as if he needed support from them.

He hoped they would be the sooner able to send another mission

somewhere--to Sumatra or some of the Indian Islands. From the first

he lived with such simplicity that he gave from one-fourth to

one-third of his little income to his own mission at Mudnabati.

Carey thus sums up his first year's experience before leaving his

jungle home on a three weeks' voyage up the Ganges, and records his

first deliberate and regular attempt to preach in Bengali on the

way.

"8th April 1794.--All my hope is in, and all my comfort arises from,

God; without His power no European could possibly be converted, and

His power can convert any Indian; and when I reflect that He has

stirred me up to the work, and wrought wonders to prepare the way, I

can hope in His promises, and am encouraged and strengthened...

"19th April.--O how glorious are the ways of God! 'My soul longeth

and fainteth for God, for the living God, to see His glory and

beauty as I have seen them in the sanctuary.' When I first left

England, my hope of the conversion of the heathen was very strong;

but, among so many obstacles, it would entirely die away unless

upheld by God. Nothing to exercise it, but plenty to obstruct it,

for now a year and nineteen days, which is the space since I left my

dear charge at Leicester. Since that I have had hurrying up and

down; a five months' imprisonment with carnal men on board the ship;

five more learning the language; my moonshi not understanding

English sufficiently to interpret my preaching; my colleague

separated from me; long delays and few opportunities for social

worship; no woods to retire to, like Brainerd, for fear of tigers

(no less than twenty men in the department of Deharta, where I am,

have been carried away by them this season from the salt-works); no

earthly thing to depend upon, or earthly comfort, except food and

raiment. Well, I have God, and His Word is sure; and though the

superstitions of the heathen were a million times worse than they

are, if I were deserted by all, and persecuted by all, yet my hope,

fixed on that sure Word, will rise superior to all obstructions, and

triumph over all trials. God's cause will triumph, and I shall come

out of all trials as gold purified by fire. I was much humbled

to-day by reading Brainerd. O what a disparity betwixt me and him,

he always constant, I as inconstant as the wind!

"22nd April.--Bless God for a continuance of the happy frame of

yesterday. I think the hope of soon acquiring the language puts

fresh life into my soul; for a long time my mouth has been shut, and

my days have been beclouded with heaviness; but now I begin to be

something like a traveller who has been almost beaten out in a

violent storm, and who, with all his clothes about him dripping wet,

sees the sky begin to clear: so I, with only the prospect of a more

pleasant season at hand, scarcely feel the sorrows of the present.

"23rd.--With all the cares of life, and all its sorrows, yet I find

that a life of communion with God is sufficient to yield consolation

in the midst of all, and even to produce a holy joy in the soul,

which shall make it to triumph over all affliction. I have never

yet repented of any sacrifice that I have made for the Gospel, but

find that consolation of mind which can come from God alone.

"26th May.--This day kept Sabbath at Chandureea; had a pleasant day.

In the morning and afternoon addressed my family, and in the

evening began my work of publishing the Word of God to the heathen.

Though imperfect in the knowledge of the language, yet, with the

help of moonshi, I conversed with two Brahmans in the presence of

about two hundred people, about the things of God. I had been to see

a temple, in which were the images of Dukkinroy, the god of the

woods, riding on a tiger; Sheetulla, goddess of the smallpox,

without a head, riding on a horse without a head; Punchanon, with

large ears; and Colloroy, riding on a horse. In another apartment

was Seeb, which was only a smooth post of wood, with two or three

mouldings in it, like the base of a Tuscan pillar. I therefore

discoursed with them upon the vanity of idols, the folly and

wickedness of idolatry, the nature and attributes of God, and the

way of salvation by Christ. One Brahman was quite confounded, and a

number of people were all at once crying out to him, 'Why do you not

answer him? Why do you not answer him?' He replied, 'I have no

words.' Just at this time a very learned Brahman came up, who was

desired to talk with me, which he did, and so acceded to what I

said, that he at last said images had been used of late years, but

not from the beginning. I inquired what I must do to be saved; he

said I must repeat the name of God a great many times. I replied,

would you, if your son had offended you, be so pleased with him as

to forgive him if he were to repeat the word 'father' a thousand

times? This might please children or fools, but God is wise. He

told me that I must get faith; I asked what faith was, to which he

gave me no intelligible reply, but said I must obey God. I answered,

what are His commands? what is His will? They said God was a great

light, and as no one could see him, he became incarnate, under the

threefold character of Brhumma, Bishno, and Seeb, and that either of

them must be worshipped in order to life. I told them of the sure

Word of the Gospel, and the way of life by Christ; and, night coming

on, left them. I cannot tell what effect it may have, as I may

never see them again."

At the beginning of the great rains in the middle of June Carey

joined Mr. Udny and his mother at the chief factory. On each of the

next two Sabbaths he preached twice in the hall of the Residency of

the Company, which excluded all Christian missionaries by Act of

Parliament. As an indigo planter he received the Company's licence

to reside for at least five years. So on 26th June he began his

secular duties by completing for the season of indigo manufacture

the buildings at Mudnabati, and making the acquaintance of the

ninety natives under his charge. Both Mr. Udny and he knew well

that he was above all things a Christian missionary. "These will

furnish a congregation immediately, and, added to the extensive

engagements which I must necessarily have with the natives, will

open a very wide door for activity. God grant that it may not only

be large but effectual."

These were the days, which continued till the next charter, when the

East India Company was still not only a body of merchants but of

manufacturers. Of all the old monopolies only the most evil one is

left, that of the growth, manufacture, and sale of opium. The civil

servants, who were termed Residents, had not political duties with

tributary sovereigns as now, but from great factory-like palaces,

and on large salaries, made advances of money to contractors, native

and European, who induced the ryots to weave cloth, to breed and

feed the silkworm, and to grow and make the blue dye to which India

had long given the name of "indigo." Mr. Carey was already familiar

with the system of advances for salt, and the opium monopoly was

then in its infancy. The European contractors were "interlopers,"

who introduced the most valuable cultivation and processes into

India, and yet with whom the "covenanted" Residents were often at

war. The Residents had themselves liberty of private trade, and

unscrupulous men abused it. Clive had been hurried out thirty years

before to check the abuse, which was ruining not only the Company's

investments but the people. It had so spread on his departure that

even judges and chaplains shared in the spoils till Cornwallis

interfered. In the case of Mr. G. Udny and purely commercial agents

the evil was reduced to a minimum, and the practice had been

deliberately sanctioned by Sir John Shore on the ground that it was

desirable to make the interests of the Company and of individuals go

hand in hand.

The days when Europe got its cotton cloth from India, calling it

"calico," from Calicut, and its rich yellow silks, have long since

passed, although the latter are still supplied in an inferior form,

and the former is once more raising its head, from the combination

of machinery and cheap labour. For the old abuses of the Company

the Government by Parliament has to some extent atoned by fostering

the new cultures of tea, coffee, and cinchona, jute and wheat. The

system of inducing the ryots to cultivate by advances, protected by

a stringent contract law, still exists in the case of opium. The

indigo culture system of Carey's time broke down in 1860 in the

lower districts, where, following the Company itself, the planter

made cash advances to the peasant, who was required to sow indigo on

land which he held as a tenant but often as a proprietor, to deliver

it at a fixed rate, and to bear the risk of the crop as well as the

exactions of the factory servants. It still exists in the upper

districts of Bihar, especially in Tirhoot, on a system comparatively

free from economic objections.

The plant known as "Indigofera Tinctoria" is sown in March in soil

carefully prepared, grows to about 5 feet, is cut down early in

July, is fermented in vats, and the liquor is beaten till it

precipitates the precious blue dye, which is boiled, drained, cut in

small cakes, and dried. From first to last the growth and the

manufacture are even more precarious than most tropical crops. An

even rainfall, rigorous weeding, the most careful superintendence of

the chemical processes, and conscientious packing, are necessary.

One good crop in three years will pay where the factory is not

burdened by severe interest on capital; one every other year will

pay very well. Personally Carey had more than the usual

qualifications of a successful planter, scientific knowledge,

scrupulous conscientiousness and industry, and familiarity with the

native character, so soon as he acquired the special experience

necessary for superintending the manufacture. That experience he

spared no effort to gain at once.

"1st, 2nd, and 3rd July.--Much engaged in the necessary business of

preparing our works for the approaching season of indigo-making,

which will commence in about a fortnight. I had on the evening of

each of these days very precious seasons of fervent prayer to God. I

have been on these evenings much drawn out in prayer for my dear

friends at Leicester, and for the Society that it may be prosperous;

likewise for the ministers of my acquaintance, not only of the

Baptist but other denominations. I was engaged for the churches in

America and Holland, as well as England, and much concerned for the

success of the Gospel among the Hindoos. At present I know not of

any success since I have been here. Many say that the Gospel is the

word of truth; but they abound so much in flattery and encomiums,

which are mere words of course, that little can be said respecting

their sincerity. The very common sins of lying and avarice are so

universal also, that no European who has not witnessed it can form

any idea of their various appearances: they will stoop to anything

whatsoever to get a few cowries, and lie on every occasion. O how

desirable is the spread of the Gospel!

"4th July.--Rather more flat, perhaps owing to the excessive heat;

for in the rainy season, if there be a fine day, it is very hot

indeed. Such has been this day, and I was necessitated to be out in

it from morning till evening, giving necessary directions. I felt

very much fatigued indeed, and had no spirits left in the evening,

and in prayer was very barren...

"9th July to 4th Aug.--Employed in visiting several factories to

learn the process of indigo-making. Had some very pleasant seasons

at Malda, where I preached several times, and the people seemed much

affected with the Word. One day, as Mr. Thomas and I were riding

out, we saw a basket hung in a tree, in which an infant had been

exposed; the skull remained, the rest having been devoured by ants."

Success in the indigo culture was indeed never possible in

Mudnabati. The factory stood on the river Tangan, within what is

now the district of Dinajpoor, thirty miles north of Malda. To this

day the revenue surveyors of Government describe it as low and

marshy, subject to inundation during the rains, and considered very

unhealthy. Carey had not been there a fortnight when he had to make

this record:--

"5th, 6th, 7th July.--Much employed in settling the affairs of the

buildings, etc., having been absent so long, and several of our

managing and principal people being sick. It is indeed an awful

time here with us now, scarcely a day but some are seized with

fevers. It is, I believe, owing to the abundance of water, there

being rice-fields all around us, in which they dam up the water, so

that all the country hereabouts is about a foot deep in water; and

as we have rain, though moderate to what I expected the rainy season

to be, yet the continual moisture occasions fevers in such

situations where rice is cultivated...Felt at home and thankful

these days. O that I may be very useful! I must soon learn the

language tolerably well, for I am obliged to converse with the

natives every day, having no other persons here except my family."

Soon in September, the worst of all the months in Bengal, he himself

was brought near to the grave by a fever, one of the paroxysms

continuing for twenty-six hours without intermission, "when

providentially Mr. Udny came to visit us, not knowing that I was

ill, and brought a bottle of bark with him." He slowly recovered,

but the second youngest child, Peter, a boy of five, was removed by

dysentery, and caste made it long difficult to find any native to

dig his grave. But of this time the faithful sufferer could

write:--

"Sometimes I enjoyed sweet seasons of self-examination and prayer,

as I lay upon my bed. Many hours together I sweetly spent in

contemplating subjects for preaching, and in musing over discourses

in Bengali; and when my animal spirits were somewhat raised by the

fever, I found myself able to reason and discourse in Bengali for

some hours together, and words and phrases occurred much more

readily than when I was in health. When my dear child was ill I was

enabled to attend upon him night and day, though very dangerously

ill myself, without much fatigue; and now, I bless God that I feel a

sweet resignation to his will."

A still harder fate befell him. The monomania of his wife became

chronic. A letter which she wrote and sent by special messenger

called forth from Thomas this loving sympathy:--"You must endeavour

to consider it a disease. The eyes and ears of many are upon you,

to whom your conduct is unimpeachable with respect to all her

charges; but if you show resentment, they have ears, and others have

tongues set on fire. Were I in your case, I should be violent; but

blessed be God, who suits our burdens to our backs. Sometimes I

pray earnestly for you, and I always feel for you. Think of Job,

Think of Jesus. Think of those who were 'destitute, afflicted,

tormented.'"

A voyage up the Tangan in Mr. Udny's pinnace as far as the north

frontier, at a spot now passed by the railway to Darjeeling,

restored the invalid. "I am no hunter," he wrote, while Thomas was

shooting wild buffaloes, but he was ever adding to his store of

observations of the people, the customs and language. Meanwhile he

was longing for letters from Fuller and Pearce and Ryland. At the

end of January 1795 the missionary exile thus talks of himself in

his journal:--"Much engaged in writing, having begun to write

letters to Europe; but having received none, I feel that hope

deferred makes the heart sick. However, I am so fully satisfied of

the firmness of their friendship that I feel a sweet pleasure in

writing to them, though rather of a forlorn kind; and having nothing

but myself to write about, feel the awkwardness of being an egotist.

I feel a social spirit though barred from society...I sometimes

walk in my garden, and try to pray to God; and if I pray at all it

is in the solitude of a walk. I thought my soul a little drawn out

to-day, but soon gross darkness returned. Spoke a word or two to a

Mohammedan upon the things of God, but I feel to be as bad as

they...9th May. I have added nothing to these memoirs since the

19th of April. Now I observe that for the last three sabbaths my

soul has been much comforted in seeing so large a congregation, and

more especially as many who are not our own workmen come from the

parts adjacent, whose attendance must be wholly disinterested. I

therefore now rejoice in seeing a regular congregation of from two

to six hundred people of all descriptions--Mussulmans, Brahmans and

other classes of Hindus, which I look upon as a favourable token

from God...Blessed be God, I have at last received letters and other

articles from our friends in England...from dear brethren Fuller,

Morris, Pearce, and Rippon, but why not from others?...14th June. I

have had very sore trials in my own family, from a quarter which I

forbear to mention. Have greater need for faith and patience than

ever I had, and I bless God that I have not been altogether without

supplies of these graces...Mr. Thomas and his family spent one

Lord's day with us, May 23rd...We spent Wednesday, 26th, in prayer,

and for a convenient place assembled in a temple of Seeb, which was

near to our house...I was from that day seized with a dysentery,

which continued nearly a week with fearful violence; but then I

recovered, through abundant mercy. That day of prayer was a good

day to our souls. We concerted measures for forming a Baptist

church."

To his sister he wrote, on the 11th March, of the church, which was

duly formed of Europeans and Eurasians. No native convert was made

in this Dinapoor mission till 1806, after Carey had removed to

Serampore. "We have in the neighbourhood about fifteen or sixteen

serious persons, or those I have good hopes of, all Europeans. With

the natives I have very large concerns; almost all the farmers for

nearly twenty miles round cultivate indigo for us, and the labouring

people working here to the number of about five hundred, so that I

have considerable opportunity of publishing the Gospel to them. I

have so much knowledge of the language as to be able to preach to

them for about half an hour, so as to be understood, but am not able

to vary my subjects much. I tell them of the evil and universality

of sin, the sins of a natural state, the justice of God, the

incarnation of Christ and his sufferings in our stead, and of the

necessity of conversion, holiness, and faith, in order to salvation.

They hear with attention in general, and some come to me for

instruction in the things of God."

"It was always my opinion that missionaries may and must support

themselves after having been sent out and received a little support

at first, and in consequence I pursue a very little worldly

employment which requires three months' closish attendance in the

year; but this is in the rains--the most unfavourable season for

exertion. I have a district of about twenty miles square, where I

am continually going from village to village to publish the Gospel;

and in this space are about two hundred villages, whose inhabitants

from time to time hear the Word. My manner of travelling is with two

small boats; one serves me to live in, and the other for cooking my

food. I carry all my furniture and food with me from place to

place--viz. a chair, a table, a bed, and a lamp. I walk from

village to village, but repair to my boat for lodging and eating.

There are several rivers in this extent of country, which is very

convenient for travelling."

Carey's first convert seems to have been Ignatius Fernandez, a

Portuguese descendant who had prospered as a trader in Dinapoor

station. The first Protestant place of worship in Bengal, outside

of Calcutta, was built by him, in 1797, next to his own house.

There he conducted service both in English and Bengali, whenever

Carey and Thomas, and Fountain afterwards, were unable to go out to

the station, and in his house Thomas and Fountain died. He remained

there as a missionary till his own death, four years before Carey's,

when he left all his property to the mission. The mission-house, as

it is now, is a typical example of the bungalow of one story, which

afterwards formed the first chapel in Serampore, and is still common

as officers' quarters in Barrackpore and other military stations.

Side by side with his daily public preaching and more private

conversations with inquirers in Bengali, Carey carried on the work

of Bible translation. As each new portion was prepared it was

tested by being read to hundreds of natives. The difficulty was

that he had at once to give a literary form to the rich materials of

the language, and to find in these or adapt from them terms

sufficiently pure and accurate to express the divine ideas and facts

revealed through the Hebrew and the Greek of the original. He gives

us this unconscious glimpse of himself at work on this loftiest and

most fruitful of tasks, which Jerome had first accomplished for

Latin Christendom, Ulfila for our Scandinavian forefathers, Wiclif

for the English, and Luther for the Germans of the time.

"Now I must mention some of the difficulties under which we labour,

particularly myself. The language spoken by the natives of this

part, though Bengali, is yet so different from the language itself,

that, though I can preach an hour with tolerable freedom so as that

all who speak the language well, or can write or read, perfectly

understand me, yet the poor labouring people can understand but

little; and though the language is rich, beautiful, and expressive,

yet the poor people, whose whole concern has been to get a little

rice to satisfy their wants, or to cheat their oppressive merchants

and zameendars, have scarcely a word in use about religion. They

have no word for love, for repent, and a thousand other things; and

every idea is expressed either by quaint phrases or tedious

circumlocutions. A native who speaks the language well finds it a

year's work to obtain their idiom. This sometimes discourages me

much; but blessed be God I feel a growing desire to be always

abounding in the work of the Lord, and I know that my labour shall

not be in vain in the Lord. I am much encouraged by our Lord's

expression, 'He who reapeth' (in the harvest) 'receiveth wages, and

gathereth fruit unto eternal life.' If I, like David, only am an

instrument of gathering materials, and another build the house, I

trust my joy will not be the less." This was written to the

well-beloved Pearce, whom he would fain have had beside him at

Mudnabati. To guide the two missionaries whom the Society were

about to send to Africa on the salaries which he and Thomas had set

free for this extension, Carey adds:--"They will do well to

associate as much as possible with the natives, and to write down

every word they can catch, with its meaning. But if they have

children with them, it is by far the readiest way of learning to

listen to them, for they will catch up every idiom in a little time.

My children can speak nearly as well as the natives, and know many

things in Bengali which they do not know in English. I should also

recommend to your consideration a very large country, perhaps

unthought of: I mean Bhootan or Tibet. Were two missionaries sent

to that country, we should have it in our power to afford them much

help...The day I received your letter I set about composing a

grammar and dictionary of the Bengal language to send to you. The

best account of Hindu mythology extant, and which is pretty exact,

is Sonnerat's Voyage, undertaken by order of the king of France."

Without Sanskrit Carey found that he could neither master its

Bengali offshoot nor enrich that vernacular with the words and

combinations necessary for his translations of Scripture.

Accordingly, with his usual rapidity and industry, we find that he

had by April 1796 so worked his way through the intricate

difficulties of the mother language of the Aryans that he could thus

write to Ryland, with more than a mere scholar's enthusiasm, of one

of the two great Vedic epics:--"I have read a considerable part of

the Mahabarata, an epic poem written in most beautiful language, and

much upon a par with Homer; and it was, like his Iliad, only

considered as a great effort of human genius, I should think it one

of the first productions in the world; but alas! it is the ground of

faith to millions of the simple sons of men, and as such must be

held in the utmost abhorrence." At the beginning of 1798 he wrote

to Sutcliff:--"I am learning the Sanskrit language, which, with only

the helps to be procured here, is perhaps the hardest language in

the world. To accomplish this, I have nearly translated the

Sanskrit grammar and dictionary into English, and have made

considerable progress in compiling a dictionary, Sanskrit, including

Bengali and English."

By this year he had completed his first translation of the Bible

except the historical books from Joshua to Job, and had gone to

Calcutta to obtain estimates for printing the New Testament, of

which he had reported to Mr. Fuller:--"It has undergone one

correction, but must undergo several more. I employ a pundit merely

for this purpose, with whom I go through the whole in as exact a

manner as I can. He judges of the style and syntax, and I of the

faithfulness of the translation. I have, however, translated

several chapters together, which have not required any alteration in

the syntax whatever: yet I always submit this article entirely to

his judgment. I can also, by hearing him read, judge whether he

understands his subject by his accenting his reading properly and

laying the emphasis on the right words. If he fails in this, I

immediately suspect the translation; though it is not an easy matter

for an ordinary reader to lay the emphasis properly in reading

Bengali, in which there is no pointing at all. The mode of

printing, i.e. whether a printing-press, etc., shall be sent from

England, or whether it shall be printed here, or whether it shall be

printed at all, now rests with the Society."

Fuller was willing, but the ardent scholar anticipated him. Seeing

a wooden printing-press advertised in Calcutta for 40, Carey at?

once ordered it. On its arrival in 1798, "after worship" he

"retired and thanked God for furnishing us with a press." When set

up in the Mudnabati house its working was explained to the natives,

on whom the delighted missionary's enthusiasm produced only the

impression that it must be the idol of the English.

But Carey's missionary organisation would not have been complete

without schools, and in planning these from the very first he gives

us the germs which blossomed into the Serampore College of 1818 on

the one hand, and the primary school circles under native Christian

inspectors on the other, a system carried out since the Mutiny of

1857 by the Christian Literature Society, and adopted by the state

departments of public instruction.

"MUDNABATI, 27th January 1795.--Mr. Thomas and I (between whom the

utmost harmony prevails) have formed a plan for erecting two

colleges (Chowparis, Bengali), one here and the other at his

residence, where we intend to educate twelve lads, viz. six

Mussulmans and six Hindoos at each place. A pundit is to have the

charge of them, and they are to be taught Sanskrit, Bengali, and

Persian; the Bible is to be introduced, and perhaps a little

philosophy and geography. The time of their education is to be

seven years, and we find them meat, clothing, lodging, etc. We are

now inquiring for children proper for the purpose. We have also

determined to require that the Society will advance money for types

to print the Bengali Bible, and make us their debtors for the sum,

which we hope to be able to pay off in one year: and it will also be

requisite to send a printing-press from England. We will, if our

lives are spared, repay the whole, and print the Bible at our own

expense, and I hope the Society will become our creditors by paying

for them when delivered. Mr. Thomas is now preparing letters for

specimens, which I hope will be sent by this conveyance.

"We are under great obligation to Mr. G. Udny for putting us in

these stations. He is a very friendly man and a true Christian. I

have no spirit for politics here; for whatever the East India

Company may be in England, their servants and officers here are very

different; we have a few laws, and nothing to do but to obey." Of

his own school he wrote in 1799 that it consisted of forty boys.

"The school would have been much larger, had we been able to have

borne the expense; but, as among the scholars there are several

orphans whom we wholly maintain, we could not prudently venture on

any further expense...The boys have hitherto learned to read and

write, especially parts of the Scriptures, and to keep accounts. We

may now be able to introduce some other useful branches of knowledge

among them...I trust these schools may tend to promote curiosity and

inquisitiveness among the rising generation; qualities which are

seldom found in the natives of Bengal."

The Medical Mission completed the equipment. "I submit it to the

consideration of the Society whether we should not be furnished with

medicines gratis. No medicines will be sold by us, yet the cost of

them enters very deeply into our allowance. The whole supply sent

in the Earl Howe, amounting to 35, besides charges amounting to?

thirty per cent., falls on me; but the whole will either be

administered to sick poor, or given to any neighbour who is in want,

or used in our own families. Neighbouring gentlemen have often

supplied us. Indeed, considering the distance we are from medical

assistance, the great expensiveness of it far beyond our ability,

and the number of wretched, afflicted objects whom we continually

see and who continually apply for help, we ought never to sell a

pennyworth. Brother Thomas has been the instrument of saving

numbers of lives. His house is constantly surrounded with the

afflicted; and the cures wrought by him would have gained any

physician or surgeon in Europe the most extensive reputation. We

ought to be furnished yearly with at least half a hundredweight of

Jesuit's bark."

Around and as the fruit of the completely organised mission, thus

conducted by the ordained preacher, teacher, scholar, scientist,

printer, and licensed indigo planter in one station, and by his

medical colleague sixteen miles to the north of him at Mahipal,

there gathered many native inquirers. Besides the planters, civil

officials, and military officers, to whom he ministered in Malda and

Dinapoor stations, there was added the most able and consistent

convert, Mr. Cunninghame of Lainshaw, the assistant judge, who

afterwards in England fought the battle of missions, and from his

Ayrshire estate, where he built a church, became famous as an

expounder of prophecy. Carey looked upon this as "the greatest

event that has occurred since our coming to this country." The

appointment of Lord Mornington, soon to be known as the Marquis

Wellesley, "the glorious little man," as Metcalfe called him, and

hardly second to his younger brother Wellington, having led Fuller

to recommend that Carey should wait upon his Excellency at Calcutta,

this reply was received:--"I would not, however, have you suppose

that we are obliged to conceal ourselves, or our work: no such

thing. We preach before magistrates and judges; and were I to be in

the company with Lord Mornington, I should not hesitate to declare

myself a missionary to the heathen, though I would not on any

account return myself as such to the Governor-General in Council."

Two years before this, in 1797, Carey had written:--"This mission

should be strengthened as much as possible, as its situation is such

as may put it in our power, eventually, to spread the Gospel through

the greatest part of Asia, and almost all the necessary languages

may be learned here." He had just returned from his first long

missionary tour among the Bhooteas, who from Tibet had overrun the

eastern Himalaya from Darjeeling to Assam. Carey and Thomas were

received as Christian Lamas by the Soobah or lieutenant-governor of

the country below the hills, which in 1865 we were compelled to

annex and now administer as Jalpaigori District. They seemed to

have been the first Englishmen who had entered the territory since

the political and commercial missions of Bogle and Buchanan-Hamilton

sent by Warren Hastings.

"The genuine politeness and gentleman-like behaviour of the Soobah

exceeded everything that can be imagined, and his generosity was

astonishing. He insisted on supplying all our people with

everything they wanted; and if we did but cast our eyes to any

object in the room, he immediately presented us with one of the same

sort. Indeed he seemed to interpret our looks before we were aware;

and in this manner he presented each of us that night with a sword,

shield, helmet, and cup, made of a very light beautiful wood, and

used by all the Bhooteas for drinking in. We admiring the wood, he

gave us a large log of it; which appears to be like fir, with a very

dark beautiful grain: it is full of a resin or turpentine, and burns

like a candle if cut into thin pieces, and serves for that use. In

eating, the Soobah imitated our manners so quickly and exactly, that

though he had never seen a European before, yet he appeared as free

as if he had spent his life with them. We ate his food, though I

confess the thoughts of the Jinkof's bacon made me eat rather

sparingly. We had much talk about Bhootan, and about the Gospel.

"We found that he had determined to give all the country a testimony

of his friendship for us in a public manner; and the next day was

fixed on to perform the ceremony in our tent on the market-place.

Accordingly we got instructed in the necessary etiquette; and

informed him we were only coming a short journey to see the country,

were not provided with English cloth, etc., for presents. The time

being come, we were waited on by the Soobah, followed by all his

servants, both Bhooteas and Hindus. Being seated, we exchanged each

five rupees and five pieces of betel, in the sight of the whole

town; and having chewed betel for the first time in our lives, we

embraced three times in the Eastern manner, and then shook hands in

the English manner; after which, he made us a present of a piece of

rich debang wrought with gold, each a Bhootan blanket, and the tail

of an animal called the cheer cow, as bushy as a horse's, and used

in the Hindu worship...In the morning, the Soobah came with his

usual friendship, and brought more presents, which we received, and

took our leave. He sent us away with every honour he could heap

upon us; as a band of music before us, guides to show us the way,

etc....The Soobah is to pay us a visit in a little time, which I

hope to improve for the great end of settling a mission in that

country."

Carey applied his unusual powers of detailed observation and memory

in noting the physical and mental characteristics of these little

Buddhists, the structure of the language and nature of their books,

beliefs, and government, all of which he afterwards utilised. He

was often in sight of snowy Kinchinjinga (28,156 feet), behind

Darjeeling, and when the Soobah, being sick, afterwards sent

messengers with gifts to induce him to return, he wrote:--"I hope to

ascend those stupendous mountains, which are so high as to be seen

at a distance of 200 or 250 miles. One of these distant mountains,

which is seen at Mahipal, is concealed from view by the tops of a

nearer range of hills, when you approach within sixty miles of them.

The distant range forms an angle of about ten degrees with the

horizon." But the time did not come for a mission to that region

till the sanitarium of Darjeeling became the centre of another

British district opened up by railway from Calcutta, and now the

aboriginal Lepchas are coming in large numbers into the church.

Subsequent communications from the Soobah informed them of the

Garos of Assam.

On his last visit to Calcutta, in 1799, "to get types cast for

printing the Bible," Carey witnessed that sight of widow-burning

which was to continue to disgrace alike the Hindoos and the

Company's Government until his incessant appeals in India and in

England led to its prevention in 1829. In a letter to Dr. Ryland he

thus describes the horrid rite:--

"MUDNABATI, 1st April 1799.--As I was returning from Calcutta I saw

the Sahamaranam, or, a woman burning herself with the corpse of her

husband, for the first time in my life. We were near the village of

Noya Serai, or, as Rennell calls it in his chart of the Hoogli

river, Niaverai. Being evening, we got out of the boat to walk,

when we saw a number of people assembled on the river-side. I asked

them what they were met for, and they told me to burn the body of a

dead man. I inquired if his wife would die with him; they answered

Yes, and pointed to the woman. She was standing by the pile, which

was made of large billets of wood, about two and a half feet high,

four feet long, and two wide, on the top of which lay the dead body

of her husband. Her nearest relation stood by her, and near her was

a small basket of sweetmeats called Thioy. I asked them if this was

the woman's choice, or if she were brought to it by any improper

influence? They answered that it was perfectly voluntary. I talked

till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my

might against what they were doing, telling them that it was a

shocking murder. They told me it was a great act of holiness, and

added in a very surly manner, that if I did not like to see it I

might go farther off, and desired me to go. I told them that I

would not go, that I was determined to stay and see the murder, and

that I should certainly bear witness of it at the tribunal of God. I

exhorted the woman not to throw away her life; to fear nothing, for

no evil would follow her refusal to burn. But she in the most calm

manner mounted the pile, and danced on it with her hands extended,

as if in the utmost tranquillity of spirit. Previous to her

mounting the pile the relation, whose office it was to set fire to

the pile, led her six times round it, at two intervals--that is,

thrice at each circumambulation. As she went round she scattered

the sweetmeat above mentioned among the people, who picked it up and

ate it as a very holy thing. This being ended, and she having

mounted the pile and danced as above mentioned (N.B.--The dancing

only appeared to be to show us her contempt of death, and prove to

us that her dying was voluntary), she lay down by the corpse, and

put one arm under its neck and the other over it, when a quantity of

dry cocoa-leaves and other substances were heaped over them to a

considerable height, and then Ghee, or melted preserved butter,

poured on the top. Two bamboos were then put over them and held

fast down, and fire put to the pile, which immediately blazed very

fiercely, owing to the dry and combustible materials of which it was

composed. No sooner was the fire kindled than all the people set up

a great shout--Hurree-Bol, Hurree-Bol, which is a common shout of

joy, and an invocation of Hurree, or Seeb. It was impossible to have

heard the woman had she groaned, or even cried aloud, on account of

the mad noise of the people, and it was impossible for her to stir

or struggle on account of the bamboos which were held down on her

like the levers of a press. We made much objection to their using

these bamboos, and insisted that it was using force to prevent the

woman from getting up when the fire burned her. But they declared

that it was only done to keep the pile from falling down. We could

not bear to see more, but left them, exclaiming loudly against the

murder, and full of horror at what we had seen." In the same letter

Carey communicates the information he had collected regarding the

Jews and Syrian Christians of the Malabar coast.

Mr. G. Udny had now found his private indigo enterprise to be

disastrous. He resolved to give it up and retire to England.

Thomas had left his factory, and was urging his colleague to try

the sugar trade, which at that time meant the distillation of rum.

Carey rather took over from Mr. Udny the out-factory of Kidderpore,

twelve miles distant, and there resolved to prepare for the arrival

of colleagues, the communistic missionary settlement on the Moravian

plan, which he had advocated in his Enquiry. Mr. John Fountain had

been sent out as the first reinforcement, but he proved to be almost

as dangerous to the infant mission from his outspoken political

radicalism as Thomas had been from his debts. Carey seriously

contemplated the setting up of his mission centre among the

Bhooteas, so as to be free from the East India Company. The

authorities would not license Fountain as his assistant. Would they

allow future missionaries to settle with him? Would they always

renew his own licence? And what if he must cease altogether to work

with his hands, and give himself wholly to the work of the mission

as seemed necessary?

Four new colleagues and their families were already on the sea, but

God had provided a better refuge for His servants till the public

conscience which they were about to quicken and enlighten should

cause the persecution to cease.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW CRUSADE--SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD

1800

Effects of the news in England on the Baptists--On the home

churches--In the foundation of the London and other Missionary

Societies--In Scotland--In Holland and America--The missionary

home--Joshua Marshman, William Ward, and two others sent

out--Landing at the Iona of Southern Asia--Meeting of Ward and

Carey--First attempt to evangelise the non-Aryan hill tribes--Carey

driven by providences to Serampore--Dense population of Hoogli

district--Adapts his communistic plan to the new

conditions--Purchase of the property--Constitution of the

Brotherhood--His relations to Marshman and Ward--Hannah Marshman,

the first woman missionary--Daily life of the Brethren--Form of

Agreement--Carey's ideal system of missionary administration

realised for fifteen years--Spiritual heroism of the Brotherhood.

The first two English missionaries to India seemed to those who sent

them forth to have disappeared for ever. For fourteen months, in

those days of slow Indiamen and French privateers, no tidings of

their welfare reached the poor praying people of the midlands, who

had been emboldened to begin the heroic enterprise. The convoy,

which had seen the Danish vessel fairly beyond the French coast, had

been unable to bring back letters on account of the weather. At

last, on the 29th July 1794, Fuller, the secretary; Pearce, the

beloved personal friend of Carey; Ryland in Bristol; and the

congregation at Leicester, received the journals of the voyage and

letters which told of the first six weeks' experience at Balasore,

in Calcutta, Bandel, and Nuddea, just before Carey knew the worst of

their pecuniary position. The committee at once met. They sang

"with sacred joy" what has ever since been the jubilee hymn of

missions, that by William Williams--

"O'er those gloomy hills of darkness."

They "returned solemn thanks to the everlasting God whose mercy

endureth for ever, for having preserved you from the perils of the

sea, and hitherto made your ways prosperous. In reading the short

account of your labours we feel something of that spirit spoken of

in the prophet, 'Thine heart shall fear and be enlarged.' We

cordially thank you for your assiduity in learning the languages, in

translating, and in every labour of love in which you have engaged.

Under God we cheerfully confide in your wisdom, fidelity, and

prudence, with relation to the seat of your labours or the means to

carry them into effect. If there be one place, however, which

strikes us as of more importance than the rest, it is Nuddea. But

you must follow where the Lord opens a door for you." The same

spirit of generous confidence marked the relations of Carey and the

committee so long as Fuller was secretary. When the news came that

the missionaries had become indigo planters, some of the weaker

brethren, estimating Carey by themselves, sent out a mild warning

against secular temptations, to which he returned a half-amused and

kindly reply. John Newton, then the aged rector of St. Mary

Woolnoth, on being consulted, reassured them: "If the heart be fired

with a zeal for God and love to souls," he said, "such attention to

business as circumstances require will not hurt it." Since Carey,

like the Moravians, meant that the missionaries should live upon a

common stock, and never lay up money, the weakest might have

recognised the Paul-like nobleness, which had marked all his life,

in relinquishing the scanty salary that it might be used for other

missions to Africa and Asia.

The spiritual law which Duff's success afterwards led Chalmers to

formulate, that the relation of foreign to home missions acts not by

exhaustion but by fermentation, now came to be illustrated on a

great scale, and to result in the foundation of the catholic

missionary enterprise of the evangelicals of England, Scotland,

Ireland, America, Germany, and France, which has marked the whole

nineteenth century. We find it first in Fuller himself. In

comforting Thomas during his extremest dejection he quoted to him

from his own journal of 1789 the record of a long period of

spiritual inactivity, which continued till Carey compelled him to

join in the mission. "Before this I did little but pine over my

misery, but since I have betaken myself to greater activity for God,

my strength has been recovered and my soul replenished." "Your work

is a great work, and the eyes of the religious world are upon you.

Your undertaking, with that of your dear colleague, has provoked

many. The spirit of missions is gone forth. I wish it may never

stop till the Gospel is sent unto all the world."

Following the pietist Francke, who in 1710 published the first

missionary reports, and also the Moravians, Fuller and his

coadjutors issued from the press of J. W. Morris at Clipstone,

towards the end of 1794, No. I. of their Periodical Accounts

relative to a Society formed among the Particular Baptists for

Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen. That contained a

narrative of the foundation of the Society and the letters of Carey

up to 15th February 1794 from the Soondarbans. Six of these

Accounts appeared up to the year 1800, when they were published as

one volume with an index and illustrations. The volume closes with

a doggerel translation of one of several Gospel ballads which Carey

had written in Bengali in 1798. He had thus early brought into the

service of Christ the Hindoo love of musical recitative, which was

recently re-discovered--as it were--and now forms an important mode

of evangelistic work when accompanied by native musical instruments.

The original has a curious interest and value in the history of the

Bengali language, as formed by Carey. As to the music he

wrote:--"We sometimes have a melody that cheers my heart, though it

would be discordant upon the ears of an Englishman."

Such was the immediate action of the infant Baptist Society. The

moment Dr. Ryland read his letter from Carey he sent for Dr. Bogue

and Mr. Stephen, who happened to be in Bristol, to rejoice with him.

The three returned thanks to God, and then Bogue and Stephen,

calling on Mr. Hey, a leading minister, took the first step towards

the foundation of a similar organisation of non-Baptists, since

known as the London Missionary Society. Immediately Bogue, the able

Presbyterian, who had presided over a theological school at Gosport

from which missionaries went forth, and who refused the best living

in Edinburgh when offered to him by Dundas, wrote his address, which

appeared in the Evangelical Magazine for September, calling on the

churches to send out at least twenty or thirty missionaries. In the

sermon of lofty eloquence which he preached the year after, he

declared that the missionary movement of that time would form an

epoch in the history of man,--"the time will be ever remembered by

us, and may it be celebrated by future ages as the ra of Christian?

Benevolence."

On the same day the Rev. T. Haweis, rector of All Saints, Aldwinkle,

referring to the hundreds of ministers collected to decide where the

first mission should be sent, thus burst forth: "Methinks I see the

great Angel of the Covenant in the midst of us, pluming his wings,

and ready to fly through the midst of heaven with his own

everlasting Gospel, to every nation and tribe and tongue and

people." In Hindostan "our brethren the Baptists have at present

prevented our wishes...there is room for a thousand missionaries,

and I wish we may be ready with a numerous host for that or any

other part of the earth."

"Scotland10 was the next to take up the challenge sent by Carey.

Greville Ewing, then a young minister of the kirk in Edinburgh,

published in March 1796 the appeal of the Edinburgh or Scottish

Missionary Society, which afterwards sent John Wilson to Bombay, and

that was followed by the Glasgow Society, to which we owe the most

successful of the Kafir missions in South Africa. Robert Haldane

sold all that he had when he read the first number of the Periodical

Accounts, and gave 35,000 to send a Presbyterian mission of six?

ministers and laymen, besides himself, to do from Benares what Carey

had planned from Mudnabati; but Pitt as well as Dundas, though his

personal friends, threatened him with the Company's intolerant Act

of Parliament. Evangelical ministers of the Church of England took

their proper place in the new crusade, and a year before the

eighteenth century closed they formed the agency, which has ever

since been in the forefront of the host of the Lord as the Church

Missionary Society, with Carey's friend, Thomas Scott, as its first

secretary. The sacred enthusiasm was caught by the Netherlands on

the one side under the influence of Dr. Van der Kemp, who had

studied at Edinburgh University, and by the divinity students of New

England, of whom Adoniram Judson was even then in training to

receive from Carey the apostolate of Burma. Soon too the Bengali

Bible translations were to unite with the needs of the Welsh at home

to establish the British and Foreign Bible Society.

As news of all this reached Carey amid his troubles and yet triumphs

of faith in the swamps of Dinajpoor, and when he learned that he was

soon to be joined by four colleagues, one of whom was Ward whom he

himself had trysted to print the Bengali Bible for him, he might

well write, in July 1799:--"The success of the Gospel and, among

other things, the hitherto unextinguishable missionary flame in

England and all the western world, give us no little encouragement

and animate our hearts." To Sutcliff he had written eighteen months

before that:--"I rejoice much at the missionary spirit which has

lately gone forth: surely it is a prelude to the universal spread of

the Gospel! Your account of the German Moravian Brethren's

affectionate regard towards me is very pleasing. I am not much

moved by what men in general say of me; yet I cannot be insensible

to the regards of men eminent for godliness...Staying at home is now

become sinful in many cases, and will become so more and more. All

gifts should be encouraged, and spread abroad."

The day was breaking now. Men as well as money were offered for

Carey's work. In Scotland especially Fuller found that he had but

to ask, but to appear in any evangelical pulpit, and he would

receive sums which, in that day of small things, rebuked his little

faith. Till the last Scotland was loyal to Carey and his

colleagues, and with almost a prevision of this he wrote so early as

1797:--"It rejoices my heart much to hear of our brethren in

Scotland having so liberally set themselves to encourage the

mission." They approved of his plans, and prayed for him and his

work. When Fuller called on Cecil for help, the "churchy"

evangelical told him he had a poor opinion of all Baptists except

one, the man who wrote The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. When

he learned that its author was before him, the hasty offender

apologised and offered a subscription. "Not a farthing, sir!" was

the reply, "you do not give in faith;" but the persistent Cecil

prevailed. Men, however, were a greater want than money at that

early stage of the modern crusade. Thomas and Fountain had each

been a mistake. So were the early African missionaries, with the

exception of the first Scotsman, Peter Greig. Of the thirty sent

out by the London Missionary Society in the Duff only four were fit

for ordination, and not one has left a name of mark. The Church

Mission continued to send out only Germans till 1815. In quick

succession four young men offered themselves to the Baptist Society

to go out as assistants to Carey, in the hope that the Company would

give them a covenant to reside--Brunsdon and Grant, two of Ryland's

Bristol flock; Joshua Marshman with his wife Hannah Marshman, and

William Ward called by Carey himself.

In nine months Fuller had them and their families shipped in an

American vessel, the Criterion, commanded by Captain Wickes, a

Presbyterian elder of Philadelphia, who ever after promoted the

cause in the United States. Charles Grant helped them as he would

have aided Carey alone. Though the most influential of the

Company's directors, he could not obtain a passport for them, but he

gave them the very counsel which was to provide for the young

mission its ark of defence: "Do not land at Calcutta but at

Serampore, and there, under the protection of the Danish flag,

arrange to join Mr. Carey." After five months' prosperous voyage

the party reached the Hoogli. Before arriving within the limits of

the port of Calcutta Captain Wickes sent them off in two boats under

the guidance of a Bengali clerk to Serampore, fifteen miles higher

up on the right bank of the river. They had agreed that he should

boldly enter them, not as assistant planters, but as Christian

missionaries, rightly trusting to Danish protection. Charles Grant

had advised them well, but it is not easy now, as in the case of

their predecessors in 1795 and of their successors up to 1813, to

refrain from indignation that the British Parliament, and the party

led by William Pitt, should have so long lent all the weight of

their power to the East India Company in the vain attempt to keep

Christianity from the Hindoos. Ward's journal thus simply tells the

story of the landing of the missionaries at this Iona, this

Canterbury of Southern Asia:--

"Lord's-day, Oct. 13, 1799.--Brother Brunsdon and I slept in the

open air on our chests. We arrived at Serampore this morning by

daylight, in health and pretty good spirits. We put up at Myerr's,

a Danish tavern to which we had been recommended. No worship

to-day. Nothing but a Portuguese church here.

"Oct. 14.--Mr. Forsyth from Calcutta, missionary belonging to the

London Missionary Society, astonished us by his presence this

afternoon. He was wholly unknown, but soon became well known. He

gave us a deal of interesting information. He had seen brother

Carey, who invited him to his house, offered him the assistance of

his Moonshi, etc.

"Oct. 16--The Captain having been at Calcutta came and informed us

that his ship could not be entered unless we made our appearance.

Brother Brunsdon and I went to Calcutta, and the next day we were

informed that the ship had obtained an entrance, on condition that

we appeared at the Police Office, or would continue at Serampore.

All things considered we preferred the latter, till the arrival of

our friends from Kidderpore to whom we had addressed letters.

Captain Wickes called on Rev. Mr. Brown, who very kindly offered to

do anything for us in his power. Our Instructions with respect to

our conduct towards Civil Government were read to him. He promised

to call at the Police Office afterwards, and to inform the Master

that we intended to stay at Serampore, till we had leave to go up

the country. Captain Wickes called at the office afterwards, and

they seemed quite satisfied with our declaration by him. In the

afternoon we went to Serampore.

"Oct. 19.--I addressed a letter to the Governor to-day begging his

acceptance of the last number of our Periodical Accounts, and

informing him that we proposed having worship to-morrow in our own

house, from which we did not wish to exclude any person.

"Lord's-day, Oct. 20.--This morning the Governor sent to inquire the

hours of our worship. About half-past ten he came to our house with

a number of gentlemen and their retinue. I preached from Acts xx.

24. We had a very attentive congregation of Europeans: several

appeared affected, among whom was the Governor."

The text was well chosen from Paul's words to the elders of Ephesus,

as he turned his face towards the bonds and afflictions that awaited

him--"But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear

unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the

ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the

gospel of the grace of God." It proved to be a history of the three

men thenceforth best known as the Serampore Missionaries. Ward,

too, the literary member of the mission, composed the hymn which

thus concluded:--

"Yes, we are safe beneath Thy shade,

And shall be so 'midst India's heat:

What should a missionary dread,

For devils crouch at Jesus' feet.

"There, sweetest Saviour! let Thy cross

Win many Hindoo hearts to Thee;

This shall make up for every loss,

While Thou art ours eternally."

In his first letter to a friend in Hull Ward used language which

unconsciously predicted the future of the mission:--"With a Bible

and a press posterity will see that a missionary will not labour in

vain, even in India." But one of their number, Grant, was meanwhile

removed by death, and, while they waited for a month, Carey failed

to obtain leave for them to settle as his assistants in British

territory. He had appealed to Mr. Brown, and to Dr. Roxburgh, his

friend in charge of the Botanic Garden, to use his influence with

the Government through Colebrooke, the Oriental scholar, then high

in the service. But it was in vain. The police had seen with

annoyance the missionaries slip from their grasp because of the

liberality of the Governor-General of whom Carey had written to

Ryland a year before: "At Calcutta, I saw much dissipation; but yet

I think less than formerly. Lord Mornington has set his face

against sports, gaming, horse-racing, and working on the Lord's-day;

in consequence of which these infamous practices are less common

than formerly." The missionaries, too, had at first been reported

not as Baptist but as "Papist," and the emissaries of France,

believed to be everywhere, must be watched against. The brave

little Governor let it be understood that he would protect to the

last the men who had been committed to his care by the Danish consul

in London. So Ward obtained a Danish passport to enable him to

visit Dinapoor and consult with Carey.

It was Sunday morning when he approached the Mudnabati factory,

"feeling very unusual sensations," greatly excited. "At length I saw

Carey! He is less altered than I expected: has rather more flesh

than when in England, and, blessed be God! he is a young man still."

It was a wrench to sacrifice his own pioneer mission, property

worth 500, the school, the church, the inquirers, but he did not?

hesitate. He thus stated the case on the other side:--"At Serampore

we may settle as missionaries, which is not allow here; and the

great ends of the mission, particularly the printing of the

Scriptures, seem much more likely to be answered in that situation

than in this. There also brother Ward can have the inspection of

the press; whereas here we should be deprived of his important

assistance. In that part of the country the inhabitants are far

more numerous than in this; and other missionaries may there be

permitted to join us, which here it seems they will not." On the

way down, during a visit to the Rajmahal Hills, round which the

great Ganges sweeps, Carey and Ward made the first attempt to

evangelise the Santal and other simple aboriginal tribes, whom the

officials Brown and Cleveland had partly tamed. The Paharis are

described, at that time, as without caste, priests, or public

religion, as living on Indian corn and by hunting, for which they

carry bows and arrows. "Brother Carey was able to converse with

them." Again, Ward's comment on the Bengali services on the next

Sunday, from the boats, is "the common sort wonder how brother Carey

can know so much of the Shasters." "I long," wrote Carey from the

spot to his new colleagues, "to stay here and tell these social and

untutored heathen the good news from heaven. I have a strong

persuasion that the doctrine of a dying Saviour would, under the

Holy Spirit's influence, melt their hearts." From Taljheri and

Pokhuria, near that place, to Parisnath, Ranchi, and Orissa,

thousands of Santals and Kols have since been gathered into the

kingdom.

On the 10th January 1800 Carey took up his residence at Serampore,

on the 11th he was presented to the Governor, and "he went out and

preached to the natives." His apprenticeship was over; so began his

full apostolate, instant in season and out of season, to end only

with his life thirty-four years after.

Thus step by step, by a way that he knew not, the shoemaker lad--who

had educated himself to carry the Gospel to Tahiti, had been sent to

Bengal in spite of the Company which cast him out of their ship, had

starved in Calcutta, had built him a wooden hut in the jungles of

the Delta, had become indigo planter in the swamps of Dinapoor that

he might preach Christ without interference, had been forced to

think of seeking the protection of a Buddhist in the Himalaya

morass--was driven to begin anew in the very heart of the most

densely peopled part of the British Empire, under the jealous care

of the foreign European power which had a century before sent

missionaries to Tranquebar and taught Zinzendorf and the Moravians

the divine law of the kingdom; encouraged by a Governor, Colonel

Bie, who was himself a disciple of Schwartz. To complete this

catalogue of special providences we may add that, if Fuller had

delayed only a little longer, even Serampore would have been found

shut against the missionaries. For the year after, when Napoleon's

acts had driven us to war with Denmark, a detachment of British

troops, under Lord Minto's son, took possession of Fredericksnagore,

as Serampore was officially called, and of the Danish East India

Company's ship there, without opposition.

The district or county of Hoogli and Howrah, opposite Calcutta and

Barrackpore, of which Serampore is the central port, swarms with a

population, chiefly Hindoo but partly Mussulman, unmatched for

density in any other part of the world. If, after years of a

decimating fever, each of its 1701 square miles still supports

nearly a thousand human beings or double the proportion of Belgium,

we cannot believe that it was much less dense at the beginning of

the century. From Howrah, the Surrey side of Calcutta, up to Hoogli

the county town, the high ridge of mud between the river and the old

channel of the Ganges to the west, has attracted the wealthiest and

most intellectually active of all the Bengalees. Hence it was here

that Portuguese and Dutch, French and English, and Danish planted

their early factories. The last to obtain a site of twenty acres

from the moribund Mussulman Government at Moorshedabad was Denmark,

two years before Plassey. In the half century the hut of the first

Governor sent from Tranquebar had grown into the "beautiful little

town" which delighted the first Baptist missionaries. Its

inhabitants, under only British administration since 1845, now

number 45,000. Then they were much fewer, but then even more than

now the town was a centre of the Vishnoo-worship of Jagganath,

second only to that of Pooree in all India. Not far off, and now

connected with the port by railway, is the foul shrine of

Tarakeswar, which attracts thousands of pilgrims, many of them

widows, who measure the road with their prostrate bodies dripping

from the bath. Commercially Serampore sometimes distanced Calcutta

itself, for all the foreign European trade was centred in it during

the American and French wars, and the English civilians used its

investments as the best means of remitting their savings home. When

the missionaries landed there was nothing but a Portuguese Catholic

church in the settlement, and the Governor was raising subscriptions

for that pretty building in which Carey preached till he died, and

the spire of which the Governor-General is said to have erected to

improve the view of the town from the windows of his summer palace

at Barrackpore opposite.

Removed from the rural obscurity of a Bengali village, where the

cost of housing, clothing, and living was small, to a town in the

neighbourhood of the capital much frequented by Europeans, Carey at

once adapted the practical details of his communistic brotherhood to

the new circumstances. With such wisdom was he aided in this by the

business experience of Marshman and Ward, that a settlement was

formed which admitted of easy development in correspondence with the

rapid growth of the mission. At first the community consisted of

ten adults and nine children. Grant had been carried off in a fever

caused by the dampness of their first quarters. The promising

Brunsdon was soon after removed by liver complaint caught from

standing on an unmatted floor in the printing-office. Fountain, who

at first continued the mission at Dinapoor, soon died there a happy

death. Thomas had settled at Beerbhoom, but joined the Serampore

brethren in time to do good though brief service before he too was

cut off. But, fortunately as it proved for the future, Carey had to

arrange for five families at the first, and this is how it was done

as described by Ward:--

"The renting of a house, or houses, would ruin us. We hoped

therefore to have been able to purchase land, and build mat houses

upon it; but we can get none properly situated. We have in

consequence purchased of the Governor's nephew a large house in the

middle of the town for Rs.6000, or about 800; the rent in four?

years would have amounted to the purchase. It consists of a

spacious verandah (portico) and hall, with two rooms on each side.

Rather more to the front are two other rooms separate, and on one

side is a storehouse, separate also, which will make a

printing-office. It stands by the river-side upon a pretty large

piece of ground, walled round, with a garden at the bottom, and in

the middle a fine tank or pool of water. The price alarmed us, but

we had no alternative; and we hope this will form a comfortable

missionary settlement. Being near to Calcutta, it is of the utmost

importance to our school, our press, and our connection with

England."

"From hence may the Gospel issue and pervade all India," they wrote

to Fuller. "We intend to teach a school, and make what we can of our

press. The paper is all arrived, and the press, with the types,

etc., complete. The Bible is wholly translated, except a few

chapters, so that we intend to begin printing immediately, first the

New and then the Old Testament. We love our work, and will do all

we can to lighten your expenses."

This house-chapel, with two acres of garden land and separate rooms

on either side, continued till 1875 to be the nucleus of the

settlement afterwards celebrated all over South Asia and

Christendom. The chapel is still sacred to the worship of God. The

separate rooms to the left, fronting the Hoogli, became enlarged

into the stately residence of Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., and his two

successors in the Friend of India, while beyond were the girl's

school, now removed, the residence of Dr. Joshua Marshman before his

death, and the boys' school presented to the mission by the King of

Denmark. The separate rooms to the right grew into the press;

farther down the river was the house of the Lady Rumohr who became

Carey's second wife, with the great paper-mill behind; and, still

farther, the second park in which the Serampore College was built,

with the principal's house in which Carey died, and a hostel for the

Native Christian students behind. The whole settlement finally

formed a block of at least five acres, with almost palatial

buildings, on the right bank of the Hoogli, which, with a breadth of

half a mile when in flood, rolls between it and the

Governor-General's summer house and English-like park of

Barrackpore. The original two acres became Carey's Botanic Garden;

the houses he surrounded and connected by mahogany trees, which grew

to be of umbrageous beauty. His favourite promenade between the

chapel and the mill, and ultimately the college, was under an avenue

of his own planting, long known as "Carey's Walk."

The new colleagues who were to live with him in loving brotherhood

till death removed the last in 1837 were not long in attracting him.

The two were worthy to be associated with him, and so admirably

supplemented his own deficiencies that the brotherhood became the

most potent and permanent force in India. He thus wrote to Fuller

his first impressions of them, with a loving

self-depreciation:--"Brother Ward is the very man we wanted: he

enters into the work with his whole soul. I have much pleasure in

him, and expect much from him. Brother Marshman is a prodigy of

diligence and prudence, as is also his wife in the latter: learning

the language is mere play to him; he has already acquired as much as

I did in double the time." After eight months of study and

evangelising work they are thus described:--"Our brother Marshman,

who is a true missionary, is able to talk a little; he goes out

frequently, nay almost every day, and assaults the fortress of

Satan. Brother Brunsdon can talk a little, though not like

Marshman. Brother Ward is a great prize; he does not learn the

language so quickly, but he is so holy, so spiritual a man, and so

useful among the children."

Thus early did Carey note the value of Hannah Marshman, the first

woman missionary to India. Granddaughter of the Baptist minister of

Crockerton in Wiltshire, she proved to be for forty-six years at

once a loving wife, and the equal of the three missionaries of

Christ and of civilisation whom she aided in the common home, in the

schools, in the congregation, in the Native Christian families, and

even, at that early time, in purely Hindoo circles. Without her the

mission must have been one-sided indeed. It gives us a pathetic

interest to turn to her household books, where we find entered with

loving care and thoughtful thrift all the daily details which at

once form a valuable contribution to the history of prices, and show

how her "prudence" combined with the heroic self-denial of all to

make the Serampore mission the light of India. Ward's journal

supplies this first sketch of the brotherhood, who realised, more

than probably any in Protestant, Romanist, or Greek hagiology, the

life of the apostolic community in Jerusalem:--

"January 18, 1800.--This week we have adopted a set of rules for the

government of the family. All preach and pray in turn; one

superintends the affairs of the family for a month, and then

another; brother Carey is treasurer, and has the regulation of the

medicine chest; brother Fountain is librarian. Saturday evening is

devoted to adjusting differences, and pledging ourselves to love one

another. One of our resolutions is, that no one of us do engage in

private trade; but that all be done for the benefit of the

mission...

"August 1.--Our labours for every day are now regularly arranged.

About six o'clock we rise; brother Carey to his garden; brother

Marshman to his school at seven; brother Brunsdon, Felix, and I, to

the printing-office. At eight the bell rings for family worship: we

assemble in the hall; sing, read, and pray. Breakfast. Afterwards,

brother Carey goes to the translation, or reading proofs: brother

Marshman to school, and the rest to the printing-office. Our

compositor having left us, we do without: we print three half-sheets

of 2000 each in a week; have five pressmen, one folder, and one

binder. At twelve o'clock we take a luncheon; then most of us shave

and bathe, read and sleep before dinner, which we have at three.

After dinner we deliver our thoughts on a text or question: this we

find to be very profitable. Brother and sister Marshman keep their

schools till after two. In the afternoon, if business be done in

the office, I read and try to talk Bengali with the br mmh n. We? ?

drink tea about seven, and have little or no supper. We have

Bengali preaching once or twice in the week, and on Thursday evening

we have an experience meeting. On Saturday evening we meet to

compose differences and transact business, after prayer, which is

always immediately after tea. Felix is very useful in the office;

William goes to school, and part of the day learns to bind. We meet

two hours before breakfast on the first Monday in the month, and

each one prays for the salvation of the Bengal heathen. At night we

unite our prayers for the universal spread of the Gospel."

The "Form of Agreement" which regulated the social economy and

spiritual enterprise of the brotherhood, and also its legal

relations to the Baptist Society in England, deserves study, in its

divine disinterestedness, its lofty aims, and its kindly common

sense. Fuller had pledged the Society in 1798 to send out 360 a?

year for the joint family of six missionaries, their wives, and

children. The house and land at Serampore cost the Society Rs.6000.

On Grant's death, leaving a widow and two children, the five

missionaries made the first voluntary agreement, which "provided

that no one should trade on his own private account, and that the

product of their labour should form a common fund to be applied at

the will of the majority, to the support of their respective

families, of the cause of God around them, and of the widow and

family of such as might be removed by death." The first year the

schools and the press enabled the brotherhood to be more than

self-supporting. In the second year Carey's salary from the College

of Fort-William, and the growth of the schools and press, gave them

a surplus for mission extension. They not only paid for the

additional two houses and ground required by such extension, but

they paid back to the Society all that it had advanced for the first

purchase in the course of the next six years. They acquired all the

property for the Serampore Mission, duly informing the home

Committee from time to time, and they vested the whole right, up to

Fuller's death in 1815, in the Society, "to prevent the premises

being sold or becoming private property in the families." But "to

secure their own quiet occupation of them, and enable them to leave

them in the hands of such as they might associate with themselves in

their work, they declared themselves trustees instead of

proprietors."

The agreement of 1800 was expanded into the "Form of Agreement" of

1805 when the spiritual side of the mission had grown. Their own

authoritative statement, as given above, was lovingly recognised by

Fuller. In 1817, and again in 1820, the claims of aged and

destitute relatives, and the duty of each brother making provision

for his own widow and orphans, and, occasionally, the calls of pity

and humanity, led the brotherhood to agree that "each shall

regularly deduct a tenth of the net product of his labour to form a

fund in his own hands for these purposes." We know nothing in the

history of missions, monastic or evangelical, which at all

approaches this in administrative perfectness as well is in

Christlike self-sacrifice. It prevents secularisation of spirit,

stimulates activity of all kinds, gives full scope to local ability

and experience, calls forth the maximum of local support and

propagation, sets the church at home free to enter incessantly on

new fields, provides permanence as well as variety of action and

adaptation to new circumstances, and binds the whole in a holy bond

of prayerful co-operation and loving brotherhood. This Agreement

worked for seventeen years, with a success in England and India

which we shall trace, or as long as Fuller, Ryland, and Sutcliff

lived "to hold the ropes," while Carey, Marshman, and Ward excavated

the mine of Hindooism.

The spiritual side of the Agreement we find in the form which the

three drew up in 1805, to be read publicly at all their stations

thrice every year, on the Lord's Day. It is the ripe fruit of the

first eleven years of Carey's daily toil and consecrated genius, as

written out by the fervent pen of Ward. In the light of it the whole

of Carey's life must be read. In these concluding sentences the

writer sketches Carey himself:--"Let us often look at Brainerd in

the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the

perishing heathen, without whose salvation nothing could make you

happy. Prayer, secret, fervent, believing prayer, lies at the root

of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the languages

current where a missionary lives, a mild and winning temper, and a

heart given up to God in closet religion; these, these are the

attainments which more than all knowledge or all other gifts, will

fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of human

redemption. Finally, let us give ourselves unreservedly to this

glorious cause. Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our

strength, our families, or even the clothes we wear are our own.

Let us sanctify them all to God and His cause. Oh! that He may

sanctify us for His work. Let us for ever shut out the idea of

laying up a cowrie (mite) for ourselves or our children. If we give

up the resolution which was formed on the subject of private trade,

when we first united at Serampore, the mission is from that hour a

lost cause. Let us continually watch against a worldly spirit, and

cultivate a Christian indifference towards every indulgence. Rather

let us bear hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. No private

family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness, even in the most

prosperous gale of worldly prosperity, than we have done since we

resolved to have all things in common. If we are enabled to

persevere in the same principles, we may hope that multitudes of

converted souls will have reason to bless God to all eternity for

sending His Gospel into this country."

Such was the moral heroism, such the spiritual aim of the Serampore

brotherhood; how did it set to work?

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

1800-1810

A carpenter the first Bengali convert--Krishna Pal's

confession--Caste broken for the first time--Carey describes the

baptism in the Hoogli--The first woman convert--The first widow

convert--The first convert of writer caste--The first Christian

Brahman--The first native chapel--A Bengali "experience"

meeting--Carey founding a new community as well as church--Marriage

difficulties solved--The first native Christian marriage feast in

North India--Hindoo Christian death and burial--The first Christian

schools and school-books in North India--The first native Sunday

school--Boarding schools for the higher education of country-born

Christians--Carey on the mixed Portuguese, Eurasians, and

Armenians--The Benevolent Institution for destitute children of all

races--A hundred schools--English only postponed--Effect on native

opinion and action--The leaven of the Kingdom--The Mission breaks

forth into five at the close of 1810.

For seven years Carey had daily preached Christ in Bengali without a

convert. He had produced the first edition of the New Testament.

He had reduced the language to literary form. He had laid the

foundations in the darkness of the pit of Hindooism, while the

Northamptonshire pastors, by prayer and self-sacrifice, held the

ropes. The last disappointment was on 25th November 1800, when "the

first Hindoo" catechumen, Fakeer, offered himself for baptism,

returned to his distant home for his child, and appeared no more,

probably "detained by force." But on the last Sunday of that year

Krishna Pal was baptised in the Hoogli and his whole family soon

followed him. He was thirty-five years of age. Not only as the

first native Christian of North India of whom we have a reliable

account, but as the first missionary to Calcutta and Assam, and the

first Bengali hymn-writer, this man deserves study.

Carey's first Hindoo convert was three years younger than himself,

or about thirty-six, at baptism. Krishna Pal, born in the

neighbouring French settlement of Chandernagore, had settled in the

suburbs of Serampore, where he worked as a carpenter. Sore sickness

and a sense of sin led him to join the Kharta-bhojas, one of the

sects which, from the time of Gautama Buddha, and of Chaitanya, the

reformer of Nuddea, to that of Nanak, founder of the Sikh

brotherhood have been driven into dissent by the yoke of Brahmanism.

Generally worshippers of some form of Vishnoo, and occasionally, as

in Kabeer's case, influenced by the monotheism of Islam, these sects

begin by professing theism and opposition to caste, though Hindooism

is elastic enough to keep them always within its pale and ultimately

to absorb them again. For sixteen years Krishna Pal was himself a

gooroo of the Ghospara sect, of which from Carey's to Duff's earlier

days the missionaries had a hope which proved vain. He recovered

from sickness, but could not shake off the sense of the burden of

sin, when this message came to him, and, to his surprise, through

the Europeans--"Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."

At the same time he happened to dislocate his right arm by falling

down the slippery side of his tank when about to bathe. He sent two

of the children to the Mission House for Thomas, who immediately

left the breakfast table at which the brethren had just sat down,

and soon reduced the luxation, while the sufferer again heard the

good news that Christ was waiting to heal his soul, and he and his

neighbour Gokool received a Bengali tract. He himself thus told the

story:--"In this paper I read that he who confesseth and forsaketh

his sins, and trusteth in the righteousness of Christ, obtains

salvation. The next morning Mr. Carey came to see me, and after

inquiring how I was, told me to come to his house, that he would

give me some medicine, by which, through the blessing of God, the

pain in my arm would be removed. I went and obtained the medicine,

and through the mercy of God my arm was cured. From this time I

made a practice of calling at the mission house, where Mr. Ward and

Mr. Felix Carey used to read and expound the Holy Bible to me. One

day Dr. Thomas asked me whether I understood what I heard from Mr.

Ward and Mr. Carey. I said I understood that the Lord Jesus Christ

gave his life up for the salvation of sinners, and that I believed

it, and so did my friend Gokool. Dr. T. said, 'Then I call you

brother--come and let us eat together in love.' At this time the

table was set for luncheon, and all the missionaries and their

wives, and I and Gokool, sat down and ate together."

The servants spread the news, most horrible to the people, that the

two Hindoos had "become Europeans," and they were assaulted on their

way home. Just thirty years after, in Calcutta, the first public

breach of caste by the young Brahman students of Duff raised a still

greater commotion, and resulted in the first converts there.

Krishna Pal and his wife, his wife's sister and his four daughters;

Gokool, his wife, and a widow of forty who lived beside them, formed

the first group of Christian Hindoos of caste in India north of

Madras. Two years after Krishna Pal sent to the Society this

confession of his faith. Literally translated, it is a record of

belief such as Paul himself might have written, illustrated by an

apostolic life of twenty-two years. The carpenter's confession and

dedication has, in the original, an exquisite tenderness, reflected

also in the hymn11 which he wrote for family worship:--

"SERAMPORE, 12th Oct. 1802.

"To the brethren of the church of our Saviour Jesus Christ, our

souls' beloved, my affectionately embracing representation. The

love of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, was made known by holy

brother Thomas. In that day our minds were filled with joy. Then

judging, we understood that we were dwelling in darkness. Through

the door of manifestation we came to know that, sin confessing, sin

forsaking, Christ's righteousness embracing, salvation would be

obtained. By light springing up in the heart, we knew that sinners

becoming repentant, through the sufferings of Christ, obtain

salvation. In this rejoicing, and in Christ's love believing, I

obtained mercy. Now it is in my mind continually to dwell in the

love of Christ: this is the desire of my soul. Do you, holy people,

pour down love upon us, that as the chatookee we may be satisfied.12

I was the vilest of sinners: He hath saved me. Now this word I will

tell to the world. Going forth, I will proclaim the love of Christ

with rejoicing. To sinners I will say this word: Here sinner,

brother! Without Christ there is no help. Christ, the world to

save, gave his own soul! Such love was never heard: for enemies

Christ gave his own soul! Such compassion, where shall we get? For

the sake of saving sinners he forsook the happiness of heaven. I

will constantly stay near him. Being awakened by this news, I will

constantly dwell in the town of joy. In the Holy Spirit I will

live: yet in Christ's sorrow I will be sorrowful. I will dwell

along with happiness, continually meditating on this;--Christ will

save the world! In Christ not taking refuge, there is no other way

of life. I was indeed a sinner, praise not knowing.--This is the

representation of Christ's servant,

"KRISTNO."

Such is the first epistle of the Church of India. Thus the first

medical missionary had his reward; but the joy proved to be too much

for him. When Carey led Krishna and his own son Felix down into the

water of baptism the ravings of Thomas in the schoolhouse on the one

side, and of Mrs. Carey on the other, mingled with the strains of

the Bengali hymn of praise. The Mission Journal, written by Ward,

tells with graphic simplicity how caste as well as idol-worship was

overcome not only by the men but the women representatives of a race

whom, thirty years after, Macaulay described as destitute of

courage, independence, and veracity, and bold only in deceit.

Christ is changing all that.

"Nov. 27.--Krishna, the man whose arm was set, overtook Felix and

me, and said he would come to our house daily for instruction; for

that we had not only cured his arm, but brought him the news of

salvation...

"Dec. 5.--Yesterday evening Gokool and Krishna prayed in my room.

This morning Gokool called upon us, and told us that his wife and

two or three more of his family had left him on account of the

gospel. He had eaten of Krishna's rice, who being of another caste,

Gokool had lost his. Krishna says his wife and family are all

desirous of becoming Christians. They declare their willingness to

join us, and obey all our Saviour's commands. Gokool and his wife

had a long talk; but she continued determined, and is gone to her

relations.

"Dec. 6.--This morning brother Carey and I went to Krishna's house.

Everything was made very clean. The women sat within the house,

the children at the door, and Krishna and Gokool with brother Carey

and I in the court. The houses of the poor are only calculated for

sleeping in. Brother Carey talked; and the women appeared to have

learned more of the gospel than we expected. They declared for

Christ at once. This work was new, even to brother Carey. A whole

family desiring to hear the gospel, and declaring in favour of it!

Krishna's wife said she had received great joy from it.

"Lord's-day, Dec. 7.--This morning brother Carey went to Krishna's

house, and spoke to a yard full of people, who heard with great

attention though trembling with cold. Brother Brunsdon is very

poorly. Krishna's wife and her sister were to have been with us in

the evening; but the women have many scruples to sitting in the

company of Europeans. Some of them scarcely ever go out but to the

river; and if they meet a European run away. Sometimes when we have

begun to speak in a street, some one desires us to remove to a

little distance; for the women dare not come by us to fill their

jars at the river. We always obey...

"Dec. 11.--Gokool, Krishna, and family continue to seek after the

Word, and profess their entire willingness to join us. The women

seem to have learnt that sin is a dreadful thing, and to have

received joy in hearing of Jesus Christ. We see them all every day

almost. They live but half a mile from us. We think it right to

make many allowances for ignorance, and for a state of mind produced

by a corrupt superstition. We therefore cannot think of demanding

from them, previous to baptism, to more than a profession of

dependence on Christ, from a knowledge of their need of Him, and

submission to Him in all things. We now begin to talk of baptism.

Yesterday we fixed upon the spot, before our gate, in the river.

We begin to talk also of many other things concerning the discipled

natives. This evening Felix and I went to Gokool's house. Krishna

and his wife and a br mmh n were present. I said a little. Felix? ?

read the four last chapters of John to them, and spoke also. We sat

down upon a piece of mat in the front of the house. (No chairs.) It

was very pleasant. To have natives who feel a little as we do

ourselves, is so new and different. The country itself seems to

wear a new aspect to me...

"Dec. 13.--This evening Felix and I went to see our friends Gokool

and Krishna. The latter was out. Gokool gave a pleasing account of

the state of his mind, and also of that of Krishna and his family.

While we were there, Gokool's gooroo (teacher) came for the first

time since his losing caste. Gokool refused to prostrate himself at

his feet while he should put his foot on his head; for which his

gooroo was displeased...

"Dec. 22.--This day Gokool and Krishna came to eat tiffin (what in

England is called luncheon) with us, and thus publicly threw away

their caste. Brethren Carey and Thomas went to prayer with the two

natives before they proceeded to this act. All our servants were

astonished: so many had said that nobody would ever mind Christ or

lose caste. Brother Thomas has waited fifteen years, and thrown

away much upon deceitful characters: brother Carey has waited till

hope of his own success has almost expired; and after all, God has

done it with perfect ease! Thus the door of faith is open to the

gentiles; who shall shut it? The chain of the caste is broken; who

shall mend it?"

Carey thus describes the baptism:--"Dec. 29.--Yesterday was a day of

great joy. I had the happiness to desecrate the Gunga, by baptising

the first Hindoo, viz. Krishna, and my son Felix: some circumstances

turned up to delay the baptism of Gokool and the two women.

Krishna's coming forward alone, however, gave us very great

pleasure, and his joy at both ordinances was very great. The river

runs just before our gate, in front of the house, and, I think, is

as wide as the Thames at Gravesend. We intended to have baptised at

nine in the morning; but, on account of the tide, were obliged to

defer it till nearly one o'clock, and it was administered just after

the English preaching. The Governor and a good number of Europeans

were present. Brother Ward preached a sermon in English, from John

v. 39--'Search the Scriptures.' We then went to the water-side,

where I addressed the people in Bengali; after having sung a Bengali

translation of 'Jesus, and shall it ever be?' and engaging in

prayer. After the address I administered the ordinance, first to my

son, then to Krishna. At half-past four I administered the Lord's

Supper; and a time of real refreshing it was...

"Thus, you see, God is making way for us, and giving success to the

word of His grace! We have toiled long, and have met with many

discouragements; but, at last, the Lord has appeared for us. May we

have the true spirit of nurses, to train them up in the words of

faith and sound doctrine! I have no fear of any one, however, in

this respect, but myself. I feel much concerned that they may act

worthy of their vocation, and also that they may be able to teach

others. I think it becomes us to make the most of every one whom

the Lord gives us."

Jeymooni, Krishna's wife's sister, was the first Bengali woman to be

baptised, and Rasoo, his wife, soon followed; both were about

thirty-five years old. The former said she had found a treasure in

Christ greater than anything in the world. The latter, when she

first heard the good news from her husband, said "there was no such

sinner as I, and I felt my heart immediately unite to Him. I wish to

keep all His commands so far as I know them." Gokool was kept back

for a time by his wife, Komal, who fled to her father's, but Krishna

and his family brought in, first the husband, then the wife, whose

simplicity and frankness attracted the missionaries. Unna, their

widowed friend of forty, was also gathered in, the first of that sad

host of victims to Brahmanical cruelty, lust, and avarice, to whom

Christianity has ever since offered the only deliverance. Of

124,000,000 of women in India in 1881, no fewer than 21,000,000 were

returned by the census as widows, of whom 669,000 were under

nineteen years, 286,000 were under fifteen, and 79,000 were under

nine, all figures undoubtedly within the appalling truth. Jeymooni

and Unna at once became active missionaries among their

country-women, not only in Serampore but in Chandernagore and the

surrounding country.

The year 1800 did not close without fruit from the other and higher

castes. Petumber Singh, a man of fifty of the writer caste, had

sought deliverance from sin for thirty years at many a Hindoo shrine

and in many a Brahmanical scripture. One of the earliest tracts of

the Serampore press fell into his hands, and he at once walked forty

miles to seek fuller instruction from its author. His baptism gave

Carey just what the mission wanted, a good schoolmaster, and he soon

proved to be, even before Krishna in time, the first preacher to the

people. Of the same writer caste were Syam Dass, Petumber Mitter,

and his wife Draupadi, who was as brave as her young husband. The

despised soodras were represented by Syam's neighbour, Bharut, an

old man, who said he went to Christ because he was just falling into

hell and saw no other way of safety. The first Mohammedan convert

was Peroo, another neighbour of Syam Dass. From the spot on the

Soondarbans where Carey first began his life of missionary farmer,

there came to him at the close of 1802, in Calcutta, the first

Brahman who had bowed his neck to the Gospel in all India up to this

time, for we can hardly reckon Kiernander's case. Krishna Prosad,

then nineteen, "gave up his friends and his caste with much

fortitude, and is the first Brahman who has been baptised. The word

of Christ's death seems to have gone to his heart, and he continues

to receive the Word with meekness." The poita or sevenfold thread

which, as worn over the naked body, betokened his caste, he trampled

under foot, and another was given to him, that when preaching Christ

he might be a witness to the Brahmans at once that Christ is

irresistible and that an idol is nothing in the world. This he

voluntarily ceased to wear in a few years. Two more Brahmans were

brought in by Petumber Singhee in 1804, by the close of which year

the number of baptised converts was forty-eight, of whom forty were

native men and women. With the instinct of a true scholar and

Christian Carey kept to the apostolic practice, which has been too

often departed from--he consecrated the convert's name as well as

soul and body to Christ. Beside the "Hermes" of Rome to whom Paul

sent his salutation, he kept the "Krishna" of Serampore and

Calcutta.

The first act of the first convert, Krishna Pal, was of his own

accord to build a house for God immediately opposite his own, the

first native meeting-house in Bengal. Carey preached the first

sermon in it to twenty natives besides the family. On the side of

the high road, along which the car of Jagganath is dragged every

year, the missionaries purchased a site and built a preaching place,

a school, a house for Gokool, and a room for the old widow, at the

cost of Captain Wickes, who had rejoiced to witness their baptism.

The Brahman who owned the neighbouring land wished to sell it and

leave the place, "so much do these people abhor us." This little

purchase for 6 grew in time into the extensive settlement of?

Jannagur, where about 1870 the last of Carey's converts passed away.

>From its native chapel, and in its village tank, many Hindoos have

since been led by their own ordained countrymen to put on Christ.

In time the church in the chapel on the Hoogli became chiefly

European and Eurasian, but on the first Sunday of the year, the

members of both churches meet together for solemn and joyful

communion, when the services are alternately in Bengali and English.

The longing for converts now gave place to anxiety that they might

continue to be Christians indeed. As in the early Corinthian

Church, all did not perceive at once the solemnities of the Lord's

Supper. Krishna Pal, for instance, jealous because the better

educated Petumber had been ordained to preach before him, made a

schism by administering it, and so filled the missionaries with

grief and fear; but he soon became penitent. Associated with men

who gave their all to Christ, the native members could not but learn

the lesson of self-support, so essential for a self-propagating

church, and so often neglected in the early history of missions, and

even still. On baptism Krishna received a new white dress with six

shillings; but such a gift, beautiful in itself, was soon

discontinued. A Mohammedan convert asked assistance to cultivate a

little ground and rear silkworms, but, writes Mr. Ward bowed down

with missionary cares, "We are desirous to avoid such a precedent."

Although these first converts were necessarily missionaries rather

than pastors for a time, each preacher received no more than six

rupees a month while in his own village, and double that when

itinerating. Carey and his colleagues were ever on the watch to

foster the spiritual life and growth of men and women born, and for

thirty or fifty years trained, in all the ideas and practices of a

system which is the very centre of opposition to teaching like

theirs. This record of an "experience meeting" of three men and

five women may be taken as a type of Bengali Christianity when it

was but two years old, and as a contrast to that which prevails a

century after:--

"Gokool. I have been the greatest of sinners, but I wish only to

think of the death of Christ. I rejoice that now people can no

longer despise the Gospel, and call us feringas; but they begin to

judge for themselves.

"Krishna Prosad. I have this week been thinking of the power of God,

that he can do all things; and of the necessity of minding all his

commands. I have thought also of my mother a great deal, who is now

become old, and who is constantly crying about me, thinking that I

have dishonoured the family and am lost. Oh that I could but once

go and tell her of the good news, as well as my brothers and

sisters, and open their eyes to the way of salvation!

"Ram Roteen. In my mind there is this: I see that all the debtahs

(idols) are nothing, and that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour. If

I can believe in him, and walk in his commandments, it may be well

with me.

"Rasoo. I am a great sinner; yet I wish continually to think of the

death of Christ. I had much comfort in the marriage of my daughter

(Onunda to Krishna Prosad). The neighbours talked much about it,

and seemed to think that it was much better that a man should choose

his own wife, than that people should be betrothed in their infancy

by their parents. People begin to be able to judge a little now

about the Christian ways.

"Jeymooni. In this country are many ways: the way of the debtahs;

the way of Jagganath, where all eat together; the way of Ghospara,

etc. Yet all these are vain. Yesoo Kreest's death, and Yesoo

Kreest's commands--this is the way of life! I long to see Kreest's

kingdom grow. This week I had much joy in talking to Gokool's

mother, whose heart is inclined to judge about the way of Kreest.

When I was called to go and talk with her, on the way I thought

within myself, but how can I explain the way of Kreest? I am but a

woman, and do not know much. Yet I recollected that the blessing

does not come from us: God can bless the weakest words. Many

Bengali women coming from the adjoining houses, sat down and heard

the word; and I was glad in hoping that the mercy of God might be

found by this old woman. [Gokool's mother.]

"Komal. I am a great sinner; yet I have been much rejoiced this week

in Gokool's mother coming to inquire about the Gospel. I had great

sorrow when Gokool was ill; and at one time I thought he would have

died; but God has graciously restored him. We have worldly sorrow,

but this lasts only for a time.

"Draupadi. This week I have had much sorrow on account of Petumber.

His mind is very bad: he sits in the house, and refuses to work;

and I know not what will become of him: yet Kreest's death is a true

word.

"Golook. I have had much joy in thinking of God's goodness to our

family. My sisters Onunda and Kesaree wish to be baptised, and to

come into the church. If I can believe in Kreest's death, and keep

his commands till death, then I shall be saved."

Carey was not only founding the Church of North India; he was

creating a new society, a community, which has its healthy roots in

the Christian family. Krishna Pal had come over with his household,

like the Philippian, and at once became his own and their gooroo or

priest. But the marriage difficulty was early forced on him and on

the missionaries. The first shape which persecution took was an

assault on his eldest daughter, Golook, who was carried off to the

house in Calcutta of the Hindoo to whom in infancy she had been

betrothed, or married according to Hindoo law enforced by the Danish

and British courts. As a Christian she loathed a connection which

was both idolatrous and polygamous. But she submitted for a time,

continuing, however, secretly to pray to Christ when beaten by her

husband for openly worshipping Him, and refusing to eat things

offered to the idol. At last it became intolerable. She fled to

her father, was baptised, and was after a time joined by her

penitent husband. The subject of what was to be done with converts

whose wives would not join them occupied the missionaries in

discussion every Sunday during 1803, and they at last referred it to

Andrew Fuller and the committee. Practically they anticipated the

Act in which Sir Henry Maine gave relief after the Scriptural mode.

They sent the husband to use every endeavour to induce his heathen

wife to join him; long delay or refusal they counted a sufficient

ground for divorce, and they allowed him to marry again. The other

case, which still troubles the native churches, of the duty of a

polygamous Christian, seems to have been solved according to Dr.

Doddridge's advice, by keeping such out of office in the church, and

pressing on the conscience of all the teaching of our Lord in

Matthew xix., and of Paul in 1st Corinthians vii.

In 1802 Carey drew up a form of agreement and of service for native

Christian marriages not unlike that of the Church of England. The

simple and pleasing ceremony in the case of Syam Dass presented a

contrast to the prolonged, expensive, and obscene rites of the

Hindoos, which attracted the people. When, the year after, a

Christian Brahman was united to a daughter of Krishna Pal, in the

presence of more than a hundred Hindoos, the unity of all in Christ

Jesus was still more marked:--

"Apr. 4, 1803.--This morning early we went to attend the wedding of

Krishna Prosad with Onunda, Krishna's second daughter. Krishna gave

him a piece of ground adjoining his dwelling, to build him a house,

and we lent Prosad fifty rupees for that purpose, which he is to

return monthly, out of his wages. We therefore had a meeting for

prayer in this new house, and many neighbours were present. Five

hymns were sung: brother Carey and Marshman prayed in Bengali.

After this we went under an open shed close to the house, where

chairs and mats were provided: here friends and neighbours sat all

around. Brother Carey sat at a table; and after a short

introduction, in which he explained the nature of marriage, and

noticed the impropriety of the Hindoo customs in this respect, he

read 2 Cor. vi. 14-18, and also the account of the marriage at Cana.

Then he read the printed marriage agreement, at the close of which

Krishna Prosad and Onunda, with joined hands, one after the other,

promised love, faithfulness, obedience, etc. They then signed the

agreement, and brethren Carey, Marshman, Ward, Chamberlain, Ram

Roteen, etc., signed as witnesses. The whole was closed with prayer

by brother Ward. Everything was conducted with the greatest decorum,

and it was almost impossible not to have been pleased. We returned

home to breakfast, and sent the new-married couple some sugar-candy,

plantains, and raisins; the first and last of these articles had

been made a present of to us, and the plantains were the produce of

the mission garden. In the evening we attended the monthly

prayer-meeting.

"Apr. 5.--This evening we all went to supper at Krishna's, and sat

under the shade where the marriage ceremony had been performed.

Tables, knives and forks, glasses, etc., having been taken from our

house, we had a number of Bengali plain dishes, consisting of curry,

fried fish, vegetables, etc., and I fancy most of us ate heartily.

This is the first instance of our eating at the house of our native

brethren. At this table we all sat with the greatest cheerfulness,

and some of the neighbours looked on with a kind of amazement. It

was a new and very singular sight in this land where clean and

unclean is so much regarded. We should have gone in the daytime,

but were prevented by the heat and want of leisure. We began this

wedding supper with singing, and concluded with prayer: between ten

and eleven we returned home with joy. This was a glorious triumph

over the caste! A Brahman married to a soodra, in the Christian

way: Englishmen eating with the married couple and their friends, at

the same table, and at a native house. Allowing the Hindoo

chronology to be true, there has not been such a sight in Bengal

these millions of years!"

In the same year the approaching death of Gokool led the

missionaries to purchase the acre of ground, near the present

railway station, in which lies the dust of themselves and their

converts, and of a child of the Judsons, till the Resurrection.

Often did Carey officiate at the burial of Europeans in the Danish

cemetery. Previous to his time the only service there consisted in

the Government secretary dropping a handful of earth on the coffin.

In the native God's-acre, as in the Communion of the Lord's Table,

and in the simple rites which accompanied the burial of the dead in

Christ, the heathen saw the one lofty platform of loving

self-sacrifice to which the Cross raises all its children:--

"Oct. 7.--Our dear friend Gokool is gone: he departed at two this

morning. At twelve he called the brethren around him to sing and

pray; was perfectly sensible, resigned, and tranquil. Some of the

neighbours had been persuading him the day before to employ a native

doctor; he however refused, saying he would have no physician but

Jesus Christ. On their saying, How is it that you who have turned

to Christ should be thus afflicted? He replied, My affliction is on

account of my sins; my Lord does all things well! Observing Komal

weep (who had been a most affectionate wife), he said, Why do you

weep for me? Only pray, etc. From the beginning of his illness he

had little hope of recovery; yet he never murmured, nor appeared at

all anxious for medicine. His answer constantly was, "I am in my

Lord's hands, I want no other physician!' His patience throughout

was astonishing: I never heard him say once that his pain was great.

His tranquil and happy end has made a deep impression on our

friends: they say one to another, 'May my mind be as Gokool's was!'

When we consider, too, that this very man grew shy of us three

years ago, because we opposed his notion that believers would never

die, the grace now bestowed upon him appears the more remarkable.

Knowing the horror the Hindoos have for a dead body, and how

unwilling they are to contribute any way to its interment, I had the

coffin made at our house the preceding day, by carpenters whom we

employ. They would not, however, carry it to the house. The

difficulty now was, to carry him to the grave. The usual mode of

Europeans is to hire a set of men (Portuguese), who live by it. But

besides that our friends could never constantly sustain that

expense, I wished exceedingly to convince them of the propriety of

doing that last kind office for a brother themselves. But as

Krishna had been ill again the night before, and two of our brethren

were absent with brother Ward, we could only muster three persons.

I evidently saw the only way to supply the deficiency; and brother

Carey being from home, I sounded Felix and William, and we

determined to make the trial; and at five in the afternoon repaired

to the house. Thither were assembled all our Hindoo brethren and

sisters, with a crowd of natives that filled the yard, and lined the

street. We brought the remains of our dear brother out, whose

coffin Krishna had covered within and without with white muslin at

his own expense; then, in the midst of the silent and astonished

multitude, we improved the solemn moment by singing a hymn of

Krishna's, the chorus of which is 'Salvation by the death of

Christ.' Bhairub the brahm n, Peroo the mussulman, Felix and I took?

up the coffin; and, with the assistance of Krishna and William,

conveyed it to its long home: depositing it in the grave, we sung

two appropriate hymns. After this, as the crowd was accumulating, I

endeavoured to show the grounds of our joyful hope even in death,

referring to the deceased for a proof of its efficacy: told them

that indeed he had been a great sinner, as they all knew, and for

that reason could find no way of salvation among them; but when he

heard of Jesus Christ, he received him as a suitable and

all-sufficient Saviour, put his trust in him, and died full of

tranquil hope. After begging them to consider their own state, we

prayed, sung Moorad's hymn, and distributed papers. The concourse

of people was great, perhaps 500: they seemed much struck with the

novelty of the scene, and with the love and regard Christians

manifest to each other, even in death; so different from their

throwing their friends, half dead and half living, into the river;

or burning their body, with perhaps a solitary attendant."

Preaching, teaching, and Bible translating were from the first

Carey's three missionary methods, and in all he led the missionaries

who have till the present followed him with a success which he never

hesitated to expect, as one of the "great things" from God. His work

for the education of the people of India, especially in their own

vernacular and classical languages, was second only to that which

gave them a literature sacred and pure. Up to 1794, when at

Mudnabati he opened the first primary school worthy of the name in

all India at his own cost, and daily superintended it, there had

been only one attempt to improve upon the indigenous schools, which

taught the children of the trading castes only to keep rude

accounts, or upon the tols in which the Brahmans instructed their

disciples for one-half the year, while for the other half they lived

by begging. That attempt was made by Schwartz at Combaconum, the

priestly Oxford of South India, where the wars with Tipoo soon put

an end to a scheme supported by both the Raja of Tanjore and the

British Government. When Carey moved to Serampore and found

associated with him teachers so accomplished and enthusiastic as

Marshman and his wife, education was not long in taking its place in

the crusade which was then fully organised for the conversion of

Southern and Eastern Asia. At Madras, too, Bell had stumbled upon

the system of "mutual instruction" which he had learned from the

easy methods of the indigenous schoolmaster, and which he and

Lancaster taught England to apply to the clamant wants of the

country, and to improve into the monitorial, pupil-teacher and

grant-in-aid systems. Carey had all the native schools of the

mission "conducted upon Lancaster's plan."

In Serampore, and in every new station as it was formed, a free

school was opened. We have seen how the first educated convert,

Petumber, was made schoolmaster. So early as October 1800 we find

Carey writing home:--"The children in our Bengali free school, about

fifty, are mostly very young. Yet we are endeavouring to instil

into their minds Divine truth, as fast as their understandings

ripen. Some natives have complained that we are poisoning the minds

even of their very children." The first attempt to induce the boys

to write out the catechism in Bengali resulted, as did Duff's to get

them to read aloud the Sermon on the Mount thirty years after, in a

protest that their caste was in danger. But the true principles of

toleration and discipline were at once explained--"that the children

will never be compelled to do anything that will make them lose

caste; that though we abhor the caste we do not wish any to lose it

but by their own choice. After this we shall insist on the children

doing what they have been ordered." A few of the oldest boys

withdrew for a time, declaring that they feared they would be sent

on board ship to England, and the baptism of each of the earlier

converts caused a panic. But instruction on honest methods soon

worked out the true remedy. Two years after we find this

report:--"The first class, consisting of catechumens, are now

learning in Bengali the first principles of Christianity; and will

hereafter be instructed in the rudiments of history, geography,

astronomy, etc. The second class, under two other masters, learn to

read and write Bengali and English. The third class, consisting of

the children of natives who have not lost caste, learn only Bengali.

This school is in a promising state, and is liberally supported by

the subscriptions of Europeans in this country."

Carey's early success led Mr. Creighton of Malda to open at Goamalty

several Bengali free schools, and to draw up a scheme for extending

such Christian nurseries all over the country at a cost of 10 for?

the education of fifty children. Only by the year 1806 was such a

scheme practicable, because Carey had translated the Scriptures,

and, as Creighton noted, "a variety of introductory and explanatory

tracts and catechisms in the Bengali and Hindostani tongues have

already been circulated in some parts of the country, and any number

may be had gratis from the Mission House, Serampore." As only a few

of the Brahman and writer castes could read, and not one woman, "a

general perusal of the Scriptures amongst natives will be

impracticable till they are taught to read." But nothing was done,

save by the missionaries, till 1835, when Lord William Bentinck

received Adam's report on the educational destitution of Bengal.

Referring to Creighton's scheme, Mr. Ward's journal thus chronicles

the opening of the first Sunday school in India in July 1803 by

Carey's sons:--

"Last Lord's day a kind of Sunday school was opened, which will be

superintended principally by our young friends Felix and William

Carey, and John Fernandez. It will chiefly be confined to teaching

catechisms in Bengali and English, as the children learn to read and

write every day. I have received a letter from a gentleman up the

country, who writes very warmly respecting the general establishment

of Christian schools all over Bengal."

Not many years had passed since Raikes had begun Sunday schools in

England. Their use seems to have passed away with the three

Serampore missionaries for a time, and to have been again extended

by the American missionaries about 1870. There are now above

200,000 boys and girls at such schools in India, and three-fourths

of these are non-Christians.

As from the first Carey drew converts from all classes, the

Armenians, the Portuguese, and the Eurasians, as well as the natives

of India, he and Mr. and Mrs. Marshman especially took care to

provide schools for their children. The necessity, indeed, of this

was forced upon them by the facts that the brotherhood began with

nine children, and that boarding-schools for these classes would

form an honourable source of revenue to the mission. Hence this

advertisement, which appeared in March 1800:--"Mission, House,

Serampore.--On Thursday, the 1st of May 1800, a school will be

opened at this house, which stands in a very healthy and pleasant

situation by the side of the river. Letters add to Mr. Carey will

be immediately attended to." The cost of boarding and fees varied

from 45 to 50 a year, according as "Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian,? ?

or Sanskrit" lessons were included. "Particular attention will be

paid to the correct pronunciation of the English language" was added

for reasons which the mixed parentage of the pupils explains. Such

was the first sign of a care for the Eurasians not connected with

the army, which, as developed by Marshman and Mack, began in 1823 to

take the form of the Doveton College. The boys' school was soon

followed by a girls' school, through which a stream of Christian

light radiated forth over resident Christian society, and from which

many a missionary came.

Carey's description of the mixed community is the best we have of

its origin as well as of the state of European society in India,

alike when the Portuguese were dominant, and at the beginning of the

nineteenth century when the East India Company were most afraid of

Christianity:--"The Portuguese are a people who, in the estimation

of both Europeans and natives, are sunk below the Hindoos or

Mussulmans. However, I am of opinion that they are rated much too

low. They are chiefly descendants of the slaves of the Portuguese

who first landed here, or of the children of those Portuguese by

their female slaves; and being born in their house, were made

Christians in their infancy by what is called baptism, and had

Portuguese names given them. It is no wonder that these people,

despised as they are by Europeans, and being consigned to the

teachings of very ignorant Popish priests, should be sunk into such

a state of degradation. So gross, indeed, are their superstitions,

that I have seen a Hindoo image-maker carrying home an image of

Christ on the cross between two thieves, to the house of a

Portuguese. Many of them, however, can read and write English well

and understand Portuguese...

"Besides these, there are many who are the children of Europeans by

native women, several of whom are well educated, and nearly all of

them Protestants by profession. These, whether children of English,

French, Dutch, or Danes, by native women, are called Portuguese.

Concubinage here is so common, that few unmarried Europeans are

without a native woman, with whom they live as if married; and I

believe there are but few instances of separation, except in case of

marriage with European women, in which case the native woman is

dismissed with an allowance: but the children of these marriages are

never admitted to table with company, and are universally treated by

the English as an inferior species of beings. Hence they are often

shame-faced yet proud and conceited, and endeavour to assume that

honour to themselves which is denied them by others. This class may

be regarded as forming a connecting link between Europeans and

natives. The Armenians are few in number, but chiefly rich. I have

several times conversed with them about religion: they hear with

patience, and wonder that any Englishman should make that a subject

of conversation."

While the Marshmans gave their time from seven in the morning till

three in the afternoon to these boarding-schools started by Carey in

1800 for the higher education of the Eurasians, Carey himself, in

Calcutta, early began to care for the destitute. His efforts

resulted in the establishment of the "Benevolent Institution for the

Instruction of Indigent Children," which the contemporary Bengal

civilian, Charles Lushington, in his History extols as one of the

monuments of active and indefatigable benevolence due to Serampore.

Here, on the Lancaster system, and superintended by Carey, Mr. and

Mrs. Penney had as many as 300 boys and 100 girls under Christian

instruction of all ages up to twenty-four, and of every

race:--"Europeans, native Portuguese, Armenians, Mugs, Chinese,

Hindoos, Mussulmans, natives of Sumatra, Mozambik, and Abyssinia."

This official reporter states that thus more than a thousand youths

had been rescued from vice and ignorance and advanced in usefulness

to society, in a degree of opulence and respectability. The origin

of this noble charity is thus told to Dr. Ryland by Carey himself in

a letter which unconsciously reveals his own busy life, records the

missionary influence of the higher schools, and reports the

existence of the mission over a wide area. He writes from Calcutta

on 24th May 1811:--

"A year ago we opened a free school in Calcutta. This year we added

to it a school for girls. There are now in it about 140 boys and

near 40 girls. One of our deacons, Mr. Leonard, a most valuable and

active man, superintends the boys, and a very pious woman, a member

of the church, is over the girls. The Institution meets with

considerable encouragement, and is conducted upon Lancaster's plan.

We meditate another for instruction of Hindoo youths in the

Sanskrit language, designing, however, to introduce the study of the

Sanskrit Bible into it; indeed it is as good as begun; it will be in

Calcutta. By brother and sister Marshman's encouragement there are

two schools in our own premises at Serampore for the gratuitous

instruction of youth of both sexes, supported and managed wholly by

the male and female scholars in our own school. These young persons

appear to enter with pleasure into the plan, contribute their money

to its support, and give instruction in turns to the children of

these free schools. I trust we shall be able to enlarge this plan,

and to spread its influence far about the country. Our brethren in

the Isles of France and Bourbon seem to be doing good; some of them

are gone to Madagascar, and, as if to show that Divine Providence

watches over them, the ship on which they went was wrecked soon

after they had landed from it. A number of our members are now gone

to Java; I trust their going thither will not be in vain. Brother

Chamberlain is, ere this, arrived at Agra...We preach every week in

the Fort and in the public prison, both in English and Bengali."

Carey had not been six months at Serampore when he saw the

importance of using the English language as a missionary weapon, and

he proposed this to Andrew Fuller. The other pressing duties of a

pioneer mission to the people of Bengal led him to postpone

immediate action in this direction; we shall have occasion to trace

the English influence of the press and the college hereafter. But

meanwhile the vernacular schools, which soon numbered a hundred

altogether, were most popular, and then as now proved most valuable

feeders of the infant Church. Without them, wrote the three

missionaries to the Society, "the whole plan must have been nipped

in the bud, since, if the natives had not cheerfully sent their

children, everything else would have been useless. But the

earnestness with which they have sought these schools exceeds

everything we had previously expected. We are still constantly

importuned for more schools, although we have long gone beyond the

extent of our funds." It was well that thus early, in schools, in

books and tracts, and in providing the literary form and apparatus

of the vernacular languages, Carey laid the foundation of the new

national or imperial civilisation. When the time for English came,

the foundations were at least above the ground. Laid deep and

strong in the very nature of the people, the structure has thus far

promised to be national rather than foreign, though raised by

foreign hands, while marked by the truth and the purity of its

Western architects.

The manifestation of Christ to the Bengalees could not be made

without rousing the hate and the opposition of the vested interests

of Brahmanism. So long as Carey was an indigo planter as well as a

proselytiser in Dinapoor and Malda he met with no opposition, for he

had no direct success. But when, from Serampore, he and the others,

by voice, by press, by school, by healing the sick and visiting the

poor, carried on the crusade day by day with the gentle persistency

of a law of nature, the cry began. And when, by the breaking of

caste and the denial of Krishna's Christian daughter Golook to the

Hindoo to whom she had been betrothed from infancy, the Brahmans

began dimly to apprehend that not only their craft but the whole

structure of society was menaced, the cry became louder, and, as in

Ephesus of old, an appeal was made to the magistrates against the

men who were turning the world upside down. At first the very boys

taunted the missionaries in the streets with the name of Jesus

Christ. Then, after Krishna and his family had broken caste, they

were seized by a mob and hurried before the Danish magistrate, who

at first refused to hand over a Christian girl to a heathen, and

gave her father a guard to prevent her from being murdered, until

the Calcutta magistrate decided that she must join her husband but

would be protected in the exercise of her new faith. The commotion

spread over the whole densely-peopled district. But the people were

not with the Brahmans, and the excitement sent many a sin-laden

inquirer to Serampore from a great distance. "The fire is now

already kindled for which our Redeemer expressed his strong desire,"

wrote Carey to Ryland in March 1801. A year later he used this

language to his old friend Morris at Clipstone village:--"I think

there is such a fermentation raised in Bengal by the little leaven,

that there is a hope of the whole lump by degrees being leavened.

God is carrying on his work; and though it goes forward, yet no one

can say who is the instrument. Doubtless, various means contribute

towards it; but of late the printing and dispersing of New

Testaments and small tracts seem to have the greatest effect."

In a spirit the opposite of Jonah's the whole brotherhood, then

consisting of the three, of Carey's son Felix, and of a new

missionary, Chamberlain, sent home this review of their position at

the close of 1804:--

"We are still a happy, healthful, and highly favoured family. But

though we would feel incessant gratitude for these gourds, yet we

would not feel content unless Nineveh be brought to repentance. We

did not come into this country to be placed in what are called easy

circumstances respecting this world; and we trust that nothing but

the salvation of souls will satisfy us. True, before we set off, we

thought we could die content if we should be permitted to see the

half of what we have already seen; yet now we seem almost as far

from the mark of our missionary high calling as ever. If three

millions of men were drowning, he must be a monster who should be

content with saving one individual only; though for the deliverance

of that one he would find cause for perpetual gratitude."

In 1810 the parent mission at Serampore had so spread into numerous

stations and districts that a new organisation became necessary.

There were 300 converts, of whom 105 had been added in that year.

"Did you expect to see this eighteen years ago?" wrote Marshman to

the Society. "But what may we not expect if God continues to bless

us in years to come?" Marshman forgot how Carey had, in 1792, told

them on the inspired evangelical prophet's authority to "expect

great things from God." Henceforth the one mission became fivefold

for a time.

CHAPTER VII

CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO AMBOYNA

1802-1817

The East India Company an unwilling partner of Carey--Calcutta

opened to the Mission by his appointment as Government teacher of

Bengali--Meeting of 1802 grows into the Lall Bazaar

mission--Christ-like work among the poor, the sick, the prisoners,

the soldiers and sailors and the natives--Krishna Pal first native

missionary in Calcutta--Organisation of subordinate

stations--Carey's "United Missions in India"--The missionary staff

thirty strong--The native missionaries--The Bengali church

self-propagating--Carey the pioneer of other

missionaries--Benares--Burma and Indo-China--Felix

Carey--Instructions to missionaries--The missionary shrivelled into

an ambassador--Adoniram and Ann Judson--Jabez Carey--Mission to

Amboyna--Remarkable letter from Carey to his third son.

The short-sighted regulation of the East India Company, which

dreamed that it could keep Christianity out of Bengal by shutting up

the missionaries within the little territory of Danish Serampore,

could not be enforced with the same ease as the order of a jailer.

Under Danish passports, and often without them, missionary tours

were made over Central Bengal, aided by its network of rivers.

Every printed Bengali leaf of Scripture or pure literature was a

missionary. Every new convert, even the women, became an apostle to

their people, and such could not be stopped. Gradually, as not only

the innocency but the positive political usefulness of the

missionaries' character and work came to be recognised by the local

authorities, they were let alone for a time. And soon, by the same

historic irony which has marked so many of the greatest reforms--"He

that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh"--the Government of India

became, though unwittingly, more of a missionary agency than the

Baptist Society itself. The only teacher of Bengal who could be

found for Lord Wellesley's new College of Fort William was William

Carey. The appointment, made and accepted without the slightest

prejudice to his aggressive spiritual designs and work, at once

opened Calcutta itself for the first time to the English

proselytising of natives, and supplied Carey with the only means yet

lacking for the translation of the Scriptures into all the languages

of the farther East. In spite of its own selfish fears the Company

became a principal partner in the Christianisation of India and

China.

>From the middle of the year 1801 and for the next thirty years Carey

spent as much of his time in the metropolis as in Serampore. He was

generally rowed down the eighteen miles of the winding river to

Calcutta at sunset on Monday evening and returned on Friday night

every week, working always by the way. At first he personally

influenced the Bengali traders and youths who knew English, and he

read with many such the English Bible. His chaplain friends, Brown

and Buchanan, with the catholicity born of their presbyterian and

evangelical training, shared his sympathy with the hundreds of poor

mixed Christians for whom St. John's and even the Mission Church

made no provision, and encouraged him to care for them. In 1802 he

began a weekly meeting for prayer and conversation in the house of

Mr. Rolt, and another for a more ignorant class in the house of a

Portuguese Christian. By 1803 he was able to write to Fuller: "We

have opened a place of worship in Calcutta, where we have preaching

twice on Lord's day in English, on Wednesday evening in Bengali, and

on Thursday evening in English." He took all the work during the

week and the Sunday service in rotation with his brethren. The

first church was the hall of a well-known undertaker, approached

through lines of coffins and the trappings of woe. In time most of

the evangelical Christians in the city promised to relieve the

missionaries of the expense if they would build an unsectarian

chapel more worthy of the object. This was done in Lall Bazaar, a

little withdrawn from that thoroughfare to this day of the poor and

abandoned Christians, of the sailors and soldiers on leave, of the

liquor-shops and the stews. There, as in Serampore, at a time when

the noble hospitals of Calcutta were not, and the children of only

the "services" were cared for, "Brother Carey gave them medicine for

their bodies and the best medicine for their poor souls," as a

contemporary widow describes it. The site alone cost so much--a

thousand pounds--that only a mat chapel could be built. Marshman

raised another 1100 in ten days, and after delays caused by the?

police Government sanctioned the building which Carey opened on

Sunday, 1st January 1809. But he and his colleagues "not

episcopally ordained" were forbidden to preach to British soldiers

and to the Armenians and Portuguese. "Carey's Baptist Chapel" is now

its name. Here was for nearly a whole generation a sublime

spectacle--the Northamptonshire shoemaker training the governing

class of India in Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi all day, and

translating the Ramayana and the Veda, and then, when the sun went

down, returning to the society of "the maimed, the halt, and the

blind, and many with the leprosy," to preach in several tongues the

glad tidings of the Kingdom to the heathen of England as well as of

India, and all with a loving tenderness and patient humility learned

in the childlike school of Him who said, "Wist ye not that I must be

about my Father's business?"

Street preaching was added to the apostolic agencies, and for this

prudence dictated recourse to the Asiatic and Eurasian converts. We

find the missionaries writing to the Society at the beginning of

1807, after the mutiny at Vellore, occasioned as certainly by the

hatlike turban then ordered, as the mutiny of Bengal half a century

after was by the greased cartridges:--

"We now return to Calcutta; not, however, without a sigh. How can

we avoid sighing when we think of the number of perishing souls

which this city contains, and recollect the multitudes who used of

late to hang upon our lips; standing in the thick-wedged crowd for

hours together, in the heat of a Bengal summer, listening to the

word of life! We feel thankful, however, that nothing has been

found against us, except in the matters of our God. Conscious of the

most cordial attachment to the British Government, and of the

liveliest interest in its welfare, we might well endure reproach

were it cast upon us; but the tongue of calumny itself has not to

our knowledge been suffered to bring the slightest accusation

against us. We still worship at Calcutta in a private house, and

our congregation rather increases. We are going on with the chapel.

A family of Armenians also, who found it pleasant to attend divine

worship in the Bengali language, have erected a small place on their

premises for the sake of the natives."

Krishna Pal became the first native missionary to Calcutta, where he

in 1810 had preached at fourteen different places every week, and

visited forty-one families, to evangelise the servants of the richer

and bring in the members of the poorer. Sebuk Ram was added to the

staff. Carey himself thus sums up the labours of the year 1811,

when he was still the only pastor of the Christian poor, and the

only resident missionary to half a million of natives:--

"Calcutta is three miles long and one broad, very populous; the

environs are crowded with people settled in large villages,

resembling (for population, not elegance) the environs of

Birmingham. The first is about a mile south of the city; at nearly

the same distance are the public jail and the general hospital.

Brother Gordon, one of our deacons, being the jailer we preach

there in English every Lord's day. We did preach in the Fort; but

of late a military order has stopped us. Krishna and Sebuk Ram,

however, preach once or twice a week in the Fort notwithstanding;

also at the jail; in the house of correction; at the village of

Alipore, south of the jail; at a large factory north of the city,

where several hundreds are employed; and at ten or twelve houses in

different parts of the city itself. In several instances Roman

Catholics, having heard the word, have invited them to their houses,

and having collected their neighbours, the one or the other have

received the word with gladness.

"The number of inquirers constantly coming forward, awakened by the

instrumentality of these brethren, fills me with joy. I do not know

that I am of much use myself, but I see a work which fills my soul

with thankfulness. Not having time to visit the people, I

appropriate every Thursday evening to receiving the visits of

inquirers. Seldom fewer than twenty come; and the simple

confessions of their sinful state, the unvarnished declaration of

their former ignorance, the expressions of trust in Christ and

gratitude to him, with the accounts of their spiritual conflicts

often attended with tears which almost choke their utterance,

presents a scene of which you can scarcely entertain an adequate

idea. At the same time, meetings for prayer and mutual edification

are held every night in the week; and some nights, for convenience,

at several places at the same time: so that the sacred leaven

spreads its influence through the mass."

On his voyage to India Carey had deliberately contemplated the time

when the Society he had founded would influence not only Asia, but

Africa, and he would supply the peoples of Asia with the Scriptures

in their own tongues. The time had come by 1804 for organising the

onward movement, and he thus describes it to Ryland:--

"14th December 1803.--Another plan has lately occupied our

attention. It appears that our business is to provide materials for

spreading the Gospel, and to apply those materials. Translations,

pamphlets, etc., are the materials. To apply them we have thought

of setting up a number of subordinate stations, in each of which a

brother shall be fixed. It will be necessary and useful to carry on

some worldly business. Let him be furnished from us with a sum of

money to begin and purchase cloth or whatever other article the part

produces in greatest perfection: the whole to belong to the mission,

and no part even to be private trade or private property. The gains

may probably support the station. Every brother in such a station

to have one or two native brethren with him, and to do all he can to

preach, and spread Bibles, pamphlets, etc., and to set up and

encourage schools where the reading of the Scriptures shall be

introduced. At least four brethren shall always reside at

Serampore, which must be like the heart while the other stations are

the members. Each one must constantly send a monthly account of

both spirituals and temporals to Serampore, and the brethren at

Serampore (who must have a power of control over the stations) must

send a monthly account likewise to each station, with advice, etc.,

as shall be necessary. A plan of this sort appears to be more

formidable than it is in reality. To find proper persons will be

the greatest difficulty; but as it will prevent much of that

abrasion which may arise from a great number of persons living in

one house, so it will give several brethren an opportunity of being

useful, whose temper may not be formed to live in a common family,

and at the same time connect them as much to the body as if they all

lived together. We have judged that about 2000 rupees will do to

begin at each place, and it is probable that God will enable us to

find money (especially if assisted in the translations and printing

by our brethren in England) as fast as you will be able to find men.

"This plan may be extended through a circular surface of a thousand

miles' radius, and a constant communication kept up between the

whole, and in some particular cases it may extend ever farther. We

are also to hope that God may raise up some missionaries in this

country who may be more fitted for the work than any from England

can be. At present we have not concluded on anything, but when

Brother Ward comes down we hope to do so, and I think one station

may be fixed on immediately which Brother Chamberlain may occupy. A

late favourable providence will, I hope, enable us to begin, viz.,

the College have subscribed for 100 copies of my Sanskrit Grammar,

which will be 6400 rupees or 800 pounds sterling. The motion was

very generously made by H. Colebrooke, Esq., who is engaged in a

similar work, and seconded by Messrs. Brown and Buchanan; indeed it

met with no opposition. It will scarcely be printed off under

twelve months more, but it is probable that the greatest part of the

money will he advanced. The Maratha war and the subjugation of the

country of Cuttak to the English may be esteemed a favourable event

for the spreading of the Gospel, and will certainly contribute much

to the comfort of the inhabitants."

Two years later he thus anticipates the consent of the local

Government, in spite of the Company's determined hostility in

England, but the Vellore mutiny panic led to further delay:--

"25th December 1805.--It has long been a favourite object with me to

fix European brethren in different parts of the country at about two

hundred miles apart, so that each shall be able to visit a circle of

a hundred miles' radius, and within each of the circuits to place

native brethren at proper distances, who will, till they are more

established, be under the superintendence of the European brethren

situated in the centre. Our brethren concur with me in this plan.

In consequence of this, I thought it would be desirable to have

leave of Government for them to settle, and preach, without control,

in any part of the country. The Government look on us with a

favourable eye; and owing to Sir G. Barlow, the Governor-General,

being up the country, Mr. Udny is Vice-President and

Deputy-Governor. I therefore went one morning, took a breakfast

with him, and told him what we were doing and what we wished to do.

He, in a very friendly manner, desired me to state to him in a

private letter all that we wished, and offered to communicate

privately with Sir G. Barlow upon the subject, and inform me of the

result. I called on him again last week, when he informed me that

he had written upon the subject and was promised a speedy reply.

God grant that it may be favourable. I know that Government will

allow it if their powers are large enough."

Not till 1810 could Carey report that "permission was obtained of

Government for the forming of a new station at Agra, a large city in

upper Hindostan, not far from Delhi and the country of the Sikhs,"

to which Chamberlain and an assistant were sent. From that year the

Bengal became only the first of "The United Missions in India."

These were five in number, each under its own separate brotherhood,

on the same principles of self-denial as the original, each a

Lindisfarne sprung from the parent Iona. These five were the Bengal,

the Burman, the Orissa, the Bhootan, and the Hindostan Missions.

The Bengal mission was fourfold--Serampore and Calcutta reckoned as

one station; the old Dinapoor and Sadamahal which had taken the

place of Mudnabati; Goamalty, near Malda; Cutwa, an old town on the

upper waters of the Hoogli; Jessor, the agricultural capital of its

lower delta; and afterwards Monghyr, Berhampore, Moorshedabad,

Dacca, Chittagong, and Assam. The Bhootan missionaries were

plundered and driven out. The Hindostan mission soon included Gaya,

Patna, Deegah, Ghazeepore, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Ajmer, and

Delhi itself. From Nagpoor, in the very centre of India, and Surat

to the north of Bombay, Carey sought to bring Marathas and

Goojaratees under the yoke of Christ. China, where the East India

Company was still master, was cared for by the press, as we shall

see. Not content with the continent of Asia, Carey's mission, at

once forced by the intolerance which refused to allow new

missionaries to land in India proper, and led by the invitations of

Sir Stamford Raffles, extended to Java and Amboyna, Penang, Ceylon,

and even Mauritius. The elaborate review of their position, signed

by the three faithful men of Serampore, at the close of 1817, amazes

the reader at once by the magnitude and variety of the operations,

the childlike modesty of the record, and the heroism of the toil

which supplied the means.

At the time of the organisation into the Five United Missions the

staff of workers had grown to be thirty strong. From England there

were nine surviving:--Carey, Marshman, Ward, Chamberlain, Mardon,

Moore, Chater, Rowe, and Robinson. Raised up in India itself there

were seven--the two sons of Carey, Felix and William; Fernandez, his

first convert at Dinapoor; Peacock and Cornish, and two Armenians,

Aratoon and Peters; two were on probation for the ministry, Leonard

and Forder. Besides seven Hindoo evangelists also on probation,

there were five survivors of the band of converts called from time

to time to the ministry--Krishna Pal, the first, who is entered on

the list as "the beloved"; Krishna Dass, Ram Mohun, Seeta Ram, and

Seeta Dass. Carey's third son Jabez was soon to become the most

advanced of the three brothers away in far Amboyna. His father had

long prayed, and besought others to pray, that he too might be a

missionary. For the last fifteen years of his life Jabez was his

closest and most valued correspondent.

But only less dear than his own sons to the heart of the father,

already in 1817 described in an official letter as "our aged brother

Carey," were the native missionaries and pastors, his sons in the

faith. He sent forth the educated Petumber Singh, first in November

1802, to his countrymen at Sooksagar, and "gave him a suitable and

solemn charge: the opportunity was very pleasant." In May 1803

Krishna Pal was similarly set apart. At the same time the young

Brahman, Krishna Prosad, "delivered his first sermon in Bengali,

much to the satisfaction of our brethren." Six months after, Ward

reports of him in Dinapoor:--"The eyes of the people were fixed

listening to Prosad; he is becoming eloquent." In 1804 their

successful probation resulted in their formal ordination by prayer

and the laying on of the hands of the brethren, when Carey addressed

them from the divine words, "As my Father hath sent me so send I

you," and all commemorated the Lord's death till He come. Krishna

Dass was imprisoned unjustly, for a debt which he had paid, but "he

did not cease to declare to the native men in power that he was a

Christian, when they gnashed upon him with their teeth. He preached

almost all night to the prisoners, who heard the word with

eagerness." Two years after he was ordained, Carey charged him as

Paul had written to Timothy, "in the sight of God and of Christ

Jesus, who shall judge the quick and the dead," to be instant in

season and out of season, to reprove, rebuke, exhort with all

long-suffering and teaching. Ram Mohun was a Brahman, the fruit of

old Petumber's ministry, and had his ability as a student and

preacher of the Scriptures consecrated to Christ on the death of

Krishna Prosad, while the missionaries thus saw again answered the

invocation they had sung, in rude strains, in the ship which brought

them to India:--

"Bid Brahmans preach the heavenly word

Beneath the banian's shade;

Oh let the Hindoo feel its power

And grace his soul pervade."

So early as 1806 the missionaries thus acknowledged the value of the

work of their native brethren, and made of all the native converts a

Missionary Church. In the delay and even failure to do this of

their successors of all Churches we see the one radical point in

which the Church in India has as yet come short of its duty and its

privilege:--

"We have availed ourselves of the help of native brethren ever since

we had one who dared to speak in the name of Christ, and their

exertions have chiefly been the immediate means by which our church

has been increased. But we have lately been revolving a plan for

rendering their labours more extensively useful; namely, that of

sending them out, two and two, without any European brother. It

appeared also a most desirable object to interest in this work, as

much as possible, the whole of the native church among us: indeed,

we have had much in them of this nature to commend. In order, then,

more effectually to answer this purpose, we called an extraordinary

meeting of all the brethren on Friday evening, Aug. 8, 1806, and

laid before them the following ideas:--

"1. That the intention of the Saviour, in calling them out of

darkness into marvellous light, was that they should labour to the

uttermost in advancing his cause among their countrymen.

"2. That it was therefore their indispensable duty, both

collectively and individually, to strive by every means to bring

their countrymen to the knowledge of the Saviour; that if we, who

were strangers, thought it our duty to come from a country so

distant, for this purpose, much more was it incumbent on them to

labour for the same end. This was therefore the grand business of

our lives.

"3. That if a brother in discharge of this duty went out forty or

fifty miles, he could not labour for his family; it therefore became

the church to support such, seeing they were hindered from

supporting themselves, by giving themselves wholly to that work in

which it was equally the duty of all to take a share.

"4. We therefore proposed to unite the support of itinerant brethren

with the care of the poor, and to throw them both upon the church

fund, as being both, at least in a heathen land, equally the duty of

a church.

"Every one of these ideas our native brethren entered into with the

greatest readiness and the most cordial approbation."

Carey's scheme so early as 1810 included not only the capital of the

Great Mogul, Surat far to the west, and Maratha Nagpoor to the

south, but Lahore, where Ranjeet Singh had consolidated the Sikh

power, Kashmeer, and even Afghanistan to which he had sent the

Pushtoo Bible. To set Chamberlain free for this enterprise he sent

his second son William to relieve him as missionary in charge of

Cutwa. "This would secure the gradual perfection of the version of

the Scriptures in the Sikh language, would introduce the Gospel

among the people, and would open a way for introducing it into

Kashmeer, and eventually to the Afghans under whose dominion

Kashmeer at present is." Carey and his two colleagues took

possession for Christ of the principal centres of Hindoo and

Mohammedan influence in India only because they were unoccupied, and

provided translations of the Bible into the principal tongues,

avowedly as a preparation for other missionary agencies. All over

India and the far East he thus pioneered the way of the Lord, as he

had written to Ryland when first he settled in Serampore:--"It is

very probable we may be only as pioneers to prepare the way for most

successful missionaries, who perhaps may not be at liberty to attend

to those preparatory labours in which we have been occupied--the

translation and printing of the Scriptures," etc. His heart was

enlarged like his Master's on earth, and hence his humbleness of

mind. When the Church Missionary Society, for instance, occupied

Agra as their first station in India, he sent the Baptist missionary

thence to Allahabad. To Benares "Brother William Smith, called in

Orissa under Brother John Peters," the Armenian, was sent owing to

his acquaintance with the Hindi language; he was the means of

bringing to the door of the Kingdom that rich Brahman Raja Jay

Narain Ghosal, whom he encouraged to found in 1817 the Church

Mission College there which bears the name of this "almost

Christian" Hindoo, who was "exceedingly desirous of diffusing light

among his own countrymen."

The most striking illustrations of this form of Carey's

self-sacrifice are, however, to be found outside of India as it then

was, in the career of his other two sons in Burma and the Spice

Islands. The East India Company's panic on the Vellore mutiny led

Carey to plan a mission to Burma, just as he had been guided to

settle in Danish Serampore ten years before. The Government of

India had doubled his salary as Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit

Professor, and thus had unconsciously supplied the means. Since

1795 the port of Rangoon had been opened to the British, although

Colonel Symes had been insulted eight years after, during his second

embassy to Ava. Rangoon, wrote the accurate Carey to Fuller in

November 1806, is about ten days' sail from Calcutta. "The Burman

empire is about eight hundred miles long, lying contiguous to Bengal

on the east; but is inaccessible by land, on account of the

mountains covered with thick forests which run between the two

countries. The east side of this empire borders upon China, Cochin

China, and Tongking, and may afford us the opportunity ultimately of

introducing the Gospel into those countries. They are quite within

our reach, and the Bible in Chinese will be understood by them

equally as well as by the Chinese themselves. About twenty chapters

of Matthew are translated into that language, and three of our

family have made considerable progress in it."

This was the beginning of Reformed missions to Eastern Asia. A year

was to pass before Dr. Robert Morrison landed at Macao. From those

politically aggressive and therefore opposed Jesuit missions, which

alone had worked in Anam up to this time, a persecuted bishop was

about to find an asylum at Serampore, and to use its press and its

purse for the publication of his Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum.

The French have long sought to seize an empire there. That, at its

best, must prove far inferior to the marvellous province and

Christian Church of Burma, of which Carey laid the foundation.

Judson, and the Governors Durand, Phayre, Aitchison, and Bernard,

Henry Lawrence's nephew, built well upon it.

On 24th January 1807 Mardon and Chater went forth, after Carey had

charged them from the words, "And thence sailed to Antioch from

whence they had been recommended to the grace of God, which they

fulfilled." Carey's eldest son Felix soon took the place of Mardon.

The instructions, which bear the impress of the sacred scholar's

pen, form a model still for all missionaries. These two extracts

give counsels never more needed than now:--

"4. With respect to the Burman language, let this occupy your most

precious time and your most anxious solicitude. Do not be content

with acquiring this language superficially, but make it your own,

root and branch. To become fluent in it, you must attentivly

listen, with prying curiosity, into the forms of speech, the

construction and accent of the natives. Here all the imitative

powers are wanted; yet these powers and this attention, without

continued effort to use all you acquire, and as fast as you acquire

it, will be comparatively of little use.

"5. As soon as you shall feel your ground well in this language you

may compose a grammar, and also send us some Scripture tract, for

printing; small and plain; simple Christian instruction, and Gospel

invitation, without any thing that can irritate the most

superstitious mind.

"6. We would recommend you to begin the translation of the Gospel of

Mark as soon as possible, as one of the best and most certain ways

of acquiring the language. This translation will of course be

revised again and again. In these revisions you will be very

careful respecting the idiom and construction, that they be really

Burman, and not English. Let your instructor be well acquainted

with the language, and try every word of importance, in every way

you can, before it be admitted...

"In prosecuting this work, there are two things to which especially

we would call your very close attention, viz. the strictest and most

rigid economy, and the cultivation of brotherly love.

"Remember, that the money which you will expend is neither ours nor

yours, for it has been consecrated to God; and every unnecessary

expenditure will be robbing God, and appropriating to unnecessary

secular uses what is sacred, and consecrated to Christ and his

cause. In building, especially, remember that you are poor men, and

have chosen a life of poverty and self-denial, with Christ and his

missionary servants. If another person is profuse in expenditure,

the consequence is small, because his property would perhaps fall

into hands where it might be devoted to the purposes of iniquity;

but missionary funds are in their very circumstances the most sacred

and important of any thing of this nature on earth. We say not

this, Brethren, because we suspect you, or any of our partners in

labour; but we perceive that when you have done all, the Rangoon

mission will lie heavy upon the Missionary Funds, and the field of

exertion is very wide."

Felix Carey was a medical missionary of great skill, a printer of

the Oriental languages trained by Ward, and a scholar, especially in

Sanskrit and Pali, Bengali and Burman, not unworthy of his father.

He early commended himself to the goodwill of the Rangoon Viceroy,

and was of great use to Captain Canning in the successful mission

from the Governor-General in 1809. At his intercession the Viceroy

gave him the life of a malefactor who had hung for six hours on the

cross. Reporting the incident to Ryland, Dr. Carey wrote that

"crucifixion is not performed on separate crosses, elevated to a

considerable height, after the manner of the Romans; but several

posts are erected which are connected by a cross piece near the top,

to which the hands are nailed, and by another near the bottom, to

which the feet are nailed in a horizontal direction." He prepared a

folio dictionary of Burmese and Pali, translated several of the

Buddhist Sootras into English, and several books of Holy Scripture

into the vernacular. His medical and linguistic skill so commended

him to the king that he was loaded with honours and sent as Burmese

ambassador to the Governor-General in 1814, when he withdrew from

the Christian mission. On his way back up the Irawadi he alone was

saved from the wreck of his boat, in which his second wife and

children and the MS. of his dictionary went down. Of this his

eldest son, who "procured His Majesty's sanction for printing the

Scriptures in the Burman and adjacent languages, which step he

highly approved," and at the same time "the orders of my rank, which

consist of a red umbrella with an ivory top, gold betel box, gold

lefeek cup, and a sword of state," the father wrote lamenting to

Ryland:--"Felix is shrivelled from a missionary into an ambassador."

To his third son the sorrowing father said:--"The honours he has

received from the Burmese Government have not been beneficial to his

soul. Felix is certainly not so much esteemed since his visit as he

was before it. It is a very distressing thing to be forced to

apologise for those you love." Mr. Chater had removed to Ceylon to

begin a mission in Colombo.

In July 1813, when Felix Carey was in Ava, two young Americans,

Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, tempest-tossed and fleeing before

the persecution of the East India Company, found shelter in the

Mission House at Rangoon. Judson was one of a band of divinity

students of the Congregational Church of New England, whose zeal had

almost compelled the institution of the American Board of Foreign

Missions. He, his wife, and colleague Rice had become Baptists by

conviction on their way to Serampore, to the brotherhood of which

they had been commended. Carey and his colleagues made it "a point

to guard against obtruding on missionary brethren of different

sentiments any conversation relative to baptism;" but Judson himself

sent a note to Carey requesting baptism by immersion. The result

was the foundation at Boston of the American Baptist Missionary

Society, which was to win such triumphs in Burma and among the

Karens. For a time, however, Judson was a missionary from

Serampore, and supported by the brotherhood. As such he wrote

thus:--

"RANGOON, Sept. 1, 1814.--Brother Ward wishes to have an idea of the

probable expense of each station; on which I take occasion to say

that it would be more gratifying to me, as presenting a less

temptation, and as less dangerous to my habits of economy and my

spiritual welfare, to have a limited monthly allowance. I fear

that, if I am allowed as much as I want, my wants will enlarge with

their gratification, and finally embrace many things, which at first

I should have thought incompatible with economical management, as

well as with that character among the heathen which it becomes the

professed followers of Him who for our sakes became poor, even to

sustain. It is better for a missionary, especially a young man, to

have rather too little than rather too much. Your case, on coming

out from England, was quite different from mine. You had all that

there was, and were obliged to make the most of it.

"If these things meet the ideas of the brethren, I will be obliged

to them to say, what sum, in Sicca Rupees, payable in Bengal, they

think sufficient for a small family in Rangoon--sufficient to meet

all common expenses, and indeed all that will be incurred at

present, except that of passages by sea. You have all the accounts

before you, especially of things purchased in Bengal, which I have

not; and from having seen the mission pass through various changes,

will be more competent to make an estimate of expense than I am.

And while you are making this estimate for one family, say also

what will be sufficient for two small families, so that if Brother

Rice, or any other should soon join me, it may not be necessary to

bring the subject again under consideration. This sum I will

receive under the same regulations as other stations are subject to,

and which I heartily approve. And if, on experiment, it be found

much too large, I shall be as glad to diminish it, as to have you

increase it, if it be found much too small.

"Sept. 7.--Since writing the above, we have received the distressing

intelligence, that a few days after Mr. Carey left us, and soon

after he had reached the brig (which had previously gone into the

great river) on the 31st of August, about noon, she was overtaken by

a squall of wind, upset, and instantly sunk. Those who could swim,

escaped with their lives merely, and those who could not, perished.

Among the saved, were Mr. Carey and most of the Bengalees. Mrs.

Carey, the two children, her women and girls, and several men--in

all, ten persons, perished. Every article of property had been

transferred from the boats to the vessel, and she had just left the

place, where she had been long waiting the arrival of Mr. Carey, and

had been under sail about three hours. Several boats were not far

distant; the gold-boat was within sight, but so instantaneous was

the disaster, that not a single thing was saved. Some attempts were

made by the lascars to save Mrs. Carey and William, but they were

unsuccessful. Mr. Carey staid on the shore through the following

night; a neighbouring governor sent him clothes and money; and the

next morning he took the gold-boat, and proceeded up the river. A

large boat, on which were several servants, men and women, beside

those that were in the vessel, followed the gold-boat. The jolly

boat has returned here, bringing the surviving lascars.

"The dreadful situation to which our poor brother was thus reduced

in a moment, from the height of prosperity, fills our minds

continually with the greatest distress. We are utterly unable to

afford him the least relief, and can only pray that this awful

dispensation may prove a paternal chastisement from his Heavenly

Father, and be sanctified to his soul."

While Judson wrote to Serampore, which he once again visited,

leaving the dust of a child in the mission burial-ground, "I am glad

to hear you say that you will not abandon this mission," Carey

pressed on to the "regions beyond." Judson lived till 1850 to found

a church and to prepare a Burmese dictionary, grammar, and

translation of the Bible so perfect that revision has hardly been

necessary up to the present day. He and Hough, a printer who joined

him, formed themselves into a brotherhood on the same self-denying

principles as that of Serampore, whom they besought to send them

frequent communications to counsel, strengthen, and encourage them.

On 28th September 1814 Judson again wrote to Carey from Rangoon:--

"DEAR BROTHER CAREY--If copies of Colebrooke's Sungskrita

Dictionary, and your Sungskrita Grammar are not too scarce, I

earnestly request a copy of each. I find it will be absolutely

necessary for me to pick up a little of the Pali, chiefly on account

of many theological terms, which have been incorporated from that

language into the Burman. I have found a dictionary, which I

suppose is the same as that which Mr. Colebrooke translated, adapted

to the Burman system. This I intend to read. I want also Leyden's

Vocabulary, and a copy or two of your son's grammar, when it is

completed. I gave your son on his going up to Ava, my copy of

Campbell's Gospels, together with several other books, all of which

are now lost. The former I chiefly regret, and know not whence I

can procure another copy.

"There is a vessel now lying here, which is destined to take round

an Ambassador from this Government to Bengal. He expects to go in

about a month, as he told me. He is now waiting for final

instructions from Ava. If Felix be really to be sent to Bengal

again, I think it most probable that he will be ordered to accompany

this ambassador.

"Mrs. J. was on the point of taking passage with Captain Hitchins,

to obtain some medical advice in Bengal; but she has been a little

better for a few days, and has given up the plan for the present.

This is a delightful climate. We have now seen all the seasons,

and can therefore judge. The hot weather in March and April is the

chief exception. Nature has done everything for this country; and

the Government is very indulgent to all foreigners. When we see how

we are distinguished above all around, even in point of worldly

comforts, we feel that we want gratitude. O that we may be faithful

in the improvement of every mercy, and patient under every trial

which God may have in store for us. We know not how the Gospel can

ever be introduced here: everything, in this respect, appears as

dark as midnight."

By 1816 Judson had prepared the Gospel of Matthew in Burmese,

following up short tracts "accommodated to the optics of a Burman."

Carey's third son Jabez was clerk to a Calcutta attorney at the

time, in 1812, when Dr. Ryland preached in the Dutch Church, Austin

Friars, the anniversary sermon on the occasion of the removal of the

headquarters of the Society to London. Pausing in the midst of his

discourse, after a reference to Carey, the preacher called on the

vast congregation silently to pray for the conversion of Jabez

Carey. The answer came next year in a letter from his father:--"My

son Jabez, who has been articled to an attorney, and has the fairest

prospects as to this world, is become decidedly religious, and

prefers the work of the Lord to every other." Lord Minto's

expeditions of 1810 and 1811 had captured the islands swept by the

French privateers from Madagascar to Java, and there was soon an end

of the active hostility of the authorities to Christianity. Sir

Stamford Raffles governed Java in the spirit of a Christian

statesman. The new Governor-General, Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis

of Hastings, proved to be the most enlightened and powerful friend

the mission had had. In these circumstances, after the charter of

1813 had removed the legislative excuse for intolerance, Dr. Carey

was asked by the Lieutenant-Governor to send missionaries and Malay

Bibles to the fifty thousand natives of Amboyna. The

Governor-General repeated the request officially. Jabez Carey was

baptised, married, and despatched at the cost of the state before he

could be ordained. Amboyna, it will be perceived, was not in India,

but far enough away to give the still timid Company little

apprehension as to the influence of the missionaries there. The

father's heart was very full when he sent forth the son:--

"24th January 1814.--You are now engaging in a most important

undertaking, in which not only you will have our prayers for your

success, but those of all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, and who

know of your engagement. I know that a few hints for your future

conduct from a parent who loves you very tenderly will be

acceptable, and I shall therefore now give you them, assured that

they will not be given in vain.

"1st. Pay the utmost attention at all times to the state of your own

mind both towards God and man: cultivate an intimate acquaintance

with your own heart; labour to obtain a deep sense of your depravity

and to trust always in Christ; be pure in heart, and meditate much

upon the pure and holy character of God; live a life of prayer and

devotedness to God; cherish every amiable and right disposition

towards men; be mild, gentle, and unassuming, yet firm and manly.

As soon as you perceive anything wrong in your spirit or behaviour

set about correcting it, and never suppose yourself so perfect as to

need no correction.

"2nd. You are now a married man, be not satisfied with conducting

yourself towards your wife with propriety, but let love to her be

the spring of your conduct towards her. Esteem her highly, and so

act that she may be induced thereby to esteem you highly. The first

impressions of love arising from form and beauty will soon wear off,

but the esteem arising from excellency of disposition and substance

of character will endure and increase. Her honour is now yours, and

she cannot be insulted without your being degraded. I hope as soon

as you get on board, and are settled in your cabin, you will begin

and end each day by uniting together to pray and praise God. Let

religion always have a place in your house. If the Lord bless you

with children, bring them up in the fear of God, and be always an

example to others of the power of godliness. This advice I give

also to Eliza, and if it is followed you will be happy.

"3rd. Behave affably and genteelly to all, but not cringingly

towards any. Feel that you are a man, and always act with that

dignified sincerity and truth which will command the esteem of all.

Seek not the society of worldly men, but when called to be with

them act and converse with propriety and dignity. To do this labour

to gain a good acquaintance with history, geography, men, and

things. A gentleman is the next best character after a Christian,

and the latter includes the former. Money never makes a gentleman,

neither does a fine appearance, but an enlarged understanding joined

to engaging manners.

"4th. On your arrival at Amboyna your first business must be to wait

on Mr. Martin. You should first send a note to inform him of your

arrival, and to inquire when it will suit him to receive you. Ask

his advice upon every occasion of importance, and communicate freely

to him all the steps you take.

"5th. As soon as you are settled begin your work. Get a Malay who

can speak a little English, and with him make a tour of the island,

and visit every school. Encourage all you see worthy of

encouragement, and correct with mildness, yet with firmness. Keep a

journal of the transactions of the schools, and enter each one under

a distinct head therein. Take account of the number of scholars,

the names of the schoolmasters, compare their progress at stated

periods, and, in short, consider this as the work which the Lord has

given you to do.

"6th. Do not, however, consider yourself as a mere superintendent of

schools; consider yourself as the spiritual instructor of the

people, and devote yourself to their good. God has committed the

spiritual interests of this island--20,000 men or more--to you; a

vast charge, but He can enable you to be faithful to it. Revise the

catechism, tracts, and school-books used among them, and labour to

introduce among them sound doctrine and genuine piety. Pray with

them as soon as you can, and labour after a gift to preach to them.

I expect you will have much to do with them respecting baptism.

They all think infant sprinkling right, and will apply to you to

baptise their children; you must say little till you know something

of the language, and then prove to them from Scripture what is the

right mode of baptism and who are the proper persons to be baptised.

Form them into Gospel churches when you meet with a few who truly

fear God; and as soon as you see any fit to preach to others, call

them to the ministry and settle them with the churches. You must

baptise and administer the Lord's Supper according to your own

discretion when there is a proper occasion for it. Avoid indolence

and love of ease, and never attempt to act the part of the great and

gay in this world.

"7th. Labour incessantly to become a perfect master of the Malay

language. In order to this, associate with the natives, walk out

with them, ask the name of everything you see, and note it down;

visit their houses, especially when any of them are sick. Every

night arrange the words you get in alphabetical order. Try to talk

as soon as you get a few words, and be as much as possible one of

them. A course of kind and attentive conduct will gain their esteem

and confidence and give you an opportunity of doing much good.

"8th. You will soon learn from Mr. Martin the situation and

disposition of the Alfoors or aboriginal inhabitants, and will see

what can be done for them. Do not unnecessarily expose your life,

but incessantly contrive some way of giving them the word of life.

"9th. I come now to things of inferior importance, but which I hope

you will not neglect. I wish you to learn correctly the number,

size, and geography of the islands; the number and description of

inhabitants; their customs and manners, and everything of note

relative to them; and regularly communicate these things to me.

"Your great work, my dear Jabez, is that of a Christian minister.

You would have been solemnly set apart thereto if you could have

stayed long enough to have permitted it. The success of your

labours does not depend upon an outward ceremony, nor does your

right to preach the Gospel or administer the ordinances of the

Gospel depend on any such thing, but only on the Divine call

expressed in the Word of God. The Church has, however, in their

intentions and wishes borne a testimony to the grace given to you,

and will not cease to pray for you that you may be successful. May

you be kept from all temptations, supported under every trial, made

victorious in every conflict; and may our hearts be mutually

gladdened with accounts from each other of the triumphs of Divine

grace. God has conferred a great favour upon you in committing to

you this ministry. Take heed to it therefore in the Lord that thou

fulfil it. We shall often meet at the throne of grace. Write me by

every opportunity, and tell Eliza to write to your mother.

"Now, my dear Jabez, I commit you both to God, and to the word of

His grace, which is able to make you perfect in the knowledge of His

will. Let that word be near your heart. I give you both up to God,

and should I never more see you on earth I trust we shall meet with

joy before His throne of glory at last."

Under both the English and the Dutch for a time, to whom the island

was restored, Jabez Carey proved to be a successful missionary,

while he supported the mission by his official income as

superintendent of schools and second member of the College of

Justice. The island contained 18,000 native Christians of the Dutch

compulsory type, such as we found in Ceylon on taking it over. Thus

by the labours of himself, his sons, his colleagues, and his

children in the faith, William Carey saw the Gospel, the press, and

the influence of a divine philanthropy extending among Mohammedans,

Buddhists, and Hindoos, from the shores of the Pacific Ocean west to

the Arabian Sea.

CHAPTER VIII

CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS

1807-1812

The type of a Christian gentleman--Carey and his first wife--His

second marriage--The Lady Rumohr--His picture of their married

life--His nearly fatal illness when forty-eight years old--His

meditations and dreams--Aldeen House--Henry Martyn's pagoda--Carey,

Marshman, and the Anglican chaplains in the pagoda--Corrie's account

of the Serampore Brotherhood--Claudius Buchanan and his Anglican

establishment--Improvement in Anglo-Indian Society--Carey's literary

and scientific friends--Desire in the West for a likeness of

Carey--Home's portrait of him--Correspondence with his son William

on missionary consecration, Buonaparte, botany, the missionary a

soldier, Felix and Burma, hunting, the temporal power of the Pope,

the duty of reconciliation--Carey's descendants.

"A Gentleman is the next best character after a Christian, and the

latter includes the former," were the father's words to the son whom

he was sending forth as a Christian missionary and state

superintendent of schools. Carey wrote from his own experience, and

he unwittingly painted his own character. The peasant bearing of

his early youth showed itself throughout his life in a certain

shyness, which gave a charm to his converse with old and young.

Occasionally, as in a letter which he wrote to his friend Pearce of

Birmingham, at a time when he did not know whether his distant

correspondent was alive or dead, he burst forth into an unrestrained

enthusiasm of affection and service. But his was rather the even

tenor of domestic devotion and friendly duty, unbroken by passion or

coldness, and ever lighted up by a steady geniality. The colleagues

who were associated with him for the third of a century worshipped

him in the old English sense of the word. The younger committee-men

and missionaries who came to the front on the death of Fuller,

Sutcliff, and Ryland, in all their mistaken conflicts with these

colleagues, always tried to separate Carey from those they

denounced, till even his saintly spirit burst forth into wrath at

the double wrong thus done to his coadjutors. His intercourse with

the chaplains and bishops of the Church of England, and with the

missionaries of other Churches and societies, was as loving in its

degree as his relations to his own people. With men of the world,

from the successive Governor-Generals, from Wellesley, Hastings, and

Bentinck, down to the scholars, merchants, and planters with whom he

became associated for the public good, William Carey was ever the

saint and the gentleman whom it was a privilege to know.

In nothing perhaps was Carey's true Christian gentlemanliness so

seen as in his relations with his first wife, above whom grace and

culture had immeasurably raised him, while she never learned to

share his aspirations or to understand his ideals. Not only did she

remain to the last a peasant woman, with a reproachful tongue, but

the early hardships of Calcutta and the fever and dysentery of

Mudnabati clouded the last twelve years of her life with madness.

Never did reproach or complaint escape his lips regarding either

her or Thomas, whose eccentric impulses and oft-darkened spirit were

due to mania also. Of both he was the tender nurse and guardian

when, many a time, the ever-busy scholar would fain have lingered at

his desk or sought the scanty sleep which his jealous devotion to

his Master's business allowed him. The brotherhood arrangement, the

common family, Ward's influence over the boys, and Hannah Marshman's

housekeeping relieved him of much that his wife's illness had thrown

upon him at Mudnabati, so that a colleague describes him, when he

was forty-three years of age, as still looking young in spite of the

few hairs on his head, after eleven years in Lower Bengal of work

such as never Englishman had before him. But almost from the first

day of his early married life he had never known the delight of

daily converse with a wife able to enter into his scholarly

pursuits, and ever to stimulate him in his heavenly quest. When the

eldest boy, Felix, had left for Burma in 1807 the faithful sorrowing

husband wrote to him:--"Your poor mother grew worse and worse from

the time you left us, and died on the 7th December about seven

o'clock in the evening. During her illness she was almost always

asleep, and I suppose during the fourteen days that she lay in a

severe fever she was not more than twenty-four hours awake. She was

buried the next day in the missionary burying-ground."

About the same time that Carey himself settled in Serampore there

arrived the Lady Rumohr. She built a house on the Hoogli bank

immediately below that of the missionaries, whose society she

sought, and by whom she was baptised. On the 9th May 1808 she

became Carey's wife; and in May 1821 she too was removed by death in

her sixty-first year, after thirteen years of unbroken happiness.

Charlotte Emilia, born in the same year as Carey in the then Danish

duchy of Schleswick, was the only child of the Chevalier de Rumohr,

who married the Countess of Alfeldt, only representative of a

historic family. Her wakefulness when a sickly girl of fifteen

saved the whole household from destruction by fire, but she herself

became so disabled that she could never walk up or down stairs. She

failed to find complete recovery in the south of Europe, and her

father's friend, Mr. Anker, a director of the Danish East India

Company, gave her letters to his brother, then Governor of

Tranquebar, in the hope that the climate of India might cause her

relief. The Danish ship brought her first to Serampore, where

Colonel Bie introduced her to the brotherhood, and there she

resolved to remain. She knew the principal languages of Europe; a

copy of the Pens es of Pascal, given to her by Mr. Anker before she?

sailed, for the first time quickened her conscience. She speedily

learned English, that she might join the missionaries in public

worship. The barren orthodoxy of the Lutheranism in which she had

been brought up had made her a sceptic. This soon gave way to the

evangelical teaching of the same apostle who had brought Luther

himself to Christ. She became a keen student of the Scriptures,

then an ardent follower of Jesus Christ.

On her marriage to Dr. Carey, in May 1808, she made over her house

to the mission, and when, long after, it became famous as the office

of the weekly Friend of India, the rent was sacredly devoted to the

assistance of native preachers. She learned Bengali that she might

be as a mother to the native Christian families. She was her

husband's counsellor in all that related to the extension of the

varied enterprise of the brethren. Especially did she make the

education of Hindoo girls her own charge, both at Serampore and

Cutwa. Her leisure she gave to the reading of French Protestant

writers, such as Saurin and Du Moulin. She admired, wrote Carey,

"Massillon's language, his deep knowledge of the human heart, and

his intrepidity in reproving sin; but felt the greatest

dissatisfaction with his total neglect of his Saviour, except when

He is introduced to give efficacy to works of human merit. These

authors she read in their native language, that being more familiar

to her than English. She in general enjoyed much of the

consolations of religion. Though so much afflicted, a pleasing

cheerfulness generally pervaded her conversation. She indeed

possessed great activity of mind. She was constantly out with the

dawn of the morning when the weather permitted, in her little

carriage drawn by one bearer; and again in the evening, as soon as

the sun was sufficiently low. She thus spent daily nearly three

hours in the open air. It was probably this vigorous and regular

course which, as the means, carried her beyond the age of threescore

years (twenty-one of them spent in India), notwithstanding the

weakness of her constitution."

It is a pretty picture, the delicate invalid lady, drawn along the

mall morning and evening, to enjoy the river breeze, on her way to

and from the schools and homes of the natives. But her highest

service was, after all, to her husband, who was doing a work for

India and for humanity, equalled by few, if any. When, on one

occasion, they were separated for a time while she sought for health

at Monghyr, she wrote to him the tenderest yet most courtly

love-letters.

"MY DEAREST LOVE,--I felt very much in parting with thee, and feel

much in being so far from thee...I am sure thou wilt be happy and

thankful on account of my voice, which is daily getting better, and

thy pleasure greatly adds to mine own.

"I hope you will not think I am writing too often; I rather trust

you will be glad to hear of me...Though my journey is very pleasant,

and the good state of my health, the freshness of the air, and the

variety of objects enliven my spirits, yet I cannot help longing for

you. Pray, my love, take care of your health that I may have the

joy to find you well.

"I thank thee most affectionately, my dearest love, for thy kind

letter. Though the journey is very useful to me, I cannot help

feeling much to be so distant from you, but I am much with you in my

thoughts...The Lord be blessed for the kind protection He has given

to His cause in a time of need. May He still protect and guide and

bless His dear cause, and give us all hearts growing in love and

zeal...I felt very much affected in parting with thee. I see

plainly it would not do to go far from you; my heart cleaves to you.

I need not say (for I hope you know my heart is not insensible) how

much I feel your kindness in not minding any expense for the

recovery of my health. You will rejoice to hear me talk in my old

way, and not in that whispering manner.

"I find so much pleasure in writing to you, my love, that I cannot

help doing it. I was nearly disconcerted by Mrs.--laughing at my

writing so often; but then, I thought, I feel so much pleasure in

receiving your letters that I may hope you do the same. I thank

thee, my love, for thy kind letter. I need not say that the serious

part of it was welcome to me, and the more as I am deprived of all

religious intercourse...I shall greatly rejoice, my love, in seeing

thee again; but take care of your health that I may find you well.

I need not say how much you are in my thoughts day and night."

His narrative of their intercourse, written after her death, lets in

a flood of light on his home life:--

"During the thirteen years of her union with Dr. Carey, they had

enjoyed the most entire oneness of mind, never having a single

circumstance which either of them wished to conceal from the other.

Her solicitude for her husband's health and comfort was unceasing.

They prayed and conversed together on those things which form the

life of personal religion, without the least reserve; and enjoyed a

degree of conjugal happiness while thus continued to each other,

which can only arise from a union of mind grounded on real religion.

On the whole, her lot in India was altogether a scene of mercy.

Here she was found of the Saviour, gradually ripened for glory, and

after having her life prolonged beyond the expectation of herself

and all who knew her, she was released from this mortal state almost

without the consciousness of pain, and, as we most assuredly

believe, had 'an abundant entrance ministered unto her into the

kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.'"

When, on 24th June 1809, Carey announced at the dinner table that he

had that morning finished the Bengali translation of the whole

Bible, and he was asked how much more he thought of doing, he

answered: "The work I have allotted to myself, in translating, will

take me about twenty years." But he had kept the bow too long and

too tightly bent, and it threatened to snap. That evening he was

seized with bilious fever, and on the eighteenth day thereafter his

life was despaired of. "The goodness of God is eminently conspicuous

in raising up our beloved brother Carey," wrote Marshman. "God has

raised him up again and restored him to his labours; may he live to

accomplish all that is in his heart," wrote Rowe. He was at once at

his desk again, in college and in his study. "I am this day

forty-eight years old," he wrote to Ryland on the 17th August, and

sent him the following letters, every line of which reveals the

inner soul of the writer:--

"CALCUTTA, 16th August 1809.--I did not expect, about a month ago,

ever to write to you again. I was then ill of a severe fever, and

for a week together scarcely any hopes were entertained of my life.

One or two days I was supposed to be dying, but the Lord has

graciously restored me; may it be that I may live more than ever to

His glory. Whilst I was ill I had scarcely any such thing as

thought belonging to me, but, excepting seasons of delirium, seemed

to be nearly stupid; perhaps some of this arose from the weak state

to which I was reduced, which was so great that Dr. Hare, one of the

most eminent physicians in Calcutta, who was consulted about it,

apprehended more danger from that than from the fever. I, however,

had scarcely a thought of death or eternity, or of life, or anything

belonging thereto. In my delirium, greatest part of which I

perfectly remember, I was busily employed in carrying a commission

from God to all the princes and governments in the world, requiring

them instantly to abolish every political establishment of religion,

and to sell the parish and other churches to the first body of

Christians that would purchase them. Also to declare war infamous,

to esteem all military officers as men who had sold themselves to

destroy the human race, to extend this to all those dead men called

heroes, defenders of their country, meritorious officers, etc.13 I

was attended by angels in all my excursions, and was universally

successful. A few princes in Germany were refractory, but my

attendants struck them dead instantly. I pronounced the doom of

Rome to the Pope, and soon afterwards all the territory about Rome,

the March of Ancona, the great city and all its riches sank into

that vast bed of burning lava which heats Nero's bath. These two

considerations were the delirious wanderings of the mind, but I hope

to feel their force, to pray and strive for their accomplishment to

the end of my life. But it is now time to attend to something not

merely ideal.

"The state of the world occupied my thoughts more and more; I mean

as it relates to the spread of the Gospel. The harvest truly is

great, and labourers bear scarcely any proportion thereto. I was

forcibly struck this morning with reading our Lord's reply to His

disciples, John iv. When He had told them that He had meat to eat

the world knew not of, and that His meat was to do the will of His

Father and to finish His work, He said, 'Say not ye there are three

months and then cometh harvest?' He by this plainly intended to

call their attention to the conduct of men when harvest was

approaching, for that being the season upon which all the hopes of

men hang for temporal supplies, they provide men and measures in

time for securing it. Afterwards directing their attention to that

which so occupied His own as to be His meat and drink, He said,

'Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields (of souls to be gathered

in), for they are white already to harvest.' After so many

centuries have elapsed and so many fields full of this harvest have

been lost for want of labourers to gather it in, shall we not at

last reflect seriously on our duty? Hindostan requires ten thousand

ministers of the Gospel, at the lowest calculation, China as many,

and you may easily calculate for the rest of the world. I trust

that many will eventually be raised up here, but be that as it may

the demands for missionaries are pressing to a degree seldom

realised. England has done much, but not the hundredth part of what

she is bound to do. In so great a want of ministers ought not every

church to turn its attention chiefly to the raising up and maturing

of spiritual gifts with the express design of sending them abroad?

Should not this be a specific matter of prayer, and is there not

reason to labour hard to infuse this spirit into the churches?

"A mission into Siam would be comparatively easy of introduction and

support on account of its vicinity to Prince of Wales Island, from

which vessels can often go in a few hours. A mission to Pegu and

another to Arakan would not be difficult of introduction, they being

both within the Burman dominions, Missions to Assam and Nepal should

be speedily tried. Brother Robinson is going to Bhootan. I do not

know anything about the facility with which missions could be

introduced into Cochin China, Cambodia, and Laos, but were the trial

made I believe difficulties would remove. It is also very desirable

that the Burman mission should be strengthened. There is no full

liberty of conscience, and several stations might be occupied; even

the borders of China might be visited from that country if an easier

entrance into the heart of the country could not be found. I have

not mentioned Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, the Philippines, or

Japan, but all these countries must be supplied with missionaries.

This is a very imperfect sketch of the wants of Asia only, without

including the Mahometan countries; but Africa and South America call

as loudly for help, and the greatest part of Europe must also be

holpen by the Protestant churches, being nearly as destitute of real

godliness as any heathen country on the earth. What a pressing

call, then, is here for labourers in the spiritual harvest, and what

need that the attention of all the churches in England and America

should be drawn to this very object!"

Two years after the establishment of the mission at Serampore, David

Brown, the senior chaplain and provost of Fort William College, took

possession of Aldeen House, which he occupied till the year of his

death in 1812. The house is the first in the settlement reached by

boat from Calcutta. Aldeen is five minutes' walk south of the

Serampore Mission House, and a century ago there was only a park

between them. The garden slopes down to the noble river, and

commands the beautiful country seat of Barrackpore, which Lord

Wellesley had just built. The house itself is embosomed in trees,

the mango, the teak, and the graceful bamboo. Just below it, but

outside of Serampore, are the deserted temple of Bullubpoor and the

Ghat of the same name, a fine flight of steps up which thousands of

pilgrims flock every June to the adjoining shrine and monstrous car

of Jagganath. David Brown had not been long in Aldeen when he

secured the deserted temple and converted it into a Christian

oratory, ever since known as Henry Martyn's Pagoda. For ten years

Aldeen and the pagoda became the meeting-place of Carey and his

Nonconformist friends, with Claudius Buchanan, Martyn, Bishop

Corrie, Thomason, and the little band of evangelical Anglicans who,

under the protection of Lords Wellesley and Hastings, sweetened

Anglo-Indian society, and made the names of "missionary" and of

"chaplain" synonymous. Here too there gathered, as also to the

Mission House higher up, many a civilian and officer who sought the

charms of that Christian family life which they had left behind. A

young lieutenant commemorated these years when Brown was removed, in

a pleasing elegy, which Charles Simeon published in the Memorials of

his friend. Many a traveller from the far West still visits the

spot, and recalls the memories of William Carey and Henry Martyn, of

Marshman and Buchanan, of Ward and Corrie, which linger around the

fair scene. When first we saw it the now mutilated ruin was

perfect, and under the wide-spreading banian tree behind a Brahman

was reciting, for a day and a night, the verses of the Mahabharata

epic to thousands of listening Hindoos.

"Long, Hoogli, has thy sullen stream

Been doomed the cheerless shores to lave;

Long has the Suttee's baneful gleam

Pale glimmered o'er thy midnight wave.

"Yet gladdened seemed to flow thy tide

Where opens on the view--Aldeen;

For there to grace thy palmy side

Loved England's purest joys were seen.

"Yon dome, 'neath which in former days

Grim idols marked the pagan shrine,

Has swelled the notes of pious praise,

Attuned to themes of love divine."

We find this allusion to the place in Carey's correspondence with

Dr. Ryland:--"20th January 1807.--It would have done your heart good

to have joined us at our meetings at the pagoda. From that place we

have successively recommended Dr. Taylor to the work of the Lord at

Bombay, Mr. Martyn to his at Dinapoor, Mr. Corrie to his at Chunar,

Mr. Parsons to his at Burhampore, Mr. Des Granges to his at

Vizagapatam, and our two brethren to theirs at Rangoon, and from

thence we soon expect to commend Mr. Thomason to his at Madras. In

these meetings the utmost harmony prevails and a union of hearts

unknown between persons of different denominations in England." Dr.

Taylor and Mr. Des Granges were early missionaries of the London

Society; the Rangoon brethren were Baptists; the others were Church

of England chaplains. Sacramentarianism and sacerdotalism had not

then begun to afflict the Church of India. There were giants in

those days, in Bengal, worthy of Carey and of the one work in which

all were the servants of one Master.

Let us look a little more closely at Henry Martyn's Pagoda. It is

now a picturesque ruin, which the peepul tree that is entwined among

its fine brick masonry, and the crumbling river-bank, may soon cause

to disappear for ever. The exquisite tracery of the moulded bricks

may be seen, but not the few figures that are left of the popular

Hindoo idols just where the two still perfect arches begin to

spring. The side to the river has already fallen down, and with it

the open platform overhanging the bank on which the missionary sat

in the cool of the morning and evening, and where he knelt to pray

for the people. We have accompanied many a visitor there, from Dr.

Duff to Bishop Cotton, and John Lawrence, and have rarely seen one

unmoved. This pagoda had been abandoned long before by the priests

of Radhabullub, because the river had encroached to a point within

300 feet of it, the limit within which no Brahman is allowed to

receive a gift or take his food. The little black doll of an idol,

which is famous among Hindoos alike for its sanctity and as a work

of art--for had it not been miraculously wafted to this spot like

the Santa Casa to Loretto?--was removed with great pomp to a new

temple after it had paid a visit to Clive's moonshi, the wealthy

Raja Nobokissen in Calcutta, who sought to purchase it outright.

In this cool old pagoda Henry Martyn, on one of his earliest visits

to Aldeen after his arrival as a chaplain in 1806, found an

appropriate residence. Under the vaulted roof of the shrine a place

of prayer and praise was fitted up with an organ, so that, as he

wrote, "the place where once devils were worshipped has now become a

Christian oratory." Here, too, he laid his plans for the

evangelisation of the people. When suffering from one of his moods

of depression as to his own state, he thus writes of this place:--"I

began to pray as on the verge of eternity; and the Lord was pleased

to break my hard heart. I lay in tears, interceding for the

unfortunate natives of this country; thinking within myself that the

most despicable soodra of India was of as much value in the sight of

God as the King of Great Britain." It was from such supplication

that he was once roused by the blaze of a Suttee's funeral pyre, on

which he found that the living widow had been consumed with the dead

before he could interfere. He could hear the hideous drums and

gongs and conch-shells of the temple to which Radhabullub had been

removed. There he often tried to turn his fellow-creatures to the

worship of the one God, from their prostrations "before a black

image placed in a pagoda, with lights burning around it," whilst, he

says, he "shivered as if standing, as it were, in the neighbourhood

of hell." It was in the deserted pagoda that Brown, Corrie, and

Parsons met with him to commend him to God before he set out for his

new duties at Dinapoor. "My soul," he writes of this occasion,

"never yet had such divine enjoyment. I felt a desire to break from

the body, and join the high praises of the saints above. May I go

'in the strength of this many days.' Amen." "I found my heaven

begun on earth. No work so sweet as that of praying and living

wholly to the service of God." And as he passed by the Mission House

on his upward voyage, with true catholicity "Dr. Marshman could not

resist joining the party: and after going a little way, left them

with prayer." Do we wonder that these men have left their mark on

India?

As years went by, the temple, thus consecrated as a Christian

oratory, became degraded in other hands. The brand "pagoda

distillery" for a time came to be known as marking the rum

manufactured there. The visits of so many Christian pilgrims to the

spot, and above all, the desire expressed by Lord Lawrence when

Governor-General to see it, led the Hindoo family who own the pagoda

to leave it at least as a simple ruin.

Corrie, afterwards the first bishop of Madras, describes the

marriage of Des Granges in the oratory, and gives us a glimpse of

life in the Serampore Mission House:--

"1806.--Calcutta strikes me as the most magnificent city in the

world; and I am made most happy by the hope of being instrumental to

the eternal good of many. A great opposition, I find, is raised

against Martyn and the principles he preaches...Went up to Serampore

yesterday, and in the evening was present at the marriage of Mr. Des

Granges. Mr. Brown entered into the concern with much interest.

The pagoda was fixed on, and lighted up for the celebration of the

wedding; at eight o'clock the parties came from the Mission House

[at Serampore], attended by most of the family. Mr. Brown commenced

with the hymn, 'Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly dove!' A divine

influence seemed to attend us, and most delightful were my

sensations. The circumstance of so many being engaged in spreading

the glad tidings of salvation,--the temple of an idol converted to

the purpose of Christian worship, and the Divine presence felt among

us,--filled me with joy unspeakable. After the marriage service of

the Church of England, Mr. Brown gave out 'the Wedding Hymn'; and

after signing certificates of the marriage we adjourned to the

house, where Mr. Brown had provided supper. Two hymns given out by

Mr. Marshman were felt very powerfully. He is a most lively,

sanguine missionary; his conversation made my heart burn within me,

and I find desires of spreading the Gospel growing stronger daily,

and my zeal in the cause more ardent...I went to the Mission House,

and supped at the same table with about fifty native converts. The

triumph of the Cross was most evident in breaking down their

prejudices, and uniting them with those who formerly were an

abomination in their eyes. After supper they sang a Bengali hymn,

many of them with tears of joy; and they concluded with prayer in

Bengali, with evident earnestness and emotion. My own feelings were

too big for utterance. O may the time be hastened when every tongue

shall confess Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father!

"On Friday evening [Oct. 10th], we had a meeting in the pagoda, at

which almost all the missionaries, some of their wives, and Captain

Wickes attended, with a view to commend Martyn to the favour and

protection of God in his work. The Divine presence was with us. I

felt more than it would have been proper to express. Mr. Brown

commenced with a hymn and prayer, Mr. Des Granges succeeded him,

with much devotion and sweetness of expression: Mr. Marshman

followed, and dwelt particularly on the promising appearance of

things; and, with much humility, pleaded God's promises for the

enlargement of Zion; with many petitions for Mr. Brown and his

family. The service was concluded by Mr. Carey, who was earnest in

prayer for Mr. Brown: the petition that 'having laboured for many

years without encouragement or support, in the evening it might be

light,' seemed much to affect his own mind, and greatly impressed us

all. Afterwards we supped together at Mr. Brown's...

"13th Oct.--I came to Serampore to dinner. Had a pleasant sail up

the river: the time passed agreeably in conversation. In the

evening a fire was kindled on the opposite bank; and we soon

perceived that it was a funeral pile, on which the wife was burning

with the dead body of her husband. It was too dark to distinguish

the miserable victim...On going out to walk with Martyn to the

pagoda, the noise so unnatural, and so little calculated to excite

joy, raised in my mind an awful sense of the presence and influence

of evil spirits."

Corrie married the daughter of Mrs. Ellerton, who knew Serampore and

Carey well. It was Mr. Ellerton who, when an indigo-planter at

Malda, opened the first Bengali school, and made the first attempt

at translating the Bible into that vernacular. His young wife,

early made a widow, witnessed accidentally the duel in which Warren

Hastings shot Philip Francis. She was an occasional visitor at

Aldeen, and took part in the pagoda services. Fifty years

afterwards, not long before her death at eighty-seven, Bishop

Wilson, whose guest she was, wrote of her: "She made me take her to

Henry Martyn's pagoda. She remembers the neighbourhood, and

Gharetty Ghat and House in Sir Eyre Coote's time (1783). The

ancient Governor of Chinsurah and his fat Dutch wife are still in

her mind. When she visited him with her first husband (she was then

sixteen) the old Dutchman cried out, 'Oh, if you would find me such

a nice little wife I would give you ten thousand rupees.'"

It was in Martyn's pagoda that Claudius Buchanan first broached his

plan of an ecclesiastical establishment for India, and invited the

discussion of it by Carey and his colleagues. Such a scheme came

naturally from one who was the grandson of a Presbyterian elder of

the Church of Scotland, converted in the Whitefield revival at

Cambuslang. It had been suggested first by Bishop Porteous when he

reviewed the Company's acquisitions in Asia. It was encouraged by

Lord Wellesley, who was scandalised on his arrival in India by the

godlessness of the civil servants and the absence of practically any

provision for the Christian worship and instruction of its officers

and soldiers, who were all their lives without religion, not a tenth

of them ever returning home. Carey thus wrote, at Ryland's request,

of the proposal, which resulted in the arrival in Calcutta of Bishop

Middleton and Dr. Bryce in 1814:--"I have no opinion of Dr.

Buchanan's scheme for a religious establishment here, nor could I

from memory point out what is exceptionable in his memoir. All his

representations must be taken with some grains of allowance." When,

in the Aldeen discussions, Dr. Buchanan told Marshman that the

temple lands would eventually answer for the established churches

and the Brahmans' lands for the chaplains, the stout Nonconformist

replied with emphasis, "You will never obtain them." We may all

accept the conversion of the idol shrine into a place of prayer--as

Gregory I. taught Augustine of Canterbury to transform heathen

temples into Christian churches--as presaging the time when the vast

temple and mosque endowments will be devoted by the people

themselves to their own moral if not spiritual good through

education, both religious and secular.

The change wrought in seventeen years by Carey and such associates

as these on society in Bengal, both rich and poor, became marked by

the year 1810. We find him writing of it thus:--"When I arrived I

knew of no person who cared about the Gospel except Mr. Brown, Mr.

Udny, Mr. Creighton, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Brown an indigo-planter,

besides Brother Thomas and myself. There might be more, and

probably were, though unknown to me. There are now in India

thirty-two ministers of the Gospel. Indeed, the Lord is doing great

things for Calcutta; and though infidelity abounds, yet religion is

the theme of conversation or dispute in almost every house. A few

weeks ago (October 1810), I called upon one of the Judges to take

breakfast with him, and going rather abruptly upstairs, as I had

been accustomed to do, I found the family just going to engage in

morning worship. I was of course asked to engage in prayer, which I

did. I afterwards told him that I had scarcely witnessed anything

since I had been in Calcutta which gave me more pleasure than what I

had seen that morning. The change in this family was an effect of

Mr. Thomason's ministry...About ten days ago I had a conversation

with one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, Sir John Boyd, upon

religious subjects. Indeed there is now scarcely a place where you

can pay a visit without having an opportunity of saying something

about true religion."

Carey's friendly intercourse, by person and letter, was not confined

to those who were aggressively Christian or to Christian and

ecclesiastical questions. As we shall soon see, his literary and

scientific pursuits led him to constant and familiar converse with

scholars like Colebrooke and Leyden, with savants like Roxburgh, the

astronomer Bentley, and Dr. Hare, with publicists like Sir James

Mackintosh and Robert Hall, with such travellers and administrators

as Manning, the friend of Charles Lamb, and Raffles.

In Great Britain the name of William Carey had, by 1812, become

familiar as a household word in all evangelical circles. The men

who had known him in the days before 1793 were few and old, were

soon to pass away for ever. The new generation had fed their

Christian zeal on his achievements, and had learned to look on him,

in spite of all his humility which only inflamed that zeal, as the

pioneer, the father, the founder of foreign missions, English,

Scottish, and American. They had never seen him; they were not

likely to see him in the flesh. The desire for a portrait of him

became irresistible. The burning of the press, to be hereafter

described, which led even bitter enemies of the mission like Major

Scott Waring to subscribe for its restoration, gave the desired

sympathetic voice, so that Fuller wrote to the missionaries:--"The

public is now giving us their praises. Eight hundred guineas have

been offered for Dr. Carey's likeness...When you pitched your tents

at Serampore you said, 'We will not accumulate riches but devote all

to God for the salvation of the heathen.' God has given you what

you desired and what you desired not. Blessed men, God will bless

you and make you a blessing. I and others of us may die, but God

will surely visit you...Expect to be highly applauded, bitterly

reproached, greatly moved, and much tried in every way. Oh that,

having done all, you may stand!"

Carey was, fortunately for posterity, not rebellious in the matter

of the portrait; he was passive. As he sat in his room in the

college of Fort William, his pen in hand, his Sanskrit Bible before

him, and his Brahman pundit at his left hand, the saint and the

scholar in the ripeness of his powers at fifty was transferred to

the canvas which has since adorned the walls of Regent's Park

College. A line engraving of the portrait was published in England

the year after at a guinea, and widely purchased, the profit going

to the mission. The painter was Home, famous in his day as the

artist whom Lord Cornwallis had engaged during the first war with

Tipoo to prepare those Select Views in Mysore, the Country of Tipoo

Sultaun, from Drawings taken on the Spot, which appeared in 1794.

Of his four sons, Felix, William, Jabez, and Jonathan, Carey's

correspondence was most frequent at this period with William, who

went forth in 1807 to Dinapoor to begin his independent career as a

missionary by the side of Fernandez.

"2nd April 1807.--We have the greatest encouragement to go forward

in the work of our Lord Jesus, because we have every reason to

conclude that it will be successful at last. It is the cause which

God has had in His mind from eternity, the cause for which Christ

shed His blood, that for which the Spirit and word of God were

given, that which is the subject of many great promises, that for

which the saints have been always praying, and which God Himself

bears an infinite regard to in His dispensations of Providence and

Grace. The success thereof is therefore certain. Be encouraged,

therefore, my dear son, to devote yourself entirely to it, and to

pursue it as a matter of the very first importance even to your

dying day.

"Give my love to Mr. and Mrs. Creighton and to Mr. Ellerton, Mr.

Grant, or any other who knows me about Malda, also to our native

Brethren."

"CALCUTTA, 29th September 1808.--A ship is just arrived which brings

the account that Buonaparte has taken possession of the whole

kingdom of Spain, and that the Royal family of that country are in

prison at Bayonne. It is likely that Turkey is fallen before now,

and what will be the end of these wonders we cannot tell. I see the

wrath of God poured out on the nations which have so long persecuted

His Gospel, and prevented the spread of His truth. Buonaparte is

but the minister of the Divine vengeance, the public executioner now

employed to execute the sentence of God upon criminal men. He,

however, has no end in view but the gratifying his own ambition."

"22nd December 1808.--DEAR WILLIAM--Be steadfast...Walk worthy of

your high calling, and so as to be a pattern to others who may

engage in similar undertakings. Much depends upon us who go first

to the work of the Lord in this country; and we have reason to

believe that succeeding Ministers of the Gospel in this country will

be more or less influenced by our example...All, even the best of

men, are more likely to be influenced by evil example than benefited

by good: let it, therefore, be your business and mine to live and

act for God in all things and at all times.

"I am very glad you wrote to Jabez and Jonathan. O that I could see

them converted!"

"30th May 1809.--When you come down take a little pains to bring

down a few plants of some sort. There is one grows plentifully

about Sadamahal which grows about as high as one's knee, and

produces a large red flower. Put half a dozen plants in pots (with

a hole in the bottom). There is at Sadamahal (for I found it there)

a plant which produces a flower like Bhayt, of a pale bluish colour,

almost white; and indeed several other things there. Try and bring

something. Can't you bring the grasshopper which has a saddle on

its back, or the bird which has a large crest which he opens when he

settles on the ground? I want to give you a little taste for

natural objects. Felix is very good indeed in this respect."

"26th April 1809.--You, my dear William, are situated in a post

which is very dear to my remembrance because the first years of my

residence in India were spent in that neighbourhood. I therefore

greatly rejoice in any exertions which you are enabled to make for

the cause of our Redeemer...Should you, after many years' labour, be

instrumental in the conversion of only one soul, it would be worth

the work of a whole life...I am not sure that I have been of real

use to any one person since I have been in this country, yet I dare

not give up the work in which I am engaged. Indeed, notwithstanding

all the discouragements which I feel from my own unfitness for any

part of it, I prefer it to everything else, and consider that in the

work of my Redeemer I have a rich reward. If you are enabled to

persevere you will feel the same, and will say with the great

Apostle--'I count not my life dear to me that I may fulfil the

ministry which I have received of the Lord.' 'Unto me is this grace

(favour) given that I should preach among the Gentiles the

unsearchable riches of Christ.' Hold on, therefore, be steady in

your work, and leave the result with God.

"I have been thinking of a mission to the Ten Tribes of Israel, I

mean the Afghans, who inhabit Cabul...I leave the other side for

your mother to write a few lines to Mary, to whom give my love."

"CALCUTTA, 1st November 1809.--Yesterday was the day for the Chinese

examination, at which Jabez acquitted himself with much honour. I

wish his heart were truly set on God. One of the greatest blessings

which I am now anxious to see before my death is the conversion of

him and Jonathan, and their being employed in the work of the Lord.

"Now, dear William, what do we live for but to promote the cause of

our dear Redeemer in the world? If that be carried on we need not

wish for anything more; and if our poor labours are at all blessed

to the promotion of that desirable end, our lives will not be in

vain. Let this, therefore, be the great object of your life, and if

you should be made the instrument of turning only one soul from

darkness to marvellous light, who can say how many more may be

converted by his instrumentality, and what a tribute of glory may

arise to God from that one conversion. Indeed, were you never to be

blessed to the conversion of one soul, still the pleasure of

labouring in the work of the Lord is greater than that of any other

undertaking in the world, and is of itself sufficient to make it the

work of our choice. I hope Sebuk Ram is arrived before now, and

that you will find him to be a blessing to you in your work. Try

your utmost to make him well acquainted with the Bible, labour to

correct his mistakes, and to establish him in the knowledge of the

truth.

"You may always enclose a pinch of seeds in a letter."

"17th January 1810.--Felix went with Captain Canning, the English

ambassador to the Burman Empire, to the city of Pegu. On his way

thither he observed to Captain Canning that he should be greatly

gratified in accompanying the Minister to the mountains of Martaban

and the country beyond them. Captain Canning at his next interview

with the Minister mentioned this to him, which he was much pleased

with, and immediately ordered several buffalo-carts to be made

ready, and gave him a war-boat to return to Rangoon to bring his

baggage, medicines, etc. He had no time to consult Brother Chater

before he determined on the journey, and wrote to me when at

Rangoon, where he stayed only one night, and returned to Pegu the

next morning. He says the Minister has now nearly the whole

dominion over the Empire, and is going to war. He will accompany

the army to Martaban, when he expects to stay with the Minister

there. He goes in great spirits to explore those countries where no

European has been before him, and where he goes with advantages and

accommodations such as a traveller seldom can obtain. Brother and

Sister Chater do not approve of his undertaking, perhaps through

fear for his safety. I feel as much for that as any one can do, yet

I, and indeed Brethren Marshman, Ward, and Rowe, rejoice that he has

undertaken the journey. It will assist him in acquiring the

language; it will gratify the Minister, it will serve the interests

of literature, and perhaps answer many other important purposes, as

it respects the mission; and as much of the way will be through

uninhabited forests, it could not have been safely undertaken except

with an army. He expects to be absent three months. I shall feel a

great desire to hear from him when he returns, and I doubt not but

you will join me in prayer for his safety both of mind and body...

"One or two words about natural history. Can you not get me a male

and female khokora--I mean the great bird like a kite, which makes

so great a noise, and often carries off a duck or a kid? I believe

it is an eagle, and want to examine it. Send me also all the sorts

of ducks and waterfowls you can get, and, in short, every sort of

bird you can obtain which is not common here. Send their Bengali

names. Collect me all the sorts of insects, and serpents, and

lizards you can get which are not common here. Put all the insects

together into a bottle of rum, except butterflies, which you may dry

between two papers, and the serpents and lizards the same. I will

send you a small quantity of rum for that purpose. Send all the

country names. Let me have the birds alive; and when you have got a

good boat-load send a small boat down with them under charge of a

careful person, and I will pay the expenses. Spare no pains to get

me seeds and roots, and get Brother Robinson to procure what he can

from Bhootan or other parts.

"Remember me affectionately to Sebuk Ram and his wife, and to all

the native brethren and sisters."

"5th February 1810.--Were you hunting the buffalo, or did it charge

you without provocation? I advise you to abstain from hunting

buffaloes or other animals, because, though I think it lawful to

kill noxious animals, or to kill animals for food, yet the

unnecessary killing of animals, and especially the spending much

time in the pursuit of them, is wrong, and your life is too valuable

to be thrown away by exposing it to such furious animals as

buffaloes and tigers. If you can kill them without running any risk

'tis very well, but it is wrong to expose yourself to danger for an

end so much below that to which you are devoted...

"I believe the cause of our Redeemer increases in the earth, and

look forward to more decided appearances of divine power. The

destruction of the temporal power of the Pope is a glorious

circumstance, and an answer to the prayers of the Church for

centuries past...

"I send you a small cask of rum to preserve curiosities in, and a

few bottles; but your best way will be to draw off a couple of

gallons of the rum, which you may keep for your own use, and then

put the snakes, frogs, toads, lizards, etc., into the cask, and send

them down. I can easily put them into proper bottles, etc.,

afterwards. You may, however, send one or two of the bottles filled

with beetles, grasshoppers, and other insects."

In the absence of Mr. Fernandez, the pastor, William had excluded

two members of the Church.

"4th April 1810.--A very little knowledge of human nature will

convince you that this would have been thought an affront in five

instances out of six. You would have done better to have advised

them, or even to have required them to have kept from the Lord's

table till Mr. Fernandez's return, and to have left it to him to

preside over the discipline of the church. You, no doubt, did it

without thinking of the consequences, and in the simplicity of your

heart, and I think Mr. Fernandez is wrong in treating you with

coolness, when a little conversation might have put everything to

rights. Of that, however, I shall say no more to you, but one of us

shall write to him upon the subject as soon as we can.

"The great thing to be done now is the effecting of a reconciliation

between you, and whether you leave Sadamahal, or stay there, this is

absolutely necessary. In order to this you both must be willing to

make some sacrifice of your feelings; and as those feelings, which

prevent either of you from making concessions where you have acted

amiss, are wrong, the sooner they are sacrificed the better. I

advise you to write to Mr. Fernandez immediately, and acknowledge

that you did wrong in proceeding to the exclusion of the members

without having first consulted with him, and state that you had no

intention of hurting his feelings, but acted from what you thought

the urgency of the case, and request of him a cordial

reconciliation. I should like much to see a copy of the letter you

send to him. I have no object in view but the good of the Church,

and would therefore rather see you stoop as low as you can to effect

a reconciliation, than avoid it through any little punctilio of

honour or feeling of pride. You will never repent of having humbled

yourself to the dust that peace may be restored, nothing will be a

more instructive example to the heathen around you, nothing will so

completely subdue Brother Fernandez's dissatisfaction, and nothing

will make you more respected in the Church of God.

"It is highly probable that you will some time or other be removed

to another situation, but it cannot be done till you are perfectly

reconciled to each other, nor can it possibly be done till some time

after your reconciliation, as such a step would be considered by all

as an effect of resentment or dissatisfaction, and would be

condemned by every thinking person. We shall keep our minds

steadily on the object, and look out for a proper station; but both

we and you must act with great caution and tenderness in this

affair. For this reason also I entreat you not to withdraw yourself

from the church, or from any part of your labours, but go on

steadily in the path of duty, suppress and pray against every

feeling of resentment, and bear anything rather than be accessory to

a misunderstanding, or the perpetuating of one. 'Let that mind be in

you which was also in Christ, who made himself of no reputation.' I

hope what I have said will induce you to set in earnest about a

reconciliation with Brother Fernandez, and to spare no pains or

concession (consistent with truth) to effect it."

William had applied to be transferred to Serampore.

"3rd August 1811.--The necessities of the mission must be consulted

before every other consideration. Native brethren can itinerate,

but Europeans must be employed to open new missions and found new

stations. For were we to go upon the plan of sending Europeans

where natives could possibly be employed, no subscriptions or

profits could support them. We intend to commence a new station at

Dacca, and if you prefer that to Cutwa you may go thither. One of

the first things to be done there will be to open a charity school,

and to overlook it. Dacca itself is a very large place, where you

may often communicate religious instructions without leaving the

town. There are also a number of Europeans there, so that Mary

would not be so much alone, and at any rate help would be near. We

can obtain the permission of Government for you to settle there.

"I ought, however, to say that I think there is much guilt in your

fears. You and Mary will be a thousand times more safe in

committing yourselves to God in the way of duty than in neglecting

obvious duty to take care of yourselves. You see what hardships and

dangers a soldier meets in the wicked trade of war. They are forced

to leave home and expose themselves to a thousand dangers, yet they

never think of objecting, and in this the officers are in the same

situation as the men. I will engage to say that no military officer

would ever refuse to go any whither on service because his family

must be exposed to danger in his absence; and yet I doubt not but

many of them are men who have great tenderness for their wives and

families. However, they must be men and their wives must be women.

Your undertaking is infinitely superior to theirs in importance.

They go to kill men, you to save them. If they leave their

families to chance for the sake of war, surely you can leave yours

to the God of providence while you go about His work. I speak thus

because I am much distressed to see you thus waste away the flower

of your life in inactivity, and only plead for it what would not

excuse a child. Were you in any secular employment you must go out

quite as much as we expect you to do in the Mission. I did so when

at Mudnabati, which was as lonesome a place as could have been

thought of, and when I well knew that many of our own ryots were

dakoits (robbers)."

William finally settled at Cutwa, higher up the Hoogli than

Serampore, and did good service there.

"1st December 1813.--I have now an assistant at College,

notwithstanding which my duties are quite as heavy as they ever

were, for we are to receive a number of military students--I suppose

thirty at least. The translation, and printing also, is now so much

enlarged that I am scarcely able to get through the necessary labour

of correcting proofs and learning the necessary languages. All

these things are causes of rejoicing more than of regret, for they

are the very things for which I came into the country, and to which

I wish to devote my latest breath...Jabez has offered himself to the

Mission, a circumstance which gives me more pleasure than if he had

been appointed Chief Judge of the Supreme Court...Your mother has

long been confined to her couch, I believe about six months."

The following was written evidently in reply to loving letters on

the death of his wife, Charlotte Emilia:--

"4th June 1821.--MY DEAR JONATHAN--I feel your affectionate care for

me very tenderly. I have just received very affectionate letters

from William and Brother Sutton (Orissa). Lord and Lady Hastings

wrote to Brother Marshman, thinking it would oppress my feelings to

write to me directly, to offer their kind condolence to me through

him. Will you have the goodness to send five rupees to William for

the Cutwa school, which your dear mother supported. I will repay

you soon, but am now very short of money.--I am your very

affectionate father, W. CAREY."

Of the many descendants of Dr. Carey, one great grandson is now an

ordained missionary in Bengal, another a medical missionary in

Delhi, and a third is a member of the Civil Service, who has

distinguished himself by travels in Northern Tibet and Chinese

Turkestan, which promise to unveil much of the unexplored regions of

Asia to the scholar and the missionary.

Thus far we have confined our study of William Carey to his purely

missionary career, and that in its earlier half. We have now to see

him as the scholar, the Bible translator, the philanthropist, the

agriculturist, and the founder of a University.

CHAPTER IX

PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI

1801-1830

Carey the only Sanskrit scholar in India besides Colebrooke--The

motive of the missionary scholar--Plans translation of the sacred

books of the East--Comparative philology from Leibniz to

Carey--Hindoo and Mohammedan codes and colleges of Warren

Hastings--The Marquis Wellesley--The College of Fort William

founded--Character of the Company's civil and military

servants--Curriculum of study, professors and teachers--The

vernacular languages--Carey's account of the college and his

appointment--How he studied Sanskrit--College Disputation Day in the

new Government House--Carey's Sanskrit speech--Lord Wellesley's

eulogy--Sir James Mackintosh--Carey's pundits--He projects the

Bibliotheca Asiatica--On the Committee of the Bengal Asiatic

Society--Edition and translation of the Ramayana epic--The

Hitopadesa--His Universal Dictionary--Influence of Carey on the

civil and military services--W. B. Bayley; B. H. Hodgson; R.

Jenkins; R. M. and W. Bird; John Lawrence.

When, in the opening days of the nineteenth century, William Carey

was driven to settle in Danish Serampore, he was the only member of

the governing race in North India who knew the language of the

people so as to teach it; the only scholar, with the exception of

Colebrooke, who could speak Sanskrit as fluently as the Brahmans.

The Bengali language he had made the vehicle of the teaching of

Christ, of the thought of Paul, of the revelation of John. Of the

Sanskrit, hitherto concealed from alien eyes or diluted only through

the Persian, he had prepared a grammar and begun a dictionary, while

he had continually used its great epics in preaching to the

Brahmans, as Paul had quoted the Greek poets on the Areopagus. And

all this he had done as the missionary of Christ and the scholar

afterwards. Reporting to Ryland, in August 1800, the publication of

the Gospels and of "several small pieces" in Bengali, he excused his

irregularity in keeping a journal, "for in the printing I have to

look over the copy and correct the press, which is much more

laborious than it would be in England, because spelling, writing,

printing, etc., in Bengali is almost a new thing, and we have in a

manner to fix the orthography." A little later, in a letter to

Sutcliff, he used language regarding the sacred books of the Hindoos

which finds a parallel more than eighty years after in Professor Max

M ller's preface to his series of the sacred books of the East, the?

translation of which Carey was the first to plan and to begin from

the highest of all motives. Mr. Max M ller calls attention to the?

"real mischief that has been and is still being done by the

enthusiasm of those pioneers who have opened the first avenues

through the bewildering forests of the sacred literature of the

East." He declares that "Eastern nations themselves would not

tolerate, in any of their classical literary compositions, such

violations of the simplest rules of taste as they have accustomed

themselves to tolerate, if not to admire, in their sacred books."

And he is compelled to leave untranslated, while he apologises for

them, the frequent allusions to the sexual aspects of nature,

"particularly in religious books." The revelations of the Maharaj

trial in Bombay are the practical fruit of all this.

"CALCUTTA, 17th March 1802.--I have been much astonished lately at

the malignity of some of the infidel opposers of the Gospel, to see

how ready they are to pick every flaw they can in the inspired

writings, and even to distort the meaning, that they may make it

appear inconsistent; while these very persons will labour to

reconcile the grossest contradictions in the writings accounted

sacred by the Hindoos, and will stoop to the meanest artifices in

order to apologise for the numerous glaring falsehoods and horrid

violations of all decency and decorum, which abound in almost every

page. Any thing, it seems, will do with these men but the word of

God. They ridicule the figurative language of Scripture, but will

run allegory-mad in support of the most worthless productions that

ever were published. I should think it time lost to translate any

of them; and only a sense of duty excites me to read them. An idea,

however, of the advantage which the friends of Christianity may

obtain by having these mysterious sacred nothings (which have

maintained their celebrity so long merely by being kept from the

inspection of any but interested Brahmans) exposed to view, has

induced me, among other things, to write the Sanskrit grammar, and

to begin a dictionary of that language. I sincerely pity the poor

people, who are held by the chains of an implicit faith in the

grossest of lies; and can scarcely help despising the wretched

infidel who pleads in their favour and tries to vindicate them. I

have long wished to obtain a copy of the Veda; and am now in hopes I

shall be able to procure all that are extant. A Brahman this

morning offered to get them for me for the sake of money. If I

succeed, I shall be strongly tempted to publish them with a

translation, pro bono publico."

It was not surprising that the Governor-General, even if he had been

less enlightened than Lord Wellesley, found in this missionary

interloper, as the East India Company officially termed the class to

which he belonged, the only man fit to be Professor of Bengali,

Sanskrit, and Marathi in the College of Fort William, and also

translator of the laws and regulations of the Government.

In a memoir read before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, which he had

founded in the first year of the eighteenth century, Leibniz first

sowed the seed of the twin sciences of comparative philology and

ethnology, to which we owe the fruitful results of the historical

and critical school. That century was passed in the necessary

collection of facts, of data. Carey introduced the second period,

so far as the learned and vernacular languages of North India are

concerned--of developing from the body of facts which his industry

enormously extended, the principles upon which these languages were

constructed, besides applying these principles, in the shape of

grammars, dictionaries, and translations, to the instruction and

Christian civilisation alike of the learned and of the millions of

the people. To the last, as at the first, he was undoubtedly only

what he called himself, a pioneer to prepare the way for more

successful civilisers and scholars. But his pioneering was

acknowledged by contemporary14 and later Orientalists, like

Colebrooke and H. H. Wilson, to be of unexampled value in the

history of scientific research and industry, while the succeeding

pages will show that in its practical results the pioneering came as

nearly to victory as is possible, until native India lives its own

national Christian life.

When India first became a united British Empire under one

Governor-General and the Regulating Act of Parliament of 1773,

Warren Hastings had at once carried out the provision he himself had

suggested for using the moulavies and pundits in the administration

of Mussulman and Hindoo law. Besides colleges in Calcutta and

Benares to train such, he caused those codes of Mohammedan and

Brahmanical law to be prepared which afterwards appeared as The

Hedaya and The Code of Gentoo Laws. The last was compiled in

Sanskrit by pundits summoned from all Bengal and maintained in

Calcutta at the public cost, each at a rupee a day. It was

translated through the Persian, the language of the courts, by the

elder Halhed into English in 1776. That was the first step in

English Orientalism. The second was taken by Sir William Jones, a

predecessor worthy of Carey, but cut off all too soon while still a

young man of thirty-four, when he founded the Bengal Asiatic Society

in 1784 on the model of Boyle's Royal Society. The code of Warren

Hastings had to be arranged and supplemented into a reliable digest

of the original texts, and the translation of this work, as done by

pundit Jaganatha, was left, by the death of Jones, to Colebrooke,

who completed it in 1797. Charles Wilkins had made the first direct

translation from the Sanskrit into English in 1785, when he

published in London The Bhagavat-Geeta or Dialogue of Krishna and

Arjoon, and his is the imperishable honour thus chronicled by a

contemporary poetaster:--

"But he performed a yet more noble part,

He gave to Asia typographic art."

In Bengali Halhed had printed at Hoogli in 1783, with types cut by

Wilkins, the first grammar, but it had become obsolete and was

imperfect. Such had been the tentative efforts of the civilians and

officials of the Company when Carey began anew the work from the

only secure foundation, the level of daily sympathetic intercourse

with the people and their Brahmans, with the young as well as the

old.

The Marquis Wellesley was of nearly the same age as Carey, whom he

soon learned to appreciate and to use for the highest good of the

empire. Of the same name and original English descent as John and

Charles Wesley, the Governor-General was the eldest and not the

least brilliant of the Irish family which, besides him, gave to the

country the Duke of Wellington and Lord Cowley. While Carey was

cobbling shoes in an unknown hamlet of the Midlands and was aspiring

to convert the world, young Wellesley was at Eton and Christ Church,

Oxford, acquiring the classical scholarship which, as we find its

fruits in his Primiti et Reliqui , extorted the praise of De? ?

Quincey. When Carey was starving in Calcutta unknown the young lord

was making his mark in the House of Commons by a speech against the

Jacobins of France in the style of Burke. The friend of Pitt, he

served his apprenticeship to Indian affairs in the Board of Control,

where he learned to fight the directors of the East India Company,

and he landed at Calcutta in 1798, just in time to save the nascent

empire from ruin by the second Mysore war and the fall of Tipoo at

Seringapatam. Like that other marquis who most closely resembled

him half a century after, the Scottish Dalhousie, his hands were no

sooner freed from the uncongenial bonds of war than he became even

more illustrious by his devotion to the progress which peace makes

possible. He created the College of Fort William, dating the

foundation of what was fitted and intended to be the greatest seat

of learning in the East from the first anniversary of the victory of

Seringapatam. So splendidly did he plan, so wisely did he organise,

and with such lofty aims did he select the teachers of the college,

that long after his death he won from De Quincey the impartial

eulogy, that of his three services to his country and India this was

the "first, to pave the way for the propagation of

Christianity--mighty service, stretching to the clouds, and which in

the hour of death must have given him consolation."

When Wellesley arrived at Calcutta he had been shocked by the

sensual ignorance of the Company's servants. Sunday was universally

given up to horse-racing and gambling. Boys of sixteen were removed

from the English public schools where they had hardly mastered the

rudiments of education to become the magistrates, judges, revenue

collectors, and governors of millions of natives recently brought

under British sway. At a time when the passions most need

regulation and the conscience training, these lads found themselves

in India with large incomes, flattered by native subordinates,

encouraged by their superiors to lead lives of dissipation, and

without the moral control even of the weakest public opinion. The

Eton boy and Oxford man was himself still young, and he knew the

world, but he saw that all this meant ruin to both the civil and

military services, and to the Company's system. The directors

addressed in a public letter, dated 25th May 1798, "an objurgation

on the character and conduct" of their servants. They re-echoed the

words of the new Governor-General in their condemnation of a state

of things, "highly discreditable to our Government, and totally

incompatible with the religion we profess." Such a service as this,

preceding the creation of the college, led Pitt's other friend,

Wilberforce, in the discussions on the charter of 1813, to ascribe

to Lord Wellesley, when summoning him to confirm and revise it, the

system of diffusing useful knowledge of all sorts as the true foe

not only of ignorance but of vice and of political and social decay.

Called upon to prevent the evils he had been the first to denounce

officially, Lord Wellesley wrote his magnificent state paper of

1800, which he simply termed Notes on the necessity of a special

collegiate training of Civil Servants. The Company's factories had

grown into the Indian Empire of Great Britain. The tradesmen and

clerks, whom the Company still called "writer," "factor," and

"merchant," in their several grades, had, since Clive obtained a

military commission in disgust at such duties, become the judges and

rulers of millions, responsible to Parliament. They must be

educated in India itself, and trained to be equal to the

responsibilities and temptations of their position. If appointed by

patronage at home when still at school, they must be tested after

training in India so that promotion shall depend on degrees of

merit. Lord Wellesley anticipated the modified system of

competition which Macaulay offered to the Company in 1853, and the

refusal of which led to the unrestricted system which has prevailed

with varying results since that time. Nor was the college only for

the young civilians as they arrived. Those already at work were to

be encouraged to study. Military officers were to he invited to

take advantage of an institution which was intended to be "the

university of Calcutta," "a light amid the darkness of Asia," and

that at a time when in all England there was not a military college.

Finally, the college was designed to be a centre of Western

learning in an Eastern dress for the natives of India and Southern

Asia, alike as students and teachers. A noble site was marked out

for it on the stately sweep of Garden Reach, where every East

Indiaman first dropped its anchor, and the building was to be worthy

of the founder who erected Government House.

The curriculum of study included Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit;

Bengali, Marathi, Hindostani (Hindi), Telugoo, Tamil, and Kanarese;

English, the Company's, Mohammedan and Hindoo law, civil

jurisprudence, and the law of nations; ethics; political economy,

history, geography, and mathematics; the Greek, Latin, and English

classics, and the modern languages of Europe; the history and

antiquities of India; natural history, botany, chemistry, and

astronomy. The discipline was that of the English universities as

they then were, under the Governor-General himself, his colleagues,

and the appellate judges. The senior chaplain, the Rev. David

Brown, was provost in charge of the discipline; and Dr. Claudius

Buchanan was vice-provost in charge of the studies, as well as

professor of Greek, Latin, and English. Dr. Gilchrist was professor

of Hindostani, in teaching which he had already made a fortune;

Lieutenant J. Baillie of Arabic; and Mr. H. B. Edmonstone of

Persian. Sir George Barlow expounded the laws or regulations of the

British Government in India. The Church of England constitution of

the college at first, to which Buchanan had applied the English Test

Act, and his own modesty, led Carey to accept of his appointment,

which was thus gazetted:--"The Rev. William Carey, teacher of the

Bengali and Sanskrit languages."

The first notice of the new college which we find in Carey's

correspondence is this, in a letter to Sutcliff dated 27th November

1800:--"There is a college erected at Fort William, of which the

Rev. D. Brown is appointed provost, and C. Buchanan classical tutor:

all the Eastern languages are to be taught in it." "All" the

languages of India were to be taught, the vernacular as well as the

classical and purely official. This was a reform not less radical

and beneficial in its far-reaching influence, and not less

honourable to the scholarly foresight of Lord Wellesley, than Lord

William Bentinck's new era of the English language thirty-five years

after. The rulers and administrators of the new empire were to

begin their career by a three years' study of the mother tongue of

the people, to whom justice was administered in a language foreign

alike to them and their governors, and of the Persian language of

their foreign Mohammedan conquerors. That the peoples of India,

"every man in his own language," might hear and read the story of

what the one true and living God had done for us men and our

salvation, Carey had nine years before given himself to acquire

Bengali and the Sanskrit of which it is one of a numerous family of

daughters, as the tongues of the Latin nations of Europe and South

America are of the offspring of the speech of Caesar and Cicero.

Now, following the missionary pioneer, as educational, scientific,

and even political progress has ever since done in the India which

would have kept him out, Lord Wellesley decreed that, like the

missionary, the administrator and the military officer shall master

the language of the people. The five great vernaculars of India

were accordingly named, and the greatest of all, the Hindi, which

was not scientifically elaborated till long after, was provided for

under the mixed dialect or lingua franca known as Hindostani.

When Carey and his colleagues were congratulating themselves on a

reform which has already proved as fruitful of results as the first

century of the Renascence of Europe, he little thought, in his

modesty, that he would be recognised as the only man who was fit to

carry it out. Having guarded the college, as they thought, by a

test, Brown and Buchanan urged Carey to take charge of the Bengali

and Sanskrit classes as "teacher" on Rs. 500 a month or 700 a year.?

Such an office was entirely in the line of the constitution of the

missionary brotherhood. But would the Government which had banished

it to Serampore recognise the aggressively missionary character of

Carey, who would not degrade his high calling by even the suspicion

of a compromise? To be called and paid as a teacher rather than as

the professor whose double work he was asked to do, was nothing to

the modesty of the scholar who pleaded his sense of unfitness for

the duties. His Master, not himself, was ever Carey's first

thought, and the full professorship, rising to 1800 a year, was?

soon conferred on the man who proved himself to be almost as much

the college in his own person as were the other professors put

together. A month after his appointment he thus told the story to

Dr. Ryland in the course of a long letter devoted chiefly to the

first native converts:--

"SERAMPORE, 15th June 1801...We sent you some time ago a box full of

gods and butterflies, etc., and another box containing a hundred

copies of the New Testament in Bengali...Mr. Lang is studying

Bengali, under me, in the college. What I have last mentioned

requires some explanation, though you will probably hear of it

before this reaches you. You must know, then, that a college was

founded last year in Fort William, for the instruction of the junior

civil servants of the Company, who are obliged to study in it three

years after their arrival. I always highly approved of the

institution, but never entertained a thought that I should be called

to fill a station in it. To my great surprise I was asked to

undertake the Bengali professorship. One morning a letter from Mr.

Brown came, inviting me to cross the water, to have some

conversation with him upon this subject. I had but just time to

call our brethren together, who were of opinion that, for several

reasons, I ought to accept it, provided it did not interfere with

the work of the mission. I also knew myself to be incapable of

filling such a station with reputation and propriety. I, however,

went over, and honestly proposed all my fears and objections. Both

Mr. Brown and Mr. Buchanan were of opinion that the cause of the

mission would be furthered by it; and I was not able to reply to

their arguments. I was convinced that it might. As to my ability,

they could not satisfy me; but they insisted upon it that they must

be the judges of that. I therefore consented, with fear and

trembling. They proposed me that day, or the next, to the

Governor-General, who is patron and visitor of the college. They

told him that I had been a missionary in the country for seven years

or more; and as a missionary I was appointed to the office. A

clause had been inserted in the statutes to accommodate those who

are not of the Church of England (for all professors are to take

certain oaths, and make declarations); but, for the accommodation of

such, two other names were inserted, viz., lecturers and teachers,

who are not included under that obligation. When I was proposed,

his lordship asked if I was well affected to the state, and capable

of fulfilling the duties of the station; to which Mr. B. replied

that he should never have proposed me if he had had the smallest

doubt on those heads. I wonder how people can have such favourable

ideas of me. I certainly am not disaffected to the state; but the

other is not clear to me.

"When the appointment was made, I saw that I had a very important

charge committed to me, and no books or helps of any kind to assist

me. I therefore set about compiling a grammar, which is now half

printed. I got Ram Basu to compose a history of one of their kings,

the first prose book ever written in the Bengali language; which we

are also printing. Our pundit has also nearly translated the

Sanskrit fables, one or two of which Brother Thomas sent you, which

we are also going to publish, These, with Mr. Foster's vocabulary,

will prepare the way to reading their poetical books; so that I hope

this difficulty will be gotten through. But my ignorance of the way

of conducting collegiate exercises is a great weight upon my mind.

I have thirteen students in my class; I lecture twice a week, and

have nearly gone through one term, not quite two months. It began

4th May. Most of the students have gotten through the accidents,

and some have begun to translate Bengali into English. The

examination begins this week. I am also appointed teacher of the

Sanskrit language; and though no students have yet entered in that

class, yet I must prepare for it. I am, therefore, writing a

grammar of that language, which I must also print, if I should be

able to get through with it, and perhaps a dictionary, which I began

some years ago. I say all this, my dear brother, to induce you to

give me your advice about the best manner of conducting myself in

this station, and to induce you to pray much for me, that God may,

in all things, be glorified by me. We presented a copy of the

Bengali New Testament to Lord Wellesley, after the appointment,

through the medium of the Rev. D. Brown, which was graciously

received. We also presented Governor Bie with one.

"Serampore is now in the hands of the English. It was taken while

we were in bed and asleep; you may therefore suppose that it was

done without bloodshed. You may be perfectly easy about us: we are

equally secure under the English or Danish Government, and I am sure

well disposed to both."

For seven years, since his first settlement in the Dinapoor

district, Carey had given one-third of his long working day to the

study of Sanskrit. In 1796 he reported:--"I am now learning the

Sanskrit language, that I may be able to read their Shasters for

myself; and I have acquired so much of the Hindi or Hindostani as to

converse in it and speak for some time intelligibly...Even the

language of Ceylon has so much affinity with that of Bengal that out

of twelve words, with the little Sanskrit that I know, I can

understand five or six." In 1798 he wrote:--"I constantly employ

the forenoon in temporal affairs; the afternoon in reading, writing,

learning Sanskrit, etc.; and the evening by candle light in

translating the Scriptures...Except I go out to preach, which is

often the case, I never deviate from this rule." Three years before

that he had been able to confute the Brahmans from their own

writings; in 1798 he quoted and translated the Rig Veda and the

Purana in reply to a request for an account of the beliefs of the

priesthood, apologising, however, with his usual

self-depreciation:--"I am just beginning to see for myself by

reading the original Shasters." In 1799 we find him reading the

Mahabharata epic with the hope of finding some allusion or fact

which might enable him to equate Hindoo chronology with reliable

history, as Dr. John Wilson of Bombay and James Prinsep did a

generation later, by the discovery of the name of Antiochus the

Great in two of the edicts of Asoka, written on the Girnar rock.

By September 1804 Carey had completed the first three years' course

of collegiate training in Sanskrit. The Governor-General summoned a

brilliant assembly to listen to the disputations and declamations of

the students who were passing out, and of their professors, in the

various Oriental languages. The new Government House, as it was

still called, having been completed only the year before at a cost

of 140,000, was the scene, in "the southern room on the marble?

floor," where, ever since, all through the century, the Sovereign's

Viceroys have received the homage of the tributary kings of our

Indian empire. There, from Dalhousie and Canning to Lawrence and

Mayo, and their still surviving successors, we have seen pageants

and durbars more splendid, and representing a wider extent of

territory, from Yarkand to Bangkok, than even the Sultanised

Englishman as Sir James Mackintosh called Wellesley, ever dreamed of

in his most imperial aspirations. There councils have ever since

been held, and laws have been passed affecting the weal of from two

to three hundred millions of our fellow-subjects. There, too, we

have stood with Duff and Cotton, Ritchie and Outram, representing

the later University of Calcutta which Wellesley would have

anticipated. But we question if, ever since, the marble hall of the

Governor-General's palace has witnessed a sight more profoundly

significant than that of William Carey addressing the Marquis

Wellesley in Sanskrit, and in the presence of the future Duke of

Wellington, in such words as follow.

The seventy students, their governors, officers, and professors,

rose to their feet, when, at ten o'clock on Thursday the 20th of

September 1804, His Excellency the Visitor entered the room,

accompanied, as the official gazette duly chronicles, by "the

Honourable the Chief Justice, the judges of the Supreme Court, the

members of the Supreme Council, the members of the Council of the

College, Major-General Cameron, Major-General the Honourable Arthur

Wellesley, Major-General Dowdeswell, and Solyman Aga, the envoy from

Baghdad. All the principal civil and military officers at the

Presidency, and many of the British inhabitants, were present on

this occasion; and also many learned natives."

After Romer had defended, in Hindostani, the thesis that the

Sanskrit is the parent language in India, and Swinton, in Persian,

that the poems of Hafiz are to be understood in a figurative or

mystical sense, there came a Bengali declamation by Tod senior on

the position that the translations of the best works extant in the

Sanskrit with the popular languages of India would promote the

extension of science and civilisation, opposed by Hayes; then Carey,

as moderator, made an appropriate Bengali speech. A similar

disputation in Arabic and a Sanskrit declamation followed, when

Carey was called on to conclude with a speech in Sanskrit. Two days

after, at a second assemblage of the same kind, followed by a state

dinner. Lord Wellesley presented the best students with degrees of

merit inscribed on vellum in Oriental characters, and delivered an

oration, in which he specially complimented the Sanskrit classes,

urged more general attention to the Bengali language, and expressed

satisfaction that a successful beginning had been made in the study

of Marathi.

It was considered a dangerous experiment for a missionary, speaking

in Sanskrit, to avow himself such not only before the

Governor-General in official state but before the Hindoo and

Mohammedan nobles who surrounded him. We may be sure that Carey

would not show less of his Master's charity and wisdom than he had

always striven to do. But the necessity was the more laid on him

that he should openly confess his great calling, for he had told

Fuller on Lord Wellesley's arrival he would do so if it were

possible. Buchanan, being quite as anxious to bring the mission

forward on this occasion, added much to the English draft--"the

whole of the flattery is his," wrote Carey to Fuller--and sent it on

to Lord Wellesley with apprehension. This answer came back from the

great Proconsul:--"I am much pleased with Mr. Carey's truly original

and excellent speech. I would not wish to have a word altered. I

esteem such a testimony from such a man a greater honour than the

applause of Courts and Parliaments."

"MY LORD, it is just that the language which has been first

cultivated under your auspices should primarily be employed in

gratefully acknowledging the benefit, and in speaking your praise.

This ancient language, which refused to disclose itself to the

former Governors of India, unlocks its treasures at your command,

and enriches the world with the history, learning, and science of a

distant age. The rising importance of our collegiate institution

has never been more clearly demonstrated than on the present

occasion; and thousands of the learned in distant nations will exult

in this triumph of literature.

"What a singular exhibition has been this day presented to us! In

presence of the supreme Governor of India, and of its most learned

and illustrious characters, Asiatic and European, an assembly is

convened, in which no word of our native tongue is spoken, but

public discourse is maintained on interesting subjects in the

languages of Asia. The colloquial Hindostani, the classic Persian,

the commercial Bengali, the learned Arabic, and the prim val?

Sanskrit are spoken fluently, after having been studied

grammatically, by English youth. Did ever any university in Europe,

or any literary institution in any other age or country, exhibit a

scene so interesting as this? And what are the circumstances of

these youth? They are not students who prosecute a dead language

with uncertain purpose, impelled only by natural genius or love of

fame. But having been appointed to the important offices of

administering the government of the country in which these languages

are spoken, they apply their acquisitions immediately to useful

purpose; in distributing justice to the inhabitants; in transacting

the business of the state, revenual and commercial; and in

maintaining official intercourse with the people, in their own

tongue, and not, as hitherto, by an interpreter. The acquisitions

of our students may be appreciated by their affording to the

suppliant native immediate access to his principal; and by their

elucidating the spirit of the regulations of our Government by oral

communication, and by written explanations, varied according to the

circumstances and capacities of the people.

"The acquisitions of our students are appreciated at this moment by

those learned Asiatics now present in this assembly, some of them

strangers from distant provinces; who wonder every man to hear in

his own tongue important subjects discussed, and new and noble

principles asserted, by the youth of a foreign land. The literary

proceedings of this day amply repay all the solicitude, labour, and

expense that have been bestowed on this institution. If the expense

had been a thousand times greater, it would not have equalled the

immensity of the advantage, moral and political, that will ensue.

"I, now an old man, have lived for a long series of years among the

Hindoos. I have been in the habit of preaching to multitudes daily,

of discoursing with the Brahmans on every subject, and of

superintending schools for the instruction of the Hindoo youth.

Their language is nearly as familiar to me as my own. This close

intercourse with the natives for so long a period, and in different

parts of our empire, has afforded me opportunities of information

not inferior to those which have hitherto been presented to any

other person. I may say indeed that their manners, customs, habits,

and sentiments are as obvious to me as if I was myself a native.

And knowing them as I do, and hearing as I do their daily

observations on our government, character, and principles, I am

warranted to say (and I deem it my duty to embrace the public

opportunity now afforded me of saying it) that the institution of

this college was wanting to complete the happiness of the natives

under our dominion; for this institution will break down that

barrier (our ignorance of their language) which has ever opposed the

influence of our laws and principles, and has despoiled our

administration of its energy and effect.

"Were the institution to cease from this moment, its salutary

effects would yet remain. Good has been done, which cannot be

undone. Sources of useful knowledge, moral instruction, and

political utility have been opened to the natives of India which can

never be closed; and their civil improvement, like the gradual

civilisation of our own country, will advance in progression for

ages to come.

"One hundred original volumes in the Oriental languages and

literature will preserve for ever in Asia the name of the founder of

this institution. Nor are the examples frequent of a renown,

possessing such utility for its basis, or pervading such a vast

portion of the habitable globe. My lord, you have raised a monument

of fame which no length of time or reverse of fortune is able to

destroy; not chiefly because it is inscribed with Maratha and

Mysore, with the trophies of war and the emblems of victory, but

because there are inscribed on it the names of those learned youth

who have obtained degrees of honour for high proficiency in the

Oriental tongues.

"These youth will rise in regular succession to the Government of

this country. They will extend the domain of British civilisation,

security, and happiness, by enlarging the bounds of Oriental

literature and thereby diffusing the spirit of Christian principles

throughout the nations of Asia. These youth, who have lived so long

amongst us, whose unwearied application to their studies we have all

witnessed, whose moral and exemplary conduct has, in so solemn a

manner, been publicly declared before this august assembly, on this

day; and who, at the moment of entering on the public service, enjoy

the fame of possessing qualities (rarely combined) constituting a

reputation of threefold strength for public men, genius, industry,

and virtue;--these illustrious scholars, my lord, the pride of their

country, and the pillars of this empire, will record your name in

many a language and secure your fame for ever. Your fame is already

recorded in their hearts. The whole body of youth of this service

hail you as their father and their friend. Your honour will ever be

safe in their hands. No revolution of opinion or change of

circumstances can rob you of the solid glory derived from the

humane, just, liberal, and magnanimous principles which have been

embodied by your administration.

"To whatever situation the course of future events may call you, the

youth of this service will ever remain the pledges of the wisdom and

purity of your government. Your evening of life will be constantly

cheered with new testimonies of their reverence and affection, with

new proofs of the advantages of the education you have afforded

them, and with a demonstration of the numerous benefits, moral,

religious, and political, resulting from this institution;--benefits

which will consolidate the happiness of millions of Asia, with the

glory and welfare of our country."

The Court of Directors had never liked Lord Wellesley, and he had,

in common with Colebrooke, keenly wounded them by proposing a free

trade movement against their monopoly. They ordered that his

favourite college should be immediately abolished. He took good

care so to protract the operation as to give him time to call in the

aid of the Board of Control, which saved the institution, but

confined it to the teaching of languages to the civilians of the

Bengal Presidency only. The Directors, when thus overruled chiefly

by Pitt, created a similar college at Haileybury, which continued

till the open competitive system of 1854 swept that also away; and

the Company itself soon followed, as the march of events had made it

an anachronism.

The first law professor at Haileybury was James Mackintosh, an

Aberdeen student who had leaped into the front rank of publicists

and scholars by his answer to Burke, in the Vindici Gallic , and? ?

his famous defence of M. Peltier accused of a libel on Napoleon

Buonaparte. Knighted and sent out to Bombay as its first recorder,

Sir James Mackintosh became the centre of scholarly society in

Western India, as Sir William Jones had been in Bengal. He was the

friend of Robert Hall, the younger, who was filling Carey's pulpit

in Leicester, and he soon became the admiring correspondent of Carey

himself. His first act during his seven years' residence in Bombay

was to establish the "Literary Society." He drew up a "Plan of a

comparative vocabulary of Indian languages," to be filled up by the

officials of every district, like that which Carey had long been

elaborating for his own use as a philologist and Bible translator.

In his first address to the Literary Society he thus eulogised the

College of Fort William, though fresh from a chair in its English

rival, Haileybury:--"The original plan was the most magnificent

attempt ever made for the promotion of learning in the East...Even

in its present mutilated state we have seen, at the last public

exhibition, Sanskrit declamation by English youth, a circumstance so

extraordinary, that if it be followed by suitable advances it will

mark an epoch in the history of learning."

Carey continued till 1831 to be the most notable figure in the

College of Fort William. He was the centre of the learned natives

whom it attracted, as pundits and moonshees, as inquirers and

visitors. His own special pundit was the chief one, Mrityunjaya

Vidyalankar, whom Home has immortalised in Carey's portrait. In the

college for more than half the week, as in his study at Serampore,

Carey exhausted three pundits daily. His college-room was the

centre of incessant literary work, as his Serampore study was of

Bible translation. When he declared that the college staff had sent

forth one hundred original volumes in the Oriental languages and

literature, he referred to the grammars and dictionaries, the

reading-books, compilations, and editions prepared for the students

by the professors and their native assistants. But he contributed

the largest share, and of all his contributions the most laborious

and valuable was this project of the Bibliotheca Asiatica.

"24th July, 1805.--By the enclosed Gazette you will see that the

Asiatic Society and the College have agreed to allow us a yearly

stipend for translating Sanskrit works: this will maintain three

missionary stations, and we intend to apply it to that purpose. An

augmentation of my salary has been warmly recommended by the College

Council, but has not yet taken place, and as Lord Cornwallis is now

arrived and Lord Wellesley going away, it may not take place. If it

should, it will be a further assistance. The business of the

translation of Sanskrit works is as follows: About two years ago I

presented proposals (to the Council of the College) to print the

Sanskrit books at a fixed price, with a certain indemnity for 100

copies. The plan was thought too extensive by some, and was

therefore laid by. A few months ago Dr. Francis Buchanan came to

me, by desire of Marquis Wellesley, about the translation of his

manuscripts. In the course of conversation I mentioned the proposal

I had made, of which he much approved, and immediately communicated

the matter to Sir John Anstruther, who is president of the Asiatic

Society. Sir John had then been drawing out a proposal to Lord

Wellesley to form a catalogue raisonn of the ancient Hindoo books,?

which he sent to me, and entering warmly into my plan, desired that

I would send in a set of proposals. After some amendments it was

agreed that the College of Fort William and the Asiatic Society

should subscribe in equal shares 300 rupees a month to defray the

current expenses, that we should undertake any work approved of by

them, and print the original with an English translation on such

paper and with such a type as they shall approve; the copy to be

ours. They have agreed to recommend the work to all the learned

bodies in Europe. I have recommended the Ramayana to begin with, it

being one of the most popular of all the Hindoo books accounted

sacred. The Veda are so excessively insipid that, had we begun with

them, we should have sickened the public at the outset. The

Ramayana will furnish the best account of Hindoo mythology that any

one book will, and has extravagancy enough to excite a wish to read

it through."

In 1807 Carey became one of the most active members of the Bengal

Asiatic Society. His name at once appears as one of the Committee

of Papers. In the ninth volume of the Asiatic Researches for that

year, scholars were invited to communicate translations and

descriptive accounts of Asiatic books. Carey's edition of The

Ramayana of Valmeeki, in the original Sanskrit, with a prose

translation and explanatory notes, appeared from the Serampore press

in three successive quartos from 1806 to 1810. The translation was

done by "Dr. Carey and Joshua Marshman." Until Gorresio published

his edition and Italian translation of the whole poem this was the

first and only attempt to open the seal of the second great Sankrit

epic to the European world. In 1802 Carey had encouraged the

publication at his own press of translations of both the Mahabharata

and the Ramayana into Bengali. Carey's Ramayana excited a keen

interest not only among the learned of Europe, but among poetical

students. Southey eagerly turned to it for materials for his Curse

of Kehama, in the notes to which he makes long quotations from "the

excellent and learned Baptist missionaries of Serampore." Dean

Milman, when professor of poetry in Oxford, drew from the same

storehouse many of the notes with which he enriched his verse

translations from both epics. A. W. von Schlegel, the death of

whose eldest brother at Madras early led him to Oriental studies,

published two books with a Latin translation. Mr. Ralph T. H.

Griffith most pleasantly opened the treasures of this epic to

English readers in his verse translations published since 1868.

Carey's translation has always been the more rare that the edition

despatched for sale in England was lost at sea, and only a few

presentation copies are extant, one of which is in the British

Museum.

Carey's contributions to Sanskrit scholarship were not confined to

what he published or to what appeared under his own name. We are

told by H. H. Wilson that he had prepared for the press translations

of treatises on the metaphysical system called Sankhya. "It was not

in Dr. Carey's nature to volunteer a display of his erudition, and

the literary labours already adverted to arose in a great measure

out of his connection with the college of Calcutta, or were

suggested to him by those whose authority he respected, and to whose

wishes he thought it incumbent upon him to attend. It may be added

that Dr. Carey spoke Sanskrit with fluency and correctness."

He edited for the college the Sanskrit text of the Hitopadesa, from

six MSS. recensions of this the first revelation to Europe of the

fountain of Aryan folk-tales, of the original of Pilpay's Fables.15

H. H. Wilson remarks that the errors are not more than might have

been expected from the variations and defects of the manuscripts and

the novelty of the task, for this was the first Sanskrit book ever

printed in the Devanagari character. To this famous work Carey

added an abridgment of the prose Adventures of Ten Princes (the Dasa

Kumara Carita), and of Bhartri-hari's Apophthegms. Colebrooke

records his debt to Carey for carrying through the Serampore press

the Sanskrit dictionary of Amara Sinha, the oldest native

lexicographer, with an English interpretation and annotations. But

the magnum opus of Carey was what in 1811 he described as A

Universal Dictionary of the Oriental Languages, derived from the

Sanskrit, of which that language is to be the groundwork. The

object for which he had been long collecting the materials of this

mighty work was the assisting of "Biblical students to correct the

translation of the Bible in the Oriental languages after we are

dead."

Through the College of Fort William during thirty long years Carey

influenced the ablest men in the Bengal Civil Service, and not a few

in Madras and Bombay. "The college must stand or the empire must

fall," its founder had written to his friends in the Government, so

convinced was he that only thus could proper men be trained for the

public service and the welfare of our native subjects be secured.

How right he was Carey's experience proved. The young civilians

turned out after the first three years' course introduced that new

era in the administration of India which has converted traders into

statesmen and filibusters into soldier-politicals, so that the East

Indian services stand alone in the history of the administration of

imperial dependencies for spotless integrity and high average

ability. Contrast with the work of these men, from the days of

Wellesley, the first Minto, and Dalhousie, from the time of Canning

to Lawrence and the second Minto, the provincial administration of

imperial Rome, of Spain and Portugal at their best, of even the

Netherlands and France. For a whole generation of thirty years the

civilians who studied Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi came daily

under the gentle spell of Carey, who, though he had failed to keep

the village school of Moulton in order, manifested the learning and

the modesty, the efficiency and the geniality, which won the

affectionate admiration of his students in Calcutta.

A glance at the register of the college for its first five years

reveals such men as these among his best students. The first

Bengali prizeman of Carey was W. Butterworth Bayley, whose long

career of blameless uprightness and marked ability culminated in the

temporary seat of Governor-General, and who was followed in the

service by a son worthy of him. The second was that Brian H.

Hodgson who, when Resident of Nepal, of all his contemporaries won

for himself the greatest reputation as a scholar, who fought side by

side with the Serampore brotherhood the battle of the vernaculars of

the people. Charles, afterwards Lord Metcalfe, had been the first

student to enter the college. He was on its Persian side, and he

learned while still under its discipline that "humility, patience,

and obedience to the divine will" which unostentatiously marked his

brilliant life and soothed his spirit in the agonies of a fatal

disease. He and Bayley were inseparable. Of the first set, too,

were Richard Jenkins, who was to leave his mark on history as

Nagpoor Resident and author of the Report of 1826; and Romer, who

rose to be Governor of Bombay for a time. In those early years the

two Birds passed through the classes--Robert Mertins Bird, who was

to found the great land revenue school of Hindostan; and Wilberforce

Bird, who governed India while Lord Ellenborough played at soldiers,

and to whom the legal suppression of slavery in Southern Asia is

due. Names of men second to those, such as Elliot and Thackeray,

Hamilton and Martin, the Shakespeares and Plowdens, the Moneys, the

Rosses and Keenes, crowd the honour lists. One of the last to enjoy

the advantages of the college before its abolition was John

Lawrence, who used to confess that he was never good at languages,

but whose vigorous Hindostani made many an ill-doing Raja tremble,

while his homely conversation, interspersed with jokes, encouraged

the toiling ryot.

These, and men like these, sat at the feet of Carey, where they

learned not only to be scholars but to treat the natives kindly,

and--some of them--even as brethren in Christ. Then from teaching

the future rulers of the East, the missionary-professor turned to

his Bengali preaching and his Benevolent Institution, to his visits

to the prisoners and his intercourse with the British soldiers in

Fort William. And when the four days' work in Calcutta was over,

the early tide bore him swiftly up the Hoogli to the study where,

for the rest of the week, he gave himself to the translation of the

Bible into the languages of the people and of their leaders.

CHAPTER X

THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST--BIBLE TRANSLATION

1801-1832

The Bible Carey's missionary weapon--Other vernacular

translators--Carey's modest but just description of his labours--His

philological key--Type-cutting and type-casting by a Hindoo

blacksmith--The first manufacture of paper and steam-engines in the

East--Carey takes stock of the translation work at the opening of

1808--In his workshop--A seminary of Bible translators--William

Yates, shoemaker, the Coverdale of the Bengali Bible--Wenger--A

Bengali Luther wanted--Carey's Bengali Bible--How the New Testament

was printed--The first copy offered to God--Reception of the volume

by Lord Spencer and George III.--Self-evidencing power of the first

edition--The Bible in Ooriya--In Maghadi, Assamese, Khasi, and

Manipoori--Marathi, Konkani, and Goojarati versions--The translation

into Hindi and its many dialects--The Dravidian translations--Tale

of the Pushtoo Bible--The Sikhs and the Bible--The first Burman

version and press--The British and Foreign Bible Society--Deaths,

earthquake, and fire in 1812--Destruction of the press--Thomason's

description of the smoking ruins--Carey's heroism as to his

manuscripts--Enthusiastic sympathy of India and Christendom--The

ph nix and its feathers.?

Every great reform in the world has been, in the first instance, the

work of one man, who, however much he may have been the product of

his time, has conceived and begun to execute the movement which

transforms society. This is true alike of the moral and the

physical forces of history, of contemporaries so apparently opposite

in character and aims as Carey and Clarkson on the one side and

Napoleon and Wellington on the other. Carey stood alone in his

persistent determination that the Church should evangelise the

world. He was no less singular in the means which he insisted on as

the first essential condition of its evangelisation--the vernacular

translation of the Bible. From the Scriptures alone, while yet a

journeyman shoemaker of eighteen, "he had formed his own system,"

and had been filled with the divine missionary idea. That was a

year before the first Bible Society was formed in 1780 to circulate

the English Bible among soldiers and sailors; and, a quarter of a

century before his own success led to the formation in 1804 of the

British and Foreign Bible Society. From the time of his youth, when

he realised the self-evidencing power of the Bible, Carey's unbroken

habit was to begin every morning by reading one chapter of the

Bible, first in English, and then in each of the languages, soon,

numbering six, which he had himself learned.

Hence the translation of the Bible into all the languages and

principal dialects of India and Eastern Asia was the work above all

others to which Carey set himself from the time, in 1793, when he

acquired the Bengali. He preached, he taught, he "discipled" in

every form then reasonable and possible, and in the fullest sense of

his Master's missionary charge. But the one form of most pressing

and abiding importance, the condition without which neither true

faith, nor true science, nor true civilisation could exist or be

propagated outside of the narrow circle to be reached by the one

herald's voice, was the publishing of the divine message in the

mother tongues of the millions of Asiatic men and women, boys and

girls, and in the learned tongues also of their leaders and priests.

Wyclif had first done this for the English-reading races of all

time, translating from the Latin, and so had begun the Reformation,

religious and political, not only in Britain but in Western

Christendom. Erasmus and Luther had followed him--the former in his

Greek and Latin New Testament and in his Paraphrase of the Word for

"women and cobblers, clowns, mechanics, and even the Turks"; the

latter in his great vernacular translation of the edition of

Erasmus, who had never ceased to urge his contemporaries to

translate the Scriptures "into all tongues." Tyndale had first

given England the Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek. And now one

of these cobblers was prompted and enabled by the Spirit who is the

author of the truth in the Scriptures, to give to South and Eastern

Asia the sacred books which its Syrian sons, from Moses and Ezra to

Paul and John, had been inspired to write for all races and all

ages. Emphatically, Carey and his later coadjutors deserve the

language of the British and Foreign Bible Society, when, in 1827, it

made to Serampore a last grant of money for translation--"Future

generations will apply to them the words of the translators of the

English Bible--'Therefore blessed be they and most honoured their

names that break the ice and give the onset in that which helped

them forward to the saving of souls. Now what can be more available

thereto than to deliver God's book unto God's people in a tongue

which they understand?'" Carey might tolerate interruption when

engaged in other work, but for forty years he never allowed anything

to shorten the time allotted to the Bible work. "You, madam," he

wrote in 1797 to a lady as to many a correspondent, "will excuse my

brevity when I inform you that all my time for writting letters is

stolen from the work of transcribing the Scriptures into the Bengali

language."

>From no mere humility, but with an accurate judgment in the state of

scholarship and criticism at the opening of last century, Carey

always insisted that he was a forerunner, breaking up the way for

successors like Yates, Wenger, and Rouse, who, in their turn, must

be superseded by purely native Tyndales and Luthers in the Church of

India. He more than once deprecated the talk of his having

translated the Bible into forty languages and dialects.16 As we

proceed that will be a apparent which he did with his own hand, that

which his colleagues accomplished, that which he revised and edited

both of their work and of the pundits', and that which he corrected

and printed for others at the Serampore press under the care of

Ward. It is to these four lines of work, which centred in him, as

most of them originally proceeded from his conception and advocacy,

that the assertion as to the forty translations is strictly

applicable. The Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit translations

were his own. The Chinese was similarly the work of Marshman. The

Hindi versions, in their many dialects, and the Ooriya, were blocked

out by his colleagues and the pundits. He saw through the press the

Hindostani, Persian, Malay, Tamil, and other versions of the whole

or portions of the Scriptures. He ceased not, night and day, if by

any means, with a loving catholicity, the Word of God might be given

to the millions.

Writing in 1904 on the centenary of the British and Foreign Bible

Society, Mr. George A. Grierson, C.I.E., Ph.D., D.Litt., the head of

the Linguistic Survey of India, sums up authoritatively the work of

Carey and his assistants. "The great-hearted band of Serampore

missionaries issued translations of the Bible or of the New

Testament in more than forty languages. Before them the number of

Protestant versions of the Bible in the speeches of India could be

counted on the fingers of one hand. The Dutch of Ceylon undertook a

Tamil New Testament in 1688, which was followed in 1715 by another

version from the pen of Ziegenbalg. The famous missionary,

Schultze, between 1727 and 1732 made a Telugu version which was

never printed, and later, between 1745 and 1758, he published at

Halle a Hindostani translation of the New Testament and of a portion

of Genesis. A manuscript version of portions of the Bible in

Bengali was made by Thomas in 1791; and then the great Serampore

series began with Carey's Bengali New Testament published in 1801.

Most of these Serampore versions were, it is true, first attempts

and have been superseded by more accurate versions, but the first

step is always the most important one, and this was taken by Carey

and his brethren."

Carey's correspondent in this and purely scholarly subjects was Dr.

Ryland, an accomplished Hebraist and Biblical critic for that day,

at the head of the Bristol College. Carey's letters, plentifully

sprinkled with Hebrew and Greek, show the jealousy with which he

sought to convey the divine message accurately, and the unwearied

sense of responsibility under which he worked. Biblical criticism,

alike as to the original text and to the exegesis of the sacred

writings, is so very modern a science, that these letters have now

only a historical interest. But this communication to Ryland shows

how he worked from the first:--

"CALCUTTA, 14th Dec. 1803.--We some time ago engaged in an

undertaking, of which we intended to say nothing until it was

accomplished; but an unforeseen providence made it necessary for us

to disclose it. It is as follows: About a year and a half ago, some

attempts were made to engage Mr. Gilchrist in the translation of the

Scriptures into the Hindostani language. By something or other it

was put by. The Persian was also at the same time much talked of,

but given up, or rather not engaged in. At this time several

considerations prevailed on us to set ourselves silently upon a

translation into these languages. We accordingly hired two

moonshees to assist us in it, and each of us took our share; Brother

Marshman took Matthew and Luke; Brother Ward, Mark and John; and

myself the remaining part of the New Testament into Hindostani. I

undertook no part of the Persian; but, instead thereof, engaged in

translating it into Maharastra, commonly called the Mahratta

language, the person who assists me in the Hindostani being a

Mahratta. Brother Marshman has finished Matthew, and, instead of

Luke, has begun the Acts. Brother Ward has done part of John, and I

have done the Epistles, and about six chapters of the Revelation;

and have proceeded as far as the second epistle of the Corinthians

in the revisal: they have done a few chapters into Persian, and I a

few into Mahratta. Thus the matter stood, till a few days ago Mr.

Buchanan informed me that a military gentleman had translated the

Gospels into Hindostani and Persian, and had made a present of them

to the College, and that the College Council had voted the printing

of them. This made it necessary for me to say what we had been

about; and had it not been for this circumstance we should not have

said anything till we had got the New Testament at least pretty

forward in printing. I am very glad that Major Colebrooke has done

it. We will gladly do what others do not do, and wish all speed to

those who do anything in this way. We have it in our power, if our

means would do for it, in the space of about fifteen years to have

the word of God translated and printed in all the languages of the

East. Our situation is such as to furnish us with the best

assistance from natives of the different countries. We can have

types of all the different characters cast here; and about 700

rupees per month, part of which I hope we shall be able to furnish,

would complete the work. The languages are the Hindostani (Hindi),

Maharastra, Ooriya, Telinga, Bhotan, Burman, Chinese, Cochin

Chinese, Tongkinese, and Malay. On this great work we have fixed

our eyes. Whether God will enable us to accomplish it, or any

considerable part of it, is uncertain."

But all these advantages, his own genius for languages, his

unconquerable plodding directed by a divine motive, his colleagues'

co-operation, the encouragement of learned societies and the public,

and the number of pundits and moonshees increased by the College of

Fort William, would have failed to open the door of the East to the

sacred Scriptures had the philological key of the Sanskrit been

wanting or undiscovered. In the preface to his Sanskrit grammar,

quoted by the Quarterly Review with high approbation, Carey wrote

that it gave him the meaning of four out of every five words of the

principal languages of the whole people of India:--"The peculiar

grammar of any one of these may be acquired in a couple of months,

and then the language lies open to the student. The knowledge of

four words in five enables him to read with pleasure, and renders

the acquisition of the few new words, as well as the idiomatic

expressions, a matter of delight rather than of labour. Thus the

Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, is so

much like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali pundit

is almost equal to the correction of an Orissa proof sheet; and the

first time that I read a page of Goojarati the meaning appeared so

obvious as to render it unnecessary to ask the pundit questions."

The mechanical apparatus of types, paper, and printing seem to have

been provided by the same providential foresight as the intellectual

and the spiritual. We have seen how, when he was far enough

advanced in his translation, Carey amid the swamps of Dinapoor

looked to England for press, type, paper, and printer. He got the

last, William Ward, a man of his own selection, worthy to be his

colleague. But he had hardly despatched his letter when he found or

made all the rest in Bengal itself. It was from the old press

bought in Calcutta, set up in Mudnabati, and removed to Serampore,

that the first edition of the Bengali New Testament was printed.

The few rare and venerable copies have now a peculiar bibliographic

interest; the type and the paper alike are coarse and blurred.

Sir Charles Wilkins, the Caxton of India, had with his own hands cut

the punches and cast the types from which Halhed's Bengali grammar

was printed at Hoogli in 1778. He taught the art to a native

blacksmith, Panchanan, who went to Serampore in search of work just

when Carey was in despair for a fount of the sacred Devanagari type

for his Sanskirt grammar, and for founts of the other languages

besides Bengali which had never been printed. They thus tell the

story in a Memoir Relative to the Translations, published in 1807:--

"It will be obvious that in the present state of things in India it

was in many instances necessary to cast new founts of types in

several of these languages. Happily for us and India at large

Wilkins had led the way in this department; and by persevering

industry, the value of which can scarcely be appreciated, under the

greatest disadvantages with respect to materials and workmen, had

brought the Bengali to a high degree of perfection. Soon after our

settling at Serampore the providence of God brought to us the very

artist who had wrought with Wilkins in that work, and in a great

measure imbibed his ideas. By his assistance we erected a

letter-foundry; and although he is now dead, he had so fully

communicated his art to a number of others, that they carry forward

the work of type-casting, and even of cutting the matrices, with a

degree of accuracy which would not disgrace European artists. These

have cast for us two or three founts of Bengali; and we are now

employing them in casting a fount on a construction which bids fair

to diminish the expense of paper, and the size of the book at least

one-fourth, without affecting the legibility of the character. Of

the Devanagari character we have also cast an entire new fount,

which is esteemed the most beautiful of the kind in India. It

consists of nearly 1000 different combinations of characters, so

that the expense of cutting the patterns only amounted to 1500

rupees, exclusive of metal and casting.

"In the Orissa we have been compelled also to cast a new fount of

types, as none before existed in that character. The fount consists

of about 300 separate combinations, and the whole expense of cutting

and casting has amounted to at least 1000 rupees. The character,

though distinct, is of a moderate size, and will comprise the whole

New Testament in about 700 pages octavo, which is about a fourth

less than the Bengali. Although in the Mahratta country the

Devanagari character is well known to men of education, yet a

character is current among the men of business which is much

smaller, and varies considerably in form from the Nagari, though the

number and power of the letters nearly correspond. We have cast a

fount in this character, in which we have begun to print the

Mahratta New Testament, as well as a Mahratta dictionary. This

character is moderate in size, distinct and beautiful. It will

comprise the New Testament in perhaps a less number of pages than

the Orissa. The expense of casting, etc., has been much the same.

We stand in need of three more founts; one in the Burman, another

in the Telinga and Kernata, and a third in the Seek's character.

These, with the Chinese characters, will enable us to go through

the work. An excellent and extensive fount of Persian we received

from you, dear brethren, last year."

Panchanan's apprentice, Monohur, continued to make elegant founts of

type in all Eastern languages for the mission and for sale to others

for more than forty years, becoming a benefactor not only to

literature but to Christian civilisation to an extent of which he

was unconscious, for he remained a Hindoo of the blacksmith caste.

In 1839, when he first went to India as a young missionary, the

Rev. James Kennedy17 saw him, as the present writer has often since

seen his successor, cutting the matrices or casting the type for the

Bibles, while he squatted below his favourite idol, under the

auspices of which alone he would work. Serampore continued down

till 1860 to be the principal Oriental typefoundry of the East.18

Hardly less service did the mission come to render to the

manufacture of paper in course of time, giving the name of Serampore

to a variety known all over India. At first Carey was compelled to

print his Bengali Testament on a dingy, porous, rough substance

called Patna paper. Then he began to depend on supplies from

England, which in those days reached the press at irregular times,

often impeding the work, and was most costly. This was not all.

Native paper, whether mill or hand-made, being sized with rice

paste, attracted the bookworm and white ant, so that the first

sheets of a work which lingered in the press were sometimes devoured

by these insects before the last sheets were printed off. Carey

used to preserve his most valuable manuscripts by writing on

arsenicated paper, which became of a hideous yellow colour, though

it is to this alone we owe the preservation in the library of

Serampore College of five colossal volumes of his polyglot

dictionary prepared for the Bible translation work. Many and long

were the experiments of the missionaries to solve the paper

difficulty, ending in the erection of a tread-mill on which relays

of forty natives reduced the raw material in the paper-engine, until

one was accidentally killed.

The enterprise of Mr. William Jones, who first worked the Raneegunj

coal-field, suggested the remedy in the employment of a

steam-engine. One of twelve-horse power was ordered from Messrs.

Thwaites and Rothwell of Bolton. This was the first ever erected in

India, and it was a purely missionary locomotive. The "machine of

fire," as they called it, brought crowds of natives to the mission,

whose curiosity tried the patience of the engineman imported to work

it; while many a European who had never seen machinery driven by

steam came to study and to copy it. The date was the 27th of March

1820, when "the engine went in reality this day." From that time

till 1865 Serampore became the one source of supply for local as

distinguished from imported and purely native hand-made paper. Even

the cartridges of Mutiny notoriety in 1857 were from this factory,

though it had long ceased to be connected with the mission.

Dr. Carey thus took stock of the translating enterprise in a letter

to Dr. Ryland:--

"22nd January 1808.--Last year may be reckoned among the most

important which this mission has seen--not for the numbers converted

among the natives, for they have been fewer than in some preceding

years, but for the gracious care which God has exercised towards us.

We have been enabled to carry on the translation and printing of

the Word of God in several languages. The printing is now going on

in six and the translation into six more. The Bengali is all

printed except from Judges vii. to the end of Esther; Sanskrit New

Testament to Acts xxvii.; Orissa to John xxi.; Mahratta, second

edition, to the end of Matthew; Hindostani (new version) to Mark v.,

and Matthew is begun in Goojarati. The translation is nearly

carried on to the end of John in Chinese, Telinga Kurnata, and the

language of the Seeks. It is carried on to a pretty large extent in

Persian and begun in Burman. The whole Bible was printed in Malay

at Batavia some years ago. The whole is printed in Tamil, and the

Syrian Bishop at Travancore is now superintending a translation from

Syriac into Malayala. I learnt this week that the language of

Kashmeer is a distinct language.

"I have this day been to visit the most learned Hindoo now living;

he speaks only Sanskrit, is more than eighty years old, is

acquainted with the writings and has studied the sentiments of all

their schools of philosophy (usually called the Darshunas of the

Veda). He tells me that this is the sixteenth time that he has

travelled from Rameshwaram to Harhu (viz. from the extreme cape of

the Peninsula to Benares). He was, he says, near Madras when the

English first took possession of it. This man has given his opinion

against the burning of women."

Four years later, in another letter to Ryland, he takes us into his

confidence more fully, showing us not only his sacred workshop, but

ingenuously revealing his own humility and self-sacrifice:--"10th

December 1811.--I have of late been much impressed with the vast

importance of laying a foundation for Biblical criticism in the

East, by preparing grammars of the different languages into which we

have translated or may translate the Bible. Without some such step,

they who follow us will have to wade through the same labour that I

have, in order to stand merely upon the same ground that I now stand

upon. If, however, elementary books are provided, the labour will

be greatly contracted; and a person will be able in a short time to

acquire that which has cost me years of study and toil.

"The necessity which lies upon me of acquiring so many languages,

obliges me to study and write out the grammar of each of them, and

to attend closely to their irregularities and peculiarities. I have

therefore already published grammars of three of them; namely, the

Sanskrit, the Bengali, and the Mahratta. To these I have resolved

to add grammars of the Telinga, Kurnata, Orissa, Punjabi, Kashmeeri,

Goojarati, Nepalese, and Assam languages. Two of these are now in

the press, and I hope to have two or three more of them out by the

end of the next year.

"This may not only be useful in the way I have stated, but may serve

to furnish an answer to a question which has been more than once

repeated, 'How can these men translate into so great a number of

languages?' Few people know what may be done till they try, and

persevere in what they undertake.

"I am now printing a dictionary of the Bengali, which will be pretty

large, for I have got to page 256, quarto, and am not near through

the first letter. That letter, however, begins more words than any

two others.

"To secure the gradual perfection of the translations, I have also

in my mind, and indeed have been long collecting materials for, An

Universal Dictionary of the Oriental languages derived from the

Sanskrit. I mean to take the Sanskrit, of course, as the

groundwork, and to give the different acceptations of every word,

with examples of their application, in the manner of Johnson, and

then to give the synonyms in the different languages derived from

the Sanskrit, with the Hebrew and Greek terms answering thereto;

always putting the word derived from the Sanskrit term first, and

then those derived from other sources. I intend always to give the

etymology of the Sanskrit term, so that that of the terms deduced

from it in the cognate languages will be evident. This work will be

great, and it is doubtful whether I shall live to complete it; but I

mean to begin to arrange the materials, which I have been some years

collecting for this purpose, as soon as my Bengali dictionary is

finished. Should I live to accomplish this, and the translations in

hand, I think I can then say, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant

depart in peace.'"

The ardent scholar had twenty-three years of toil before him in this

happy work. But he did not know this, while each year the labour

increased, and the apprehension grew that he and his colleagues

might at any time be removed without leaving a trained successor.

They naturally looked first to the sons of the mission for

translators as they had already done for preachers.

To Dr. Carey personally, however, the education of a young

missionary specially fitted to be his successor, as translator and

editor of the translations, was even more important. Such a man was

found in William Yates, born in 1792, and in the county,

Leicestershire, in which Carey brought the Baptist mission to the

birth. Yates was in his early years also a shoemaker, and member of

Carey's old church in Harvey Lane, when under the great Robert Hall,

who said to the youth's father, "Your son, sir, will be a great

scholar and a good preacher, and he is a holy young man." In 1814

he became the last of the young missionaries devoted to the cause by

Fuller, soon to pass away, Ryland, and Hall. Yates had not been many

months at Serampore when, with the approval of his brethren, Carey

wrote to Fuller, on 17th May 1815:--"I am much inclined to associate

him with myself in the translations. My labour is greater than at

any former period. We have now translations of the Bible going

forward in twenty-seven languages, all of which are in the press

except two or three. The labour of correcting and revising all of

them lies on me." By September we find Yates writing:--"Dr. Carey

sends all the Bengali proofs to me to review. I read them over, and

if there is anything I do not understand, or think to be wrong, I

mark it. We then converse over it, and if it is wrong, he alters

it; but if not, he shows me the reason why it is right, and thus

will initiate me into the languages as fast as I can learn them. He

wishes me to begin the Hindi very soon. Since I have been here I

have read three volumes in Bengali, and they have but six of

consequence in prose. There are abundance in Sanskrit." "Dr. Carey

has treated me with the greatest affection and kindness, and told me

he will give me every information he can, and do anything in his

power to promote my happiness." What Baruch was to the prophet

Jeremiah, that Yates might have been to Carey, who went so far in

urging him to remain for life in Serampore as to say, "if he did not

accept the service it would be, in his judgment, acting against

Providence, and the blessing of God was not to be expected." Yates

threw in his lot with the younger men who, in Calcutta after

Fuller's death, began the Society's as distinct from the Serampore

mission. If Carey was the Wyclif and Tyndale, Yates was the

Coverdale of the Bengali and Sanskrit Bible. Wenger, their

successor, was worthy of both. Bengal still waits for the first

native revision of the great work which these successive pioneers

have gradually improved. When shall Bengal see its own Luther?

The Bengali Bible was the first as it was the most important of the

translations. The province, or lieutenant-governorship then had the

same area as France, and contained more than double its population,

or eighty millions. Of the three principal vernaculars, Bengali is

spoken by forty-five millions of Hindoos and Mohammedans. It was

for all the natives of Bengal and of India north of the Dekhan

("south") tableland, but especially for the Bengali-speaking people,

that William Carey created a literary language a century ago.

The first Bengali version of the whole New Testament Carey

translated from the original Greek before the close of 1796. The

only English commentary used was the Family Expositor of Doddridge,

published in 1738, and then the most critical in the language. Four

times he revised the manuscript, with a Greek concordance in his

hand, and he used it not only with Ram Basu by his side, the most

accomplished of early Bengali scholars, but with the natives around

him of all classes. By 1800 Ward had arrived as printer, the press

was perfected at Serampore, and the result of seven years of toil

appeared in February 1801, in the first edition of 2000 copies,

costing 612. The printing occupied nine months. The type was set?

up by Ward and Carey's son Felix with their own hands; "for about a

month at first we had a Brahman compositor, but we were quite weary

of him. We kept four pressmen constantly employed." A public

subscription had been opened for the whole Bengali Bible at Rs. 32,

or 4 a copy as exchange then was, and nearly fifty copies had been?

at once subscribed for. It was this edition which immediately led

to Carey's appointment to the College of Fort William, and it was

that appointment which placed Carey in a position, philological and

financial, to give the Bible to the peoples of the farther East in

their own tongue.

Some loving memories cluster round the first Bengali version of the

New Testament which it is well to collect. On Tuesday, 18th March

1800, Ward's journal19 records: "Brother Carey took an impression at

the press of the first page in Matthew." The translator was himself

the pressman. As soon as the whole of this Gospel was ready, 500

copies of it were struck off for immediate circulation, "which we

considered of importance as containing a complete life of the

Redeemer." Four days after an advertisement in the official

Calcutta Gazette, announcing that the missionaries had established a

press at Serampore and were printing the Bible in Bengali, roused

Lord Wellesley, who had fettered the press in British India. Mr.

Brown was able to inform the Governor-General that this very

Serampore press had refused to print a political attack on the

English Government, and that it was intended for the spiritual

instruction only of the natives. This called forth the assurance

from that liberal statesman that he was personally favourable to the

conversion of the heathen. When he was further told that such an

Oriental press would be invaluable to the College of Fort William,

he not only withdrew his opposition but made Carey first teacher of

Bengali. It was on the 7th February 1801 that the last sheet with

the final corrections was put into Carey's hands. When a volume had

been bound it was reverently offered to God by being placed on the

Communion-table of the chapel, and the mission families and the

new-made converts gathered around it with solemn thanksgiving to God

led by Krishna Pal. Carey preached from the words (Col. iii. 11)

"Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom." The

centenary was celebrated in Calcutta in 1901, under Dr. Rouse, whose

fine scholarship had just revised the translation.

When the first copies reached England, Andrew Fuller sent one to the

second Earl Spencer, the peer who had used the wealth of Sarah,

Duchess of Marlborough, to collect the great library at Althorp.

Carey had been a poor tenant of his, though the Earl knew it not.

When the Bengali New Testament reached him, with its story, he sent

a cheque for 50 to help to translate the Old Testament, and he took?

care that a copy should be presented to George III., as by his own

request. Mr. Bowyer was received one morning at Windsor, and along

with the volume presented an address expressing the desire that His

Majesty might live to see its principles universally prevail

throughout his Eastern dominions. On this the lord in waiting

whispered a doubt whether the book had come through the proper

channel. At once the king replied that the Board of Control had

nothing to do with it, and turning to Mr. Bowyer said, "I am greatly

pleased to find that any of my subjects are employed in this

manner."

This now rare volume, to be found on the shelves of the Serampore

College Library, where it leads the host of the Carey translations,

is coarse and unattractive in appearance compared with its latest

successors. In truth the second edition, which appeared in 1806,

was almost a new version. The criticism of his colleagues and

others, especially of a ripe Grecian like Dr. Marshman, the growth

of the native church, and his own experience as a Professor of

Sanskrit and Marathi as well as Bengali, gave Carey new power in

adapting the language to the divine ideas of which he made it the

medium. But the first edition was not without its self-evidencing

power. Seventeen years after, when the mission extended to the old

capital of Dacca, there were found several villages of Hindoo-born

peasants who had given up idol-worship, were renowned for their

truthfulness, and, as searching for a true teacher come from God,

called themselves "Satya-gooroos." They traced their new faith to a

much-worn book kept in a wooden box in one of their villages. No

one could say whence it had come; all they knew was that they had

possessed it for many years. It was Carey's first Bengali version

of the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the

wide and elastic bounds of Hindooism, and even, as we shall see,

amid fanatical Mussulmans beyond the frontier, the Bible, dimly

understood without a teacher, has led to puritan sects like this, as

to earnest inquirers like the chamberlain of Queen Candace.

The third edition of the Bengali Testament was published in 1811 in

folio for the use of the native congregations by that time formed.

The fourth, consisting of 5000 copies, appeared in 1816, and the

eighth in 1832. The venerable scholar, like Columba at Iona over

the thirty-fourth psalm, and Baeda at Jarrow over the sixth chapter

of John's Gospel, said as he corrected the last sheet--the last

after forty years' faithful and delighted toil: "My work is done; I

have nothing more to do but to wait the will of the Lord." The Old

Testament from the Hebrew appeared in portions from 1802 to 1809.

Such was the ardour of the translator, that he had finished the

correction of his version of the first chapter of Genesis in January

1794. When he read it to two pundits from Nuddea, he told Fuller in

his journal of that month they seemed much pleased with the account

of the creation, but they objected to the omission of patala, their

imaginary place beneath the earth, which they thought should have

been mentioned. At this early period Carey saw the weakness of

Hindooism as a pretended revelation, from its identification with

false physics, just as Duff was to see and use it afterwards with

tremendous effect, and wrote:--"There is a necessity of explaining

to them several circumstances relative to geography and chronology,

as they have many superstitious opinions on those subjects which are

closely connected with their systems of idolatry." The Bengali

Bible was the result of fifteen years' sweet toil, in which Marshman

read the Greek and Carey the Bengali; every one of their colleagues

examined the proof sheets, and Carey finally wrote with his own pen

the whole of the five octavo volumes. In the forty years of his

missionary career Carey prepared and saw through the press five

editions of the Old Testament and eight editions of the New in

Bengali.

The Sanskrit version was translated from the original, and written

out by the toiling scholar himself. Sir William Jones is said to

have been able to secure his first pundit's help only by paying him

Rs. 500 a month, or 700 a year. Carey engaged and trained his many?

pundits at a twentieth of that sum. He well knew that the Brahmans

would scorn a book in the language of the common people. "What,"

said one who was offered the Hindi version, "even if the books

should contain divine knowledge, they are nothing to us. The

knowledge of God contained in them is to us as milk in a vessel of

dog's skin, utterly polluted." But, writes the annalist of Biblical

Translations in India, Carey's Sanskrit version was cordially

received by the Brahmans. Destroyed in the fire in 1812, the Old

Testament historical books were again translated, and appeared in

1815. In 1827 the aged saint had strength to bring out the first

volume of a thorough revision, and to leave the manuscript of the

second volume, on his death, as a legacy to his successors, Yates

and Wenger. Against Vedas and Upanishads, Brahmanas and Epics, he

set the Sanskrit Bible.

The whole number of completely translated and published versions of

the sacred Scriptures which Carey sent forth was twenty-eight. Of

these seven included the whole Bible, and twenty-one contained the

books of the New Testament. Each translation has a history, a

spiritual romance of its own. Each became almost immediately a

silent but effectual missionary to the peoples of Asia, as well as

the scholarly and literary pioneer of those later editions and

versions from which the native churches of farther Asia derive the

materials of their lively growth.

The Ooriya version was almost the first to be undertaken after the

Bengali, to which language it bears the same relation as rural

Scotch to English, though it has a written character of its own.

What is now the Orissa division of Bengal, separating it from

Madras to the south-west, was added to the empire in 1803. This

circumstance, and the fact that its Pooree district, after centuries

of sun-worship and then shiva-worship, had become the high-place of

the vaishnava cult of Jaganath and his car, which attracted and

often slew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year, led Carey

to prepare at once for the press the Ooriya Bible. The chief

pundit, Mritunjaya, skilled in both dialects, first adapted the

Bengali version to the language of the Ooriyas, which was his own.

Carey then took the manuscript, compared it with the original

Greek, and corrected it verse by verse. The New Testament was ready

in 1809, and the Old Testament in 1815, the whole in four volumes.

Large editions were quickly bought up and circulated. These led to

the establishment of the General Baptist Society's missionaries at

Cuttak, the capital.

In 1814 the Serampore Bible translation college, as we may call it,

began the preparation of the New Testament in Maghadi, another of

the languages allied to the Bengali, and derived from the Sanskrit

through the Pali, because that was the vernacular of Buddhism in its

original seat; an edition of 1000 copies appeared in 1824. It was

intended to publish a version in the Maithili language of Bihar,

which has a literature stretching back to the fourteenth century,

that every class might have the Word of God in their own dialect.

But Carey's literary enthusiasm and scholarship had by this time

done so much to develop and extend the power of Bengali proper, that

it had begun to supersede all such dialects, except Ooriya and the

northern vernaculars of the valley of the Brahmapootra. In 1810 the

Serampore press added the Assamese New Testament to its

achievements. In 1819 the first edition appeared, in 1826 the

province became British, and in 1832 Carey had the satisfaction of

issuing the Old Testament, and setting apart Mr. Rae, a Scottish

soldier, who had settled there, as the first missionary at Gowhatti.

To these must be added, as in the Bengali character though

non-Aryan languages, versions in Khasi and Manipoori, the former for

the democratic tribes of the Khasia hills among whom the Welsh

Calvinists have since worked, and the latter for the curious Hindoo

snake-people on the border of Burma, who have taught Europe the game

of polo.

Another immediate successor of the Bengali translation was the

Marathi, of which also Carey was professor in the College of Fort

William. By 1804 he was himself hard at work on this version, by

1811 the first edition of the New Testament appeared, and by 1820

the Old Testament left the press. It was in a dialect peculiar to

Nagpoor, and was at first largely circulated by Lieutenant Moxon in

the army there. In 1812 Carey sent the missionary Aratoon to Bombay

and Surat just after Henry Martyn had written that the only

Christian in the city who understood his evangelical sermon was a

ropemaker just arrived from England. At the same time he was busy

with a version in the dialect of the Konkan, the densely-peopled

coast district to the south of Bombay city, inhabited chiefly by the

ablest Brahmanical race in India. In 1819 the New Testament

appeared in this translation, having been under preparation at

Serampore for eleven years. Thus Carey sought to turn to Christ the

twelve millions of Hindoos who, from Western India above and below

the great coast-range known as the Sahyadri or "delectable"

mountains, had nearly wrested the whole peninsula from the

Mohammedans, and had almost anticipated the life-giving rule of the

British, first at Panipat and then as Assye. Meanwhile new

missionaries had been taking possession of those western districts

where the men of Serampore had sowed the first seed and reaped the

first fruits. The charter of 1813 made it possible for the American

Missionaries to land there, and for the local Bible Society to

spring into existence. Dr. John Wilson and his Scottish colleagues

followed them. Carey and his brethren welcomed these and retired

from that field, confining themselves to providing, during the next

seven years, a Goojarati version for the millions of Northern

Bombay, including the hopeful Parsees, and resigning that, too, to

the London Missionary Society after issuing the New Testament in

1820.

Mr. Christopher Anderson justly remarks, in his Annals of the

English Bible, published half a century ago:--"Time will show, and

in a very singular manner, that every version, without exception,

which came from Carey's hands, has a value affixed to it which the

present generation, living as it were too near an object, is not yet

able to estimate or descry. Fifty years hence the character of this

extraordinary and humble man will be more correctly appreciated."

In none of the classes of languages derived from the Sanskrit was

the zeal of Carey and his associates so remarkable as in the Hindi.

So early as 1796 he wrote of this the most widely extended

offspring of the Sanskrit:--"I have acquired so much of the Hindi as

to converse in it and preach for some time intelligibly...It is the

current language of all the west from Rajmahal to Delhi, and perhaps

farther. With this I can be understood nearly all over Hindostan."

By the time that he issued the sixth memoir of the translations

Chamberlain's experiences in North-Western India led Carey to write

that he had ascertained the existence of twenty dialects of Hindi,

with the same vocabulary but different sets of terminations. The

Bruj or Brijbhasa Gospels were finished in 1813, two years after

Chamberlain had settled in Agra, and the New Testament was completed

nine years after. This version of the Gospels led the Brahman

priest, Anand Masih, to Christ. In their eagerness for a copy of

the Old Testament, which appeared in 1818, many Sepoys brought

testimonials from their commanding officers, and in one year it led

eighteen converts to Christ. The other Hindi dialects, in which the

whole New Testament or the Gospels appeared, will be found at page

177 {see footnote number 16}. The parent Hindi translation was made

by Carey with his own hand from the original languages between 1802

and 1807, and ran through many large editions till Mr. Chamberlain's

was preferred by Carey himself in 1819.

We may pass over the story of the Dravidian versions, the Telugoo20

New Testament and Pentateuch, and the Kanarese. Nor need we do more

than refer to the Singhalese, "derived from the previous labours of

Dr. Carey" by Tolfrey, the Persian, Malayalam, and other versions

made by others, but edited or carefully carried through the press by

Carey. The wonderful tale of his Bible work is well illustrated by

a man who, next to the Lawrences, was the greatest Englishman who

has governed the Punjab frontier, the hero of Mr. Ruskin's book, A

Knight's Faith. In that portion of his career which Sir Herbert

Edwardes gave to the world under the title of A Year on the Punjab

Frontier in 1848-49, and in which he describes his bloodless

conquest of the wild valley of Bunnoo, we find this gem embedded.

The writer was at the time in the Gundapoor country, of which

Kulachi is the trade-centre between the Afghan pass of Ghwalari and

Dera Ismail Kan, where the dust of Sir Henry Durand now lies:--

"A highly interesting circumstance connected with the Indian trade

came under my notice. Ali Khan, Gundapoor, the uncle of the present

chief, Goold d Khan, told me he could remember well, as a youth,?

being sent by his father and elder brother with a string of Cabul

horses to the fair of Hurdw r, on the Ganges. He also showed me a?

Pushtoo version of the Bible, printed at Serampore in 1818, which he

said had been given him thirty years before at Hurdw r by an English?

gentleman, who told him to 'take care of it, and neither fling it

into the fire nor the river; but hoard it up against the day when

the British should be rulers of his country!' Ali Khan said little

to anybody of his possessing this book, but put it carefully by in a

linen cover, and produced it with great mystery when I came to

settle the revenue of his nephew's country, 'thinking that the time

predicted by the Englishman had arrived!' The only person, I

believe, to whom he had shown the volume was a Moolluh, who read

several passages in the Old Testament, and told Ali Khan 'it was a

true story, and was all about their own Muhommudan prophets, Father

Moses and Father Noah.'

"I examined the book with great interest. It was not printed in the

Persian character, but the common Pushtoo language of Afghanistan;

and was the only specimen I had ever seen of Pushtoo reduced to

writing. The accomplishment of such a translation was a highly

honourable proof of the zeal and industry of the Serampore mission;

and should these pages ever meet the eye of Mr. John Marshman, of

Serampore,21 whose own pen is consistently guided by a love of civil

order and religious truth, he may probably be able to identify 'the

English gentleman' who, thirty-two years ago on the banks of the

Ganges, at the then frontier of British India, gave to a young

Afghan chief, from beyond the distant Indus, a Bible in his own

barbarous tongue, and foresaw the day when the followers of the 'Son

of David' should extend their dominion to the 'Throne of Solomon.'"

Hurdw r, as the spot at which the Ganges debouches into the plains,?

is the scene of the greatest pilgrim gathering in India, especially

every twelfth year. Then three millions of people used to assemble,

and too often carried, all over Asia, cholera which extended to

Europe. The missionaries made this, like most pilgrim resorts, a

centre of preaching and Bible circulation, and doubtless it was from

Thompson, Carey's Missionary at Delhi, that this copy of the Pushtoo

Bible was received. It was begun by Dr. Leyden, and continued for

seven years by the same Afghan maulavee under Carey, in the Arabic

character. The Punjabi Bible, nearly complete, issued first in

1815, had become so popular by 1820 as to lead Carey to report of

the Sikhs that no one of the nations of India had discovered a

stronger desire for the Scriptures than this hardy race. At

Amritsar and Lahore "the book of Jesus is spoken of, is read, and

has caused a considerable stir in the minds of the people." A Thug,

asked how he could have committed so many murders, pointed to it and

said, "If I had had this book I could not have done it." A fakeer,

forty miles from Lodiana, read the book, founded the community of

worshippers of the Sachi Pit Isa, and suffered much persecution in?

a native State.

When Felix Carey returned to Serampore in 1812 to print his Burmese

version of the Gospel of Matthew and his Burmese grammar, his father

determined to send the press at which they were completed to

Rangoon. The three missionaries despatched with it a letter to the

king of Ava, commending to his care "their beloved brethren, who

from love to his majesty's subjects had voluntarily gone to place

themselves under his protection, while they translated the Bible,

the Book of Heaven, which was received and revered" by all the

countries of Europe and America as "the source whence all the

knowledge of virtue and religion was drawn." The king at once

ordered from Serampore a printing-press, like that at Rangoon, for

his own palace at Ava, with workmen to use it. In this Carey saw

the beginning of a mission in the Burman capital, but God had other

designs which the sons and daughters of America, following Judson

first of all, are still splendidly developing, from Rangoon to

Kareng-nee, Siam, and China. The ship containing the press sank in

the Rangoon river, and the first Burmese war soon followed.

Three months after the complete and magnificent plan of translating

the Bible into all the languages of the far East, which the

assistance of his two colleagues and the college of Fort William led

Carey to form, had been laid before Fuller in Northamptonshire, the

British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London. Joseph

Hughes, the Nonconformist who was its first secretary, had been

moved by the need of the Welsh for the Bible in their own tongue.

But the ex-Governor-General, Lord Teignmouth, became its first

president, and the Serampore translators at once turned for

assistance to the new organisation whose work Carey had individually

been doing for ten years at the cost of his two associates and

himself. The catholic Bible Society at once asked Carey's old

friend, Mr. Udny, then a member of the Government in Calcutta, to

form a corresponding committee there of the three

missionaries--their chaplain friends, Brown and Buchanan, and

himself. The chaplains delayed the formation of the committee till

1809, but liberally helped meanwhile in the circulation of the other

appeals issued from Serampore, and even made the proposal which

resulted in Dr. Marshman's wonderful version of the Bible in Chinese

and Ward's improvements in Chinese printing. To the principal

tributary sovereigns of India Dr. Buchanan sent copies of the

vernacular Scriptures already published.

>From 1809 till 1830, or practically through the rest of Carey's

life, the co-operation of Serampore and the Bible Society was

honourable to both. Carey loyally clung to it when in 1811, under

the spell of Henry Martyn's sermon on Christian India, the chaplains

established the Calcutta Auxiliary Bible Society in order to

supersede its corresponding committee. In the Serampore press the

new auxiliary, like the parent Society, found the cheapest and best

means of publishing editions of the New Testament in Singhalese,

Malayalam, and Tamil. The press issued also the Persian New

Testament, first of the Romanist missionary, Sebastiani--"though it

be not wholly free from imperfections, it will doubtless do much

good," wrote Dr. Marshman to Fuller--and then of Henry Martyn, whose

assistant, Sabat, was trained at Serampore. Those three of

Serampore had a Christ-like tolerance, which sprang from the divine

charity of their determination to live only that the Word of God

might sound out through Asia. When in 1830 this auxiliary--which had

at first sought to keep all missionaries out of its executive in

order to conciliate men like Sydney Smith's brother, the

Advocate-General of Bengal--refused to use the translations of Carey

and Yates, and inclined to an earlier version of Ellerton, because

of the translation or transliteration of the Greek words for

"baptism," these two scholars acted thus, as described by the Bible

Society's annalist--they, "with a liberality which does them honour,

permitted the use of their respective versions of the Bengali

Scriptures, with such alterations as were deemed needful in the

disputed word for 'baptism,' they being considered in no way parties

to such alterations." From first to last the British and Foreign

Bible Society, to use its own language, "had the privilege of aiding

the Serampore brethren by grants, amounting to not less than

?13,500." Of this 1475 had been raised by Mr. William Hey, F.R.S.,?

a surgeon at Leeds, who had been so moved by the translation memoir

of 1816 as to offer 500 for the publication of a thousand copies of?

every approved first translation of the New Testament into any

dialect of India. It was with this assistance that most of the

Hindi and the Pushtoo and Punjabi versions were produced.

The cold season of 1811-12 was one ever to be remembered. Death

entered the home of each of the staff of seven missionaries and

carried off wife or children. An earthquake of unusual violence

alarmed the natives. Dr. Carey had buried a grandson, and was at

his weekly work in the college at Calcutta. The sun had just set on

the evening of the 11th March 1812, and the native typefounders,

compositors, pressmen, binders, and writers had gone. Ward alone

lingered in the waning light at his desk settling an account with a

few servants. His two rooms formed the north end of the long

printing-office. The south rooms were filled with paper and printed

materials. Close beyond was the paper-mill. The Bible-publishing

enterprise was at its height. Fourteen founts of Oriental types,

new supplies of Hebrew, Greek, and English types, a vast stock of

paper from the Bible Society, presses, priceless manuscripts of

dictionaries, grammars, and translations, and, above all, the steel

punches of the Eastern letters--all were there, with the deeds and

account-books of the property, and the iron safe containing notes

and rupees. Suffocating smoke burst from the long type-room into

the office. Rushing through it to observe the source of the fire,

he was arrested at the southern rooms by the paper store. Returning

with difficulty and joined by Marshman and the natives, he had every

door and window closed, and then mounting the south roof, he had

water poured through it upon the burning mass for four hours, with

the most hopeful prospect of arresting the ruin. While he was busy

with Marshman in removing the papers in the north end some one

opened a window, when the air set the entire building on flame. By

midnight the roof fell in along its whole length, and the column of

fire leapt up towards heaven. With "solemn serenity" the members of

the mission family remained seated in front of the desolation.

The ruins were still smoking when next evening Dr. Carey arrived

from Calcutta, which was ringing with the sad news. The venerable

scholar had suffered most, for his were the manuscripts; the steel

punches were found uninjured. The Sikh and Telugoo grammars and ten

Bible versions in the press were gone. Second editions of

Confucius. A Dissertation on the Chinese Language, and of Ward on

the Hindoos, and smaller works were destroyed. The translation of

the Ramayana, on which he and Marshman had been busy for a year, was

stopped for ever; fifty years after the present writer came upon

some charred sheets of the fourth volume, which had been on the

press and rescued. The Circular Letter for April 1812 is printed on

paper scorched at the edge. Worst of all was the loss of that

polyglot dictionary of all the languages derived from the Sanskrit

which, if Carey had felt any of this world's ambition, would have

perpetuated his name in the first rank of philologists.

With the delicacy which always marked him Dr. Marshman had himself

gone down to Calcutta next morning to break the news to Carey, who

received it with choking utterance. The two then called on the

friendly chaplain, Thomason, who burst into tears. When the

afternoon tide enabled the three to reach Serampore, after a two

hours' hard pull at the flood, they found Ward rejoicing. He had

been all day clearing away the rubbish, and had just discovered the

punches and matrices unharmed. The five presses too were untouched.

He had already opened out a long warehouse nearer the river-shore,

the lease of which had fallen in to them, and he had already planned

the occupation of that uninviting place in which the famous press of

Serampore and, at the last, the Friend of India weekly newspaper

found a home till 1875. The description of the scene and of its

effect on Carey by an eye-witness like Thomason has a value of its

own:--

"The year 1812 was ushered in by an earthquake which was preceded by

a loud noise; the house shook; the oil in the lamps on the walls was

thrown out; the birds made a frightful noise; the natives ran from

their houses, calling on the names of their gods; the sensation is

most awful; we read the forty-sixth Psalm. This fearful prodigy was

succeeded by that desolating disaster, the Serampore fire. I could

scarcely believe the report; it was like a blow on the head which

stupefies. I flew to Serampore to witness the desolation. The

scene was indeed affecting. The immense printing-office, two

hundred feet long and fifty broad, reduced to a mere shell. The

yard covered with burnt quires of paper, the loss in which article

was immense. Carey walked with me over the smoking ruins. The

tears stood in his eyes. 'In one short evening,' said he, 'the

labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of

God! I had lately brought some things to the utmost perfection of

which they seemed capable, and contemplated the missionary

establishment with perhaps too much self-congratulation. The Lord

has laid me low, that I may look more simply to Him.' Who could

stand in such a place, at such a time, with such a man, without

feelings of sharp regret and solemn exercise of mind. I saw the

ground strewed with half-consumed paper, on which in the course of a

very few months the words of life would have been printed. The

metal under our feet amidst the ruins was melted into misshapen

lumps--the sad remains of beautiful types consecrated to the service

of the sanctuary. All was smiling and promising a few hours

before--now all is vanished into smoke or converted into rubbish!

Return now to thy books, regard God in all thou doest. Learn

Arabic with humility. Let God be exalted in all thy plans, and

purposes, and labours; He can do without thee."

Carey himself thus wrote of the disaster to Dr. Ryland:--"25th March

1812.--The loss is very great, and will long be severely felt; yet I

can think of a hundred circumstances which would have made it much

more difficult to bear. The Lord has smitten us, he had a right to

do so, and we deserve his corrections. I wish to submit to His

sovereign will, nay, cordially to acquiesce therein, and to examine

myself rigidly to see what in me has contributed to this evil.

"I now, however, turn to the bright side; and here I might mention

what still remains to us, and the merciful circumstances which

attend even this stroke of God's rod; but I will principally notice

what will tend to cheer the heart of every one who feels for the

cause of God. Our loss, so far as I can see, is reparable in a much

shorter time than I should at first have supposed. The Tamil fount

of types was the first that we began to recast. I expect it will be

finished by the end of this week, just a fortnight after it was

begun. The next will be the small Devanagari, for the Hindostani

Scriptures, and next the larger for the Sanskrit. I hope this will

be completed in another month. The other founts, viz., Bengali,

Orissa, Sikh, Telinga, Singhalese, Mahratta, Burman, Kashmeerian,

Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, will follow in order, and will

probably be finished in six or seven months, except the Chinese,

which will take more than a year to replace it. I trust, therefore,

that we shall not be greatly delayed. Our English works will be

delayed the longest; but in general they are of the least

importance. Of MSS. burnt I have suffered the most; that is, what

was actually prepared by me, and what owes its whole revision for

the press to me, comprise the principal part of the MSS. consumed.

The ground must be trodden over again, but no delay in printing

need arise from that. The translations are all written out first by

pundits in the different languages, except the Sanskrit which is

dictated by me to an amanuensis. The Sikh, Mahratta, Hindostani,

Orissa, Telinga, Assam, and Kurnata are re-translating in rough by

pundits who have been long accustomed to their work, and have gone

over the ground before. I follow them in revise, the chief part of

which is done as the sheets pass through the press, and is by far

the heaviest part of the work. Of the Sanskrit only the second book

of Samuel and the first book of Kings were lost. Scarcely any of

the Orissa, and none of the Kashmeerian or of the Burman MSS. were

lost--copy for about thirty pages of my Bengali dictionary, the

whole copy of a Telinga grammar, part of the copy of the grammar of

Punjabi or Sikh language, and all the materials which I had been

long collecting for a dictionary of all the languages derived from

the Sanskrit. I hope, however, to be enabled to repair the loss,

and to complete my favourite scheme, if my life be prolonged."

Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their work, dream

that this fire would prove to be the means of making them and their

work famous all over Europe and America as well as India. Men of

every Christian school, and men interested only in the literary and

secular side of their enterprise, had their active sympathy called

out. The mere money loss, at the exchange of the day, was not under

ten thousand pounds. In fifty days this was raised in England and

Scotland alone, till Fuller, returning from his last campaign,

entered the room of his committee, declaring "we must stop the

contributions." In Greenock, for instance, every place of worship

on one Sunday collected money. In the United States Mr. Robert

Ralston, a Presbyterian, a merchant of Philadelphia, who as Carey's

correspondent had been the first American layman to help missions to

India, and Dr. Staughton, who had taken an interest in the formation

of the Society in 1792 before he emigrated, had long assisted the

translation work, and now that Judson was on his way out they

redoubled their exertions. In India Thomason's own congregation

sent the missionaries 800, and Brown wrote from his dying bed a?

message of loving help. The newspapers of Calcutta caught the

enthusiasm; one leading article concluded with the assurance that

the Serampore press would, "like the phoenix of antiquity, rise from

its ashes, winged with new strength, and destined, in a lofty and

long-enduring flight, widely to diffuse the benefits of knowledge

throughout the East." The day after the fire ceased to smoke Monohur

was at the task of casting type from the lumps of the molten metal.

In two months after the first intelligence Fuller was able to send

as "feathers of the phoenix" slips of sheets of the Tamil Testament,

printed from these types, to the towns and churches which had

subscribed. Every fortnight a fount was cast; in a month all the

native establishment was at work night and day. In six months the

whole loss in Oriental types was repaired. The Ramayana version and

Sanskrit polyglot dictionary were never resumed. But of the Bible

translations and grammars, Carey and his two heroic brethren

wrote:--"We found, on making the trial, that the advantages in going

over the same ground a second time were so great that they fully

counter-balanced the time requisite to be devoted thereto in a

second translation." The fire, in truth, the cause of which was

never discovered, and insurance against which did not exist in

India, had given birth to revised editions.

CHAPTER XI

WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY

The growth of a language--Carey identified with the transition stage

of Bengali--First printed books--Carey's own works--His influence on

indigenous writers--His son's works--Bengal the first heathen

country to receive the press--The first Bengali newspaper--The

monthly and quarterly Friend of India--The Hindoo revival of the

eighteenth century fostered by the East India Company--Carey's three

memorials to Government on female infanticide, voluntary drowning,

and widow-burning--What Jonathan Duncan and Col. Walker had

done--Wellesley's regulation to prevent the sacrifice of

children--Beginning of the agitation against the Suttee

crime--Carey's pundits more enlightened than the Company's

judges--Humanity triumphs in 1832--Carey's share in Ward's book on

the Hindoos--The lawless supernaturalism of Rome and of

India--Worship of Jaganath--Regulation identifying Government with

Hindooism--The swinging festival--Ghat murders--Burning of

lepers--Carey establishes the Leper Hospital in Calcutta--Slavery in

India loses its legal status--Cowper, Clarkson, and Carey.

Like the growth of a tree is the development of a language, as

really and as strictly according to law. In savage lands like those

of Africa the missionary finds the living germs of speech, arranges

them for the first time in grammatical order, expresses them in

written and printed form, using the simplest, most perfect, and most

universal character of all--the Roman, and at one bound gives the

most degraded of the dark peoples the possibility of the highest

civilisation and the divinest future. In countries like India and

China, where civilisation has long ago reached its highest level,

and has been declining for want of the salt of a universal

Christianity, it is the missionary again who interferes for the

highest ends, but by a different process. Mastering the complex

classical speech and literature of the learned and priestly class,

and living with his Master's sympathy among the people whom that

class oppresses, he takes the popular dialects which are instinct

with the life of the future; where they are wildly luxuriant he

brings them under law, where they are barren he enriches them from

the parent stock so as to make them the vehicle of ideas such as

Greek gave to Europe, and in time he brings to the birth nations

worthy of the name by a national language and literature lighted up

with the ideas of the Book which he is the first to translate.

This was what Carey did for the speech of the Bengalees. To them,

as the historians of the fast approaching Christian future will

recognise, he was made what the Saxon Boniface had become to the

Germans, or the Northumbrian Baeda and Wyclif to the English. The

transition period of English, from 1150 when its modern grammatical

form prevailed, to the fifteenth century when the rich dialects gave

place to the literary standard, has its central date in 1362. Then

Edward the Third made English take the place of French as the public

language of justice and legislation, closely followed by Wyclif's

English Bible. Carey's one Indian life of forty years marks the

similar transition stage of Bengali, including the parallel

regulation of 1829, which abolished Persian, made by the Mohammedan

conquerors the language of the courts, and put in its place Bengali

and the vernaculars of the other provinces.

When Carey began to work in Calcutta and Dinapoor in 1792-93 Bengali

had no printed and hardly any written literature. The very written

characters were justly described by Colebrooke as nothing else but

the difficult and beautiful Sanskrit Devanagari deformed for the

sake of expeditious writings, such as accounts. It was the new

vaishnava faith of the Nuddea reformer Chaitanya which led to the

composition of the first Bengali prose.22 The Brahmans and the

Mohammedan rulers alike treated Bengali--though "it arose from the

tomb of the Sanskrit," as Italian did from Latin under Dante's

inspiration--as fit only for "demons and women." In the generation

before Carey there flourished at the same Oxford of India, as Nuddea

has been called, Raja Krishna Rai, who did for Bengali what our own

King Alfred accomplished for English prose. Moved, however, chiefly

by a zeal for Hindooism, which caused him to put a Soodra to death

for marrying into a Brahman family, he himself wrote the vernacular

and spent money in gifts, which "encouraged the people to study

Bengali with unusual diligence." But when, forty years after that,

Carey visited Nuddea he could not discover more than forty separate

works, all in manuscript, as the whole literature of 30,000,000 of

people up to that time. A press had been at work on the opposite

side of the river for fifteen years, but Halhed's grammar was still

the only as it was the most ancient printed book. One Baboo Ram,

from Upper India, was the first native who established a press in

Calcutta, and that only under the influence of Colebrooke, to print

the Sanskrit classics. The first Bengali who, on his own account,

printed works in the vernacular on trade principles, was Gunga

Kishore, whom Carey and Ward had trained at Serampore. He soon made

so large a fortune by his own press that three native rivals had

sprung up by 1820, when twenty-seven separate books, or 15,000

copies, had been sold to natives within ten years.

For nearly all these Serampore supplied the type. But all were in

another sense the result of Carey's action. His first edition of

the Bengali New Testament appeared in 1801, his Grammar in the same

year, and at the same time his Colloquies, or "dialogues intended to

facilitate the acquiring of the Bengali language," which he wrote

out of the abundance of his knowledge of native thought, idioms, and

even slang, to enable students to converse with all classes of

society, as Erasmus had done in another way. His Dictionary of

80,000 words began to appear in 1815. Knowing, however, that in the

long run the literature of a nation must be of indigenous growth, he

at once pressed the natives into this service. His first pundit,

Ram Basu, was a most accomplished Bengali scholar. This able man,

who lacked the courage to profess Christ in the end, wrote the first

tract, the Gospel Messenger, and the first pamphlet exposing

Hindooism, both of which had an enormous sale and caused much

excitement. On the historical side Carey induced him to publish in

1801 the Life of Raja Pratapaditya, the last king of Sagar Island.

At first the new professor could not find reading books for his

Bengali class in the college of Fort William. He, his pundits,

especially Mritunjaya who has been compared in his physique and

knowledge to Dr. Samuel Johnson, and even the young civilian

students, were for many years compelled to write Bengali text-books,

including translations of Virgil's neid and Shakspere's Tempest.?

The School Book Society took up the work, encouraging such a man as

Ram Komal Sen, the printer who became chief native official of the

Bank of Bengal and father of the late Keshab Chunder Sen, to prepare

his Bengali dictionary. Self-interest soon enlisted the haughtiest

Brahmans in the work of producing school and reading books, till now

the Bengali language is to India what the Italian is to Europe, and

its native literature is comparatively as rich. Nor was Carey

without his European successor in the good work for a time. When

his son Felix died in 1823 he was bewailed as the coadjutor of Ram

Komal Sen, as the author of the first volume of a Bengali

encyclop dia on anatomy, as the translator of Bunyan's Pilgrim,?

Goldsmith's History of England, and Mill's History of India.

Literature cannot be said to exist for the people till the newspaper

appears. Bengal was the first non-Christian country into which the

press had ever been introduced. Above all forms of truth and faith

Christianity seeks free discussion; in place of that the

missionaries lived under a shackled press law tempered by the higher

instincts of rulers like Wellesley, Hastings, and Bentinck, till

Macaulay and Metcalfe gained for it liberty. When Dr. Marshman in

1818 proposed the publication of a Bengali periodical, Dr. Carey,

impressed by a quarter of a century's intolerance, consented only on

the condition that it should be a monthly magazine, and should avoid

political discussion. Accordingly the Dig-darshan appeared,

anticipating in its contents and style the later Penny and Saturday

Magazines, and continued for three years. Its immediate success led

to the issue from the Serampore press on the 31st May 1818, of "the

first newspaper ever printed in any Oriental language"--the Samachar

Darpan, or News Mirror.

It was a critical hour when the first proof of the first number was

laid before the assembled brotherhood at the weekly meeting on

Friday evening. Dr. Carey, fearing for his spiritual work, but

eager for this new avenue to the minds of the people who were being

taught to read, and had little save their own mythology, consented

to its publication when Dr. Marshman promised to send a copy, with

an analysis of its contents in English, to the Government, and to

stop the enterprise if it should be officially disapproved. Lord

Hastings was fighting the Pindarees, and nothing was said by his

Council. On his return he declared that "the effect of such a paper

must be extensively and importantly useful." He allowed it to

circulate by post at one-fourth the then heavy rate. The natives

welcomed their first newspaper. Although it avoided religious

controversy, in a few weeks an opposition journal was issued by a

native, who sought to defend Hindooism under the title of the

Destroyer of Darkness. To the Darpan the educated natives looked as

the means of bringing the oppression of their own countrymen to the

knowledge of the public and the authorities. Government found it

most useful for contradicting silly rumours and promoting

contentment if not loyalty. The paper gave a new development to the

Bengali language as well as to the moral and political education of

the people.

The same period of liberty to the press and to native advancement,

with which the names of the Marquis of Hastings and his accomplished

wife will ever be associated, saw the birth of an English periodical

which, for the next fifty-seven years, was to become not merely

famous but powerfully useful as the Friend of India. The title was

the selection of Dr. Marshman, and the editorial management was his

and his able son's down to 1852, when it passed into the hands of

Mr. Meredith Townsend, long the most brilliant of English

journalists, and finally into those of the present writer. For some

years a monthly and for a time a quarterly magazine till 1835, when

Mr. John Marshman made it the well-known weekly, this journal became

the means through which Carey and the brotherhood fought the good

fight of humanity. In the monthly and quarterly Friend, moreover,

reprinted as much of it was in London, the three philanthropists

brought their ripe experience and lofty principles to bear on the

conscience of England and of educated India alike. As, on the

Oriental side, Carey chose for his weapon the vernacular, on the

other he drew from Western sources the principles and the thoughts

which he clothed in a Bengali dress.

We have already seen how Carey at the end of the eighteenth century

found Hindooism at its worst. Steadily had the Pooranic corruption

and the Brahmanical oppression gone on demoralising the whole of

Hindoo society. In the period of virtual anarchy, which covered the

seventy-five years from the death of Aurangzeb to the supremacy of

Warren Hastings and the reforms of Lord Cornwallis, the healthy zeal

of Islam against the idolatrous abominations of the Hindoos had

ceased. In its place there was not only a wild licence amounting to

an undoubted Hindoo revival, marked on the political side by the

Maratha ascendency, but there came to be deliberate encouragement of

the worst forms of Hindooism by the East India Company and its

servants. That "the mischievous reaction" on England from

India--its idolatry, its women, its nabobs, its wealth, its

absolutism--was prevented, and European civilisation was "after much

delay and hesitation" brought to bear on India, was due indeed to

the legislation of Governor-Generals from Cornwallis to Bentinck,

but much more, to the persistent agitation of Christian

missionaries, notably Carey and Duff. For years Carey stood alone in

India, as Grant and Wilberforce did in England, in the darkest hour

of England's moral degradation and spiritual death, when the men who

were shaping the destinies of India were the Hindooising Stewarts

and Youngs, Prendergasts, Twinings, and Warings, some of whom hated

missions from the dread of sedition, others because their hearts

"seduced by fair idolatresses had fallen to idols foul."

The most atrociously inhuman of all the Brahmanical customs, and yet

the most universal, from the land of the five rivers at Lahore to

the far spice islands at Bali, was the murder of widows by burning

or burying them alive with the husband's corpse. We have seen how

the first of the many such scenes which he was doomed to witness for

the next thirty years affected Carey. After remonstrances, which

the people met first by argument and then by surly threats, Carey

wrote:--"I told them I would not go, that I was determined to stay

and see the murder, and that I should certainly bear witness of it

at the tribunal of God." And when he again sought to interfere

because the two stout bamboos always fixed for the purpose of

preventing the victim's escape were pressed down on the shrieking

woman like levers, and they persisted, he wrote: "We could not bear

to see more, but left them exclaiming loudly against the murder and

full of horror at what we had seen." The remembrance of that sight

never left Carey. His naturally cheerful spirit was inflamed to

indignation all his life through, till his influence, more than that

of any other one man, at last prevailed to put out for ever the

murderous pyre. Had Lord Wellesley remained Governor-General a year

longer Carey would have succeeded in 1808, instead of having to wait

till 1829, and to know as he waited and prayed that literally every

day saw the devilish smoke ascending along the banks of the Ganges,

and the rivers and pools considered sacred by the Hindoos. Need we

wonder that when on a Sunday morning the regulation of Lord William

Bentinck prohibiting the crime reached him as he was meditating his

sermon, he sent for another to do the preaching, and taking his pen

in his hand, at once wrote the official translation, and had it

issued in the Bengali Gazette that not another day might be added to

the long black catalogue of many centuries?

On the return of the Marquis Wellesley to Calcutta from the Tipoo

war, and his own appointment to the College of Fort William, Carey

felt that his time had come to prevent the murder of the innocents

all over India in the three forms of female infanticide, voluntary

drowning, and widow-burning or burying alive. His old friend, Udny,

having become a member of Council or colleague of the

Governor-General, he prepared three memorials to Government on each

of these crimes. When afterwards he had enlisted Claudius Buchanan

in the good work, and had employed trustworthy natives to collect

statistics proving that in the small district around Calcutta 275

widow murders thus took place in six months of 1803, and when he was

asked by Dr. Ryland to state the facts which, with his usual absence

of self-regarding, he had not reported publicly, or even in letters

home, he thus replied:--

"27th April 1808.--The report of the burning of women, and some

others, however, were made by me. I, at his expense, however, made

the inquiries and furnished the reports, and believe they are rather

below the truth than above it. I have, since I have been here,

through a different medium, presented three petitions or

representations to Government for the purpose of having the burning

of women and other modes of murder abolished, and have succeeded in

the case of infanticide and voluntary drowning in the river. Laws

were made to prevent these, which have been successful."

But there was a crime nearer home, committed in the river flowing

past his own door, and especially at Sagar Island, where the Ganges

loses itself in the ocean. At that tiger-haunted spot, shivering in

the cold of the winter solstice, every year multitudes of Hindoos,

chiefly wives with children and widows with heavy hearts, assembled

to wash away their sins--to sacrifice the fruit of their body for

the sin of their soul. Since 1794, when Thomas and he had found in

a basket hanging on a tree the bones of an infant exposed, to be

devoured by the white ants, by some mother too poor to go on

pilgrimage to a sacred river-spot, Carey had known this unnatural

horror. He and his brethren had planned a preaching tour to Sagar,

where not only mothers drowned their first born in payment of a vow,

with the encouragement of the Brahmans, but widows and even men

walked into the deep sea and drowned themselves at the spot where

Ganga and Sagar kiss each other, "as the highest degree of holiness,

and as securing immediate heaven." The result of Carey's memorial

was the publication of the Regulation for preventing the sacrifice

of children at Sagar and other places on the Ganges:--"It has been

represented to the Governor-General in Council that a criminal and

inhuman practice of sacrificing children, by exposing them to be

drowned or devoured by sharks, prevails...Children thrown into the

sea at Sagar have not been generally rescued...but the sacrifice has

been effected with circumstances of peculiar atrocity in some

instances. This practice is not sanctioned by the Hindoo law, nor

countenanced by the religious orders." It was accordingly declared

to be murder, punishable with death. At each pilgrim gathering

sepoys were stationed to check the priests and the police, greedy of

bribes, and to prevent fanatical suicides as well as superstitious

murders.

The practice of infanticide was really based on the recommendation

of Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras

require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her

husband. Surely, reasoned the Rajpoots, we may destroy a daughter

by abortion, starvation, suffocation, strangulation, or neglect, of

whose marriage in the line of caste and dignity of family there is

little prospect, if a widow may be burned to preserve her chastity!

In answer to Carey's third memorial Lord Wellesley took the first

step, on 5th February 1805, in the history of British India, two

centuries after Queen Elizabeth had given the Company its mercantile

charter, and half a century after Plassey had given it political

power, to protect from murder the widows who had been burned alive,

at least since the time of Alexander the Great. This was the first

step in the history of British but not of Mohammedan India, for our

predecessors had by decree forbidden and in practice discouraged the

crime. Lord Wellesley's colleagues were still the good Udny, the

great soldier Lord Lake and Sir George Barlow. The magistrate of

Bihar had on his own authority prevented a child-widow of twelve,

when drugged by the Brahmans, from being burned alive, after which,

he wrote, "the girl and her friends were extremely grateful for my

interposition." Taking advantage of this case, the Government asked

the appellate judges, all Company's servants, to "ascertain how far

the practice is founded on the religious opinions of the Hindoos.

If not founded on any precept of their law, the Governor-General in

Council hopes that the custom may gradually, if not immediately, be

altogether abolished. If, however, the entire abolition should

appear to the Court to be impracticable in itself, or inexpedient,

as offending any established religious opinion of the Hindoos," the

Court were desired to consider the best means of preventing the

abuses, such as the use of drugs and the sacrifice of those of

immature age. But the preamble of this reference to the judges

declared it to be one of the fundamental principles of the British

Government to consult the religious opinions of the natives,

"consistently with the principles of morality, reason, and

humanity." There spoke Carey and Udny, and Wellesley himself. But

for another quarter of a century the funeral pyres were to blaze

with the living also, because that caveat was set aside, that

fundamental maxim of the constitution of much more than the British

Government--of the conscience of humanity, was carefully buried up.

The judges asked the pundits whether the woman is "enjoined" by the

shaster voluntarily to burn herself with the body of her husband.

They replied "every woman of the four castes is permitted to burn

herself," except in certain cases enumerated, and they quoted Manoo,

who is against the custom in so far as he says that a virtuous wife

ascends to heaven if she devotes herself to pious austerities after

the decease of her lord.

This opinion would have been sufficient to give the requisite native

excuse to Government for the abolition, but the Nizamat Adawlat

judges urged the "principle" of "manifesting every possible

indulgence to the religious opinions and prejudices of the natives,"

ignoring morality, reason, and humanity alike. Lord Wellesley's

long and brilliant administration of eight years was virtually at an

end: in seven days he was to embark for home. The man who had

preserved the infants from the sharks of Sagar had to leave the

widows and their children to be saved by the civilians Carey and he

had personally trained, Metcalfe and Bayley, who by 1829 had risen

to Council and become colleagues of Lord W. Bentinck. But Lord

Wellesley did this much, he declined to notice the so-called

"prohibitory regulations" recommended by the civilian judges.

These, when adopted in the year 1812, made the British Government

responsible by legislation for every murder thereafter, and greatly

increased the number of murders. From that date the Government of

India decided "to allow the practice," as recognised and encouraged

by the Hindoo religion, except in cases of compulsion, drugging,

widows under sixteen, and proved pregnancy. The

police--natives--were to be present, and to report every case. At

the very time the British Parliament were again refusing in the

charter discussions of 1813 for another twenty years to tolerate

Christianity in its Eastern dependency, the Indian legislature

legalised the burning and burying alive of widows, who numbered at

least 6000 in nine only of the next sixteen years, from 1815 to 1823

inclusive.

>From Plassey in 1757 to 1829, three quarters of a century, Christian

England was responsible, at first indirectly and then most directly,

for the known immolation of at least 70,000 Hindoo widows. Carey

was the first to move the authorities; Udny and Wellesley were the

first to begin action against an atrocity so long continued and so

atrocious. While the Governor-Generals and their colleagues passed

away, Carey and his associates did not cease to agitate in India and

to stir up Wilberforce and the evangelicals in England, till the

victory was gained. The very first number of the Friend of India

published their essay on the burning of widows, which was thereafter

quoted on both sides of the conflict, as "a powerful and convincing

statement of the real facts and circumstances of the case," in

Parliament and elsewhere. Nor can we omit to record the opinion of

Carey's chief pundit, with whom he spent hours every day as a

fellow-worker. The whole body of law-pundits wrote of Sati as only

"permitted." Mritunjaya, described as the head jurist of the

College of Fort William and the Supreme Court, decided that,

according to Hindooism, a life of mortification is the law for a

widow. At best burning is only an alternative for mortification,

and no alternative can have the force of direct law. But in former

ages nothing was ever heard of the practice, it being peculiar to a

later and more corrupt era. "A woman's burning herself from the

desire of connubial bliss ought to be rejected with abhorrence,"

wrote this colossus of pundits. Yet before he was believed, or the

higher law was enforced, as it has ever since been even in our

tributary States, mothers had burned with sons, and forty wives,

many of them sisters, at a time, with polygamous husbands. Lepers

and the widows of the devotee class had been legally buried alive.

Magistrates, who were men like Metcalfe, never ceased to prevent

widow-murder on any pretext, wherever they might be placed, in

defiance of their own misguided Government.

Though from 4th December 1829--memorable date, to be classed with

that on which soon after 800,000 slaves were set free--"the Ganges

flowed unblooded to the sea" for the first time, the fight lasted a

little longer. The Calcutta "orthodox" formed a society to restore

their right of murdering their widows, and found English lawyers

ready to help them in an appeal to the Privy Council under an Act of

Parliament of 1797. The Darpan weekly did good service in keeping

the mass of the educated natives right on the subject. The Privy

Council, at which Lord Wellesley and Charles Grant, venerable in

years and character, were present, heard the case for two days, and

on 24th June 1832 dismissed the petition!

Though the greatest, this was only one of the crimes against

humanity and morality which Carey opposed all his life with a

practical reasonableness till he saw the public opinion he had done

so much to create triumph. He knew the people of India, their

religious, social, and economic condition, as no Englishman before

him had done. He stood between them and their foreign Government at

the beginning of our intimate contact with all classes as detailed

administrators and rulers. The outcome of his peculiar experience

is to be found not only in the writings published under his own name

but in the great book of his colleague William Ward, every page of

which passed under his careful correction as well as under the more

general revision of Henry Martyn. Except for the philosophy of

Hindooism, the second edition of A View of the History, Literature,

and Mythology of the Hindoos, including a Minute Description of

their Manners and Customs, and Translations from their Principal

Works, published in 1818 in two quarto volumes, stands unrivalled as

the best authority on the character and daily life and beliefs of

the 200,000,000 to whom Great Britain had been made a terrestrial

providence, till Christianity teaches them to govern themselves and

to become to the rest of Asia missionaries of nobler truth than that

wherewith their Buddhist fathers covered China and the farther East.

All the crimes against humanity with which the history of India

teems, down to the Mutiny and the records of our courts and

tributary states at this hour, are directly traceable to lawless

supernaturalism like that of the civilised world before the triumph

of Christianity. In nothing does England's administration of India

resemble Rome's government of its provinces in the seven centuries

from the reduction of Sicily, 240 B.C., to the fall of the Western

Empire, 476 A.D., so much as in the relation of nascent Christianity

to the pagan cults which had made society what it was. Carey and

the brotherhood stood alone in facing, in fighting with divine

weapons, in winning the first victories over the secular as well as

spiritual lawlessness which fell before Paul and his successors down

to Augustine and his City of God. The gentle and reasonable but none

the less divinely indignant father of modern missions brings against

Hindoo and Mohammedan society accusations no more railing than those

in the opening passage of the Epistle to the Romans, and he brings

these only that, following Paul, he may declare the more excellent

way.

As Serampore, or its suburbs, is the most popular centre of Jaganath

worship next to Pooree in Orissa, the cruelty and oppression which

marked the annual festival were ever before the missionaries' eyes.

In 1813 we find Dr. Claudius Buchanan establishing his veracity as

an eye-witness of the immolation of drugged or voluntary victims

under the idol car, by this quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to

describe at that time to his English readers, as a man of

unquestionable integrity, long held in estimation by the most

respectable characters in Bengal, and possessing very superior

opportunities of knowing what is passing in India generally:

"Idolatry destroys more than the sword, yet in a way which is

scarcely perceived. The numbers who die in their long pilgrimages,

either through want or fatigue, or from dysenteries and fevers

caught by lying out, and want of accommodation, is incredible. I

only mention one idol, the famous Juggernaut in Orissa, to which

twelve or thirteen pilgrimages are made every year. It is

calculated that the number who go thither is, on some occasions,

600,000 persons, and scarcely ever less than 100,000. I suppose, at

the lowest calculation, that in the year 1,200,000 persons attend.

Now, if only one in ten died, the mortality caused by this one idol

would be 120,000 in a year; but some are of opinion that not many

more than one in ten survive and return home again. Besides these,

I calculate that 10,000 women annually burn with the bodies of their

deceased husbands, and the multitudes destroyed in other methods

would swell the catalogue to an extent almost exceeding

credibility."

After we had taken Orissa from the Marathas the priests of Jaganath

declared that the night before the conquest the god had made known

its desire to be under British protection. This was joyfully

reported to Lord Wellesley's Government by the first British

commissioner. At once a regulation was drafted vesting the shrine

and the increased pilgrim-tax in the Christian officials. This Lord

Wellesley indignantly refused to sanction, and it was passed by Sir

George Barlow in spite of the protests of Carey's friend, Udny. In

Conjeeveram a Brahmanised civilian named Place had so early as 1796

induced Government to undertake the payment of the priests and

prostitutes of the temples, under the phraseology of "churchwardens"

and "the management of the church funds." Even before the Madras

iniquity, the pilgrims to Gaya from 1790, if not before, paid for

authority to offer funeral cakes to the manes of their ancestors and

to worship Vishnoo under the official seal and signature of the

English Collector. Although Charles Grant's son, Lord Glenelg, when

President of the Board of Control in 1833, ordered, as Theodosius

had done on the fall of pagan idolatry in A.D. 390, that "in all

matters relating to their temples, their worship, their festivals,

their religious practices, their ceremonial observances, our native

subjects be left entirely to themselves," the identification of

Government with Hindooism was not completely severed till a recent

period.

The Charak, or swinging festival, has been frequently witnessed by

the present writer in Calcutta itself. The orgie has been

suppressed by the police in great cities, although it has not ceased

in the rural districts. In 1814 the brotherhood thus wrote home:--

"This abominable festival was held, according to the annual custom,

on the last day of the Hindoo year. There were fewer gibbet posts

erected at Serampore, but we hear that amongst the swingers was one

female. A man fell from a stage thirty cubits high and broke his

back; and another fell from a swinging post, but was not much hurt.

Some days after the first swinging, certain natives revived the

ceremonies. As Mr. Ward was passing through Calcutta he saw several

Hindoos hanging by the heels over a slow fire, as an act of

devotion. Several Hindoos employed in the printing-office applied

this year to Mr. Ward for protection, to escape being dragged into

these pretendedly voluntary practices. This brought before us facts

which we were not aware of. It seems that the landlords of the poor

and other men of property insist upon certain of their tenants and

dependants engaging in these practices, and that they expect and

compel by actual force multitudes every year to join the companies

of sunyassees in parading the streets, piercing their sides,

tongues, etc. To avoid this compulsion, many poor young men leave

their houses and hide themselves; but they are sure of being beaten

if caught, or of having their huts pulled down. The influence and

power of the rich have a great effect on the multitude in most of

the idolatrous festivals. When the lands and riches of the country

were in few hands, this influence carried all before it. It is

still very widely felt, in compelling dependants to assist at public

shows, and to contribute towards the expense of splendid

ceremonies."

The Ghat murders, caused by the carrying of the dying to the Ganges

or a sacred river, and their treatment there, continue to this day,

although Lord Lawrence attempted to interfere. Ward estimated the

number of sick whose death is hastened on the banks of the Ganges

alone at five hundred a year, in his anxiety to "use no unfair means

of rendering even idolatry detestable," but he admits that, in the

opinion of others, this estimate is far below the truth. We

believe, from our own recent experience, that still it fails to give

any just idea of the destruction of parents by children in the name

of religion.

One class who had been the special objects of Christ's healing power

and divine sympathy was specially interesting to Carey in proportion

to their misery and abandonment by their own people--lepers. When

at Cutwa in 1812, where his son was stationed as missionary, he saw

the burning of a leper, which he thus described:--"A pit about ten

cubits in depth was dug and a fire placed at the bottom of it. The

poor man rolled himself into it; but instantly, on feeling the fire,

begged to be taken out, and struggled hard for that purpose. His

mother and sister, however, thrust him in again; and thus a man, who

to all appearance might have survived several years, was cruelly

burned to death. I find that the practice is not uncommon in these

parts. Taught that a violent end purifies the body and ensures

transmigration into a healthy new existence, while natural death by

disease results in four successive births, and a fifth as a leper

again, the leper, like the even more wretched widow, has always

courted suicide." Carey did not rest until he had brought about the

establishment of a leper hospital in Calcutta, near what became the

centre of the Church Missionary Society's work, and there benevolent

physicians, like the late Dr. Kenneth Stuart, and Christian people,

have made it possible to record, as in Christ's days, that the leper

is cleansed and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.

By none of the many young civilians whom he trained, or, in the

later years of his life, examined, was Carey's humane work on all

its sides more persistently carried out than by John Lawrence in the

Punjab. When their new ruler first visited their district, the Bedi

clan amazed him by petitioning for leave to destroy their infant

daughters. In wrath he briefly told them he would hang every man

found guilty of such murder. When settling the land revenue of the

Cis-Sutlej districts he caused each farmer, as he touched the pen in

acceptance of the assessment, to recite this formula--

"Bewa mat jal o,?

Beti mat m ro,?

Korhi mat dabao"

("Thou shalt not burn thy widow, thou shalt not kill thy daughters,

thou shalt not bury thy lepers.")

>From the hour of Carey's conversion he never omitted to remember in

prayer the slave as well as the heathen. The same period which saw

his foundation of modern missions witnessed the earliest efforts of

his contemporary, Thomas Clarkson of Wisbeach, in the neighbouring

county of Cambridge, to free the slave. But Clarkson, Granville

Sharp, and their associates were so occupied with Africa that they

knew not that Great Britain was responsible for the existence of at

least nine millions of slaves in India, many of them brought by

Hindoo merchants as well as Arabs from Eastern Africa to fill the

hareems of Mohammedans, and do domestic service in the zananas of

Hindoos. The startling fact came to be known only slowly towards

the end of Carey's career, when his prayers, continued daily from

1779, were answered in the freedom of all our West India slaves.

The East India answer came after he had passed away, in Act V. of

1843, which for ever abolished the legal status of slavery in India.

The Penal Code has since placed the pr dial slave in such a?

position that if he is not free it is his own fault. It is penal in

India to hold a slave "against his will," and we trust the time is

not far distant when the last three words may be struck out.

With true instinct Christopher Anderson, in his Annals of the

English Bible, associates Carey, Clarkson, and Cowper, as the

triumvirate who, unknown to each other, began the great moral

changes, in the Church, in society, and in literature, which mark

the difference between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

Little did Carey think, as he studied under Sutcliff within sight

of the poet's house, that Cowper was writing at that very time these

lines in The Task while he himself was praying for the highest of

all kinds of liberty to be given to the heathen and the slaves,

Christ's freedom which had up till then remained

"...unsung

By poets, and by senators unpraised,

Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers

Of earth and hell confederate take away;

A liberty which persecution, fraud,

Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind:

Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more."

CHAPTER XII

WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE--FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA

Carey's relation to science and economics--State of the

peasantry--Carey a careful scientific observer--Specially a

botanist--Becomes the friend of Dr. Roxburgh of the Company's

Botanic Garden--Orders seeds and instruments of husbandry--All his

researches subordinate to his spiritual mission--His eminence as a

botanist acknowledged in the history of the science--His own botanic

garden and park at Serampore--The poet Montgomery on the daisies

there--Borneo--Carey's paper in the Asiatic Researches on the state

of agriculture in Bengal--The first to advocate Forestry in

India--Founds the Agri-Horticultural Society of India--Issues

queries on agriculture and horticulture--Remarkable results of his

action--On the manufacture of paper--His expanded address on

agricultural reform--His political foresight on the importance of

European capital and the future of India--An official estimate of

the results in the present day--On the usury of the natives and

savings banks--His academic and scientific honours--Destruction of

his house and garden by the Damoodar flood of 1823--Report on the

Horticultural Society's garden--The Society honours its founder.

Not only was the first Englishman, who in modern times became a

missionary, sent to India when he desired to go to Tahiti or West

Africa; and sent to Bengal from which all Northern India was to be

brought under British rule; and to Calcutta--with a safe asylum at

Danish Serampore--then the metropolis and centre of all Southern

Asia; but he was sent at the very time when the life of the people

could best be purified and elevated on its many sides, and he was

specially fitted to influence each of these sides save one. An

ambassador for Christ above all things like Paul, but, also like

him, becoming all things to all men that he might win some to the

higher life, Carey was successively, and often at the same time, a

captain of labour, a schoolmaster, a printer, the developer of the

vernacular speech, the expounder of the classical language, the

translator of both into English and of the English Bible into both,

the founder of a pure literature, the purifier of society, the

watchful philanthropist, the saviour of the widow and the

fatherless, of the despairing and the would-be suicide, of the

downtrodden and oppressed. We have now to see him on the scientific

or the physical and economic side, while he still jealously keeps

his strength for the one motive power of all, the spiritual, and

with almost equal care avoids the political or administrative as his

Master did. But even then it was his aim to proclaim the divine

principles which would use science and politics alike to bring

nations to the birth, while, like the apostles, leaving the

application of these principles to the course of God's providence

and the consciences of men. In what he did for science, for

literature, and for humanity, as in what he abstained from doing in

the practical region of public life, the first English missionary

was an example to all of every race who have followed him in the

past century. From Carey to Livingstone, alike in Asia and Africa,

the greatest Christian evangelists have been those who have made

science and literature the handmaids of missions.

Apart from the extreme south of the peninsula of India, where the

Danish missionaries had explored with hawk's eyes, almost nothing

was known of its plants and animals, its men, as well as its beasts,

when Carey found himself in a rural district of North Bengal in the

closing decade of the eighteenth century. Nor had any writer,

official or missionary, anywhere realised the state of India and the

needs of the Hindoo and Mohammedan cultivators as flowing from the

relation of the people to the soil. India was in truth a land of

millions of peasant proprietors on five-acre farms, rack-rented or

plundered by powerful middlemen, both squeezed or literally tortured

by the Government of the day, and driven to depend on the usurer for

even the seed for each crop. War and famine had alternated in

keeping down the population. Ignorance and fear had blunted the

natural shrewdness of the cultivator. A foul mythology, a saddening

demon-worship, and an exacting social system, covered the land as

with a pall. What even Christendom was fast becoming in the tenth

century, India had been all through the eighteen Christian

centuries.

The boy who from eight to fourteen "chose to read books of science,

history, voyages, etc., more than others"; the youth whose gardener

uncle would have had him follow that calling, but whose sensitive

skin kept him within doors, where he fitted up a room with his

botanical and zoological museum; the shoemaker-preacher who made a

garden around every cottage-manse in which he lived, and was

familiar with every beast, bird, insect, and tree in the Midlands of

England, became a scientific observer from the day he landed at

Calcutta, an agricultural reformer from the year he first built a

wooden farmhouse in the jungle, as the Manitoba emigrant now does

under very different skies, and then began to grow and make indigo

amid the peasantry at Dinapoor. He thus unconsciously reveals

himself and his method of working in a letter to Morris of

Clipstone:--

"MUDNABATI, 5th December 1797.--To talk of continuance of friendship

and warm affection to you would be folly. I love you; and next to

seeing your face, a letter from you is one of my greatest

gratifications. I see the handwriting, and read the heart of my

friend; nor can the distance of one-fourth of the globe prevent a

union of hearts.

"Hitherto I have refrained from writing accounts of the country,

because I concluded that those whose souls were panting after the

conversion of the heathen would feel but little gratified in having

an account of the natural productions of the country. But as

intelligence of this kind has been frequently solicited by several

of my friends, I have accordingly opened books of observation, which

I hope to communicate when they are sufficiently authenticated and

matured. I also intend to assign a peculiar share to each of my

stated correspondents. To you I shall write some accounts of the

arts, utensils, and manufactures of the country; to Brother Sutcliff

their mythology and religion; to Brother Ryland the manners and

customs of the inhabitants; to Brother Fuller the productions of the

country; to Brother Pearce the language, etc.; and to the Society a

joint account of the mission."

He had "separate books for every distinct class, as birds, beasts,

fishes, reptiles, etc." Long before this, on 13th March 1795, he

had written to the learned Ryland, his special correspondent on

subjects of science and on Hebrew, his first impressions of the

physiography of Bengal, adding: "The natural history of Bengal would

furnish innumerable novelties to a curious inquirer. I am making

collections and minute descriptions of whatever I can obtain; and

intend at some future time to transmit them to Europe."

"MUDNABATI, 26th November 1796.--I observed in a former letter that

the beasts have been in general described, but that the undescribed

birds were surprisingly numerous; and, in fact, new species are

still frequently coming under my notice. We have sparrows and

water-wagtails, one species of crow, ducks, geese, and common fowls;

pigeons, teal, ortolans, plovers, snipes like those in Europe; but

others, entirely unlike European birds, would fill a volume.

Insects are very numerous. I have seen about twelve sorts of

grylli, or grasshoppers and crickets. Ants are the most omnivorous

of all insects; we have eight or ten sorts very numerous. The

termes, or white ants, destroy everything on which they fasten; they

will eat through an oak chest in a day or two and devour all its

contents. Butterflies are not so numerous as in England, but I

think all different. Common flies and mosquitoes (or gnats) are

abundant, and the latter so tormenting as to make one conclude that

if the flies in Egypt were mosquitoes, the plague must be almost

insupportable. Here are beetles of many species; scorpions of two

sorts, the sting of the smallest not mortal; land crabs in

abundance, and an amazing number of other kinds of insects. Fish is

very plentiful, and the principal animal food of the inhabitants. I

find fewer varieties of vegetables than I could have conceived in so

large a country. Edible vegetables are scarce, and fruit far from

plentiful. You will perhaps wonder at our eating many things here

which no one eats in England: as arum, three or four sorts, and

poppy leaves (Papaver somniferum). We also cut up mallows by the

bushes for our food (Job xxx. 4). Amaranths, of three sorts, we

also eat, besides capsicums, pumpkins, gourds, calabashes, and the

egg-plant fruit; yet we have no hardships in these respects. Rice

is the staple article of food...

"My love to the students. God raise them up for great blessings.

Great things are certainly at hand."

But he was also an erudite botanist. Had he arrived in Calcutta a

few days earlier than he did, he would have been appointed to the

place for which sheer poverty led him to apply, in the Company's

Botanical Garden, established on the right bank of the Hoogli a few

miles below Calcutta, by Colonel Alexander Kyd, for the collection

of indigenous and acclimatisation of foreign plants. There he at

once made the acquaintance, and till 1815 retained the loving

friendship, of its superintendent, Dr. Roxburgh, the leader of a

series of eminent men, Buchanan and Wallich, Griffith, Falconer, T.

Thomson, and Thomas Anderson, the last two cut off in the ripe

promise of their manhood. One of Carey's first requests was for

seeds and instruments, not merely from scientific reasons, but that

he might carry out his early plan of working with his hands as a

farmer while he evangelised the people. On 5th August 1794 he wrote

to the Society:--"I wish you also to send me a few instruments of

husbandry, viz., scythes, sickles, plough-wheels, and such things;

and a yearly assortment of all garden and flowering seeds, and seeds

of fruit trees, that you can possibly procure; and let them be

packed in papers, or bottles well stopped, which is the best method.

All these things, at whatever price you can procure them, and the

seeds of all sorts of field and forest trees, etc., I will regularly

remit you the money for every year; and I hope that I may depend

upon the exertions of my numerous friends to procure them. Apply to

London seedsmen and others, as it will be a lasting advantage to

this country; and I shall have it in my power to do this for what I

now call my own country. Only take care that they are new and dry."

Again he addressed Fuller on 22nd June 1797:--

"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER--I have yours of August 9, 16, which informs

me that the seeds, etc., were shipped. I have received those seeds

and other articles in tolerable preservation, and shall find them a

very useful article. An acquaintance which I have formed with Dr.

Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden, and whose

wife is daughter of a missionary on the coast, may be of future use

to the mission, and make that investment of vegetables more

valuable."

Thus towards the close of his six years' sacrifice for the people of

Dinapoor does he estimate himself and his scientific pursuits in the

light of the great conflict to which the Captain of Salvation had

called him. He is opening his heart to Fuller again, most trusted

of all:--

"MUDNABATI, 17th July 1799.--Respecting myself I have nothing

interesting to say; and if I had, it appears foreign to the design

of a mission for the missionaries to be always speaking of their own

experiences. I keep several journals, it is true, relating to

things private and public, respecting the mission, articles of

curiosity and science; but they are sometimes continued and

sometimes discontinued: besides, most things contained in them are

of too general or trivial a nature to send to England, and I imagine

could have no effect, except to mock the expectations of our

numerous friends, who are waiting to hear of the conversion of the

heathen and overthrow of Satan's kingdom.

"I therefore only observe, respecting myself, that I have much proof

of the vileness of my heart, much more than I thought of till

lately: and, indeed, I often fear that instead of being instrumental

in the conversion of the heathen, I may some time dishonour the

cause in which I am engaged. I have hitherto had much experience of

the daily supports of a gracious God; but I am conscious that if

those supports were intermitted but for a little time, my sinful

dispositions would infallibly predominate. At present I am kept,

but am not one of those who are strong and do exploits.

"I have often thought that a spirit of observation is necessary in

order to our doing or communicating much good; and were it not for a

very phlegmatic habit, I think my soul would be richer. I, however,

appear to myself to have lost much of my capacity for making

observations, improvements, etc., or of retaining what I attend to

closely. For instance, I have been near three years learning the

Sanskrit language, yet know very little of it. This is only a

specimen of what I feel myself to be in every respect. I try to

observe, to imprint what I see and hear on my memory, and to feel my

heart properly affected with the circumstances; yet my soul is

impoverished, and I have something of a lethargic disease cleaving

to my body...

"I would communicate something on the natural history of the country

in addition to what I have before written, but no part of that

pleasing study is so familiar to me as the vegetable world."

His letters of this period to Fuller on the fruits of India, and to

Morris on the husbandry of the natives, might be quoted still as

accurate and yet popular descriptions of the mango, guava, and

custard apple; plantain, jack, and tamarind; pomegranate,

pine-apple, and rose-apple; papaya, date, and cocoa-nut; citron,

lime, and shaddock. Of many of these, and of foreign fruits which

he introduced, it might be said he found them poor, and he

cultivated them till he left to succeeding generations a rich and

varied orchard.

While still in Dinapoor, he wrote on 1st January 1798: "Seeds of

sour apples, pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries,

gooseberries, currants, strawberries, or raspberries, put loose into

a box of dry sand, and sent so as to arrive in September, October,

November, or December, would be a great acquisition, as is every

European production. Nuts, filberts, acorns, etc., would be the

same. We have lately obtained the cinnamon tree, and nutmeg tree,

which Dr. Roxburgh very obligingly sent to me. Of timber trees I

mention the sissoo, the teak, and the saul tree, which, being an

unnamed genus, Dr. Roxburgh, as a mark of respect to me, has called

Careya saulea."

The publication of the last name caused Carey's sensitive modesty

extreme annoyance. "Do not print the names of Europeans. I was

sorry to see that you printed that Dr. Roxburgh had named the saul

tree by my name. As he is in the habit of publishing his drawings

of plants, it would have looked better if it had been mentioned

first by him." Whether he prevailed with his admiring friend in the

Company's Botanic Garden to change the name to that which the useful

sal tree now bears, the Shorea robusta, we know not, but the term is

derived from Lord Teignmouth's name. Carey will go down to

posterity in the history of botanical research, notwithstanding his

own humility and the accidents of time. For Dr. Roxburgh gave the

name of Careya to an interesting genus of Myrtace . The great?

French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert duly commemorates the labours

of Dr. Carey in the Mus e Botanique.?

It was in Serampore that the gentle botanist found full scope for

the one recreation which he allowed himself, in the interest of his

body as well as of his otherwise overtasked spirit. There he had

five acres of ground laid out, and, in time, planted on the Linn an?

system. The park around, from which he had the little paradise

carefully walled in, that Brahmani bull and villager's cow, nightly

jackal and thoughtless youth, might not intrude, he planted with

trees then rare or unknown in lower Bengal, the mahogany and deodar,

the teak and tamarind, the carob and eucalyptus. The fine American

Mahogany has so thriven that the present writer was able, seventy

years after the trees had been planted, to supply Government with

plentiful seed. The trees of the park were so placed as to form a

noble avenue, which long shaded the press and was known as Carey's

Walk. The umbrageous tamarind formed a dense cover, under which more

than one generation of Carey's successors rejoiced as they welcomed

visitors to the consecrated spot from all parts of India, America,

and Great Britain. Foresters like Sir D. Brandis and Dr. Cleghorn

at various times visited this arboretum, and have referred to the

trees, whose date of planting is known, for the purpose of recording

the rate of growth.

For the loved garden Carey himself trained native peasants who, with

the mimetic instinct of the Bengali, followed his instructions like

those of their own Brahmans, learned the Latin names, and pronounced

them with their master's very accent up till a late date, when

Hullodhur, the last of them, passed away. The garden with its

tropical glories and more modest exotics, every one of which was as

a personal friend, and to him had an individual history, was more

than a place of recreation. It was his oratory, the scene of prayer

and meditation, the place where he began and ended the day of

light--with God. What he wrote in his earlier journals and letters

of the sequestered spot at Mudnabati was true in a deeper and wider

sense of the garden of Serampore:--"23rd September, Lord's

Day.--Arose about sunrise, and, according to my usual practice,

walked into my garden for meditation and prayer till the servants

came to family worship." We have this account from his son

Jonathan:--

"In objects of nature my father was exceedingly curious. His

collection of mineral ores, and other subjects of natural history,

was extensive, and obtained his particular attention in seasons of

leisure and recreation. The science of botany was his constant

delight and study; and his fondness for his garden remained to the

last. No one was allowed to interfere in the arrangements of this

his favourite retreat; and it is here he enjoyed his most pleasant

moments of secret devotion and meditation. The arrangements made by

him were on the Linn an system; and to disturb the bed or border of?

the garden was to touch the apple of his eye. The garden formed the

best and rarest botanical collection of plants in the East; to the

extension of which, by his correspondence with persons of eminence

in Europe and other parts of the world, his attention was constantly

directed; and, in return, he supplied his correspondents with rare

collections from the East. It was painful to observe with what

distress my father quitted this scene of his enjoyments, when

extreme weakness, during his last illness, prevented his going to

his favourite retreat. Often, when he was unable to walk, he was

drawn into the garden in a chair placed on a board with four wheels.

"In order to prevent irregularity in the attendance of the gardeners

he was latterly particular in paying their wages with his own hands;

and on the last occasion of doing so, he was much affected that his

weakness had increased and confined him to the house. But,

notwithstanding he had closed this part of his earthly scene, he

could not refrain from sending for his gardeners into the room where

he lay, and would converse with them about the plants; and near his

couch, against the wall, he placed the picture of a beautiful shrub,

upon which he gazed with delight.

"On this science he frequently gave lectures, which were well

attended, and never failed to prove interesting. His publication of

Roxburgh's Flora Indica is a standard work with botanists. Of his

botanical friends he spoke with great esteem; and never failed to

defend them when erroneously assailed. He encouraged the study of

the science wherever a desire to acquire it was manifested. In this

particular he would sometimes gently reprove those who had no taste

for it; but he would not spare those who attempted to undervalue it.

His remark of one of his colleagues was keen and striking. When

the latter somewhat reprehended Dr. Carey, to the medical gentleman

attending him, for exposing himself so much in the garden, he

immediately replied, that his colleague was conversant with the

pleasures of a garden, just as an animal was with the grass in the

field."

As from Dinapoor, so from Serampore after his settlement there, an

early order was this on 27th November 1800:--"We are sending an

assortment of Hindoo gods to the British Museum, and some other

curiosities to different friends. Do send a few tulips, daffodils,

snowdrops, lilies, and seeds of other things, by Dolton when he

returns, desiring him not to put them into the hold. Send the roots

in a net or basket, to be hung up anywhere out of the reach of salt

water, and the seeds in a separate small box. You need not be at

any expense, any friend will supply these things. The cowslips and

daisies of your fields would be great acquisitions here." What the

daisies of the English fields became to Carey, and how his request

was long after answered, is told by James Montgomery, the Moravian,

who formed after Cowper the second poet of the missionary

reformation:--

THE DAISY IN INDIA

"A friend of mine, a scientific botanist, residing near Sheffield,

had sent a package of sundry kinds of British seeds to the learned

and venerable Doctor WILLIAM CAREY. Some of the seeds had been

enclosed in a bag, containing a portion of their native earth. In

March 1821 a letter of acknowledgment was received by his

correspondent from the Doctor, who was himself well skilled in

botany, and had a garden rich in plants, both tropical and European.

In this enclosure he was wont to spend an hour every morning,

before he entered upon those labours and studies which have rendered

his name illustrious both at home and abroad, as one of the most

accomplished of Oriental scholars and a translator of the Holy

Scriptures into many of the Hindoo languages. In the letter

aforementioned, which was shown to me, the good man says:--'That I

might be sure not to lose any part of your valuable present, I shook

the bag over a patch of earth in a shady place: on visiting which a

few days afterwards I found springing up, to my inexpressible

delight, a Bellis perennis of our English pastures. I know not that

I ever enjoyed, since leaving Europe, a simple pleasure so exquisite

as the sight of this English Daisy afforded me; not having seen one

for upwards of thirty years, and never expecting to see one again.'

"On the perusal of this passage, the following stanzas seemed to

spring up almost spontaneously in my mind, as the 'little English

flower' in the good Doctor's garden, whom I imagined to be thus

addressing it on its sudden appearance:--

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

My mother-country's white and red,

In rose or lily, till this hour,

Never to me such beauty spread:

Transplanted from thine island-bed,

A treasure in a grain of earth,

Strange as a spirit from the dead,

Thine embryo sprang to birth.

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

Whose tribes, beneath our natal skies,

Shut close their leaves while vapours lower;

But, when the sun's gay beams arise,

With unabashed but modest eyes,

Follow his motion to the west,

Nor cease to gaze till daylight dies,

Then fold themselves to rest.

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

To this resplendent hemisphere,

Where Flora's giant offspring tower

In gorgeous liveries all the year:

Thou, only thou, art little here,

Like worth unfriended and unknown,

Yet to my British heart more dear

Than all the torrid zone.

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

Of early scenes beloved by me,

While happy in my father's bower,

Thou shalt the blythe memorial be;

The fairy sports of infancy,

Youth's golden age, and manhood's prime.

Home, country, kindred, friends,--with thee,

I find in this far clime.

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

I'll rear thee with a trembling hand:

Oh, for the April sun and shower,

The sweet May dews of that fair land.

Where Daisies, thick as starlight, stand

In every walk!--that here may shoot

Thy scions, and thy buds expand

A hundred from one root.

"Thrice welcome, little English flower!

To me the pledge of hope unseen:

When sorrow would my soul o'erpower,

For joys that were, or might have been,

I'll call to mind, how, fresh and green,

I saw thee waking from the dust;

Then turn to heaven with brow serene,

And place in GOD my trust."

>From every distant station, from Amboyna to Delhi, he received seeds

and animals and specimens of natural history. The very schoolboys

when they went out into the world, and the young civilians of Fort

William College, enriched his collections. To Jabez, his son in

Amboyna, we find him thus writing:--"I have already informed you of

the luckless fate of all the animals you have sent. I know of no

remedy for the living animals dying, but by a little attention to

packing them you may send skins of birds and animals of every kind,

and also seeds and roots. I lately received a parcel of seeds from

Moore (a large boy who, you may remember, was at school when the

printing-office was burnt), every one of which bids fair to grow.

He is in some of the Malay islands. After all you have greatly

contributed to the enlargement of my collection."

"17th September 1816.--I approve much of Bencoolen as a place for

your future labours, unless you should rather choose the island of

Borneo...The English may send a Resident thither after a time. I

mention this from a conversation I had some months ago on the

subject with Lord Moira, who told me that there is a large body of

Chinese on that island." They "applied to the late Lieut.-Governor

of Java, requesting that an English Resident may be sent to govern

them, and offering to be at the whole expense of his salary and

government. The Borneo business may come to nothing, but if it

should succeed it would be a glorious opening for the Gospel in that

large island. Sumatra, however, is larger than any one man could

occupy." As we read this we see the Serampore apostle's hope

fulfilled after a different fashion, in Rajah Brooke's settlement at

Sarawak, in the charter of the North Borneo Company, in the opening

up of New Guinea and in the civilisation of the Philippines by the

United States of America.

To Roxburgh and his Danish successor Wallich, to Voigt who succeeded

Wallich in Serampore, and hundreds of correspondents in India and

Germany, Great Britain and America, Carey did many a service in

sending plants and--what was a greater sacrifice for so busy a

man--writing letters. What he did for the Hortus Bengalensis may

stand for all.

When, in 1814, Dr. Roxburgh was sent to sea almost dying, Dr. Carey

edited and printed at his own press that now very rare volume, the

Hortus Bengalensis, or a Catalogue of the Plants of the Honourable

East India Company's Botanic Garden in Calcutta. Carey's

introduction of twelve large pages is perhaps his most

characteristic writing on a scientific subject. His genuine

friendliness and humility shine forth in the testimony he bears to

the abilities, zeal, and success of the great botanist who, in

twenty years, had created a collection of 3200 species. Of these

3000 at least had been given by the European residents in India,

himself most largely of all. Having shown in detail the utility of

botanical gardens, especially in all the foreign settlements of

Great Britain, he declared that only a beginning had been made in

observing and cataloguing the stock of Asiatic productions. He

urged English residents all over India to set apart a small plot for

the reception of the plants of their neighbourhood, and when riding

about the country to mark plants, which their servants could bring

on to the nursery, getting them to write the native name of each.

He desiderated gardens at Hurdwar, Delhi, Dacca, and Sylhet, where

plants that will not live at Calcutta might prosper, a suggestion

which was afterwards carried out by the Government in establishing a

garden at Saharanpoor, in a Sub-Himalayan region, which has been

successfully directed by Royle, Falconer, and Jameson.

On Dr. Roxburgh's death in 1815 Dr. Carey waited to see whether an

English botanist would publish the fruit of thirty years' labour of

his friend in the description of more than 2000 plants, natives of

Eastern Asia. At his own risk he then, in 1820, undertook this

publication, or the Flora Indica, placing on the title-page, "All

Thy works praise Thee, O Lord--David." When the Roxburgh MSS. were

made over to the library of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, the

fourth and final volume appeared with this note regarding the new

edition:--"The work was printed from MSS. in the possession of Dr.

Carey, and it was carried through the press when he was labouring

under the debility of great age...The advanced age of Dr. Carey did

not admit of any longer delay."

His first public attempt at agricultural reform was made in the

paper which he contributed to the Transactions of the Bengal Asiatic

Society, and which appeared in 1811 in the tenth volume of the

Asiatic Researches. In the space of an ordinary Quarterly Review

article he describes the "State of Agriculture in the District of

Dinapoor," and urges improvements such as only the officials,

settlers, and Government could begin. The soils, the "extremely

poor" people, their "proportionally simple and wretched farming

utensils," the cattle, the primitive irrigation alluded to in

Deuteronomy as "watering with the foot," and the modes of ploughing

and reaping, are rapidly sketched and illustrated by lithographed

figures drawn to scale. In greater detail the principal crops are

treated. The staple crop of rice in its many varieties and harvests

at different seasons is lucidly brought before the Government, in

language which it would have been well to remember or reproduce in

the subsequent avoidable famines of Orissa and North Bihar. Indigo

is set before us with the skill of one who had grown and

manufactured it for years. The hemp and jute plants are enlarged on

in language which unconsciously anticipates the vast and enriching

development given to the latter as an export and a local manufacture

since the Crimean War. An account of the oil-seeds and the faulty

mode of expressing the oil, which made Indian linseed oil unfit for

painting, is followed by remarks on the cultivation of wheat, to

which subsequent events have given great importance. Though many

parts, even of Dinapoor, were fit for the growth of wheat and

barley, the natives produced only a dark variety from bad seed. "For

the purpose of making a trial I sowed Patna wheat on a large

quantity of land in the year 1798, the flour produced from which was

of a very good quality." The pulses, tobacco, the egg-plant, the

capsicums, the cucumbers, the arum roots, turmeric, ginger, and

sugar-cane, all pass in review in a style which the non-scientific

reader may enjoy and the expert must appreciate. Improvements in

method and the introduction of the best kinds of plants and

vegetables are suggested, notwithstanding "the poverty, prejudices,

and indolence of the natives."

This paper is most remarkable, however, for the true note which its

writer was the first to strike on the subject of forestry. If we

reflect that it was not till 1846 that the Government made the first

attempt at forest conservancy, in order to preserve the timber of

Malabar for the Bombay dockyard; and not till the conquest of Pegu,

in 1855, that the Marquis of Dalhousie was led by the Friend of

India to appoint Dietrich Brandis of Bonn to care for the forests of

Burma, and Dr. Cleghorn for those of South India, we shall

appreciate the wise foresight of the missionary-scholar, who, having

first made his own park a model of forest teaching, wrote such words

as these early in the century:--"The cultivation of timber has

hitherto, I believe, been wholly neglected. Several sorts have been

planted...all over Bengal, and would soon furnish a very large share

of the timber used in the country. The sissoo, the Andaman redwood,

the teak, the mahogany, the satin-wood, the chikrasi, the toona, and

the sirisha should be principally chosen. The planting of these

trees single, at the distance of a furlong from each other, would do

no injury to the crops of corn, but would, by cooling the

atmosphere, rather be advantageous. In many places spots now

unproductive would be improved by clumps or small plantations of

timber, under which ginger and turmeric might be cultivated to great

advantage. In some situations saul...would prosper. Indeed the

improvements that might be made in this country by the planting of

timber can scarcely be calculated. Teak is at present brought from

the Burman dominions...The French naturalists have already begun to

turn their attention to the culture of this valuable tree as an

object of national utility. This will be found impracticable in

France, but may perhaps be attempted somewhere else. To England,

the first commercial country in the world, its importance must be

obvious."

Ten years passed, Carey continued to watch and to extend his

agri-horticultural experiments in his own garden, and to correspond

with botanists in all parts of the world, but still nothing was done

publicly in India. At last, on 15th April 1820, when "the

advantages arising from a number of persons uniting themselves as a

Society for the purpose of carrying forward any undertaking" were

generally acknowledged, the shoemaker and preacher who had a

generation before tested these advantages in the formation of the

first Foreign Mission Society, issued a Prospectus of an

Agricultural and Horticultural Society in India, from the "Mission

House, Serampore." The prospectus thus concluded:--"Both in forming

such a Society and in subsequently promoting its objects, important

to the happiness of the country as they regard them, the writer and

his colleagues will be happy in doing all their other avocations

will permit." Native as well as European gentlemen were

particularly invited to co-operate. "It is peculiarly desirable that

native gentlemen should be eligible as members of the Society,

because one of its chief objects will be the improvement of their

estates and of the peasantry which reside thereon. They should

therefore not only be eligible as members but also as officers of

the Society in precisely the same manner as Europeans." At the

first meeting in the Town Hall of Calcutta, Carey and Marshman found

only three Europeans beside themselves. They resolved to proceed,

and in two months they secured more than fifty members, several of

whom were natives. The first formal meeting was held on 14th

September, when the constitution was drawn up on the lines laid down

in the prospectus, it being specially provided "that gentlemen of

every nation be eligible as members."

At the next meeting Dr. Carey was requested to draw up a series of

queries, which were circulated widely, in order to obtain "correct

information upon every circumstance which is connected with the

state of agriculture and horticulture in the various provinces of

India." The twenty queries show a grasp of principles, a mastery of

detail, and a kindliness of spirit which reveal the practical

farmer, the accomplished observer, and the thoughtful philanthropist

all in one. One only we may quote:--"19. In what manner do you

think the comforts of the peasantry around you could be increased,

their health better secured, and their general happiness promoted?"

The Marquis of Hastings gladly became patron, and ever since the

Government has made a grant to the Society. His wife showed such an

interest in its progress that the members obtained her consent to

sit to Chinnery for her portrait to fill the largest panel in the

house at Titigur. Lord Hastings added the experimental farm, formed

near Barrackpore, to the Botanic Garden, with an immediate view to

its assisting the Agricultural Society in their experiments and

pursuits. The Society became speedily popular, for Carey watched

its infancy with loving solicitude, and was the life of its

meetings. In the first eighty-seven years of its existence seven

thousand of the best men in India have been its members, of whom

seven hundred are Asiatics. Agriculturists, military and medical

officers, civilians, clergy, and merchants, are represented on its

roll in nearly equal proportions. The one Society has grown into

three in India, and formed the model for the Royal Agricultural

Society of England, which was not founded till 1838.

Italy and Scotland alone preceded Carey in this organisation, and he

quotes with approbation the action of Sir John Sinclair in 1790,

which led to the first inquiry into the state of British

agriculture. The Transactions which Carey led the Society to

promise to publish in English, Bengali, and Hindostani, have proved

to be only the first of a series of special periodicals representing

Indian agriculture generally, tea, and forestry. The various

Governments in India have economic museums; and the Government of

India, under Lord Mayo, established a Revenue and Agricultural

Department expanded by Lord Curzon. Carey's early proposal of

premiums, each of a hundred rupees, or the Society's gold medal, for

the most successful cultivation on a commercial scale of coffee and

improved cotton, for the successful introduction of European fruits,

for the improvement of indigenous fruits, for the successful

introduction from the Eastern Islands of the mangosteen or doorian,

and for the manufacture of cheese equal to Warwickshire, had the

best results in some cases. In 1825 Mr. Lamb of Dacca was presented

by "Rev. Dr. Carey in the chair" with the gold medal for 80 lbs. of

coffee grown there. Carey's own head gardener became famous for his

cabbages; and we find this sentence in the Society's Report just

after the founder's death:--"Who would have credited fifteen years

ago that we could have exhibited vegetables in the Town Hall of

Calcutta equal to the choicest in Covent Garden?" The berries two

centuries ago brought from Arabia in his wallet by the pilgrim Baba

Booden to the hills of Mysore, which bear his name, have, since that

Dacca experiment, covered the uplands of South India and Ceylon.

Before Carey died he knew of the discovery of the indigenous

tea-tree in its original home on the Assam border of Tibet--a

discovery which has put India in the place of China as a producer.

In the Society's Proceedings for 9th January 1828 we find this

significant record:--"Resolved, at the suggestion of the Rev. Dr.

Carey, that permission be given to Goluk Chundra, a blacksmith of

Titigur, to exhibit a steam engine made by himself without the aid

of any European artist." At the next meeting, when 109 malees or

native gardeners competed at the annual exhibition of vegetables,

the steam engine was submitted and pronounced "useful for irrigating

lands made upon the model of a large steam engine belonging to the

missionaries at Serampore." A premium of Rs. 50 was presented to

the ingenious blacksmith as an encouragement to further exertions of

his industry. When in 1832 the afterwards well-known

Lieutenant-Governor Thomason was deputy-secretary to Government, he

applied to the Society for information regarding the manufacture of

paper. Dr. Carey and Ram Komal Sen were referred to, and the former

thus replied in his usual concise and clear manner:--

"When we commenced paper-making several years ago, having then no

machinery, we employed a number of native papermakers to make it in

the way to which they had been accustomed, with the exception of

mixing conjee or rice gruel with the pulp and using it as sizing;

our object being that of making paper impervious to insects. Our

success at first was very imperfect, but the process was conducted

as follows:--

"A quantity of sunn, viz., the fibres of Crotolaria juncea, was

steeped repeatedly in limewater, and then exposed to the air by

spreading it on the grass; it was also repeatedly pounded by the

dhenki or pedal, and when sufficiently reduced by this process to

make a pulp, it was mixed in a gumla with water, so as to make it of

the consistence of thick soup. The frames with which the sheets

were taken up were made of mat of the size of a sheet of paper. The

operator sitting by the gumla dipped this frame in the pulp, and

after it was drained gave it to an assistant, who laid it on the

grass to dry: this finished the process with us; but for the native

market this paper is afterwards sized by holding a number of sheets

by the edge and dipping them carefully in conjee, so as to keep the

sheets separate. They are afterwards dried, folded, and pressed by

putting them between two boards, the upper board of which is loaded

with one or more large stones.

"In the English method the pulp is prepared by the mill and put into

cisterns; the frames are made of fine wire, and the workman stands

by the cistern and takes up the pulp on the frames. The sheets when

sufficiently dry are hung on lines to dry completely, after which

they are sized, if sizing be required.

"We now make our paper by machinery, in which the pulp is let to run

on a web of wire, and passing over several cylinders, the last of

which is heated by steam, it is dried and fit for use in about two

minutes from its having been in a liquid state."

Since that reply the Government of India, under the pressure of the

home authorities, has alternately discouraged and fostered the

manufacture of paper on the spot. At present it is in the wiser

position of preferring to purchase its supplies in India, at once as

being cheaper, and that it may develop the use of the many

paper-making fibres there. Hence at the Calcutta Exhibition of

1881-82 the jurors began their report on the machine and hand-made

paper submitted to them, with a reference to Carey and this report

of his. The Serampore mills were gradually crushed by the expensive

and unsatisfactory contracts made at home by the India Office. The

neighbouring Bally mills seem to flourish since the abandonment of

that virtual monopoly, and Carey's anticipations as to the

utilisation of the plantain and other fibres of India are being

realised nearly a century after he first formed them.

Carey expanded and published his "Address respecting an Agricultural

Society in India" in the quarterly Friend of India. He still thinks

it necessary to apologise for his action by quoting his hero,

Brainerd, who was constrained to assist his Indian converts with his

counsels in sowing their maize and arranging their secular concerns.

"Few," he adds with the true breadth of genius which converted the

Baptist shoemaker into the Christian statesman and scholar, "who are

extensively acquainted with human life, will esteem these cares

either unworthy of religion or incongruous with its highest

enjoyments." When Carey wrote, the millions of five-acre farmers in

India were only beginning to recover from the oppression and neglect

of former rulers and the visitation of terrific famines. Trade was

as depressed as agriculture. Transit duties, not less offensive

than those of the Chinese, continued to weigh down agricultural

industry till Lord W. Bentinck's time and later. The English

Government levied an unequal scale of duties on the staples of the

East and West Indies, against which the former petitioned in vain.

The East India Company kept the people in ignorance, and continued

to exclude the European capitalist and captain of labour. The large

native landholders were as uneducated as the cultivators. Before

all Carey set these reforms: close attention to the improvement of

land, the best method of cropping land, the introduction of new and

useful plants, the improvement of the implements of husbandry, the

improvement of live stock, the bringing of waste lands under

cultivation, the improvement of horticulture. He went on to show

that, in addition to the abundance which an improved agriculture

would diffuse throughout the country, the surplus of grain exported,

besides "her opium, her indigo, her silk, and her cotton," would

greatly tend to enrich India and endear Britain to her. "Whatever

may be thought of the Government of Mr. Hastings and those who

immediately preceded him for these last forty years, India has

certainly enjoyed such a Government as none of the provinces of the

Persian or the Roman Empire ever enjoyed for so great a length of

time in succession, and, indeed, one almost as new in the annals of

modern Europe as in those of India."

Carey found one of the greatest obstacles to agricultural progress

to be the fact that not one European owned a single foot of the

soil, "a singular fact in the history of nations," removed only

about the time of his own death. His remarks on this have a present

significance:--

"It doubtless originated in a laudable care to preserve our Indian

fellow-subjects from insult and violence, which it was feared could

scarcely be done if natives of Britain, wholly unacquainted with the

laws and customs of the people, were permitted to settle

indiscriminately in India. While the wisdom of this regulation at

that time is not impugned, however, it may not be improper to

inquire whether at the present time a permission to hold landed

property, to be granted by Government to British subjects in India,

according to their own discretion, might not be of the highest

benefit to the country, and in some degree advantageous to the

Government itself.

"The objections which have been urged against any measure of this

nature are chiefly that the indiscriminate admission of Europeans

into the country might tend to alienate the minds of the inhabitants

from Britain, or possibly lead to its disruption from Britain in a

way similar to that of America. Respecting this latter

circumstance, it is certain that, in the common course of events, a

greater evil could scarcely befall India. On the continuance of her

connection with Britain is suspended her every hope relative to

improvement, security, and happiness. The moment India falls again

under the dominion of any one or any number of native princes, all

hope of mental improvement, or even of security for person or

property, will at once vanish. Nothing could be then expected but

scenes of rapine, plunder, bloodshed, and violence, till its

inhabitants were sealed over to irremediable wretchedness, without

the most distant ray of hope respecting the future. And were it

severed from Britain in any other way, the reverse felt in India

would be unspeakably great. At present all the learning, the

intelligence, the probity, the philanthropy, the weight of character

existing in Britain, are brought to bear on India. There is

scarcely an individual sustaining a part in the administration of

affairs who does not feel the weight of that tribunal formed by the

suffrages of the wise and the good in Britain, though he be

stationed in the remotest parts of India. Through the medium of a

free press the wisdom, probity, and philanthropy which pervade

Britain exercise an almost unbounded sway over every part of India,

to the incalculable advantage of its inhabitants; constituting a

triumph of virtue and wisdom thus unknown to the ancients, and which

will increase in its effects in exact proportion to the increase in

Britain of justice, generosity, and love to mankind. Let India,

however, be severed from Britain, and the weight of these is felt no

more...

"It is a fact that in case of outrage or injury it is in most cases

easier for a native to obtain justice against a European, than for a

European to obtain redress if insulted or wronged by a native. This

circumstance, attended as it may be with some inconvenience,

reflects the highest honour on the British name; it is a fact of

which India affords almost the first instance on record in the

annals of history. Britain is nearly the first nation in whose

foreign Courts of Justice a tenderness for the native inhabitants

habitually prevails over all the partialities arising from country

and education. If there ever existed a period, therefore, in which

a European could oppress a native of India with impunity, that time

is passed away--we trust for ever. That a permission of this nature

might tend to sever India from Britain after the example of America

is of all things the most improbable...

"Long before the number of British landholders in India shall have

become considerable, Penang and the Eastern Isles, Ceylon, the Cape,

and even the Isles of New South Wales, may in European population

far exceed them in number; and unitedly, if not singly, render the

most distant step of this nature as impracticable, as it would be

ruinous, to the welfare and happiness of India...

"British-born landholders would naturally maintain all their

national attachments, for what Briton can lose them? and derive

their happiness from corresponding with the wise and good at home.

If sufficiently wealthy, they would no doubt occasionally visit

Britain, where indeed it might be expected that some of them would

reside for years together, as do the owners of estates in the West

Indies. While Britain shall remain what she now is, it will be

impossible for those who have once felt the force of British

attachments, ever to forego them. Those feelings would animate

their minds, occupy their conversation, and regulate the education

and studies of their children, who would be in general sent home

that they might there imbibe all those ideas of a moral and

intellectual nature for which our beloved country is so eminent.

Thus a new intercourse would be established between Britain and the

proprietors of land in India, highly to the advantage of both

countries. While they derived their highest happiness from the

religion, the literature, the philanthropy and public spirit of

Britain, they would, on the other hand, be able to furnish Britain

with the most accurate and ample information relative to the state

of things in a country in which the property they held there

constrained them to feel so deep an interest. The fear of all

oppression being out of the question, while it would be so evidently

the interest not only of every Briton but of every Christian,

whether British or native, to secure the protecting aid of Britain,

at least as long as two-thirds of the inhabitants of India retained

the Hindoo or Mussulman system of religion, few things would be more

likely to cement and preserve the connection between both countries

than the existence of such a class of British-born landholders in

India."

It is profitable to read this in the light of subsequent events--of

the Duff-Bentinck reforms, the Sepoy mutiny, the government of the

Queen-Empress, the existence of more than three millions of

Christians in India, the social and commercial development due to

the non-officials from Great Britain and America, and the

administrative progress under Lord Curzon and Lord Minto.

There is one evil which Carey never ceased to point out, but which

the very perfection of our judicial procedure and the temporary

character of our land assessments have intensified--"the borrowing

system of the natives." While 12 per cent. is the so-called legal

rate of interest; it is never below 36, and frequently rises to 72

per cent. Native marriage customs, the commercial custom of

"advances," agricultural usage, and our civil procedure combine to

sink millions of the peasantry lower than they were, in this

respect, in Carey's time. For this, too, he had a remedy so far as

it was in his power to mitigate an evil which only practical

Christianity will cure. He was the first to apply in India that

system of savings banks which the Government has of late sought to

encourage.

At a time when the English and even Scottish universities denied

their honorary degrees to all British subjects who were not of the

established churches, Brown University, in the United

States--Judson's--spontaneously sent Carey the diploma of Doctor of

Divinity. That was in the year 1807. In 1823 he was elected a

corresponding member of the Horticultural Society of London, a

member of the Geological Society, and a Fellow of the Linn an?

Society. To him the latter year was ever memorable, not for such

honours which he had not sought, but for a flood of the Damoodar

river, which, overflowing its embankments and desolating the whole

country between it and the Hoogli, submerged his garden and the

mission grounds with three feet of water, swept away the botanic

treasures or buried them under sand, and destroyed his own house.

Carey was lying in bed at the time, under an apparently fatal fever

following dislocation of the hip-joint. He had lost his footing

when stepping from his boat. Surgical science was then less equal

to such a case than it is now, and for nine days he suffered agony,

which on the tenth resulted in fever. When hurriedly carried out of

his tottering house, which in a few hours was scoured away by the

rush of the torrent into a hole fifty feet deep, his first thought

was of his garden. For six months he used crutches, but long before

he could put foot to the ground he was carefully borne all over the

scene of desolation. His noble collection of exotic plants,

unmatched in Asia save in the Company's garden, was gone. His

scientific arrangement of orders and families was obliterated. It

seemed as if the fine barren sand of the mountain torrent would make

the paradise a desert for ever. The venerable botanist was wounded

in his keenest part, but he lost not an hour in issuing orders and

writing off for new supplies of specimens and seeds, which years

after made the place as lovely if not so precious, as before. He

thus wrote to Dr. Ryland:--

"SERAMPORE, 22nd December 1823.

"MY DEAR BROTHER--I once more address you from the land of the

living, a mercy which about two months ago I had no expectation of,

nor did any one expect it more than, nor perhaps so much as, myself.

On the 1st of October I went to Calcutta to preach, and returned

with another friend about midnight. When I got out of the boat

close to our own premises, my foot slipped and I fell; my friend

also fell in the same place. I however perceived that I could not

rise, nor even make the smallest effort to rise. The boatmen

carried me into the house, and laid me on a couch, and my friend,

who was a medical man, examined my hurt.--From all this affliction I

am, through mercy, nearly restored. I am still very weak, and the

injured limb is very painful. I am unable to walk two steps without

crutches; yet my strength is sensibly increasing, and Dr. Mellis,

who attended me during the illness, says he has no doubts of my

perfect recovery.

"During my confinement, in October, such a quantity of water came

down from the western hills, that it laid the whole country for

about a hundred miles in length and the same in breadth, under

water. The Ganges was filled by the flood, so as to spread far on

every side. Serampore was under water; we had three feet of water

in our garden for seven or eight days. Almost all the houses of the

natives in that vast extent of country fell; their cattle were swept

away, and the people, men, women, and children. Some gained

elevated spots, where the water still rose so high as to threaten

them with death; others climbed trees, and some floated on the roofs

of their ruined houses. One of the Church missionaries, Mr. Jetter,

who had accompanied Mr. Thomason and some other gentlemen to Burdwan

to examine the schools there, called on me on his return and gave me

a most distressing account of the fall of houses, the loss of

property, the violent rushing of waters, so that none, not even the

best swimmers, dared to leave the place where they were.

"This inundation was very destructive to the Mission house, or

rather the Mission premises. A slip of the earth (somewhat like

that of an avalanche), took place on the bank of the river near my

house, and gradually approached it until only about ten feet of

space were left between that and the house; and that space soon

split. At last two fissures appeared in the foundation and wall of

the house itself. This was a signal for me to remove; and a house

built for a professor in the College being empty, I removed to it,

and through mercy am now comfortably settled there.

"I have nearly filled my letter with this account, but I must give

you a short account of the state of my mind when I could think, and

that was generally when excited by an access of friends; at other

times I could scarcely speak or think. I concluded one or two days

that my death was near. I had no joys; nor any fear of death, or

reluctance to die; but never was I so sensibly convinced of the

value of an ATONING Saviour as then. I could only say, 'Hangs my

helpless soul on thee;' and adopt the language of the first and

second verses of the fifty-first Psalm, which I desired might be the

text for my funeral sermon. A life of faith in Christ as the Lamb

of God who taketh away the sin of the world, appeared more than

ordinarily important to my mind, and I expressed these feelings to

those about me with freedom and pleasure.

"Now, through the gracious providence of God, I am again restored to

my work, and daily do a little as my strength will admit. The

printing of the translations is now going forward almost as usual,

but I have not yet been able to attend to my duties in College. The

affairs of the Mission are more extended, and I trust in as

prosperous a state as at any former time. There are now many of

other denominations employed in Missions, and I rejoice to say that

we are all workers together in the work. The native churches were

never in a better state, and the face of the Mission is in every

respect encouraging. Give my love to all who know me.--I am very

affectionately yours, W. CAREY."

Still more severe and disastrous in its effects was the cyclone of

1831. The former had desolated the open garden, but this laid low

some of the noblest trees which, in their fall, crushed his splendid

conservatory. One of his brethren represents the old man as weeping

over the ruin of the collections of twenty years. Again the Hoogli,

lashed into fury and swollen by the tidal wave, swept away the

lately-formed road, and, cutting off another fourth of the original

settlement of the Mission, imperilled the old house of Mr. Ward. Its

ruins were levelled to form another road, and ever since the whole

face of the right bank of the river has been a source of

apprehension and expense. Just before this, Dr. Staughton had

written from America that the interest on the funds raised there by

Ward for the College would not be sent until the trustees were

assured that the money was not to be spent on the teaching of

science in the College, but only on the theological education of

Hindoo converts. "I must confess," was Carey's reply, "I never heard

anything more illiberal. Pray can youth be trained up for the

Christian ministry without science? Do you in America train up

youths for it without any knowledge of science?"

One of Dr. Carey's latest visits to Calcutta was to inspect the

Society's Garden then at Alipore, and to write the elaborate report

of the Horticultural Committee which appeared in the second volume

of the Transactions after his death. He there records the great

success of the cultivation of the West India arrowroot. This he

introduced into his own garden, and after years of discontinued

culture we raised many a fine crop from the old roots. The old man

"cannot but advert, with feelings of the highest satisfaction, to

the display of vegetables on the 13th January 1830, a display which

would have done honour to any climate, or to any, even the most

improved system of horticulture...The greater part of the vegetables

then produced were, till within these last few years, of species

wholly unknown to the native gardeners."

When, in 1842, the Agri-Horticultural Society resolved to honour its

founder, it appropriately fell to Dr. Wallich, followed by the

president Sir J. P. Grant, to do what is thus recorded:--"Dr.

Wallich addressed the meeting at some length, and alluded to the

peculiar claims which their late venerable founder had on the

affection of all classes for his untiring exertions in advancing the

prosperity of India, and especially so on the members of the

Society. He concluded his address by this motion:--'That the

Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, duly estimating the

great and important services rendered to the interests of British

India by the founder of the institution, the late Reverend Dr.

William Carey, who unceasingly applied his great talents, abilities,

and influence in advancing the happiness of India--more especially

by the spread of an improved system of husbandry and

gardening--desire to mark, by some permanent record, their sense of

his transcendent worth, by placing a marble bust to his memory in

the Society's new apartments at the Metcalfe Hall, there to remain a

lasting testimony to the pure and disinterested zeal and labours of

so illustrious a character: that a subscription, accordingly, from

among the members of the Society, be urgently recommended for the

accomplishment of the above object.'"

One fact in the history of the marble bust of Carey, which since

1845 has adorned the hall of the Agricultural Society of India,

would have delighted the venerable missionary. Following the

engraving from Home's portrait, and advised by one of the sons, Nobo

Koomar Pal, a self-educated Bengali artist, modelled the clay. The

clay bust was sent to England for the guidance of Mr. J. C. Lough,

the sculptor selected by Dr. Royle to finish the work in marble.

Mr. Lough had executed the Queen's statue for the Royal Exchange,

and the monument with a reclining figure of Southey. In sending out

the marble bust of Carey to Calcutta Dr. Royle wrote,--"I think the

bust an admirable one; General Macleod immediately recognised it as

one of your much esteemed Founder."

The Bengal Asiatic Society, on the motion of the Lord Bishop and

Colonel Sir Jer. Bryant, entered these words on their Journal:--"The

Asiatic Society cannot note upon their proceedings the death of the

Rev. W. Carey, D.D., so long an active member and an ornament of

this Institution, distinguished alike for his high attainments in

the Oriental languages, for his eminent services in opening the

stores of Indian literature to the knowledge of Europe, and for his

extensive acquaintance with the sciences, the natural history and

botany of this country, and his useful contributions on every hand

towards the promotion of the objects of the Society, without placing

on record this expression of their high sense of his value and

merits as a scholar and a man of science; their esteem for the

sterling and surpassing religious and moral excellencies of his

character, and their sincere grief for his irreparable loss."

CHAPTER XIII

CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA

1813-1830

Carey's relation to the new era--The East India Company's Charters

of 1793, 1813, and 1833--His double influence on the churches and

public opinion--The great missionary societies--Missionary journals

and their readers--Bengal and India recognised as the most important

mission fields--Influence on Robert Haldane--Reflex effect of

foreign on home missions--Carey's power over individuals--Melville

Horne and Douglas of Cavers--Henry Martyn--Charles Simeon and

Stewart of Moulin--Robert Hall and John Foster--Heber and

Chalmers--William Wilberforce on Carey--Mr. Prendergast and the tub

story--Last persecution by the Company's Government--Carey on the

persecution and the charter controversy--The persecuting clause and

the resolution legalising toleration--The Edinburgh Review and

Sydney Smith's fun--Sir James Mackintosh's opinion--Southey's

defence and eulogy of Carey and the brotherhood in the Quarterly

Review--Political value of Carey's labours--Andrew Fuller's death--A

model foreign mission secretary--His friendship with Carey--The

sixteen years' dispute--Dr. Carey's position--His defence of

Marshman--His chivalrous seIf-sacrifice--His forgiveness of the

younger brethren in Calcutta--His fidelity to righteousness and to

friendship.

Himself the outcome of the social and political forces which began

in the French Revolution, and are still at work, William Carey was

made a living personal force to the new era. The period which was

introduced in 1783 by the Peace of Versailles in Europe following

the Independence of the United States of America, was new on every

side--in politics, in philosophy, in literature, in scientific

research, in a just and benevolent regard for the peoples of every

land, and in the awakening of the churches from the sleep of

formalism. Carey was no thinker, but with the reality and the

vividness of practical action and personal sacrifice he led the

English-speaking races, to whom the future of the world was then

given, to substitute for the dreams of Rousseau and all other

theories the teaching of Christ as to His kingdom within each man,

and in the progress of mankind.

Set free from the impossible task of administering North America on

the absolutist system which the Georges would fain have continued,

Great Britain found herself committed to the duty of doing for India

what Rome had done for Europe. England was compelled to surrender

the free West to her own children only that she might raise the

servile and idolatrous East to such a Christian level as the genius

of its peoples could in time enable them to work out. But it took

the thirty years from 1783 to 1813 to convince British statesmen,

from Pitt to Castlereagh, that India is to be civilised not

according to its own false systems, but by truth in all forms,

spiritual and moral, scientific and historical. It took other

twenty years, to the Charter of 1833, to complete the conversion of

the British Parliament to the belief that the principles of truth

and freedom are in their measure as good for the East as for the

West. At the beginning of this new period William Pitt based his

motion for Parliamentary reform on this fact, that "our senators are

no longer the representatives of British virtue but of the vices and

pollutions of the East." At the close of it Lord William Bentinck,

Macaulay, and Duff, co-operated in the decree which made truth, as

most completely revealed through the English language and

literature, the medium of India's enlightenment. William Carey's

career of fifty years, from his baptism in 1783 and the composition

of his Enquiry to his death in 1834, covered and influenced more

than any other one man's the whole time; and he represented in it an

element of permanent healthy nationalisation which these successors

overlooked,--the use of the languages of the peoples of India as the

only literary channels for allowing the truth revealed through

English to reach the millions of the people.

It was by this means that Carey educated Great Britain and America

to rise equal to the terrible trust of jointly creating a Christian

Empire of India, and ultimately a series of self-governing Christian

nations in Southern and Eastern Asia. He consciously and directly

roused the Churches of all names to carry out the commission of

their Master, and to seek the promised impulse of His Spirit or

Divine Representative on earth, that they might do greater things

than even those which He did. And he, less directly but not less

consciously, brought the influence of public opinion, which every

year purified and quickened, to bear upon Parliament and upon

individual statesmen, aided in this up till 1815 by Andrew Fuller.

He never set foot in England again, and the influence of his

brethren Ward and Marshman during their visits was largely

neutralised by some leaders of their own church. But Carey's

character and career, his letters and writings, his work and whole

personality, stood out in England, Scotland, and America as the

motive power which stimulated every church and society, and won the

triumph of toleration in the charter of 1813, of humanity,

education, and administrative reform in the legislation of Lord

William Bentinck.

We have already seen how the immediate result of Carey's early

letters was the foundation on a catholic basis of the London

Missionary Society, which now represents the great Nonconformist

half of England; of the Edinburgh or Scottish and Glasgow Societies,

through which the Presbyterians sent forth missionaries to West and

South Africa and to Western India, until their churches acted as

such; of the Church Missionary Society which the evangelical members

of the Church of England have put in the front of all the societies;

and of Robert Haldane's splendid self-sacrifice in selling all that

he had to lead a large Presbyterian mission to Hindostan. Soon

(1797) the London Society became the parent of that of the

Netherlands, and of that which is one of the most extensive in

Christendom, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign

Missions. The latter, really founded (1810) by Judson and some of

his fellow-students, gave birth (1814) to the almost equally great

American Baptist Union when Judson and his colleague became

Baptists, and the former was sent by Carey to Burma. The Religious

Tract Society (1799), and the British and Foreign Bible Society

(1804)--each a handmaid of the missionary agencies--sprang as really

though less directly from Carey's action. Such organised efforts to

bring in heathen and Mohammedan peoples led in 1809 to the at first

catholic work begun by the London Society for promoting Christianity

among the Jews. The older Wesleyan Methodist and Gospel Propagation

Societies, catching the enthusiasm as Carey succeeded in opening

India and the East, entered on a new development under which the

former in 1813, and the latter in 1821, no longer confined their

operations to the slaves of America and the English of the

dispersion in the colonies and dependencies of Great Britain. In

1815 Lutheran Germany also, which had cast out the Pietists and the

Moravian brethren as the Church of England had rejected the

Wesleyans, founded the principal representative of its

evangelicalism at Basel. The succeeding years up to Carey's death

saw similar missionary centres formed, or reorganised, in Leipzig

(1819), Berlin (1823), and Bremen (1836).23

The Periodical Accounts sent home from Mudnabati and Serampore,

beginning at the close of 1794, and the Monthly Circular Letters

after 1807, gave birth not only to these great missionary movements

but to the new and now familiar class of foreign missionary

periodicals. The few magazines then existing, like the Evangelical,

became filled with a new spirit of earnest aggressiveness. In 1796

there appeared in Edinburgh The Missionary Magazine, "a periodical

publication intended as a repository of discussion and intelligence

respecting the progress of the Gospel throughout the world." The

editors close their preface in January 1797 with this

statement:--"With much pleasure they have learned that there was

never a greater number of religious periodical publications carried

on than at present, and never were any of them more generally read.

The aggregate impression of those alone which are printed in

Britain every month considerably exceeds thirty thousand." The

first article utilises the facts sent home by Dr. Carey as the fruit

of his first two years' experience, to show "The Peculiar Advantages

of Bengal as a Field for Missions from Great Britain." After

describing, in the style of an English statesman, the immense

population, the highly civilised state of society, the eagerness of

the natives in the acquisition of knowledge, and the principles

which the Hindoos and Mohammedans hold in common with Christians,

the writer thus continues:--

"The attachment of both the Mohammedans and Hindoos to their ancient

systems is lessening every day. We have this information from the

late Sir William Jones, one of the Judges of that country, a name

dear to literature, and a lover of the religion of Jesus. The

Mussulmans in Hindostan are in general but little acquainted with

their system, and by no means so zealous for it as their brethren in

the Turkish and Persian empires. Besides, they have not the strong

arm of civil authority to crush those who would convert them. Mr.

Carey's letters seem to intimate the same relaxation among the

Hindoos. This decay of prejudice and bigotry will at least incline

them to listen with more patience, and a milder temper, to the

doctrines and evidences of the Christian religion. The degree of

adhesion to their castes, which still remains, is certainly

unfavourable, and must be considered as one of Satan's arts to

render men unhappy; but it is not insuperable. The Roman Catholics

have gained myriads of converts from among them. The Danish

missionaries record their thousands too: and one (Schwartz) of the

most successful missionaries at present in the world is labouring in

the southern part of Hindostan. Besides a very considerable number

who have thrown aside their old superstition, and make a profession

of the Christian religion, he computes that, in the course of his

ministry, he has been the instrument of savingly converting two

thousand persons to the faith of Christ. Of these, above five

hundred are Mohammedans: the rest are from among the different

castes of the Hindoos. In addition to these instances, it is proper

to notice the attention which the Hindoos are paying to the two

Baptist missionaries, and which gives a favourable specimen of their

readiness to listen to the preaching of the Gospel...

"Reflect, O disciple of Jesus! on what has been presented to thy

view. The cause of Christ is thy own cause. Without deep

criminality thou canst not be indifferent to its success. Rejoice

that so delightful a field of missions has been discovered and

exhibited. Rouse thyself from the slumbers of spiritual languor.

Exert thyself to the utmost of thy power; and let conscience be

able to testify, without a doubt, even at the tribunal of Jesus

Christ, If missionaries are not speedily sent to preach she glorious

Gospel in Bengal, it shall not be owing to me."

That is remarkable writing for an Edinburgh magazine in the year

1797, and it was Carey who made it possible. Its author followed up

the appeal by offering himself and his all, for life and death, in a

"Plan of the Mission to Bengal," which appeared in the April number.

Robert Haldane, whose journal at this time was full of Carey's

doings, and his ordained associates, Bogue, Innes, and Greville

Ewing, accompanied by John Ritchie as printer, John Campbell as

catechist, and other lay workers, determined to turn the very centre

of Hindooism, Benares, into a second Serampore. Defeated by one set

of Directors of the East India Company, he waited for the election

of their successors, only to find the East India Company as hostile

to the Scottish gentleman as they had been to the English shoemaker

four years before.

The formation of the great Missionary and Bible Societies did not,

as in the case of the Moravian Brethren and the Wesleyans, take

their members out of the Churches of England and Scotland, of the

Baptists and Independents. It supplied in each case an executive

through which they worked aggressively not only on the non-christian

world, but still more directly on their own home congregations and

parishes. The foreign mission spirit directly gave birth to the

home mission on an extensive scale. Not merely did the Haldanes and

their agents, following Whitefield and the Scottish Secession of

1733, become the evangelists of the north when they were not

suffered to preach the Gospel in South Asia; every member of the

churches of Great Britain and America, as he caught the enthusiasm

of humanity, in the Master's sense, from the periodical accounts

sent home from Serampore, and soon from Africa and the South Seas,

as well as from the Red Indians and Slaves of the West, began to

work as earnestly among the neglected classes around him, as to pray

and give for the conversion of the peoples abroad. From first to

last, from the early days of the Moravian influence on Wesley and

Whitefield, and the letters of Carey, to the successive visits to

the home churches of missionaries like Duff and Judson, Ellis and

Williams, Moffat and Livingstone, it is the enterprise of foreign

missions which has been the leaven of Christendom no less really

than of the rest of the world. Does the fact that at the close of

the year 1796 there were more than thirty thousand men and women in

Great Britain who every month read and prayed about the then little

known world of heathenism, and spared not their best to bring that

world to the Christ whom they had found, seem a small thing? How

much smaller, even to contemptible insignificance, must those who

think so consider the arrival of William Carey in Calcutta to be

three years before! Yet the thirty thousand sprang from the one,

and to-day the thirty thousand have a vast body of Christians really

obedient to the Master, in so far as, banded together in five

hundred churches and societies, they have sent out eighteen thousand

missionaries instead of one or two; they see eighty thousand

Asiatics, Africans, and Polynesians proclaiming the Christ to their

countrymen, and their praying is tested by their giving annually a

sum of 5,000,000, to which every year is adding.?

The influence of Carey and his work on individual men and women in

his generation was even more marked, inasmuch as his humility kept

him so often from magnifying his office and glorifying God as the

example of Paul should have encouraged him to do. Most important of

all for the cause, he personally called Ward to be his associate,

and his writings drew Dr. and Mrs. Marshman to his side, while his

apostolic charity so developed and used all that was good in Thomas

and Fountain, that not even in the churches of John and James, Peter

and Paul, Barnabas and Luke, was there such a brotherhood. When

troubles came from outside he won to himself the younger brethren,

Yates and Pearce, and healed half the schism which Andrew Fuller's

successors made. His Enquiry, followed "by actually embarking on a

mission to India," led to the publication of the Letters on Missions

addressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches by

Melville Horne, who, after a brief experience as Church of England

chaplain in Zachary Macaulay's settlement of Sierra Leone, published

that little book to excite in all Christians a passion for missions

like the Master's. Referring to the English churches, Established

and Nonconformist, he wrote:--"Except the Reverend Mr. Carey and a

friend who accompanies him, I am not informed of any...ministers who

are engaged in missions." Such was the impression made by Carey on

John Newton that, in 1802, he rebuked his old curate, Claudius

Buchanan, for depreciating the Serampore missionaries, adding, "I do

not look for miracles, but if God were to work one in our day, I

should not wonder if it were in favour of Dr. Carey."

The Serampore Mission, at an early period, called forth the

admiration of the Scottish philanthropist and essayist, James

Douglas of Cavers, whose Hints on Missions (1822), a book still full

of suggestiveness, contains this passage:--"Education and the press

have only been employed to purpose of very late years, especially by

the missionaries of Serampore; every year they have been making some

improvements upon their former efforts, and...it only requires to

increase the number of printing presses, schools, teachers,

translators, and professors, to accelerate to any pitch the rate of

improvement...To attempt to convert the world without educating it,

is grasping at the end and neglecting the means." Referring to what

Carey had begun and the Serampore College had helped to develop in

Asia, as in Africa and America, Douglas of Cavers well described the

missionary era, the new crusade:--"The Reformation itself needed

anew a reform in the spirit if not in the letter. That second

Reformation has begun; it makes less noise than that of Luther, but

it spreads wider and deeper; as it is more intimate it will be more

enduring. Like the Temple of Solomon, it is rising silently,

without the din of pressure or the note of previous preparation, but

notwithstanding it will be not less complete in all its parts nor

less able to resist the injuries of time!"

Henry Martyn died, perhaps the loftiest and most loving spirit of

the men whom Carey drew to India. Son of a Cornish miner-captain,

after passing through the Truro Grammar School, he was sixteen--the

age at which Carey became a shoemaker's apprentice--when he was

entered at St. John's, and made that ever since the most missionary

of all the colleges of Cambridge. When not yet twenty he came out

Senior Wrangler. His father's death drove him to the Bible, to the

Acts of the Apostles, which he began to study, and the first whisper

of the call of Christ came to him in the joy of the Magnificat as

its strains pealed through the chapel. Charles Simeon's preaching

drew him to Trinity Church. In the vicarage, when he had come to be

tutor of his college, and was preparing for the law, he heard much

talk of William Carey, of his self-sacrifice and his success in

India. It was the opening year of the nineteenth century, the

Church Missionary Society had just been born as the fruit partly of

a paper written by Simeon four years previously, and he offered

himself as its first English missionary. He was not twenty-one, he

could not be ordained for two years. Meanwhile a calamity made him

and his unmarried sister penniless; he loved Lydia Grenfell with a

pure passion which enriched while it saddened his short life, and a

chaplaincy became the best mode in every way of his living and dying

for India. What a meeting must that have been between him and Carey

when, already stricken by fever, he found a sanctuary in Aldeen, and

learned at Serampore the sweetness of telling to the natives of

India in one of their own tongues the love of God. William Carey and

Henry Martyn were one in origin, from the people; in industry, as

scholars; in genius, as God-devoted; in the love of a great heart

not always returned. The older man left the church of his fathers

because there was no Simeon and no missionary society, and he made

his own university; he laid the foundation of English missions deep

and broad in no sect but in Christ, to whom he and Martyn alike gave

themselves.

The names of Carey and Simeon, thus linked to each other by Martyn,

find another pleasant and fruitful tie in the Rev. Alexander

Stewart, D.D., Gaelic scholar and Scottish preacher. It was soon

after Carey went out to India that Simeon, travelling in the

Highlands, spent a Sunday in the manse of Moulin, where his personal

intercourse and his evening sermon after a season of Communion were

blessed to the evangelical enlightenment of Stewart. Moulin was the

birthplace ten years after of Alexander Duff, whose parents

previously came under the power of the minister's new-found light.24

Like Simeon, Dr. Stewart thenceforth became a warm supporter of

foreign missions. Finding in the Periodical Accounts a letter in

which Carey asked Fuller to send him a copy of Van der Hooght's

edition of the Hebrew Bible because of the weakness of his eyesight,

Dr. Stewart at once wrote offering his own copy. Fuller gladly

accepted the kindness. "I with great pleasure," writes Dr. Stewart,

"followed the direction, wrote a letter of some length to Carey, and

sent off my parcel to London. I daresay you remember my favourite

Hebrew Bible in two volumes. I parted with it with something of the

same feelings that a pious parent might do with a favourite son

going on a mission to the heathen--with a little regret but with

much goodwill." This was the beginning of an interesting

correspondence with Carey and Fuller.

Next to Andrew Fuller, and in the region of literature, general

culture and eloquence before him, the strongest men among the

Baptists were the younger Robert Hall and John Foster. Both were

devoted to Carey, and were the most powerful of the English

advocates of his mission. The former, for a time, was led to side

with the Society in some of the details of its dispute with Dr.

Marshman, but his loyalty to Carey and the principles of the mission

fired some of the most eloquent orations in English literature.

John Foster's shrewder common sense never wavered, but inspired his

pen alike in the heat of controversy and in his powerful essays and

criticisms. Writing in 1828, he declared that the Serampore

missionaries "have laboured with the most earnest assiduity for a

quarter of a century (Dr. Carey much longer) in all manner of

undertakings for promoting Christianity, with such a renunciation of

self-interest as will never be surpassed; that they have conveyed

the oracles of divine truth into so many languages; that they have

watched over diversified missionary operations with unremitting

care; that they have conducted themselves through many trying and

some perilous circumstances with prudence and fortitude; and that

they retain to this hour an undiminished zeal to do all that

providence shall enable them in the same good cause." The

expenditure of the Serampore Brotherhood up to that time, leaving

out of account the miscellaneous missionary services, he showed to

have been upwards of 75,000. Dr. Chalmers in Scotland was as?

stoutly with Carey and his brethren as Foster was in England, so

that Marshman wrote:--"Thus two of the greatest and wisest men of

England are on our side, and, what is more, I trust the Lord God is

with us." What Heber thought, alike as man and bishop, his own

loving letter and proposal for "reunion of our churches" in the next

chapter will show.

Of all the publicists in the United Kingdom during Carey's long

career the foremost was William Wilberforce; he was not second even

to Charles Grant and his sons. Defeated in carrying into law the

"pious clauses" of the charter which would have opened India to the

Christian missionary and schoolmaster in 1793, he nevertheless

succeeded by his persuasive eloquence and the weight of his

character in having them entered as Resolutions of the House of

Commons. He then gave himself successfully to the abolition of the

slave-trade. But he always declared the toleration of Christianity

in British India to be "that greatest of all causes, for I really

place it before the abolition, in which, blessed be God, we gained

the victory." His defeat in 1793, when Dundas and the Government

were with him, was due to the apathy of public opinion, and

especially of the dumb churches. But in the next twenty years Carey

changed all that. Not merely was Andrew Fuller ever on the watch

with pen and voice, but all the churches were roused, the

Established to send out bishops and chaplains, the Nonconformist and

Established Evangelicals together to secure freedom for missionaries

and schoolmasters. In 1793 an English missionary was an unknown and

therefore a much-dreaded monster, for Carey was then on the sea. In

1813 Carey and the Serampore Brotherhood were still the only English

missionaries continuously at work in India, and not the churches

only, but governor-generals like Teignmouth and Wellesley, and

scholars like Colebrooke and H. H. Wilson, were familiar with the

grandeur and political innocency of their labours. Hence this

outburst of Wilberforce in the House of Commons on the 16th July

1813, when he used the name of Carey to defeat an attempt of the

Company to prevent toleration by omitting the declaratory clauses of

the Resolution, which would have made it imply that the privilege

should never be exerted though the power of licensing missionaries

was nominally conceded.

"One great argument of his opponents was grounded on the

enthusiastic character which they imputed to the missionary body.

India hitherto has seen no missionary who was a member of the

English Church, and imputations could be cast more readily on

'Anabaptists and fanatics.' These attacks Mr. Wilberforce

indignantly refuted, and well had the noble conduct of the band at

Serampore deserved this vindication. 'I do not know,' he often said,

'a finer instance of the moral sublime, than that a poor cobbler

working in his stall should conceive the idea of converting the

Hindoos to Christianity; yet such was Dr. Carey. Why Milton's

planning his Paradise Lost in his old age and blindness was nothing

to it. And then when he had gone to India, and was appointed by

Lord Wellesley to a lucrative and honourable station in the college

of Fort William, with equal nobleness of mind he made over all his

salary (between 1000 and 1500 per annum) to the general objects of? ?

the mission. By the way, nothing ever gave me a more lively sense

of the low and mercenary standard of your men of honour, than the

manifest effect produced upon the House of Commons by my stating

this last circumstance. It seemed to be the only thing which moved

them.' Dr. Carey had been especially attacked, and 'a few days

afterwards the member who had made this charge came to me, and asked

me in a manner which in a noted duellist could not be mistaken,

"Pray, Mr. Wilberforce, do you know a Mr. Andrew Fuller, who has

written to desire me to retract the statement which I made with

reference to Dr. Carey?" "Yes," I answered with a smile, "I know him

perfectly, but depend upon it you will make nothing of him in your

way; he is a respectable Baptist minister at Kettering." In due

time there came from India an authoritative contradiction of the

slander. It was sent to me, and for two whole years did I take it

in my pocket to the House of Commons to read it to the House

whenever the author of the accusation should be present; but during

that whole time he never once dared show himself in the House.'"

The slanderer was a Mr. Prendergast, who affirmed that Dr. Carey's

conduct had changed so much for the worse since the departure of

Lord Wellesley, that he himself had seen the missionary on a tub in

the streets of Calcutta haranguing the mob and abusing the religion

of the people in such a way that the police alone saved him from

being killed. So, and for the same object of defeating the

Resolutions on Toleration, Mr. Montgomerie Campbell had asserted

that when Schwartz was in the heat of his discourse in a certain

village and had taken off his stock, "that and his gold buckle were

stolen by one of his virtuous and enlightened congregation; in such

a description of natives did the doctrine of the missionaries

operate." Before Dr. Carey's exposure could reach England this

"tub" story became the stock argument of the anti-christian orators.

The Madras barrister, Marsh, who was put up to answer Wilberforce,

was driven to such language as this:--

"Your struggles are only begun when you have converted one caste;

never will the scheme of Hindoo conversion be realised till you

persuade an immense population to suffer by whole tribes the

severest martyrdom that has yet been sustained for the sake of

religion--and are the missionaries whom this bill will let loose on

India fit engines for the accomplishment of this great revolution?

Will these people, crawling from the holes and caverns of their

original destinations, apostates from the loom and the anvil--he

should have said the awl--and renegades from the lowest handicraft

employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they

will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into

the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to

grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace

and discomfiture of whole hosts of tub preachers in the conflict?"

Lord Wellesley's eulogy of the Serampore mission in the House of

Lords was much more pronounced than appears from the imperfect

report. But even in that he answered the Brahmanised member of the

House of Commons thus:--

"With regard to the missionaries, he must say that while he was in

India he never knew of any danger arising from their proceedings,

neither had he heard of any impression produced by them in the way

of conversion. The greater number of them were in the Danish

settlement of Serampore; but he never heard of any convulsions or

any alarm produced by them. Some of them, particularly Mr. Carey,

were very learned men, and had been employed in the College of Fort

William. He had always considered the missionaries who were in

India in his time a quiet, orderly, discreet, and learned body; and

he had employed them in the education of youth and the translation

of the Scriptures into the eastern languages. He had thought it his

duty to have the Sacred Scriptures translated into the languages of

the East, and to give the learned natives employed in the

translation the advantage of access to the sacred fountain of divine

truth. He thought a Christian governor could not have done less;

and he knew that a British governor ought not to do more."

Carey's letters to Fuller in 1810-12 are filled with importunate

appeals to agitate, so that the new charter might legalise Christian

mission work in India. Fuller worked outside of the House as hard

as Wilberforce. In eight weeks of the session no fewer than nine

hundred petitions were presented, in twenties and thirties, night

after night, till Lord Castlereagh exclaimed, "This is enough, Mr.

Fuller." There was more reason for Carey's urgency than he knew at

the time he was pressing Fuller. The persecution of the

missionaries in Bengal, excused by the Vellore mutiny, which had

driven Judson to Burma and several other missionaries elsewhere, was

renewed by the Indian Government's secretaries and police. The

Ministry had informed the Court of Directors that they had resolved

to permit Europeans to settle in India, yet after five weeks'

vacillation the Governor-General yielded to his subordinates so far

as to issue an order on 5th March 1812, for the expulsion of three

missionaries, an order which was so executed that one of them was

conducted like a felon through the streets and lodged in the native

jail for two hours. Carey thus wrote to Ryland on the

persecution:--

"CALCUTTA, 14th April 1813.--Before this reaches you it is probable

that you will have heard of the resolution of Government respecting

our brethren Johns, Lawson, and Robinson, and will perhaps have even

seen Brother Johns, who was by that cruel order sent home on the

Castlereagh. Government have agreed that Brother Lawson shall stay

till the pleasure of the Court of Directors is known, to whom a

reference will be made. Brother Robinson was gone down the river,

and was on board a ship bound to Java when the order was issued; he

therefore got out without hearing of it, but I understand it will be

sent thither after him. Jehovah reigneth!

"Since Brother Johns's departure I have tried to ascertain the cause

of the severity in Government. I had a long conversation with H. T.

Colebrooke, Esq., who has been out of Council but a few months, upon

the matter. I cannot learn that Government has any specific dislike

to us, but find that ever since the year 1807 the orders of the

Court of Directors to send home all Europeans not in the service of

Her Majesty or the Company, and who come out without leave of the

Directors, have been so peremptory and express that Government

cannot now overlook any circumstance which brings such persons to

notice. Notwithstanding the general way in which the Court of

Directors have worded their orders, I cannot help putting several

circumstances together, which make me fear that our Mission was the

cause of the enforcement of that general law which forbids Europeans

to remain in India without the leave of the Court of Directors.

"Whether Twining's pamphlet excited the alarm, or was only an echo

of the minds of a number of men hostile to religion, I cannot say,

but if I recollect dates aright the orders of the Court of Directors

came as soon as possible after that pamphlet was published; and as

it would have been too barefaced to have given a specific order to

send home missionaries, they founded their orders on an unjust and

wicked clause in the charter, and so enforced it that it should

effectually operate on missionaries.

"I hope the friends of religion will persevere in the use of all

peaceful and lawful means to prevail on the legislature to expunge

that clause, or so to modify it that ministers of the Gospel may

have leave to preach, form and visit churches, and perform the

various duties of their office without molestation, and that they

may have a right to settle in and travel over any part of India for

that purpose. Nothing can be more just than this wish, and nothing

would be more politic than for it to be granted; for every one

converted from among the heathen is from that time a staunch friend

of the English Government. Our necks have, however, been more or

less under the yoke ever since that year, and preaching the Gospel

stands in much the same political light as committing an act of

felony. Witness what has been done to Mr. Thompson, the five

American brethren, and our three brethren. Mr. Thomason, the

clergyman, has likewise hard work to stand his ground.

"I trust, however, it is too late to eradicate the Gospel from

Bengal. The number of those born in the country who preach the Word

is now very considerable. Fifteen of this description preach

constantly, and seven or eight more occasionally exhort their

countrymen, besides our European brethren. The Gospel is stationed

at eighteen or twenty stations belonging to our Mission alone, and

at several of them there are churches. The Bible is either

translated or under translation into twenty-four of the languages of

the East, eighteen of which we are employed about, besides printing

most of the others. Thirteen out of these eighteen are now in the

press, including a third edition of the Bengali New Testament.

Indeed, so great is the demand for Bibles that though we have eight

presses constantly at work I fear we shall not have a Bengali New

Testament to sell or give away for the next twelve months, the old

edition being entirely out of print. We shall be in almost the same

predicament with the Hindostani. We are going to set up two more

presses, which we can get made in Calcutta, and are going to send

another to Rangoon. In short, though the publishing of the Word of

God is a political crime, there never was a time when it was so

successful. 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the

Lord.'

"Through divine mercy we are all well, and live in peace and love.

A small cloud which threatened at the time Brother Johns left us

has mercifully blown over, and we are now in the utmost harmony. I

will, if possible, write to my nephew Eustace by these ships, but I

am so pressed for time that I can never promise to write a letter.

The Lord has so blessed us that we are now printing in more

languages than we could do before the fire took place.

"Give my love to Eustace, also to all who recollect or think of me.

I am now near fifty-two years of age; yet through mercy I am well

and am enabled to keep close to work twelve or fourteen hours a day.

I hope to see the Bible printed in most of the languages in which

it is begun.--I am, very affectionately yours, WM. CAREY."

Carey had previously written thus to Fuller:--"The fault lies in the

clause which gives the Company power thus to send home interlopers,

and is just as reasonable as one which should forbid all the people

in England--a select few excepted--to look at the moon. I hope this

clause will be modified or expunged in the new charter. The

prohibition is wrong, and nothing that is morally wrong can be

politically right."

It was left to the charter of 1853 fully to liberalise the Company,

but each step was taken too late to save it from the nemesis of 1857

and extinction in 1858. "Let no man think," Wilberforce had said to

the House of Commons in 1813, "that the petitions which have loaded

our table have been produced by a burst of momentary enthusiasm.

While the sun and moon continue to shine in the firmament so long

will this object be pursued with unabated ardour until the great

work be accomplished."

The opposition of Anglo-Indian officials and lawyers, which vainly

used no better weapons than such as Mr. Prendergast and his "tub"

fabrication, had been anticipated and encouraged by the Edinburgh

Review. That periodical was at the height of its influence in 1808,

the year before John Murray's Quarterly was first published. The

Rev. Sydney Smith, as the literary and professional representative

of what he delighted to call "the cause of rational religion," was

the foe of every form of earnest Christianity, which he joined the

mob in stigmatising as "Methodism." He was not unacquainted with

Indian politics, for his equally clever brother, known as Bobus

Smith, was long Advocate-General in Calcutta, and left a very

considerable fortune made there to enrich the last six years of the

Canon's life. Casting about for a subject on which to exercise at

once his animosity and his fun, he found it in the Periodical

Accounts, wherein Fuller had undoubtedly too often published letters

and passages of journals written only for the eye of the private

friend. Carey frequently remonstrated against the publicity given

to some of his communications, and the fear of this checked his

correspondence. In truth, the new-born enthusiasm was such that, at

first, the Committee kept nothing back. It was easy for a

litterateur like Sydney Smith in those days to extract passages and

to give them such headings as "Brother Carey's Piety at Sea,"

"Hatred of the Natives to the Gospel." Smith produced an article

which, as republished in his collected essays, has a historical

value as a test of the bitterness of the hate which the missionary

enterprise had to meet in secular literature till the death of

Livingstone, Wilson, and Duff opened the eyes of journalism to the

facts. In itself it must be read in the light of its author's own

criticism of his articles, thus expressed in a letter to Francis

Jeffrey, and of the regret that he had written it which, Jeffrey

told Dr. Marshman, he lived to utter:--"Never mind; let them" (his

articles) "go away with their absurdity unadulterated and pure. If

I please, the object for which I write is attained; if I do not, the

laughter which follows my error is the only thing which can make me

cautious and tremble." But for that picture by himself we should

have pronounced Carlyle's drawing of him to be almost as malicious

as his own of the Serampore missonaries--"A mass of fat and

muscularity, with massive Roman nose, piercing hazel eyes,

shrewdness and fun--not humour or even wit--seemingly without soul

altogether."

The attack called forth a reply by Mr. Styles so severe that Sydney

Smith wrote a rejoinder which began by claiming credit for "rooting

out a nest of consecrated cobblers." Sir James Mackintosh, then in

Bombay, wrote of a similar assault by Mr. Thomas Twining on the

Bible Societies, that it "must excite general indignation. The only

measure which he could consistently propose would be the infliction

of capital punishment on the crime of preaching or embracing

Christianity in India, for almost every inferior degree of

persecution is already practised by European or native

anti-christians. But it fell to Southey, in the very first number

of the Quarterly Review, in April 1809, to deal with the Rev. Sydney

Smith, and to defend Carey and the Brotherhood as both deserved.

The layman's defence was the more effective for its immediate

purpose that he started from the same prejudice as that of the

reverend Whig rationalist--"the Wesleyans, the Orthodox dissenters

of every description, and the Evangelical churchmen may all be

comprehended under the generic name of Methodists. The religion

which they preach is not the religion of our fathers, and what they

have altered they have made worse." But Southey had himself faith

as well as a literary canon higher than that of his opponent who

wrote only to "please" his patrons. He saw in these Methodists

alone that which he appreciated as the essence of true faith--"that

spirit of enthusiasm by which Europe was converted to Christianity

they have in some measure revived, and they have removed from

Protestantism a part of its reproach." He proceeded to tell how

"this Mission, which is represented by its enemies as so dangerous

to the British Empire in India, and thereby, according to a logic

learnt from Buonaparte, to England also, originated in a man by name

William Carey, who till the twenty-fourth year of his age was a

working shoemaker. Sectarianism has this main advantage over the

Established Church, that its men of ability certainly find their

station, and none of its talents are neglected or lost. Carey was a

studious and pious man, his faith wrong, his feelings right. He

made himself competently versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He is

now probably a far more learned orientalist than any European has

ever been before him, and has been appointed Professor of Sanskrit

and Bengali at the College of Fort William." Then follow a history

of the Mission written in a style worthy of the author of the Life

of Nelson, and these statements of the political and the purely

missionary questions, which read now almost as predictions:--

"The first step towards winning the natives to our religion is to

show them that we have one. This will hardly be done without a

visible church. There would be no difficulty in filling up the

establishment, however ample; but would the archbishop, bishops,

deans, and chapters of Mr. Buchanan's plan do the work of

missionaries? Could the Church of England supply

missionaries?--where are they to be found among them? In what

school for the promulgation of sound and orthodox learning are they

trained up? There is ability and there is learning in the Church of

England, but its age of fermentation has long been over; and that

zeal which for this work is the most needful is, we fear, possessed

only by the Methodists...

"Carey and his son have been in Bengal fourteen years, the other

brethren only nine; they had all a difficult language to acquire

before they could speak to a native, and to preach and argue in it

required a thorough and familiar knowledge. Under these

circumstances the wonder is, not that they have done so little, but

that they have done so much; for it will be found that, even without

this difficulty to retard them, no religious opinions have spread

more rapidly in the same time, unless there was some remarkable

folly or extravagance to recommend them, or some powerful worldly

inducement. Their progress will be continually accelerating; the

difficulty is at first, as in introducing vaccination into a distant

land; when the matter has once taken one subject supplies infection

for all around him, and the disease takes root in the country. The

husband converts the wife, the son converts the parent, the friend

his friend, and every fresh proselyte becomes a missionary in his

own neighbourhood. Thus their sphere of influence and of action

widens, and the eventual issue of a struggle between truth and

falsehood is not to be doubted by those who believe in the former.

Other missionaries from other societies have now entered India, and

will soon become efficient labourers in their station. From

Government all that is asked is toleration for themselves and

protection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for

their own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and

there is as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would

be of their shrinking from it, if the cause of God and man require

the sacrifice. But the converts ought to be protected from

violence, and all cramming with cow-dung prohibited on pain of

retaliation with beef-tea.

"Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which the scoffers

and alarmists have represented the missionaries. We, who have thus

vindicated them, are neither blind to what is erroneous in their

doctrine or ludicrous in their phraseology; but the

anti-missionaries cull out from their journals and letters all that

is ridiculous sectarian, and trifling; call them fools, madmen,

tinkers, Calvinists, and schismatics; and keep out of sight their

love of man, and their zeal for God, their self-devotement, their

indefatigable industry, and their unequalled learning. These

low-born and low-bred mechanics have translated the whole Bible into

Bengali, and have by this time printed it. They are printing the

New Testament in the Sanskrit, the Orissa, Mahratta, Hindostan, and

Guzarat, and translating it into Persic, Telinga, Karnata, Chinese,

the language of the Sieks and of the Burmans, and in four of these

languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary as this

is, it will appear more so when it is remembered that of these men

one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at Hull, and a

third the master of a charity-school at Bristol. Only fourteen

years have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in India, and in

that time have these missionaries acquired this gift of tongues, in

fourteen years these low-born, low-bred mechanics have done more

towards spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen

than has been accomplished, or even attempted, by all the princes

and potentates of the world--and all the universities and

establishments into the bargain.

"Do not think to supersede the Baptist missionaries till you can

provide from your own church such men as these, and, it may be

added, such women also as their wives."

Soon after the Charter victory had been gained "that fierce and

fiery Calvinist," whose dictum Southey adopted, that the question in

dispute is not whether the natives shall enjoy toleration, but

whether that toleration shall be extended to the teachers of

Christianity, Andrew Fuller, entered into rest on the 7th May 1815,

at the age of sixty-two. Sutcliff of Olney had been the first of

the three to be taken away25 a year before, at the same age. The

scholarly Dr. Ryland of Bristol was left alone, and the home

management of the Mission passed into the hands of another

generation. Up to Fuller's death that management had been almost

ideally perfect. In 1812 the Committee had been increased by the

addition of nineteen members, to represent the growing interest of

the churches in Serampore, and to meet the demand of the

"respectable" class who had held aloof at the first, who were eager

that the headquarters of so renowned an enterprise should be removed

to London. But Fuller prevailed to keep the Society a little longer

at Kettering, although he failed to secure as his assistant and

successor the one man whose ability, experience, and prudence would

have been equal to his own, and have prevented the troubles that

followed--Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated a

letter to Ryland wherein he thus referred to the evangelical

doctrine of grace which he had been the one English theologian of

his day to defend from the hyper-calvinists, and to use as the

foundation of the modern missionary enterprise:--"I have preached

and written much against the abuse of the doctrine of grace, but

that doctrine is all my salvation and all my desire. I have no

other hope than from salvation by mere sovereign, efficacious grace

through the atonement of my Lord and Saviour: with this hope I can

go into eternity with composure. We have some who have been giving

it out of late that if Sutcliff and some others had preached more of

Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards they would have been more

useful. If those who talk thus had preached Christ half as much as

Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their

usefulness would be double what it is. It is very singular that the

Mission to the East originated with one of these principles, and

without pretending to be a prophet, I may say if it ever falls into

the hands of men who talk in this strain (of hyper-calvinism) it

will soon come to nothing."

Andrew Fuller was not only the first of Foreign Mission Secretaries;

he was a model for all. To him his work was spiritual life, and

hence, though the most active preacher and writer of his day, he was

like Carey in this, that his working day was twice as long as that

of most men, and he could spend half of his time in the frequent

journeys all over the kingdom to raise funds, in repeated campaigns

in London to secure toleration, and in abundant letters to the

missionaries. His relation to the Committee, up to the last, was

equally exemplary. In the very earliest missionary organisation in

England it is due to him that the line was clearly drawn between the

deliberative and judicial function which is that of the members, and

the executive which is that of the secretary. Wisdom and

efficiency, clearness of perception and promptitude of action, were

thus combined. Fuller's, too, was the special merit of realising

that, while a missionary committee or church are fellow-workers only

with the men and women abroad, the Serampore Brotherhood was a

self-supporting, and to that extent a self-governing body in a sense

true of no foreign mission ever since. The two triumvirates,

moreover, consisted of giants--Carey, Marshman, and Ward abroad;

Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland at home. To Carey personally the death

of Fuller was more than to any other. For almost the quarter of a

century he had kept his vow that he would hold the rope. When

Pearce died all too soon there was none whom Carey loved like

Fuller, while Fuller's devotion to Carey was all the greater that it

was tempered by a wise jealousy for his perfectness. So early as

1797, Fuller wrote thus to the troublesome Fountain:--"It affords us

good hope of your being a useful missionary that you seem to love

and revere the counsels of Brother Carey. A humble, peaceful,

circumspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous conduct

like his will render you a blessing to society. Brother Carey is

greatly respected and beloved by all denominations here. I will

tell you what I have foreborne to tell him lest it should hurt his

modesty. Good old Mr. Newton says: 'Mr. Carey has favoured me with

a letter, which, indeed, I accept as a favour, and I mean to thank

him for it. I trust my heart as cordially unites with him as though

I were a brother Baptist myself. I look to such a man with

reverence. He is more to me than bishop or archbishop; he is an

apostle. May the Lord make all who undertake missions like-minded

with Brother Carey!'" As the home administrator, no less than as

the theological controversialist, Andrew Fuller stands only second

to William Carey, the founder of Modern English Missions.

Fuller's last letter to Carey forms the best introduction to the

little which it is here necessary to record of the action of the

Baptist Missionary Society when under the secretaryship of the Rev.

John Dyer. Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., has written the detailed

history of that controversy not only with filial duty, but with a

forgiving charity which excites our admiration for one who suffered

more from it than all his predecessors in the Brotherhood, of which

he was the last representative. The Society has long since ceased

to approve of that period. Its opinion has become that of Mr.

Marshman, to which a careful perusal of all the documents both in

Serampore and England has led us--"Had it been possible to create a

dozen establishments like that of Serampore, each raising and

managing its own funds, and connected with the Society as the centre

of unity in a common cause, it ought to have been a subject of

congratulation and not of regret." The whole policy of every

missionary church and society is now and has long been directed to

creating self-supporting and self-propagating missions, like

Serampore, that the regions beyond may be evangelised--whether these

be colleges of catechumens and inquirers, like those of Duff and

Wilson, Hislop and Dr. Miller in India, and of Govan and Dr. Stewart

in Lovedale, Kafraria; or the indigenous churches of the West

Indies, West Africa, the Pacific Ocean, and Burma. To us the long

and bitter dispute is now of value only in so far as it brings out

in Christ-like relief the personality of William Carey.

At the close of 1814 Dr. Carey had asked Fuller to pay 50 a year to?

his father, then in his eightieth year, and 20 to his (step) mother?

if she survived the old man. Protesting that an engraving of his

portrait had been published in violation of the agreement which he

had made with the artist, he agreed to the wish of each of his

relatives for a copy. To these requests Fuller had replied:--"You

should not insist on these things being charged to you, nor yet your

father's 50, nor the books, nor anything necessary to make you?

comfortable, unless it be to be paid out of what you would otherwise

give to the mission. To insist on their being paid out of your

private property seems to be dictated by resentment. It is thus we

express our indignation when we have an avaricious man to deal

with."

The first act of the Committee, after Fuller's funeral, led Dr.

Ryland to express to Carey his unbounded fears for the future.

There were two difficulties. The new men raised the first

question, in what sense the Serampore property belonged to the

Society? They then proceeded to show how they would answer it, by

appointing the son of Samuel Pearce to Serampore as Mr. Ward's

assistant. On both sides of their independence, as trustees of the

property which they had created and gifted to the Society on this

condition, and as a self-supporting, self-elective brotherhood, it

became necessary, for the unbroken peace of the mission and the

success of their work, that they should vindicate their moral and

legal position. The correspondence fell chiefly to Dr. Marshman.

Ward and he successively visited England, to which the controversy

was transferred, with occasional references to Dr. Carey in

Serampore. All Scotland, led by Christopher Anderson, Chalmers, and

the Haldanes--all England, except the Dyer faction and Robert Hall

for a time, among the Baptists, and nearly all America, held with

the Serampore men; but their ever-extending operations were checked

by the uncertainty, and their hearts were nearly broken. The junior

missionaries in India formed a separate union and congregation by

themselves in Calcutta, paid by the Society, though professing to

carry out the organisation of the Serampore Brotherhood in other

respects. The Committee's controversy lasted sixteen years, and was

closed in 1830, after Ward's death, by Carey and Marshman drawing up

a new trust-deed, in which, having vindicated their position, the

old men made over properties which had cost them 7800 to eleven?

trustees in England, stipulating only that they should occupy them

rent free till death, and that their colleagues--who were John

Marshman and John Mack, of Edinburgh University--might continue in

them for three years thereafter, paying rent to the Society. Such

self-sacrifice would be pronounced heroic, but it was only the

outcome of a life of self-devotion, marked by the spirit of Him who

spake the Sermon on the Mount, and said to the first missionaries He

sent forth:--"Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves." The story is

completed by the fact that John Marshman, on his father's death,

again paid the price of as much of the property as the Hoogli had

not swallowed up when the Committee were about to put it in the

market.

Such was Dr. Carey's position in the Christian world that the Dyer

party considered it important for their interest to separate him

from his colleagues, and if not to claim his influence for their

side, at least to neutralise it. By trying to hold up Dr. Marshman

to odium, they roused the righteous indignation of Carey, while

outraging his sense of justice by their blows at the independence of

the Brotherhood. Dr. Marshman, when in England, met this course by

frankly printing the whole private correspondence of Carey on the

subject of the property, or thirty-two letters ranging from the year

1815 to 1828. One of the earliest of these is to Mr. Dyer, who had

so far forgotten himself as to ask Dr. Carey to write home, alone,

his opinion of his "elder brethren," and particularly of Dr.

Marshman. The answer, covering eleven octavo pages of small type,

is a model for all controversialists, and especially for any whom

duty compels to rebuke the minister who has failed to learn the

charity which envieth not. We reproduce the principal passages, and

the later letters to Christopher Anderson and his son Jabez,

revealing the nobleness of Carey and the inner life of the

Brotherhood:--

"SERAMPORE, 15th July 1819.

"MY DEAR BROTHER--I am sorry you addressed your letter of January

the 9th to me alone, because it places me in a most awkward

situation, as it respects my elder brethren, with whom I have acted

in concert for the last nineteen years, with as great a share of

satisfaction and pleasure as could reasonably be expected from a

connection with imperfect creatures, and whom I am thereby called to

condemn contrary to my convictions, or to justify at the expense of

their accusers. It also places me in a disagreeable situation as it

respects my younger brethren, whom I highly respect as Christians;

but whose whole conduct, as it respects the late unhappy

differences, has been such as makes it impossible for me to do

otherwise than condemn it...

"You ask, 'Is there no ground for the charges of profusion, etc.,

preferred against Brother Marshman?' Brother Marshman has always

been ardently engaged in promoting the cause of God in India, and,

being of a very active mind, has generally been chosen by us to draw

up our Reports, to write many of our public letters, to draw up

plans for promoting the objects of the mission, founding and

managing schools, raising subscriptions, and other things of a like

nature; so that he has taken a more active part than Brother Ward or

myself in these public acts of the mission. These things placed him

in the foreground, and it has been no uncommon thing for him to bear

the blame of those acts which equally belong to Brother Ward and

myself, merely because he was the instrument employed in performing

them.

"The charge of profusion brought against Dr. Marshman is more

extensive than you have stated in your letter. He is charged with

having his house superbly furnished, with keeping several vehicles

for the use of his family, and with labouring to aggrandise and

bring them into public notice to a culpable extent. The whole

business of furniture, internal economy, etc., of the Serampore

station, must exclusively belong to ourselves, and I confess I think

the question about it an unlovely one. Some person, we know not

whom, told some one, we know not whom, 'that he had been often at

Lord Hastings's table, but that Brother Marshman's table far

exceeded his.' I have also often been at Lord Hastings's table (I

mean his private table), and I do therefore most positively deny the

truth of the assertion; though I confess there is much domestic

plainness at the table of the Governor-General of India (though

nothing of meanness; on the contrary, everything is marked with a

dignified simplicity). I suspect the informant never was at Lord

Hastings's table, or he could have not been guilty of such

misrepresentation. Lord Hastings's table costs more in one day than

Brother Marshman's in ten.

"The following statement may explain the whole business of Brother

Marshman's furniture, etc., which you have all been so puzzled to

account for, and have certainly accounted for in a way that is not

the true one. We have, you know, a very large school, perhaps the

largest in India. In this school are children of persons of the

first rank in the country. The parents or guardians of these

children frequently call at the Mission-house, and common propriety

requires that they should be respectfully received, and invited to

take a breakfast or dinner, and sometimes to continue there a day or

two. It is natural that persons who visit the Mission-house upon

business superintended by Brother Marshman should be entertained at

his house rather than elsewhere. Till within the last four or five

years we had no particular arrangement for the accommodation of

visitors who came to see us; but as those who visited us on business

were entertained at Brother Marshman's, it appeared to be the most

eligible method to provide for the entertainment of other visitors

there also; but at that time Brother Marshman had not a decent table

for persons of the above description to sit down to. We, therefore,

voted him a sum to enable him to provide such articles as were

necessary to entertain them with decency; and I am not aware that he

has been profuse, or that he has provided anything not called for by

the rules of propriety. I have no doubt but Brother Ward can

enumerate and describe all these articles of furniture. It is,

however, evident that you must be very imperfect judges of their

necessity, unless you could at the same time form a just estimate of

the circumstances in which we stand. It ought also to be considered

that all these articles are public property, and always convertible

into their full value in cash. I hope, however, that things are not

yet come to that pass, that a man who, with his wife, has for

nineteen or twenty years laboured night and day for the mission, who

by their labour disinterestedly contribute between 2000 and 3000

rupees monthly to it, and who have made sacrifices which, if others

have not seen, Brother Ward and I have,--sacrifices which ought to

put to the blush all his accusers, who, notwithstanding their cries

against him, have not only supported themselves, but also have set

themselves up in a lucrative business at the Society's expense; and

who, even to this day, though they have two prosperous schools, and

a profitable printing-office, continue to receive their monthly

allowance, amounting (including Miss Chaffin's) to 700 rupees a

month from the Society; I feel indignant at their outcry on the

subject of expense, and I say, merely as a contrast to their

conduct, So did not Brother Marshman. Surely things are not come to

that pass, that he or any other brother must give an account to the

Society of every plate he uses, and every loaf he cuts.

"Till a very few years ago we had no vehicle except a single horse

chaise for me to go backwards and forwards to Calcutta. That was

necessarily kept on the opposite side of the river; and if the

strength of the horse would have borne it, could not have been used

for the purposes of health. Sister Marshman was seized with a

disease of the liver, a disease which proves fatal in three cases

out of four. Sister Ward was ill of the same disorder, and both of

them underwent a long course of mercurial treatment, as is usual in

that disease. Exercise was considered by the physicians as of the

first importance, and we certainly thought no expense too great to

save the valuable lives of our sisters. A single horse chaise, and

an open palanquin, called a Tonjon, were procured. I never ride out

for health; but usually spend an hour or two, morning and evening,

in the garden. Sister Ward was necessitated to visit England for

hers. Brother Ward had a saddle horse presented to him by a friend.

My wife has a small carriage drawn by a man. These vehicles were

therefore almost exclusively used by Brother Marshman's family.

When our brethren arrived from England they did not fail to put

this equipage into the account against Brother Marshman. They now

keep three single horse chaises, besides palanquins; but we do not

think they keep more than are necessary.

"Brother Marshman retains for the school a French master, a music

master, and a drawing master. The expenses of these are amply

repaid by the school, but Brother Marshman's children, and all those

belonging to the family, have the advantage of their instructions.

Brother Marshman's children are, however, the most numerous, and

envy has not failed to charge him with having retained them all for

the sake of his own children. Surely a man's caring for his

family's health and his children's education is, if a crime, a

venial one, and ought not to be held up to blacken his reputation.

Brother Marshman is no more perfect than other men, partakers like

him of the grace of God. His natural bias and habits are his own,

and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one

another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his

children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond

parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety,

energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of God. These excellencies,

in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am

constrained to consider him a Christian far above the common run. I

must now close this defence of Brother Marshman by repeating that

all matters of furniture, convenience, etc., are things belonging to

the economy of the station at Serampore, and that no one beside

ourselves has the smallest right to interfere therewith. The

Calcutta brethren are now acting on the same principle, and would

certainly repel with indignation any attempt made by us to regulate

their affairs.

"I have said that 'I never ride out for the sake of health'; and it

may therefore be inquired, 'Why are vehicles, etc., for the purpose

of health more necessary for the other members of the family than

for you?' I reply that my health is in general good, and probably

much benefited by a journey to and from Calcutta two or three times

a week. I have also a great fondness for natural science,

particularly botany and horticulture. These, therefore, furnish not

only exercise, but amusement for me. These amusements of mine are

not, however, enjoyed without expense, any more than those of my

brethren, and were it not convenient for Brother Marshman's accusers

to make a stepping-stone of me, I have no doubt but my collection of

plants, aviary, and museum, would be equally impeached as articles

of luxury and lawless expenses; though, except the garden, the whole

of these expenses are borne by myself.

"John Marshman is admitted a member of the union, but he had for

some time previously thereto been a member of the church. I

perceive plainly that all your objections to him have been excited

by the statements of the Calcutta brethren, which you certainly

ought to receive with much caution in all things which regard Bother

Marshman and his family. You observe that the younger brethren

especially look up to me with respect and affection. It may be so;

but I confess I have frequently thought that, had it been so, they

would have consulted me, or at least have mentioned to me the

grounds of their dissatisfaction before they proceeded to the

extremity of dividing the mission. When I engaged in the mission,

it was a determination that, whatever I suffered, a breach therein

should never originate with me. To this resolution I have hitherto

obstinately adhered. I think everything should be borne, every

sacrifice made, and every method of accommodation or reconciliation

tried, before a schism is suffered to take place...

"I disapprove as much of the conduct of our Calcutta brethren as it

is possible for me to disapprove of any human actions. The evil

they have done is, I fear, irreparable; and certainly the whole

might have been prevented by a little frank conversation with either

of us; and a hundredth part of that self-denial which I found it

necessary to exercise for the first few years of the mission, would

have prevented this awful rupture. I trust you will excuse my

warmth of feeling upon this subject, when you consider that by this

rupture that cause is weakened and disgraced, in the establishment

and promotion of which I have spent the best part of my life. A

church is attempted to be torn in pieces, for which neither I nor my

brethren ever thought we could do enough. We laboured to raise it:

we expended much money to accomplish that object; and in a good

measure saw the object of our desire accomplished. But now we are

traduced, and the church rent by the very men who came to be our

helpers. As to Brother Marshman, seriously, what do they want?

Would they attempt to deny his possessing the grace of God? He was

known to and esteemed by Brother Ryland as a Christian before he

left England. I have lived with him ever since his arrival in

India, and can witness to his piety and holy conduct. Would they

exclude him from the mission? Judge yourself whether it is comely

that a man, who has laboriously and disinterestedly served the

mission so many years--who has by his diligence and hard labour

raised the most respectable school in India, as well as given a tone

to all the others--who has unvaryingly consecrated the whole of that

income, as well as his other labours, to the cause of God in

India,--should be arraigned and condemned without a hearing by a few

young men just arrived, and one of whom had not been a month in the

country before he joined the senseless outcry? Or would they have

his blood? Judge, my dear brother, yourself, for I am ashamed to

say more on this subject.

"I need not say that circumstances must in a great measure determine

where missionaries should settle. The chief town of each of these

countries would be preferable, if other circumstances permit; but

sometimes Government would not allow this, and sometimes other

things may close the door. Missionaries however must knock loud and

push hard at the door, and if there be the smallest opening, must

force themselves in; and, once entered, put their lives in their

hands and exert themselves to the utmost in dependence upon divine

support, if they ever hope to do much towards evangelising the

heathen world. My situation in the college, and Brother Marshman's

as superintending the first academy in India, which, I likewise

observe, has been established and brought to its present flourishing

state wholly by his care and application, have made our present

situation widely different from what it was when first engaged in

the mission. As a missionary I could go in a straw hat and dine

with the judge of the district, and often did so; but as a Professor

in the College I cannot do so. Brother Marshman is placed in the

same predicament. These circumstances impose upon us a necessity of

making a different appearance to what we formerly did as simple

missionaries; but they furnish us with opportunities of speaking to

gentlemen of the first power and influence in government, upon

matters of the highest importance to the great work in which we are

engaged; and, as a proof that our opportunities of this nature have

not been in vain, I need only say that, in a conversation which I

had some time ago with one of the secretaries to Government, upon

the present favourable bias of government and the public in general

to favour all plans for doing good, he told me that he believed the

whole was owing to the prudent and temperate manner in which we had

acted; and that if we had acted with precipitancy and indiscretion,

he had every reason to believe the general feeling would have been

as hostile to attempts to do good as it is now favourable to them.

"I would not wish you to entertain the idea that we and our brethren

in Calcutta are resolved upon interminable hatred. On the contrary,

I think that things are gone as far as we may expect them to go; and

I now expect that the fire of contention will gradually go out. All

the distressing and disagreeable circumstances are, I trust, past;

and I expect we shall be in a little time on a more friendly

footing. Much of what has taken place originated in England.

Mistakes and false conclusions were followed by all the

circumstances I have detailed. I think the whole virulence of

opposition has now spent itself. Our brethren have no control over

us, nor we over them. And, if I am not mistaken, each side will

soon acknowledge that it has gone too far in some instances; and

ultimate good will arise from the evil I so much deplore.

"Having now written to you my whole sentiments upon the business,

and formerly to my very dear Brother Ryland, allow me to declare my

resolution not to write anything further upon the subject, however

much I may be pressed thereto. The future prosperity of the mission

does not depend upon the clearing up of every little circumstance to

the satisfaction of every captious inquirer, but upon the

restoration of mutual concord among us, which must be preceded by

admitting that we are all subject to mistake, and to be misled by

passion, prejudice, and false judgment. Let us therefore strive and

pray that the things which make for peace and those by which we may

edify one another may abound among us more and more. I am, my dear

brother, very affectionately, yours in our Lord Jesus Christ, W.

CAREY."

"14th May 1828.

"MY DEAR BROTHER ANDERSON--Yours by the Louisa, of October last,

came to hand a few days ago with the copies of Brother Marshman's

brief Memoir of the Serampore Mission. I am glad it is written in

so temperate and Christian a spirit, and I doubt not but it will be

ultimately productive of good effects. There certainly is a great

contrast between the spirit in which that piece is written and that

in which observations upon it, both in the Baptist and Particular

Baptist Magazines, are written. The unworthy attempts in those and

other such like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly

contemptible. In plain English, they amount to thus much--'The

Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, have acted a

dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not include Dr. Carey

in the charge of dishonesty; he is an easy sort of a man, who will

agree to anything for the sake of peace, or in other words, he is a

fool. Mr. Ward, it is well known,' say they, 'was the tool of Dr.

Marshman, but he is gone from the present scene, and it is unlovely

to say any evil of the dead.' Now I certainly hold those persons'

exemption of me from the blame they attach to Brother Marshman in

the greatest possible contempt. I may have subscribed my name

thoughtlessly to papers, and it would be wonderful if there had been

no instance of this in so long a course of years. The great esteem

I had for the Society for many years, undoubtedly on more occasions

than one put me off my guard, and I believe my brethren too; so that

we have signed writings which, if we could have foreseen the events

of a few years, we should not have done. These, however, were all

against our own private interest, and I believe I have never been

called an easy fool for signing of them. It has only been since we

found it necessary to resist the claims of the Committee that I have

risen to this honour.

"It has also been hinted that I intend to separate from Brother

Marshman. I cannot tell upon what such hints or reports are

founded, but I assure you, in the most explicit manner, that I

intend to continue connected with him and Serampore as long as I

live; unless I should be separated from him by some unforeseen

stroke of Providence. There may be modifications of our union,

arising from circumstances; but it is my wish that it should remain

in all things essential to the mission as long as I live.

"I rejoice to say that there is very little of that spirit of

hostility which prevails in England in India, and I trust what still

remains will gradually decrease till scarcely the remembrance of it

will continue. Our stations, I mean those connected with Serampore,

are of great importance, and some of them in a flourishing state.

We will do all we can to maintain them, and I hope the friends to

the cause of God in Britain will not suffer them to sink for want of

that pecuniary help which is necessary. Indeed I hope we shall be

assisted in attempting other stations beside those already occupied;

and many such stations present themselves to my mind which nothing

prevents being immediately occupied but want of men and money. The

college will also require assistance, and I hope will not be without

it; I anticipate the time when its salutary operation in the cause

of God in India will be felt and acknowledged by all.

"These observations respecting my own conduct you are at liberty to

use as you please. I hope now to take my final leave of this

unpleasant subject, and have just room to say that I am very

affectionately yours, W. CAREY."

Throughout the controversy thus forced upon him, we find Dr. Carey's

references, in his unpublished letters to the brethren in Calcutta,

all in the strain of the following to his son Jabez:--

"15th August 1820.--This week we received letters from Mr. Marshman,

who had safely arrived at St. Helena. I am sure it will give you

pleasure to learn that our long-continued dispute with the younger

brethren in Calcutta is now settled. We met together for that

purpose about three weeks ago, and after each side giving up some

trifling ideas and expressions, came to a reconciliation, which, I

pray God, may be lasting. Nothing I ever met with in my life--and I

have met with many distressing things--ever preyed so much upon my

spirits as this difference has. I am sure that in all disputes very

many wrong things must take place on both sides for which both

parties ought to be humbled before God and one another.

"I wish you could succeed in setting up a few more

schools...Consider that and the spread of the gospel as the great

objects of your life, and try to promote them by all the wise and

prudent methods in your power. Indeed we must always venture

something for the sake of doing good. The cause of our Lord Jesus

Christ continues to prosper with us. I have several persons now

coming in who are inquirers; two or three of them, I hope, will be

this evening received into the Church. Excuse my saying more as my

room is full of people."

Eight years after, on the 17th April 1828, he thus censured Jabez in

the matter of the Society's action at home:--"From a letter of yours

to Jonathan, in which you express a very indecent pleasure at the

opposition which Brother Marshman has received, not by the Society

but by some anonymous writer in a magazine, I perceive you are

informed of the separation which has taken place between them and

us. What in that anonymous piece you call a 'set-down' I call a

'falsehood.' You ought to know that I was a party in all public

acts and writings, and that I never intend to withdraw from all the

responsibility connected therewith. I utterly despise all the

creeping, mean assertions of that party when they say they do not

include me in their censures, nor do I work for their praise.

According to their and according to your rejoicing...I am either a

knave or a fool--a knave if I joined with Brother Marshman; but if,

as those gentlemen say, and as you seem to agree with them, I was

only led as he pleased, and was a mere cat's-paw, then of course I

am a fool. In either way your thoughts are not very high as it

respects me. I do not wonder that Jonathan should express himself

unguardedly; his family connection with Mr. Pearce sufficiently

accounts for that. We have long been attacked in this

country--first by Mr. Adam,26 and afterwards by Dr. Bryce.27 Bryce

is now silenced by two or three pieces by John Marshman in his own

newspaper, the John Bull; and as to some of the tissues of falsehood

published in England, I shall certainly never reply to them, and I

hope no one else will. That cause must be bad which needs such

means to support it. I believe God will bring forth our

righteousness as the noonday."

On the 12th July 1828 the father again writes to his son Jabez

thus:--"Your apologies about Brother Marshman are undoubtedly the

best you can offer. I should be sorry to harbour hostile sentiments

against any man on the earth upon grounds so slight. Indeed, were

all you say matter of fact you ought to forgive it as God for

Christ's sake forgives us. We are required to lay aside all envy

and strife and animosities, to forgive each other mutually and to

love one another with a pure heart fervently. 'Thine own friend and

thy father's friend forsake not.'"

CHAPTER XIV

CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR--THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN THE EAST

1818-1830

A college the fourth and perfecting corner-stone of the

mission--Carey on the importance of English in 1800--Anticipates

Duff's policy of undermining Brahmanism--New educational era begun

by the charter of 1813 and Lord Hastings--Plan of the Serampore

College in 1818--Anticipates the Anglo-Orientalism of the Punjab

University--The building described by John Marshman--Bishop

Middleton follows--The Scottish and other colleges--Action of the

Danish Government--The royal charter--Visit of Maharaja

Serfojee--Death of Ward, Charles Grant and Bentley--Bishop Heber and

his catholic letter--Dr. Carey's reply--Progress of the

college--Cause of its foundation--The college directly and

essentially a missionary undertaking--Action of the Brotherhood from

the first vindicated--Carey appeals to posterity--The college and

the systematic study of English--Carey author of the Grant in Aid

system--Economy in administering missions--The Serampore Mission has

eighteen stations and fifty missionaries of all kinds--Subsequent

history of the Serampore College to 1883.

The first act of Carey and Marshman when their Committee took up a

position of hostility to their self-denying independence, was to

complete and perpetuate the mission by a college. As planned by

Carey in 1793, the constitution had founded the enterprise on these

three corner-stones--preaching the Gospel in the mother tongue of

the people; translating the Bible into all the languages of Southern

and Eastern Asia; teaching the young, both heathen and Christian,

both boys and girls, in vernacular schools. But Carey had not been

a year in Serampore when, having built well on all three, he began

to see that a fourth must be laid some day in the shape of a

college. He and his colleagues had founded and supervised, by the

year 1818, no fewer than 126 native schools, containing some 10,000

boys, of whom more than 7000 were in and around Serampore. His work

among the pundit class, both in Serampore and in the college of Fort

William, and the facilities in the mission-house for training

natives, Eurasians, and the missionaries' sons to be preachers,

translators, and teachers, seemed to meet the immediate want. But

as every year the mission in all its forms grew and the experience

of its leaders developed, the necessity of creating a college staff

in a building adapted to the purpose became more urgent. Only thus

could the otherwise educated natives be reached, and the Brahmanical

class especially be permanently influenced. Only thus could a

theological institute be satisfactorily conducted to feed the native

Church.

On 10th October 1800 the missionaries had thus written home:--"There

appears to be a favourable change in the general temper of the

people. Commerce has roused new thoughts and awakened new energies;

so that hundreds, if we could skilfully teach them gratis, would

crowd to learn the English language. We hope this may be in our

power some time, and may be a happy means of diffusing the gospel.

At present our hands are quite full." A month after that Carey

wrote to Fuller:--"I have long thought whether it would not be

desirable for us to set up a school to teach the natives English. I

doubt not but a thousand scholars would come. I do not say this

because I think it an object to teach them the English tongue; but,

query, is not the universal inclination of the Bengalees to learn

English a favourable circumstance which may be improved to valuable

ends? I only hesitate at the expense." Thirty years after Duff

reasoned in the same way, after consulting Carey, and acted at once

in Calcutta.

By 1816, when, on 25th June, Carey wrote a letter, for his

colleagues and himself, to the Board of the American Baptist General

Convention, the great idea, destined slowly to revolutionise not

only India, but China, Japan, and the farther East, had taken this

form:--

"We know not what your immediate expectations are relative to the

Burman empire, but we hope your views are not confined to the

immediate conversion of the natives by the preaching of the Word.

Could a church of converted natives be obtained at Rangoon, it might

exist for a while, and be scattered, or perish for want of

additions. From all we have seen hitherto we are ready to think

that the dispensations of Providence point to labours that may

operate, indeed, more slowly on the population, but more effectually

in the end: as knowledge, once put into fermentation, will not only

influence the part where it is first deposited, but leaven the whole

lump. The slow progress of conversion in such a mode of teaching

the natives may not be so encouraging, and may require, in all, more

faith and patience; but it appears to have been the process of

things, in the progress of the Reformation, during the reigns of

Henry, Edward, Elizabeth, James, and Charles. And should the work

of evangelising India be thus slow and silently progressive, which,

however, considering the age of the world, is not perhaps very

likely, still the grand result will amply recompense us, and you,

for all our toils. We are sure to take the fortress, if we can but

persuade ourselves to sit down long enough before it. 'We shall reap

if we faint not.'

"And then, very dear brethren, when it shall be said of the seat of

our labours, the infamous swinging-post is no longer erected; the

widow burns no more on the funeral pile; the obscene dances and

songs are seen and heard no more; the gods are thrown to the moles

and to the bats, and Jesus is known as the God of the whole land;

the poor Hindoo goes no more to the Ganges to be washed from his

filthiness, but to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness; the

temples are forsaken; the crowds say, 'Let us go up to the house of

the Lord, and He shall teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His

statutes;' the anxious Hindoos no more consume their property, their

strength, and their lives, in vain pilgrimages, but they come at

once to Him who can save to 'the uttermost'; the sick and the dying

are no more dragged to the Ganges, but look to the Lamb of God, and

commit their souls into His faithful hands; the children, no more

sacrificed to idols, are become 'the seed of the Lord, that He may

be glorified'; the public morals are improved; the language of

Canaan is learnt; benevolent societies are formed; civilisation and

salvation walk arm in arm together; the desert blossoms; the earth

yields her increase; angels and glorified spirits hover with joy

over India, and carry ten thousand messages of love from the Lamb in

the midst of the throne; and redeemed souls from the different

villages, towns, and cities of this immense country, constantly add

to the number, and swell the chorus of the redeemed, 'Unto Him that

loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, unto HIM be

the glory;'--when this grand result of the labours of God's servants

in India shall be realised, shall we then think that we have

laboured in vain, and spent our strength for nought? Surely not.

Well, the decree is gone forth! 'My word shall prosper in the thing

whereunto I sent it.'"

India was being prepared for the new missionary policy. On what we

may call its literary side Carey had been long busy. On its more

strictly educational side, the charter of 1813 had conceded what had

been demanded in vain by a too feeble public opinion in the charter

of 1793. A clause was inserted at the last moment declaring that a

sum of not less than a lakh of rupees (or ten thousand pounds) a

year was to be set apart from the surplus revenues, and applied to

the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of

the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion

of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British

territories there. The clause was prompted by an Anglo-Indian of

oriental tastes, who hoped that the Brahman and his Veda might thus

be made too strong for the Christian missionary and the Bible as at

last tolerated under the 13th resolution. For this reason, and

because the money was to be paid only out of any surplus, the

directors and their friends offered no opposition. For the quarter

of a century the grant was given, and was applied in the spirit of

its proposer. But the scandals of its application became such that

it was made legally by Bentinck and Macaulay, and practically by

Duff, the fountain of a river of knowledge and life which is

flooding the East.

The first result of the liberalism of the charter of 1813 and the

generous views of Lord Hastings was the establishment in Calcutta by

the Hindoos themselves, under the influence of English secularists,

of the Hindoo, now the Presidency College. Carey and Marshman were

not in Calcutta, otherwise they must have realised even then what

they left to Duff to act on fourteen years after, the importance of

English not only as an educating but as a Christianising instrument.

But though not so well adapted to the immediate need of the

reformation which they had begun, and though not applied to the very

heart of Bengal in Calcutta, the prospectus of their "College for

the Instruction of Asiatic, Christian, and Other Youth in Eastern

Literature and European Science," which they published on the 15th

July 1818, sketched a more perfect and complete system than any

since attempted, if we except John Wilson's almost unsupported

effort in Bombay. It embraced the classical or learned languages of

the Hindoos and Mohammedans, Sanskrit and Arabic; the English

language and literature, to enable the senior students "to dive into

the deepest recesses of European science, and enrich their own

language with its choicest treasures"; the preparation of manuals of

science, philosophy, and history in the learned and vernacular

languages of the East; a normal department to train native teachers

and professors; as the crown of all, a theological institute to

equip the Eurasian and native Christian students, by a quite

unsectarian course of study, in apologetics, exegetics, and the

Bible languages, to be missionaries to the Brahmanical classes.

While the Government and the Scottish missionaries have in the

university and grant in aid systems since followed too exclusively

the English line, happily supplanting the extreme Orientalists, it

is the glory of the Serampore Brotherhood that they sought to apply

both the Oriental and the European, the one as the form, the other

as the substance, so as to evangelise and civilise the people

through their mother tongue. They were the Vernacularists in the

famous controversy between the Orientalists and the Anglicists

raised by Duff. In 1867 the present writer in vain attempted to

induce the University of Calcutta to follow them in this. It was

left to Sir Charles Aitchison, when he wielded the power and the

influence of the Lieutenant-Governor, to do in 1882 what the

Serampore College would have accomplished had its founders been

young instead of old men, by establishing the Punjab University.

Lord Hastings and even Sir John Malcolm took a personal interest in

the Serampore College. The latter, who had visited the missionaries

since his timid evidence before the House of Lords in 1813, wrote to

them:--"I wish I could be certain that your successors in the

serious task you propose would have as much experience as you and

your fellow-labourers at Serampore--that they would walk, not run,

in the same path--I would not then have to state one reserve." Lord

Hastings in Council passed an order encouraging the establishment of

a European Medical Professorship in Serampore College, and engaged

to assist in meeting the permanent expense of the chair when

established. His Excellency "interrupted pressing avocations" to

criticise both the architectural plan of the building and the

phraseology of the draft of the first report, and his suggestions

were followed. Adopting one of the Grecian orders as most suitable

to a tropical climate, the Danish Governor's colleague, Major

Wickedie, planned the noble Ionic building which was then, and is

still, the finest edifice of the kind in British India.

"The centre building, intended for the public rooms, was a hundred

and thirty feet in length, and a hundred and twenty in depth. The

hall on the ground floor, supported on arches, and terminated at the

south by a bow, was ninety-five feet in length, sixty-six in

breadth, and twenty in height. It was originally intended for the

library, but is now occupied by the classes. The hall above, of the

same dimensions and twenty-six feet in height, was supported by two

rows of Ionic columns; it was intended for the annual examinations.

Of the twelve side-rooms above and below, eight were of spacious

dimensions, twenty-seven feet by thirty-five. The portico which

fronted the river was composed of six columns, more than four feet

in diameter at the base. The staircase-room was ninety feet in

length, twenty-seven in width, and forty-seven in height, with two

staircases of cast-iron, of large size and elegant form, prepared at

Birmingham. The spacious grounds were surrounded with iron railing,

and the front entrance was adorned with a noble gate, likewise cast

at Birmingham...

"The scale on which it was proposed to establish the college, and to

which the size of the building was necessarily accommodated,

corresponded with the breadth of all the other enterprises of the

Serampore missionaries,--the mission, the translations, and the

schools. While Mr. Ward was engaged in making collections for the

support of the institution in England, he wrote to his brethren,

'the buildings you must raise in India;' and they determined to

respond to the call, and, if possible, to augment their donation

from 2500 to 8000, and to make a vigorous effort to erect the? ?

buildings from their own funds. Neither the ungenerous suspicion,

nor the charge of unfaithfulness, with which their character was

assailed in England, was allowed to slacken the prosecution of this

plan. It was while their reputation was under an eclipse in

England, and the benevolent hesitated to subscribe to the society

till they were assured that their donations would not be mixed up

with the funds of the men at Serampore, that those men were engaged

in erecting a noble edifice for the promotion of religion and

knowledge, at their

own cost, the expense of which eventually grew under their hands to

the sum of 15,000. To the charge of endeavouring to alienate from?

the society premises of the value of 3000, their own gift, they?

replied by erecting a building at five times the cost, and vesting

it in eleven trustees,--seven besides themselves. It was thus they

vindicated the purity of their motives in their differences with the

society, and endeavoured to silence the voice of calumny. They were

the first who maintained that a college was an indispensable

appendage to an Indian mission."

The next to follow Carey in this was Bishop Middleton, who raised

funds to erect a chaste Gothic pile beside the Botanic Garden, since

to him the time appeared "to have arrived when it is desirable that

some missionary endeavours, at least, should have some connection

with the Church establishment." That college no longer exists, in

spite of the saintly scholarship of such Principals as Mill and Kay;

the building is now utilised as a Government engineering college.

But in Calcutta the Duff College, with the General Assembly's

Institution (now united as the Scottish Churches College), the

Cathedral Mission Divinity School, and the Bhowanipore Institution;

in Bombay the Wilson College, in Madras the Christian College, in

Nagpoor the Hislop College, in Agra St. John's College, in Lahore

the Church Mission Divinity School, in Lucknow the Reid College, and

others, bear witness to the fruitfulness of the Alma Mater of

Serampore.

The Serampore College began with thirty-seven students, of whom

nineteen were native Christians and the rest Hindoos. When the

building was occupied in 1821 Carey wrote to his son:--"I pray that

the blessing of God may attend it, and that it may be the means of

preparing many for an important situation in the Church of God...The

King of Denmark has written letters signed with his own hand to

Brothers Ward, Marshman, and myself, and has sent each of us a gold

medal as a token of his approbation. He has also made over the

house in which Major Wickedie resides, between Sarkies's house and

ours, to us three in perpetuity for the college. Thus Divine

generosity appears for us and supplies our expectations." The

missionaries had declined the Order of the Dannebrog. When, in

1826, Dr. Marshman visited Europe, one of his first duties was to

acknowledge this gift to Count Moltke, Danish Minister in London and

ancestor of the great strategist, and to ask for a royal charter.

The Minister and Count Schulin, whose wife had been a warm friend

of Mrs. Carey, happened to be on board the steamer in which Dr.

Marshman, accompanied by Christopher Anderson, sailed to Copenhagen.

Raske, the Orientalist, who had visited Serampore, was a Professor

in the University there. The vellum charter was prepared among

them, empowering the College Council, consisting of the Governor of

Serampore and the Brotherhood, to confer degrees like those of the

Universities of Copenhagen and Kiel, but not carrying the rank in

the State implied in Danish degrees unless with the sanction of the

Crown. The King, in the audience which he gave, informed Dr.

Marshman that, having in 1801 promised the mission protection, he

had hitherto refused to transfer Serampore to the East India

Company, since that would prevent him from keeping his word. When,

in 1845, the Company purchased both Tranquebar and Serampore, it

could be no longer dangerous to the Christian Mission, but the

Treaty expressly provided that the College should retain all its

powers, and its Christian character, under the Danish charter, which

it does. It was thus the earliest degree-conferring college in

Asia, but it has never exercised the power. Christian VIII., then

the heir to the throne, showed particular interest in the Bible

translation work of Carey. When, in 1884, the Evangelical Alliance

held its session in Copenhagen, and was received by Christian IX.,28

it did well, by special resolution, to express the gratitude of

Protestant Christendom to Denmark for such courageous and continued

services to the first Christian mission from England to India.

How Dr. Carey valued the gift of the King is seen in this writing,

on the lining of the case of the gold medal, dated 6th November

1823:--

"It is my desire that this medal, and the letter of the King of

Denmark, which accompanied it, be given at my death to my dear son

Jonathan, that he may keep it for my sake."

The letter of King Frederic VI. is as follows:--

"MONSIEUR LE DOCTEUR ET PROFESSEUR WILLIAM CAREY--

C'est avec beaucoup d'int r t que nous avons appris le m rite qu'en?? ?

qualit de membre dirigeant de la Soci t de la Mission, vous avez? ??

acquis, ainsi que vos co-directeurs, et les eff ts salutaires que?

vos louables travaux ont produits et partout o votre influence a pu?

atteindre. Particulierement inform s qu'en votre dite qualit vous? ?

avez contribu a effectuer bien des choses utiles, dont?

l' tablissement Fr d ricsnagore a se louer, et voulant vous? ? ? ? ?

certifier que nous vous en avons gr , nous avons charg le chef du? ?

dit tablissement,--notre Lieutenant-Colonel Kraefting, de vous?

remettre cette lettre; et en m me temps une medaille d'or, comme une?

marque de notre bienveillance et de notre protection, que vous

assurera toujours une conduite meritoire.

"Sur ce nous prions Dieu de vous avoir dans Sa sainte et digne

garde.--Votre affectionn FREDERIC.?

"Copenhague, ce 7 Juin 1820.

"Au Docteur et Professeur WILLIAM CAREY,

Membre dirigeant de la Soci t de la Mission Fr d ricsnagore."?? ? ? ?

The new College formed an additional attraction to visitors to the

mission. One of these, in 1821, was the Maharaja Serfojee, the

prince of Tanjore, whom Schwartz had tended, but who was on

pilgrimage to Benares. Hand in hand with Dr. Carey he walked

through the missionary workshop, noticed specially the pundits who

were busy with translation to which Lord Hastings had directed his

attention, and dilated with affectionate enthusiasm on the deeds and

the character of the apostle of South India. In 1823 cholera

suddenly cut off Mr. Ward in the midst of his labours. The year

after that Charles Grant died, leaving a legacy to the mission.

Almost his last act had been to write to Carey urging him to

publish a reply to the attack of the Abb Dubois on all Christian?

missions. Another friend was removed in Bentley, the scholar who

put Hindoo astronomy in its right place. Bishop Heber began his too

brief episcopate in 1824, when the college, strengthened by the

abilities of the Edinburgh professor, John Mack, was accomplishing

all that its founders had projected. The Bishop of all good

Christian men never penned a finer production--not even his

hymns--than this letter, called forth by a copy of the Report on the

College sent to him by Dr. Marshman:--

"I have seldom felt more painfully than while reading your appeal on

the subject of Serampore College, the unhappy divisions of those who

are the servants of the same Great Master! Would to God, my

honoured brethren, the time were arrived when not only in heart and

hope, but visibly, we shall be one fold, as well as under one

shepherd! In the meantime I have arrived, after some serious

considerations, at the conclusion that I shall serve our great cause

most effectually by doing all which I can for the rising

institutions of those with whom my sentiments agree in all things,

rather than by forwarding the labours of those from whom, in some

important points, I am conscientiously constrained to differ. After

all, why do we differ? Surely the leading points which keep us

asunder are capable of explanation or of softening, and I am

expressing myself in much sincerity of heart--(though, perhaps,

according to the customs of the world, I am taking too great a

freedom with men my superiors both in age and in talent), that I

should think myself happy to be permitted to explain, to the best of

my power, those objections which keep you and your brethren divided

from that form of church government which I believe to have been

instituted by the apostles, and that admission of infants to the

Gospel Covenants which seem to me to be founded on the expressions

and practice of Christ himself. If I were writing thus to worldly

men I know I should expose myself to the imputation of excessive

vanity or impertinent intrusion. But of you and Dr. Carey I am far

from judging as of worldly men, and I therefore say that, if we are

spared to have any future intercourse, it is my desire, if you

permit, to discuss with both of you, in the spirit of meekness and

conciliation, the points which now divide us, convinced that, if a

reunion of our Churches could be effected, the harvest of the

heathen would ere long be reaped, and the work of the Lord would

advance among them with a celerity of which we have now no

experience.

"I trust, at all events, you will take this hasty note as it is

intended, and believe me, with much sincerity, your friend and

servant in Christ, REGINALD CALCUTTA.

"3rd June 1824."

This is how Carey reciprocated these sentiments, when writing to Dr.

Ryland:--

"SERAMPORE, 6th July 1824.

"I rejoice to say that there is the utmost harmony between all the

ministers of all denominations. Bishop Heber is a man of liberal

principles and catholic spirit. Soon after his arrival in the

country he wrote me a very friendly letter, expressing his wish to

maintain all the friendship with us which our respective

circumstances would allow. I was then confined, but Brother

Marshman called on him. As soon as I could walk without crutches I

did the same, and had much free conversation with him. Some time

after this he wrote us a very friendly letter, saying that it would

highly gratify him to meet Brother Marshman and myself, and discuss

in a friendly manner all the points of difference between himself

and us, adding that there was every reason to expect much good from

a calm and temperate discussion of these things, and that, if we

could at any rate come so near to each other as to act together, he

thought it would have a greater effect upon the spread of the gospel

among the heathen than we could calculate upon. He was then just

setting out on a visitation which will in all probability take a

year. We, however, wrote him a reply accepting his proposal, and

Brother Marshman expressed a wish that the discussion might be

carried on by letter, to which in his reply he partly consented. I

have such a disinclination to writing, and so little leisure for it,

that I wished the discussion to be viva voce; it will, however, make

little difference, and all I should have to say would be introduced

into the letter."

On the death of Mr. Ward and departure of Dr. Marshman for Great

Britain on furlough, after twenty-six years' active labours, his

son, Mr. John Marshman, was formally taken into the Brotherhood. He

united with Dr. Carey in writing to the Committee two letters, dated

21st January 1826 and 15th November 1827, which show the progress of

the college and the mission from the first as one independent

agency, and closed with Carey's appeal to the judgment of posterity.

"About seven years ago we felt convinced of the necessity of

erecting a College for native Christian youth, in order to

consolidate our plans for the spread of gospel truth in India; and,

as we despaired of being able to raise from public subscriptions a

sum equal to the expense of the buildings, we determined to erect

them from our own private funds. Up to the present date they have

cost us nearly 14,000, and the completion of them will require a?

further sum of about 5000, which, if we are not enabled to advance?

from our own purse, the undertaking must remain incomplete. With

this burden upon our private funds we find it impossible any longer

to meet, to the same extent as formerly, the demands of our

out-stations. The time is now arrived when they must cease to be

wholly dependent on the private donations of three individuals, and

must be placed on the strength of public contributions. As two out

of three of the members of our body are now beyond the age of

fifty-seven, it becomes our duty to place them on a more permanent

footing, as it regards their management, their support, and their

increase. We have therefore associated with ourselves, in the

superintendence of them, the Rev. Messrs. Mack and Swan, the two

present professors of the college, with the view of eventually

leaving them entirely in the hands of the body of professors, of

whom the constitution of the college provides that there shall be an

unbroken succession.

"To secure an increase of missionaries in European habits we have

formed a class of theological students in the college, under the

Divinity Professor. It contains at present six promising youths, of

whose piety we have in some cases undoubted evidence, in others

considerable ground for hope. The class will shortly be increased

to twelve, but none will be continued in it who do not manifest

undeniable piety and devotedness to the cause of missions. As we

propose to allow each student to remain on an average four years, we

may calculate upon the acquisition of two, and perhaps three,

additional labourers annually, who will be eminently fitted for

active service in the cause of missions by their natural familiarity

with the language and their acquisitions at college. This

arrangement will, we trust, secure the speedy accomplishment of the

plan we have long cherished, that of placing one missionary in each

province in Bengal, and eventually, if means be afforded, in

Hindostan.

"As the completion of the buildings requires no public contribution,

the sole expense left on the generosity of its friends is that of

its existing establishment. Our subscriptions in India, with what

we receive as the interest of money raised in Britain and America,

average 1000 annually; about 500 more from England would cover? ?

every charge, and secure the efficiency of the institution. Nor

shall we require this aid beyond a limited period.

"Of the three objects connected with the College, the education of

non-resident heathen students, the education of resident Christian

students, and the preparation of missionaries from those born in the

country, the first is not strictly a missionary object, the two

latter are intimately connected with the progress of the good cause.

The preparation of missionaries in the country was not so much

recommended as enforced by the great expense which attends the

despatch of missionaries from Europe. That the number of labourers

in this country must be greatly augmented, before the work of

evangelising the heathen can be said to have effectively commenced,

can admit of no doubt.

"The education of the increasing body of Native Christians likewise,

necessarily became a matter of anxiety. Nothing could be more

distressing than the prospect of their being more backward in mental

pursuits than their heathen neighbours. The planting of the gospel

in India is not likely to be accomplished by the exertions of a few

missionaries in solitary and barren spots in the country, without

the aid of some well-digested plan which may consolidate the

missionary enterprise, and provide for the mental and religious

cultivation of the converts. If the body of native Christians

required an educational system, native ministers, who must gradually

take the spiritual conduct of that body, demanded pre-eminent

attention. They require a knowledge of the ingenious system they

will have to combat, of the scheme of Christian theology they are to

teach, and a familiarity with the lights of modern science. We

cannot discharge the duty we owe as Christians to India, without

some plan for combining in the converts of the new religion, and

more especially in its ministers, the highest moral refinement of

the Christian character, and the highest attainable progress in the

pursuits of the mind.

"During the last ten years of entire independence the missionary

cause has received from the product of our labour, in the erection

of the college buildings, in the support of stations and schools,

and in the printing of tracts, much more than 23,000. The?

unceasing calumny with which we have been assailed, for what has

been called 'our declaration of independence' (which, by the bye,

Mr. Fuller approved of our issuing almost with his dying breath), it

is beneath us to notice, but it has fully convinced us of the

propriety of the step. This calumny is so unreasonable that we

confidently appeal from the decision of the present age to the

judgment of posterity."

Under Carey, as Professor of Divinity and Lecturer on Botany and

Zoology, Mack and John Marshman, with pundits and moulavies, the

college grew in public favour, even during Dr. Marshman's absence,

while Mrs. Marshman continued to conduct the girls' school and

superintend native female education with a vigorous enthusiasm which

advancing years did not abate and misrepresentation in England only

fed. The difficulties in which Carey found himself had the happy

result of forcing him into the position of being the first to

establish practically the principle of the Grant in Aid system. Had

his Nonconformist successors followed him in this, with the same

breadth of view and clear distinction between the duty of aiding the

secular education, while giving absolute liberty to the spiritual,

the splendid legacy which he left to India would have been both

perpetuated and extended. As it is, it was left to his young

colleague, John Marshman, and to Dr. Duff, to induce Parliament, by

the charter of 1853, and the first Lord Halifax in the Educational

Despatch of 1854, to sanction the system of national education for

the multifarious classes and races of our Indian subjects, under

which secular instruction is aided by the state on impartial terms

according to its efficiency, and Christianity delights to take its

place, unfettered and certain of victory, with the Brahmanical and

aboriginal cults of every kind.

In 1826 Carey, finding that his favourite Benevolent Institution in

Calcutta was getting into debt, and required repair, applied to

Government for aid. He had previously joined the Marchioness of

Hastings in founding the Calcutta School Book and School Society,

and had thus been relieved of some of the schools. Government at

once paid the debt, repaired the building, and continued to give an

annual grant of 240 for many years. John Marshman did not think it?

necessary, "to defend Dr. Carey from the charge of treason to the

principles of dissent in having thus solicited and accepted aid from

the state for an educational establishment; the repudiation of that

aid is a modern addition to those principles." He tells us that

"when conversation happened to turn upon this subject at Serampore,

his father was wont to excuse any warmth which his colleague might

exhibit by the humorous remark that renegades always fought hardest.

There was one question on which the three were equally

strenuous--that it was as much the duty of Government to support

education as to abstain from patronising missions."

A letter written in 1818 to his son William, then one of the

missionaries, shows with what jealous economy the founder of the

great modern enterprise managed the early undertakings.

"MY DEAR WILLIAM--Yours of the 3rd instant I have received, and must

say that it has filled me with distress. I do not know what the

allowance of 200 rupees includes, nor how much is allotted for

particular things; but it appears that Rs. 142:2 is expended upon

your private expenses, viz., 78:2 on table expenses, and 64 on

servants. Now neither Lawson nor Eustace have more than 140 rupees

for their allowance, separate from house rent, for which 80 rupees

each is allowed, and I believe all the brethren are on that, or a

lower allowance, Brother Yates excepted, who chooses for himself. I

cannot therefore make an application for more with any face. Indeed

we have no power to add or diminish salaries, though the Society

would agree to our doing so if we showed good reasons for it. I

believe the allowances of the missionaries from the London Society

are about the same, or rather less--viz. 200 sterling, or 132?

rupees a month, besides extra expenses; so that your income, taking

it at 140 rupees a month, is quite equal to that of any other

missionary. I may also mention that neither Eustace nor Lawson can

do without a buggy, which is not a small expense.

"I suppose the two articles you have mentioned of table expenses and

servants include a number of other things; otherwise I cannot

imagine how you can go to that expense. When I was at Mudnabati my

income was 200 per month, and during the time I stayed there I had

saved near 2000 rupees. My table expenses scarcely ever amounted to

50 rupees, and though I kept a moonshi at 20 rupees and four

gardeners, yet my servants' wages did not exceed 60 rupees monthly.

I kept a horse and a farmyard, and yet my expenses bore no

proportion to yours. I merely mention this without any reflection

on you, or even a wish to do it; but I sincerely think your expenses

upon these two articles are very greater.--I am your affectionate

father, W. CAREY."

In 1825 Carey completed his great Dictionary of Bengali and English

in three quarto volumes, abridged two years afterwards. No

language, not even in Europe, could show a work of such industry,

erudition, and philological completeness at that time. Professor H.

H. Wilson declared that it must ever be regarded as a standard

authority, especially because of its etymological references to the

Sanskrit, which supplies more than three-fourths of the words; its

full and correct vocabulary of local terms, with which the author's

"long domestication amongst the natives" made him familiar, and his

unique knowledge of all natural history terms. The first copy which

issued from the press he sent to Dr. Ryland, who had passed away at

seventy-two, a month before the following letter was written:--

"June 7th, 1825.--On the 17th of August next I shall be sixty-four

years of age; and though I feel the enervating influence of the

climate, and have lost something of my bodily activity, I labour as

closely, and perhaps more so than I have ever done before. My

Bengali Dictionary is finished at press. I intend to send you a

copy of it by first opportunity, which I request you to accept as a

token of my unshaken friendship to you. I am now obliged, in my own

defence, to abridge it, and to do it as quickly as possible, to

prevent another person from forestalling me and running away with

the profits.

"On Lord's day I preached a funeral sermon at Calcutta for one of

our deacons, who died very happily; administered the Lords' Supper,

and preached again in the evening. It was a dreadfully hot day, and

I was much exhausted. Yesterday the rain set in, and the air is

somewhat cooled. It is still uncertain whether Brothers Judson and

Price are living. There was a report in the newspaper that they

were on their way to meet Sir Archibald Campbell with proposals of

peace from the Burman king; but no foundation for the report can be

traced out. Living or dead they are secure."

On hearing of the death of Dr. Ryland, he wrote:--"There are now in

England very few ministers with whom I was acquainted. Fuller,

Sutcliff, Pearce, Fawcett, and Ryland, besides many others whom I

knew, are gone to glory. My family connections also, those excepted

who were children when I left England, or have since that time been

born, are all gone, two sisters only excepted. Wherever I look in

England I see a vast blank; and were I ever to revisit that dear

country I should have an entirely new set of friendships to form.

I, however, never intended to return to England when I left it, and

unless something very unexpected were to take place I certainly

shall not do it. I am fully convinced I should meet with many who

would show me the utmost kindness in their power, but my heart is

wedded to India, and though I am of little use I feel a pleasure in

doing the little I can, and a very high interest in the spiritual

good of this vast country, by whose instrumentality soever it is

promoted."

By 1829 the divinity faculty of the College had become so valuable a

nursery of Eurasian and Native missionaries, and the importance of

attracting more of the new generation of educated Hindoos within its

influence had become so apparent that Oriental gave place to English

literature in the curriculum. Mr. Rowe, as English tutor, took his

place in the staff beside Dr. Carey, Dr. Marshman, Mr. Mack, and Mr.

John Marshman. Hundreds of native youths flocked to the classes.

Such was the faith, such the zeal of Carey, that he continued to

add new missions to the ten of which the College was the life-giving

centre; so that when he was taken away he left eighteen, under

eleven European, thirteen Eurasian, seventeen Bengali, two

Hindostani, one Telugoo, and six Arakanese missionaries. When Mr.

David Scott, formerly a student of his own in Fort William College,

and in 1828 Commissioner of Assam (then recently annexed to the

empire), asked for a missionary, Carey's importunity prevailed with

his colleagues only when he bound himself to pay half the cost by

stinting his personal expenditure. Similarly it was the generous

action of Mr. Garrett, when judge of Barisal, that led him to send

the best of his Serampore students to found that afterwards famous

mission.

Having translated the Gospels into the language of the Khasias in

the Assam hills, he determined in 1832 to open a new mission at the

village of Cherra, which the Serampore Brotherhood were the first to

use as a sanitarium in the hot season. For this he gave up 60 of?

his Government pension and Mr. Garrett gave a similar sum. He sent

another of his students, Mr. Lisk, to found the mission, which

prospered until it was transferred to the Welsh Calvinists, who have

made it the centre of extensive and successful operations. Thus the

influence of his middle age and old age in the Colleges of Fort

William and of Serampore combined to make the missionary patriarch

the father of two bands--that of the Society and that of the

Brotherhood.

Dr. Carey's last report, at the close of 1832, was a defence of what

has since been called, and outside of India and of Scotland has too

often been misunderstood as, educational missions or Christian

Colleges. To a purely divinity college for Asiatic Christians he

preferred a divinity faculty as part of an Arts and Science

College,29 in which the converts study side by side with their

inquiring countrymen, the inquirers are influenced by them as well

as by the Christian teaching and secular teaching in a Christian

spirit, and the Bible consecrates the whole. The United Free Church

of Scotland has, alike in India, China and Africa, proved the

wisdom, the breadth, and the spiritual advantage of Carey's policy.

When the Society opposed him, scholars like Mack from Edinburgh and

Leechman from Glasgow rejoiced to work out his Paul-like conception.

When not only he, but Dr. Marshman, had passed away Mack bravely

held aloft the banner they bequeathed, till his death in 1846. Then

John Marshman, who in 1835 had begun the Friend of India as a weekly

paper to aid the College, transferred the mission to the Society

under the learned W. H. Denham. When in 1854 a new generation of

the English Baptists accepted the College also as their own, it

received a Principal worthy to succeed the giants of those days, the

Rev. John Trafford, M.A., a student of Foster's and of Glasgow

University. For twenty-six years he carried out the principles of

Carey. On his retirement the College as such was suspended in the

year 1883, and in the same building a purely native Christian

Training Institution took its place. There, however, the many

visitors from Christendom still found the library and museum; the

Bibles, grammars, and dictionaries; the natural history collections,

and the Oriental MSS.; the Danish Charter, the historic portraits,

and the British Treaty; as well as the native Christian classes--all

of which re-echo William Carey's appeal to posterity.

CHAPTER XV

CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA

The Danish charter--The British treaty--Growth of native Christian

community--Lord Minto's concession of self-governing

privileges--Madras Decennial Conference and Serampore

degrees--Proposed reorganisation of College so as to teach and

examine for B.D. and other degrees--Appeal for endowments of Carey's

Christian University

Attention has already been directed to the far-seeing plans which

Carey laid down for Serampore College. It is a pleasure to record

that while this volume is in the press (1909), a scheme is being

promoted by the College Council for the reorganisation of the

College on the lines of Carey's ideal, with a view to making it a

centre of higher ministerial training for all branches of the Indian

Church.

It will be remembered that in 1827 the College received from

Friedrich VI. a Royal Charter, empowering it to confer degrees, and

giving to it all the rights which are possessed by Western

Universities. Under Treaty dated the 6th October, 1845, the King of

Denmark agreed to transfer to the Governor-General of India, Lord

Hardinge, G.C.B., for the sum of 125,000, the towns of Tranquebar,?

Frederiksnagore or Serampore,30 and the old factory site at

Balasore. Article 6 of this treaty provides that "the rights and

immunities granted to the Serampore College by Royal Charter, of

date 23rd of February, 1827, shall not be interfered with, but

continue in force in the same manner as if they had been obtained by

a Charter from the British Government, subject to the General Law of

British India."31

For lack of an endowment sufficient to maintain the teaching staff

required, and to establish the necessary scholarships, the College

has never been fully developed on University lines. Since 1883 it

has been used as a training Institution for preachers and teachers

for the Bengal field of the Baptist Missionary Society. Meanwhile

in the century since Carey's statesman-like ideal was sketched,

under the providence of God there have been two notable developments

in the conditions of Indian life--(1) the educated Christian natives

of India, from Cape Comorin to Peshawar, have grown, and continue to

grow, in numbers, in character, and in influence, with a rapidity

pronounced marvellous by the official report of the Census of 1901;

(2) the three hundred millions of the peoples of India have, by the

frank concession of the Earl of Minto and his advisers, and the

sanction of Viscount Morley and Parliament, received a virtual

constitution, which recognises their fitness for self-governing

rights under the benevolent rule of King Edward VII. and his Viceroy

in Council. Christianity, and the leaven of the more really

educated Christian natives, will alone moralise and loyalise the

peoples of India, and prepare future generations for a healthy

independence, material and political.

As they have watched the lines along which these developments have

proceeded, the leaders of the missionary enterprise have become more

and more convinced that the realisation of Carey's ideal has been

too long delayed, and that the influence of the Christian community

on the great movements of Indian thought has suffered in

consequence. In particular, while the need for highly-equipped

Indian preachers, evangelists and leaders, is far more urgent now

even than it was in Carey's day, the most experienced missionaries

of all societies are far from satisfied with the present level of

theological education in the Indian Church. They are convinced that

the time has come to reorganise the whole system of ministerial

training, and to secure for the study of Christian Theology in India

that academic recognition which it has enjoyed for centuries in

Western lands. Since the British Government is pledged to

neutrality in religious matters, it is unable to sanction the

establishment of Divinity faculties, in any of the State

Universities, Hence the Decennial Missionary Conference,

representing all the Protestant Missionary Societies working in

India, meeting in Madras in December 1902, appointed a Committee "to

confer with the Council of the Serampore College, through the

Committee of the London Baptist Missionary Society, to ascertain

whether they are prepared to delegate the degree-conferring powers

of the Charter of that College to a Senate or Faculty,

representative of the various Protestant Christian Churches and

Societies working in India."

The College Council (of which Meredith Townsend, Esq., is Master,

and Alfred Henry Baynes, Esq., F.R.G.S., is Secretary), has taken

this request into careful consideration, and after being assured by

the highest legal opinion that the Charter is still valid, has

resolved to do everything in its power to carry out the suggestions

of the Decennial Conference. They realise, however, that if the

degree-conferring powers of the Charter are to be used, the College

itself must be raised to the highest standard of efficiency as a

Teaching Institution, and its permanence must be guaranteed by an

adequate endowment.

The Council has felt that the attainment of these two objects is

possible only through a union of the forces of the various

Protestant Christian Churches working in India. The result has been

the adoption of a wise and catholic project of reorganisation, under

which it is hoped that Serampore will become a great

interdenominational College of University rank, giving a theological

training up to the standard of the London B.D., conferring its own

divinity degrees, and maintaining an Arts and Science department,

for the present at least affiliated to the Calcutta University. It

is justly claimed that such a Christian University at Serampore will

both unify and raise the standard of theological education in the

Indian Church, helping to build the Eastern structure of Christian

thought and life on the one Foundation of Jesus Christ, the Word of

God.

The scheme which the Council has sanctioned contemplates the

permanent endowment of the requisite professorships and

scholarships. The College building will provide sufficient

class-room accommodation, but it will be necessary to secure

additional land, and to erect houses for the staff and hostels for

the students. An immediate endowment of 250,000 is aimed at with a?

view of establishing a well-equipped theological faculty, with a

preliminary department in Arts and Sciences. The Council, however,

is not without hope that in due time Carey's noble vision of a great

Christian University at Serampore conferring its own degrees, not

only in theology but in all branches of useful learning, may

powerfully appeal to some of the merchant princes of the West. It is

estimated that the sum of 2,000,000 would be required for this?

equipment and endowment of the University on this larger scale. The

great missionary Churches and Societies look favourably on the

proposal, initiated by their own missionaries, to co-operate with

Carey's more immediate representatives in realising and applying his

ideal which is bound to expand and grow as India becomes

Christianised.

The members of the College Council maintain that, in view of the

world-wide influence of the modern missionary movement, inaugurated

by William Carey, a movement that has been so beneficial both to the

Church at home and to non-Christian nations, there is no institution

that has greater historical and spiritual claims upon modern

philanthropy than Serampore, and they believe that there are large

numbers of men and women in Great Britain, America, India and other

lands who will consider it a sacred privilege to have their names

inscribed with those of Carey, Marshman and Ward on the walls of

Serampore College as its second founders.

The Council is doing all within its power to reorganise the College

on the broadest possible basis, believing that an institution with

such inspiring traditions and associations should be utilised in the

interests, not merely of one denomination, but of the whole Church

in India and the nation. Up to the present, the Council, though

legally an entirely independent body, has worked in the closest

association with the Baptist Missionary Society's Committee. But

now with the fullest sympathy both of the Baptist Missionaries on

the field and the Committee in England, it is also inviting the

co-operation of all evangelical Christian bodies in the work of

Serampore College. It is prepared to welcome as full professors of

the College, in Arts and Theology, representatives of other

evangelical missions, who shall have special superintendence of the

students belonging to their respective denominations, and be free to

give them such supplementary instruction as may be thought

necessary. All professors without distinction of denomination will

share equally in the local management of the affairs of the College.

The final authority must, in accordance with the Charter, remain in

the hands of the College Council, but in order to admit of the due

representation upon the Council of the various evangelical bodies

which may co-operate, the present members of Council have, with the

hearty concurrence of the Baptist Missionary Society's Committee,

approved the suggestion that application should be made to the

Indian Legislature for powers to enlarge its membership.

The Honorary Secretary of the College Council, A. H. Baynes, Esq.,

19 Furnival Street, London, E.C., will be glad to supply further

information, or to receive contributions towards the Fund for the

endowment and equipment of the College.

In view of the conditions at present existing in India, this appeal

should be of interest not only to friends of Christian missions, but

to philanthropists generally, for a Christian University, conducted

on the broad and catholic principles laid down by Carey,

supplementary but in no way antagonistic to the existing

Universities, will be a most effective instrument for permeating the

political and social ideals of the youth of India with the spirit of

Christ. This is a matter that deeply concerns, not only the

Missionary, but also the statesman, the merchant, and all true

friends of India of whatever race or creed.

In all the romance of Christian Missions, from Iona to Canterbury,

there is no more evident example of the working of the Spirit of God

with the Church, than the call of Carey and the foundation of

Serampore College under Danish Charter and British treaty, making it

the only University with full powers to enable the whole Reformed

Church in India to work out its own theological system and Christian

life.

CHAPTER XVI

CAREY'S LAST DAYS

1830-1834

The college and mission stripped of all their funds--Failure of the

six firms for sixteen millions--Carey's official income reduced from

?1560 to 600--His Thoughts and Appeal published in England--His?

vigour at seventy--Last revision of the Bengali Bible--Final edition

of the Bengali New Testament--Carey rejoices in the reforms of Lord

William Bentinck's Government--In the emancipation of the

slaves--Carey sketched by his younger contemporaries--His latest

letters and last message to Christendom--Visits of Lady William

Bentinck and Bishop Daniel Wilson--Marshman's affection and promise

as to the garden--The English mail brings glad news a fortnight

before his death--His last Sabbath--He dies--Is buried--His tomb

among his converts--His will--The Indian press on his poverty and

disinterestedness--Dr. Marshman and Mack, Christopher Anderson and

John Wilson of Bombay on his character--His influence still as the

founder of missions--Dr. Cox and Robert Hall on Carey as a

man--Scotland's estimate of the father of the Evangelical Revival

and its foreign missions.

The last days of William Carey were the best. His sun went down in

all the splendour of a glowing faith and a burning self-sacrifice.

Not in the penury of Hackleton and Moulton, not in the hardships of

Calcutta and the Soondarbans, not in the fevers of the swamps of

Dinapoor, not in the apprehensions twice excited by official

intolerance, not in the most bitter sorrow of all--the sixteen

years' persecution by English brethren after Fuller's death, had the

father of modern missions been so tried as in the years 1830-1833.

Blow succeeded blow, but only that the fine gold of his trust, his

humility, and his love might be seen to be the purer.

The Serampore College and Mission lost all the funds it had in

India. By 1830 the financial revolution which had laid many houses

low in Europe five years before, began to tell upon the merchant

princes of Calcutta. The six firms, which had developed the trade

of Northern India so far as the Company's monopolies allowed, had

been the bankers of the Government itself, of states like

Haidarabad, and of all the civil and military officials, and had

enriched a succession of partners for half a century, fell one by

one--fell for sixteen millions sterling among them. Palmer and Co.

was the greatest; the house at one time played a large part in the

history of India, and in the debates and papers of Parliament. Mr.

John Palmer, a personal friend of the Serampore men, had advanced

them money at ten per cent. four years previously, when the

Society's misrepresentation had done its worst. The children in the

Eurasian schools, which Dr. and Mrs. Marshman conducted with such

profit to the mission, depended chiefly on funds deposited with this

firm. It suddenly failed for more than two millions sterling.

Although the catastrophe exposed the rottenness of the system of

credit on which commerce and banking were at that time conducted, in

the absence of a free press and an intelligent public opinion, the

alarm soon subsided, and only the more business fell to the other

firms. But the year 1833 had hardly opened when first the house of

Alexander and Co., then that of Mackintosh and Co., and then the

three others, collapsed without warning. The English in India,

officials and merchants, were reduced to universal poverty. Capital

disappeared and credit ceased at the very time that Parliament was

about to complete the partial concession of freedom of trade made by

the charter of 1813, by granting all Carey had argued for, and

allowing Europeans to hold land.

The funds invested for Jessor and Delhi; the legacy of Fernandez,

Carey's first convert and missionary; his own tenths with which he

supported three aged relatives in England; the property of the

partner of his third marriage, on whom the money was settled, and

who survived him by a year; the little possessed by Dr. Marshman,

who had paid all his expenses in England even while working for the

Society--all was swept away. Not only was the small balance in hand

towards meeting the college and mission expenditure gone, but it was

impossible to borrow even for a short time. Again one of Dr.

Carey's old civilian students came to the rescue. Mr. Garrett,

grandson of Robert Raikes who first began Sunday schools, pledged

his own credit with the Bank of Bengal, until Samuel Hope of

Liverpool, treasurer of the Serampore Mission there, could be

communicated with. Meanwhile the question of giving up any of the

stations or shutting the college was not once favoured. "I have seen

the tears run down the face of the venerable Dr. Carey at the

thought of such a calamity," wrote Leechman; "were it to arrive we

should soon have to lay him in his grave." When the interest of the

funds raised by Ward in America ceased for a time because of the

malicious report from England that it might be applied by Dr.

Marshman to the purposes of family aggrandisement, Carey replied in

a spirit like that of Paul under a similar charge: "Dr. Marshman is

as poor as I am, and I can scarcely lay by a sum monthly to relieve

three or four indigent relatives in Europe. I might have had large

possessions, but I have given my all, except what I ate, drank, and

wore, to the cause of missions, and Dr. Marshman has done the same,

and so did Mr. Ward."

Carey's trust in God, for the mission and for himself, was to be

still further tried. On 12th July 1828 we find him thus writing

from Calcutta to Jabez:--"I came down this morning to attend Lord W.

Bentinck's first lev e. It was numerously attended, and I had the?

pleasure of seeing there a great number of gentlemen who had

formerly studied under me, and for whom I felt a very sincere

regard. I hear Lady Bentinck is a pious woman, but have not yet

seen her. I have a card to attend at her drawing-room this evening,

but I shall not go, as I must be at home for the Sabbath, which is

to-morrow." It soon fell to Lord William Bentinck to meet the

financial consequences of his weak predecessor's administration.

The College of Fort William had to be sacrificed. Metcalfe and

Bayley, Carey's old students whom he had permanently influenced in

the higher life, were the members of council, and he appealed to

them. They sent him to the good Governor-General, to whose sympathy

he laid bare all the past and present of the mission's finance. He

was told to have no fear, and indeed the Council held a long sitting

on this one matter. But from June 1830 the college ceased to be a

teaching, and became an examining body. When the salary was reduced

one-half, from Rs. 1000 a month, the Brotherhood met to pray for

light and strength. Mr. Robinson, the Java missionary who had

attached himself to Serampore, and whose son long did good service

as a Bengali scholar and preacher, gives us this glimpse of its

inner life at this time:--

"The two old men were dissolved in tears while they were engaged in

prayer, and Dr. Marshman in particular could not give expressions to

his feelings. It was indeed affecting to see these good old men,

the fathers of the mission, entreating with tears that God would not

forsake them now grey hairs were come upon them, but that He would

silence the tongue of calumny, and furnish them with the means of

carrying on His own cause."

They sent home an appeal to England, and Carey himself published

what is perhaps the most chivalrous, just, and weighty of all his

utterances on the disagreeable subject--Thoughts upon the

Discussions which have arisen from the Separation between the

Baptist Missionary Society and the Serampore Missions. "From our age

and other circumstances our contributions may soon cease. We have

seen a great work wrought in India, and much of it, either directly

or indirectly, has been done by ourselves. I cannot, I ought not to

be indifferent about the permanency of this work, and cannot

therefore view the exultation expressed at the prospect of our

resources being crippled otherwise than being of a character too

satanic to be long persisted in by any man who has the love of God

in his heart."

The appeal to all Christians for "a few hundred pounds per annum"

for the mission station closed thus: "But a few years have passed

away since the Protestant world was awakened to missionary effort.

Since that time the annual revenues collected for this object have

grown to the then unthought-of sum of 400,000. And is it?

unreasonable to expect that some unnoticeable portion of this should

be intrusted to him who was amongst the first to move in this

enterprise and to his colleagues?" The Brotherhood had hardly

despatched this appeal to England with the sentence, "Our present

incomes even are uncertain," when the shears of financial reduction

cut off Dr. Carey's office of Bengali translator to Government,

which for eight years had yielded him Rs. 300 a month. But such was

his faith this final stroke called forth only an expression of

regret that he must reduce his contributions to the missionary cause

by so much. He was a wonder to his colleagues, who wrote of him:

"Though thus reduced in his circumstances the good man, about to

enter on his seventieth year, is as cheerful and as happy as the day

is long. He rides out four or five miles every morning, returning

home by sunrise; goes on with the work of translation day by day;

gives two lectures on divinity and one on natural history every week

in the college, and takes his turn of preaching both in Bengali and

in English."

When the Christian public responded heartily to his appeal Carey was

loud and frequent in his expressions of gratitude to God, who, "in

the time of our great extremity, appeared and stirred up His people

thus willingly to offer their substance for His cause." With

respect to myself, I consider my race as nearly run. The days of

our years are three score years and ten, and I am now only three

months short of that age, and repeated bilious attacks have weakened

my constitution. But I do not look forward to death with any

painful anticipations. I cast myself on and plead the efficacy of

that atonement which will not fail me when I need it."

Dr. Marshman gives us a brighter picture of him. "I met with very

few friends in England in their seventieth year so lively, as free

from the infirmities of age, so interesting in the pulpit, so

completely conversible as he is now." The reason is found in the

fact that he was still useful, still busy at the work he loved most

of all. He completed his last revision of the entire Bible in

Bengali--the fifth edition of the Old Testament and the eighth

edition of the New--in June 1832. Immediately thereafter, when

presiding at the ordination of Mr. Mack as co-pastor with Dr.

Marshman and himself over the church at Serampore, he took with him

into the pulpit the first copy of the sacred volume which came from

the binder's hands, and addressed the converts and their children

from the words of Simeon--"Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart

in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." As the months

went on he carried through the press still another and improved

edition of the New Testament, and only then he felt and often said

that the work of his heart was done.

He had other sources of saintly pleasure as he lay meditating on the

Word, and praising God for His goodness to the college and the

mission stations increased to nineteen by young Sir Henry Havelock,

who founded the church at Agra. Lord William Bentinck, having begun

his reign with the abolition of the crime of suttee, was, with the

help of Carey's old students, steadily carrying out the other

reforms for which in all his Indian career the missionary had prayed

and preached and published. The judicial service was reorganised so

as to include native judges. The uncovenanted civil service was

opened to all British subjects of every creed. The first act of

justice to native Christians was thus done, so that he wrote of the

college:--"The students are now eligible to every legal appointment

in India which a native can hold; those who may possess no love for

the Christian ministry have the prospect of a profitable profession

as advocates in the judicial courts, and the hope of rising to posts

of honourable distinction in their native land." The Hindoo law of

inheritance which the Regulating Act of Parliament had so covered

that it was used to deprive converts to Christianity of all civil

rights, was dealt with so far as a local regulation could do so, and

Carey, advised by such an authority as Harington, laid it on his

successor in the apostolate, the young Alexander Duff, to carry the

act of justice out fully, which was done under the Marquis of

Dalhousie. The orders drawn up by Charles Grant's sons at last, in

February 1833, freed Great Britain from responsibility for the

connection of the East India Company with Temple and mosque

endowments and the pilgrim tax.

His son Jonathan wrote this of him two years after his death:--

"In principle my father was resolute and firm, never shrinking from

avowing and maintaining his sentiments. He had conscientious

scruples against taking an oath; and condemned severely the manner

in which oaths were administered, and urged vehemently the propriety

of altogether dispensing with them. I remember three instances in

which he took a conspicuous part in regard to oaths, such as was

characteristic of the man. On one occasion, when a respectable

Hindoo servant of the college of Fort William, attached to Dr.

Carey's department, was early one morning proceeding to the Ganges

to bathe, he perceived a dead body lying near the road; but it being

dark, and no person being present, he passed on, taking no further

notice of the circumstance. As he returned from the Ganges after

sunrise, he saw a crowd near the body, and then happened to say to

one of the watchmen present that in the morning he saw the body on

the other side of the road. The watchman took him in custody, as a

witness before the coroner; but, when brought before the coroner, he

refused to take an oath, and was, consequently, committed to prison

for contempt. The Hindoo being a respectable person, and never

having taken an oath, refused to take any nourishment in the prison.

In this state he continued a day and a half, my father being then

at Serampore; but upon his coming to Calcutta, the circumstances

were mentioned to him. The fact of the man having refused to take

an oath was enough to make him interest himself in his behalf. He

was delighted with the resolution the man took--rather to go to

prison than take an oath; and was determined to do all he could to

procure his liberation. He first applied to the coroner, but was

directed by him to the sheriff. To that functionary he proceeded,

but was informed by him that he could make no order on the subject.

He then had an interview with the then chief judge, by whose

interference the man was set at liberty.

"Another instance relates to him personally. On the occasion of his

last marriage, the day was fixed on which the ceremony was to take

place--friends were invited--and all necessary arrangements made;

but, three or four days prior to the day fixed, he was informed that

it would be necessary for him to obtain a licence, in doing which,

he must either take an oath or have banns published. To taking an

oath he at once objected, and applied to the then senior judge, who

informed him that, as he was not a quaker, his oath was

indispensable; but, rather than take an oath, he applied to have the

banns published, and postponed the arrangements for his marriage for

another three weeks.

"The third instance was as follows:--It was necessary, in a certain

case, to prove a will in court, in which the name of Dr. Carey was

mentioned, in connection with the Serampore missionaries as

executors. An application was made by one of his colleagues, which

was refused by the court, on account of the vagueness of the terms,

'Serampore missionaries;' but as Dr. Carey's name was specifically

mentioned, the court intimated that they would grant the application

if made by him. The communication was made: but when he was

informed that an oath was necessary, he shrunk with abhorrence from

the idea; but after much persuasion, he consented to make the

application, if taking an oath would be dispensed with. He did

attend, and stated his objections to the then chief judge, which

being allowed, his affirmation was received and recorded by the

court.

"The duties connected with the College of Fort William afforded him

a change of scene, which relieved his mind, and gave him

opportunities of taking exercise, and conduced much to his health.

During the several years he held the situation of professor to the

college, no consideration would allow him to neglect his attendance;

and though he had to encounter boisterous weather in crossing the

river at unseasonable hours, he was punctual in his attendance, and

never applied for leave of absence. And when he was qualified by

the rules of the service to retire on a handsome pension, he

preferred being actively employed in promoting the interests of the

college, and remained, assiduously discharging his duties, till his

department was abolished by Government. The business of the college

requiring his attendance in Calcutta, he became so habituated to his

journeys to and fro, that at his age he painfully felt the

retirement he was subjected to when his office ceased. After this

circumstance his health rapidly declined; and though he occasionally

visited Calcutta, he complained of extreme debility. This increased

daily, and made him a constant sufferer; until at length he was not

able to leave his house."

Nor was it in India alone that the venerable saint found such causes

of satisfaction. He lived long enough to thank God for the

emancipation of the slaves by the English people, for which he had

prayed daily for fifty years.

We have many sketches of the Father of English Missions in his later

years by young contemporaries who, on their first arrival in Bengal,

sought him out. In 1824 Mr. Leslie, an Edinburgh student, who

became in India the first of Baptist preachers, and was the means of

the conversion of Henry Havelock who married Dr. Marshman's youngest

daughter, wrote thus of Carey after the third great illness of his

Indian life:--

"Dr. Carey, who has been very ill, is quite recovered, and bids fair

to live many years; and as for Dr. Marshman, he has never known

ill-health is, during the whole period of his residence in India.

They are both active to a degree which you would think impossible

in such a country. Dr. Carey is a very equable and cheerful old

man, in countenance very like the engraving of him with his pundit,

though not so robust as he appears to be there. Next to his

translations Botany is his grand study. He has collected every

plant and tree in his garden that will possibly grow in India, and

is so scientific withal that he calls everything by its classical

name. If, therefore, I should at any time blunder out the word

Geranium, he would say Pelargonium, and perhaps accuse me of

ignorance, or blame me for vulgarity. We had the pleasure of

hearing him preach from Rom. vii. 13, when he gave us an excellent

sermon. In manner he is very animated, and in style very

methodical. Indeed he carries method into everything he does;

classification is his grand hobby, and wherever anything can be

classified, there you find Dr. Carey; not only does he classify and

arrange the roots of plants and words, but visit his dwelling and

you find he has fitted up and classified shelves full of minerals,

stones, shells, etc., and cages full of birds. He is of very easy

access, and great familiarity. His attachments are strong, and

extend not merely to persons but places. About a year ago, so much

of the house in which he had lived ever since he had been at

Serampore, fell down so that he had to leave it, at which he wept

bitterly. One morning at breakfast, he was relating to us an

anecdote of the generosity of the late excellent John Thornton, at

the remembrance of whom the big tear filled his eye. Though it is

an affecting sight to see the venerable man weep; yet it is a sight

which greatly interests you, as there is a manliness in his

tears--something far removed from the crying of a child."

The house in which for the last ten years he lived, and where he

died, was the only one of two or three, planned for the new

professors of the college, that was completed. Compared with the

adjoining college it was erected with such severe simplicity that it

was said to have been designed for angels rather than for men.

Carey's room and library looked towards the river with the breadth

of the college garden between. On the other side, in the upper

verandah, in the morning he worked at his desk almost to the last,

and in the evening towards sunset he talked with his visitors. In

1826 the London Missionary Society sent out to Calcutta the first of

its deputations. Dr. Carey sent his boat for them, and in the

absence of her husband in England, Mrs. Marshman entertained the

guests. They wrote:--

"We found Dr. Carey in his study, and we were both pleased and

struck with his primitive, and we may say, apostolical appearance.

He is short of stature, his hair white, his countenance equally

bland and benevolent in feature and expression. Two Hindoo men were

sitting by, engaged in painting some small subjects in natural

history, of which the doctor, a man of pure taste and highly

intellectual cast of feeling, irrespective of his more learned

pursuits, has a choice collection, both in specimens and pictorial

representations. Botany is a favourite study with him, and his

garden is curiously enriched with rarities."

Of all the visits paid to Carey none are now so interesting to the

historian of the Church of India, as those of the youth who

succeeded him as he had succeeded Schwartz. Alexander Duff was

twenty-four years of age when, in 1830, full of hesitation as to

carrying out his own plans in opposition to the experience of all

the missionaries he had consulted, he received from Carey alone the

most earnest encouragement to pursue in Calcutta the Christian

college policy so well begun in the less central settlement of

Serampore. We have elsewhere32 told the story:--

"Landing at the college ghaut one sweltering July day, the still

ruddy highlander strode up to the flight of steps that leads to the

finest modern building in Asia. Turning to the left, he sought the

study of Carey in the house--'built for angels,' said one, so simple

is it--where the greatest of missionary scholars was still working

for India. There he beheld what seemed to be a little yellow old

man in a white jacket, who tottered up to the visitor of whom he had

already often heard, and with outstretched hands solemnly blessed

him. A contemporary soon after wrote thus of the childlike saint--

"'Thou'rt in our heart--with tresses thin and grey,

And eye that knew the Book of Life so well,

And brow serene, as thou wert wont to stray

Amidst thy flowers--like Adam ere he fell.'

"The result of the conference was a double blessing; for Carey could

speak with the influence at once of a scholar who had created the

best college at that time in the country, and of a vernacularist who

had preached to the people for half a century. The young Scotsman

left his presence with the approval of the one authority whose

opinion was best worth having...

"Among those who visited him in his last illness was Alexander Duff,

the Scots missionary. On one of the last occasions on which he saw

him--if not the very last--he spent some time talking chiefly about

Carey's missionary life, till at length the dying man whispered,

Pray. Duff knelt down and prayed, and then said Good-bye. As he

passed from the room, he thought he heard a feeble voice pronouncing

his name, and, turning, he found that he was recalled. He stepped

back accordingly, and this is what he heard, spoken with a gracious

solemnity: 'Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr.

Carey; When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey--speak about Dr.

Carey's Saviour.' Duff went away rebuked and awed, with a lesson in

his heart that he never forgot."33

When with his old friends he dwelt much on the past. Writing of May

1832, Dr. Marshman mentioned: "I spent an hour at tea with dear

Brother Carey last night, now seventy and nine months. He was in

the most comfortable state of health, talking over his first

feelings respecting India and the heathen, and the manner in which

God kept them alive, when even Fuller could not yet enter into them,

and good old John Ryland (the doctor's father) denounced them as

unscriptural. Had these feelings died away, in what a different

state might India now have been!" In September of that year, when

burying Mrs. Ward, he seemed, in his address at the grave, to long

for renewed intercourse with the friends who had preceded him in

entering into the joy of the Lord.

On Mr. Leechman's arrival from Scotland to be his colleague, he

found the old man thus vigorous even in April 1833, or if "faint,

yet pursuing":--

"Our venerable Dr. Carey is in excellent health, and takes his turn

in all our public exercises. Just forty years ago, the first of

this month, he administered the Lord's Supper to the church at

Leicester, and started on the morrow to embark for India. Through

this long period of honourable toil the Lord has mercifully

preserved him; and at our missionary prayer meeting, held on the

first of this month, he delivered an interesting address to

encourage us to persevere in the work of the Lord. We have also a

private monthly prayer meeting held in Dr. Carey's study, which is

to me a meeting of uncommon interest. On these occasions we

particularly spread before the Lord our public and private trials,

both those which come upon us from the cause of Christ, with which

it is our honour and privilege to be connected, and those also which

we as individuals are called to bear. At our last meeting Dr. Carey

read part of the history of Gideon, and commented with deep feeling

on the encouragement which that history affords, that the cause of

God can be carried on to victory and triumph, by feeble and

apparently inefficient means."

Carey's successor, Mack, wrote thus to Christopher Anderson ten

months later:--

"SERAMPORE, 31st January 1834.--Our venerable father, Dr. Carey, is

yet continued to us, but in the same state in which he has been for

the last three months or so. He is quite incapable of work, and

very weak. He can walk but a few yards at a time, and spends the

day in reading for profit and entertainment, and in occasionally

nodding and sleeping. He is perfectly tranquil in mind. His

imagination does not soar much in vivid anticipations of glory; and

it never disquiets him with restless misgivings respecting his

inheritance in God. To him it is everything that the gospel is true,

and he believes it; and, as he says, if he can say he knows

anything, he knows that he believes it. When his attention is

turned to his dismissal from earth, or his hope of glory, his

emotions are tender and sweet. They are also very simple, and

express themselves in a few brief and pithy sentences. His interest

in all the affairs of the mission is unabated, and although he can

no longer join us either in deliberation or associated prayer, he

must be informed of all that occurs, and his heart is wholly with us

in whatever we do. I do not conceive it possible that he can

survive the ensuing hot season, but he may, and the Lord will do in

this as in all other things what is best.

"When our necessities were coming to their climax I concluded that I

must leave Serampore in order to find food to eat, and I fixed upon

Cherra-poonjee as my future residence. I proposed establishing a

first-class school there, and then with some warmth of imagination I

began anticipating a sort of second edition of Serampore up in the

Khasia hills, to be a centre of diffusing light in the western

provinces. I became really somewhat enamoured of the phantom of my

imagination, but it was not to be. The brethren here would not see

it as I did."

This last sketch, by Mr. Gogerly, whom the London Missionary Society

had sent out in 1819, brings us still nearer the end:--

"At this time I paid him my last visit. He was seated near his

desk, in the study, dressed in his usual neat attire; his eyes were

closed, and his hands clasped together. On his desk was the

proof-sheet of the last chapter of the New Testament, which he had

revised a few days before. His appearance, as he sat there, with

the few white locks which adorned his venerable brow, and his placid

colourless face, filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared as

then listening to the Master's summons, and as waiting to depart. I

sat, in his presence, for about half an hour, and not one word was

uttered; for I feared to break that solemn silence, and call back to

earth the soul that seemed almost in heaven. At last, however, I

spoke; and well do I remember the identical words that passed

between us, though more than thirty-six years have elapsed since

then. I said, 'My dear friend, you evidently are standing on the

borders of the eternal world; do not think it wrong, then, if I ask,

What are your feelings in the immediate prospect of death?' The

question roused him from his apparent stupor, and opening his

languid eyes, he earnestly replied, 'As far as my personal salvation

is concerned, I have not the shadow of a doubt; I know in Whom I

have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I

have committed unto Him against that day; but when I think that I am

about to appear in the presence of a holy God, and remember all my

sins and manifold imperfections--I tremble.' He could say no more.

The tears trickled down his cheeks, and after a while he relapsed

into the same state of silence from which I had aroused him.

"Deeply solemn was that interview, and important the lesson I then

received. Here was one of the most holy and harmless men whom I

ever knew--who had lived above the breath of calumny for upwards of

forty years, surrounded by and in close intimacy with many, both

Europeans and natives, who would have rejoiced to have witnessed any

inconsistency in his conduct, but who were constrained to admire his

integrity and Christian character--whilst thus convinced of the

certainty of his salvation, through the merits of that Saviour whom

he had preached, yet so impressed with the exceeding sinfulness of

sin, that he trembled at the thought of appearing before a holy God!

A few days after this event, Dr. Carey retired to his bed, from

which he never rose."

So long before this as 17th March 1802, Carey had thus described

himself to Dr. Ryland:--"A year or more ago you, or some other of my

dear friends, mentioned an intention of publishing a volume of

sermons as a testimony of mutual Christian love, and wished me to

send a sermon or two for that purpose. I have seriously intended

it, and more than once sat down to accomplish it, but have as

constantly been broken off from it. Indolence is my prevailing sin,

and to that are now added a number of avocations which I never

thought of; I have also so continual a fear that I may at last fall

some way or other so as to dishonour the Gospel that I have often

desired that my name may be buried in oblivion; and indeed I have

reason for those fears, for I am so prone to sin that I wonder every

night that I have been preserved from foul crimes through the day,

and when I escape a temptation I esteem it to be a miracle of grace

which has preserved me. I never was so fully persuaded as I am now

that no habit of religion is a security from falling into the

foulest crimes, and I need the immediate help of God every moment.

The sense of my continual danger has, I confess, operated strongly

upon me to induce me to desire that no publication of a religious

nature should be published as mine whilst I am alive. Another

reason is my sense of incapacity to do justice to any subject, or

even to write good sense. I have, it is true, been obliged to

publish several things, and I can say that nothing but necessity

could have induced me to do it. They are, however, only grammatical

works, and certainly the very last things which I should have

written if I could have chosen for myself."

On 15th June 1833 the old man was still able to rejoice with others.

He addressed to his son Jonathan the only brief letter which the

present writer possesses from his pen, in a hand as clear as that of

a quarter of a century before:--

"MY DEAR JONATHAN--I congratulate you upon the good news you have

received. But am sorry Lucy continues so ill. I am too weak to

write more than to say your mother is as well as the weather will

permit us to expect. I could scarcely have been worse to live than

I have been the last fortnight.--Your affectionate father, W.

CAREY."

The hot season had then reached its worst.

His last letters were brief messages of love and hope to his two

sisters in England. On 27th July 1833 he wrote to them:--

"About a week ago so great a change took place in me that I

concluded it was the immediate stroke of death, and all my children

were informed of it and have been here to see me. I have since that

revived in an almost miraculous manner, or I could not have written

this. But I cannot expect it to continue. The will of the Lord be

done. Adieu, till I meet you in a better world.--Your affectionate

brother, "W. CAREY."

Two months later he was at his old work, able "now and then to read

a proof sheet of the Scriptures."

"SERAMPORE, 25th Sept. 1833.

"MY DEAR SISTERS--My being able to write to you now is quite

unexpected by me, and, I believe, by every one else; but it appears

to be the will of God that I should continue a little time longer.

How long that may be I leave entirely with Him, and can only say,

'All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.'

I was, two months or more ago, reduced to such a state of weakness

that it appeared as if my mind was extinguished; and my weakness of

body, and sense of extreme fatigue and exhaustion, were such that I

could scarcely speak, and it appeared that death would be no more

felt than the removing from one chair to another. I am now able to

sit and to lie on my couch, and now and then to read a proof sheet

of the Scriptures. I am too weak to walk more than just across the

house, nor can I stand even a few minutes without support. I have

every comfort that kind friends can yield, and feel, generally, a

tranquil mind. I trust the great point is settled, and I am ready

to depart; but the time when, I leave with God.

"3rd Oct.--I am not worse than when I began this letter.--I am, your

very affectionate brother, WM. CAREY."

His latest message to Christendom was sent on the 30th September,

most appropriately to Christopher Anderson:--"As everything

connected with the full accomplishment of the divine promises

depends on the almighty power of God, pray that I and all the

ministers of the Word may take hold of His strength, and go about

our work as fully expecting the accomplishment of them all, which,

however difficult and improbable it may appear, is certain, as all

the promises of God are in Him, yea, and in Him, Amen." Had he not,

all his career, therefore expected and attempted great things?

He had had a chair fixed on a small platform, constructed after his

own direction, that he might be wheeled through his garden. At

other times the chief gardener Hullodhur, reported to him the state

of the collection of plants, then numbering about 2000. Dr.

Marshman saw his friend daily, sometimes twice a day, and found him

always what Lord Hastings had described him to be--"the cheerful old

man." On the only occasion on which he seemed sad, Dr. Marshman as

he was leaving the room turned and asked why. With deep feeling the

dying scholar looked to the others and said, "After I am gone

Brother Marshman will turn the cows into my garden." The reply was

prompt, "Far be it from me; though I have not your botanical tastes,

the care of the garden in which you have taken so much delight,

shall be to me a sacred duty."34

Of strangers his most frequent visitor was the Governor-General's

wife, Lady William Bentinck. Her husband was in South India, and

she spent most of her time in Barrackpore Park retreat opposite to

Carey's house. From her frequent converse with him, in his life as

well as now, she studied the art of dying. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of

Calcutta, learned to delight in Serampore almost from the beginning

of his long episcopate, and in later years he lived there more than

in Calcutta. On the 14th February 1833 he first visited Carey, "his

interview with whom, confined as he was to his room, and apparently

on the verge of the celestial world, was peculiarly affecting." In

the last of subsequent visits the young Bishop asked the dying

missionary's benediction. With all the talk was the same, a humble

resignation to the will of God, firm trust in the Redeemer of

sinners, a joyful gratitude for the wonderful progress of His

Kingdom. What a picture is this that his brethren sent home six

weeks before he passed away. "Our aged and venerable brother feels

himself growing gradually weaker. He can scarcely rise from his

couch, and it is with great difficulty that he is carried out daily

to take the air. Yet he is free from all pain as to disease, and

his mind is in a most serene and happy state. He is in full

possession of his faculties, and, although with difficulty, on

account of his weakness, he still converses with his friends from

day to day."

The hottest season of the year crept wearily on during the month of

May and the first week of June. Each night he slept well, and each

day he was moved to his couch in the dining-room for air. There he

lay, unable to articulate more than a word or two, but expressing by

his joyful features union in prayer and interest in conversation.

On the 22nd May the English mail arrived with gladdening

intelligence from Mr. Hope--God's people were praying and giving

anew for the mission. Especially was his own latest station of

Cherra-poonjee remembered. As he was told that a lady, anonymously,

had offered 500 for that mission, 500 for the college, 500 for? ? ?

the translations, and 100 for the mission generally, he raised his?

emaciated hands to heaven and murmured praise to God. When the

delirium of departure came he strove to reach his desk that he might

write a letter of thanks, particularly for Cherra. Then he would

recall the fact that the little church he at first formed had

branched out into six and twenty churches, in which the ordinances

of the Gospel were regularly administered, and he would whisper,

"What has God wrought!"

The last Sabbath had come--and the last full day. The constant

Marshman was with him. "He was scarcely able to articulate, and

after a little conversation I knelt down by the side of his couch

and prayed with him. Finding my mind unexpectedly drawn out to

bless God for His goodness, in having preserved him and blessed him

in India for above forty years, and made him such an instrument of

good to His church; and to entreat that on his being taken home, a

double portion of his spirit might rest on those who remained

behind; though unable to speak, he testified sufficiently by his

countenance how cordially he joined in this prayer. I then asked

Mrs. Carey whether she thought he could now see me. She said yes,

and to convince me, said, 'Mr. Marshman wishes to know whether you

now see him?' He answered so loudly that I could hear him, 'Yes, I

do,' and shook me most cordially by the hand. I then left him, and

my other duties did not permit me to reach him again that day. The

next morning, as I was returning home before sunrise, I met our

Brethren Mack and Leechman out on their morning ride, when Mack told

me that our beloved brother had been rather worse all the night, and

that he had just left him very ill. I immediately hastened home,

through the college in which he has lived these ten years, and when

I reached his room, found that he had just entered into the joy of

his Lord--Mrs. Carey, his son Jabez, my son John, and Mrs. Mack

being present."

It was Monday the 9th June 1834, at half-past five, as the morning

sun was ascending the heavens towards the perfect day. The

rain-clouds burst and covered the land with gloom next morning when

they carried William Carey to the converts' burial-ground and made

great lamentation. The notice was too short for many to come up

from Calcutta in those days. "Mr. Duff, of the Scottish Church,

returned a most kind letter." Sir Charles Metcalfe and the Bishop

wrote very feelingly in reply. Lady Bentinck sent the Rev. Mr.

Fisher to represent the Governor-General and herself, and "a most

kind and feeling answer, for she truly loved the venerable man,"

while she sadly gazed at the mourners as they followed the simple

funeral up the right bank of the Hoogli, past the College and the

Mission chapel. Mr. Yates, who had taken a loving farewell of the

scholar he had been reluctant to succeed, represented the younger

brethren; Lacroix, Micaiah Hill, and Gogerly, the London Missionary

Society. Corrie and Dealtry do not seem to have reached the spot in

time. The Danish Governor, his wife, and the members of council

were there, and the flag drooped half-mast high as on the occasion

of a Governor's death. The road was lined by the poor, Hindoo and

Mohammedan, for whom he had done so much. When all, walking in the

rain, had reached the open grave, the sun shone out, and Leechman

led them in the joyous resurrection hymn, "Why do we mourn departing

friends?" "I then addressed the audience," wrote Marshman, "and,

contrary to Brother Mack's foretelling that I should never get

through it for tears, I did not shed one. Brother Mack was then

asked to address the native members, but he, seeing the time so far

gone, publicly said he would do so at the village. Brother Robinson

then prayed, and weeping--then neither myself nor few besides could

refrain." In Jannuggur village chapel in the evening the Bengali

burial hymn was sung, P ritran Christer Morone, "Salvation by the?

death of Christ," and Pran Krishna, the oldest disciple, led his

countrymen in prayer. Then Mack spoke to the weeping converts with

all the pathos of their own sweet vernacular from the words, "For

David, after he had served his own generation, by the will of God

fell on sleep." Had not Carey's been a royal career, even that of a

king and a priest unto God?

"We, as a mission," wrote Dr. Marshman to Christopher Anderson,

"took the expense on ourselves, not suffering his family to do so,

as we shall that of erecting a monument for him. Long before his

death we had, by a letter signed by us all, assured him that the

dear relatives, in England and France, should have their pensions

continued as though he were living, and that Mrs. Carey, as a widow,

should have Rs. 100 monthly, whatever Mackintosh's house might yield

her."

Twenty-two years before, when Chamberlain was complaining because of

the absence of stone, or brick, or inscription in the mission

burial-ground, Carey had said, "Why should we be remembered? I

think when I am dead the sooner I am forgotten the better." Dr.

Johns observed that it is not the desire of the persons themselves

but of their friends for them, to which Carey replied, "I think of

others in that respect as I do of myself." When his second wife was

taken from him, his affection so far prevailed that he raised a

memorial stone, and in his will left this "order" to Mack and

William Robinson, his executors: "I direct that my funeral be as

plain as possible; that I be buried by the side of my second wife,

Charlotte Emilia Carey; and that the following inscription and

nothing more may be cut on the stone which commemorates her, either

above or below, as there may be room, viz.:--

WILLIAM CAREY, BORN AUGUST 17, 1761; DIED

A wretched, poor, and helpless worm,

On Thy kind arms I fall."

The surviving brethren seem to have taken the small oblong stone,

with the inscription added as directed, and to have placed it on the

south side of the domed square block of brick and white

plaster--since renewed from time to time--which stands in the left

corner of the God's-acre, now consecrated by the mingled dust of

four generations of missionaries, converts, and Christian people.

Ward's monument stands in the centre, and that of the Marshman

family at the right hand. Three and a half years afterwards Joshua

Marshman followed Carey; not till 1847 was Hannah Marshman laid

beside him, after a noble life of eighty years. Mack had gone the

year before, cut off by cholera like Ward. But the brotherhood

cannot be said to have ended till John Marshman, C.S.I., died in

London in 1877. From first to last the three families contributed

to the cause of God from their own earnings, ninety thousand pounds,

and the world would never have known it but for the lack of the

charity that envieth not on the part of Andrew Fuller's successors.

Carey's last will and testament begins: "I utterly disclaim all or

any right or title to the premises at Serampore, called the mission

premises, and every part and parcel thereof; and do hereby declare

that I never had, or supposed myself to have, any such right or

title. I give and bequeath to the College of Serampore the whole of

my museum, consisting of minerals, shells, corals, insects, and

other natural curiosities, and a Hortus Siccus; also the folio

edition of Hortus Woburnensis, which was presented to me by Lord

Hastings; Taylor's Hebrew Concordance, my collection of Bibles in

foreign languages, and all my books in the Italian and German

languages." His widow, Grace, who survived him a short time, had

the little capital that was hers before her marriage to him, and he

desired that she would choose from his library whatever English

books she valued. His youngest son, Jonathan, was not in want of

money. He had paid Felix and William Rs. 1500 each in his lifetime.

In order to leave a like sum to Jabez, he thus provided: "From the

failure of funds to carry my former intentions into effect, I direct

that my library be sold." In dying as in living he is the

same--just to others because self-devoted to Him to whom he thus

formally willed himself, "On Thy kind arms I fall."

The Indian journals rang with the praises of the missionary whose

childlike humility and sincerity, patriotism and learning, had long

made India proud of him. After giving himself, William Carey had

died so poor that his books had to be sold to provide 187 10s. for?

one of his sons. One writer asserted that this man had contributed

"sixteen lakhs of rupees" to the cause of Christ while connected

with the Serampore Mission, and the statement was everywhere

repeated. Dr. Marshman thereupon published the actual facts, "as no

one would have felt greater abhorrence of such an attempt to impose

on the Christian public than Dr. Carey himself, had he been living."

At a time when the old Sicca Rupee was worth half a crown, Carey

received, in the thirty-four and a half years of his residence at

Serampore, from the date of his appointment to the College of Fort

William, 45,000.35 Of this he spent 7500 on his Botanic Garden in? ?

that period. If accuracy is of any value in such a question, which

has little more than a curious biographical interest, then we must

add the seven years previous to 1801, and we shall find that the

shoemaker of Hackleton received in all for himself and his family

?600 from the Society which he called into existence, and which sent

him forth, while he spent on the Christianisation and civilisation

of India 1625 received as a manufacturer of indigo; and 45,000 as? ?

Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, and Bengali Translator

to Government, or 46,625 in all.?

"It is possible," wrote Dr. Marshman, "that if, instead of thus

living to God and his cause with his brethren at Serampore, Dr.

Carey had, like the other professors in the college, lived in

Calcutta wholly for himself and his family, he might have laid by

for them a lakh of rupees in the thirty years he was employed by

Government, and had he been very parsimonious, possibly a lakh and a

half. But who that contrasts the pleasures of such a life with

those Dr. Carey enjoyed in promoting with his own funds every plan

likely to plant Christianity among the natives around him, without

having to consult any one in thus doing, but his two brethren of one

heart with him, who contributed as much as himself to the Redeemer's

cause, and the fruit of which he saw before his death in Twenty-six

Gospel Churches planted in India within a surface of about eight

hundred miles, and above Forty labouring brethren raised up on the

spot amidst them--would not prefer the latter? What must have been

the feelings on a deathbed of a man who had lived wholly to himself,

compared with the joyous tranquillity which filled Carey's soul in

the prospect of entering into the joy of his Lord, and above all

with what he felt when, a few days before his decease, he said to

his companion in labour for thirty-four years: 'I have no fears; I

have no doubts; I have not a wish left unsatisfied.'"

In the Danish Church of Serampore, and in the Mission Chapel, and

afterwards in the Union Chapel of Calcutta, Dr. Marshman and Mr.

Mack preached sermons on William Carey. These and the discourse

delivered in Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh, on the 30th of November,

by Christopher Anderson, were the only materials from which a just

estimate of Carey and his work could be formed for the next quarter

of a century. All, and especially the last, were as worthy of their

theme as loges pronounced in such circumstances could be. Marshman?

spoke from the text chosen by Carey himself a few weeks before his

death as containing the foundation of his hope and the source of his

calm and tranquil assurance--"For by grace are ye saved." Mack

found his inspiration again, as he had done in the Bengali village,

in Paul's words--"David, after he had served his own generation, by

the will of God fell on sleep." The Edinburgh preacher turned to

the message of Isaiah wherewith Carey used to comfort himself in his

early loneliness, and which the Revised Version renders--"Look unto

Abraham your father; for when he was but one I called him and I

blessed him and made him many." And in Bombay the young

contemporary missionary who most nearly resembled Carey in personal

saintliness, scholarship, and self-devotion, John Wilson, thus

wrote:--

"Dr. Carey, the first of living missionaries, the most honoured and

the most successful since the time of the Apostles, has closed his

long and influential career. Indeed his spirit, his life, and his

labours, were truly apostolic...The Spirit of God which was in him

led him forward from strength to strength, supported him under

privation, enabled him to overcome in a fight that seemed without

hope. Like the beloved disciple, whom he resembled in simplicity of

mind, and in seeking to draw sinners to Christ altogether by the

cords of love, he outlived his trials to enjoy a peaceful and

honoured old age, to know that his Master's cause was prospering,

and that his own name was named with reverence and blessing in every

country where a Christian dwelt. Perhaps no man ever exerted a

greater influence for good on a great cause. Who that saw him, poor

and in seats of learning uneducated, embark on such an enterprise,

could ever dream that, in little more than forty years, Christendom

should be animated with the same spirit, thousands forsake all to

follow his example, and that the Word of Life should be translated

into almost every language and preached in almost every corner of

the earth?"

As the Founder and Father of Modern Missions, the character and

career of William Carey are being revealed every year in the

progress, and as yet, the purity of the expansion of the Church and

of the English-speaking races in the two-thirds of the world which

are still outside of Christendom. The 13:2:6 of Kettering became?

?400,000 before he died, and is now 5,000,000 a year. The one?

ordained English missionary is now a band of 20,000 men and women

sent out by 558 agencies of the Reformed Churches. The solitary

converts, each with no influence on his people, or country, or

generation, are now a community of 3,000,000 in India alone, and in

all the lands outside of Christendom 5,000,000, of whom 80,000 are

missionaries to their own countrymen, and many are leaders of the

native communities. Since the first edition of the Bengali New

Testament appeared at the beginning of the century 250,000,000 of

copies of the Holy Scriptures have been printed, of which one half

are in 370 of the non-English tongues of the world. The Bengali

School of Mudnabati, the Christian College of Serampore, have set in

motion educational forces that are bringing nations to the birth,

are passing under Bible instruction every day more than a million

boys and girls, young men and maidens of the dark races of mankind.

The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the greatest and most practical

Evangelical of the nineteenth century after William Wilberforce,

wrote thus in his Journal of the class whom Carey headed in the

eighteenth, and whom Wordsworth commemorated as

"Not sedentary all, there are who roam

To scatter seeds of Life on barbarous shores."

1847. "Aug. 30th--RYDE.--Reading Missionary Enterprises by

Williams...Zeal, devotion, joy, simplicity of heart, faith, love;

and we here have barely affection enough to thank God that such

deeds have been done. Talk of 'doing good' and being 'useful in

one's generation,' why, these admirable men performed more in one

month than I or many others shall perform in a whole life!"

The eloquent Dr. Richard Winter Hamilton, reflecting that sacrifice

to heroes is reserved until after sunset, recalled William Carey,

eight years after his death, as "wielding a power to which all

difficulties yielded, but that power noiseless as a law of nature;

great in conception as well as in performance; profound as those

deep combinations of language in which the Indian philosophy and

polytheism hide themselves, but gentle as the flower which in his

brief recreation he loved to train; awful as the sage, simple as the

child; speaking through the Eastern world in as many languages,

perhaps, as 'the cloven tongues of fire' represented; to be

remembered and blessed as long as Ganges rolls!"

The historian of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Robert Hall,

whom Sir James Mackintosh pronounced the greatest English orator,

have both attempted an estimate of Carey's genius and influence.

Dr. F. A. Cox remarks:--"Had he been born in the sixteenth century

he might have been a Luther, to give Protestantism to Europe; had he

turned his thought and observations merely to natural philosophy he

might have been a Newton; but his faculties, consecrated by religion

to a still higher end, have gained for him the sublime distinction

of having been the Translator of the Scriptures and the Benefactor

of Asia." Robert Hall spoke thus of Carey in his lifetime:--"That

extraordinary man who, from the lowest obscurity and poverty,

without assistance, rose by dint of unrelenting industry to the

highest honours of literature, became one of the first of

Orientalists, the first of Missionaries, and the instrument of

diffusing more religious knowledge among his contemporaries than has

fallen to the lot of any individual since the Reformation; a man who

unites with the most profound and varied attainments the fervour of

an evangelist, the piety of a saint, and the simplicity of a child."

Except the portrait in London and the bust in Calcutta, no memorial,

national, catholic, or sectarian, marks the work of Carey. That

work is meanwhile most appropriately embodied in the College for

natives at Serampore, in the Lall Bazaar chapel and Benevolent

Institution for the poor of Calcutta. The Church of England, which

he left, like John Wesley, has allowed E. S. Robinson, Esq., of

Bristol, to place an inscription, on brass, in the porch of the

church of his native village, beside the stone which he erected over

the remains of his father, Edmund, the parish clerk:--"To the Glory

of God and in memory of Dr. Wm. Carey, Missionary and Orientalist."

Neither Baptist nor Anglican, the present biographer would, in the

name of the country which stood firm in its support of Carey and

Serampore all through the forty-one years of his apostolate, add

this final eulogy, pronounced in St. George's Free Church,

Edinburgh, on the man who, more than any other and before all

others, made the civilisation of the modern world by the

English-speaking races a Christian force.36 Carey, childlike in his

humility, is the most striking illustration in all Hagiology,

Protestant or Romanist, of the Lord's declaration to the Twelve when

He had set a little child in the midst of them, "Whosoever shall

humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the

kingdom of heaven." Yet we, nigh a century after he went forth with

the Gospel to Hindostan, may venture to place him where the Church

History of the future is likely to keep him--amid the uncrowned

kings of men who have made Christian England what it is, under God,

to its own people and to half the human race. These are Chaucer,

the Father of English Verse; Wyclif the Father of the Evangelical

Reformation in all lands; Hooker, the Father of English Prose;

Shakspere, the Father of English Literature; Milton, the Father of

the English Epic; Bunyan, the Father of English Allegory; Newton,

the father of English Science; Carey, the Father of the Second

Reformation through Foreign Missions.

APPENDIX

I.--CHARTER OF INCORPORATION OF SERAMPORE COLLEGE

WE, Frederick the Sixth, by the Grace of God King of Denmark, the

Venders and Gothers, Duke of Slesvig Holsten, Stormarn, Ditmarsken,

Limessborg and Oldenborg, by writings these make known and publicly

declare, that whereas William Carey and Joshua Marshman, Doctors of

Divinity, and John Clark Marshman, Esq., inhabitants of our town of

Fredericksnagore (or Serampore) in Bengal, being desirous of

founding a College to promote piety and learning particularly among

the native Christian population of India, have to secure this object

erected suitable buildings and purchased and collected suitable

books, maps, etc., and have humbly besought us to grant unto them

and such persons as shall be elected by them and their successors to

form the Council of the College in the manner to be hereafter named,

our Royal Charter of Incorporation that they may the more

effectually carry into execution the purposes above-mentioned:--We,

being desirous to encourage so laudable an undertaking, have of our

special grace and free motion ordained, constituted, granted and

declared, and by the presents We do for ourselves, our heirs and

successors ordain, constitute, grant and declare:

1. That the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark

Marshman, and such other person or persons as shall successively be

elected and appointed the Council of the said College, in the manner

hereafter mentioned, shall by virtue of the presents be for ever

hereafter one body politic and incorporate by the name of the

Serampore College for the purposes aforesaid to have perpetual

succession and to have a common seal, and by the said name to sue

and be sued, to implead and be impleaded, and to answer and be

answered unto in every court and place belonging to us, our heirs

and successors.

2. And We do hereby ordain, constitute and declare that the persons

hereby incorporated and their successors shall for ever be competent

in law to purchase, hold and enjoy for them and their successors any

goods and chattels whatsoever and to receive, purchase, hold and

enjoy, they and their successors, any lands, tenements or

hereditaments whatever, and that they shall have full power and

authority to sell, exchange or otherwise dispose of any real or

personal property to be by them acquired as aforesaid, unless the

sale or alienation of such property be specially prohibited by the

donor or donors thereof, and to do all things relating to the said

College or Corporation in as ample a manner or form as any of our

liege subjects, or any other body politic or corporate in our said

kingdom or its dependencies may or can do.

3. And We do hereby ordain, grant and declare that the number of

Professors, Fellows or Student Tutors and Students, shall be

indefinite and that the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John

Clark Marshman, shall be the first Council of the said College, and

that in the event of its appearing to them necessary during their

life-time, or in the case of the death of any one of the three

members of the said first Council, the survivors or survivor shall

and may under their respective hands and seals appoint such other

person or persons to be members of the Council of the College, and

to succeed each other so as to become Members of the said Council in

the order in which they shall be appointed, to the intent that the

Council of the said College shall for ever consist of at least three

persons.

4. And We do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that for the

better government of the said College, and the better management of

its concerns, the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark

Marshman, the members of the first Council, shall have full power

and authority for the space of ten years from the date of these

presents, to make and establish such statutes as shall appear to

them useful and necessary for the government of the said College, in

which statutes they shall define the powers to be entrusted to their

successors, to the Professors, the Fellows or Student Tutors and the

other Officers thereof, and the duties to be performed by these

respectively for the management of the estates, lands, revenues and

goods--and of the business of the said College, and the manner of

proposing, electing, admitting and removing all and every one of the

Council, the Professors, the Fellows or Tutors, the officers, the

students and the servants thereof, and shall make and establish

generally all such other statutes as may appear to them necessary

for the future good government and prosperity of the said College,

provided that these statutes be not contrary to the laws and

statutes of our realm.

5. And we do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that the

statutes thus made and established by the said three members of the

first Council, and given or left in writing under their respective

hands, shall be valid and in full force at the expiration of ten

years from the date of these presents, so that no future Council of

the College shall have power to alter, change or vary them in any

manner whatever and that the statutes shall for ever be considered

the constitution of the said College. And we do hereby appoint and

declare that these statutes shall be made and established by the

said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marshman alone,

so that in case either of them should die before the expiration of

ten years, the power of completing or perfecting these statutes

shall devolve wholly on the survivors or survivor; and that in case

all three of them should die before the expiration of ten years, the

statutes which they have left in writing under their hands, or under

the hand of the last survivor among them shall be considered "The

Fundamental Statutes and Constitution of Serampore College,"

incapable of receiving either addition or alteration, and shall and

may be registered in our Royal Court of Chancery as "The Statutes

and Constitution of Serampore College."

6. And We do hereby further appoint, grant and declare that from and

after the completion of the statutes of the said College in the

above said time of ten years, the said Council of the College shall

be deemed to consist of a Master or President and two or four

members who may be Professors or otherwise as the Statutes may

direct so that the said Council shall not contain less than three,

nor more than five persons, as shall be defined in the Statutes.

The Council shall ever be elected as the Statutes of the College

may direct, yet the said Master or President shall always previously

have been a Member of the said College; and upon the decease of the

said Master or President, the Council of the said College shall be

unable to do any act or deed until the appointment of a new Master

or President, save and except the appointment of such a Master.

7. And We further appoint, grant and declare, that the said William

Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marshman, the members of the

first Council, and their successors for ever, shall have the power

of conferring upon the students of the said College, Native

Christians as well as others, degrees of rank and honour according

to their proficiency in as ample a manner as any other such College,

yet the said Serampore College shall only have the power of

conferring such degrees on the students that testify their

proficiency in Science and no rank or other special right shall be

connected therewith in our dominions. And We do hereby further

appoint, grant and declare, that after the expiration of the said

ten years, the said Council of the College and their successors for

ever shall have power to make and establish such orders and bye-laws

as shall appear to them useful and necessary for the government of

the said College, and to alter, suspend or repeal those already

made, and from time to time make such new ones in their room as

shall appear to them most proper and expedient provided the same be

not repugnant to the Statutes of the College, or to the laws of our

realm, and that after the expiration of these ten years any member

of the Council shall have power to move the enactment of any new

bye-law, or the alteration, suspension or repeal of any existing one

provided notice of such motion shall have been delivered in writing

to the Master and read from the Chair at one previous meeting of the

Council of the said College, but that no such motion shall be deemed

to have passed in the affirmative, until the same shall have been

discussed and decided by ballot at another meeting summoned

especially for that purpose, a majority of the members then present

having voted in the affirmative; and in this, as in all other cases,

if the votes be equal, the Master or President shall have the

casting vote.

Given at our Royal Palace in Copenhagen on the twenty-third day of

February, in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and

twenty-seven, in the nineteenth year of our reign.

Under our Royal Hand and Seal.

FREDERICK R.

II.--STATUTES AND REGULATIONS OF SERAMPORE COLLEGE

June 12th, 1833.

1. Article the Third of the Charter granted by his Danish Majesty,

having authorised the first Council of Serampore College in their

lifetime to nominate under their hand and seal such other person or

persons for colleagues or successors as may to them appear most

proper, so that the Council shall always consist of at least three

persons, their successors in the Council shall be competent in like

manner to nominate in their lifetime, under their separate hand and

seal, such person or persons as they may deem most proper to fill

vacancies then existing or which may occur on their demise; members

thus nominated and chosen shall succeed to the Council in order of

their nomination.

2. It being fixed in the Charter that the Council must consist of

the Master or President and at least two, but no more than four

Members, and that on the demise of the Master no act shall be done

until another be elected, the Master and Council for the time being

shall appoint the next Master under their separate hand and seal.

If on the demise of a Master no one be found thus appointed under

the hand and seal of a majority of the Council, the Senior Member of

the Council shall succeed as Master.

3. The Charter having given the casting vote to the Master, in all

cases when the votes are equal the casting vote shall lie with the

Master, and if there be no Master, it shall lie with the Senior

Member of the Council.

4. Learning and piety being peculiar to no denomination of

Christians, one member of the Council may at all times be of any

other denomination besides the Baptist, to preserve the original

design of the Institution; however, if on the election of a Master a

number of the Council be equally divided, that part which is

entirely of the Baptist denomination shall have the casting vote,

whether it includes the Master or not.

5. The management of the College, including its revenues and

property, the choice of Professor and Tutors, the admission of

Students, the appointment of all functionaries and servants, and the

general order and government of the College, shall ever be vested in

the Master and the Council. The Master shall see that the Statutes

and Regulations of the Council be duly carried into effect, and take

order for the good government of the College in all things. His

signature is necessary to the validity of all deeds, instruments,

documents and proceedings.

6. "The first Council and their successor for ever" being authorised

by the Charter "to confer such degrees of rank and honour as shall

encourage learning" in the same manner as other Colleges and

Universities, they shall from time to time confer degrees in such

branches of Knowledge and Science as may be studied there, in the

same manner as the Universities in Denmark, Germany and Great

Britain. In doing this the Master and Council shall ad libitum call

in the aid of any or all the Professors of Serampore College. All

such degrees shall be perfectly free of expense to the person on

whom they may be conferred, whether he be in India, Europe or

America.

7. No oaths shall be administered in Serampore College, either to

the Members of Council, the Professors and Tutors, or the Students.

In all cases a solemn promise, duly recorded and signed by the

party, shall be accepted instead of an oath.

8. Marriage shall be no bar to any office or situation in Serampore

College, from that of the Master to that of the lowest student.

9. The salaries of the Professors and Tutors in Serampore College

shall be appointed, and the means of support for all functionaries,

students and servants be regulated by the Council in such manner as

shall best promote the objects of the Institution.

10. It is intended that neither the Master nor any Member of the

Council in general shall receive any salary. But any Master who may

not previously reside in the College shall have a residence there

free of rent for himself and his family. And if the Council shall

elect any one in Europe or in America, whom they deem eminent for

learning and piety, a Member of the Council, with a view to choosing

him Master, should they on trial deem him worthy, the Council shall

be competent to appoint him such salary as they may deem necessary,

not exceeding, however, the highest given to a Professor.

11. As the founders of the College deem the belief of Christ's

Divinity and Atonement essential to vital Christianity, the

promotion of which is the grand object of this Institution, no one

shall be eligible to the College Council or to any Professorship who

is known to oppose these doctrines, and should any one of the

Professors or any member of the Council unhappily so change his

views after his election as to oppose these fundamental doctrines of

Christianity, on this being clearly and decidedly proved from his

teaching or his writings, he shall vacate the office he previously

held. But every proceeding of this nature on the part of the

College Council shall be published to the Christian world, with the

proofs on which it may rest, as an Appendix to the succeeding

Report.

12. Members of the Council are eligible from among the Professors of

the College, or from among any in India, Europe, or America whom the

College Council may deem suitable in point of learning, piety, and

talent.

13. Students are admissible at the discretion of the Council from

any body of Christians, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, the

Greek, or the Armenian Church; and for the purpose of study, from

the Mussulman and Hindu youth, whose habits forbid their living in

the College. No caste, colour, or country shall bar any man from

admission into Serampore College.

14. Expulsion shall be awarded in cases of open immorality,

incorrigible idleness, neglect of the College Statutes and

regulations, or repeated disobedience to the officers of the

College.

15. Any person in India, Europe, or America shall be at liberty to

found any Professorship, or to attach to Serampore College any

annual exhibition or prize for the encouragement of learning in the

same manner as in the Universities of Great Britain, regulating such

endowment according to their own will; and it shall be duty of the

College Council to carry such benefactions into effect in strict

consonance with the will of the donors as far as shall be consistent

with the Statutes of the College.

16. It shall be lawful for the first Council of the College or their

successors to make and rescind any bye-laws whatever, provided they

be not contrary to these Statutes.

17. The Charter having declared that the number of the Professors

and students in Serampore College remains unlimited, they shall be

left thus unlimited, the number to be regulated only by the gracious

providence of God and the generosity of the public in India, Europe

and America.

III.--ARTICLE VI., CLAUSE 2, OF THE TREATY OF PURCHASE, TRANSFERRING

SERAMPORE TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

"The rights and immunities granted to the Serampore College by Royal

Charter of date, 23rd February, 1827, shall not be interfered with,

but continue in force in the same manner as if they had been

obtained by a Charter from the British Government, subject to the

general law of British India."

FOOTNOTES

1 Iphicrates, great Athenian general, who was the son of a

shoemaker, used this saying, fit motto for Carey, .????????????

{Font=Courier New Greek}

2 The shopmate, William Manning, preserved this signboard. In 1881

we found a Baptist shoemaker, a descendant of Carey's wife, with

four assistants, at work in the shed. Then an old man, who had

occasionally worked under Carey, had just died, and he used to tell

how Carey had once flipped him with his apron when he had allowed

the wax to boil over.

3 In the library of the late Rev. T. Toller of Kettering was a

manuscript (now in the library of Bristol Baptist College) of nine

small octavo pages, evidently in the exquisitely small and legible

handwriting of Carey, on the Psalter. The short treatise discusses

the literary character and authorship of the Psalms in the style of

Michaelis and Bishop Lowth, whose writings are referred to. The

Hebrew words used are written even more beautifully than the

English. If this little work was written before Carey went to

India--and the caligraphy seems to point to that--the author shows a

very early familiarity with the writings of one who was his

predecessor as a Christian Orientalist, Sir William Jones. The

closing paragraph has this sentence:--"A frequent perusal of the

book of Psalms is recommended to all. We should permit few days to

pass without reading in Hebrew one of those sacred poems; the more

they are read and studied, the more will they delight, edify, and

instruct."

4 Twice reprinted, in Leicester, and in London (1892) in facsimile.

5 Wealth of Nations, Book IV., Chap. VII.

6 Mr. Thomas Haddon of Clipstone writes: "I recollect when I was

about ten years old, at my father's house; it was on a Saturday,

Carey was on his way to Arnsby (which is twenty miles from Moulton)

to supply there the following Sabbath; he had then walked from

Moulton to Clipstone, a distance of ten miles, and had ten miles

further to walk to Arnsby. My honoured father had been intimately

acquainted with him for some years before, and he pressed him to

stay and take an early cup of tea before he went further. I well

recollect my father saying to him, 'I suppose you still work at your

trade?' (which was that of an army and navy shoemaker). Mr. Carey

replied: 'No, indeed, I do not; for yesterday week I took in my work

to Kettering, and Mr. Gotch came into the warehouse just as I had

emptied my bag. He took up one of the shoes and said, "Let me see,

Carey, how much do you earn a week?" I said, "About 9s., sir." Mr.

Gotch then said: "I have a secret to tell you, which is this: I do

not intend you should spoil any more of my leather, but you may

proceed as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and I

will allow you from my own private purse 10s. a week!" With that

sum and about 5s. a week which I get from my people at Moulton, I

can make a comfortable living' (although at that time he had a wife

and three children to provide for)."

7 Farewell Letters on Returning to Bengal in 1821.

8 Rev. A. T. Clarke succeeded Kiernander in 1789 in the Old or

Mission Church, according to Miss Blechynden's Calcutta Past and

Present (1905), p. 84.

9 At this time, and up to 1801, the last survivor of the Black Hole

tragedy was living in Calcutta and bore his own name, though the

missionary knew it not. Mrs. Carey was a country-born woman, who,

when a girl, had married an officer of one of the East Indiamen, and

with him, her mother, and sister, had been shut up in the Black

Hole, where, while they perished, she is said to have retained life

by swallowing her tears. Dr. Bishop, of Merchant Taylors'

School--Clive's School--wrote Latin verses on the story, which thus

conclude--

"...Nescit sitiendo perire

Cui sic dat lacrymas quas bibat ipsa fides."

--See Echoes from Old Calcutta, by Dr. Busteed, C.I.E.

10 But not its Church. In October 1796 Mr. A. Johnstone, thirty

years elder in Lady Yester's congregation, beside the University of

Edinburgh, began a prayer meeting for Carey's work and for foreign

missions. He was summoned to the Presbytery, and there questioned

as if he had been a "Black-neb" or revolutionary. This meeting led

to the foundation of the Sabbath School and Destitute Sick Societies

in Edinburgh. See Lives of the Haldanes.

11 Dr. Marshman's English translation is still used, beginning--

"Oh! thou my soul forget no more

The Friend who all thy misery bore."

12 The chatookee is a bird which, they say, drinks not at the

streams below: but when it rains, opening its bill, it catches the

drops as they fall from the clouds.

13 The sight of the red coat of the military surgeon who attended

him gave this form to his delirious talk: "I treated him very

roughly and refused to touch his medicine. In vain did he retire

and put on a black coat. I knew him and was resolved."

14 In a criticism of the three Sanskrit grammars of Carey, Wilkins,

and Colebrooke, the first number of the Quarterly Review in 1809

pronounces the first "everywhere useful, laborious, and practical.

Mr. Wilkins has also discussed these subjects, though not always so

amply as the worthy and unwearied missionary. We have been much

pleased with Dr. Carey's very sensible preface."

15 It was reserved for a young Orientalist, whom the career of Carey

and Wilson of Bombay attracted to the life of a Christian

missionary, to do full justice to this book and its literature. In

1885 the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, M.A., published, at the Cambridge

University Press, his Kalilah and Dimnah, or The Fables of Bidpai:

Being an Account of their Literary History, with an English

Translation of the later Syriac Version of the Same, and Notes. The

heroic scholar and humble follower of Christ, having given himself

and his all to found a Mission to the Mohammedans of South Arabia,

at Sheikh Othman, near Aden, died there, on 11th May 1887, a death

which will bring life to Yemen, through his memory, and the Mission

which he founded, his family support, and the United Free Church of

Scotland carry on in his name.

16 THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS,

MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE

First

Published in

1801. BENGALI--New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9.

1811. Ooriya " " in 1819.

1824. Maghadi " only.

1815-19. Assamese " " in 1832.

1824. Khasi.

1814-24. Manipoori.

1808. SANSKRIT " " in 1811-18.

1809-11. HINDI " " in 1813-18.

1822-32. Bruj-bhasa " only.

1815-22. Kanouji " "

1820. Khosali--Gospel of Matthew only.

1822. Oodeypoori--New Testament only.

1815. Jeypoori "

1821. Bhugeli "

1821. Marwari "

1822. Haraoti "

1823. Bikaneri "

1823. Oojeini "

1824. Bhatti "

1832. Palpa "

1826. Kumaoni "

1832. Gurhwali "

1821. Nepalese "

1811. MARATHI-- " Old Testament in 1820.

1820. Goojarati " only.

1819. Konkan " Pentateuch in 1821.

1815. PANJABI " " and Historical Books

in 1822.

1819. Mooltani--New Testament.

1825. Sindhi--Gospel of Matthew only.

1820. Kashmeeri--New Testament; and Old Testament to 2nd Book

of Kings.

1820-26. Dogri--New Testament only.

1819. PUSHTOO--New Test. and Old Test. Historical Books.

1815. BALOOCHI " Three Gospels.

1818. TELUGOO " and Pentateuch in 1820.

1822. KANARESE " only.

MALDIVIAN--Four Gospels.

EDITED AND PRINTED ONLY BY CAREY

Persian. Singhalese.

Hindostani. Chinese (Dr. Marshman's).

Malayalam. Javanese.

Burmese--Matthew's Gospel. Malay.

17 Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-77. London, 1884.

18 Mr. John Marshman, in his Life and Times of the three, states

that Fry and Figgins, the London typefounders, would not produce

under 700 half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native turned?

out at about 100. In 1813 Dr. Marshman's Chinese Gospels were?

printed on movable metallic types, instead of the immemorial wooden

blocks, for the first time in the twenty centuries of the history of

Chinese printing. This forms an era in the history of Chinese

literature, he justly remarks.

19 The fervent printer thus wrote to his Hull friends:--"To give to

a man a New Testament who never saw it, who has been reading lies as

the Word of God; to give him these everlasting lines which angels

would be glad to read--this, this is my blessed work."

20 In 1795 Captain Dodds, a Madras officer front Scotland,

translated part of the Bible into Telugoo, and, lingering on in the

country to complete the work, died seven days after the date of his

letter on the subject in the Missionary Magazines of 1796.

21 Then Editor of the Friend of India.

22 The Chaitanya Charita Amrita, by Krishna Dass in 1557, was the

first of importance.

23 Nor was his influence confined to the Protestant division of

Christendom. When, on the Restoration of 1815, France became once

more aggressively Romanist for a time, the Association for the

Propagation of the Faith was founded at Lyons and Paris, avowedly on

the model of the Baptist Missionary Society, and it now raises a

quarter of a million sterling a year for its missions. The

expression in an early number of its Annales is:--"C'est

l'Angleterre qui a fourni l'id e mod le," etc. "La Soci t des? ? ??

Anabaptistes a form pour ses Missions des Soci t s," etc.? ??

24 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., chapter I.

25 Fuller more than once referred to the dying words of Sutcliff--"I

wish I had prayed more." "I do not suppose he wished he had prayed

more frequently, but more spiritually. I wish I had prayed more for

the influences of the Holy Spirit; I might have enjoyed more of the

power of vital godliness. I wish I had prayed more for the

assistance of the Holy Spirit in studying and preaching my sermons;

I might have seen more of the blessing of God attending my ministry.

I wish I had prayed more for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to

attend the labours of our friends in India; I might have witnessed

more of the effects of their efforts in the conversion of the

heathen."

26 The Baptist missionary, who became an Arian, and was afterwards

employed by Lord William Bentinck to report on the actual state of

primary education in Bengal.

27 The first India chaplain of the Church of Scotland,

superintendent of stationery and editor of the John Bull.--See Life

of Alexander Duff, D.D.

28 His Majesty's Lord Chamberlain formally expressed to the British

Minister at Copenhagen, H.E. the Hon. Edmund Monson, C.B., the

King's high pleasure at "the author's noble expressions of the good

his pre-possessors of the throne and the government of Denmark tried

to do for their Indian subjects," when the first edition of this

Life of William Carey, D.D., was presented to His Majesty.--See

Taylor and Son's Biographical and Literary Notices of William Carey,

D.D., Northampton, 1886.

29 In 1834, the year Carey died, there were in the college ten

European and Eurasian students learning Hebrew, Greek, Latin,

Bengali, mathematics, chemistry, mental philosophy, and history

(ancient and ecclesiastical). There were forty-eight resident

native Christians and thirty-four Hindoos, sons of Brahmans chiefly,

learning Sanskrit, Bengali, and English. "The Bengal language is

sedulously cultivated...The Christian natives of India will most

effectually combat error and diffuse sounder information with a

knowledge of Sanskrit. The communication, therefore, of a

thoroughly classic Indian education to Christian youth is deemed an

important but not always an indispensable object."

30 Serampore--Srirampur or place of the worshipful Ram.

31 Aitchison's Collection, vol. i., edition 1892, pp. 81-86

32 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., 1879.

33 William Carey, by James Culross, D.D., 1881.

34 For years, and till the land was sold to the India Jute Company

in 1875, the Garden was kept up at the expense of John Marshman,

Esq., C.S.I.

Sa. Rs.

35 "From May 1801 to June 1807, inclusive, as Teacher of

Bengali and Sanskrit, 74 months at 500 rupees monthly 37,000

From 1st July 1807 to 31st May 1830, as Professor of

ditto, at 1000 rupees monthly 2,75,000

From 23rd Oct. to July 1830, inclusive, 300 rupees

monthly, as Translator of Government Regulations 24,600

From 1st July 1830 to 31st May 1834, a pension of 500

rupees monthly 23,500

"Sicca Rupees 3,60,100"

36 The Evangelical Succession. Third Series. Edinburgh, Macniven and

Wallace, 1884.

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Life of William Carey, by Smith

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