LIFE
OF
WM CAREY
SMITH
BV
3269
028
65
1887
LONDON,
WOHN MURIA

garunt
Religrous look Sontpl
LAHORE





شام پریم
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.
DAULAT
Senior Advocate.
RAM PRE
RAM
Sup..
Waverly Simla
THE LIM
IEDOITV
OF MICULO
DARIES
"
1
ہے
THE LIFE
OF
WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.
SHOEMAKER AND MISSIONARY
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI IN THE
COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM, CALCUTTA
By GEORGE SMITH, LL.D., C.I.E.
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETIES; MEMBER OF
COUNCIL OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY; AUTHOR OF THE
'LIFE OF DUFF' AND 'LIFE OF WILSON,' ETC.
Πῦρ ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰς τὴν γῆν
SECOND EDITION
WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1887
}
(Boclusive of all ages)
US. $10.00
Available from:
Cultural Books, Inc.,
1, Park View Annoxe,
Ajmalkhan Park, Karolbaglay
New Delhi-3, India.
BV
2259
caa
565
1887
3
1244540-234
ΤΟ
MY WIFE
FOR TWENTY YEARS MY FELLOW-WORKER IN
CALCUTTA AND SERAMPORE
IN THE SCENES CONSECRATED BY THE MEMORY OF
WILLIAM CAREY
PREFACE
ON the death of William Carey in 1834 Dr. Joshua Marsh-
man 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. As a writer of culture, in full sympathy and
frequent correspondence with Carey, the Rev. Christopher
Anderson, of Edinburgh, was even better fitted for the
task.
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 perse-
vere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything."
The Rev. Dr. Belcher was the first to publish, at Phila-
delphia, U.S.A., in 1853, a brief biography showing the man
viii
PREFACE
as he was. 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. In 1881 the Rev. Dr. Culross wrote a
short and charming sketch of William Carey. Mr. John
Taylor, Northampton, has lately published a collection of
biographical and literary notices of Carey, in his Bibliotheca
Northantonensis.
When I first went to Serampore the great missionary
had not been twenty years dead. During my long resi-
dence 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 Frederick
George Carey, Esq., LL.B., of Lincoln's Inn; and the Rev.
Jonathan P. Carey of Tiverton; also the Rev. C. B.
Lewis, the biographer of Thomas, the first medical mission-
ary. Mr. Baynes, the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary
Society-which is worthily conducting in Africa, on the
Congo, an enterprise greater than even Carey prayed for―
has generously granted me the use of several engravings
from photographs, which he had taken during a recent
visit to Serampore. Mr. R. Blechynden jun., of Calcutta,
PREFACE
ix
caused the records of the Asiatic and Agricultural Societies
there to be searched and copied for use in these pages.
My three Biographies of Carey of Serampore, 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 Church
of India which one of its native sons must some day
attempt; but also to the annals of the Evangelical Revival,
which may well be called the Second Reformation; 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.
SERAMPORE HOUSE, MERCHISTON,
EDINBURGH, 24th August 1885.
}
:
+
{
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I THANK several critics of the First Edition for suggestions
which have led to the omission of a few passages; and
Mrs. S. Carey, South Bank, Red Hill, for enriching this
Edition by several letters from Dr. Carey to his sons, and
by the letter of King Frederic VI. of Denmark to Carey
himself. I have added, also, a valuable letter from Judson
to Carey.
9th August 1887.
:
:
.
..
1
•
CAREY'S COLLEGE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
1
CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS
25
CHAPTER III
INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT
49
CHAPTER IV
SIX YEARS IN NORTH BENGAL-MISSIONARY AND INDIGO
PLANTER
•
CHAPTER V
70
THE NEW CRUSADE-SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD
97
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
115
CHAPTER VII
CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION
MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO
AMBOYNA.
139
xiv
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS
CHAPTER IX
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI
CHAPTER X
THE WICLIF OF THE EAST-BIBLE TRANSLATION
CHAPTER XI
WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY
CHAPTER XII
WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE-FOUNDER OF THE AGRICUL-
TURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA
CHAPTER XIII
CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND
AMERICA.
CHAPTER XIV
CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR-THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN
THE EAST.
CHAPTER XV
CAREY'S LAST DAYS
INDEX
PAGE
161
187
210
•
241
259
•
288
326
355
383
ILLUSTRATIONS
WILLIAM CAREY AT FIFTY
COTTAGE AND SCHOOLHOUSE OF CAREY'S BOYHOOD
CAREY'S "COLLEGE," HACKLETON
CAREY'S COTTAGE AND SCHOOL, PIDDINGTON
•
Frontispiece
BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS, KETTERING
FIRST MISSION HOUSE IN NORTH INDIA, DINAJPOOR
DANISH LUTHERAN (NOW ANGLICAN) CHURCH, SERAMPORE
KRISHNA CHANDRA PAL, THE FIRST CONVERT
PAGE
4
20
22
46
87
108
116
CAREY'S CHRISTIAN VILLAGE-BAPTISM IN THE TANK
121
THE FIRST BRAHMAN WHO PREACHED CHRIST
CHRISTIAN VILLAGERS, SERAMPORE
•
123
125
HENRY MARTYN'S PAGODA, ALDEEN
172
•
SHEEV TEMPLE, SERAMPORE
176
•
THE SERAMPORE COLLEGE
331
NATIVE DIVINITY STUDENTS, SERAMPORE COLLEGE
333
CAREY'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE
364
CAREY'S TOMB.
375
1
'As time passes it appears that we are in the hands of a Providence
which is greater than all statesmanship, that this fabric so
blindly piled up has a chance of becoming a part of the perma-
nent edifice of civilisation, and that the Indian achievement of
England, as it is the strangest, may after all turn out to be the
greatest of all her achievements."-PROFESSOR J. R. SEELEY.
!
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 com-
panions and the villagers-His experience as son of the parish clerk-
Apprenticed to a shoemaker of Hackleton-Poverty-Famous shoe-
makers 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,
who became the most extensive translator of the Bible and
civiliser of India, 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 Wiclif and Hooker, had bred Fox
and Bunyan, 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
B
2
[1761
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Clarkson, born a year before Carey, was beginning his
assaults on the slave-trade by translating into English his
Latin prize poem 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, CÆR or CARE, which
became a place-name as CAR-EY. Among scores of neigh-
bours called William, William of Car-ey would soon sink
into Carey, and this would again become the family name.
In Denmark the name Caròe is common. The oldest English
instance is the Cariet who coined money in London for
Æthelred 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 Lincoln-
shire 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 pos-
sibility 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 Mon-
mouth. 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 de-
scendants, aged ladies, addressed a pathetic letter to Par-
1761]
WEAVERS AND PEERS
3
liament about the time that the great missionary died,
praying that they might not be doomed to starvation by
being deprived of a Crown pension of £80 a year. The
older branch of the Careys also had fallen on evil times,
and it became extinct while the future missionary was yet
four years old. The seventh lord was a weaver when he
succeeded to the title, and he died childless. The eighth
was a Dutchman who had to be naturalised, and he was
the last. The Careys fell lower still. One of them bore
to the brilliant and reckless Marquis of Halifax, Henry
Carey, who wrote one of the few English ballads that live.
Another, the poet's granddaughter, was the mother of
Edmund Kean, and he at first was known by her name
on the stage.
At the time when the weaver became the lord the grand-
father of the missionary was parish clerk and first school-
master of the village of Paulerspury, eleven miles south of
Northampton, and near the ancient posting town of Tow-
cester, 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 de-
molished 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, have more recently made way for the present
pretty buildings.
The village surroundings and the county 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
4
[1761
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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

life illl illl s
味
​COTTAGE AND SCHOOLHOUSE OF CAREY'S BOYHOOD.
"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
1775]
NATURALIST AND LOVER OF BOOKS
5
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.
66
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 in-
fluence 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 kind-
ness, 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
Though I was but a child I well remember his
care.
6
[1775
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 per-
fected 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 nick-
name 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 7 feet high
(standing till recently), 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 com-
panions 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 a 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
1775]
CHURCH AND FAMILY INFLUENCES
7
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 simpler and
possibly not less really reverent 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
က
[1777
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
was duly confirmed. The family training, too, was ex-
ceptionally 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 de-
spise 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 the venerable 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 attempts 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 ap-
prentice 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 after-
wards described him as "a strict churchman and, what I
1777]
A SHOEMAKER'S APPRENTICE
9
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 their 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 dis-
senting apprentice was soon to be the first to lead him to
Christ.
At one
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, com-
pelled 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.
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 goat-skin in
the days when infant Christianity was chased from city to
city, and the cross was a reproach only less bitter, how-
ever, 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 first English
missionary and the most learned scholar and Bible trans-
lator of his day in the East. The same providence thus
linked him to the earliest Latin missionaries of Alexandria,
10
[1777
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 shoe-
maker's life to become illustrious. 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 com-
memorates 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 their only 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 Nürnberg, 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
1779]
SHOEMAKER MISSIONARIES
11
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 medita-
tion, 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 Shaks-
pere 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, philan-
thropist, and countryman of Judson though he was, might
have found a place for Carey when he sang so well of
others :-
12
[1779
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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
patronise 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 mix-
ture 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 pur-
1779]
FROM PHARISAISM TO CHRIST
13
chase 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 occa-
sion, 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.
66
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 exhorta-
tion 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
14
[1779
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 dis-
senters; 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 neigh-
bourhood, and select passages from whose writings the Mora-
vian 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 congre-
gational church. The state of the parish may be imagined
from its recent history. Hackleton is part of Piddington,
and the squire had long appropriated the living of £300 a
year, the parsonage, the glebe, and all tithes, sending his
house minister "at times" to do duty. A Certificate from
"to
Northamptonshire, against the pluralities and other such scan-
dals, 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." For-
tunately, like Luther, he "was obliged to draw all from the
Bible alone."
When, at twenty years of age, Carey was slowly piecing
1781]
BAPTIZED IN THE RIVER NEN
15
together "the doctrines in the Word of God" into some-
thing 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 Doc-
trinal, 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 baptize
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, 1873: I baptized in the river Nen, a little beyond Dr.
Doddridge's meeting-house at Northampton, a poor journey-
man 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
16
[1783
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
saying, "Many first shall be last, and the last first," which
asserts His absolute sovereignty in choosing and in reward-
ing 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 pre-
ference for the Baptist division of the Christian host. But
from the first he enjoyed the friendship of Scott and New-
ton, 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 and 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
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, per-
haps, 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 under-
took, 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
1783]
FIRST ATTEMPTS AS A PREACHER
17
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 show-
ing 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 dis-
covered 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 grati-
fied by it."
In Hackleton itself his expositions of Scripture were so
valued that the people, he writes, "being ignorant, some-
times 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 under-
C
18
[1784
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
standing, 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 suc-
ceeded John Newton. There he had no more attentive
listener or intelligent talker than the new apprentice or
journeyman, who had been more influenced by his preach-
ing 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 sug-
gested 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
1784] INFLUENCED BY SCOTT, THE COMMENTATOR
19
working dress. I at first rather wondered to see him
enter, as he seemed young, being, I believe, little of hist
age. We, however, entered into very interesting conversa-
tion, 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
20
[1784
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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."

Afkar
ம
CAREY'S "COLLEGE," HACKLETON.
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 busi-
ness, 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,
1784]
THE COBBLER'S SHED AND HIS COLLEGE
21
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 Sold," 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 pres-
ent 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. At the end of Hopkins's Three Sermons on the
1 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 occa-
sionally 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.
2 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
22
[1785
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 North-
ampton to Bristol. In an old woman's cottage he found a
Dutch quarto, and from that he so taught himself the lan-
guage that 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 char-
acter, unlike what might have been expected from one who

JW
1f!b plt - ➢་་་་་་
CAREY'S COTTAGE AND SCHOOL, PIDDINGTON.
had wrought with his hands for eight years. French he ac-
quired, sufficiently for literary purposes, in three weeks from
the French version of Ditton on the Resurrection, which
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 recom-
mended 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."
1
1785]
SENT TO PREACH THE GOSPEL
he purchased for a few coppers.
which soon after made the young
Bologna famous and a cardinal.
23
He had the linguistic gift
carpenter Mezzofanti of
But the gift would have
been buried in the grave of his penury and his circum-
stances 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 baptized by
24
[1785
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the Rev. Mr. Ryland, jun., of Northampton. He was invited by the
Church to preach in public once next Lord's Day.
66
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 preach-
ing at those places where he has been for some time employed, and
that he should engage again on suitable occasions for sometime before
us, in order that farther trial may be made of his ministerial gifts.
"June 16, 1786.-C. M. The case of Bro. 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 North-
amptonshire 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 the missionary enterprise. He must
have hailed what Mr. 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' op-
position-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 Northampton-
shire 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 North-
ampton 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 en-
trance 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
26
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 tender-
ness. But a calling which at once starved him, in spite
of all his method and perseverance, and cramped the
ardour of his soul for service to the Master who had
revealed Himself in him, became distasteful. He gladly
accepted an invitation from the somewhat disorganised
church at Moulton to preach to them. They could offer
him only about £10 a year, supplemented by £5 from a
London fund. But the schoolmaster had just left, and
Carey saw in that fact a new hope. For a time he and
his family managed to live on an income which is estimated.
as never exceeding £36 a year. We find this passage in
a printed appeal made by the "very poor congregation
for funds to repair and enlarge the chapel to which the
new pastor's preaching had attracted a crowd:-"The
peculiar situation of our minister, Mr. Carey, renders it
impossible for us to send him far abroad to collect the
Contributions of the Charitable; as we are able to raise
him but about Ten Pounds per Annum, so that he is
obliged to keep a School for his Support: And as there
are other two Schools in the Town, if he was to leave
1786]
FIRED WITH THE MISSIONARY IDEA
27
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 learn-
ing little fitted him to drill peasant children in the alphabet.
"When I kept school the boys kept me," he used to con-
fess 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.
All
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-consecra-
tion, unknown to Wiclif and Hus, Luther and Calvin,
Knox and even Bunyan, for theirs was other work.
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 expound-
ings 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 com-
mon sense like his own, when Carey had been suddenly
called to preach in Northampton to supply the place of
28
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 know-
ledge. 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 at 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 with-
out 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 import-
ance 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, remark-
ably 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 Moul-
1786]
REBUKED AS A MISERABLE ENTHUSIAST
*
29
ton, 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 Christen-
dom, 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 four-
teen 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
30
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Bir-
mingham in 1786 collecting subscriptions for the rebuilding
of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr. Thomas Potts, who
had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering that
he had prepared the manuscript, gave him £10 to publish
it. And it appeared at Leicester in 1792, "price one
shilling and sixpence," the profits to go to the proposed
mission. The pamphlet form doubtless accounts for its
disappearance now; only three copies are known to be in
existence.
This Enquiry has a literary interest of its own, as a con-
tribution 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 find-
ing 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 impedi-
ments 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 unin-
telligibleness 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
1786]
ANSWERS OBJECTIONS TO MISSIONS
31
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 com-
merce 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 like-
wise 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 undoubt-
edly 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 Euro-
peans without it could never accomplish. It is no objection to com-
mercial 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.
32
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
'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 bar-
barism? 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 con-
sult 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 Barna-
bus, 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 peril-
ous 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
1786]
HIS MISSIONARY IDEAL
33
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 scrvant 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 plea-
sure, 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 virtu-
ally 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.
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, naked-
ness, 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 Chris-
tians, go everywhere preaching the gospel.
The
"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 neces-
saries, 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 advan-
tages 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
D
34
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pur-
poses 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.
In some
"FIFTHLY, AS to learning their languages, the same means would
be found necessary here as in trade between different nations.
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 en-
counter all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, an uncomfort-
able 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 pro-
vided 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 them-
selves, 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 travel-
ling night and day, they must instruct, exhort, and rebuke, with all
long suffering and anxious desire for them, and, above all, must be
1786]
HIS MISSIONARY IDEAL
35
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 re-
ligion 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 Chris-
tians acting in an aggressive missionary church as was pos-
36
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
sible in an age when the Established Churches of England,
Scotland, and Germany scouted foreign missions, and the
Free Churches were chiefly congregational in their ecclesias-
tical action, and were only learning to escape from the
Erastian yoke. 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, a century since Carey wrote, and after a remark-
able missionary revival in consequence of what he wrote
and did, all Christendom, Evangelical, Greek, and Latin,
does not give more than three 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 three millions would be
thirty, 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 un-
conscious 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 pa-
thetic he acknowledges their toil, 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
1786]
HIS FORERUNNERS
37
He was the first of the true
have been worthy to survive.
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 Renais-
sance of Europe, the discovery of America, and the open-
ing 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,
Ecclesiastes, in 1535 anticipated, theoretically at least,
Carey's Enquiry by two centuries and a half. The mis-
sionary 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 Brain-
erds, and the Mayhews sought to evangelise tribes which
did not long survive themselves.
It was from Courtenhall, 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 Propa-
ganda, so to the Long Parliament William Castell, "parson
of Courtenhall," sent a petition which, with the "Eliot
Tracts," resulted in an ordinance creating the Corporation
į
38
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 geo-
graphical 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.¹
Samuel Johnson rose to a higher level alike of wisdom and
righteousness, when he expressed the indignation of a Chris-
tian 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 settle-
ment and statute of Queen Anne, had put down the evan-
1 Wealth of Nations, Book IV., Chap. VII.
1786]
THE CONCERT FOR PRAYER
39
gelical teaching of Boston and the "marrow" men, and
had cast out the fathers of the Secession in 1733.
In
CC
42 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 Satur-
day 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 King-
dom 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 Extraordi-
nary 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 North-
amptonshire Association of Baptist ministers and mes-
sengers. 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 ecumenical
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 mis-
40
[1786
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
sions, 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 estab-
lished churches of all London, and that of twenty thousand
1786]
FALSE CALVINISM OPPOSED TO MISSIONS
41
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.
1
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
because misleading and unscriptural tenets 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 sal-
vation 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 bewilder-
ment, 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. To us now it seems
incredible that the only class who a century ago repre-
sented evangelicalism should have opposed missions to the
heathen on the ground that the Gospel is meant only for
42
[1789
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the elect, whether at home or abroad; that nothing spiritu-
ally good is the duty of the unregenerate, therefore “nothing
must be addressed to them in a way of exhortation except-
ing 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 re-
membering the manuscript Enquiry, Carey thought action
cannot be longer delayed. Hardly was the usual discus-
sion 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.
1791]
ORDAINED PASTOR AT LEICESTER
43
Meanwhile, in 1789, Carey had left Moulton for
Leicester, whither he was summoned to build up a con-
gregation, ruined by antinomianism, in the mean brick
This
chapel of the obscure quarter of Harvey Lane.
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, com-
position, etc."; Wednesday, "I preach a lecture, and have
been for more than twelve months on the Book of Re-
velation"; 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 sur-
rounding 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 ordina-
tion, after which he proposed the usual questions to the
44
[1791
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 dis-
senter and you are a churchman; we must each endeav-
our 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 baptized 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
45
1792] THE FIRST ENGLISH SOCIETY FOR THE HEATHEN
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, ex-
claimed : "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 North-
ampton 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
:
46
[1792
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 minis-
ters' meeting, October 31, 1792, at which time the subject shall be
considered more particularly by the committee, and other subscribers
who may be present.
Signed, John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, John Sutcliff, Andrew
Fuller, Abraham Greenwood, Edward Sherman, Joshua Burton,
Samuel Pearce, Thomas Blundel, William Heighton, John Eayres,
Joseph Timms; whose subscriptions in all amounted to £13:2:6."
The procedure suggested in "brother Carey's late
publication" was strictly followed-a society of sub-
scribers, 2d. a week, or 10s. 6d. a year as a compromise
between the tithes and the penny a week of the Enquiry.
The secretary was the courageous Fuller, who once said
to Ryland and Sutcliff: "You excel me in wisdom,
especially in foreseeing difficulties. I therefore want to
advise with you both, but to execute without you." The
frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to train
missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer
was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned
his office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the
others we need now point only to Samuel Pearce, the
seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and
sent £70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to
give himself like Carey, became to him dearer than even
Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed parlour in the
house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back garden,

4 12
BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS, KETTERING
W}} VAW-INGEN
To face page 46.
1792]
THE BACK PARLOUR IN KETTERING
47
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.
Already the centenary is at hand.
Can any good come out of Kettering? was the con-
clusion to which the Baptist ministers of London came,
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 lan-
guage 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 Presby-
terians, with a few noble exceptions like Dr. Erskine, whose
Dutch volume Carey had translated, denounced such move-
ments as revolutionary in a General Assembly of Socin-
ianised "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
48
[1792
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Wilber-
force 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 Com-
pany 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-Hin-
dooised 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 North-
ampton churches began their seven years' concert of prayer,
just after his own second baptism. From the
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 expedi-
tions round the world which roused both the scientific and
E
50
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the simple of England as much as the discoveries of
Columbus had excited Europe. When the childlike ignor-
ance 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 the 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 meet-
ing 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 fellow-
men, 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,
""
1793]
SET APART AS A MISSIONARY
51
and Ryland) must hold the ropes.' We solemnly engaged
to him to do so, nor while we live shall we desert him.
""
Carey and Thomas, an ordained minister and a medical
evangelist, were at this meeting in Kettering, on 10th
January 1793, appointed missionaries to "the East Indies
for preaching the gospel to the heathen," on "£100 or
£150 a year between them all,”—that is, for two mission-
aries, their wives, and four children,—until they should be
able to support themselves like the Moravians.
As a
matter of fact they received just £200 in all for the first
three years when self-support and mission extension fairly
began. The whole sum at credit of the Society for outfit,
passage, and salaries was £130, so that Fuller's prudence
was not without justification when supported by Thomas's
assurances that the amount was enough, and Carey's modest
self-sacrifice. "We advised Mr. Carey," wrote Fuller to
Ryland, "to give up his school this quarter, for we must
make up the loss to him. The more serious cost of the
passage was raised by Fuller and by the preaching tours
of the two missionaries. During one of these, at Hull,
Carey met the printer and newspaper editor, William
Ward, and cast his mantle over him thus "If the Lord
bless us, we shall want a person of your business to enable
us to print the Scriptures; I hope you will come after us,
as he did 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 after-
noon 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 direc-
52
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
tions you must observe, the difficulties you must encounter,
the reward you may expect."
Under date four days after we find this entry in the
Church Book-"Mr. Carey, our minister, left Leicester to
go on a mission to the East Indies, to take and propagate
the Gospel among those idolatrous and superstitious.
heathens. This is inserted to show his love to his poor
miserable fellow-creatures. In this we concurred with him,
though it is at the expense of losing one whom we love as
our own souls." When Carey's preaching had so filled the
church that it became necessary to build a front gallery at
a cost of £98, and they had applied to several other churches
for assistance in vain, he thus taught them to help them-
selves. The minister and many of the members agreed to
pay off the debt "among ourselves" by weekly subscrip-
tions,—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 mis-
sionary for a time until his eccentricities and debts out-
raged 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 English-
man 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
1793]
BENGAL HIS FIELD
53
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 Seram-
pore illustrious, Thomas was the Peter, so far as we know
Peter in the Gospels only.
Just before being ejected from the Orford, 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 he 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 good-
ness 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
I answer, it is much as when I left you. If I had all
is.
54
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 con-
stantly. 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 mon-
strous 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 mis-
sionary 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
1793]
SELF-DEVOTED
55
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 sacri-
fice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service.
To be devoted like a sacrifice to holy uses, is the great busi-
I con-
ness of a christian, pursuant to these requisitions.
sider 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 ardu-
ous, honourable, and important work that ever any of the
sons of men were called to engage in.
fices to make. I must part with a
number of most affectionate friends.
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."
I have many sacri-
beloved family, and a
Never did I see such
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 Par-
liament 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 pre-
viously 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 nation-
56
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
ality 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 per-
secuted 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.
CC
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.
66
Aug 20.—I have reason to lament over a barrenness
1793]
HE LANDS IN BENGAL
57
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 Eng-
lish 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 know-
ledge 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
58
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 popula-
tion 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 pre-
sented, 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 that 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
1793] A SPIRITUAL FOUNDER OF THE INDIAN EMPIRE
59
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 philo-
sophy 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 present era
of full toleration and partial but increasing self-government
directed by Parliament.
Carey had been sent not only to the one people outside
of Christendom whose conversion would tell most power-
fully 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
60
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 popu-
lation. 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 ad-
ministrative 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 ("land-
holders"). 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 middle-
men, 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
1793]
LANDLORDS AND TENANTS
61
revenue or rent be made, not with mere farmers like the
pashas of Turkey, but with the old zameendars, and that
the rate be fixed for ten years. Cornwallis and Shore took
three years to make the detailed investigations, and in
1789 the state rent-roll of Bengal proper was fixed at
£2,858,772 a year. The English peer, who was Governor-
General, at once jumped to the conclusion that this rate
should be fixed not only for ten years, but for ever.
The
experienced Bengal civilian protested that to do that
would be madness when a third of the rich province was
out of cultivation, and as to the rest its value was but
little known, and its estates were without reliable survey
or boundaries.
We can now see that, as usual, both were right in what
they asserted and wrong in what they denied. The prin-
ciple 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 cul-
tivating 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 per-
manent 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 settle-
ment 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 custom-
ary 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
62
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
them; the process of extortion with the aid of the courts
had hardly begun when they were many, and the zameen-
dars 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, 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 regula-
tions have intensified to give the state tenants a guar-
antee 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 dis-
inclined 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
1793]
HINDOOISM A CENTURY AGO
63
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 mis-
take that it took years of discussion and action to rectify.
He did not abolish from the courts the use of Persian, the
language of the old Mussulman invaders, now foreign to
all parties; and he excluded from all offices above £30 a
year the natives of the country, contrary to their fair and
politic practice. Bengal and its millions, in truth, were
nominally governed in detail by three hundred white and
upright civilians, with the inevitable result in abuses which
they could not prevent, and oppression of native by native
which they would not check, and the delay or development
of reforms which the few missionaries long called for in
vain. In a word, after making the most generous allow-
ance for the good intentions of Cornwallis, and conscien-
tiousness 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.
shall reproduce some outlines of the picture which Ward
drew:
1
We
"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
1 Farewell Letters on Returning to Bengal in 1821.
:
64
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
of Jehovah, they saw this immense population prostrate before dead
matter, before the monkey, the serpent, before idols the very personi-
fications of sin; and they found this animal, this reptile, and the
lecher Krishnu 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 misappre-
hensions; 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 with-
out 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 pre-
parative 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 last census
shows to be now 124,000,000, is thus described after an
account of female infanticide:
"To the Hindoo female all education is denied by the positive
1793]
HINDOO WOMEN LAST CENTURY
65
injunction of the shastru, 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 bramhŭn, 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 bramhŭns;
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 extraordin-
ary 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
F
66
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 hus-
band, she is buried alive with the dead body. In this kind of immo-
lation 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, Franke 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 must
now include half a million. But, when Carey landed,
rationalism in Germany and Denmark, and the Carnatic
wars between the English and French, had reduced the
1793]
SOCIETY IN BENGAL
67
Coast Mission to a state almost 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 the Free Church of Scotland and America, was pre-
pared 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.
The
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 baptize 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.
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
68
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
coat is no security." They were so badly paid-from £50
to £230 a year, increased by £120 to meet the cost of
living in Calcutta after 1764-that they traded. Preach-
ing 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 founda-
tion of the useful charity still known as the Free School.
The fathers not infrequently adopted the Hindoo pan-
theon 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
1793]
HE HAD NO PREDECESSOR
69
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 em-
braced 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. 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
baptized 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 mis-
sionary 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 Welles-
ley-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 con-
firmed 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 mis-
sionary must as soon as possible become indigenous, self-
i
1794]
FIRST MISSIONARY ATTEMPTS
71
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 Cal-
cutta 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 pro-
fessing 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 base level of idolatrous heathenism, and deluding
the ignorant into accepting the blasphemous compromise.
Alas! Carey could not manage to get out of Calcutta
and its neighbourhood for five months. As he thought to
live by farming, Thomas was to practise his profession;
and their first year's income of £150 had, in those days
when the foreign exchanges were unknown, to be realised
by the sale of the goods in which it had been invested.
As usual, Thomas had again blundered, so that even his
gentle colleague himself half-condemned, half-apologised for
him by the shrewd reflection that he was only fit to live at
sea, where his daily business would be before him, and
daily provision would be made for him. Carey found him-
self penniless. Even had he received the whole of his £75,
as he really did in one way or other, what was that for
such a family as his at the beginning of their undertaking?
The expense of living at all in Calcutta drove the whole
72
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Kier-
nander, 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 Conjeveram in
sanctity, where Chaitanya the Vaishnaiva reformer was
born, Carey might have attacked Brahmanism in its strong-
hold. 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 gran-
deur, the customs, and prejudices of the Europeans are
1794]
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF CALCUTTA
73
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 in-
clined 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 dis-
appointed. 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. Nelu Dutt, a banker who
had lent money to Thomas, offered the destitute family
his garden house in the north-eastern quarter of Manick-
1
¹
¹ 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 swal-
74
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
tolla 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, through his
pundit, 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 dis-
position 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 some-
where beneath the earth, and he thought that should
have been mentioned likewise.
lowing 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., 1882, pp. 31-35.
1794]
HE SETTLES IN THE SWAMPS
75
"Was very weary, having walked in the sun about
fifteen or sixteen miles, yet had the satisfaction of dis-
coursing 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 de-
sisted, and went to his old occupation of money-changing
again. If once God would by his Spirit convince them of
sin, a Saviour would be a blessing indeed to them: but
human nature is the same all the world over, and all
conviction fails except it is produced by the effectual
working of the Holy Spirit."
Ram Basu was himself in debt, was indeed all along a
self-interested inquirer. But the next gleam of hope
came from him, that the Carey family should move to
the waste jungles of the Soondarbans, the tiger-haunted
swamps south-east of Calcutta, and there cultivate a grant
of land. With a sum of £16 borrowed from a native at
twelve per cent by Mr. Thomas, a boat was hired, and on
the fourth day, when only one more meal remained, the
miserable family and their stout-hearted father saw an
English-built house. As they walked up to it the owner
met them, and with Anglo-Indian hospitality invited them
all to become his guests. He proved to be Mr. Charles
Short, in charge of the Company's salt manufacture there.
As a deist he had no sympathy with Carey's enterprise,
but he helped the missionary none the less, and the reward
came to him in due time in the opening of his heart to the
love of Christ. He afterwards married Mrs. Carey's sister,
and in England the two survived the great missionary, to
tell this and much more regarding him. Here, at the place
appropriately named Hashnabad, 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
"}
76
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"When
man that, after just three months, he wrote thus :—
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 sad-
dened by the news that, when crossing the Hoogli at
1794]
HE PREACHES IN BENGALI
77
Calcutta, a boat containing three of its principal merchants.
and the wife of one of them, had been upset, and all had
been drowned. It turned out that two of the men
recovered, but Mr. R. Udny and his young wife perished.
His aged mother had been one of the godly circle in the
Residency at Malda to whom Thomas had ministered; and
Mr. G. Udny, her other son, was still the Company's
commercial Resident there. A letter of sympathy which
Thomas sent to them restored the old relations, and
resulted in Mr. G. Udny inviting first the writer and then
Carey to become his assistants in charge of new indigo
factories which he was building on his own account. Each
received a salary equivalent to £250 a year, with the
prospect of a commission on the out-turn, and even a
proprietary share. Carey's remark in his journal on the
day he received the offer was :— "This appearing to be a
remarkable opening in divine providence for our comfort-
able 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 circum-
stances 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.
78
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"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 suffi-
ciently 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 super-
stitions 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!
"22d 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
1794]
DISCUSSION WITH BRAHMANS
79
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.
"23d.—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 ad-
dressed 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 apart-
ment 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
80
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 congrega-
tion 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
1794]
INDIGO PLANTING AND MAKING
81
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 cultiva-
tion and processes into India, and yet with whom the
"covenanted" Residents were often at war. The Resi-
dents had themselves liberty of private trade, and un-
scrupulous 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 chap-
lains 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, pro-
tected 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 flourishes 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
G
82
[1794
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pre-
carious 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, 2d, and 3d July.-Much engaged in the necessary
business of preparing our works for the approaching season
of indigo-making, which will commence in about a fort-
night. 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 he 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 ex-
1794]
FEVER-STRICKEN AND BEREAVED
83
cessive 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 ex-
posed; 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 in
undation 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 per-
sons here except my family."
Soon in September, the worst of all the months in Ben-
gal, he himself was brought near to the grave by a fever,
84
[1795
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
one of the paroxysms continuing for twenty-six hours with-
out 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 to-
gether, 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 for the rest of her life. 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
1795]
FIRST CHURCH FORMED
85
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 congre-
gation, 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 re-
ceived letters and other articles from our friends in Eng-
land... 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
23d. . . . 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.
certed measures for forming a Baptist church."
We con-
86
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Dinajpoor mission till
1806, after Carey had removed to Serampore. "We have
in the neighbourhood about fifteen or sixteen serious per-
sons, 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 oppor-
tunity 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."
I
"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.
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 Fer-
nandez, a Portuguese descendant who had prospered as a

܂
มืด อาห
יאם
யிரோடு
CORIQUEL
METANO.
பம்
FIRST MISSION-HOUSE IN NORTH INDIA DINAJPOOR
To face page 87.
1796]
FIRST ATTEMPTS AT BIBLE TRANSLATION
87
trader in Dinajpoor 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 ser-
vice 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 hun-
dreds 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 under-
stand 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
88
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 some-
times 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 expres-
sion, '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
1796]
EARLY STUDIES IN SANSKRIT
89
Ryland, with more than a mere scholar's enthusiasm, of
one of the two great Vedic epics :-"I have read a con-
siderable part of the Mahabarata, an epic poem written in
most beautiful language, and much upon a par with Homer;
and was it, 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 accom-
plish this, I have nearly translated the Sanskrit grammar
and dictionary into English, and have made considerable
progress in compiling a dictionary, Sanskrit, including Ben-
gali 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 print-
ing 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, how-
ever, 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 em-
phasis properly in reading Bengali, in which there is no
pointing at all. The mode of printing, i.c. 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
90
[1795-96
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
him. Seeing a wooden printing-press advertised in Cal-
cutta for £40, Carey at once ordered it. On its arrival in
1798, "after worship" he "retired and thanked God for
furnishing us with a press." When set up in the Mudna-
bati 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 ever since the Mutiny of
1857 by the Christian Vernacular Education Society, and
adopted by the state departments of public instruction.
etc.
“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 philo-
sophy and geography. The time of their education is to
be seven years, and we find them meat, clothing, lodging,
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;
1796-99] THE SCHOOL AND MEDICAL MISSION
91
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 main-
tain, we could not prudently venture on any further
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."
"" I
expense.
•
The Medical Mission completed the equipment.
submit it to the consideration of the Society whether we
should not be furnished with medicines gratis. No medi-
cines will be sold by us, yet the cost of them enters very
deeply into our allowance. The whole supply sent in the
Earl Howe, amounting to £35, besides charges amounting
to thirty per cent, falls on me; but the whole will either
be administered to sick poor, or given to any neighbour
who is in want, or used in our own families. Neighbour-
ing 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
92
[1797-99
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Dinajpoor
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:
CC
"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, event-
ually, 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,
1797]
HE VISITS BHOOTAN
93
and his generosity was astonishing. He insisted on sup-
plying 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 em-
braced 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
94
[1799
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 character-
istics 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 con-
cealed from view by the tops of a nearer range of hills,
when you approach within sixty miles of them. The dis-
tant 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 Cal-
cutta, 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.
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
I
1799]
FIRST SIGHT OF WIDOW-BURNING
95
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 2 feet high, 4 feet long,
and 2 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 men-
tioned 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
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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 regard-
ing the Jews and Syrian Christians of the Malabar coast.
Mr. G. Udny had now found his private indigo enter-
prise 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 dis-
tant, and there resolved to prepare for the arrival of col-
leagues, 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 mis-
sion 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 ser-
vants 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
Effect 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 com-
munistic 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 mission-
ary 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 pray-
ing 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 pecu-
H
98
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
niary 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 some-
thing 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 con-
fidence 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 re-
turned 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
1
1794]
THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS GONE FORTH
99
evangelicals of England, Scotland, Ireland, America, Ger-
many, 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 Franke, 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 Period-
ical 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
100
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pre-
sided 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 re-
membered by us, and may it be celebrated by future ages
as the Era 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 everlast-
ing 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."
"Scotland¹ 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 after-
1 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.
or revolutionary. This meeting
led to the foundation of the Sabbath School and Destitute Sick
Societies in Edinburgh.
1794] SYMPATHY AND SUPPORT FROM SCOTLAND
101
wards sent John Wilson to Bombay, and that was followed
by the Glasgow Society, to which we owe the most suc-
cessful of the Kafir missions in South Africa. Robert
Haldane sold all that he had when he read the first number
of the Periodical Accounts, and gave £35,000 to send a
Presbyterian mission of six ministers and laymen, besides
himself, to do from Benares what Carey had planned from
Mudnabati; but Pitt as well as Dundas, though his personal
friends, threatened him with the Company's intolerant Act
of Parliament. Evangelical ministers of the Church of
England took their proper place in the new crusade, and a
year before the eighteenth century closed they formed the
agency, which has ever since been in the forefront of the
host of the Lord as the Church Missionary Society, with
Carey's friend, Thomas Scott, as its first secretary. The
sacred enthusiasm was caught by the Netherlands on the
one side under the influence of Dr. Van der Kemp, who
had studied at Edinburgh University, and by the divinity
students of New England, of whom Adoniram Judson was
even then in training to receive from Carey the apostolate
of Burma. Soon too the Bengali Bible translations were
to unite with the needs of the Welsh at home to establish
the British and Foreign Bible Society.
As news of all this reached Carey amid his troubles
and yet triumphs of faith in the swamps of Dinajpoor, and
when he learned that he was soon to be joined by four
colleagues, one of whom was Ward whom he himself had
trysted to print the Bengali Bible for him, he might well
write, in July 1799:— "The success of the Gospel and,
among other things, the hitherto unextinguishable mission-
ary 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 affec-
tionate 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
102
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
abroad."
Men as well as money
In Scotland especially
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
The day was breaking now.
were offered for Carey's work.
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 Scots-
man, 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 them-
selves 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
1799]
UNDER THE DANISH FLAG
103
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 protec-
tion. 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 after-
noon. 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.
66
Oct. 16.-The Captain having been at Calcutta came and in-
formed 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 con-
dition 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
104
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
letters. Captain Wickes called on Rev. Mr. Brown, who very kindly
offered to do any thing 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 after-
noon 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 inform-
ing 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 mission-
ary will not labour in vain, even in India." But one of
their number, Grant, was meanwhile removed by death,
•
1799]
SETTLES AT SERAMPORE
105
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 mission-
aries, too, had at first been reported not as Baptist but as
"Papist," and the emissaries of France, believed to be every-
where, 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 Dinajpoor 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, prop-
erty worth £500, the school, the church, the inquirers,
but he did not hesitate. He thus stated the case on the
other side :—“ At Serampore we may settle as mission-
aries, which is not allowed 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
106
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
to the Rajmahal Hills, round which the great Ganges
sweeps, Carey and Ward made the first attempt to evangel-
ise the Santal and other simple aboriginal tribes, whom the
officials Brown and Cleveland had partly tamed. The
Paharias 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, 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 ap-
prenticeship 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 shoe-
maker 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 Dinajpoor that he
might preach Christ without interference, had been forced to
think of seeking the protection of a Buddhist in the Hima-
laya 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 cata-
1800]
SERAMPORE
107
logue 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 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 cen-
tral 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 Cal-
cutta, 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 Portu-
guese 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 Moor-
shedabad was Denmark, two years before Plassey. In the
half century the hut of the first governor sent from Tran-
quebar had grown into the "beautiful little town" which
delighted the first Baptist missionaries. Its inhabitants,
under only British administration since 1845, now number
25,000. Then they must have been 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 Tarakeshor, 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 Cal-
cutta itself, for all the foreign European trade was centred
in it during the American and French wars, and the English
108
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
civilians used its investments as the best means of remit-
ting 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.

DANISH LUTHERAN CHURCH (NOW ANGLICAN), SERAMPORE.
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 fre-
quented by Europeans, Carey at once adapted the practical
details of his communistic brotherhood to the new circum-
stances. With such wisdom was he aided in this by the
business experience of Marshman and Ward, that a settle-
ment was formed which admitted of easy development in
1800]
THE MISSION SETTLEMENT
109
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 damp-
ness of their first quarters. The promising Brunsdon was
soon after removed by liver complaint caught from stand-
ing on an unmatted floor in the printing-office. Fountain,
who at first continued the mission at Dinajpoor, 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, fortu-
nately as it proved for the future, Carey had to arrange
for five families at the first, and this is how it was done as
described by Ward:-
"The renting of a house, or houses, would ruin us.
We hoped
therefore to have been able to purchase land, and build mat houses upon
it; but we can get none properly situated. We have in consequence
purchased of the Governor's nephew a large house in the middle of the
town for Rs.6000, or about £800; the rent in four years would have
amounted to the purchase. It consists of a spacious verandah
(portico) and hall, with two rooms on each side. Rather more to the
front are two other rooms separate, and on one side is a storehouse,
separate also, which will make a printing-office. It stands by the
river-side upon a pretty large piece of ground, walled round, with a
garden at the bottom, and in the middle a fine tank or pool of water.
The price alarmed us, but we had no alternative; and we hope this
will form a comfortable missionary settlement. Being near to Cal-
cutta, 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
110
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the worship of God. The separate rooms to the left,
fronting the Hoogli, became enlarged into the stately resi
dence of Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., and his two successors
in the Friend of India, while beyond were the girls' 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, rolled 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 umbra-
geous 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."
(C
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. After his disappointment in
Thomas and Fountain he must have narrowly scanned
them during the first month at Serampore. The two were
worthy to be associated with him, and so admirably sup-
plemented 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
1800]
SKETCH OF THE BROTHERHOOD
111
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 Marsh-
man, 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 civilisa-
tion 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 still
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
112
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 bràmmhàn. We drink tea about seven,
and have little or no supper. We have Bengali preaching once or
twice in the week, and on Thursday evening we have an experience
meeting. On Saturday evening we meet to compose differences and
transact business, after prayer, which is always immediately after tea.
Felix is very useful in the office; William goes to school, and part of
the day learns to bind. We meet two hours before breakfast on the
first Monday in the month, and each one prays for the salvation of the
Bengal heathen. At night we unite our prayers for the universal
spread of the Gospel.”
The "Form of Agreement" which regulated the social
economy and spiritual enterprise of the brotherhood, and
also its legal relations to the Baptist Society in England,
deserves study, in its divine disinterestedness, its lofty aims,
and its kindly common sense. Fuller had pledged the
Society in 1798 to send out £360 a year for the joint
family of six missionaries, their wives, and children. The
house and land at Serampore cost the Society Rs.6000.
On Grant's death, leaving a widow and two children, the
five missionaries made the first voluntary agreement, which
"provided that no one should trade on his own private
account, and that the product of their labour should form
a common fund to be applied at the will of the majority,
to the support of their respective families, of the cause of
God around them, and of the widow and family of such as
might be removed by death." The first year the schools
and the press enabled the brotherhood to be more than
self-supporting. In the second year Carey's salary from
the College of Fort-William, and the growth of the schools
1800]
THE BOND OF THE BROTHERHOOD
113
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 pur-
chase 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 pur-
poses.' We know nothing in the history of missions,
monastic or evangelical, which at all approaches this in
administrative perfectness as well as in Christlike self-sacri-
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 brother-
hood. 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.
fice.
I
114
[1805
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 compe-
tent 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, well fit
us to become the instruments of God in the great work
of human redemption. Finally, let us give ourselves unre-
servedly 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 indiffer-
ence 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 con-
vert 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 Ben-
gali 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 dark-
ness 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 baptized in
the Hoogli, and his whole family soon followed him. He
was thirty-five years of age. Not only as the first native
""
116
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Chanderna-
gore, 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,

KRISHNA PAL, THE FIRST CONVERT.
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
1800]
THE FIRST CONVERT
117
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 imme-
diately 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.
118
[1802
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 apos-
tolic life of twenty-two years. The carpenter's confession
and dedication has, in the original, an exquisite tenderness,
reflected also in the hymn¹ 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 con-
fessing, 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.2 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
1 The English translation is still used by Baptists, beginning—
"Oh! thou my soul forget no more
The Friend who all thy misery bore."
2 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.
1800]
THE CHAIN OF CASTE BROKEN
119
sorrow I will be sorrowful. I will dwell along with happiness, con-
tinually 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
120
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
house, and spoke to a yard full of people, who heard with great atten-
tion 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 Euro-
peans. 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.
always obey.
We
“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 about 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, 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 bràmmhàn
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

sil.
CAREY'S CHRISTIAN VILLAGE-BAPTISM IN THE TANK
To face page 21.
1800]
THE FIRST NATIVE BAPTISMS
121
shall shut it? The chain of the caste is broken; who shall mend
it ?"
Carey thus describes the baptism:-"Dec. 29.-Yester-
day was a day of great joy. I had the happiness to
desecrate the Gunga, by baptizing 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 baptized 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.
•
C
"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 baptized, 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
122
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
""
I wish
I, and I felt my heart immediately unite to Him.
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 un-
doubtedly 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.
His
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.
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 neigh-
bour, 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
1
1804]
THE FIRST BRAHMAN CONVERT
123
up his friends and his caste with much fortitude, and is
the first Brahman who has been baptized. The word of
Christ's death seems to have gone to his heart, and he
continues to receive the Word with meekness." The poitu
or sevenfold thread which, as worn over the naked body,
betokened his caste, he trampled under foot, and another

KRISHNA PROSAD, THE FIRST BRAHMAN WHO PREACHED CHRIST.
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 volun-
tarily 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 baptized converts was
124
[1804
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
forty-eight, of whom forty were native men and women.
With the instinct of a true scholar and Christian Carey
kept to the apostolic practice, which has been too often
departed from-he consecrated the convert's name as well
as soul and body to Christ. Beside the "Hermes" of
Rome to whom Paul sent his salutation, he kept the
"Krishna" of Serampore and Calcutta.
The first act of the first convert, Krishna Pal, was of
his own accord to build a house for God immediately
opposite his own, the first native meeting-house in Bengal.
Carey preached the first sermon in it to twenty natives.
besides the family. On the side of the high road, along
which the car of Jagganath is dragged every year, the
missionaries purchased a site and built a preaching place,
a school, a house for Gokool, and a room for the old
widow, at the cost of Captain Wickes, who had rejoiced.
to witness their baptism. The Brahman who owned the
neighbouring land wished to sell it and leave the place,
so much do these people abhor us." This little purchase
for £6 grew in time into the extensive settlement of
Jannagur, where about 1870 the last of Carey's converts
passed away.
From its native chapel, and in its village
tank, many Hindoos have since been led by their own
ordained countrymen to put on Christ. In time the
church in the chapel on the Hoogli became chiefly
European and Eurasian, but on the first Sunday of the
year, the members of both churches meet together for
solemn and joyful communion, when the services are
alternately in Bengali and English.
CC
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

To face page 125.
CHRISTIAN VILLAGERS, SERAMPORE
1803]
FOUNDING A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
125
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 opposi-
tion 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 nearly 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
126
[1803
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 my-
self, 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.
66
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 baptized, 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
1803]
FIRST NATIVE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
127
submitted for a time, continuing, however, secretly to pray
to Christ when beaten by her husband for openly worship-
ping Him, and refusing to eat things offered to the idol.
At last it became intolerable. She fled to her father, was
baptized, and was after a time joined by her penitent
husband. The subject of what was to be done with con-
verts 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 Commit-
tee. 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 Cor-
inthians 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 pro-
longed, 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
66
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.
128
[1803
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 them-
selves 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 Govern-
ment secretary dropping a handful of earth on the coffin.
In the native God's-acre, as in the communion of the Lord's
1803]
FIRST NATIVE CHRISTIAN BURIAL
129
Table, and in the simple rites which accompanied the burial
of the dead in Christ, the heathen saw the one lofty plat-
form 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 through-
out 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 un-
willing 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 expence, 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 expence; 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
K
130
[1803
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Christ.' Bhairub the brahmàn, 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, prayed, sung Moorad's hymn, and dis-
tributed 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 educa-
tion of the people of India, especially in their own ver-
nacular 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 sup-
ported by both the Raja of Tanjore and the British Govern-
ment. When Carey moved to Serampore and found
associated with him teachers so accomplished and enthu-
siastic as Marshman and his wife, education was not long
in taking its place in the crusade which was then fully
1800]
FIRST BENGALI SCHOOLS
131
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 of the present hour.
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 poison-
ing 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 prin-
ciples 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
132
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Bengali. This school is in a promising state, and is liber-
ally supported by the subscriptions of Europeans in this
country."
Carey's early success led Mr. Creighton of Malda to
open at Goamalty several Bengali free schools, and to draw
up a scheme for extending such Christian nurseries all over
the country at a cost of £10 for the education of fifty
children. Only by the year 1806 was such a scheme
practicable, because Carey had translated the Scriptures,
and, as Creighton noted, "a variety of introductory and
explanatory tracts and catechisms in the Bengali and Hin-
dostani 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 Brah-
man and writer castes could read, and not one woman,
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 educa-
tional destitution of Bengal.
a
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 100,000
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
1800] WORK AMONG EURASIANS AND EUROPEANS
133
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 addressed to Mr. Carey will be immediately attended
to." The cost of boarding and fees varied from £45 to
£50 a year, according as "Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian,
or Sanskrit" lessons were included. "Particular attention
will be paid to the correct pronunciation of the English
language" was added for reasons which the mixed parent-
age 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
134
[1810
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 which 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 with-
out 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 con-
necting link between Europeans and natives. The Arme-
nians 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 educa-
tion 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 In-
struction of Indigent Children," which the contemporary
Bengal civilian, Charles Lushington, in his History extols
as one of the monuments of active and indefatigable bene-
volence 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 instruc-
1810] FREE SCHOOLS IN CALCUTTA AND SERAMPORE 135
tion 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 influ-
ence 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 Chamber-
lain is, ere this, arrived at Agra.
We preach every
136
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 in-
fluence of the press and the college hereafter.
But mean-
while the vernacular schools, which soon numbered a hun-
dred 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 im-
portuned 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 founda-
tions 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 Dinajpoor
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
1810]
TURNING BENGAL UPSIDE DOWN
137
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 pro-
tected 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 brother-
hood, 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 casy circum-
stances respecting this world; and we trust that nothing but the salva-
tion of souls will satisfy us. True, before we set off, we thought we
138
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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.
CC 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
ΤΟ ΑΜΒΟΥΝΑ
1802-1817
4
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-Christlike
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-In-
structions to missionaries-The missionary shrivelled into an ambas-
sador-Adoniram and Ann Judson-Jabez Carey-Mission to Am-
boyna-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 pass-
ports, and often without them, missionary tours were made
over Central Bengal, aided by its marvellous 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' charac-
ter and work came to be recognised by the local authorities,
they were let alone for a time. And soon, by the same
140
[1802
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Bengali 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 metro-
polis as in Serampore. He 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 still 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 even-
ing 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
1807]
EVANGELISING CALCUTTA
141
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 with-
drawn 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. He had in the end to meet half the
cost of the building out of his own pocket, and as the
number of churches in Calcutta increased, the chapel be-
came one of the two Baptist places of worship in the city.
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 humi-
lity 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
✩
142
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Cal-
cutta, where he in 1810 had preached at fourteen different
places every week, and visited forty-one families, to evan-
gelise 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 notwith-
standing; 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
1810]
ORGANISATION OF NEW STATIONS
143
Thursday evening to receiving the visits of inquirers.
Seldom fewer than twenty come; and the simple confes-
sions 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 contem-
plated 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 occu-
pied 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 what-
ever other article the part produces in greatest perfection:
the whole to belong to the mission, and no part ever 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
144
[1804
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 even 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 sub-
scribed 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 favour-
able 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
!
1810]
THE FIVEFOLD MISSIONS
145
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 break-
fast 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 Govern-
ment 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 Dinajpoor and Sadamahal which had taken
L
146
[1817
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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
Monghir, 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 reorganisation into the Five United
Missions the staff of workers had grown to be thirty strong.
From England there were nine surviving, or Carey, Marsh-
man, 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 Dinajpoor; 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 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
1802]
THE NATIVE CHURCH
147
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 country-
men 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
Dinajpoor:-"The eyes of the people were fixed listening
to Prosad; he is becoming eloquent." In 1804 their suc-
cessful 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 com-
memorated 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."
148
[1806
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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
of 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 ren-
dering 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 pos-
sible, 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 dark-
ness into marvellous light, was that they should labour to the utter-
most 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
1817]
THE MISSION TO BURMA
149
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 more 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 illustra-
tions 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
150
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 trans-
lated 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; and 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.
1807]
INSTRUCTIONS TO MISSIONARIES
151
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 attentively
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 unneces-
sary 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."
1
152
[1813
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Bur-
man, not unworthy of his father. He early commended
himself to the good-will 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 direc-
tion." He prepared a folio dictionary of Burmese and
Pali, translated several of the Buddhist Sootras into Eng-
lish, and several books of Holy Scripture into the ver-
nacular. 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 Govern-
ment have not been beneficial to his soul. Felix is cer-
tainly 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.
1814]
ADONIRAM AND ANN JUDSON
153
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 Con-
gregational 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 tempta-
tion, 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 gratifica-
tion, 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, ever to sustain.
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.
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
154
[1814
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
CC
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 regula-
tions as other stations are subject to, and which I heartily approve.
And if, on experiment, it be found much too large, 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 distress-
ing 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 neces-
sary up to the present day. He and Hough, a printer who
1814]
LETTER FROM JUDSON
155
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 Sep-
tember 1814 Judson again wrote to Carey from Rangoon :-
I ear-
"DEAR BROTHER CAREY-If copies of Colebrooke's Sungskrita
Dictionary, and your Sungskrita Grammar are not too scarce,
nestly 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 theo-
logical 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 instruc-
tions 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 ambas-
sador.
"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 im-
provement 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
156
[1814
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 his recall had put
an end to the active hostility of the authorities to Christi-
anity. 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 baptized, 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
1814]
THE IDEAL OF A MISSIONARY
157
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 dis-
position 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.
"2d. You are now a married men, 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 sub-
stance 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 godli-
ness. This advice I give also to Eliza, and if it is followed
you will be happy.
"3d. Behave affably and genteelly to all, but not cring-
ingly 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
158
[1814
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 mild-
ness, 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 baptize 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 baptized. 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
baptize 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
1814]
THE IDEAL OF A MISSIONARY
159
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 out-
ward 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 inten-
tions 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, sup-
ported 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.
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.
God
160
[1817
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"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 knowlege 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 estab-
lishment-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 mis-
sionary and state superintendent of schools. Carey wrote
Осса-
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.
sionally, 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
M
Y
!
162
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
were associated with him for the third of a century wor-
shipped 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 and self-seeking conflicts with these col-
leagues, 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 gentle-
manliness 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 Englishmen had before him.
1808]
HIS SECOND WIFE
163
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 stimu-
late 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 baptized. 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
Pensées 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 mission-
aries in public worship. The barren orthodoxy of the
164
[1808
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 him-
self to Christ. She became a keen student of the Scrip-
tures, 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 lan-
guage, his deep knowledge of the human heart, and his
intrepidity in reproving sin; but felt the greatest dis-
satisfaction 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
1809]
A LOVE-LETTER
165
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
Monghir, 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,
•
166
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 con-
versed together on those things which form the life of per-
sonal 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 alto-
gether 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 there-
after 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 letter, every line of
which reveals the inner soul of the writer :-
1809] THE WORLD AND THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST
167
"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 deli-
rium, 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 phy-
sicians in Calcutta, who was consulted about it, appre-
hended 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 in-
stantly 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.¹ I was attended by
angels in all my excursions, and was universally successful.
A few princes in Germany were refractory, but my attend-
ants 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
¹ 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."
168
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
:
end of my life. But it is now time to attend to something
not merely ideal.
"The state of the world occupies 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 seri-
ously on our duty? Hindostan requires ten thousand minis-
ters 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
*
1807]
MISSIONARY UNITY AT ALDEEN
169
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 imper-
fect 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 there 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 Seram-
pore Mission House, and eighty years 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 thou-
sands of pilgrims flock every June to the adjoining shrine
and monstrous car of Jagganath. David Brown had not
.
170
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Noncon-
formist friends, with Claudius Buchanan, Martyn, Bishop
Corrie, Thomason, and the little band of evangelical Angli-
cans 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.
"You 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 correspond-
1807]
HENRY MARTYN'S PAGODA
:-
171
ence with Dr. Ryland :—" 20th January 1807.—It would
have done your heart good to have joined us at our meet-
ings at the pagoda. From that place we have successively
recommended Dr. Taylor to the work of the Lord at Bom-
bay, Mr. Martyn to his at Dinajpoor, 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. Thompson to his at Madras. In these meet-
ings 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 chap-
lains. Sacramentarianism and sacerdotalism had not then
begun to afflict the Church in 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. Here is the picturesque ruin, which the peepul
tree that is entwined among its fine brick masonry, and the
crumbling river-bank, will 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 accom-
panied many a visitor there, from Dr. Duff to Bishop
Cotton, and have rarely seen one unmoved. This pagoda
had been abandoned long before by the priests of Radha-
bullub, 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 miracu-
lously wafted to this spot like the Santa Casa to Loretto ?—
was removed with great pomp to a new temple after it had
1
172
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
paid a visit to Clive's moonshi, the wealthy Raja Nobo-
kissen 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."

HENRY MARTYN'S PAGODA, ALDEEN, SERAMPORE.
Here, too, he laid his plans for the evangelisation of the
people. When suffering from one of his moods of depres-
sion 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, inter-
ceding 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
|
1807]
MISSION LIFE IN SERAMPORE
173
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 this pagoda that Brown, Corrie, and
Parsons met with him for the last time to commend him to
God before he set out for his new duties at Dinajpoor.
"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 join-
ing 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 wealthy Hindoo family who now 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 Ser-
•
&
174
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
ampore 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, san-
guine 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,
The
and supped at the same table with about fifty native converts.
triumph of the Cross was most evident in breaking down their preju-
dices, 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 con-
fess 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. After-
wards 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
1808] THE ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENT PROJECTED 175
evening a fire was kindled on the opposite bank; and we soon per-
ceived 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 Cambus-
lang. 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 ser-
vants 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
176
[1810
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 representa-
tions 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 chap-
lains, the stout Nonconformist replied with emphasis, "You
will never obtain them." We may all accept the conver-
sion 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. In-
deed, the Lord is doing great things for Calcutta ; and
though infidelity abounds, yet religion is the theme of con-
versation 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
I was of course
going to engage in morning worship.
asked to engage in prayer, which I did. I afterwards told
him that I had scarcely witnessed any thing 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

SHEEV TEMPLE, SERAMPORE
To Juce page 176.
镇
​养
​刷​您​!
البحسني
麻辣
​1812]
HIS PORTRAIT BY HOME
177
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 restora-
tion, 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!"
N
178
[1808
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Dinajpoor to
begin his independent career as a missionary by the side.
of Fernandez.
“2d 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.
1809]
CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS SON
179
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."
"22d 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 exer-
tions which you are enabled to make for the cause of our
180
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 discourage-
ments 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.
(6
Let
Now, dear William, what do we live for but to pro-
mote 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.
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 conver-
sion. Indeed, were you never to be blessed to the conver-
sion of one soul, still the pleasure of labouring in the work
1810]
HIS SONS FELIX AND WILLIAM
181
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 estab-
lish 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 Can-
ning, 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 accompany-
ing the Minister to the mountains of Martaban and the
country beyond them. Captain Canning at his next inter-
view 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 deter-
mined 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 accommoda-
tions 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 per-
haps answer many other important purposes, as it respects
the mission; and as much of the way will be through unin-
habited 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
182
[1810
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 com-
mon 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.
•
1810]
THE DUTY OF RECONCILIATION
183
“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, how-
ever, send one or two of the bottles filled with beetles,
grasshoppers, and other insects."
رو
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 dis-
cipline 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 Sada-
mahal, 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 ex-
clusion 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.
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
I
184
[1811
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 with-
draw 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 reputa-
tion.' 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.
"3d 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
charity school, and to overlook it.
large place, where you may often
there will be to open a
Dacca itself is a very
communicate religious
:
1813]
THE MISSIONARY AND THE SOLDIER
185
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.
(C
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 lone-
some 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
186
[1821
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Marsh-
man, 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 grand-
son is now an ordained missionary in Bengal, another
a medical missionary in Delhi, and a third is a member
of the Bombay Civil Service, who has distinguished him-
self by travels in Northern Tibet and Chinese Turkestan,
which promise to unveil the last 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 educator.
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 Mar-
quis of 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—Col-
lege Disputation Day in the new Government House-Carey's Sans-
krit speech-Lord Wellesley's eulogy--Sir James Mackintosh -
Carey's pundits-He projects the Bibliotheca Asiatica-On the Com-
mittee of the Bengal Asiatic Society-Edition and translation of the
Ramayana epic-The Hitopadesa — His Universal Dictionary—In-
fluence 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 reduced to writing and made the
vehicle of the teaching of Christ, of the thought of Paul,
of the revelation of John. Of the Sanskrit, hitherto con-
cealed 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
188
[1802
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
9
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 irregu-
larity 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 spell-
ing, 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 re-
garding the sacred books of the Hindoos which finds a
parallel more than eighty years after in Professor Max
Müller'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
Müller 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 bewilder-
ing forests of the sacred literature of the East." He
declares that "Eastern nations themselves would not toler-
ate, 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 incon-
sistent; 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
1802]
PLANS TRANSLATION OF THE VEDA
189
in almost every page. Any thing, it seems, will do with
these men but the word of God. They ridicule the figura-
tive 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 in-
terested 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 l'eda; 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 transla-
tion, 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
already 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.
190
[1802
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
upon which these languages were constructed, besides apply-
ing these principles, in the shape of grammars, dictionaries,
and translations, to the instruction and Christian civilisa-
tion 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 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 practi-
cal results the pioneering came as nearly to victory as is
possible, until native India lives its own national Chris-
tian life.
1
When India first became a united British Empire under
one Governor-General, and the Regulating Act of Parlia-
ment 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 Brah-
manical 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 sup-
¹ 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."
1798]
THE MARQUIS WELLESLEY
191
plemented 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 com-
pleted 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 Dia-
logue 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 founda-
tion, 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 at his proper
value 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 con-
vert the world, young Wellesley was at Eton and Christ
Church, Oxford, acquiring the classical scholarship which,
as we find its fruits in his Primitice et Reliquiæ, 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 at 1798, just
in time to save the nascent empire from ruin by the second
.
192
[1798
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pro-
gress 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 at Seringapa-
tam. 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 ser-
vants. 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."
1800]
THE CIVIL AND MILITARY SERVANTS
193
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 competi-
tion 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.
O
194
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
!
The curriculum of study included Arabic, Persian, and
Sanskrit; Bengali, Marathi, Hindostani or Hindi, Telugoo,
Tamil, and Kanarese; English, the Company's, Moham-
medan 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 anti-
quities of India; natural history, botany, chemistry, and
astronomy. The discipline was that of the English uni-
versities 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 honour-
able 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
1801]
THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM
195
governors, in the Persian language of their former Moham-
medan 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 Cæsar 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 fruit-
ful of results as the first century of the Renaissance of
Europe, he little thought, in his modesty, that he would be
recognised as the only man who was fit to carry it out.
Having guarded the college, as they thought, by a test,
Brown and Buchanan urged Carey to take charge of the
Bengali and Sanskrit classes as "teacher on Rs. 500 a
month or £700 a year. Such an office was entirely in the
line of the constitution of the missionary brotherhood. But
would the Government which had banished it to Serampore.
recognise the aggressively missionary character of Carey,
who would not degrade his high calling by even the sus-
picion 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 and only thought, and
the full professorship, rising to £1800 a year, was soon
conferred on the man who proved himself to be almost
as much the college in his own person as were the other
196
[1801
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
professors put together. A month after his appoint-
ment he thus told the story to Dr. Ryland in the course
of a long letter devoted chiefly to the first native con-
verts:
“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 professor-
ship. One morning a letter from Mr. Brown came, invit-
ing 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
1801]
PROFESSOR OF BENGALI AND SANSKRIT
197
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 conduct-
ing 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 dic-
tionary, 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,
1
198
[1804
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 there-
fore 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 Dinaj-
poor district, Carey had given one-third of his long work-
ing 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 con-
verse 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 San-
skrit, 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, how-
ever, with his usual self-depreciation:-"I am just begin-
ning 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
1
1804]
COLLEGE DISPUTATION DAY
199
to the disputations and declamations of the students who
were passing out, and of their professors, in the various
Oriental languages. The new Government House, as it
was still called, having been completed only the year before
at a cost of £140,000, was the scene, in "the southern
room on the marble floor," where, ever since, all through
the century, the Sovereign's Viceroys have received the
homage of the tributary kings of our Indian empire. There,
from Dalhousie and Canning to Lawrence and Mayo, and
their still surviving successors, we have seen pageants and
durbars more splendid, and representing a wider extent
of territory, from Yarkand to Bangkok, than even the
Sultanised Englishman, as Sir James Mackintosh called
Wellesley, ever dreamed of in his most imperial aspirations.
There councils have ever since been held, and laws have
been passed affecting the weal or woe of from two to three
hundred millions of our fellow-subjects. There, too, we
have stood with Duff and Cotton, Ritchie and Outram, to
mention only the dead, representing the later University
of Calcutta which Wellesley would have long 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 pro-
fessors, 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."
200
[1804
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 con-
clude 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 compli-
mented 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 mission-
ary, 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 apprehen-
sion. 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 Parlia-
ments."
占
​R
1804]
BEFORE LORD WELLESLEY
201
"MY LORD, it is just that the language which has been first culti-
vated 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 con-
vened, 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 primeval 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 im-
mediately 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 capaci-
ties 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 pro-
ceedings 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
202
[1804
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 inter-
course 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 nie as if I was myself a native. And knowing them
as I do, and hearing as I do their daily observations on our govern-
ment, 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 habit-
able 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 pos-
sessing qualities (rarely combined) constituting a reputation of threefold
1804]
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
203
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 con-
stantly 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, re-
ligious, 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, the Orientalist,
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 insti-
tution, 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 com-
petitive 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 Mack-
intosh, an Aberdeen student who had leaped into the front
rank of publicists and scholars by his answer to Burke, in
the Vindicia Gallicæ, 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 Mack-
intosh became the centre of scholarly society in Western
India, as Sir William Jones had been in Bengal. He was
204
[1805
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the friend of Robert Hall, the younger, who was filling
Carey's pulpit in Leicester, and he soon became the admir-
ing 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 compara-
tive 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 fol-
lowed 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 moon-
shees, 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 an incessant literary work, as his Seram-
pore 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 re-
ferred 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:
4
1807]
PROJECTS A BIBLIOTHECA ASIATICA
205
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 An-
struther, 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 mytho-
logy 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
206
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Val-
meeki, 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 transla-
tion 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 Sanskrit 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 has most
pleasantly opened the treasures of this epic to English
readers in his verse translations which he has published
from time to time 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
1804-34]
MEN INFLUENCED BY CAREY
207
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.¹ 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
Apothegms. Colebrooke records his debt to Carey for carry-
ing 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
1 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 fol-
lower of Christ, having given himself and his all to found a Mission
to the Mohammedans of South Arabia, at Shaikh Othman, near Aden,
died there, on 11th May 1887, a death which will bring life to Yemen,
through his memory, and through the Mission which he founded, his
family support, and the Free Church of Scotland carry on in his name.
ན་
208
[1804-34
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 fili-
busters into soldier-politicals, so that the East Indian ser-
vices stand alone in the history of the administration of
imperial dependencies for spotless integrity and high aver-
age ability. Contrast with the work of these men, from
the days of Wellesley, Hastings, and Dalhousie, from the
time of Canning to Lawrence and Dufferin, 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 vil-
lage 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. Butter-
worth Bayley, whose long career of blameless upright-
ness 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 con-
temporaries 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 "humi-
lity, patience, and obedience to the divine will" which
unostentatiously marked his brilliant life and soothed his
1804-34]
MEN INFLUENCED BY CAREY
209
spirit in the agonies of a fatal disease. He and Bayley
were inseparable. Of the first set, too, were Richard Jen-
kins, 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, cheered and 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 Wil-
liam. 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.
Р
CHAPTER X
1
THE WICLIF 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-engine 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, shoe-
maker, 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 transla-
tion into Hindi and its many dialects-The Dravidian translations-
Tale of the Pushtoo Bible-The Sikhs and the Bible-The first Bur-
man 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 phoenix 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 char-
acter and aims as Carey and Clarkson on the one side
1804]
VERNACULAR TRANSLATORS OF THE BIBLE
211
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 him-
self 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 mastered the Bengali. He preached,
he taught, he “discipled" in every form then reasonable
and possible, and in the fullest sense of his Master's mis-
sionary 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. Wiclif
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
212
[1805
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 coad-
jutors 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 under-
stand?'" 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 corre-
spondent, "will excuse my brevity when I inform you
that all my time for writing letters is stolen from the
work of transcribing the Scriptures into the Bengali
language."
(
When stripped of the extravagance of statement into
which they have grown in the course of a century in the
missionary periodicals and on the popular platforms of
England, the facts are more remarkable than the pious
myth which has accreted round them. From no mere
humility, but with an accurate judgment in the state of
scholarship and criticism at the end of last century, Carey
always insisted that he was a forerunner, breaking up the
way for successors like Yates and Wenger, who, in their
turn, must be superseded by purely native Tyndales and
Luthers in the Church of India. He never justified, he
more than once deprecated, the talk of his having trans-
1801-32] HIS THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS
213
As we
lated the Bible into forty languages and dialects.¹
proceed that will be 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
First
1 THIRTY-SIX TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE,
MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE.
Published in
1801. BENGALI-New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9.
1811.
1824.
Ooriya
Maghadi
only.
1815-19.
Assamese
1824.
Khasi.
1814-24.
Manipoori.
1822-32.
1808. SANSKRIT
1809-11. HINDI
Bruj-bhasa
""
1815-22.
Kanouji
1820.
1822.
only.
Khosali-Gospel of Matthew only.
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—
1820. Goojarati
1819.
Konkan
1815. PANJABI
Books in 1822.
1819.
པ
in 1819.
in 1832.
in 1811-18.
in 1813-18.
Old Testament in 1820.
only.
Pentateuch in 1821.
and Historical
>>
Mooltani-New Testament.
1825. Sindhi-Gospel of Matthew only.
1820.
Kashmeeri-New Testament; and Old Testament to 2d
Book of Kings.
1820-26. Dogri-New Testament only.
214
[1803
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
pundits', and that which he corrected and printed for
others at his own 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 transla-
tions 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.
His home correspondent in this and purely scholarly sub-
jects 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 responsi-
bility under which he worked. Biblical criticism, alike as
to the original text and to the exegesis of the sacred writ-
ings, is so very modern a science, that these letters have
now only a historical interest. But this communication from
Carey to Ryland shows how he worked from the first :—
CALCUTTA, 14th Dec. 1803.-We some time ago en-
gaged in an undertaking, of which we intended to say
First
Published in
1819. PUSHTOO-New Test. and Old Test. Historical Books.
1815. BALOOCHI
1818. TELUGOO
1822.
KANARESE
Three Gospels.
and Pentateuch in 1820.
only.
MALDIVIAN-Four Gospels.
EDITED AND PRINTED ONLY BY CAREY.
Persian.
Hindostani.
Malayalam.
Singhalese.
Chinese (Dr. Marshman's).
Javanese.
Burmese-Matthew's Gospel. Malay.
1803]
HIS GREAT WORK
"
215
nothing until it was accomplished; but an unforeseen pro-
vidence 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 some-
thing 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 pre-
vailed on us to set ourselves silently to work upon a trans-
lation 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 chap-
ters 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 trans-
lated the Gospels into Hindostani and Persian, and had
made a present of them to the College, and that the Col-
lege 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 any thing 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 any thing
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
:
216
[1803
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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, Tongkin-
ese, and Malay. On this great work we have fixed our eyes.
Whether God will enable us to accomplish it, or any con-
siderable 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 approba-
tion, 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 idio-
matic 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 fore-
sight as the intellectual and the spiritual. We have seen
how, when he was far enough advanced in his translation,
Carey amid the swamps of Dinajpoor 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 col-
1807]
TYPE-CUTTING IN SERAMPORE
217
league. 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
Sanskrit 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, pub-
lished 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 disad-
vantages 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 im-
bibed 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
218
[1807
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Testa-
ment 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 char-
acter. 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."
In
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 Chris-
tian civilisation to an extent of which he was unconscious,
for he remained a Hindoo of the blacksmith caste.
1839, when he first went to India as a young missionary,
the Rev. James Kennedy ¹ 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. 2
1
1 Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-77, London, 1884.
2 Mr. John Marshman, in his Life and Times of the three, states
that Fry and Figgins, the London typefounders, would not produce
under £700 half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native turned
out at about £100. In 1813 Dr. Marshman's Chinese Gospels were
printed on movable metallic types, instead of the immemorial wooden
blocks, for the first time in the twenty centuries of the history of
Chinese printing. This forms an era in the history of Chinese litera-
ture he justly remarks.
1820]
PAPER-MAKING IN SERAMPORE
219
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 often
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 pre-
servation in the library of Serampore College of five colossal.
volumes of a 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 em-
ployment 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 Seram-
pore became the one source of supply for local as distin-
guished 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.
(6
220
[1808
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Dr. Carey thus took stock of the translating enterprise
in a letter to Dr. Ryland :-
"22d 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,
2d ed., to the end of Matthew; Hindostani (new version)
to Mark v., and Matthew is begun in Goojarati. The trans-
lation 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 trans-
lation from Syriac into Malayala. I learnt this week that
the language of Cashmere 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 Ramesh-
waram to Harhu (viz. from the extreme cape of the Penin-
sula 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 hist
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
1811] PROJECTS A UNIVERSAL SANSKRIT DICTIONARY 221
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, ele-
mentary 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 irregulari-
ties 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, how-
ever, 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 collect-
ing 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 Sans-
krit, 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
222
[1815
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
that of the terms deduced from it in the cognate languages
will be evident. This work will be great, and it is doubt-
ful 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 trans-
lations 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 im-
portant. 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 mission-
aries 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 trans-
lations of the Bible going forward in twenty-seven lan-
guages, 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
1815]
THE FIRST BENGALI NEW TESTAMENT
223
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.
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
Wiclif and Tyndale, Yates was the Coverdale of the Bengali
and Sanskrit Bible. Wenger, their successor, was worthy
of both. Bengal now waits for the first native revision of
the great work which these successive pioneers have gradu-
ally improved. When shall Bengal see its own Luther?
The Bengali Bible was the first as it was the most im-
portant of the thirty-six translations completely, or partially
made by Carey. The province, or lieutenant-governorship
as it now is, has the same area as France, and contains
nearly double its population, or seventy millions. Of the
three principal vernaculars, Bengali is spoken by thirty-seven
millions of Hindoos and Mohammedans; Hindi, Hindostani,
and Oordoo by twenty-five millions; and Ooriya by about six
millions of Hindoos in Orissa. It was for all the natives of
Bengal and of India north of the Dekhan ("south ") table-
land, but especially for the Bengali-speaking people, who
have increased till they are as numerous as the French,
that William Carey may be said to have created a literary
language ninety years 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
224
[1801
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Family Expositor of Doddridge, published in 1738, and then
the most critical in the language. Four times he revised
the manuscript, with a Greek concordance in his hand, and
he used it not only with Ram Basu by his side, the most
accomplished of early Bengali scholars, but with the natives
around him of all classes. By 1800 Ward had arrived as
printer, the press was perfected at Serampore, and the result
of seven years of toil appeared in February 1801, in the
first edition of 2000 copies, costing £612. The printing
occupied nine months. The type was set up by Ward and
Carey's son Felix with their own hands; "for about a
month at first we had a Brahman compositor, but we were
quite weary of him. We kept four pressmen constantly
employed." A public subscription had been opened for
the whole Bengali Bible at Rs.32, or £4 a copy as exchange
then was, and nearly fifty copies had been at once sub-
scribed 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, philo-
logical and financial, to give the Bible to all the peoples of
the farther East in their own tongue.
man.
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 journal¹ records:-
"Brother Carey took an impression at the press of the first
page in Matthew." The translator was himself the press-
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 mission-
aries had established a press at Serampore and were print-
ing 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
"To give
1 The fervent printer thus wrote to his Hull friends :-
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."
1801]
THE BENGALI BIBLE AND GEORGE III
225
press had refused to print a political attack on the English
Government, and that it was intended for the spiritual in-
struction only of the natives. This called forth the assurance
from that liberal statesman that he was personally favour-
able 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 opposi-
tion but made Carey first teacher of Bengali. It was on the
7th February 1801 that the last sheet with the final correc-
tions 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 fami-
lies and the new-made converts gathered around it with
solemn thanksgiving to God. As Tyndale's version had
broken the yoke of the papacy in England, Carey thus
struck the first deadly blow at Brahmanism in its strong-
hold.
When the first copies reached England, Andrew Fuller
sent one to the second Earl Spencer, the peer who had used
the wealth of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, to collect the
great library at Althorp. Carey had been a poor tenant
of his, though the Earl knew it not. When the Bengali
New Testament reached him, with its story, he sent a cheque
for £50 to help to translate the Old Testament, and he took
care that a copy should be presented to George III., as by
his own request. Mr. Bowyer was received one morning at
Windsor, and along with the volume presented an address
expressing the desire that His Majesty might live to see
its principles universally prevail throughout his Eastern
dominions. On this the lord in waiting whispered a doubt
whether the book had come through the proper channel.
At once the king replied that the Board of Control had
nothing to do with it, and turning to Mr. Boywer said, “I
am greatly pleased to find that any of my subjects are em-
ployed 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 appear-
ance compared with its latest successors. In truth the
Q
226
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
second edition, which appeared in 1806, was almost a new
version. The criticism of his colleagues and others, espe-
cially 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."
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 cham-
berlain of Queen Candace.
The
The third edition of the Bengali Testament was pub-
lished in 1811 in folio for the use of the native congrega-
tions by that time formed. The fourth, consisting of 5000
copies, appeared in 1816, and the eighth in 1832.
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
1815]
THE BIBLE IN SANSKRIT
227
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 Hin-
dooism as a pretended revelation, from its identifica-
tion 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.
to us.
The Sanskrit version was translated from the original,
and written out by the toiling scholar himself. Sir William
Jones is said to have been able to secure his first pundit's
help only by paying him Rs.500 a month, or £700 a year.
Carey engaged and trained his many pundits at a twentieth
of that sum.
He well knew that the Brahmans would scorn
a book in the language of the common people. "What,"
said one who was offered the Hindi version,
66 even if the
books should contain divine knowledge, they are nothing
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 suc-
cessors, Yates and Wenger. Against Vedas and Upanishads,
Brahmanas and Epics, he set the Sanskrit Bible.
The whole number of completely translated and pub-
:
228
[1824
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
lished 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 under-
taken 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 dia-
lects, 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,
whence to this day they have evangelised the country and
are hastening the decay of the Jaganath pilgrim abuses, in
brotherly harmony with the Calvinistic Baptists and other
evangelical missionaries.
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 in-
1811-20] BIBLE IN ASSAMESE, MARATHI, AND HINDI 229
tended to publish a version in the Maithili language of
Bihar, which has a literature stretching back to the four-
teenth 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 Testa-
ment, 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 a lieutenant 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-
230
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
range known as the Sahyadri or "delectable" mountains,
had nearly wrested the whole peninsula from the Moham-
medans, and had almost anticipated the life-giving rule of
the British, first at Panipat and then at Assye. Mean-
while 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 exist-
ence. 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 forty-two years ago :-"Time
will show, and in a very singular manner, that every ver-
sion, 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, we repeat, 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 remark-
able as in the Hindi. So early as 1796 he wrote of this
perhaps the most widely extended offspring of the Sans-
krit: "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 under-
stood 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 ter-
minations. The Bruj or Brijbhasa Gospels were finished
1
1818]
EDWARDES'S STORY OF THE AFGHAN BIBLE 231
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 213. 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 Telugoo¹ 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 Khan, 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, Gooldâd Khan, told me he
¹ In 1795 Captain Dodds, a Madras officer from Scotland, trans-
lated 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.
232
[1818
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
could remember well, as a youth, being sent by his father
and elder brother with a string of Cabul horses to the fair
of Hurdwâr, 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 Hurdwâr
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!'
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.'
The
"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 accomplish-
ment 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 Marsh-
man, of Serampore,¹ 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.'
C
C
Hurdwâr, 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 epidemic
1 Then Editor of the Friend of India.
1820]
THE PUNJABI AND BURMESE BIBLES
233
disease like cholera all over Asia 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.
From Pushtoo Peshawar to Quetta and Kandahar, the
missionaries ask for a revised version. 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 Pitè 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 now splendidly developing, from Rangoon
to Kareng-nee, Siam, and China. The ship containing the
(6
234
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 correspond-
ing 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
1812] THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY
235
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 translitera-
tion of the Greek words for "baptism," these two scholars
acted thus, as described by the Bible Society's annalist-
they, "with a liberality which does them honour, permitted
the use of their respective versions of the Bengali Scriptures,
with such alterations as were deemed needful in the disputed
word for 'baptism,' they being considered in no way parties
to such alterations." From first to last the British and
Foreign Bible Society, to use its own language, “had the
privilege of aiding the Serampore brethren by grants,
amounting to not less than £13,500." Of this a large
proportion had been given by Mr. William Hey, a well-
known surgeon at Leeds, who had been so moved by the
translation memoir of 1816 as to offer £500 for the publi-
cation of 1000 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 remem-
bered. 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 even-
ing 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
236
[1812
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
were filled with paper and printed materials. Close
beyond was the paper-mill. The Bible-publishing enter-
prise 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 hope-
ful 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
1812]
DESTRUCTION OF THE SERAMPORE PRESS
237
this world's ambition, would have perpetuated his name in
the first rank of philologists.
With the delicacy which always marked him Dr. Marsh-
man 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 both ceased in
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 pre-
ceded 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 sensa-
tion is most awful; we read the forty-sixth Psalm. This fearful pro-
digy 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 contem-
plated the missionary establishment with perhaps too much self-con-
gratulation. 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
238
[1812
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 diffi-
cult 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 con-
tributed 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 Devana-
gari, 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 pre-
pared by me, and what owes its whole revision for the
1812]
HIS LOSSES IN THE FIRE
239
press to me, comprise the principal part of the MSS. con-
sumed. 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 lan-
guages, 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."
out.
Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their
work, dream that this fire would prove to be the means of
making them, as well as the 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
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 Philadel-
phia, 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
240
[1812
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the translation work, and now that Judson was on his way
out they redoubled their exertions. In India Thomason's
own congregation sent the missionaries £800, and Brown
wrote from his dying bed a message of loving help. The
very 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 fort-
night a fount was cast; in a month all the native estab-
lishment 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
counterbalanced 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 super-
naturalism 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
R
242
[1793
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Wiclif 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 fol-
lowed by Wiclif'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 vernacu-
lars of the other provinces.
When Carey began to work in Calcutta and Dinajpoor
in 1792-93 Bengali had no printed and hardly any written
literature. The very written characters were justly de-
scribed 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.¹ The
Brahmans and the Mohammedan rulers alike treated Ben-
gali-though "it arose from the tomb of the Sanskrit," as
1 The Chaitanya Charita Amrita, by Krishna Dass in 1557, was the
first of importance.
·
1815]
HE GIVES BENGALI LITERARY FORM
243
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 manu-
script, 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 abun-
dance 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 Diction-
ary 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
244
[1818
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Prata-
paditya, 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 Æneid
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
encyclopædia 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
1818] FIRST BENGALI PAPER-FRIEND OF INDIA
245
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 pub-
lication 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 dis-
approved. 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 con-
troversy, 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 con-
tentment if not loyalty. The paper gave a new develop-
ment 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.
246
[1799
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
was his and his able son's down to 1850, when it passed
into the hands of Mr. Meredith Townsend, still 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 Marsh-
man 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 Pooranik corruption and the Brahmanical oppres-
sion 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 license amounting to an undoubted Hindoo revival,
marked on the political side by the Maratha ascendancy, 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 absolu-
tism 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 Wilber-
force 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
""
1799]
THE MURDER OF WIDOWS
247
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 prevent-
ing 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 Ben-
gali 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
248
[1808
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
the Tipoo war, and his own appointment to the College
of Fort William, Carey felt that his time had come to pre-
vent 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
1805] ACTION AGAINST INFANTICIDE AND SUTTEE
249
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 publica-
tion 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 pre-
serve 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 pro-
tect 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 Moham-
medan India, for our predecessors had by decree forbidden
and in practice discouraged the crime. Lord Wellesley's
250
[1805
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 ex-
tremely 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 impracti-
cable 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 Welles-
ley 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
1757-1829] SEVENTY THOUSAND WIDOWS BURNED
:
251
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 1812 by Lord Minto, 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 cen-
tury, 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 atro-
cious. 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 evan-
gelicals 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,'
252
[1829
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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." Mritun-
jaya, 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 Cal-
cutta "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 Wel-
lesley 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
1832]
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
253
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 care-
ful 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 has been made a terrestrial providence, till Chris-
tianity 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 trace-
able 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 govern-
ment of its provinces in the seven centuries from the reduc-
tion 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 in-
dignant 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,
!
254
[1813
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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. Be-
sides these, I calculate that 10,000 women annually burn
with the bodies of their deceased husbands, and the multi-
tudes 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 pro-
tection. 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
BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND HINDOOISM
255
1814]
George Barlow in spite of the protests of Carey's friend,
Udny. In Conjeveram 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 man-
agement 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 observ-
ances, 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 only of late 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 cere-
monies. 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 pretend-
edly 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
256
[1812
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 cere-
monies."
66
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 hun-
dred 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 interest-
ing to Carey in proportion to their misery and abandon-
ment 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 to this
1
1843]
SLAVERY IN INDIA
257
day 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 jaláo,
Beti mat máro,
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 contem-
porary, 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 9,000,000 of
slaves in India, many of them brought by Hindoo mer-
chants 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
S
i
:
258
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
[1843
India. The Penal Code has since placed the prædial
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 subordi-
nate to his spiritual mission-His eminence as a botanist acknow-
ledged 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
1
260
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
like Paul, but, also like him, becoming all things to all men
that he might win some to the higher life, Carey was suc-
cessively, 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 trans-
lator of both into English and of the English Bible into
both, the founder of a pure literature, the purifier of so-
ciety, 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 mis-
sions.
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 last cen-
tury. 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 liter-
ally tortured by the Government of the day, and driven to

"
1797]
HIS EARLY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES
261
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 becom-
ing 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 Dinajpoor. He thus unconsciously reveals
himself and his method of working in a letter to Morris of
Clipstone :-
MUDNABATI, 5th December 1797.-To talk of continu-
ance 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 produc-
tions 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

262
[1797
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 inhabi-
tants; 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, add-
ing"The natural history of Bengal would furnish in-
numerable 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
Butterflies
in a day or two and devour all its contents.
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
1794]
AN ERUDITE BOTANIST
263
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). Ama-
ranths, 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.
CC
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, estab-
lished 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 instru-
ments, 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 assort-
ment 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 pro-
cure them, and the seeds of all sorts of field and forest
trees, etc., I will regularly remit you the money for every
264
[1799
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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.
they are new and dry." Again he
22d June 1797:
Only take care that
addressed Fuller on
"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 Dinajpoor does he estimate himself and his scien-
tific 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 discon-
tinued 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 con-
version 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
1798]
THE FRUITS OF INDIA
265
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 his-
tory 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; pa-
paya, date, and cocoa-nut; citron, lime, and shaddock.
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.
Of
While still in Dinajpoor 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
266
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 sen-
sitive 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 Myrtaceae.
The great French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert duly
commemorates the labours of Dr. Carey in the Musée
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 over-
tasked spirit. There he had five acres of ground laid out,
and, in time, planted on the Linnæan 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 plenti-
ful 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
C
1800]
HIS GARDEN AT SERAMPORE
267
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 recent date, when Hullodhur,
the last of them, passed away. The garden with its tropi-
cal 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 seques-
tered spot at Mudnabati was true in a deeper and wider
sense of the garden of Serampore:-23d 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 :
His
"In objects of nature my father was exceedingly curious.
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 Linnæan 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
268
[1800
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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, not-
withstanding 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 gentle-
man 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 Dinajpoor, so from Serampore after his settle-
ment 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:-
1821]
HIS DAISY
269
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 en-
closed 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 spring-
ing 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 unbashed'd but modest eyes,
Follow his motion to the west,
Nor cease to gaze till daylight dies,
Then fold themselves to rest.
270
[1821
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"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, conntry, 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
24
1814]
THE HORTUS BENGALENSIS
271
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 print-
ing-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 collec-
tion."
“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 con-
versation 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, and in the opening up of New Guinea.
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 scien-
272
[1811
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
tific 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 the North-west province, 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 car-
ried 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
1811]
AN AGRICULTURAL REFORMER
273
of an ordinary Quarterly Review article he describes the
"State of Agriculture in the District of Dinajpoor," 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 differ-
ent 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 develop-
ment 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 recent events have given
great importance. Though many parts, even of Dinajpoor,
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
T
274
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
•
the Government made the first attempt at forest conserv-
ancy, 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 Professor (now Sir) 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 im-
provements 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 atten-
tion 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 carryiug forward any undertaking" were
1820]
FOUNDS THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY
275
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 pros-
pectus 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 gentle-
men 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 horti-
culture 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 philanthrop
ist 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 Govern-
ment has made a grant to the Society, which is now
276
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Rs.2400 a year.
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 sixty-
seven years of its existence five thousand of the best men
in India have been its members, of whom five 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 organ-
isation, 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 agri-
culture generally, tea, and forestry. The various Govern-
ments in India have economic museums; and the Govern-
ment of India, under Lord Mayo, established a Revenue
and Agricultural Department. 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
1828]
PAPER MANUFACTURE
277
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
discovery which is fast putting India in the place of China
as a producer.
-a
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 belong-
ing 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 spread-
278
[1832
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
ing 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 conjce, so as to keep the sheets separate. They are after-
wards 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."
In the half century 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
papermaking fibres there. Hence at the Calcutta Exhibi-
tion 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 unsatis-
factory contracts made at home by the India Office. The
neighbouring Bally mills seem to flourish since the aban-
donment 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
1820]
AN ECONOMIC REFORMER
279
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.
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."
He
280
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 indiscrimi-
nately 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 improve-
ment, or even of security for person or property, will at once vanish.
Nothing could be then expected but scenes of rapine, plunder, blood-
shed, 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, gener-
1820]
IMPORTANCE OF EUROPEAN CAPITAL
281
osity, 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 im-
probable.
"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 ruin-
ous, 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 con-
versation, 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 happi-
ness 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 con-
strained them to feel so deep an interest. The fear of all oppres-
sion being out of the question, while it would be so evidently the in-
282
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
terest 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 Mussul-
man system of religion, few things would be more likely to cement
and preserve the connection between both countries than the exist-
ence of such a class of British-born landholders in India."
It is profitable to read this in the light of the events of
the subsequent half-century-of the Duff-Bentinck reforms,
the Sepoy mutiny, the government of the Queen-Empress,
the existence of more than two millions of Christians in
India, the social and commercial development due to the
non-official and official aliens from Great Britain and
America.
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 more frequently rises to 72 per cent.
Native marriage customs, the commercial custom of “ad-
vances," agricultural usage, and our civil procedure com-
bine 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 univer-
sities denied their honourary degrees to all British subjects
who were not of the established churches, Brown Univer-
sity, 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 Linnæan
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
1823] DESTRUCTION OF HIS GARDEN BY A FLOOD 283
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.
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
Dr. Ryland :-
It
"SERAMPORE, 22d 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
284
[1823
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
steps without crutches; yet my strength is sensibly in-
creasing, 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
1831]
DESTRUCTION OF HIS TREES BY A CYCLONE
285
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 pros-
perous 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
286
[1842
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
on the teaching of science in the College, but only on the
theological education of Hindoo converts. "I must con-
fess," 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 intro-
duced 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 esti-
mating 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 advanc-
ing the happiness of India-more especially by the spread
of an improved system of husbandry and gardening-de-
sire to mark, by some permanent record, their sense of his
transcendent worth, by placing a marble bust to his memory

1842]
MARBLE BUST OF CAREY
287
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 sub-
scription, 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 por-
trait, 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."

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 Lord Minto's Government-Carey on the per-
secution 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-Poli-
tical 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 a century ago 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
1783]
CAREY'S RELATION TO THE NEW ERA
289
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 his-
torical. 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 repre-
sented in it an element of permanent healthy nationalisa-
tion 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.
U
290
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
$
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,
He never
aided in this up till 1815 by Andrew Fuller.
set foot in England again, and the influence of his brethren
Ward and Marshman during their visits was largely neu-
tralised by some leaders of their own sect. 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 Edin-
burgh 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 Hal-
dane's splendid self-sacrifice in selling all that he had to
Soon
lead a large Presbyterian mission to Hindostan.
(1797) the London Society became the parent of that of
the Netherlands, and of that which has since become one
of the most extensive in all Christendom, the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The latter,
1836]
INFLUENCE ON MISSIONARY SOCIETIES
291
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 hand-
maid 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 con-
fined 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 mis-
sionary centres formed, or reorganised, in Leipzig (1819),
Berlin (1823), and Bremen (1836).1
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 famil-
iar class of foreign missionary periodicals. The few maga-
zines then existing, like the Evangelical, became filled with
1 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 Propa-
gation 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'idée modèle," etc. "La Société des Anabaptistes a formé pour ses
Missions des Societés," etc.
+
292
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
a new spirit of earnest aggressiveness. In 1796 there
appeared in Edinburgh The Missionary Magazine, “a period-
ical publication intended as a repository of discussion and
intelligence respecting the progress of the Gospel through-
out 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 thou-
sand." 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 Chris-
tians, the writer thus continues:
"The attachment of both the Mohammedans and Hindoos to their an-
cient 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 con-
siderable number who have thrown aside their old superstition, and
make a profession of the Christian religion, he computes that, in the
1797]
INFLUENCE ON MISSIONARY LITERATURE
293
course of his ministry, he has been the instrument of savingly con-
verting 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 crimi-
nality thou canst not be indifferent to its success. Rejoice that so de-
lightful 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 the 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, deter-
mined 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
294
[1796
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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
of missionaries like Duff and Judson, Ellis and Williams,
Moffat and Livingstone, to the home churches, 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 con-
sider the arrival of William Carey in Calcutta to be three
years before! Yet the thirty thousand sprang from the
one, and to-day, not a century after, the thirty thousand
have a vast body of Christians really obedient to the
Master, in so far as, banded together in a hundred and
eighty churches and societies, they have sent out seven
thousand missionaries instead of one or two; they see
thirty-three thousand Asiatics, Africans, and Polynesians
proclaiming the Christ to their countrymen, and their
praying is tested by their giving annually a sum of
£2,400,000, 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 modesty and humility kept him so often
from magnifying his office and glorifying God as the ex-
1800]
HORNE, DOUGLAS OF CAVERS, MARTYN
295
ample 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 mission-
aries, 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
•
•
296
[1811
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pre-
paration, but notwithstanding it will be not less complete.
in all its parts nor less able to resist the injuries of time!"
to Trinity Church.
Henry Martyn died, perhaps the loftiest and most loving
spirit of the men whom Carey drew to India. Son of a
Cornish miner, 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
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 Eng-
lish 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 Gren-
fell 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
1813] HENRY MARTYN AND ALEXANDER STEWART
297
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.
or sectional church, 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 inter-
course and his evening sermon after a season of com-
munion 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.¹ 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, and asking how it could best be
sent. 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.
1 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., chapter i.
298
[1828
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
Next to Andrew Fuller, and in the region of litera-
ture, general culture and eloquence far 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 fervid and 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 more practical intellect
and shrewder common sense never wavered, but inspired
his pen alike in the heat of controversy and in his powerful
essays and criticisms. Writing in 1828, he declared that
the Serampore missionaries "have laboured with the most
earnest assiduity for a quarter of a century (Dr. Carey
much longer) in all manner of undertakings for promoting
Christianity, with such a renunciation of self-interest as
will never be surpassed; that they have conveyed the
oracles of divine truth into so many languages; that they
have watched over diversified missionary operations with
unremitting care; that they have conducted themselves
through many trying and some perilous circumstances with
prudence and fortitude; and that they retain to this hour.
an undiminished zeal to do all that providence shall enable
them in the same good cause." The expenditure of the
Serampore Brotherhood up to that time, leaving out of
account the miscellaneous missionary services, he showed
to have been upwards of £75,000. Dr. Chalmers in
Scotland was as stoutly with Carey and his brethren as
Foster was in England, so that Marshman wrote:-"Thus
two of the greatest and wisest men of England are on our
side, and, what is more, I trust the Lord God is with us.
What Heber thought, alike as man and bishop, his own
loving letter and proposal for "reunion of our churches" in
the next chapter will show.
""
Of all the publicists in the United Kingdom during
Carey's long career the foremost was William Wilberforce;
he was not second even to Charles Grant and his sons.
Defeated in carrying into law the "pious clauses" of the
1813]
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE ON CAREY
299
charter which would have opened India to the Christian
missionary and schoolmaster in 1793, he nevertheless suc-
ceeded 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 aboli-
tion, 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 ignorance and 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 aroused, the Estab-
lished 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 en-
thusiastic character which they imputed to the missionary body. India
hitherto had 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
300
[1813
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 honour-
able station in the college of Fort William, with equal nobleness of
mind he made over all his salary (between £1000 and £1500 per annum)
to the general objects of the mission. By the way, nothing ever gave me
a more lively sense of the low and mercenary standard of your men of
honour, than the manifest effect produced upon the House of Commons
by my stating this last circumstance. It seemed to be the only thing
which moved them.' Dr. Carey had been especially attacked, and ‘a
few days afterwards the member who had made this charge came to
me, and asked me in a manner which in a noted duellist could not be
mistaken, "Pray, Mr. Wilberforce, do you know a Mr. Andrew Fuller,
who has written to desire me to retract the statement which I made
with reference to Dr. Carey?" "Yes," I answered with a smile, "I
know him perfectly, but depend upon it you will make nothing of him
in your way; he is a respectable Baptist minister at Kettering." In
due time there came from India an authoritative contradiction of the
slander. It was sent to me, and for two whole years did I take it in
my pocket to the House of Commons to read it to the House whenever
the author of the accusation should be present; but during that whole
time he never once dared show himself in the House.'
The slanderer was a Mr. Prendergast, who affirmed that
Dr. Carey's conduct had changed so much for the worse
since the departure of Lord Wellesley, that he himself had
seen the missionary on a tub in the streets of Calcutta
haranguing the mob and abusing the religion of the people
in such a way that the police alone saved him from being
killed. So, and for the same object of defeating the
Resolutions on Toleration, Mr. Montgomerie Campbell had
asserted that when Schwartz was in the heat of his dis-
course 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 descrip-
tion 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:
">
1812]
MARQUIS WELLESLEY ON SERAMPORE
301
"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 Com-
mons 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.
>>
Fuller
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.
worked outside of the House as hard as Wilberforce.
eight weeks of the session no fewer than nine hundred
In
302
[1813
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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, with the
approval of Lord Minto. The Ministry had informed the
Court of Directors that they had resolved to permit Euro-
peans to settle in India, yet after five weeks' vacillation
that 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 :-
CC
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 ascer-
tain 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
1813]
INTOLERANCE OF GOVERNMENT
303
and express that Government cannot now overlook any
circumstance which brings such persons to notice. Not-
withstanding 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 pur-
pose. 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
304
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LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Ran-
goon. 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."
(C
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."
"The
Carey had previously written thus to Fuller:—
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
1813]
SYDNEY SMITH'S RATIONAL RELIGION
305
I hope this clause
few excepted-to look at the moon.
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 Com-
mons in 1813, "that the petitions which have loaded our
table have been produced by a burst of momentary enthu-
siasm. While the sun and moon continue to shine in the
firmament so long will this object be pursued with una-
bated 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 antici-
pated 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 sworn foe of every form of
earnest and real 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 pas-
sages of journals written only for the eye of the private
friend. Carey frequently remonstrated against the publi-
city 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's Carey's Piety at Sea," "Hatred
X
306
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 mis-
sionary 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 mus-
cularity, 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 claim-
ing 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 embrac
ing 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.
1809]
""
SOUTHEY ON CAREY
307
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 re-
proach." 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 Euro-
pean 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 estab-
lishment, 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 fermen-
tation has long been over; and that zeal which for this work is the
most needful is, we fear, possessed only by the Methodists.
66
·
Carey and his son have been in Bengal fourteen years, the other
308
[1809
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pro-
gress 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 sacri-
fice. But the convert sought 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-mission-
aries 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
1815]
ANDREW FULLER DIES
309
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 away¹ 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 manage-
ment had been almost ideally perfect. In 1812 the Com-
mittee 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
""
1 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."
310
[1815
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
to his own, and have prevented the troubles that followed-
Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated
a letter to Ryland in which he thus referred to the evan-
gelical 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, effi-
cacious grace through the atonement of my Lord and
Saviour: with this hope I can go into eternity with com-
posure. 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
1815]
SELF-SUPPORTING MISSIONS
311
a missionary committee or church are fellow-workers only
with the men and women abroad, the Serampore Brother-
hood 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, too, 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, cir-
cumspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous
conduct like his will render you a blessing to society.
Brother Carey is greatly respected and beloved by all de-
nominations 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 theologi-
cal 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 Marsh-
man, C.S.I., has written the detailed history of that con-
troversy 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,
312
[1815
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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-propagat-
ing 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 Christlike relief the personality of
William Carey.
At the close of 1814 Dr. Carey had asked Fuller to
pay £50 a year to his father, then in his eightieth year,
and £20 to his (step)mother if she survived the old man.
Protesting that an engraving of his portrait had been
published in violation of the agreement which he had made
with the artist, he agreed to the wish of each of his rela-
tives for a copy.
To these requests Fuller had replied :—
'You should not insist on these things being charged to you,
nor yet your father's £50, nor the books, nor anything neces-
sary 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 in-
dignation 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
1815]
CONTROVERSY FORCED ON THE BROTHERHOOD
313
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 brother-
hood, 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 correspond-
ence fell chiefly to Dr. Marshman. Ward and he succes-
sively visited England, to which the controversy was trans-
ferred, 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 pro-
fessing to carry out the organisation of the Serampore
Brotherhood in other respects. The Committee's contro-
versy lasted sixteen years, and was closed in 1830, after
Ward's death, by Carey and Marshman drawing up a new
trust-deed, in which, having vindicated their position, the
old men made over properties which had cost them £7800
to eleven trustees in England, stipulating only that they
should occupy them rent free till death, and that their
colleagues who were John Marshman and John Mack, of
Edinburgh University-might continue in them for three
years thereafter, paying rent to the Society. Such self-
sacrifice would be pronounced heroic, but it was only the
outcome of a life of self-devotion, marked by the spirit of
Him who spake the Sermon on the Mount, and said to the
first missionaries He sent forth :-"Be wise as serpents,
harmless as doves." The story is completed by the fact
that John Marshman, on his father's death, again paid the
price of as much of the property as the Hoogli had not
swallowed up when the Committee were about to put it in
the market.
314
[1819
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
3
1
Such was Dr. Carey's position in the Christian world
that the Dyer party considered it important for their in-
terest 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 by misrepre-
sentation and suppression of facts, 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 disagree-
able 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 pro-
1819]
THE DEFENCE OF DR. MARSHMAN
315
fusion, 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 pro-
moting 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 who,
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 not have 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 busi-
ness 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.
316
[1819
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 accommo-
dation of visitors who came to see us; but as those who
visited us on business were entertained at Brother Marsh-
man'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 pro-
priety. 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 pro-
perty, 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,-sacri-
fices 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
1819]
REBUKES CALUMNIATORS
317
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.
The
"Brother Marshman retains for the school a French
master, a music master, and a drawing master.
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.
318
[1819
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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, con-
venience, 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.
r
"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 with-
out 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,
1819]
HIS REBUKE OF ENVY
319
but he had for some time previously thereto been a mem-
ber of the church. I perceive plainly that all your objec-
tions 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 Brother
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 deter-
mination 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 ex-
ercise 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 ex-
pended 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 Marsh-
man, 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
320
[1819
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
he left England. I have lived with him ever since his
arrival in India, and can witness to his piety and holy con-
duct. Would they exclude him from the mission? Judge
yourself whether it is comely that a man, who has labori-
ously 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
ག
1819]
INFLUENCE OF THE BROTHERHOOD
321
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 intermin-
able 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.
66
'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 mis-
take, and to be misled by passion, prejudice, and false
Y
322
[1828
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 Seram-
pore 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 con-
trast 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 these persons' exemp-
tion of me from the blame they attach to Brother Marsh-
man 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
1820]
LOYALTY TO HIS BRETHREN
323
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 circum-
stances; but it is my wish that it should remain in all
things essential to the mission as long as I live.
(C
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 :—
66
15th August 1820.-This week we received letters
324
[1828
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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.
(C
'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. In-
deed 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 cen-
sured 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 con-
nected 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
1828]
A TRUE FRIEND
325
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 him-
self unguardedly; his family connection with Mr. Pearce
sufficiently accounts for that. We have long been attacked
in this country-first by Mr. Adam,¹ and afterwards by Dr.
Bryce.2 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 right-
eousness 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.'
¹ The Baptist missionary, who became an Arian, and was afterwards
employed by Lord William Bentinck to report on the actual state of
education in Bengal.
2 The first Indian chaplain of the Church of Scotland, superintend-
ent of stationery and editor of the John Bull.-See Life of Alexander
Duff, D.D.
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 Univer-
sity-The building described by John Marshman-Bishop Middleton
follows The Scottish Free Church and other colleges-Action of
the Danish Government-The royal charter-Visit of Maharaja Serfo-
jee-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-Reasons for giving its Council control of the mis-
sion stations-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 Seram-
pore College.
THE first act of Carey and Marshman when their Committee
took up a position of hostility to their self-denying inde-
pendence, 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
1793]
EDUCATIONAL EVANGELISING
327
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 Seram-
pore. His work among the pundit class, both in Seram-
pore 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 expe-
rience 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,
328
[1816
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 fer-
mentation, 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;'
1813]
INDIA WHEN CHRISTIANISED
329
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 glori-
fied'; the public morals are improved; the language of
Canaan is learnt; benevolent societies are formed; civilis-
ation 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.'
6
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 en-
couragement 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
330
[1813
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
reason, and because the money was to be paid only out of
any surplus, the directors and their friends offered no oppo-
sition. 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 now
flooding the East.
The first result of the liberalism of the charter of 1813
and the generous views of Lord Hastings was the estab-
lishment 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 "Col-
lege 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, philo-
sophy, 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 Brah-
manical classes. While the Government and the Scottish
missionaries have in the university and grant in aid
1

GRONI
UWO
1818]
THE SERAMPORE COLLEGE
331
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, 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 Uni-
versity 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 founding the
Punjab University.
""
Lord Hastings and even Sir John Malcolm took a per-
sonal 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 avoca-
tions" to criticise both the architectural plan of the build-
ing 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, we do not hesi-
tate to declare, 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
332
[1819
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 dimen-
sions 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, corre-
sponded with the breadth of all the other enterprises of the Serampore
missionaries,—the mission, the translations, and the schools. While
Mr. Ward was engaged in making collections for the support of the
institution in England, he wrote to his brethren, 'the buildings you
must raise in India ;' and they determined to respond to the call, and,
if possible, to augment their donation from £2500 to £8000, and to
make a vigorous effort to erect the buildings from their own funds.
Neither the ungenerous suspicion, nor the charge of unfaithfulness,
with which their character was assailed in England, was allowed to
slacken the prosecution of this plan. It was while their reputation
was under an eclipse in England, and the benevolent hesitated to sub-
scribe 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 event-
ually grew under their hands to the sum of £15,000. To the charge
of endeavouring to alienate from the society premises of the value of
£3000, their own gift, they replied by erecting a building at five times
the cost, and vesting it in eleven trustees,-seven besides themselves.
It was thus they vindicated the purity of their motives in their dif-
ferences 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 first to follow Carey in this was Bishop Middleton,
who raised funds to erect the chaste Gothic pile next to
the Botanic Garden, since to him the time appeared "to
have arrived when it is desirable that some missionary
.

E
NATIVE DIVINITY STUDENTS, SERAMPORE COLLEGE
To face page 333.
1819]
KING OF DENMARK GRANTS A CHARTER
333
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,
the General Assembly's Institution, the Cathedral Mission
Divinity School, and the Bhowanipore Institution; in
Bombay the Wilson College, in Madras the Christian
College and Free Church Institution, in Nagpoor the
Hislop College, in Agra St. John's College, and in Lahore
the Church Mission Divinity School, and others, bear
witness to the fruitfulness of the Alma Mater of Seram-
pore.
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. Marsh-
man, accompanied by Christopher Anderson, sailed to
Copenhagen. Raske, the Orientalist, who had visited
Serampore, was in the University there. The vellum
charter was prepared among them, empowering the Col-
lege Council, consisting of the Governor of Serampore and
the Brotherhood, to confer degrees like those of the Uni-
$3
334
[1820
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
versities 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.
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.,¹ it did well, by special resolu-
tion, to express the gratitude of Protestant Christendom
to Denmark for such courageous and continued services
to the first Christian mission from England to India.
It
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
1 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 prepossessors 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.
1820]
BISHOP HEBER AND CAREY
335
avec beaucoup d'intérêt que nous avons appris le mérite qu'en qualité
de membre dirigeant de la Société de la Mission, vous avez acquis,
ainsi que vos co-directeurs, et les effets salutaires que vos louables
travaux ont produits et partout où votre influence a pu atteindre.
Particulièrement informés qu'en votre dite qualité vous avez contribué
à effectuer bien des choses utiles, dont l'établissement à Frédéricsnagore
a à se louer, et voulant vous certifier que nous vous en avons gré,
nous avons chargé le chef du dit établissement,- notre Lieutenant-
Colonel Kraefting, de vous remettre cette lettre ; et en même 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 affectionné
FREDERIC.
"Copenhague, ce 7 Juin 1820.
"Au Docteur et Professeur WILLIAM CAREY,
Membre dirigeant de la Société de la Mission à Frédéricsnagore.”
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 Abbé 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 grander 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 :-
336
[1824
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"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 conscien-
tiously 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 seems 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 dis-
cuss 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 in-
tended, and believe me, with much sincerity, your friend and servant
in Christ,
REGINALD CALCUTTA.
"3d 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 be-
tween 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
1826]
THE COLLEGE AND MISSION
337
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 temper-
ate 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. Marsh-
man, Mr. John Marshman was formally taken into the
Brotherhood. He united with Dr. Carey in writing these
letters to the Committee. They show the progress of the
college and the mission from the first as one independent.
agency, and they close with Carey's appeal to the judg-
ment of posterity.
'SERAMPORE, Jan. 21, 1826.
"DEAR BRETHREN-Our colleague, Dr. Marshman, being about
to visit his native land, after twenty-six years of active missionary
service, we embrace this opportunity of soliciting your attention to the
necessity of some arrangement respecting the stations connected with
Serampore College; and as he is perfectly acquainted with our senti-
ments, and equally anxious with ourselves for the continuance of
mutual harmony, we are enabled to leave the conclusion of any settle-
ment in his hands with entire confidence.
"The missionary stations connected with us, and now associated
Z
338
[1826
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
with the college, amount to ten. It will be in your recollection that
they have from the beginning been supported independently of sub-
scriptions from Europe, and almost exclusively from the proceeds of
our own labour. These stations, however, have been constantly iden-
tified with yours in all your applications for public support, and the
majority of the subscribers to the Baptist Mission have been ignorant
of the fact that we did not participate in the funds thus raised. We
might, indeed, with strict equity, have claimed a share of support for
them out of those donations, for they have in general outnumbered
the other Indian stations; but as we felt a particular pleasure in sup-
porting them ourselves, we have never, till lately, made any solicita-
tion to you on their behalf, which has left one-half of the stations in
India in the entire enjoyment of those funds which were subscribed
towards the maintenance of all. We have not, however, the most
distant idea of censuring this arrangement, for we voluntarily allowed
the claim of our stations to lie dormant ; but, as we are now constrained
to solicit public assistance for those stations, it appears requisite to
state this circumstance, as the ground on which we make our primary
application to you.
،،
'About seven years ago we felt convinced of the necessity of erect-
ing a college for native Christian youth, in order to consolidate our
plans for the spread of gospel truth in India; and, as we despaired of
being able to raise from public subscriptions a sum equal to the expense
of the buildings, we determined to erect them from our own private
funds. Up to the present date they have cost us nearly £14,000, and
the completion of them will require a further sum of about £5000,
which, if we are not enabled to advance from our own purse, the under-
taking 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 con-
tributions. 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 sup-
port, 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
1826]
A DIVINITY FACULTY
339
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 accom-
plishment 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.
"It will strike you at once that such a plan, for the permanence
and increased efficiency of missionary labours, requires the permanent
security of public support. We would therefore apply to you in the
first instance for assistance, partly because these stations have hitherto
contributed to the improvement of your funds, and partly because of
the sincere pleasure it would give us if all the Baptist stations in India
could appear before the public in connection with you. We would
therefore propose the following arrangement :-That you should bring
this plan of operation distinctly before the public, distinguishing the
stations connected with Serampore College from those under your own
guidance and superintendence; that all the intelligence from our
stations be published by you from our Periodical Accounts, of which
we should then send only a few copies to our friends; and that you
should appropriate from the funds raised on this combined publication
£1000 annually to the support of our stations at present, and £1500
eventually, when they so far increase as to need it. It scarcely needs
to be remarked that this plan would leave you annually £7000 for the
support of somewhat more than one moiety of the stations in India
in the Baptist connection. Our reason for desiring that the stations
should be kept distinct in. the same publication is, that, in the event
of the funds thus raised being at any future period inadequate to the
support of both classes of stations, these funds might be left entirely
for the support of your stations, and we might be enabled to apply to
the public in a separate form for supplies, without even the appearance
of any division.
"You will easily perceive that unless permanent support be obtained
we must sacrifice our stations, the fruit of so many years' labour, and
dismiss every prospect of future usefulness-a course which we are
confident would distress you as much as ourselves. We can therefore
leave the determination of the question to your own judgment with
340
[1826
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
perfect safety, only adding that nothing would give us more sincere
pleasure than for our efforts to remain united with yours. But should
you, after maturely weighing the question, discover inconveniences in
this plan, and perceive that greater advantages would accrue to the
cause from our stations forming a distinct claim before the public, we
have requested Dr. Marshman to consult with the friends of religion on
the best means of bringing them forward and raising supplies; and, as
we cannot expect any member of the college to visit England till three
years after Dr. Marshman's return to India, we have pointed out to
him the indispensable necessity of his securing some permanent
arrangement, either with you or with the public, for the support and
increase of our missionary stations before he quit England.
"It may not be intrusive for us to mention the arrangements
respecting the college, to which Dr. Marshman will direct his atten-
tion. As the completion of the buildings requires no public contri-
bution, the sole expense left on the generosity of its friends is that of
its existing establishment. Our subscriptions in India, with what we
receive as the interest of money raised in Britain and America, average
£1000 annually; about £500 more from England would cover every
charge, and secure the efficiency of the institution. Nor shall we
require this aid beyond a limited period, as we are endeavouring to
form a fund here, with a view of presenting it to the college when it is
sufficiently increased to provide perinanently for two professors, which
we calculate will be effected in twelve or fourteen years; and when the
professors and fellows (or tutors) are thus permanently provided for,
we trust that the contributions of the Indian public will be sufficient
for all other expenses of the college. We have therefore requested Dr.
Marshman to aim at the formation of about five corresponding com-
mittees in as many of the principal towns in England, with the hope
of receiving £100 annually from each; and, as the college possesses
a literary as well as a missionary interest, we further trust that the
greater part of this sum may be obtained from among those who are
not in the habit of aiding missionary efforts."
'SERAMPORE, Nov. 15, 1827.
“Dr. Carey, and after him, Dr. Marshman and Mr. Ward, were, as
you know, sent out soon after the formation of the Baptist Missionary
Society, by the Committee, to plant the gospel in India, with this
express stipulation, that they should without delay, make exertions
for their own support, and should receive assistance from the Society
only till they were able thus to support themselves. Within eighteen
months respectively of their arrival, they were enabled to fulfil this
stipulation, and to relinquish all support from England.
Thus was
1827] MISSIONARIES RAISED UP IN THE COUNTRY
341
the pecuniary connection between the two bodies dissolved in the
earliest stage of the mission.
"Though thus disconnected in a pecuniary sense, they were still
bound to the Committee, more especially to Mr. Fuller, by the most
intimate ties which can unite men together, by a common co-operative
interest in one of the most illustrious objects of human pursuit. It
would be idle to institute any comparison between the strength of
union thus created and any other in which pecuniary dependence must
constitute a prominent ingredient. The full and free communion of
soul which characterised the first association between Fuller, Sutcliff,
and Ryland, the three chief men who presided over the Society at
home, and their colleagues in India, was the offspring of those
peculiar circumstances which fall but once within the history of a
society. With the death of Mr. Fuller this bond of union, which
had subsisted for nearly a quarter of a century, was weakened. Subse-
quent events combined, with the death of Dr. Ryland, to dissolve it
altogether.
"It is a fact that no stipulation was made with the Serampore
missionaries regarding the disposal of their private funds. But the
principles of natural equity, which were admitted by both parties, and
which give every free-born man the absolute control of his own pro-
perty, supplied the deficiency. The Society, as a body created to
receive and disburse public subscriptions, could not interfere with
funds not thus received, without departing from the spirit of its insti-
tution. Hence, Mr. Fuller required accounts only of the public sub-
scriptions with which he entrusted us as the corresponding Committee
of the Society; and we confined our annual returns of receipts and
disbursements to these specific sums. As our private income gradually
increased so as to exceed the necessities of the three families, we
expended the surplus in the formation of missionary stations around
We superintended them ourselves, but sent the missionary intel-
ligence from them to the Committee, to be incorporated with the
annual Report of the Society.
us.
"With the multiplication of the stations, the efficiency of mission-
aries raised up in the country became more apparent, and we determined
to bend our attention chiefly to this object. The native Christian
population had also increased, and required increasing care.
We
therefore determined in 1818 to establish a college, which might in its
gradual development provide means for more extensively diffusing
religion and knowledge in Hindostan. Convinced that it would be
difficult to raise funds for the college buildings, we determined to
attempt the erection of them ourselves, and though we were thereby
involved in debt for many years, we have now the happiness of know-
342
[1827
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
ing that about £3000 more will complete the undertaking. We need
scarcely add, that for this sum also we do not intend to apply to the
public. The course of circumstances has thus led us first to the
establishment of means for our own support-then to the employment
of a portion of our surplus income in the extension of the cause by
missionaries raised up in the country-after this, to provide for the
education of native Christian youth-and finally to concentrate every
plan in one institution, in the hope that it might survive the transient
circumstances of our private union.
"Of these 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 pre-
paration 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.
But the prospect of adequately supplying the missionary
exigencies of the country from Europe is altogether hopeless. Nearly
every European missionary has, on an average, cost the public in his
education, outfit, and passage, £700. The first eighteen months of
his residence are necessarily devoted to the acquisition of the language.
If we estimate the expense of that period at £300, a charge of £1000 is
incurred before he can be said to have commenced his missionary career.
After such an expenditure, it will not be found in the records of any
society that more than half the number of the missionaries sent out
are to be found at their post at the close of ten years; so hostile is
this climate to European constitutions.
"The expense of Asiatic missionaries educated at Serampore Col-
lege, during the four years of study, amounts to nearly £200 each,
including their clothes, etc., and their board through the whole year.
Their intuitive knowledge of the language enables them to enter on
their duty without delay; their widows fall back into the society
of their relatives, and require but a slender support. If attacked with
disease, no long sea voyages are required to restore them to health;
and if inefficient as missionaries, they may be severed from the body
with little expense.
Their constitutions are moreover so assimilated
to the climate, that, of ten missionaries thus employed by us, during
the last fifteen years (some of course for a shorter period), we have lost
only one by disease. All that is required to fit them for labour is the
grace of God, and an adequate education, and we were therefore led to
1827]
IDEAL OF NATIVE CHRISTIAN MINISTERS
343
think that we could not render a more acceptable service to the cause
than to assemble in the college every facility for their tuition.
"The education of the increasing body of Native Christians like-
wise, 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 con-
duct 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 con-
verts 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.
66
Subsequently to the adoption of this plan, it appeared desirable
to attach the superintendence of the stations to the college; the
reasons which recommended this arrangement were two. First, pre-
supposing the zeal and piety of the professors, we thought that no
individuals could be better adapted to conduct the work of the mission
than those whose daily employment was so intimately associated with
it; and that, as the body of the missionaries in our connection would
gradually be formed out of those who had pursued their studies at the
college, no men could be better fitted to direct their future labours
than their former tutors, who must necessarily possess a more distinct
knowledge of their several capacities and deficiencies than any other
men. The second reason for taking this step was, our anxious wish
to consolidate and perpetuate the missionary undertaking we had
begun. The peculiar circumstances under which our union, partly
missionary, partly secular, arose, are not likely again to occur. We
were therefore desirous of placing our missionary undertaking during
our own lifetime, on a more permanent basis, by separating it from the
risk which must inevitably have attended its being entwined with the
transactions of secular business. We wished that the missionary
undertaking, which was the great object, should in no respect be de-
pendent on the secular undertakings, the minor object.
No plan
seemed more likely to secure this result, than to associate the profes-
sors of the college with ourselves in our missionary exertions, and
344
[1827
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
gradually to devolve on them, with the lapse of our lives, the respon-
sibility and management of the stations. By the charter the college
has acquired that perpetuity which could never be given to a union in
which an aptitude for secular business must be an essential qualifica-
tion. By this arrangement we hoped to secure the object nearest to
our hearts, the perpetuity and enlargement of the missionary plan,
which has formed the chief business of our lives.
"The plan proposed by the Committee, of severing the stations
from the college, by bestowing the management of them on the body
of resident missionaries in Bengal, or by leaving them with us only
during the lifetime of the two elder missionaries, would completely
have subverted our design. The Committee will forgive our objecting
to the proposal partly on this ground. We cannot bring ourselves to
violate the paternal feelings with which we cherish the prospects of
missionary utility likely to result from our plan. We cannot contem-
plate without dismay the annihilation of those expectations which
give the college its chief value, nor the gloomy prospect that on the
death of two of our number (the one sixty-seven, the other sixty),
everything that was valuable at Serampore should be transplanted to
another soil. These fears were not idle and unfounded. Your pro-
posal would immediately have excluded the professors of the college
and the youngest member of our body, from all share in the manage-
ment of the stations, since they are not officially Baptist missionaries.
If thus excluded during the lifetime of their elder colleagues, it is not
to be expected that they would meet with more favourable treatment
after their death.
"There appears another objection to this proposal. It has been
objected to the college that it was not calculated to promote the mis-
sionary undertaking. We have invariably maintained that it was
eminently adapted to promote that great work, and have employed
every effort to bring it to bear directly on it. Were we then to sub-
scribe to a measure which would remove out of our possession the
means of rendering the college efficient for this work, we should give
validity to the taunts of our adversaries, and appear weak, incon-
sistent, and contemptible in the eyes of the Christian world. The last,
but not the least objection to this proposal is, the uncertainty to
which it would expose the missionary establishment. For the welfare
of the stations in connection with us we are responsible. We are
responsible to a higher tribunal than an assembly of subscribers, and
if we were to place their welfare in any degree of risk, we should be
guilty of a dereliction of duty, for which the highest human approba-
tion could not compensate. Our experience of the past is perhaps
superior to yours, since it has been acquired by suffering. That
1827]
HIS APPEAL TO POSTERITY
345
experience forbids us to hope that if at any future period the direction
of the stations be left open as a prize for competition, there can be any
prospect of harmony. It is even possible that discussions similar to
those which have embittered the last ten years may be renewed. In
this case the cause would be the first and greatest sufferer; and we
cannot reconcile it with the tenor of our responsibility to leave our
missionary undertaking on so dangerous a footing.
"On these grounds we are constrained to withhold our assent
from your last proposal to Dr. Marshman, and to give our cordial
concurrence to the arrangements he has made. Your first proposal
(to allow us a tenth of your income) did not compromise the inde-
pendence of our missionary stations, but left the management of
them with us, we therefore agreed to it. When Dr. Marshman
requested from you an addition of funds, you proposed to take them
away from Serampore after the death of the two elder missionaries.
IVe therefore withhold our assent from this plan. We are fully aware
of the pecuniary risk which we incur. In fact, the risk is entirely on
our side.
You have five missionary stations on the continent of India,
and twelve European and Asiatic missionaries on your funds; we have
ten missionary stations, and from twenty-five to twenty-eight Euro-
pean, Asiatic, and Native missionaries dependent on us for support.
The prospect of our being embarrassed for funds is therefore much
more immediate than yours. But with every pecuniary disadvantage
against us, we prefer the adoption of a plan which secures a certain
tangible benefit, with the blessing of peace, to one which contains
within itself the seeds of discord and dissolution.
"The irreconcilable difference of our plans of action having thus
rendered a separation inevitable, we are of course anxious to part on
friendly terms, and to secure the esteem, even though we should not
enjoy the co-operation, of all our brethren. We entreat only for that
measure of candour, in forming a judgment of our conduct, which every
man is permitted to expect from his neighbour. If we were to say that
every plan sketched out and every document penned here, during the
last twenty-seven years, has been free from imperfection, we should
justly appear ridiculous. Like every other body of men associated in
a new undertaking of some difficulty, we have been constrained to fol-
low that judgment which appeared most correct. When the lapse of
time or the course of circumstances has discovered the error of that
judgment we have not scrupled to adopt a different line of conduct.
Thus in 1805 Mr. Ward drew up his ideas of missionary economy, in
the 'agreement' respecting the way in which we thought missionaries
ought to act in money matters, and obtained the concurrence and
signature of his brethren to it; in less than a year it was found im-
346
[1827
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
practicable, and was consigned to oblivion. We were no parties to its
publication, from which we never reaped a farthing of benefit; and if
we could have foreseen the unfair use which has been made of it to our
disparagement, we should certainly have sent home for publication a
formal abrogation of it in 1806.
"It was superseded in 1808 by another arrangement, when the out-
stations were formed. We then wrote to our brethren to say that, in
reference to our own money, we intended to make several appropriations
and to present the surplus to the Society. Mr. Fuller never acted on
this gift, nor suffered it to appear in the Annual Accounts of the
Society, convinced, as he informed us, that we were more competent to
manage our own affairs than the Society at home. When, upon his
death, there arose a new Committee, almost entirely ignorant of the
state of affairs, they appeared to us to claim as a right what we had
intended to present, and their missionaries appeared ready to give effect
to this claim. We therefore determined to pursue a new line of con-
duct. Withdrawing nothing of what we had already given, we
resolved to give no more. An idea has been propagated that we
seized on the property of the Society and then declared ourselves inde-
pendent. It is unfounded. The balance of money belonging to the
Society in our hands, Rs. 25,927, 2as. 8p. (£3249: 17: 6), we paid over
to Messrs. Alexander and Co. on the 15th of July 1817. Respecting
our own property, our letter of 1817 informed you that, when all our
obligations should be discharged, we should have nothing left, except
the premises, the right of property in which is still vested in the
Society. Our determination, therefore, had reference to the future, not
to the past. But when we resolved that our future income should be
free and unfettered, we did not intend to desert the cause. During the
last ten years of entire independence the missionary cause has received
from the product of our labour, in the erection of the college buildings,
in the support of stations and schools, and in the printing of tracts,
much more than £23,000. The unceasing calumny with which we
have been assailed, for what has been called 'our declaration of inde-
pendence' (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. If the whole amount of
public money ever expended in any shape by the Society on the three
senior missionaries never exceeded £1500, and if this sum has been
repaid with far more than a twenty-fold addition, is not that judg-
ment harsh which condemns us? If, when we found it necessary for our
own security ten years ago to dissolve whatever pecuniary connection
1827]
EDUCATION OF NATIVE WOMEN
347
was supposed to subsist between us and the Society, we conscientiously
respected every preceding gift, and simply determined that we would
not give our future income to a body we knew not and who knew us
not, what individual would not have acted in the same manner under
similar circumstances?
"We fervently join in the prayer with which your Report concludes,
that it may please God to overrule this event, however undesirable in
itself, to the furtherance of the Gospel of his Son."
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 posi-
tion of being the first to establish practically the principle
of the Grant in Aid system. Had his Nonconformist suc-
cessors followed him in this, with the same breadth of view
and clear distinction between the duty of aiding the secular
1 What Hannah Marshman, and for a time Charlotte Emilia Carey,
had done for the education of the girls and women of Bengal may be
imagined from this paragraph in the Brief Memoir of the Brother-
hood, published in London in 1827:-
"The education of females, till within these few years, had never
been attempted; and not a few were disposed to regard the experiment
as one which must prove altogether vain. This, however, like various
other prognostications respecting India, was a great mistake. In
Serampore and its vicinity there are at present fourteen schools com-
posed entirely of Hindoo females, among which are the Liverpool and
Chatham, the Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Stirling and Dunfermline
schools, etc. Besides these, one is taught at Benares, another at
Allahabad, a third in Beerbhoom, three at Chittagong, and seven at
Dacca; in the whole twenty-seven schools, with 554 pupils on the lists.
One of these in the vicinity of Serampore may be regarded as an un-
precedented thing; an adult female school, in which the women who
have entered have shown themselves quite desirous to receive instruc-
tion. The daughters of Mohammedans, as well as Hindoos, indeed,
receive instruction with evident delight; and into these schools,
whether for boys or girls, the sacred Scriptures are freely admitted."
348
[1826
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 late
Lord Halifax in the Educational Despatch of 1854, to
sanction the system of national education for the multi-
farious 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 Cal-
cutta School Book and School Society, and had thus been
relieved of some of the schools. Government at once paid
the debt, repaired the building, and continued to give an
annual grant of £240 for many years. John Marshman
did not think it necessary "to defend Dr. Carey from the
charge of treason to the principles of dissent in having thus
solicited and accepted aid from the state for an educational
establishment; the repudiation of that aid is a modern addi-
tion to those principles." He tells us that "when conver-
sation 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. At a time when "missionaryism" threatens,
in some cases, to drag down to a lower level the noblest
form of disinterestedness which this or any century has
seen, the letter has its lessons:
.1
1818]
ECONOMICS OF INDIA MISSIONS
349
"MY DEAR WILLIAM-Yours of the 3d instant I have
received, and must say that it has filled me with distress.
I do not know what the allowance of 200 rupees includes,
nor how much is allotted for particular things; but it
appears that Rs.142: 2 is expended upon your private
expenses, viz. 78: 2 on table expenses, and 64 on servants.
Now neither Lawson nor Eustace have more than 140
rupees for their allowance, separate from house rent, for
which 80 rupees each is allowed, and I believe all the
brethren are on that, or a lower allowance, Brother Yates
excepted, who chooses for himself. I cannot therefore
make an application for more with any face.
Indeed we
have no power to add or diminish salaries, though the
Society would agree to our doing so if we showed good
reasons for it. I believe the allowances of the missionaries
from the London Society are about the same, or rather
less-viz. £200 sterling, or 132 rupees a month, besides
extra expenses; so that your income, taking it at 140
rupees a month, is quite equal to that of any other mis-
sionary. 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 farm-
yard, and yet my expenses bore no proportion to yours.
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 great.
I
"I expect Felix every hour at Calcutta. I am greatly
distressed to know what is to be done with him. He writes
Jonathan that the Raja of Tippera has offered him 300
rupees a month, but that he has refused it, and requires
350
[1825
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
500. This is certainly a most thoughtless step, for places
of 300 rupees monthly are not to be met with every day.
In England it would be a good fortune. If he comes to
Calcutta he must expect to be cast into prison for debt.
Jonathan thinks that if his creditors will have patience he
can get him a situation in an attorney's office. But Felix
will never confine himself from eight in the morning till
four in the evening at a desk. If he be but truly on the
Lord's side I have no doubt but he will be provided for;
but I am full of anxiety.
"Of Jabez I have heard nothing for a long time past.
I have been disabled from writing by a bad hand, which is
now through mercy well; but I have for the last week
been unable to bend on account of a violent pain at the
bottom of my back, which is
morbus still awfully prevails.
whenever the call may come. I am your affectionate
father,
still very bad.
May we all be
The cholera
found ready
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 com-
pleteness 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
1825]
((
MY HEART IS WEDDED TO INDIA
351
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; adminis-
tered the Lord's 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. Wher-
ever 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 general
1
352
[1832
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
tion 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 mis-
sionary, 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 Burisal, 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 Seram-
pore Brotherhood were the first to use as a sanitarium in
the hot season. For this he gave up £60 of his Govern-
ment 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 Cal-
vinists, who have made it the centre of extensive and suc-
cessful operations. Thus the influence of his middle age
and old age in the Colleges of Fort William and of Seram-
pore combined to make the missionary patriarch the father
of two bands-that of the Society and that of the Brother-
hood.
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
1834-1883]
THE SERAMPORE COLLEGE
353
faculty as part of an Arts and Science College,¹ in which
the converts study side by side with their inquiring country-
men, 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 Free
Church of Scotland has, alike in India 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, trans-`
ferred the mission to the Society under the Rev. 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 in all things, save that, when Ser-
ampore became one of the colleges of the Calcutta Uni-
versity, the Society would not apply for the same grant in
aid from Government which other Nonconformist colleges
enjoy.
The result was that after Mr. Trafford's retirement the
college of Carey and Marshman ceased with the year 1883,
and in the same building a purely native Christian Train-
1
¹ In 1834, the year Carey died, there were in the college ten Euro-
pean 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, Ben-
gali, 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 indis-
pensable object."
2 A
354
[1883
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
ing Institution took its place. There, however, the many
visitors from Christendom still find the library and museum;
the bibles, grammars, and dictionaries; the natural history'
collections, and the Oriental MSS.; the Danish charter, the
royal 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 LAST DAYS
1830-1834
The college and mission stripped of all their funds-Failure of the six
firms for sixteen millions-Carey's official income reduced from £1560
to £600-His Thoughts and Appeal published in England-His vigour
at seventy-Last revision of the Bengali Bible-Final edition of the
Bengali New Testament-Carey rejoices in the reforms of Lord William
Bentinck's Government-In the emancipation of the slaves—Carey
sketched by his younger contemporaries-His latest letters and last
message to Christendom-Visits of Lady William Bentinck and
Bishop Daniel Wilson-Marshman's affection and promise as to the
garden-The English mail brings glad news a fortnight before his
death-His last Sabbath-He dies-Is buried-His tomb among his
converts-His will-The Indian press on his poverty and disinterested-
ness-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 Dinajpoor,
not in the apprehensions twice excited by official intoler-
ance, 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
356
[1830
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 suc-
cession 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,
1833]
HIS TRUST IN GOD
357
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, nephew 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 commu-
nicated 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 Leech-
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. Marsh-
man 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 rela-
tives 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.”
man;
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 levée. 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 draw-
ing-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 conse-
358
[1830
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
The
quences of his weak predecessor's administration.
College of Fort William had to be sacrificed. Metcalfe
and Bayley, Carey's old students whom he had perma-
nently 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 expression to his feelings. It was indeed.
affecting to see these good old men, the fathers of the mis-
sion, entreating with tears that God would not forsake
them now gray 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 him-
self 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 circum-
stances 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 can-
not, I ought not to be indifferent about the permanency of
this work, and cannot therefore view the exultation ex-
pressed at the prospect of our resources being crippled other-
wise than being of a character too satanic to be long
persisted in by any man who has the love of God in his
heart."
1830]
HIS FAITH AND VIGOUR AT SEVENTY
359
The appeal to all Christians for "a few hundred pounds
per annum" for the mission stations closed thus: "But a
few years have passed away since the Protestant world was
awakened to missionary effort. Since that time the annual
revenues collected for this object have grown to the then
unthought-of sum of £400,000. And is it unreasonable
to expect that some unnoticeable portion of this should be
intrusted to him who was amongst the first to move in this
enterprise and to his colleagues?" The Brotherhood had
hardly despatched this appeal to England with the sentence,
Our present incomes even are uncertain," when the shears
of financial reduction cut off Dr. Carey's office of Bengali
translator to Government, which for eight years had yielded
him Rs.300 a month. But such was his faith this final
stroke called forth only an expression of regret that he
must reduce his contributions to the missionary cause by
so much. He was a wonder to his colleagues, who wrote
of him: "Though thus reduced in his circumstances the
good man, about to enter on his seventieth year, is as cheer-
ful 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 Ben-
gali 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
threescore years and ten, and I am now only three months
short of that age, and repeated bilious attacks have weak-
ened 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
360
[1830
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
now."
year so lively, as free from the infirmities of age, so in-
teresting in the pulpit, so completely conversible as he is
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 edi-
tion 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 Seram-
pore, 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.
The
He had other sources of saintly pleasure as he lay medi-
tating on the Word; and praising God for His goodness to
the college and the mission stations increased to nineteen
by young 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 mis-
sionary had prayed and preached and published.
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 judi-
cial courts, and the hope of rising to posts of honourable
distinction in their native land." The Hindoo law of in-
heritance which the Regulating Act of Parliament had so
covered that it was used to deprive courts and Christianity
:
{
1
1830]
SKETCHED BY HIS SON
361
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 Feb-
ruary 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 depart-
ment, 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 watch-
men 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 con-
tinued 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 resolu-
tion 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
362
[1830
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 oppor-
tunities 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 unseason-
able 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
1830]
SKETCHED BY LESLIE
363
the English people, for which he had prayed daily for fifty
years.
We have many sketches of the Father of English Mis-
sions 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 con-
version 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
what 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
364
[1830
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
where he died, is seen to the right of the picture, partly
shadowed by a small teak-tree. It 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. The white front
shows the upper verandah where 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 depu-
tations. Dr. Carey sent his boat for them, and in the
absence of her husband in England, Mrs. Marshman enter-
tained 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 inter-
esting 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 Ser-
ampore. We have elsewhere¹ 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
1
¹ Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., 1879.

CAREY'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE
To face page 364.
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:
1832]
VISITED BY ALEXANDER DUFF
365
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 gray,
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.
66
Among those who visited him in his last illness was Alexander
Duff, the Scotch 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 beart that he never forgot.
"'1
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 comfort-
able 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
1 William Carcy, by James Culross, D.D., 1881.
366
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 con-
nected, and those also which we as individuals are called to bear.
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."
At
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
1834]
WAITING FOR THE SUMMONS
367
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 imagina-
tion, 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 colour-
less face, filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared as then listen-
ing 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
368
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 pre-
vailing sin, and to that are now added a number of avoca-
tions 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 dis-
honour 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
1833]
HIS LAST LETTERS
369
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, which we have appended to his portrait :—
"MY DEAR JONATHAN-I congratulate you upon the
good news you have received. But am sorry Lucy con-
tinues 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 affec-
tionate 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
2 B
370
[1833
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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.
"3d 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 at-
tempted great things?
He had had a chair fixed in a small platform, con-
structed 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
1833] VISITED BY LADY BENTINCK AND BISHOP WILSON 371
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." 1
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 the Bar-
rackpore summer house 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 won-
derful 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 articu-
late more than a word or two, but expressing by his joyful
1 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.
372
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
On
features union in prayer and interest in conversation.
the 22d May the English mail arrived with gladdening
intelligence from Mr. Hope-God's people were praying
and giving anew for the mission. Especially was his own
latest station of Cherra-poonjee remembered. As he was
told that a lady, anonymously, had offered £500 for that
mission, £500 for the college, £500 for the translations,
and £100 for the mission generally, he raised his emaci-
ated hands to heaven and murmured his 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 good-
ness, 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 per-
mit 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 imme-
diately hastened home, through the college in which he has
1834]
HE DIES
373
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 Met-
calfe and the Bishop wrote very feelingly in reply. Lady
Bentinck sent the Rev. Mr. Fisher to represent the Gover-
nor-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 ad-
dressed 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
1
374
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
"Salvation by
hymn was sung, Paritran Christer Morone,
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 monu-
ment 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 com-
plaining because of the absence of stone, or brick, or inscrip-
tion 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
1
·

To face page 375.
ERD
CAREY'S TOMB, SERAMPORE
1834]
HIS WILL
375
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 three 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 after-
wards 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 dis-
claim 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 sup-
posed 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
376
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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 mis-
sionary whose childlike humility and sincerity, patriotism
and learning, had long made India proud of him. After
giving himself, William Carey had died so poor that his
books had to be sold to provide £187: 10s. for one of his
sons. One writer asserted that this man had contributed
"sixteen lakhs of rupees" to the cause of Christ while con-
nected with the Serampore Mission, and the statement was
everywhere repeated. Dr. Marshman thereupon published
the actual facts, “as no one would have felt greater
abhorrence of such an attempt to impose on the Christian
public than Dr. Carey himself, had he been living." At a
time when the old Sicca Rupee was worth half a crown,
Carey received, in the thirty-four and a half years of his
residence at Serampore, from the date of his appointment.
to the College of Fort William, £45,000.¹ Of this he spent
£7500 on his Botanic Garden in that period. If accuracy
is of any value in such a question, which has little more.
than a curious biographical interest, then we must add the
seven years previous to 1801, and we shall find that the
shoemaker of Hackleton received in all for himself and his
family £600 from the Society which he called into existence,
and which sent him forth, while he spent on the Christiani-
sation and civilisation of India £1625 received as a manu-
facturer of indigo; and £45,000 as Professor of Sanskrit,
1 "From May 1801 to June 1807, inclusive, as Teacher of
Bengali and Sanskrit, 74 months at 500 rupees
monthly
From 1st July 1807 to 31st May 1830, as Professor of
ditto, at 1000 rupees monthly
Sa. Rs.
37,000
•
2,75,000
From 23d Oct. to July 1830, inclusive, 300 rupees monthly,
as Translator of Government Regulations
From 1st July 1830 to 31st May 1834, a pension of
500 rupees monthly
24,600
23,500
"Sicca Rupees
3,60,100"
1834]
HIS SELF-SACRIFICE
377
Bengali, and Marathi, and Bengali Translator to Govern-
ment, or £46,625 in all.
"It is possible," wrote Dr. Marshman, "that if, instead
of thus living to God and his cause with his brethren at
Serampore, Dr. Carey had, like the other professors in the
college, lived in Calcutta wholly for himself and his family,
he might have laid by for them a lakh of rupees in the
thirty years he was employed by Government, and had he
been very parsimonious, possibly a lakh and a half. But
who that contrasts the pleasures of such a life with those
Dr. Carey enjoyed in promoting with his own funds every
plan likely to plant Christianity among the natives around
him, without having to consult any one in thus doing, but
his two brethren of one heart with him, who contributed as
much as himself to the Redeemer's cause, and the fruit of
which he saw before his death in Twenty-six Gospel Churches
planted in India within a surface of about eight hundred
miles, and above Forty labouring brethren raised up on the
spot amidst them, would not prefer the latter? What
must have been the feelings on a deathbed of a man who
had lived wholly to himself, compared with the joyous
tranquillity which filled Carey's soul in the prospect of
entering into the joy of his Lord, and above all with what
he felt when, a few days before his decease, he said to hist
companion in labour for thirty-four years: 'I have no
fears; I have no doubts; I have not a wish left unsatis-
fied.'
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 Chris-
topher 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 éloges 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
378
[1834
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
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, scholar-
ship, and self-devotion, John Wilson, thus wrote:-
In-
"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.
deed his spirit, his life, and his labours, were truly apos-
tolic. . . . 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 out-
lived 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 unedu-
cated, 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
1834]
HIS PLACE IN HISTORY
379
of Christendom. The £13:26 of Kettering became
£400,000 before he died, and is now £2,400,000 a year.
The one ordained English missionary is now a band of
7000 men and women sent out by a hundred and eighty
agencies of the Reformed Churches. The solitary converts,
each with no influence on his people, or country, or gene-
ration, are now two-thirds of a million in India alone, and
in all the lands outside of Christendom three millions, of
whom thirty-three thousand are missionaries to their own
countrymen, and many are leaders of the native commu-
nities. Since the first edition of the Bengali New Testa-
ment appeared at the beginning of the century 220 millions
of copies of the Holy Scriptures have been printed, of
which one-half are in 340 of the non-English tongues of
the world. The Bengali School of Mudnabati, the Chris-
tian 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 four hundred
thousand 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 thus commemorated—
"Not sedentary all; there are who roam
To scatter seeds of Life on barbarous shores."
1847. "Aug. 30th-RYDE.-Reading Missionary Enter-
prises 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, re-
called William Carey, eight years after his death, as
"wielding a power to which all difficulties yielded, but
380
[1825-1842
LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY
that power noiseless as a law of nature; great in concep-
tion 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 East-
ern world in as many languages, perhaps, as 'the cloven
tongues of fire' represented; to be remembered and blessed
as long as Ganges rolls!"
66
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 facul-
ties, 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 indi-
vidual 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 appropri-
ately embodied in the College for natives at Serampore,
and in the Lall Bazaar chapel and Benevolent Institution
for the poor of Calcutta. The Church of England, which
he left, like John Wesley, has recently allowed E. S.
Robinson, Esq., of Bristol, to place an inscription, on brass,
1884]
FATHER OF THE SECOND REFORMATION
381
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 civili-
sation of the modern world by the English-speaking races
a Christian force.¹ 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 great-
est 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; Wiclif 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.
1 The Evangelical Succession. Third Series. Edinburgh, Macniven
and Wallace, 1884.
:
DAULAT
Senior Avis
RAM
PREM
me Court,
Waverly,
Stala

ABRAHAM, 76, 378
Adam, John, 325
Aden Mission, 207
Afghans, 180, 231
Agra, 145
INDEX
Agricultural Society of India, 274
Aitchison, Sir C., 150, 331
Aldeen, 169
Alexander and Co., 356
Alexander, Bishop, 10
Allahabad, 149
Althorp Library, 225
Amboyna, 156
America and missions, 153, 239, 291
Anastatosantes, 37
Anderson, Christopher, 230, 258,
322, 333, 366
T., 263
Anker, Mr., 163
Annianus, 10
Anstruther, Sir John, 205
Arab Mission, 207
Asia, its missionary wants, 169
Asiatic Society of Bengal, 205
Assamese, 229
Bandel, 72
Baptist Missionary Societies, 45, 99,
228, 380
Baptists, 41, 153
Barlow, Sir George, 194, 255
Basu, Ram, 71, 75, 197, 244
Bayley, W. B., 208, 358
Beddome, B., 47
Bell, Dr., of Madras, 131
Benares, 149
Benevolent Institution, the, 134
Bengal, 59, 292
Bengali, 76, 87, 166, 197, 221, 245,
350
Bentinck, Lord W., 59, 247, 289,
357, 360, 371
Bentley, 335
Bernard, Sir C., 150
Bhagavat-Geeta, The, 191
Bhooteas, 92
Bhowanipore Institution, 333
Bible Society, 211, 234, 291
Bible translation, 87, 151, 197, 212
Bidpai's Fables, 207
Bie, Colonel, 106
Association for Propagation of the Bird, R. M. and W., 209
Faith, 291
Assye, 230
Augustine, 12
of Canterbury, 176
Ava, 233
BABA BOODEN, 277
Bacon, the sculptor, 67
Baeda, 226
Baillie, Lieut. J., 194
Balasore, 57
Bishop's College, 332
Black Hole of Calcutta, 67, 73
Boehme, 10
Bogue, Rev. Dr., 100, 293
Boniface, St., 242
Boston of Duns, 39
Botanic Garden, 73, 263, 276
Boyle, Robert, 38
Christian Faith Society, 38
Brainerd, 35, 279
Brandis, Sir D., 267, 274

384
INDEX
Bristol College, 15, 46
Brotherhood of Serampore, 111
Brown, civilian, 106
Rev. D., 69, 74, 169
University, 282
Browning the poet, 24
Brunsdon, 102, 109
Bryce, Rev. Dr., 325
Buchanan, Claudius, 68, 175
Dr. Francis, 205, 263
Buddha, 116, 228
Bunyan, 1, 12
Burial, first native Christian, 129
Burke, 68
Burma, 150, 233
CALCUTTA, 58, 67, 71, 140
Calico, 81
Calvinism, 41
Campbell, John, 293
Canning, Captain, 152, 180
Capital in India, 280
Carey, the name, 2
the Peers, 2
a
Charlotte Emilia, 163, 186,
317, 347
Felix, 54, 121, 150, 180, 233,
244, 349
Henry, the poet, 3
Jabez, 146, 155, 180, 324
Jonathan, 179, 361, 369
Mary, 5, 16
Mrs., and the Black Hole, 73
William, 178, 349
CAREY, WILLIAM, birth, 1; parent-
age, 3; childhood, 5; reading, 8;
shoemaker's apprentice, 9;
conversion, 13; baptism, 15;
preaches, 17; his "college," 18;
linguistic power, 21; poverty, 25;
fired with the missionary idea,
27; his Enquiry, 29; at Leices-
ter, 43; his great sermon, 44;
set apart as missionary, 51; the
voyage, 56; in Bengal, 70; Bible
translation, 87; in Dinajpoor, 80;
in Serampore, 106; first native
convert, 115; a missionary organ-
iser, 143; native church, 148;
sends Mission to Burma, 150; a
gentleman, 161; marries the Lady
Rumohr, 163; portrait, 178;
professor of Bengali, 194; and
of Sanskrit, 197; oration before
Lord Wellesley, 200; translates
the Ramayana, 205; influence on
men, 208; his Bible translation,
212; on destruction of the press,
238; gave literary form to Ben-
gali, 242; Friend of India, 245;
stops infanticide and voluntary
drowning, 249; action against
suttee, 249; against Jaganath,
254; against the Charak, 255;
for lepers, 256; for slaves, 257;
as a naturalist, 260; chiefly a
botanist, 263; the daisy, 269;
founds the Agricultural Society,
274; papermaker, 277; on the
political future of India, 280; his
bust, 287; relation to new era,
289; influence on others, 291;
opinion of Wilberforce, 299; on
Government intolerance, 302;
Edinburgh and Quarterly Re-
views, 305; Dyer controversy,
311; as an educator, 326; Ser-
ampore College, 330; letter from
King Frederic VI., 334; corre-
spondence with Heber, 335;
appeals to posterity, 346; on
mission economics, 349; on evan-
gelising by education, 352; his
trust in God, 357; sketched by
contemporaries, 361; last letters,
369; he dies, 372; his will, 375;
estimates of his career, 377
Carlyle, T., 10
Cartridges, mutiny, 219
Castell, W., 37
Castlereagh, Lord, 302
Cathedral Mission College, 333
Cecil, Rev. R., 102
Ceylon, 152, 198
Chaitanya, 116, 242
Chalmers, Thomas, 298
Chamberlain, 135, 149
Chambers, Justice, 69
Charak abuse, 255
Charters, E. I. Co.'s, 63, 330
Chater, Rev., 13, 152, 181
Cherra-poonjee, 352
Chinnery, 276
Clarkson, 2
Cleghorn, Dr., 267, 274
Cleveland, Augustus, 106
Clive, 58, 67, 81, 193
Coast Mission, 66
Colebrooke, Colonel, 215
INDEX
Orientalist, 105, 144, 190, 302
Coleridge, 10
Columba, St., 226
Combaconum, 130
Conjeveram, 255
Cook, Captain, 7, 49
Cornwallis, 59
Corrie, Bishop, 170, 175
Cotton, Bishop, 199
Courtenhall, 37
Coverdale, 223
Cowper the poet, 1, 24, 258
Cox, Dr. F. A., 380
Creighton of Malda, 132
Cromwell, 37
Crucifixion, 152
Cunninghame of Lainshaw, 92
Cuttak, 228
Cutwa, 185
Cyclone of 1831, 285
DACCA, 226
Daisy, 268
Dalhousie, Marquis of, 192, 274
Damoodar River, 282
Danegelt, 2
Darjeeling, 94
Dass, Guneshan, 69
Delessert, M., 266
Denham, Rev. W. H., 353
Denmark and missions, 54, 103, 260,
333
Des Granges, missionary, 171
Dinajpoor, 83
Doddridge, 1, 224
Dodds, Captain, 231
Douglas of Cavers, 295
Doveton College, 133
Dravidian translations, 231
Dubois, Abbé, 335
348, 361, 364
EARLS Barton, 18
385
East India Company, 63, 80, 138
Edinburgh Review, 305
Edmonstone, H. B., 194
Education and missions, 90, 130,
136, 227, 348, 352
Educational Despatch of 1854, 348
Edward III., 242
Edwardes, Sir H., 231
Edwards, Jonathan, 39
Eliot, George, 12
John, 35
Eliot Tracts, 37
Ellerton, Mrs., 175
English in education, 136, 242, 327
Erasmus, 37, 211
Erskine, Rev. Dr., 22, 47
Eurasians, 133
Ewing, Greville, 100, 293
FALCONER, 263
Falkland, 2
Farrar, Dr., 47
Fernandez, Ignatius, 86, 183
Forestry, 273
Forsyth, missionary, 103
Fort William College, 192, 199
Foster, John, 298
Fountain, Rev. J., 96, 109
Fox, George, 1, 10
Francis, Philip, 68
Franke, 66, 99
Free Church of Scotland, 353
Friedrich of Denmark, 66, 334
Friend of India, newspaper, 164,
237, 245, 353
magazine, 246
Friends, Society of, 10, 38
Fuller, Andrew, 17, 40, 99, 299,
309
GAROS, the, 94
Garrett, Mr., 352, 357
Gentleman defined by Carey, 157,
161
Duff, Alexander, 59, 199, 227, 289, George III., 225
College, 333
Dundas, 61
Durand, Sir H., 150
Dutch missions, 160
Dyer, Rev. J., 311
Ghat murders, 256
Ghospara sect, 116
Gilchrist, Dr., 194, 215
Glenelg, Lord, 255
Gogerly, Mr., 367
Gokool, 119
2 C
386
INDEX
Golook, 126
Goojarati, 216
Government House, Calcutta, 199
Grant, Charles, 19, 48, 102, 335
Sir J. P., 286
the missionary, 102, 109
Grant-in-aid system, 347
Greenock, 239
Gregory I., 176
Greig, Peter, 102
Grenfell, Lydia, 296
Griffith, Dr., 263
Guericke, 66
Guthrie, T., 11
HACKLETON, 8, 18
Haileybury College, 203
Haldanes, the, 101, 290
Halhed, 190
Halifax, Lord, 348
Hall, R., the elder, 15
the younger, 43, 298, 380
Hamilton, Dr. R. W., 379
Hare, Dr., 167, 177
JAGGANATH, 124, 228, 254
Jannagur village, 124
Java, 156
Jeffrey, Francis, 306
Jenkins, R., 208
Jetter, Mr., missionary, 284
Jews, 96
Jeymooni, 121
Jochanan, Rabbi, 10
Johns, Dr., 302,374
Johnson, Samuel, 10, 38
Jonah, 137
Jones, Sir W., 22, 190, 292
Jubilee at Kettering, 47
hymn, 98
Judson, Ann, 153
Dr., 101, 150, 153, 291, 351
KABEER, 116
Kalilah and Dimnah, 207
Karens, 153
Kay, Rev. Dr., 333
Keith-Falconer, Ion, 207
Kettering, 25, 45, 51
Hastings, Marquis of, 156, 245, 275, Khasi, 229
331, 370
Warren, 58, 68, 190, 279
Havelock, Sir H., 360
Hawaii, 49
Haweis, Rev. T., 100
Heber, 335
190
Hedaya, the,
Henderson, Alexander, 38
Hey, Dr. W., 235
Heyne, Dr., 69
Hill, Rev. M., 373
Hindi, 230
Hindoos, 59, 63
Hislop College, 333
Hitopadesa, the, 207
Hodgson, Brian H., 208
Hogg, Reynold, 46
Home, artist, 178
Hoogli district, 107
Hope, S., 357
Horne, Melville, 295
Hough of Burma, 154
Hurdwâr, 232
Hymns, 98, 99, 118
INDIGO, 81
Infanticide, 249
Islam, 116, 246
Kiernander, 67
Kishore, Gunga, 243
Konkan, 229
Kyd, Col. A., 263
LACROIX, Rev. Mr., 373
Lahore Divinity School, 333
University, 331
Lake, Lord, 250
Lall Bazaar Chapel, 141
Lancaster, educationist, 131
Land revenue, 60, 280
Law, William, 10, 14
Lawrence, John, 173, 209, 257
Lawrences, the, 69
Leechman, Mr., 353, 366
Leibniz, 189
Leicester, 43, 51
Lepchas, the, 94
Lepers, 256
Leslie, Rev. J., 363
Leyden, John, 177, 233
Livingstone, David, 72
London Missionary Society, 100,
290
Lough, J. C., 287
Luther, 37, 211
Lutheran missions, 291
}
MACAULAY, Lord, 193, 289
Mack, John, 313, 335, 353, 366
Mackintosh, Sir James, 203
Mackintosh and Co., 356
Madras, 66, 220
Madras Christian College, 333
Maghadi, 228
Mahabarata, 89
Mahipal, 92
Malabar coast, 96
Malay, 158
Malcolm, Sir J., 331
Malda, 76
Manipoori, 229
Manning, 177
Marathi, 229
Marriage and divorce, 127
Marrow of Divinity, 39, 41
Marsh, 300
INDEX
Morrison, Robert, 150
Moulin, Du, 164
Moulton, 25
387
Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar, 204, 228,
244, 252
Mudnabati, 77
Müller, Max, Prof., 188
Murray, John, 305
NANAK, 116
New England Company, 37
Newspapers in Serampore, 245
Newton, John, 1, 55, 98, 295, 311
Nizamat Adawlat judges, 250
Northampton, 5
Nuddea, 72, 243
OLNEY, 1, 23
Ooriya, 216, 228
Marshman, Hannah, 102, 111, 133, Orissa, 254
162, 347, 375
John Clark, 232, 246, 312,
318, 337, 348, 375
Joshua, 102, 110, 133, 176,
206, 214, 246, 315, 371
Martin, Mr., of Amboyna, 158
Martyn, Henry, 170, 229, 296
Masih, Anand, 231
Mason, John, 1
Massillon, 164
Mayhews, 37
Mayo, Lord, 276
Medical missions, 91, 117, 152
Metcalfe, Lord, 208, 358, 371
Mezzofanti, 23
Middleton, Bishop, 176, 332
Midlands of England, 1, 97
Mill, Rev. Dr., 333
Miller, Dr. W., 67
Missionary ideal, 156, 185, 348
Missionaryism, 348
Missions, foreign, 30, 38, 45, 51,
70, 72, 90, 130, 148, 150, 156,
168, 253, 294, 326, 352, 377
home, 98, 294
medical, 91, 117, 152
Moltke, Count, 333
Outram, Sir J., 199
PAL, Krishna, 115, 142, 147
| Pali, 228
Palmer and Co., 356
Panchanan, 217
Panipat, 230
Papermaking in Serampore, 219,
277
Pascal, 163
Paul, St., 9, 29, 35, 85
Paulerspury, 2
Pearce, Samuel, 46
Penney, Mr. and Mrs., 134
Permanent settlement, 60
Phayre, Sir A., 150
Piddington, 14, 22
Pietists, 37
Pitt, W., 61, 68, 103
Plassey, 67
Polo, 229
Porteous, Bishop, 175
Portuguese in India, 133
Potts, Thomas, 30
Pounds, John, 11
Prayer concert, 39, 82
Monohur, 218
Montgomery, James, 268
101, 268
Morris of Clipstone, 29, 99
Prinsep, James, 198
Prendergast, 300
Press, the, 89, 109, 224, 236
Prosad, Krishna, 122, 147
Punjabi, 233
Moravian Brethren, 37, 38, 69, 98, Propagation of Gospel societies, 38
388
INDEX
Pushtoo, 231
Pytchley Hunt, 25
QUAKERS, see Friends
Quarterly Review, 305
RAE, missionary, 229
Raffles, Sir Stamford, 156
Rai, Raja Krishna, 243
Raikes, R., 357
Ralston, R., 239
Ram, Baboo, 243
Sebuk, 142
Ramayana, 205, 240
Rangoon, 233
Rask, 333
Rasoo, 121
Rennell, 94
Rippon, Rev. Mr., 85
Ritchie, Advocate-General, 199
John, 293
Robinson of Leicester, 16, 44
missionary, 358, 374
Romaine, 40
Roman Catholic missions, 291
Empire, 253
Romer, 200, 209
Rowe, Mr., 352
Roxburgh, Dr., 105, 177, 263, 271
Royle, Dr., 287
Rumohr, Lady, 110, 163, 186
Ruskin, 231
Ryland, Dr., 15, 39, 214, 350, 368
Ryots, 60
SABAT, 235
Sachs, Hans, 10
Sahamaranam, 94
Sahyadri Mountains, 230
Sanskrit, 88, 186, 198, 216, 227
Santals, 106
Saul-tree, 266
Saurin, 164
Schulin, Count, 333
Schwartz, 66, 130, 300
Scotland, 102, 381
Scott, David, 352
Thomas, 1, 18
Walter, 7
Scottish Church, 38, 294
Missionary Society, 100, 293
Secession, Scottish, 294
Sen, Ram Komal, 244, 277
Serampore, 103, 106, 236
College, 330, 338, 353
Serfojee, 335
Shaftesbury, seventh Earl of, 379
Shaikh Othman Mission, 207
Shillitoe, T., 11
Shoemaker missionaries, 9
Short, Mr. C., 75
Siam, 168
Sierra Leone, 40
Sikhs, 233
Simeon, Charles, 48, 170, 297
Sinclair, Sir John, 276
Singh, Petumber, 131, 147
Singhalese, 231
Slave trade, 2, 28, 257, 362
Smith, Adam, 38
Sydney, 235, 365
Soondarbans, 75
Southey, 306
Spencer, second Earl, 225
Staughton, Dr., 286
Steam engine, first in India, 219
Stennett, Dr., 48
Stewart, Rev. Dr., 297
Street-preaching, 141
Styles, Mr., 306
Sunday schools, 132
Sutcliff, 1, 39, 309
Suttee, see Widows
Syrian Christians, 96
TAMIL, 240
Tangan River, 83
Tarakeshor pilgrimage, 107
Taylor, missionary, 171
Teignmouth, Lord, 58, 266
Telugoo, 231
Theodosius, 255
Thomas, John, 19, 50, 52, 71
Thomason, the chaplain, 170, 176,
237, 303
his son, 277
Thomson, T., 263
Thornton, John, 363
Tinnevelli Church, 66
Tirhoot, 81
Tithes for missions, 36
Titighur, 276
Toller, Rev. T., 21
Towcester, 3
Townsend, Meredith, 246
Trafford, Rev. J., 333
Tranquebar, 66
Translation, Bible, 87, 151
Twining, Mr., 303
Tyndale, 212, 225
Type-cutting, 217
INDEX
Waring, Major Scott, 177
Watling Street, 3
389
Wellesley, Marquis, 92, 105, 175,
191, 200, 301
Wellington, Duke of, 199
Wenger, Dr., 223
Wesley, John, 8, 10, 191
Whitefield, 10, 24
UDNY, G., 52, 77, 90, 96, 145, 234 Whittier, 11
R., 77
Ulfila, 87
United Presbyterian Church, 39
University, Calcutta, 331
Edinburgh, 101, 313
Glasgow, 353, 366
Punjab, 331
Unna, 122
Usury, 282
VAN DER KEMP, Dr., 101
Veda, the, 188, 205
Vellore mutiny, 141
Versailles, Peace of, 288
Vidyalankar, M., 204
Voigt, Dr., 271
WALLICH, 263, 271, 286
Wallis, Widow, 46
253, 255, 316, 335
Wickes, Captain, 102, 124
Wiclif, 1, 211, 381
Widows, 64, 94, 122, 247, 252
Wilberforce, W., 48, 298
Wilkins, C., 190, 217
Williams, missionary, 379
Wilson, Bishop, 371
College, 333
Dr. John, 101, 198, 230, 378
H. H., 190, 206
Woman, 64, 122, 347
Wordsworth, 379
YATES, Dr., 212, 222
ZAMEENDARS, 60
Zananas, 68, 257
Ziegenbalg, 66
Ward, William, 51, 63, 101, 102, Zinzendorf, 106
Zoology of Bengal, 262
THE END
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
LIBRARY EDITION.
The Life of William Carey, D.D., Shoemaker and
Missionary, Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, in
the College of Fort William, Calcutta. With Portrait and
Illustrations. Price 16s. London: John Murray.
1885.
'Dr. George Smith, author of the well-known Lives of Dr. Duff, and of Wilson
of Bombay, continues his biographies of Indian missionaries by a Life of Dr. William
Carey, in many respects the most remarkable man of the three. Carey has had to
wait long for a biography; previous accounts of him have all been rather sketchy;
but he has at length found one with unusual qualifications for the task, who has
produced an altogether admirable work. Dr. Smith began to collect materials for
this work during his long residence in Serampore, which was begun when Carey
was only twenty years dead, and in the course of which he got thoroughly ac-
quainted with the nature of Carey's work in India, and had access to everything
likely to illustrate it. These materials he has worked up with great literary skill
and finish, into one of the most instructive and readable biographies we have seen.'
-Contemporary Review, March 1886.
'It is long since we have read any book so full of the highest inspiration, and
presenting a portrait of the very grandest religious and moral beauty, in which
simplicity and humility of feeling are as prominent as quiet greatness of achieve-
ment.'-British Quarterly Review, January 1886.
'This biography brings out the man thoroughly, and it will be welcome to a
much wider circle than that which is interested in Missions.'-The Spectator, 21st
November 1885.
C
This biography of Carey is a fascinating book.'-The Scotsman, 25th December
1885.
'We have spoken plainly on the points of which we have to complain in this
biography. But we hope that the very fact of our having done so will serve to
emphasise our welcome of this really valuable volume, and our tribute to the
honour of the great missionary who is the subject of it.'-The Mission Field, pub-
lished for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, May 1886.
'A more suggestive, stimulating book our Mission literature does not possess.
Its facts and spirit and style are alike welcome.'-The (Baptist) Freeman, 4th De-
cember 1885.
'For more than half a century the world has waited for an adequate Life of
William Carey, the father of modern missions and the Wycliffe of Asia. Dr.
Smith's work now leaves nothing to be desired, and it is worthy to take its place
by the side of the Lives of Duff and Wilson.'-The London Quarterly Review, April
1886.
'William Carey has at last arisen from the grave into which his nephew Eustace
cast his memory. Dr. Smith writes in the happiest style. When low with weak-
ness we read his pages with pleasure, and felt our heart glow with interest. He is
solid, accurate, and profound; and withal, gracious, appreciative, and clear. The
Serampore mistake is wisely treated. As for Carey, he rises before us in growing
majesty. Dr. Smith has our profound gratitude for this invaluable volume.'-Mr.
Spurgeon in Sword and Trowel, March 1886.
'Nachdem mehrere kleine biographische Versuche an's Licht getreten waren,
ist in dem überschriftlich genannten Buch von Smith ein Werk erschienen, welches
dem seltenen Manne gerecht wird und daher auch bereits von englischen Press-
timmen lebhaft wilkommen geheisoen ist. . . Smith welcher in der indischen
Missionsgeschichte schon einen rühmlich bekannten Namen gewonnen hat durch
seine Monographieen über Duff und Wilson, hat auch diesmal die Bausteine in
umsichtlicher Gründlichkeit zusammengetragen.'-Theologische Literatur Zeitung,
27th November 1886 (Berlin).
'The picture which Dr. Smith has given us of the great founder of modern
missions remains on the whole a faithful portrait, drawn by a hand guided by
affectionate reverence for the subject, and by extensive knowledge of the facts and
surroundings of his life.'-The Times of India, 5th June 1886.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
1
The Life of John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S., for Fifty Years
Philanthropist and Scholar in the East. With Portrait and
Illustrations. Second Edition. Price 9s. London: John
Murray.
1879.
•
'Dr. Smith's Life of the late Dr. John Wilson of Bombay is, without exception,
one of the most valuable records of missionary work in India ever submitted to the
English public, and equally worthy of its subject and its author.. Dr. George
Smith's mature knowledge of Indian affairs has enabled him to give an admirable
representation of Dr. Wilson's life and labours in connection with the great public
improvements and progress of the years, extending over two generations of official
service, during which he resided in Bombay. Dr. Smith has given us, not a simple
biography of Dr. Wilson, but a complete history of missionary, philanthropic, and
educational enterprise in Western India, from the Governorship of Mountstuart
Elphinstone, 1819-27, to that of Sir Bartle Frere, 1862-67. He has arranged the
many subjects with which he has had to deal, and the materials placed at his dis-
posal, with great simplicity, clearness, and effect.'-The Times.
The Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D. With Por-
traits by JEENS. (1) LIBRARY EDITION, 2 vols. royal 8vo,
price 24s. (2) POPULAR EDITION, 1 vol. price 9s. London:
Hodder & Stoughton. 1879.
'Dr. George Smith's Life of Duff is characterised by the same mastery of his
subject and skill in its presentment as distinguished his Life of Dr. John Wilson of
Bombay.'-The Athenaeum.
'The two missionaries are happy in their biographer.'-The London Quarterly
Review.
Short History of Christian Missions, from Abraham
and Paul to Carey, Livingstone, and Duff. Second Edition.
Price 2s. 6d. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1886. (Hand-
books for Bible Classes and Private Students. Edited by
MARCUS DODDS, D.D., and ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.)
'Here we have not only the history of all missions, but also the philosophy, the
origin, the theory, the rationale of this department of the kingdom of Christ. The
details of the story of the various missions, and the life and work of the world's
most noted and devoted missionaries, are graphically recorded, and the statistical
information given is particularly useful and thorough. The possessor of this little
volume will find himself as well furnished as if he had a hundred volumes on
missions at his hand.'-The British and Foreign Evangelical Review.
The Student's Geography of British India, Political
and Physical, with Maps. Price 7s. 6d. London: John
Murray. 1882.
'It is a marvel of labour and condensation.'-The Spectator.
'The difficult and usually ungrateful task of condensing such a gigantic subject
into a given number of pages has been undertaken and accomplished so ably and
carefully that the descriptions, though necessarily brief, are full of interest. The
whole book is carefully and thoroughly planned. The maps are clear and well
arranged.'-The Economist.
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