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Title: The Life of William Carey

Author: George Smith

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The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary


by

George Smith




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use of many unpublished letters written by Carey or referring to him;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 Caroe is common.  The oldest English instance is the
Cariet who coined money in London for AEthelred 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 L80
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 Nuernberg, 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 L300
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 L10 a year,
supplemented by L5 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 L36 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 L10 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
edition[4] 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 [oe]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 Moulton[6] 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 L13:2:6."

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 L70 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 "L100 or L150 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 L200 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 L130, 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 L98, 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 L2,858,772 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 L30 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-caron} 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-caron}, 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-caron}, 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-caron}; 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 L50 to L230 a
year, increased by L120 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
L150 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 L75, 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
interior, 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 L16 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 L250 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 L40, 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 L35, 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
AEra 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."

"Scotland[10] 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 L35,000 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 L500, 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 L800; 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 brammhan.  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 L360 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 hymn[11] 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 brammhan 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 L6 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 brahman, 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 L10 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 L45 to L50 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 L1100 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 be 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 Pensees 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
Mueller'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 Mueller 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 contemporary[14]
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[oe] et
Reliqui[oe], 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 be 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 L700 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 L1800
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
L140,000, 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 primaeval 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[oe] Gallic[oe], 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
raisonne 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[oe]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 Kennedy[17]
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 L612.  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 L4 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 journal[19] 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 L50 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 L700 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 Telugoo[20]
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,
Gooldad 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 Hurdwar, 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 Hurdwar 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.'"

Hurdwar, 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 Pite 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 L13,500."  Of
this L1475 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 L500 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 L800, 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 AEneid 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 encyclopaedia 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 jalao,
  Beti mat maro,
  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 praedial 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[oe].  The great French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert
duly commemorates the labours of Dr. Carey in the Musee 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 Linnaean 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
Linnaean 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 Linnaean 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 self-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 L5,000,000, 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 L75,000.  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 L1000 and L1500 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 missionaries--"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 away[25]
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 L50 a year to
his father, then in his eightieth year, and L20 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 L50, 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 L7800 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 L2500 to
L8000, 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 L15,000.  To the
charge of endeavouring to alienate from the society premises of the
value of L3000, 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'interet que nous avons appris le merite qu'en
qualite de membre dirigeant de la Societe de la Mission, vous avez
acquis, ainsi que vos co-directeurs, et les effets salutaires que vos
louables travaux ont produits et partout ou votre influence a pu
atteindre.  Particulierement informes qu'en votre dite qualite vous
avez contribue a effectuer bien des choses utiles, dont l'etablissement
a Fredericsnagore a a se louer, et voulant vous certifier que nous vous
en avons gre, nous avons charge le chef du dit etablissement,--notre
Lieutenant-Colonel Kraefting, de vous remettre cette lettre; et en meme
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 affectionne FREDERIC.

"Copenhague, ce 7 Juin 1820.

"Au Docteur et Professeur WILLIAM CAREY,

Membre dirigeant de la Societe de la Mission a Fredericsnagore."

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 Abbe 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 L14,000, and the
completion of them will require a further sum of about L5000, 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
L1000 annually; about L500 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 L23,000.  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 L240 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. L200 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 L60 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 L125,000, 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
L250,000 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 L2,000,000 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 L1560
to L600--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 levee.  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 L400,000.  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 elsewhere[32] 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 L500 for that
mission, L500 for the college, L500 for the translations, and L100 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[oe]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 L187 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, L45,000.[35] Of
this he spent L7500 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 L600 from the Society which
he called into existence, and which sent him forth, while he spent on
the Christianisation and civilisation of India L1625 received as a
manufacturer of indigo; and L45,000 as Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali,
and Marathi, and Bengali Translator to Government, or L46,625 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 eloges
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 L13:2:6 of Kettering became L400,000
before he died, and is now L5,000,000 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, _ex oion eis oia_.

[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 L700
half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native turned out at about
L100.  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'idee
modele," etc. "La Societe des Anabaptistes a forme pour ses Missions
des Societes," 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.


[35]                                                         Sa. Rs.
     "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.









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