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 BIOGRAPHY 
 
 LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 BY GEORGE SMITH 
 
 C.I.E., LL.D.
 
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 13V 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ON the death of William Carey in 1834 Dr. Joshua Marshman 
 promised to write the Life of his great colleague, with whom 
 he had held almost daily converse since the beginning of the 
 century, but he survived too short a time to begin the work. 
 In 1836 the Rev. Eustace Carey anticipated him by issuing 
 what is little better than a selection of mutilated letters and 
 journals made at the request of the Committee of the Baptist 
 Missionary Society. It contains one passage of value, however. 
 Dr. Carey once said to his nephew, whose design he seems to 
 have suspected, " Eustace, if after my removal any one should 
 think it worth his while to write my Life, I will give you a 
 criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he 
 give me credit for being a plodder he will describe me justly. 
 Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can 
 persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything." 
 
 In 1859 Mr. John Marshman, after his final return to Eng- 
 land, published The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and 
 Ward, a valuable history and defence of the Serampore Mission, 
 but rather a biography of his father than of Carey. 
 
 When I first went to Serampore the great missionary had not 
 been twenty years dead. During my long residence there as 
 Editor of the Friend of India, I came to know, in most of its 
 details, the nature of the work done by Carey for India and for 
 Christendom in the first third of the century. I began to 
 collect such materials for his Biography as were to be found in 
 the office, the press, and the college, and among the Native 
 Christians and Brahman pundits whom he had influenced. In 
 addition to such materials and experience I have been favoured 
 with the use of many unpublished letters written by Carey or 
 referring to him; for which courtesy I here desire to thank 
 Mrs. S. Carey, South Bank, Red Hill; Frederick George Carey, 
 
 vii 
 
 -4 O /"* f~* 4 * /~v 
 
 1086440
 
 viii Life of William Carey 
 
 Esq., LL.B., of Lincoln's Inn; and the Rev. Jonathan P. Carey 
 of Tiverton. 
 
 My Biographies of Carey of Serampore, Henry Martyn, Duff 
 of Calcutta, and Wilson of Bombay, cover a period of nearly a 
 century and a quarter, from 1761 to 1878. They have been 
 written as contributions to that history of the Christian Church 
 of India which one of its native sons must some day attempt ; 
 and to the history of English-speaking peoples, whom the 
 Foreign Missions begun by Carey have made the rulers and 
 civilisers of the non-Christian world.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. CAREY'S COLLEGE ........ i 
 
 II. THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS . . .20 
 
 III. INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT . . . . .40 
 
 IV. Six YEARS is NORTH BENGAL MISSIONARY AND INDIGO 
 
 PLANTER 58 
 
 V. THE NEW CRUSADE SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD 81 
 
 VI. THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS . 96- 
 
 VII. CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO 
 
 AMBOYNA ......... 115 
 
 VIII. CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS ..... 134 
 
 IX. PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI . . 156- 
 
 X. THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST BIBLE TRANSLATION . . 175 
 
 XI. WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY . 201 
 
 XII. WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE FOUNDER OF THE AGRICUL- 
 TURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA . . 216- 
 
 XIII. CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND 
 
 AMERICA ......... 241 
 
 XIV. CAR<SY AS AN EDUCATOR THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN 
 
 THE EAST ......... 273 
 
 XV. CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 290- 
 
 XVI. CAREY'S LAST DAYS ....... 295 
 
 APPENDIX ......... 318 
 
 INDEX .......... 324, 
 
 i\
 
 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 Paulers- 
 pury Impressions made by him on his sister On his companions 
 and the villagers His experience as son of the parish clerk Ap- 
 prenticed 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 to India, where he 
 became the most extensive translator of the Bible and civiliser, 
 was the son of a weaver, and was himself a village shoemaker 
 till he was twenty-eight years of age. He was born on the 
 1 7th August 1761, in the very midland of England, in the heart 
 of the district which had produced Shakspere, had fostered 
 Wyclif and Hooker, had bred Fox and Bunyan, and had for a 
 time been the scene of the lesser lights of John Mason and 
 Doddridge, of John Newton and Thomas Scott. William 
 Cowpcr, the poet of missions, made the land his chosen home, 
 writing Hope and The Task in Olney, while the shoemaker was 
 studying theology under Sutcliff on the opposite side of the 
 market-place. Thomas Clarkson, born a year before Carey, 
 was beginning his assaults on the slave-trade by translating 
 into English his Latin essay on the day-star of African liberty 
 when the shoemaker, whom no university knew, was writing 
 his Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for 
 the Conversion of the Heathens. 
 
 William Carey bore a name which had slowly fallen into 
 forgetfulness after services to the Stewarts, with whose cause 
 it had been identified. Professor Stephens, of Copenhagen,
 
 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 traces it to the Scando-Anglian Car, CAER or CARE, which became 
 a place-name as CAR-EY. Among scores of neighbours called 
 William, William of Car-ey would soon sink into Carey, and 
 this would again become the family name. In Denmark the 
 name Caroe is common. The oldest English instance is the 
 Cariet who coined money in London for ^thelred II. in 1016. 
 Certainly the name, through its forms of Crew, Carew, Carey, 
 and Gary, still prevails on the Irish coast from which depres- 
 sion of trade drove the family first to Yorkshire, then to the 
 Northamptonshire village of Yelvertoft, and finally to Paulers- 
 pury, farther south as well as over the whole Danegelt from 
 Lincolnshire to Devonshire. If thus there was Norse blood in 
 William Carey it came out in his persistent missionary daring, 
 and it is pleasant even to speculate on the possibility of such 
 an origin in one who was all his Indian life indebted to Denmark 
 for the protection which alone made his career possible. 
 
 The Careys who became famous in English history sprang 
 from Devon. For two and a half centuries, from the second 
 Richard to the second Charles, they gave statesmen and soldiers, 
 scholars and bishops, to the service of their country. Henry 
 Carey, first cousin of Queen Elizabeth, was the common ancestor 
 of two ennobled houses long since extinct the Earls of Dover 
 and the Earls of Monmouth. A third peerage won by the Careys 
 has been made historic by the patriotic counsels and self- 
 sacrificing fate of Viscount Falkland, whose representative was 
 Governor of Bombay for a time. Two of the heroic Falkland's 
 descendants, aged ladies, addressed a pathetic letter to Parlia- 
 ment about the time that the great missionary died, praying 
 that they might not be doomed to starvation by being deprived 
 of a crown pension of 80 a year. The older branch of the 
 Careys also had fallen on evil times, and it became extinct 
 while the future missionary was yet four years old. The 
 seventh lord was a weaver when he succeeded to the title, and 
 he died childless. The eighth was a Dutchman who had to be 
 naturalised, and he was the last. The Careys fell lower still. 
 One of them bore to the brilliant and reckless Marquis of Halifax, 
 Henry Carey, who wrote one of the few English ballads that 
 live. Another, the poet's granddaughter, was the mother of 
 Edmund Kean, and he at first was known by her name on the 
 stage. 
 
 At that time when the weaver became the lord the grand- 
 father of the missionary was parish clerk and first schoolmaster 
 of the village of Paulerspury, eleven miles south of Northampton,
 
 Carey's College 3 
 
 and near the ancient posting town of Towcester, on the old 
 Roman road from London to Chester. The free school was at 
 the east or " church end " of the village, which, after crossing 
 the old Watling Street, straggles for a mile over a sluggish burn 
 to the " Pury end." One son, Thomas, had enlisted and was 
 in Canada. Edmund Carey, the second, set up the loom on 
 which he wove the woollen cloth known as " tammy," in a 
 two-storied cottage. There his eldest child, WILLIAM, was born, 
 and lived for six years till his father was appointed schoolmaster, 
 when the family removed to the free schoolhouse. The cottage 
 was demolished in 1854 by one Richard Linnell, who placed on 
 the still meaner structure now occupying the site the memorial 
 slab that guides many visitors to the spot. The schoolhouse, 
 in which William Carey spent the eight most important years 
 of his childhood till he was fourteen, and the school made way 
 for the present pretty buildings. 
 
 The village surroundings and the country scenery coloured 
 the whole of the boy's after life, and did much to make him the 
 first agricultural improver and naturalist of Bengal, which he 
 Ijecame. The lordship of Pirie, as it was called by Gitda, its 
 Saxon owner, was given by the Conqueror, with much else, to 
 his natural son, William Peverel, as we see from the Domesday 
 survey. His descendants passed it on to Robert de Paveli, 
 whence its present name, but in Carey's time it was held by the 
 second Earl Bathurst, who was Lord Chancellor. Up to the 
 very schoolhouse came the royal forest of Whittlebury, its walks 
 leading north to the woods of Salcey, of Yardley Chase and 
 Rockingham, from the beeches which give Buckingham its 
 name. Carey must have often sat under the Queen's Oak, 
 still venerable in its riven form, where Edward IV., when 
 hunting, first saw Elizabeth, unhappy mother of the two princes 
 murdered in the Tower. The silent robbery of the people's 
 rights called " inclosures " has done much, before and since 
 Carey's time, to sweep away or shut up the woodlands. The 
 country may be less beautiful, while the population has grown 
 so that Paulerspury has now nearly double the eight hundred 
 inhabitants of a century ago. But its oolitic hills, gently swel- 
 ling 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
 
 4 Life of William Carey 
 
 for the rapidly-developing production of iron from the Lias, 
 begun by the Romans, there is but one manufacture that of 
 shoes. It is now centred by modern machinery and labour 
 arrangements in Northampton itself, which has 24,000 shoe- 
 makers, and in the other towns, but a century ago the craft 
 was common to every hamlet. For botany and agriculture, 
 however, Northamptonshire was the finest county in England, 
 and young Carey had trodden many a mile of it, as boy and 
 man, before he left home for ever for Bengal. 
 
 Two unfinished autobiographical sketches, written from India 
 at the request of Fuller and of Ryland, and letters of his youngest 
 sister Mary, his favourite " Polly " who survived him, have 
 preserved for us in still vivid characters the details of the early 
 training of William Carey. He was the eldest of five children. 
 He was the special care of their grandmother, a woman of a 
 delicate nature and devout habits, who closed her sad widow- 
 hood in the weaver-son's cottage. Encompassed by such a 
 living influence the grandson spent his first six years. Already 
 the child unconsciously showed the eager thirst for knowledge, 
 and perseverance in attaining his object, which made him chiefly 
 what he became. His mother would often be awoke in the 
 night by the pleasant lisping of a voice " casting accompts; so 
 intent was he from childhood in the pursuit of knowledge. 
 Whatever he began he finished; difficulties never seemed to 
 discourage his mind." On removal to the ancestral schoolhouse 
 the boy had a room to himself. His sister describes it as full 
 of insects stuck in every corner that he might observe their 
 progress. His many birds he entrusted to her care when he 
 was from home. In this picture we see the exact foreshadow- 
 ing of the man. " Though I often used to kill his birds by 
 kindness, yet when he saw my grief for it he always indulged 
 me with the pleasure of serving them again; and often took 
 me over the dirtiest roads to get at a plant or an insect. He 
 never walked out, I think, when quite a boy, without observa- 
 tion on the hedges as he passed ; and when he took up a plant 
 of any kind he always observed it with care. Though I was 
 but a child I well remember his pursuits. He always seemed 
 in earnest in his recreations as well as in school. He was 
 generally one of the most active in all the amusements and 
 recreations that boys in general pursue. He was always beloved 
 by the boys about his own age." To climb a certain tree was 
 the object of their ambition; he fell often in the attempt, but 
 did not rest till he had succeeded. His Uncle Peter was a
 
 Carey's College 5 
 
 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 neighbour- 
 hood. Wherever after that he lived, as boy or man, poor or 
 in comfort, William Carey made and perfected his garden, and 
 always for others, until he created at Serampore the botanical 
 park which for more than half a century was unique in Southern 
 Asia. 
 
 We have in a letter from the Manse, Paulerspury, a tradition 
 of the impression made on the dull rustics by the dawning genius 
 of the youth whom they but dimly comprehended. He went 
 amongst them under the nickname of Columbus, and they would 
 say, " Well, if you won't play, preach us a sermon," which he 
 would do. Mounting on an old dwarf witch-elm about seven 
 feet high, where several could sit, he would hold forth. This 
 seems to have been a resort of his for reading, his favourite 
 occupation. The same authority tells how, when suffering 
 toothache, he allowed his companions to drag the tooth from his 
 head with a violent jerk, by tying around it a string attached to 
 a wheel used to grind malt, to which they gave a sharp turn. 
 
 The boy's own peculiar room was a little library as well as 
 museum of natural history. He possessed a few books, which 
 indeed were many for those days, but he borrowed more from 
 the whole country-side. Recalling the eight years of his intel- 
 lectual apprenticeship till he was fourteen, from the serene 
 height of his missionary standard, he wrote long after: " I 
 chose to read books of science, history, voyages, etc., more than 
 any others. Novels and plays always disgusted me, and I 
 avoided them as much as I did books of religion, and perhaps 
 from the same motive. I was better pleased with romances, 
 and this circumstance made me read the Pilgrim's Progress 
 with eagerness, though to no purpose." The new era, of which 
 he was to be the aggressive spiritual representative from 
 Christendom, had not dawned. Walter Scott was ten years his 
 junior. Captain Cook had not discovered the Sandwich 
 Islands, and was only returning from the second of his three 
 voyages while Carey was still at school. The church services 
 and the watchfulness of his father supplied the directly moral 
 training which his grandmother had begun. 
 
 The Paulerspury living of St. James is a valuable rectory in 
 the gift of New College, Oxford. Originally built in Early 
 English, and rebuilt in 1844, the church must have presented a 
 still more venerable appearance a century ago than it does now,
 
 6 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 monu- 
 ments called forth first the fear and then the pride of the parish 
 clerk's eldest son. In those days the clerk had just below the 
 pulpit the desk from which his sonorous " Amen " sounded 
 forth, while his family occupied a low gallery rising from the 
 same level up behind the pulpit. There the boys of the free 
 school also could be under the master's eye, and with instru- 
 ments of music like those of King David, but now banished 
 from even village churches, would accompany him in the 
 doggerel strains of Sternhold and Hopkins, immortalised by 
 Cowper. To the far right the boys could see and long for the 
 ropes under the tower, in which the bell-ringers of his day, as 
 of Bunyan's not long before, delighted. The preaching of the 
 time did nothing more for young Carey than for the rest of 
 England and Scotland, whom the parish church had not driven 
 into dissent or secession. But he could not help knowing the 
 Prayer-Book, and especially its psalms and lessons, and he was 
 duly confirmed. The family training, too, was exceptionally 
 scriptural, though not evangelical. " I had many stirrings of 
 mind occasioned by being often obliged to read books of a 
 religious character; and, having been accustomed from my 
 infancy to read the Scriptures, I had a considerable acquaintance 
 therewith, especially with the historical parts." The first result 
 was to make him despise dissenters. But, undoubtedly, this 
 eldest son of the schoolmaster and the clerk of the parish had 
 at fourteen received an education from parents, nature, and 
 books which, with his habits of observation, love of reading, and 
 perseverance, made him better instructed than most boys of 
 fourteen far above the peasant class to which he belonged. 
 
 Buried in this obscure village in the dullest period of the 
 dullest of all centuries, the boy had no better prospect before him 
 than that of a weaver or labourer, or possibly a schoolmaster 
 like one of his uncles in the neighbouring town of Towcester. 
 When twelve years of age, with his uncle there, he might have 
 formed one of the crowd which listened to John Wesley, who, 
 in 1773 and then aged seventy, visited the prosperous posting 
 town. Paulerspury could indeed boast of one son, Edward 
 Bernard, D.D., who, two centuries before, had made for himself 
 a name in Oxford, where he was Savilian Professor of Astronomy.
 
 Carey's College 7 
 
 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. 
 IFor 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 
 & good man who would receive him as apprentice to the shoe- 
 rmaking trade. The man was not difficult to find, in the hamlet 
 <of Hackleton, nine miles off, in the person of one Clarke Nichols. 
 The lad afterwards described him as " a strict churchman and, 
 what I thought, a very moral man. It is true he sometimes 
 idrank rather too freely, and generally employed me in carrying 
 iout goods on the Lord's Day morning; but he was an inveterate 
 (enemy to lying, a vice to which I was awfully addicted." The 
 ^senior apprentice was a dissenter, and the master and his boys 
 .gave much of the talk over their work to disputes upon religious 
 subjects. Carey " had always looked upon dissenters with 
 contempt. I had, moreover, a share of pride sufficient for a 
 thousand times my knowledge; I therefore always scorned to 
 have the worst in an argument, and the last word was assuredly 
 mine. I also made up in positive assertion what was wanting 
 in argument, and generally came off with triumph. But I was 
 often convinced afterwards that although I had the last word 
 my antagonist had the better of the argument, and on that 
 account felt a growing uneasiness and stings of conscience 
 gradually increasing." The dissenting apprentice was soon to 
 be the first to lead him to Christ. 
 
 William Carey was a shoemaker during the twelve years of 
 his life from sixteen to twenty-eight, till he went to Leicester. 
 Poverty, which the grace of God used to make him a preacher 
 also from his eighteenth year, compelled him to work with his 
 hands in leather all the week, and to tramp many a weary mile 
 to Northampton and Kettering carrying the product of his 
 labour. At one time, when minister of Moulton, he kept a 
 school by day, made or cobbled shoes by night, and preached on 
 Sunday. So Paul had made tents of his native Cilician goat- 
 skin in the days when infant Christianity was chased from city 
 to city, and the cross was a reproach only less bitter, however, 
 than evangelical dissent in Christian England in the eighteenth 
 century. The providence which made and kept young Carey 
 
 B
 
 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 so long a shoemaker, put him in the very position in which he 
 could most fruitfully receive and nurse the sacred fire that made 
 him the most learned scholar and Bible translator of his day in 
 the East. The same providence thus linked him to the earliest 
 Latin missionaries of Alexandria, of Asia Minor, and of Gaul, 
 who were shoemakers, and to a succession of scholars and 
 divines, poets and critics, reformers and philanthropists, who 
 have used the shoemaker's life to become illustrious. 1 St. 
 Mark chose for his successor, as first bishop of Alexandria, that 
 Annianus whom he had been the means of converting to Christ 
 when he found him at the cobbler's stall. The Talmud 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 a means of livelihood and of helping 
 their poor converts. The Hackleton apprentice was still ajchild 
 when the great Goethe was again adding to the then artificial 
 literature of his country his own true predecessor, Hans Sachs, 
 the shoemaker of Niirnberg, the friend of Luther, the meister- 
 singer of the Reformation. And it was another German shoe- 
 maker, Boehme, whose exalted theosophy as expounded by 
 William Law became one link in the chain that drew Carey to 
 Christ, as it influenced Wesley and Whitefield, Samuel Johnson 
 and Coleridge. George Fox was only nineteen when, after 
 eight years' service with a shoemaker in Drayton, Leicestershire, 
 not far from Carey's county, he heard the voice from heaven 
 which sent him forth in 1643 to preach righteousness, temperance, 
 and judgment to come, till Cromwell sought converse with him, 
 and the Friends became a power among men. 
 
 Carlyle has, in characteristic style, seized on the true meaning 
 that was in the man when he made to himself a suit of leather 
 and became the modern hero of Sartor Resartus. The words fit 
 William Carey's case even better than that of George Fox: 
 " Sitting in his stall, working on tanned hides, amid pincers, 
 paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of 
 
 1 Iphicrates, great Athenian general, who was the son of a shoemaker 
 used this saying, fit motto for Carey, <? olW fit ola.
 
 Carey's College 9 
 
 rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit belonging 
 to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as 
 through a window, it could look upwards and discern its celestial 
 Home." That " shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier 
 place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine. . . . Stitch away, 
 every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart 
 of slavery." Thirty-six years after Fox had begun to wear his 
 leathern doublet he directed all Friends everywhere that had 
 Indians or blacks to preach the Gospel to them. 
 
 But it would be too long to tell the list of workers in what has 
 been called the gentle craft, whom the cobbler's stall, with its 
 peculiar opportunities for rhythmic meditation, hard thinking, 
 and oft harder debating, has prepared for the honours of litera- 
 ture 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 Scot- 
 land. 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 experi- 
 ence in Massachusetts fitted him to be the poet-laureate of the 
 craft which for some years he adorned. His Songs of Labour, 
 published in 1850, contain the best English lines on shoemakers 
 since Shakspere put into the mouth of King Henry V. the address 
 on the eve of Agincourt, which begins: " This day is called the 
 feast of Crispin." But Whittier, Quaker, philanthropist, and 
 countryman of Judson though he was, might have found a place 
 for Carey when he sang so well of others : 
 
 " Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 
 
 In strong and hearty German ; 
 And Bloomfield's lay and Gifford's wit 
 And patriot fame of Sherman ; 
 
 " Still from his book, a mystic seer, 
 
 The soul of Behmen teaches, 
 And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 
 Of Fox's leathern breeches." 
 
 The confessions of Carey, made in the spiritual humility and
 
 I o Life of William Carey 
 
 self-examination of his later life, form a parallel to the Grace 
 Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the little classic of John 
 Bunyan second only to his Pilgrim's Progress. The young 
 Pharisee, who entered Hackleton with such hate in his heart to 
 dissenters that he would have destroyed their meeting-place, 
 who practised " lying, swearing, and other sins," gradually 
 yielded so far to his brother apprentice's importunity as to leave 
 these off, to try to pray sometimes when alone, to attend church 
 three times a day, and to visit the dissenting prayer-meeting. 
 Like the zealot who thought to do God service by keeping the 
 whole law, Carey lived thus for a time, " not doubting but this 
 would produce ease of mind and make me acceptable to God." 
 What revealed him to himself was an incident which he tells in 
 language recalling at once Augustine and one of the subtlest 
 sketches of George Eliot, in which the latter uses her half-know- 
 ledge of evangelical faith to stab the very truth that delivered 
 Paul and Augustine, Bunyan and Carey, from the antinomianism 
 of the Pharisee: 
 
 " A circumstance which I always reflect on with a mixture of 
 horror and gratitude occurred about this time, which, though 
 greatly to my dishonour, I must relate. It being customary in 
 that part of the country for apprentices to collect Christmas 
 boxes [donations] from the tradesmen with whom their masters 
 have dealings, I was permitted to collect these little sums^ 
 When I applied to an ironmonger, he gave me the choice of a 
 shilling or a sixpence ; I of course chose the shilling, and putting 
 it in my pocket, went away. When I had got a few shillings 
 my next care was to purchase some little articles for myself, I 
 have forgotten what. But then, to my sorrow, I found that my 
 shilling was a brass one. I paid for the things which I bought by 
 using a shilling of my master's. I now found that I had ex- 
 ceeded my stock by a few pence. I expected severe reproaches 
 from my master, and therefore came to the resolution to declare 
 strenuously that the bad money was his. I well remember the 
 struggles of mind which I had on this occasion, and that I made 
 this deliberate sin a matter of prayer to God as I passed over 
 the fields towards home ! I there proimsed 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 iron-
 
 Carey's College 1 1 
 
 monger acknowledged the giving me the shilling, and I was 
 therefore exposed to shame, reproach, and inward remorse, 
 which preyed upon my mind for a considerable time. I at this 
 time sought the Lord, perhaps much more earnestly than ever, 
 but with shame and fear. I was quite ashamed to go out, and 
 never, till I was assured that my conduct was not spread over 
 the town, did I attend a place of worship. 
 
 " I trust that, under these circumstances, I was led to see much 
 more of myself than I had ever done before, and to seek for 
 mercy with greater earnestness. I attended prayer-meetings 
 only, however, till February 10, 1779, which being appointed a 
 day of fasting and prayer, I attended worship on that day. 
 Mr. Chater [congregationalist] of Olney preached, but from 
 what text I have forgotten. He insisted much on following 
 Christ entirely, and enforced his exhortation with that passage, 
 ' Let us therefore go out unto him without the camp, bearing 
 his reproach.' Heb. xiii. 13. I think I had a desire to follow 
 Christ; but one idea occurred to my mind on hearing those 
 words which broke me off from the Church of England. The 
 idea was certainly very crude, but useful in bringing me from 
 attending a lifeless, carnal ministry to one more evangelical. I 
 concluded that the Church of England, as established by law, 
 was the camp in which all were protected from the scandal of 
 the cross, and that I ought to bear the reproach of Christ among 
 the dissenters; and accordingly I always afterwards attended 
 divine worship among them." 
 
 At eighteen Carey was thus emptied of self and there was room 
 for Christ. In a neighbouring village he consorted much for a 
 time with some followers of William Law, who had not long before 
 passed away in a village in the neighbourhood, and select passages 
 from whose writings the Moravian minister, Francis Okely, of 
 Northampton, had versified. These completed the negative 
 process. " I felt ruined and helpless." Then to his spiritual 
 eyes, purged of self, there appeared the Crucified One ; and to his 
 spiritual intelligence there was given the Word of God. The 
 change was that wrought on Paul by a Living Person. It con- 
 verted the hypocritical Pharisee into the evangelical preacher; 
 it turned the vicious peasant into the most self-denying saint; it 
 sent the village shoemaker far off to the Hindoos. 
 
 But the process was slow; it had been so even in Paul's case. 
 Carey found encouragement in intercourse with some old 
 Christians in Hackleton, and he united with a few of them, 
 including his fellow-apprentice, in forming a congregational
 
 i 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 church. The state of the parish may be imagined from its 
 recent history. Hackleton is part of Piddington, and the squire 
 had long appropriated the living of 300 a year, the parsonage, 
 the glebe, and all tithes, sending his house minister " at times " 
 to do duty. A Certificate from Northamptonshire, against the 
 pluralities and other such scandals, published in 1641, declared 
 that not a child or servant in Hackleton or Piddington could say 
 the Lord's Prayer. Carey sought the preaching of Doddridge's 
 successor at Northampton, of a Baptist minister at Road, and of 
 Scott the commentator, then at Ravenstone. He had found 
 peace, but was theologically " inquisitive and unsatisfied." 
 Fortunately, like Luther, he " was obliged to draw all from the 
 Bible alone." 
 
 When, at twenty years of age, Carey was slowly piecing 
 together " the doctrines in the Word of God " into something 
 like a system which would at once satisfy his own spiritual and 
 intellectual needs, and help him to preach to others, a little 
 volume was published, of which he wrote: " I do not remember 
 ever to have read any book with such raptures." It was Help to 
 Zion's Travellers ; being an attempt to remove various Stumbling- 
 Blocks out of the Way, relating to Doctrinal, Experimental, and 
 Practical Religion, by Robert Hall. The writer was the father 
 of the greater Robert Hall, a venerable man, who, in his village 
 church of Arnsby, near Leicester, had already taught Carey how 
 to preach. The book is described as an " attempt to relieve dis- 
 couraged Christians " in a day of gloominess and perplexity, 
 that they might devote themselves to Christ through life as 
 well as be found in Him in death. Carey made a careful 
 synopsis of it in an exquisitely neat hand on the margin of each 
 page. The worm-eaten copy, which he treasured even in India, 
 is now deposited in Bristol College. 
 
 A Calvinist of the broad missionary type of Paul, Carey 
 somewhat suddenly, according to his own account, became a 
 Baptist. " I do not recollect having read anything on the 
 subject till I applied to Mr. Ryland, senior, to baptise me. He 
 lent me a pamphlet, and turned me over to his son," who thus 
 told the story when the Baptist Missionary Society held its 
 first public meeting in London: " October 5th, 1783: I baptised 
 in the river Nen, a little beyond Dr. Doddridge's meeting-house 
 at Northampton, a poor journeyman shoemaker, little thinking 
 that before nine years had elapsed, he would prove the first 
 instrument of forming a society for sending missionaries from 
 England to preach the gospel to the heathen. Such, however,
 
 Carey's College i 3 
 
 as the event has proved, was the purpose of the Most High, who 
 selected for this work not the son of one of our most learned 
 ministers, nor of one of the most opulent of our dissenting 
 gentlemen, but the son of a parish clerk." 
 
 The spot may still be visited at the foot of the hill, where the 
 Nen fed the moat of the old castle, in which many a Parliament 
 sat from the days of King John. The text of that morning's 
 sermon happened to be the Lord's saying, " Many first shall be 
 last, and the last first," which asserts His absolute sovereignty 
 in choosing and in rewarding His missionaries, and introduces 
 the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. As Carey 
 wrote in the fulness of his fame, that the evangelical doctrines 
 continued to be the choice of his heart, so he never wavered in 
 his preference for the Baptist division of the Christian host. 
 But from the first he enjoyed the friendship of Scott and Newton, 
 and of his neighbour Mr. Robinson of St. Mary's, Leicester, 
 and we shall see him in India the centre of the Episcopal and 
 Presbyterian chaplains and missionaries from Martyn 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, perhaps, his real 
 exceeded the bounds of prudence; but he felt the importance 
 of things we were strangers to, and his natural disposition was 
 to pursue earnestly what he undertook, so that it was not to be 
 wondered at, though we wondered at the change. He stood 
 alone in his father's house for some years. After a time he 
 asked permission to have family prayer when he came home 
 to see us, a favour which he very readily had granted. Often 
 have I felt my pride rise while he was engaged in prayer, at the
 
 1 4 Life of William Carey 
 
 mention of those words in Isaiah, ' that all our righteousness was 
 like filthy rags.' I did not think he thought his so, but looked 
 on me and the family as filthy, not himself and his party. Oh, 
 what pride is in the human heart! Nothing but my love to 
 my brother would have kept me from showing my resentment." 
 
 " A few of the friends of religion wished our brother to 
 exercise his gifts by speaking to a few friends in a house licensed 
 atPury; which he did with great acceptance. The next morn- 
 ing a neighbour of ours, a very pious woman, came in to con- 
 gratulate my mother on the occasion, and to speak of the Lord's 
 goodness in calling her son, and my brother, two such near 
 neighbours, to the same noble calling. My mother replied, 
 ' What, do you think he will be a preacher ? ' ' Yes,' she 
 replied, ' and a great one, I think, if spared.' From that time 
 till he was settled at Moulton he regularly preached once a 
 month at Pury with much acceptance. He was at that time 
 in his twentieth year, and married. Our parents were always 
 friendly to religion; yet, on some accounts, we should rather 
 have wished him to go from home than come home to preach. 
 I do not think I ever heard him, though my younger brother 
 and my sister, I think, generally did. Our father much wished 
 to hear his son, if he could do it unseen by him or any one. 
 It was not long before an opportunity offered, and he embraced 
 it. Though he was a man that never discovered any partiality 
 for the abilities of his children, but rather sometimes went too 
 far on the other hand, that often tended a little to discourage 
 them, yet we were convinced that he approved of what he 
 heard, and was highly gratified by it." 
 
 In Hackleton itself his expositions of Scripture were so valued 
 that the people, he writes, " being ignorant, sometimes applauded 
 to my great injury." When in poverty, so deep that he fasted 
 all that day because he had not a penny to buy a dinner, he 
 attended a meeting of the Association of Baptist Churches at 
 Olney, not far off. There he first met with his lifelong colleague, 
 the future secretary of the mission, Andrew Fuller, the young 
 minister of Soham, who preached on being men in understand- 
 ing, 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 preach- 
 ing elsewhere also. The secret of his power which drew the 
 Northamptonshire peasants and craftsmen to the feet of their
 
 Carey's College I 5 
 
 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. Hackle ton stands on the high road from Bedford 
 and Olney to Northampton, and Thomas Scott was in the habit 
 of resting at Mr. Old's on his not infrequent walks from Olney, 
 where he had succeeded John Newton. There he had no more 
 attentive listener or intelligent talker than the new journeyman, 
 who had been more influenced by his preaching at Ravenstone 
 than by that of any other man. Forty years after, just before 
 Scott's death, Dr. Ryland gave him this message from Carey : 
 " If there be anything of the work of God in my soul, I owe 
 much of it to his preaching when I first set out in the ways of 
 the Lord; " to which this reply was sent: " I am surprised as 
 well as gratified at your message from Dr. Carey. He heard 
 me preach only a few times, and that as far as I know in my 
 rather irregular excursions; though I often conversed and 
 prayed in his presence, and endeavoured to answer his sensible 
 and pertinent inquiries when at Hackleton. But to have 
 suggested even a single useful hint to such a mind as his must 
 be considered as a high privilege and matter of gratitude." 
 Scott had previously written this more detailed account of his 
 intercourse with the preaching shoemaker, whom he first saw 
 when he called on Mr. Old to tell him of the welfare of his 
 mother : 
 
 " When I went into the cottage I was soon recognised, and 
 Mr. Old came in, with a sensible-looking lad in his working- 
 dress. I at first rather wondered to see him enter, as he seemed 
 young, being, I believe, little of his age. We, however, entered 
 into very interesting conversation, especially respecting my 
 parishioner, their relative, and the excellent state of her mind, 
 and the wonder of divine grace in the conversion of one who 
 had been so very many years considered as a self-righteous 
 Pharisee. I believe I endeavoured to show that the term was 
 often improperly applied to conscientious but ignorant inquirers, 
 who are far from self-satisfied, and who, when the Gospel is set 
 before them, find the thing which they had long been groping 
 after. However that may be, I observed the lad who entered 
 with Mr. Old riveted in attention with every mark and symptom 
 of intelligence and feeling; saying little, but modestly asking 
 now and then an appropriate question. I took occasion, before
 
 1 6 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 settle- 
 ments in India, perhaps in 1792. My little influence was of no 
 avail. What I said of Mr. Carey so far satisfied Mr. Grant 
 that he said, if Mr. Carey was going alone, or with one equally 
 to be depended on along with him, he would not oppose him; 
 but his strong disapprobation of Mr. T., on what ground I 
 knew not, induced his negative. I believe Mr. Old died soon 
 after I left Olney, if not just before; and his shop, which was 
 a little building apart from the house, was suffered to go to 
 decay. While in this state I several times passed it, and said 
 to my sons and others with me, that is Mr. Carey's college." 
 
 This cobbler's shed which was Carey's college has been since 
 restored, but two of the original walls still stand, forming the 
 corner in which he sat, opposite the window that looks out into 
 the garden he carefully kept. Here, when his second master 
 died, Carey succeeded to the business, charging himself with 
 the care of the widow, and marrying the widow's sister, Dorothy 
 or Dolly Placket. He was only twenty when he took upon 
 himself such burdens, in the neighbouring church of Piddington, 
 a village to which he afterwards moved his shop. Never had 
 minister, missionary, or scholar a less sympathetic mate, due 
 largely to that latent mental disease which in India carried her 
 off; but for more than twenty years the husband showed her 
 loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed, over 
 which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own
 
 Carey's College 17 
 
 hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, " Second 
 
 Hand Shoes Bought and /' l we can realise the low estate 
 
 to which Carey fell, even below his father's loom and school- 
 house, and from which he was called to become the apostle of 
 North India as Schwartz was of the South. 
 
 How was this shed his college ? We have seen that he brought 
 with him from his native village an amount of information, 
 habits of observation, and a knowledge of books unusual in 
 rustics of that day, and even of the present time. At twelve 
 he made his first acquaintance with a language other than his 
 own, when he mastered the short grammar in Dyche's Latine 
 Vocabulary, and committed nearly the whole book to memory. 
 When urging him to take the preaching at Barton, Mr. Sutcliff 
 of Olney gave him Ruddiman's Latin Grammar. The one 
 alleviation of his lot under the coarse but upright Nichols was 
 found in his master's small library. There he began to study 
 Greek. In a New Testament commentary he found Greek words, 
 which he carefully transcribed and kept until he should next 
 visit home, where a youth whom dissipation had reduced from 
 college to weaving explained both the words and their termina- 
 tions 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. 2 At the end of Hopkins's 
 Three Sermons on the Effects of Sin on the Universe, preached in 
 1759, he had made this entry on 9th August 1787 " Gulielm. 
 Careius perlegit." He starved himself to purchase a few books 
 at the sale which attended Dr. Ryland's removal from North- 
 ampton to Bristol. In an old woman's cottage he found a 
 
 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 occasionally 
 worked under Carey, had just died, and he used to tell how Carey had 
 once flipped him with his apron when he had allowed the wax to boil over. 
 
 * In the library of the late Rev. T. Toller of Kettering was a manuscript 
 (now in the library of Bristol Baptist College) of nine small octavo pages, 
 evidently in the exquisitely small and legible handwriting of Carey, on 
 the Psalter. The short treatise discusses the literary character and 
 authorship of the Psalms in the style of Michaelis and Bishop Lowth, whose 
 writings are referred to. The Hebrew words used are written even more 
 beautifully than the English. If this little work was written before Carey 
 went to India and the caligraphy seems to point to that the author 
 shows a very early familiarity with the writings of one who was his pre- 
 decessor as a Christian Orientalist, Sir William Tones. The closing 
 paragraph has this sentence:" A frequent perusal of the book of Psalms 
 is recommended to all. We should permit few days to pass without reading 
 in Hebrew one of those sacred poems; the more they are read and studied, 
 the more will they delight, edify, and instruct."
 
 1 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 Dutch quarto, and from that he so taught himself the language 
 that in 1789 he translated for Ryland a discourse on the Gospel 
 Offer sent to him by the evangelical Dr. Erskine of Edinburgh. 
 The manuscript is in an extremely small character, unlike what 
 might have been expected from one who had wrought with his 
 hands for eight years. French he acquired, sufficiently for 
 literary purposes, in three weeks from the French version of 
 Ditton on the Resurrection, which he purchased for a few 
 coppers. He had the linguistic gift which soon after made the 
 young carpenter Mezzofanti of Bologna famous and a cardinal. 
 But the gift would have been buried in the grave of his penury 
 and his circumstances had his trade been almost any other, 
 and had he not been impelled by the most powerful of all 
 motives. He never sat on his stall without his book before 
 him, nor did he painfully toil with his wallet of new-made shoes 
 to the neighbouring towns or return with leather without 
 conning over his lately-acquired knowledge, and making it for 
 ever, in orderly array, his own. He so taught his evening 
 school and his Sunday congregations that the teaching to him, 
 like writing to others, stereotyped or lighted up the truths. 
 Indeed, the school and the cobbling often went on together 
 a fact commemorated in the addition to the Hackleton sign- 
 board 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 bap-
 
 Carey's College 19 
 
 tised by the Rev. Mr. Ryland, jun., of Northampton. He was 
 invited by the Church to preach in public once next Lord's Day. 
 
 " July 17. Ch. Meeting, Lord's Day Evening. W. Carey, in 
 consequence of a request from the Church, preached this Evening. 
 After which it was resolved that he should be allowed to go on 
 preaching at those places where he has been for some time em- 
 ployed, and that he should engage again on suitable occasions for 
 some time before us, in order that farther trial may be made of his 
 ministerial gifts. 
 
 " June 1 6, 1786. C.M. The case of Bror. Carey was considered, 
 and an unanimous satisfaction with his ministerial abilities being 
 expressed, a vote was passed to call him to the Ministry at a proper 
 time. 
 
 " August 10. Ch. Meeting. This evening our Brother William 
 Carey was called to the work of the Ministry, and sent out by the 
 Church to preach the Gospel, wherever God in His providence 
 might call him. 
 
 " April 29, 1787. Ch. M. After the Orde. our Brother William 
 Carey was dismissed to the Church of Christ at Moulton in North- 
 amptonshire with a view to his Ordination there." 
 
 These were the last years at Olney of William Cowper before 
 he removed to the Throckmor tons' 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 Mrs. 
 Browning calls "the deathless singing" which in 1785, in 
 The Task, opened a new era in English literature. He may 
 have been fired with the desire to imitate Whitefield, in the 
 description of whom, though reluctant to name him, Cowper 
 really anticipated Carey himself: 
 
 " He followed Paul ; his zeal a kindred flame. 
 His apostolic charity the same; 
 Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas, 
 Forsaking country, kindred, friends and ease; 
 Like him he laboured and, Like him, content 
 To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 1785-1792 
 
 Moulton the Mission's birthplace Carey's fever and poverty His Moulton 
 school Fired with the missionary idea His very large missionary 
 map Fuller's confession of the aged and respectable ministers' 
 opposition Old Mr. Ryland's rebuke Driven to publish his Enquiry 
 Its literary character Carey's survey of the world in 1788 His 
 motives, difficulties, and plans Projects the first Missionary Society 
 Contrasted with his predecessors from Erasmus Prayer concert 
 begun in Scotland in 1742 Jonathan Edwards The 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 Northampton 
 to Kettering, passes through a country known last century 
 for the doings of the Pytchley Hunt. Stories, by no means 
 exaggerated, of the deep drinking and deeper play of the club, 
 whose gatehouse now stands at the entrance of Overstone Park, 
 were rife, when on Lady Day 1785 William Carey became 
 Baptist preacher of Moulton village, on the other side of the 
 road. Moulton was to become the birthplace of the modern 
 missionary idea; Kettering, of evangelical missionary action. 
 
 No man in England had apparently a more wretched lot or 
 more miserable prospects than he. He had started in life as 
 a journeyman shoemaker at eighteen, burdened with a payment 
 to his first master's widow which his own kind heart had led 
 him to offer, and with the price of his second master's stock 
 and business. Trade was good for the moment, and he had 
 married, before he was twenty, one who brought him the most 
 terrible sorrow a man can bear. He had no sooner completed 
 a large order for which his predecessor had contracted than it 
 was returned on his hands. From place to place he wearily 
 trudged, trying to sell the shoes. Fever carried off his first 
 child and brought himself so near to the grave that he sent for 
 
 20
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 2 i 
 
 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 there- 
 after until his voyage to India. During his preaching for more 
 than three years at Barton, which involved a walk of sixteen 
 miles, he did not receive from the poor folks enough to pay for 
 the clothes he wore out in their service. His younger brother 
 delicately came to his help, and he received the gift with a 
 pathetic tenderness. But a calling which at once starved him, 
 in spite of all his method and perseverance, and cramped the 
 ardour of his soul for service to the Master who had revealed 
 Himself in him, became distasteful. He gladly accepted an 
 invitation from the somewhat disorganised church at Moulton 
 to preach to them. They could offer him only about 10 a 
 year, supplemented by 5 from a London fund. But the 
 schoolmaster had just left, and Carey saw in that fact a new 
 hope. For a time he and his family managed to live on an 
 income which is estimated as never exceeding 36 a year. We 
 find this passage in a printed appeal made by the " very poor 
 congregation " for funds to repair and enlarge the chapel to 
 which the new pastor's preaching had attracted a crowd: 
 " The peculiar situation of our minister, Mr. Carey, renders it 
 impossible for us to send him far abroad to collect the Con- 
 tributions of the Charitable; as we are able to raise him but 
 about Ten Pounds per Annum, so that he is obliged to keep 
 a School for his Support: And as there are other two 
 Schools in the Town, if he was to leave Home to collect for 
 the Building, he must probably quit his Station on his Return, 
 for Want of a Maintenance." 
 
 His genial loving-kindness and his fast increasing learning 
 little fitted him to drill peasant children in the alphabet. 
 " When I kept school the boys kept me," he used to confess 
 with a merry twinkle. In all that our Lord meant by it William 
 Carey was a child from first to last. The former teacher re- 
 turned, and the poor preacher again took to shoemaking for 
 the village clowns and the shops in Kettering and Northampton. 
 His house still stands, one of a row of six cottages of the dear old 
 English type, with the indispensable garden behind, and the 
 glad sunshine pouring in through the open window embowered 
 in roses and honeysuckle. 
 
 There, and chiefly in the school-hours as he tried to teach the 
 children geography and the Bible and was all the while teaching 
 himself, the missionary idea arose in his mind, and his soul
 
 22 Life of William Carey 
 
 became fired with the self-consecration, unknown to Wyclif and 
 Hus, Luther and Calvin, Knox and even Bunyan, for theirs was 
 other work. All his past knowledge of nature and of books, all 
 his favourite reading of voyages and of travels which had led 
 his school-fellows to dub him Columbus, all his painful study of 
 the Word, his experience of the love of Christ and expoundings 
 of the meaning of His message to men for six years, were 
 gathered up, were intensified, and were directed with a concen- 
 trated 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, Sutclifi, and Fuller were asked to 
 ordain him on the loth August 1786. Fuller had discovered 
 the value of a man who had passed through spiritual experience, 
 and possessed a native common sense like his own, when Carey 
 had been suddenly called to preach in Northampton to supply the 
 place of another. Since that day he had often visited Moulton, 
 and he thus tells us what he had seen : 
 
 " The congregation being few and poor, he followed his 
 business in order to assist in supporting his family. His mind, 
 however, was much occupied in acquiring the learned languages, 
 and almost every other branch of useful knowledge. I remember, 
 on going into the room where he employed himself at his busi- 
 ness, I saw hanging up against the wall a very large map, con- 
 sisting 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 read- 
 ing, relative to its population, religion, etc. The substance of 
 this was afterwards published in his Enquiry. These researches, 
 on which his mind was naturally bent, hindered him, of course, 
 from doing much of his business; and the people, as was said, 
 being few and poor, he was at this time exposed to great hard- 
 ships. I have been assured that he and his family have lived 
 for a great while together without tasting animal food, and with 
 but a scanty pittance of other provision." 
 
 " He would also be frequently conversing with his brethren 
 in the ministry on the practicability and importance of a mission 
 to the heathen, and of his willingness to engage in it. At 
 several ministers' meetings, between the year 1787 and 1790, this
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 23 
 
 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 Moulton, the first 
 summer after I was thoughtful. It was from these words: 
 ' For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's 
 sake will I give him no rest.' It was a day to be remembered 
 by me; a day set apart for prayer and fasting by the church.. 
 What hath God wrought since that time ! " 
 
 Old Mr. Ryland always failed to recall the story, but we have* 
 it on the testimony of Carey's personal friend, Morris of Clip- 
 stone, 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 com- 
 mand 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 Parti- 
 cular Baptists from the yoke of hyper-calvinism which had to 
 that hour shut the heathen out of a dead Christendom, and the 
 aged chairman shouted out the rebuke " You are a miserable 
 enthusiast for asking such a question. Certainly nothing can 
 be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of miracu- 
 lous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will give effect to the 
 commission of Christ as at first." Carey had never before 
 mentioned the subject openly, and he was for the moment 
 greatly mortified. But, says Morris, he still pondered these 
 things in his heart. That incident marks the wide gulf which 
 Carey had to bridge. Silenced by his brethren, he had recourse 
 to the press. It was then that he wrote his own contribution 
 to the discussion he would have raised on a duty which was more 
 than seventeen centuries old, and had been for fourteen of these 
 
 c
 
 24 Life of William Carey 
 
 neglected: An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use 
 Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in -which the Religious 
 State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former 
 Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, 
 are considered by WILLIAM CAREY. Then follows the great 
 conclusion of Paul in his letter to the Romans (x. 12-15): 
 " For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. . . . 
 How shall they preach except they be sent? " He happened 
 to be in Birmingham in 1786 collecting subscriptions for the 
 rebuilding of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr. Thomas Potts, 
 who had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering 
 that he had prepared the manuscript, gave him 10 to publish 
 it. And it appeared at Leicester in 1792, " price one shilling 
 and sixpence," the profits to go to the proposed mission. The 
 pamphlet form doubtless accounts for its disappearance now; 
 only four copies of the original edition 1 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 finding rest on Sunday only by a 
 change of toil, far from libraries and the society of men with 
 more advantages than his own, this shoemaker, still under 
 thirty, surveys the whole world, continent by continent, island 
 by island, race by race, faith by faith, kingdom by kingdom, 
 tabulating his results with an accuracy, and following them up 
 with a logical power of generalisation which would extort the 
 admiration of the learned even of the present day. 
 
 Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to 
 His disciples is still binding on us, having reviewed former 
 undertakings for the conversion of the heathen from the Ascen- 
 sion to the Moravians and " the late Mr. Wesley " in the West 
 Indies, and having thus surveyed in detail the state of the 
 world in 1786, he removes the five impediments in the way of 
 carrying the Gospel among the heathen, which his contem- 
 poraries advanced their distance from us, their barbarism, the 
 danger of being killed by them, the difficulty of procuring the 
 necessaries of life, the unintelligibleness of their languages. 
 These his loving heart and Bible knowledge enable him skilfully 
 to turn in favour of the cause he pleads. The whole section is 
 1 Twice reprinted, in Leicester, and in London (1892) in facsimile.
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 25 
 
 essential to an appreciation of Carey's motives, difficulties, and 
 plans : 
 
 " FIRST, As to their distance from us, whatever objections might 
 have been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's 
 compass, nothing can be alleged for it with any colour of plausi- 
 bility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty 
 through the Great South Sea as they can through the Mediterranean 
 or any lesser sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite 
 us to the trial, as there are to our knowledge trading companies, 
 whose commerce lies in many of the places where these barbarians 
 dwell. At one time or other ships are sent to visit places of more 
 recent discovery, and to explore parts the most unknown; and 
 every fresh account of their ignorance or cruelty should call forth 
 our pity, and excite us to concur with providence in seeking their 
 eternal good. Scripture likewise seems to point out this method, 
 ' Surely the Isles shall wait for me; the ships of Tarshish first, to 
 bring my sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto 
 the name of the Lord, thy God.' Isai. Ix. 9. This seems to imply 
 that in the time of the glorious increase of the church, in the latter 
 days (of which the whole chapter is undoubtedly a prophecy), 
 commerce shall subserve the spread of the gospel. The ships of 
 Tarshish were trading vessels, which made voyages for traffic to 
 various parts; thus much therefore must be meant by it, that 
 navigation, especially that which is commercial, shall be one great 
 mean of carrying on the work of God; and perhaps it may imply 
 that there shall be a very considerable appropriation of wealth to 
 that purpose. 
 
 " SECONDLY, As to their uncivilised and barbarous way of living, 
 this can be no objection to any, except those whose love of ease 
 renders them unwilling to expose themselves to inconveniences for 
 the good of others. It was no objection to the apostles and their 
 successors, who went among the barbarous Germans and Gauls, and 
 still more barbarous Britons! They did not wait for the ancient 
 inhabitants of these countries to be civilised before they could be 
 christianised, but went simply with the doctrine of the cross; and 
 Tertullian could boast that ' those parts of Britain which were 
 proof against the Roman armies, were conquered by the gospel of 
 Christ.' It was no objection to an Eliot or a Brainerd, in later 
 times. They went forth, and encountered every difficulty of the 
 kind, and found that a cordial reception of the gospel produced 
 those happy effects which the longest intercourse with Europeans 
 without it could never accomplish. It is no objection to 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. 
 
 " After all, the uncivilised state of the heathen, instead of afford- 
 ing 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
 
 26 Life of William Carey 
 
 and contributing by their preachings, writings, or practices to the 
 glory of our Redeemer's name and the good of his church, are 
 enveloped in ignorance and barbarism ? Can we hear that they are 
 without the gospel, without government, without laws, and without 
 arts, and sciences; and not exert ourselves to introduce among 
 them the sentiments of men, and of Christians? Would not the 
 spread of the gospel be the most effectual mean of their civilisation ? 
 Would not that make them useful members of society ? We know 
 that such effects did in a measure follow the afore-mentioned efforts 
 of Eliot, Brainerd, and others amongst the American Indians; and 
 if similar attempts were made in other parts of the world, and 
 succeeded with a divine blessing (which we have every reason to 
 think they would), might we not expect to see able divines, or 
 read well-conducted treatises in defence of the truth, even amongst 
 those who at present seem to be scarcely human ? 
 
 " THIRDLY, In respect to the danger of being killed by them, it 
 is true that whoever does go must put his life in his hand, and not 
 consult with flesh and blood ; but do not the goodness of the cause, 
 the duties incumbent on us as the creatures of God and Christians, 
 and the perishing state of our fellow-men, loudly call upon us to 
 venture all, and use every warrantable exertion for their benefit? 
 Paul and Barnabas, who hazarded their lives for the name of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, were not blamed as being rash, but commended 
 for so doing; while John Mark, who through timidity of mind 
 deserted them in their perilous undertaking, was branded with 
 censure. After all, as has been already observed, I greatly question 
 whether most of the barbarities practised by the savages upon 
 those who have visited them, have not originated in some real or 
 supposed affront, and were therefore, more properly, acts of self- 
 defence, than proofs of ferocious dispositions. No wonder if the 
 imprudence of sailors should prompt them to offend the simple 
 savage, and the offence be resented; but Eliot, Brainerd, and the 
 Moravian missionaries have been very seldom molested. Nay, in 
 general the heathen have showed a willingness to hear the word; 
 and have principally expressed their hatred of Christianity on 
 account of the vices of nominal Christians. 
 
 " FOURTHLY, As to the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of 
 life, this would not be so great as may appear at first sight; for, 
 though we could not procure European food, yet we might procure 
 such as the natives of those countries which we visit, subsist upon 
 themselves. And this would only be passing through what we 
 have virtually engaged in by entering on the ministerial office. A 
 Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his 
 own ; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly 
 devoted to him. By entering on that sacred office he solemnly 
 undertakes to be always engaged, as much as possible, in the Lord's 
 work, and not to choose his own pleasure, or employment, or pursue 
 the ministry as a something that is to subserve his own ends, or 
 interests, or as a kind of bye-work. He engages to go where God 
 pleases, and to do or endure what he sees fit to command, or call 
 him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell 
 to friends, pleasures, and comforts, and stands in readiness to
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 27 
 
 endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord, and Master. 
 It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts 
 of a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilised country, legal 
 protection, affluence, splendour, or even a competency. The 
 slights, and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy 
 prisons, and tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech, 
 miserable accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger, and 
 thirst, nakedness, weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but 
 little worldly encouragement, should rather be the objects of their 
 expectation. Thus the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and 
 endured hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; and though we, 
 living in a civilised country where Christianity is protected by law, 
 are not called to suffer these things while we continue here, yet I 
 question whether all are justified in staying here, while so many are 
 perishing without means of grace in other lands. Sure I am that 
 it is entirely contrary to the spirit of the gospel for its ministers 
 to enter upon it from interested motives, or with great worldly 
 expectations. On the contrary, the commission is a sufficient call 
 to them to venture all, and, like the primitive Christians, go every- 
 where preaching the gospel. 
 
 " It might be necessary, however, for two, at least, to go together, 
 and in general I should think it best that they should be married 
 men, and to prevent their time from being employed in procuring 
 necessaries, two, or more, other persons, with their wives and 
 families, might also accompany them, who should be wholly em- 
 ployed in providing for them. In most countries it would be 
 necessary for them to cultivate a little spot of ground just for 
 their support, which would be a resource to them, whenever their 
 supplies failed. Not to mention the advantages they would reap 
 from each other's company, it would take off the enormous expense 
 which has always attended undertakings of this kind, the first 
 expense being the whole; for though a large colony needs support 
 for a considerable time, yet so small a number would, upon receiving 
 the first crop, maintain themselves. They would have the advan- 
 tage of choosing their situation, their wants would be few; the 
 women, and even the children, would be necessary for domestic 
 purposes: and a few articles of stock, as a cow or two, and a bull, 
 and a few other cattle of both sexes, a very few utensils of hus- 
 bandry, 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 imple- 
 ments for these purposes. Indeed, a variety of methods may be 
 thought of, and when once the work is undertaken, many things 
 will suggest themselves to us, of which we at present can form 
 no idea. 
 
 " FIFTHLY, As to learning their languages, the same means would 
 be found necessary here as in trade between different nations. In 
 some cases interpreters might be obtained, who might be employed 
 for a time; and where these were not to be found, the missionaries 
 must have patience, and mingle with the people, till they have 
 learned so much of their language as to be able to communicate 
 their ideas to them in it. It is well known to require no very
 
 28 Life of William Carey 
 
 extraordinary talents to learn, in the space of a year, or two at most, 
 the language of any people upon earth, so much of it at least as to 
 be able to convey any sentiments we wish to their understandings. 
 
 " The Missionaries must be men of great piety, prudence, courage, 
 and forbearance; of undoubted orthodoxy in their sentiments, and 
 must enter with all their hearts into the spirit of their mission; 
 they must be willing to leave all the comforts of life behind them, 
 and to encounter all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, 
 an uncomfortable manner of living, and every other inconvenience 
 that can attend this undertaking. Clothing, a few knives, powder 
 and shot, fishing-tackle, and the articles of husbandry above men- 
 tioned, must be provided for them; and when arrived at the place 
 of their destination, their first business must be to gain some 
 acquaintance with the language of the natives (for which purpose 
 two would be better than one), and by all lawful means to en- 
 deavour to cultivate a friendship with them, and as soon as possible 
 let them know the errand for which they were sent. They must 
 endeavour to convince them that it was their good alone which 
 induced them to forsake their friends, and all the comforts of their 
 native country. They must be very careful not to resent injuries 
 which may be offered to them, nor to think highly of themselves, 
 so as to despise the poor heathens, and by those means lay a 
 foundation for their resentment or rejection of the gospel. They 
 must take every opportunity of doing them good, and labouring 
 and travelling night and day, they must instruct, exhort, and 
 rebuke, with all long suffering and anxious desire for them, and, 
 above all, must be instant in prayer for the effusion of the Holy 
 Spirit upon the people of their charge. Let but missionaries of the 
 above description engage in the work, and we shall see that it is 
 not impracticable. 
 
 " It might likewise be of importance, if God should bless their 
 labours, for them to encourage any appearances of gifts amongst 
 the people of their charge ; if such should be raised up many advan- 
 tages would be derived from their knowledge of the language and 
 customs of their countrymen; and their change of conduct would 
 give great weight to their ministrations." 
 
 This first and still greatest missionary treatise in the English 
 language closes with the practical suggestion of these means 
 fervent and united prayer, the formation of a catholic or, failing 
 that, a Particular Baptist Society of " persons whose hearts are 
 in the work, men of serious religion and possessing a spirit of 
 perseverance," with an executive committee, and subscriptions 
 from rich and poor of a tenth of their income for both village 
 preaching and foreign missions, or, at least, an average of one 
 penny or more per week from all members of congregations. 
 He thus concludes: " It is true all the reward is of mere grace, 
 but it is nevertheless encouraging; what a treasure, what an 
 harvest must await such characters as Paul, and Eliot, and 
 Brainerd, and others, who have given themselves wholly to the
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 29 
 
 work of the Lord. What a heaven will it be to see the many 
 myriads of poor heathens, of Britons amongst the rest, who by 
 their labours have been brought to the knowledge of God. 
 Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth aspiring to. Surely 
 it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our might, in 
 promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ." 
 
 So Carey projected the first organisation which England had 
 seen for missions to all the human race outside of Christendom; 
 and his project, while necessarily requiring a Society to carry 
 it out, as coming from an " independent " Church, provided 
 that every member of every congregation should take a part 
 to the extent of fervent and united prayer, and of an average 
 subscription of a penny a week. He came as near to the New 
 Testament ideal of all Christians acting in an aggressive 
 missionary church as was possible in an age when the Estab- 
 lished Churches of England, Scotland, and Germany scouted 
 foreign missions, and the Free Churches were chiefly congrega- 
 tional in their ecclesiastical action. While asserting the other 
 ideal of the voluntary tenth or tithe as both a Scriptural principle 
 and Puritan practice, his common sense was satisfied to suggest 
 an average penny a week, all over, for every Christian. At 
 this hour, more than a century since Carey wrote, and after a 
 remarkable missionary revival in consequence of what he wrote 
 and did, all Christendom, Evangelical, Greek, and Latin, does 
 not give more than five millions sterling a year to Christianise 
 the majority of the race still outside its pale. It is not too 
 much to say that were Carey's penny a week from every 
 Christian a fact, and the prayer which would sooner or later 
 accompany it, the five millions would be fifty, and Christendom 
 would become a term nearly synonymous with humanity. The 
 Churches, whether by themselves or by societies, have yet to 
 pray and organise up to the level of Carey's penny a week. 
 
 The absolute originality as well as grandeur of the unconscious 
 action of the peasant shoemaker who, from 1779, prayed daily 
 for all the heathen and slaves, and organised his society accord- 
 ingly, 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
 
 30 Life of William Carey 
 
 special servant of the Lord, as no people had ever before been 
 charged in all history, sacred or secular. William Carey, 
 indeed, reaped the little that the few brave toilers of the wintry 
 time had sown; with a humility that is pathetic he acknow- 
 ledges 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 have been worthy to survive. He was 
 the first of the true Anastatosantes of the modern world, as only 
 an English-speaking man could be of the most thorough, 
 permanent, and everlasting of all Reformers, the men who turn 
 the world upside down, because they make it rise up and depart 
 from deadly beliefs and practices, from the fear and the fate of 
 death, into the life and light of Christ and the Father. 
 
 Who were his predecessors, reckoning from the Renascence 
 of Europe, the discovery of America, and the opening up of 
 India and Africa? Erasmus comes first, the bright scholar of 
 compromise who in 1516 gave the New Testament again to 
 Europe, as three centuries after Carey gave it to all Southern 
 Asia, and whose missionary treatise, Ecdesiastes, in 1535 
 anticipated, theoretically at least, Carey's Enquiry by two 
 centuries and a half. The missionary dream of this escaped 
 monk of Rotterdam and Basel, who taught women and weavers 
 and cobblers to read the Scriptures, and prayed that the Book 
 might be translated into all languages, was realised in the 
 scandalous iniquities and frauds of Portuguese and Spanish 
 and Jesuit missions in West and East. Luther had enough to 
 do with his papal antichrist and his German translation of the 
 Greek of the Testament of Erasmus. The Lutheran church 
 drove missions into the hands of the Pietists and Moravians 
 Wiclif 's offspring who nobly but ineffectually strove to do 
 a work meant for the whole Christian community. The Church 
 of England thrust forth the Puritans first to Holland and then 
 to New England, where Eliot, the Brainerds, and the Mayhews 
 sought to evangelise tribes which did not long survive themselves. 
 
 It was from Courteenhall, a Northamptonshire village near 
 Paulerspury, that in 1644 there went forth the appeal for the 
 propagation of the Gospel which comes nearest to Carey's cry 
 from the same midland region. Cromwell was in power, and 
 had himself planned a Protestant Propaganda, so to the Long 
 Parliament William Castell, " parson of Courteenhall," sent a 
 petition which, with the " Eliot Tracts," resulted in an ordinance 
 creating the Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England. Seventy English
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 31 
 
 ministers had backed the petition, and six of the Church of 
 Scotland, first of whom was Alexander Henderson. The 
 corporation, which, in a restored form, Robert Boyle governed 
 for thirty years, familiarised the nation with the duty of caring 
 for the dark races then coming more and more under our sway 
 alike in America and in India. It still exists, as well as Boyle's 
 Society for advancing the Faith in the West Indies. The 
 Friends also, and then the Moravians, taught the Wesleys and 
 Whitefield to care for the negroes. The English and Scottish 
 Propagation Societies sought also to provide spiritual aids for 
 the colonists and the highlanders. 
 
 The two great thinkers of the eighteenth century, who 
 flourished as philosopher and moralist when Carey was a youth, 
 taught the principles which he of all others was to apply on 
 their spiritual and most effective side. Adam Smith put his 
 finger on the crime which had darkened and continued till 1834 
 to shadow the brightness of geographical enterprise in both 
 hemispheres the treatment of the natives by Europeans whose 
 superiority of force enabled them to commit every sort of 
 injustice in the ne& 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 Christian 
 mind that the propagation of truth had never been seriously 
 pursued by any European nation, and the hope " that the light 
 of the Gospel will at last illuminate the sands of Africa and the 
 deserts of America, though its progress cannot but be slow 
 when it is so much obstructed by the lives of Christians." 
 
 The early movement which is connected most directly with 
 Carey's and the Northamptonshire Baptists' began in Scotland. 
 Its Kirk, emasculated by the Revolution settlement and statute 
 of Queen Anne, had put down the evangelical teaching of Boston 
 and the " marrow " men, and had cast out the fathers of the 
 Secession in 1733. In 1742 the quickening spread over the 
 west country. In October 1744 several ministers in Scotland 
 united, for the two years next following, in what they called, 
 and what has since become familiar in America as, a " Concert 
 to promote more abundant application to a duty that is 
 perpetually binding prayer that our God's kingdom may 
 come, joined with praises; " to be offered weekly on Saturday 
 evening and Sunday morning, and more solemnly on the first 
 1 Wealth of Nations, Book IV., Chap. VII.
 
 32 Life of William Carey 
 
 Tuesday of every quarter. Such was the result, and so did 
 the prayer concert spread in the United Kingdom that in 
 August 1746 a memorial was sent to Boston inviting all 
 Christians in North America to enter/ into it for the next seven 
 years. It was on this that Jonathan Edwards wrote his Humble 
 Attempt to -promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of 
 God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion 
 and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth. 
 
 This work of Edwards, republished at Olney, came into the 
 hands of Carey, and powerfully influenced the Northampton- 
 shire Association of Baptist ministers and messengers. At their 
 meeting in Nottingham in 1784 Sutcliff of Olney suggested and 
 Ryland of Northampton drafted an invitation to the people 
 to join them, for one hour on the first Monday of every month, 
 in prayer for the effusion of the Holy Spirit of God. " Let the 
 whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately remembered," 
 wrote these catholic men, and to give emphasis to their 
 oecumenical missionary desires they added in italics " Let the 
 spread of the Gospel to the most distant parts of the habitable 
 globe be the object of your most fervent requests. We shall 
 rejoice if any other Christian societies of our own or other 
 denominations will join with us, and we do now invite them 
 most cordially to join heart and hand in the attempt." To 
 this Carey prominently referred in his Enquiry , tracing to even 
 the unimportunate and feeble prayers of these eight years the 
 increase of the churches, the clearing of controversies, the 
 opening of lands to missions, the spread of civil and religious 
 liberty, the noble effort made to abolish the inhuman slave-trade, 
 and the establishment of the free settlement of Sierra Leone. 
 And then he hits the other blots in the movement, besides the 
 want of importunity and earnestness " We must not be con- 
 tented 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
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 33 
 
 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 snowed how, by Bible and church and school, 
 by physical and spiritual truth, India and all Asia could be 
 brought to Christ; the other taught England, Scotland, and 
 America to begin at last to play their part in an enterprise as 
 old as Abraham; as divine in its warrant, its charge, its promise, 
 as Christ Himself. Seven years older than Carey, his friend was 
 born a farmer's son and labourer in the fen country of Cromwell 
 whom he resembled, was self-educated under conditions precisely 
 similar, and passed through spiritual experiences almost exactly 
 the same. The two, unknown to each other, found themselves 
 when called to preach at eighteen unable to reconcile the grim 
 dead theology of their church with the new life and liberty which 
 had come to them direct from the Spirit of Christ and from His 
 Word. Carey had left his ancestral church at a time when the 
 biographer of Romaine could declare with truth that that 
 preacher was the only evangelical in the established churches 
 of all London, and that of twenty thousand clergymen in 
 England, the number who preached the truth as it is in Jesus 
 had risen from not twenty in 1749 to three hundred in 1789. 
 The methodism of the Wesleys was beginning to tell, but the 
 Baptists were as lifeless as the Established Church. In both 
 the Church and Dissent there were individuals only, like Newton 
 and Scott, the elder Robert Hall and Ryland, whose spiritual 
 fervour made them marked men. 
 
 The Baptists, who had stood alone as the advocates of tolera- 
 tion, religious and civil, in an age of intolerance which made 
 them the victims, had subsided like Puritan and Covenanter 
 when the Revolution of 1688 brought persecution to an end. 
 The section who held the doctrine of " general " redemption, 
 and are now honourably known as General Baptists, preached 
 ordinary Arminianism, and even Socinianism. The more 
 earnest and educated among them clung to Calvinism, but, by 
 adopting the unhappy term of " particular " Baptists, gradually 
 fell under a fatalistic and antinomian spell. This false Calvinism, 
 which the French theologian of Geneva would have been the 
 first to denounce, proved all the more hostile to the preaching 
 of the Gospel of salvation to the heathen abroad, as well as the 
 sinner at home, that it professed to be an orthodox evangel 
 while either emasculating the Gospel or turning the grace of God 
 into licentiousness. From such " particular " preachers as
 
 34 Life of William Carey 
 
 young Fuller and Carey listened to, at first with bewilderment, 
 then impatience, and then denunciation, missions of no kind 
 could come. Fuller exposed and pursued the delusion with a 
 native shrewdness, a masculine sagacity, and a fine English 
 style, which have won for him the apt name of the Franklin of 
 Theology. For more than twenty years Fullerism, as it was 
 called, raised a controversy like that of the Marrow of Divinity 
 in Scotland, and cleared the ground sufficiently at least to allow 
 of the foundation of foreign missions in both countries. It 
 now seems incredible that the only class who a century ago 
 represented evangelicalism should have opposed missions to the 
 heathen on the ground that the Gospel is meant only for the 
 elect, whether at home or abroad; that nothing spiritually 
 good is the duty of the unregenerate, therefore " nothing must 
 be addressed to them in a way of exhortation excepting what 
 relates to external obedience." 
 
 The same year, 1784, in which the Baptist concert for prayer 
 was begun, saw the publication of Fuller's Gospel Worthy of all 
 Acceptation. Seven years later he preached at Clipstone a 
 famous sermon, in which he applied the dealing of the Lord of 
 Hosts (in Haggai) to the Jewish apathy " The time is not come 
 that the Lord's house should be built " with a power and 
 directness which nevertheless failed practically to convince 
 himself. The men who listened to him had been praying for 
 seven years, yet had opposed Carey's pleas for a foreign mission, 
 had treated him as a visionary or a madman. When Fuller had 
 published his treatise, Carey had drawn the practical deduction 
 " If it be the duty of all men, when the Gospel comes, to 
 believe unto salvation, then it is the duty of those who are 
 entrusted with the Gospel to endeavour to make it known 
 among all nations for the obedience of faith." Now, after seven 
 more years of waiting, and remembering the manuscript Enquiry, 
 Carey thought action cannot be longer delayed. Hardly was 
 the usual discussion that followed the meeting over when, as the 
 story is told by the son of Ryland who had silenced him in a 
 former ministers' meeting, Carey appealed to his brethren to 
 put their preaching into practice and begin a missionary society 
 that very day. Fuller's sermon bore the title of The Evil Nature 
 and the Dangerous Tendency of Delay in the Concerns of Religion, 
 and it had been preceded by one on being very jealous for the 
 Lord God of Hosts, in which Sutcliff cried for the divine passion, 
 the celestial fire that burned in the bosom and blazed in the life 
 of Elijah. The Elijah of their own church and day was among
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 35 
 
 them, burning and blazing for years, and all that he could 
 induce them to promise was vaguely that, " something should be 
 done," and to throw to his importunity the easy request that he 
 would publish his manuscript and preach next year's sermon. 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1789, Carey had left Moulton l for Leicester, 
 whither he was summoned to build up a congregation, ruined 
 by antinomianism, in the mean brick chapel of the obscure 
 quarter of Harvey Lane. This chapel his genius and Robert 
 Hall's eloquence made so famous in time that the Baptists sent 
 off a vigorous hive to the fine new church. In an equally humble 
 house opposite the chapel the poverty of the pastor compelled 
 him to keep a school from nine in the morning till four in winter 
 and five in summer. Between this and the hours for sleep and 
 food he had little leisure ; but that he spent, as he had done all 
 his life before and did all his life after, with a method and zeal 
 which doubled his working days. " I have seen him at work," 
 writes Gardiner in his Music and Friends, " his books beside him, 
 and his beautiful flowers in the windows." In a letter to his 
 father we have this division of his leisure Monday, " the 
 learned languages;" Tuesday, "the study of science, history, 
 composition, etc; " Wednesday, " I preach a lecture, and have 
 been for more than twelve months on the Book of Revelation; " 
 Thursday, " I visit my friends; " Friday and Saturday, 
 " preparing for the Lord's Day." He preached three times 
 every Sunday in his own chapel or the surrounding villages, 
 with such results that in one case he added hundreds to its 
 Wesleyan congregation. He was secretary to the local com- 
 mittee of dissenters. " Add to this occasional journeys, 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Haddon of Clipstone writes: " I recollect when I was about 
 ten years old, at my father's house; it was on a Saturday, Carey was on his 
 way to Arnsby (which is twenty miles from Moulton) to supply there the 
 following Sabbath; he had then walked from Moulton to Clipstone, a 
 distance of ten miles, and had ten miles further to walk to Arnsby. My 
 honoured father had been intimately acquainted with him for some years 
 before, and he pressed him to stay and take an early cup of tea before he 
 went further. I well recollect my father saying to him, ' I suppose you 
 still work at your trade ? ' (which was that of an army and navy shoemaker). 
 Mr. Carey replied: ' No, indeed, I do not; for yesterday week I took in my 
 work to Kettering, and Mr. Gotch came into the warehouse just as I had 
 emptied my bag. He took up one of the shoes and said, " Let me see, 
 Carey, how much do you earn a week? " 1 said, " About QS., sir." Mr. 
 Gotch then said : " 1 have a secret to tell you, which is this : I do not intend 
 you should spoil any more of my leather, but you may proceed as fast as 
 you can with your Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and I will allow you from 
 my own private purse los. a week! " With that sum and about 53. a 
 week which I get from my people at Moulton, I can make a comfortable 
 living ' (although at that time he had a wife and three children to provide 
 for)."
 
 36 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 de- 
 nominations were witnesses to the transactions of the day. 
 After prayer Brother Hopper of Nottingham addressed the 
 congregation upon the nature of an ordination, after which he 
 proposed the usual questions to the church, and required my 
 Confession of Faith; which being delivered, Brother Ryland 
 prayed the ordination prayer, with laying on of hands. Brother 
 Sutcliff delivered a very solemn charge from Acts vi. 4 ' But 
 we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry 
 of the word.' And Brother Fuller delivered an excellent address 
 to the people from Eph. v. 2 ' Walk in love.' In the evening 
 Brother Pearce of Birmingham preached from Gal. vi. 14 
 ' God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I 
 unto the world.' The day was a day of pleasure, and I hope of 
 profit to the greatest part of the Assembly." 
 
 Carey became the friend of his neighbour, Thomas Robinson, 
 evangelical rector of St. Mary's, to whom he said on one occasion 
 when indirectly charged in humorous fashion with " sheep- 
 stealing: " " Mr. Robinson, I am a dissenter, and you are a 
 churchman; we must each endeavour to do good according to 
 our light. At the same time, you may be assured that I had 
 rather be the instrument of converting a scavenger that sweeps 
 the streets than of merely proselyting the richest and best 
 characters in your congregation." Dr. Arnold and Mr. R. 
 Brewin, a botanist, opened to him their libraries, and all good 
 men in Leicester soon learned to be proud of the new Baptist 
 minister. In the two chapels, as in that of Moulton, enlarged 
 since his time, memorial tablets tell succeeding generations of 
 the virtues and the deeds of " the illustrious W. Carey, D.D." 
 
 The ministers' meeting of 1792 came round, and on 3ist 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
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 37 
 
 he had baptised in the river, and he gives us this record : " If 
 all the people had lifted up their voices and wept, as the children 
 of Israel did at Bochim, I should not have wondered at the 
 effect. It would only have seemed proportionate to the cause, 
 so clearly did he prove the criminality of our supineness in the 
 cause of God." The text was Isaiah's (liv. 2, 3) vision of the 
 widowed church's tent stretching forth till her children inherited 
 the nations and peopled the desolate cities, and the application 
 to the reluctant brethren was couched in these two great maxims 
 written ever since on the banners of the missionary host of the 
 kingdom 
 
 EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD. 
 
 ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD. 
 
 The service was over; even Fuller was afraid, even Ryland 
 made no sign, and the ministers were leaving the meeting. 
 Seizing Fuller's arm with an imploring look, the preacher, whom 
 despair emboldened to act alone for his Master, exclaimed: 
 " And are you, after all, going again to do nothing? " What 
 Fuller describes as the " much fear and trembling " of these 
 inexperienced, poor, and ignorant village preachers gave way to 
 the appeal of one who had gained both knowledge and courage, 
 and who, as to funds and men, was ready to give himself. They 
 entered on their minutes this much: "That a plan be pre- 
 pared against the next ministers' meeting at Kettering for 
 forming a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the 
 Heathen." There was more delay, but only for four months. 
 The first purely English Missionary Society, which sent forth 
 its own English founder, was thus constituted as described in* 
 the minutes of the Northampton ministers' meeting. 
 
 " At the ministers' meeting at Kettering, October 2, 1792, after 
 the public services of the day were ended, the ministers retired to 
 consult further on the matter, and to lay a foundation at least for 
 a society, when the following resolutions were proposed, and 
 unanimously agreed to: 
 
 " i. Desirous of making an effort for the propagation of the 
 gospel among the heathen, agreeably to what is recommended hi 
 brother Carey's late publication on that subject, we, whose names 
 appear to the subsequent subscription, do solemnly agree to act in 
 society together for that purpose. 
 
 " 2. As in the present divided state of Christendom, it seems that 
 each denomination, by exerting itself separately, is most likely to 
 accomplish the great ends of a mission, it is agreed that this society 
 be called The Particular [Calvinistic] Baptist Society for Propagating 
 the Gospel among the Heathen. 
 
 " 3. As such an undertaking must needs be attended with ex-
 
 3 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 pense, we agree immediately to open a subscription for the above 
 purpose, and to recommend it to others. 
 
 " 4. Every person who shall subscribe ten pounds at once, or 
 ten shillings and sixpence annually, shall be considered a member 
 of the society. 
 
 " 5. That the Rev. John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, William Carey, 
 John Sutcliff, and Andrew Fuller, be appointed a committee, three 
 of whom shall be empowered to act in carrying into effect the 
 purposes of this society. 
 
 " 6. That the Rev. Reynold Hogg be appointed treasurer, and 
 the Rev. Andrew Fuller secretary. 
 
 "7. That the subscriptions be paid in at the Northampton 
 ministers' meeting, October 31, 1792, at which time the subject 
 shall be considered more particularly by the committee, and other 
 subscribers who may be present. 
 
 " Signed, John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, John Sutcliff, Andrew 
 Fuller, Abraham Greenwood, Edward Sherman, Joshua Burton, 
 Samuel Pearce, Thomas Blundel, William Heighten, John Eayres, 
 Joseph Timms; whose subscriptions in all amounted to ^13 : 2 : 6." 
 
 The procedure suggested in " brother Carey's late publica- 
 tion " was strictly followed a society of subscribers, 2d. a 
 week, or IDS 6d. a year as a compromise between the tithes and 
 the penny a week of the Enquiry. The secretary was the 
 courageous Fuller, who once said to Ryland and Sutcliff: " You 
 excel me in wisdom, especially in foreseeing difficulties. I 
 therefore want to advise with you both, but to execute without 
 you." The frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to 
 train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer 
 was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office 
 into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need 
 now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of 
 Birmingham, who went home and sent 70 to the collection, 
 and who, since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to 
 him dearer than even Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed 
 parlour in the house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back 
 garden, which many a pilgrim still visits, and around which 
 there gathered thousands in 1842 to hold the first jubilee of 
 modern missions, when commemorative medals were struck. 
 There in 1892 the centenary witnessed a still vaster assemblage. 
 
 Can any good come out of Kettering ? was the conclusion of 
 the Baptist ministers of London with the one exception of Booth, 
 when they met formally to decide whether, like those of Birming- 
 ham and other places, they should join the primary society. 
 Benjamin Beddome, a venerable scholar whom Robert Hall 
 declared to be chief among his brethren, replied to Fuller in 
 language which is far from unusual even at the present day,
 
 Birth of England's Foreign Missions 39 
 
 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 excel- 
 lent motives, will meet with a disappointment. However, God 
 hath his ends, and whoever is disappointed He cannot be so. My 
 unbelieving heart is ready to suggest that the time is not come, 
 the time that the Lord's house should be built." 
 
 The other Congregationalists made no sign. The Presbyterians, 
 with a few noble exceptions like Dr. Erskine, whose Dutch 
 volume Carey had translated, denounced such movements as 
 revolutionary in a General Assembly of Socinianised " mode- 
 rates." The Church of England kept haughtily or timidly aloof, 
 though king and archbishop were pressed to send a mission. 
 " Those who in that day sneered that England had sent a 
 cobbler to convert the world were the direct lineal descendants 
 of those who sneered in Palestine 2000 years ago, ' Is not this the 
 carpenter? ' " said Archdeacon Farrar in Westminster Abbey 
 on 6th March 1887. Hence Fuller's reference to this time: 
 " When we began in 1792 there was little or no respectability 
 among us, not so much as a squire to sit in the chair or an 
 orator to address him with speeches. Hence good Dr. Stennett 
 advised the London ministers to stand aloof and not commit 
 themselves." 
 
 One man in India had striven to rouse the Church to its duty 
 as Carey had done at home. Charles Grant had in 1787 written 
 from Malda to Charles Simeon and Wilberforce for eight mis- 
 sionaries, 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 
 
 J 793 
 
 Tahiti v. Bengal Carey and Thomas appointed missionaries to Bengal 
 The farewell at Leicester John Thomas, first medical missionary 
 Carey's letter to his father The Company's " abominable monopoly " 
 The voyage Carey's aspirations for world-wide missions Lands at 
 Calcutta His description of Bengal in 1793 Contrast presented 
 by Carey to Clive, Hastings, and Cornwallis The spiritual founder of 
 an Indian Empire of Christian Britain Bengal and the famine of 
 1769-70 The Decennial Settlement declared permanent Effects on 
 the landed classes Obstacles to Carey's work East India Company 
 at its worst Hindooism and the Bengalees in 1793 Position of 
 Hindoo women Missionary attempts before Carey's Ziegenbalg 
 and Schwartz Kiernander and the chaplains Hindooised state 
 of Anglo-Indian society and its reaction on England Guneshan Dass, 
 the first caste Hindoo to visit England William Carey had no 
 predecessor. 
 
 CAREY had desired to go first to Tahiti or Western Africa. The 
 natives of North America and the negroes of the West Indies 
 and Sierra Leone were being cared for by Moravian and Wesleyan 
 evangelists. The narrative of Captain Cook's two first voyages 
 to the Pacific and discovery of Tahiti had appeared in the same 
 year in which the Northampton churches began their seven 
 years' concert of prayer, just after his own second baptism. 
 From the map, and a leather globe which also he is said to have 
 made, he had been teaching the children of Piddington, Moulton, 
 and Leicester the great outlines and thrilling details of expedi- 
 tions round the world which roused both the scientific and the 
 simple of England as much as the discoveries of Columbus had 
 excited Europe. When the childlike ignorance and natural 
 grace of the Hawaiians, which had at first fired him with the 
 longing to tell them the good news of God, were seen turned into 
 the wild justice of revenge, which made Cook its first victim, 
 Carey became all the more eager to anticipate the disasters of 
 later days. That was work for which others were to be found. 
 It was not amid the scattered and decimated savages of the 
 Pacific or of America that the citadel of heathenism was found, 
 nor by them that the world, old and new, was to be made the 
 
 40
 
 India as Carey Found It 41 
 
 kingdom of Christ. With the cautious wisdom that marked all 
 Fuller's action, though perhaps with the ignorance that was due 
 to Carey's absence, the third meeting of the new society recorded 
 this among other articles " to be examined and discussed in the 
 most diligent and impartial manner In what part of the heathen 
 world do there seem to be the most promising openings? " 
 
 The answer, big with consequence for the future of the East, 
 was in their hands, in the form of a letter from Carey, who stated 
 that " Mr. Thomas, the Bengal missionary," was trying to raise 
 a fund for that province, and asked " whether it would not be 
 worthy of the Society to try to make that and ours unite with 
 one fund for the purpose of sending the gospel to the heathen 
 indefinitely." Tahiti was not to be neglected, nor Africa, nor 
 Bengal, in " our larger plan," which included above four 
 hundred millions of our fellowmen, among whom it was an 
 object " worthy of the most ardent and persevering pursuit to 
 disseminate the humane and saving principles of the Christian 
 Religion." If this Mr. Thomas were worthy, his experience 
 made it desirable to begin with Bengal. Thomas answered for 
 himself at the next meeting, when Carey fell upon his neck and 
 wept, having previously preached from the words " Behold I 
 come quickly, and My reward is with Me." " We saw," said 
 Fuller afterwards, " there was a gold mine in India, but it was 
 as deep as the centre of the earth. Who will venture to explore 
 it? 'I will venture to go down,' said Carey, ' but remember 
 that you (addressing Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland) must hold 
 the ropes.' We solemnly engaged to him to do so, nor while we 
 live shall we desert him." 
 
 Carey and Thomas, an ordained minister and a medical 
 evangelist, were at this meeting in Kettering, on loth January 
 J 793> appointed missionaries to " the East Indies for preaching 
 the gospel to the heathen," on "ioo or 150 a year between 
 them all," that is, for two missionaries, their wives, and four 
 children, until they should be able to support themselves like 
 the Moravians. As a matter of fact they received just 200 in 
 all for the first three years when self-support and mission exten- 
 sion 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
 
 42 Life of William Carey 
 
 Fuller and by the preaching tours of the two missionaries. 
 During one of these, at Hull, Carey met the printer and news- 
 paper editor, William Ward, and cast his mantle over him thus 
 " If the Lord bless us, we shall want a person of your business 
 to enable us to print the Scriptures ; I hope you will come after 
 us." Ward did so in five years. 
 
 The 2oth March 1793 was a high day in the Leicester chapel, 
 Harvey Lane, when the missionaries were set apart like 
 Barnabas and Paul a forenoon of prayer; an afternoon of 
 preaching by Thomas from Psalm xvi. 4; " Their sorrows shall 
 be multiplied that hasten after another God; " an evening of 
 preaching by the treasurer from Acts xxi. 14, " And when he 
 would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, the will of the Lord 
 be done; " and the parting charge by Fuller the secretary, from 
 the risen Lord's own benediction and forthsending of His 
 disciples, " Peace be unto you, as My Father hath sent Me, even 
 so send I you." Often in after days of solitude and reproach 
 did Carey quicken his faith by reading the brave and loving 
 words of Fuller on " the objects you must keep in view, the 
 directions you must observe, the difficulties you must encounter, 
 the reward you may expect." 
 
 Under date four days after we find this entry in the Church 
 Book " Mr. Carey, our minister, left Leicester to go on a 
 mission to the East Indies, to take and propagate the Gospel 
 among those idolatrous and superstitious heathens. This is 
 inserted to show his love to his poor miserable fellow-creatures. 
 In this we concurred with him, though it is at the expense of 
 losing one whom we love as our own souls." When Carey's 
 preaching had so filled the church that it became necessary to 
 build a front gallery at a cost of 98, and they had applied to 
 several other churches for assistance in vain, he thus taught them 
 to help themselves. The minister and many of the members 
 agreed to pay off the debt " among ourselves " by weekly sub- 
 scriptions, a process, however, which covered five years, so 
 poor were they. Carey left this as a parting lesson to home 
 congregations, while his people found it the easier to pay the 
 debt that they had sacrificed their best, their own minister, to 
 the work of missions for which he had taught them to pray. 
 
 John Thomas, four years older than Carey, was a surgeon, who 
 had made two voyages to Calcutta in the Oxford Indiaman, had 
 been of spiritual service to Charles Grant, Mr. George Udny, and 
 the Bengal civilian circle at Malda, and had been supported by 
 Mr. Grant as a missionary for a time until his eccentricities and
 
 India as Carey Found It 43 
 
 debts outraged his friends and drove him home at the time of 
 the Kettering meetings. Full justice has been done to a char- 
 acter and a career somewhat resembling those of John Newton, 
 by his patient and able biographer the Rev. C. B. Lewis. John 
 Thomas has the merit of being the first medical missionary, at a 
 time when no other Englishman cared for either the bodies or 
 souls of our recently acquired subjects in North India, outside 
 of Charles Grant's circle. He has more; he was used by God to 
 direct Carey to the dense Hindoo population of Bengal to the 
 people and to the centre, that is, where Brahmanism had its 
 seat, and whence Buddhism had been carried by thousands of 
 missionaries all over Southern, Eastern, and Central Asia. But 
 there our ascription of merit to Thomas must stop. However 
 well he might speak the uncultured Bengali, he never could 
 write the language or translate the Bible into a literary style so 
 that it could be understood by the people or influence their 
 leaders. His temper kept Charles Grant back from helping the 
 infant mission, though anxious to see Mr. Carey and to aid him 
 and any other companion. The debts of Thomas caused him 
 and Carey to be excluded from the Oxford, in which his friend the 
 commander had agreed to take them and their party without a 
 licence; clouded the early years of the enterprise with their 
 shadow, and formed the heaviest of the many burdens Carey 
 had to bear at starting. If, afterwards, the old association of 
 Thomas with Mr. Udny at Malda gave Carey a home during his 
 Indian apprenticeship, this was a small atonement for the loss 
 of the direct help of Mr. Grant. If Carey proved to be the John 
 among the men who began to make Serampore illustrious, 
 Thomas was the Peter, so far as we know Peter in the Gospels 
 only. 
 
 Just before being ejected from the Oxford, as he had been 
 deprived of the effectual help of Charles Grant through his 
 unhappy companion, when with only his eldest son Felix beside 
 him, how did Carey view his God-given mission? The very 
 different nature of his wife, who had announced to him the birth 
 of a child, clung anew to the hope that this might cause him to 
 turn back. Writing from Ryde on the 6th May he thus replied 
 with sweet delicacy of human affection, but with true loyalty to 
 his Master's call : 
 
 " Received yours, giving me an account of your safe delivery. 
 This is pleasant news indeed to me ; surely goodness and mercy 
 follow me all my days. My stay here was very painful and un-
 
 44 Life of William Carey 
 
 pleasant, but now I see the goodness of God in it. It was that 
 I might hear the most pleasing accounts that I possibly could 
 hear respecting earthly things. You wish to know in what 
 state my mind is. I answer, it is much as when I left you. If I 
 had all the world, I would freely give it all to have you and my 
 dear children with me ; but the sense of duty is so strong as to 
 overpower all other considerations; I could not turn back 
 without guilt on my soul. I find a longing desire to enjoy 
 more of God; but, now I am among the people of the world, I 
 think I see more beauties in godliness than ever, and, I hope, 
 enjoy more of God in retirement than I have done for some time 
 past. . . . You want to know what Mrs. Thomas thinks, and 
 how she likes the voyage. . . . She would rather stay in 
 England than go to India; but thinks it right to go with her 
 husband. . . . Tell my dear children I love them dearly, and 
 pray for them constantly. Felix sends his love. I look upon 
 this mercy as an answer to prayer indeed. Trust in God. Love 
 to Kitty, brothers, sisters, etc. Be assured I love you most 
 affectionately. Let me know my dear little child's name. I 
 am, for ever, your faithful and affectionate husband, 
 
 " WILLIAM CAREY. 
 
 " My health never was so well. I believe the sea makes Felix 
 and me both as hungry as hunters. I can eat a monstrous meat 
 supper, and drink a couple of glasses of wine after it, without 
 hurting me at all. Farewell." 
 
 She was woman and wife enough, in the end, to do as Mrs. 
 Thomas had done, but she stipulated that her sister should 
 accompany her. 
 
 By a serious of specially providential events, as it seemed, 
 such as marked the whole early history of this first missionary 
 enterprise of modern England, Carey and Thomas secured a 
 passage on board the Danish Indiaman Kron Princessa Maria, 
 bound from Copenhagen to Serampore. At Dover, where they 
 had been waiting for days, the eight were roused from sleep by 
 the news that the ship was off the harbour. Sunrise on the i3th 
 June saw them on board. Carey had had other troubles besides 
 his colleague and his wife. His father, then fifty-eight years 
 old, had not given him up without a struggle. " Is William 
 mad ? " he had said when he received the letter in which his son 
 thus offered himself up on the missionary altar. His mother 
 had died six years before:
 
 India as Carey Found It 45 
 
 " LEICESTER, Jan. i7th, 1793. 
 
 " DEAR AND HONOURED FATHER, The importance of spend- 
 ing our time for God alone, is the principal theme of the gospel. 
 I beseech you, brethren, says Paul, by the mercies of God, that 
 you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, 
 which is your reasonable service. To be devoted like a sacrifice 
 to holy uses, is the great business of a Christian, pursuant to these 
 requisitions. I consider myself as devoted to the service of God 
 alone, and now I am to realise my professions. I am appointed 
 to go to Bengal, in the East Indies, a missionary to the Hindoos. 
 I shall have a colleague who has been there five or six years 
 already, and who understands their language. They are the 
 most mild and inoffensive people in all the world, but are 
 enveloped in the greatest superstition, and in the grossest 
 ignorance. ... I hope, dear father, you may be enabled to 
 surrender me up to the Lord for the most arduous, honourable, 
 and important work that ever any of the sons of men were called 
 to engage in. I have many sacrifices to make. I must part 
 with a beloved family, and a number of most affectionate friends. 
 Never did I see such sorrow manifested as reigned through our 
 place of worship last Lord's-day. But I have set my hand to 
 the plough. I remain, your dutiful son, 
 
 "WILLIAM CAREY." 
 
 When in London Carey had asked John Newton, " What if 
 the Company should send us home on our arrival in Bengal? " 
 " Then conclude," was the reply, " that your Lord has nothing 
 there for you to accomplish. But if He have, no power on 
 earth can hinder you." By Act of Parliament not ten years old, 
 every subject of the King going to or found in the East Indies 
 without a licence from the Company, was guilty of a high crime 
 and misdemeanour, and liable to fine and imprisonment. Only 
 four years previously a regulation had compelled every com- 
 mander to deliver to the Hoogli pilot a return of the passengers 
 on board that the Act might be enforced. The Danish nation- 
 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, un- 
 answerable 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
 
 46 Life of William Carey 
 
 for the permission of any power upon earth, but to go, and take 
 the consequences. If a man of God, conscious of having nothing 
 in his heart unfriendly to any civil government whatever, but 
 determined in all civil matters to obey and teach obedience to the 
 powers that are, put his life in his hand, saying, I will go, and 
 if I am persecuted in one city I will flee to another ' . . . what- 
 ever the wisdom of this world may decide upon his conduct, he 
 will assuredly be acquitted, and more than acquitted, at a 
 higher tribunal." 
 
 Carey's journal of the voyage begins with an allusion to " the 
 abominable East Indian monopoly," which he was to do more 
 than any other man to break down by weapons not of man's 
 warfare. The second week found him at Bengali, and for his 
 companion the poems of Cowper. Of the four fellow-passengers 
 one was a French deist, with whom he had many a debate. 
 
 " Aug. 2. I feel myself to be much declined, upon the 
 whole, in the more spiritual exercises of religion; yet have had 
 some pleasant exercises of soul, and feel my heart set upon the 
 great work upon which I am going. Sometimes I am quite 
 dejected when I see the impenetrability of the hearts of those 
 with us. They hear us preach on the Lord's-day, but we are 
 forced to witness their disregard to God all the week. 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. may God give them grace to fit them for the work ! 
 I have been much concerned for fear the power of the Company 
 should oppose us. ... 
 
 " Aug. 20. I have reason to lament over a barrenness of soul, 
 and am sometimes much discouraged; for if I am so dead and 
 stupid, how can I expect to be of any use among the heathen? 
 Yet I have of late felt some very lively desires after the success 
 of our undertaking. If there is anything that engages my 
 heart in prayer to God, it is that the heathen may be converted, 
 and that the society which has so generously exerted itself may 
 be encouraged, and excited to go on with greater vigour in the 
 important undertaking. . . . 
 
 " Nov. 9. I think that I have had more liberty in prayer, 
 and more converse with God, than for some time before; but 
 have, notwithstanding, been a very unfruitful creature, and so 
 remain. For near a month we have been within two hundred 
 miles of Bengal, but the violence of the currents set us back 
 when we have been at the very door. I hope I have learned
 
 India as Carey Found It 47 
 
 the necessity of bearing up in the things of God against wind and 
 tide, when there is occasion, as we have done in our voyage." 
 
 To the Society he writes for a Polyglot Bible, the Gospels in 
 Malay, Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and Sowerby's English 
 Botany, at his own cost, and thus plans the conquest of the 
 world : " I hope the Society will go on and increase, and that the 
 multitudes of heathen in the world may hear the glorious words 
 of truth. Africa is but a little way from England; Madagascar 
 but a little way farther; South America, and all the numerous 
 and large islands in the Indian and Chinese seas, I hope will not 
 be passed over. A large field opens on every side, and millions 
 of perishing heathens, tormented in this life by idolatry, super- 
 stition, and ignorance, and exposed to eternal miseries in the 
 world to come, are pleading; yea, all their miseries plead as 
 soon as they are known, with every heart that loves God, and 
 with all the churches of the living God. Oh, that many 
 labourers may be thrust out into the vineyard of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and that the gentiles may come to the knowledge 
 of the truth as it is in Him ! " 
 
 On the yth November, as the ship lay in the roads of Balasore, 
 he and Thomas landed and " began our labours." For three 
 hours the people of the bazaar listened with great attention to 
 Thomas, and one prepared for them a native dinner with plantain 
 leaf for dish, and fingers for knives and forks. Balasore name 
 of Krishna was one of the first settlements of the English in 
 North India in 1642, and there the American Baptist successors 
 of Carey have since carried on his work. On the i ith November, 
 after a five months' voyage, they landed at Calcutta unmolested. 
 The first fortnight's experience of the city, whos > 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
 
 48 Life of William Carey 
 
 unhappy surrender of York Town, which had resulted in the 
 independence of the United States. Sir John Shore, afterwards 
 Lord Teignmouth, who had been selected by Pitt to carry out 
 the reforms which he had elaborated along with his predecessor, 
 had entered on his high office just a fortnight before. What a 
 contrast was presented, as man judges, by the shy shoemaker, 
 schoolmaster, and Baptist preacher, who found not a place in 
 which to lay his head save a hovel lent to him by a Hindoo, 
 to Clive, whose suicide he might have heard of when a child ; to 
 Hastings, who for seventeen years had stood before his country 
 impeached. They were men described by Macaulay as of 
 ancient, even illustrious lineage, and they had brought into 
 existence an empire more extensive than that of Rome. He 
 was a peasant craftsman, who had taught himself with a skill 
 which Lord Wellesley, their successor almost as great as them- 
 selves, delighted publicly to acknowledge a man of the people, 
 of the class who had used the Roman Empire to build out of it 
 a universal Christendom, who were even then turning France 
 upside down, creating the Republic of America, and giving new 
 life to Great Britain itself. The little Englishman was about 
 to do in Calcutta and from Serampore what the little Jew, Paul, 
 had done in Antioch and Ephesus, from Corinth and Rome. 
 England might send its nobly born to erect the material and the 
 secular fabric of empire, but it was only, in the providence of 
 God, that they might prepare for the poor village preacher to 
 convert the empire into a spiritual force which should in time 
 do for Asia what Rome had done for Western Christendom. 
 But till the last, as from the first, Carey was as unconscious of 
 the part which he had been called to play as he was unresting 
 in the work which it involved. It is no fanatical criticism, but 
 the true philosophy of history, which places Carey over against 
 Clive, the spiritual and secular founders, and Duff beside 
 Hastings, the spiritual and secular consolidators of our Indian 
 Empire. 
 
 Carey's work for India underlay the first period of forty years 
 of transition from Cornwallis to Bentinck, as Duff's covered 
 the second of thirty years to the close of Lord Canning's ad- 
 ministration, which introduced the new era of full toleration 
 and partial but increasing self-government directed by the 
 Viceroy and Parliament. 
 
 Carey had been sent not only to the one people outside of 
 Christendom whose conversion would tell most powerfully on 
 all Asia, Africa, and their islands the Hindoos ; but to the one
 
 India as Carey Found It 49 
 
 province which was almost entirely British, and could be used 
 as it had been employed to assimilate the rest of India Bengal. 
 Territorially the East India Company possessed, when he landed, 
 nothing outside of the Ganges valley of Bengal, Bihar, and 
 Benares, save a few spots on the Madras and Malabar coasts 
 and the portion just before taken in the Mysore war. The rest 
 was desolated by the Marathas, the Nizam, Tipoo, and other 
 Mohammedan adventurers. On the Gangetic delta and right 
 up to Allahabad, but not beyond, the Company ruled and raised 
 revenue, leaving the other functions of the state to Mohammedans 
 of the type of Turkish pashas under the titular superiority of 
 the effete Emperor of Delhi. The Bengali and Hindi-speaking 
 millions of the Ganges and the simpler aborigines cf the hills 
 had been devastated by the famine of 1769-70, which the 
 Company's officials, who were powerless where they did not 
 intensify it by interference with trade, confessed to have cut 
 off from ten to twelve millions of human beings. Over three- 
 fifths of the area the soil was left without a cultivator. The 
 whole young of that generation perished, so that, even twenty 
 years after, Lord Cornwallis officially described one-third of 
 Bengal as a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts. A quarter 
 of a century after Carey's language was, as we have seen, " three- 
 fifths of it are an uncultivated jungle abandoned to wild beasts 
 and serpents." 
 
 But the British peace, in Bengal at least, had allowed abundant 
 crops to work their natural result on the population. The local 
 experience of Shore, who had witnessed the horrors he could 
 do so little to relieve, had united with the statesmanship of 
 Cornwallis to initiate a series of administrative reforms that 
 worked some evil, but more good, all through Carey's time. 
 First of all, as affecting the very existence and the social develop- 
 ment of the people, or their capacity for being educated, 
 Christianised, civilised in the highest sense, there was the 
 relation of the Government to the ryots (" protected ones ") 
 and the zameendars (" landholders "). In India, as nearly all 
 over the world except in feudalised Britain, the state is the 
 common landlord in the interests of all classes who hold the soil 
 subject to the payment of customary rents, directly or through 
 middlemen, to the Government. For thirty years after Plassey 
 the Government of India had been learning its business, and in 
 the process had injured both itself and the landed classes, as 
 much as has been done in Ireland. From a mere trader it had 
 been, more or less consciously, becoming a ruler. In 1786 the
 
 50 Life of William Carey 
 
 Court of Directors, in a famous letter, tried to arrest the ruin 
 which the famine had only hastened by ordering that a settle- 
 ment of the land-tax or revenue or rent be made, not with mere 
 farmers like the pashas of Turkey, but with the old zameendars, 
 and that the rate be fixed for ten years. Cornwallis and Shore 
 took three years to make the detailed investigations, and in 
 1789 the state rent-roll of Bengal proper was fixed at 2,858,772 
 a year. The English peer, who was Governor-General, at once 
 jumped to the conclusion that this rate should be fixed not only 
 for ten years, but for ever. The experienced Bengal civilian 
 protested that to do that would be madness when a third of the 
 rich province was out of cultivation, and as to the rest its value 
 was but little known, and its estates were without reliable 
 survey or boundaries. 
 
 We can now see that, as usual, both were right in what they 
 asserted and wrong in what they denied. The principle of fixity 
 of tenure and tax cannot be over-estimated in its economic, 
 social, and political value, but it should have been applied to the 
 village communities and cultivating peasants without the inter- 
 vention 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 after- 
 wards Stein did in Prussia, with the result seen in the present 
 German people and empire. The dispute as to a permanent or 
 a decennial settlement was referred home, and Pitt, aided by 
 Dundas and Charles Grant, took a week to consider it. His 
 verdict was given in favour of feudalism. Eight months before 
 Carey landed at Calcutta the settlement had been declared 
 perpetual; in 1795 it was extended to Benares also. 
 
 During the next twenty years mismanagement and debt 
 revolutionised the landed interest, as in France at the same time, 
 but in a very different direction. The customary rights of the 
 peasant proprietors had been legislatively secured by reserving 
 to the Governor-General the power " to enact such regulations 
 as he may think necessary for the protection and welfare of the 
 dependent talookdars, ryots, and other cultivators of the soil." 
 The peasants continued long to be so few that there was com- 
 petition for them; the process of extortion with the aid of the 
 courts had hardly begun when they were many, and the 
 zameendars were burdened with charges for the police. But in 
 1799 an d 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
 
 India as Carey Found It 51 
 
 Ganges valley and the peaceful multiplication of the people and 
 spread of cultivation, that all through the wars and annexations, 
 up to the close of the Mutiny, it was Bengal which enabled 
 England to extend the empire up to its natural limits from the 
 two seas to the Himalaya. But in 1859 the first attempt was 
 made by the famous Act X. to check the rack-renting power of 
 the zameendars. And now, more than a century since the first 
 step was taken to arrest the ruin of the peasantry, the legislature 
 of India has again tried to solve for the whole country these 
 four difficulties which all past landed regulations have intensi- 
 fied to give the state tenants a guarantee against uncertain 
 enhancements of rent, and against taxation of improvements; 
 to minimise the evil of taking rent in cash instead of in kind by 
 arranging the dates on which rent is paid; and to mitigate if 
 not prevent famine by allowing relief for failure of crops. As 
 pioneering, the work of Carey and his colleagues all through 
 was distinctly hindered by the treatment of the land question, 
 which at once ground down the mass of the people and created 
 a class of oppressive landlords destitute for the most part of 
 public spirit and the higher culture. Both were disinclined by 
 their circumstances to lend an ear to the Gospel, but these cir- 
 cumstances made it the more imperative on the missionaries to 
 tell them, to teach their children, to print for all the glad tidings. 
 Carey, himself of peasant extraction, cared for the millions of 
 the people above all ; but his work in the classical as well as the 
 vernacular languages was equally addressed to their twenty 
 thousand landlords. The time of his work before Bentinck; 
 and the centre of it outside the metropolis, left the use of the 
 English weapon against Brahmanism largely for Duff. 
 
 When Cornwallis, following Warren Hastings, completed the 
 substitution of the British for the Mohammedan civil adminis- 
 tration by a system of courts and police and a code of regula- 
 tions, he was guilty of one omission and one mistake that it 
 took years of discussion and action to rectify. He did not 
 abolish from the courts the use of Persian, the language of the 
 old Mussulman invaders, now foreign to all parties; and he 
 excluded from all offices above 30 a year the natives of the 
 country, contrary to their fair and politic practice. Bengal 
 and its millions, in truth, were nominally governed in detail by 
 three hundred white and upright civilians, with the inevitable 
 result in abuses which they could not prevent, and oppression 
 of native by native which they would not check, and the delay 
 or development of reforms which the few missionaries long
 
 5 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 called for in vain. In a word, after making the most generous 
 allowance 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. We shall reproduce some outlines of the picture 
 which Ward drew : x 
 
 " On landing in Bengal, in the year 1793, our brethren found 
 themselves surrounded with a population of heathens (not including 
 the Mahometans) amounting to at least one hundred millions of 
 souls. 
 
 " On the subject of the divine nature, with the verbal admission 
 of the doctrine of the divine unity, they heard these idolaters speak 
 of 330,000,000 of gods. Amidst innumerable idol temples they 
 found none erected for the worship of the one living and true God. 
 Services without end they saw performed in honour of the elements 
 and deified heroes, but heard not one voice tuned to the praise or 
 employed in the service of the one God. Unacquainted with the 
 moral perfections of Jehovah, they saw this immense population 
 prostrate before dead matter, before the monkey, the serpent, 
 before idols the very personifications of sin; and they found this 
 animal, this reptile, and the lecher Krishnu 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 mis- 
 apprehensions; 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 then- characters and conduct in the fol- 
 lowing 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, 
 
 1 Farewell Letters on Returning to Bengal in 1821.
 
 India as Carey Found It 53 
 
 for how should a people be moral whose gods are monsters of vice; 
 whose priests are their ringleaders in crime; whose scriptures en- 
 courage pride, impurity, falsehood, revenge, and murder; whose 
 worship is connected with indescribable abominations, and whose 
 heaven is a brothel? As might be expected, they found that men 
 died here without indulging the smallest vestige of hope, except 
 what can arise from transmigration, the hope, instead of plunging 
 into some place of misery, of passing into the body of some reptile. 
 To carry to such a people the divine word, to call them together 
 for sacred instruction, to introduce amongst them a pure and 
 heavenly worship, and to lead them to the observance of a Sabbath 
 on earth, as the preparative and prelude to a state of endless 
 perfection, was surely a work worthy for a Saviour to command, 
 and becoming a Christian people to attempt." 
 
 The condition of women, who were then estimated at 
 " seventy-five millions of minds," and whom the census shows 
 to be now above 144,000,000, is thus described after an account 
 of female infanticide: 
 
 " To the Hindoo female all education is denied by the positive 
 injunction of the shastrtt, and by the general voice of the popula- 
 tion. Not a single school for girls, therefore, all over the country! 
 With knitting, sewing, embroidery, painting, music, and drawing, 
 they have no more to do than with letters; the washing is done by 
 men of a particular tribe. The Hindoo girl, therefore, spends the 
 ten first years of her life in sheer idleness, immured in the house of 
 her father. 
 
 " Before she has attained to this age, however, she is sought after 
 by the ghutuks, men employed by parents to seek wives for their 
 sons. She is betrothed without her consent; a legal agreement, 
 which binds her for life, being made by the parents on both sides 
 while she is yet a child. At a time most convenient to the parents, 
 this boy and girl are brought together for the first time, and the 
 marriage ceremony is performed; after which she returns to the 
 house of her father. 
 
 " Before the marriage is consummated, in many instances, the 
 boy dies, and this girl becomes a widow; and as the law prohibits 
 the marriage of widows, she is doomed to remain in this state as 
 long as she lives. The greater number of these unfortunate beings 
 become a prey to the seducer, and a disgrace to their families. Not 
 long since a bride, on the day the marriage ceremony was to have 
 been performed, was burnt on the funeral pile with the dead body 
 of the bridegroom, at Chandernagore, a few miles north of Calcutta. 
 Concubinage, to a most awful extent, is the fruit of these marriages 
 without choice. What a sum of misery is attached to the lot of 
 woman in India before she has attained even her fifteenth year! 
 
 " In some cases as many as fifty females, the daughters of so 
 many Hindoos, are given in marriage to one bramhun, 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 .
 
 54 Life of William Carey 
 
 " But the awful state of female society in this miserable country 
 appears in nothing so much as in dooming the female, the widow, 
 to be burnt alive with the putrid carcase of her husband. The 
 Hindoo legislators have sanctioned this immolation, showing herein 
 a studied determination to insult and degrade woman. She is, 
 therefore, in the first instance, deluded into this act by the writings 
 of these bramhuns; in which also she is promised, that if she will 
 offer herself, for the benefit of her husband, on the funeral pile, she 
 shall, by the extraordinary merit of this action, rescue her husband 
 from misery, and take him and fourteen generations of his and her 
 family with her to heaven, where she shall enjoy with them celestial 
 happiness until fourteen kings of the gods shall have succeeded to 
 the throne of heaven (that is, millions of years!) Thus ensnared, 
 she embraces this dreadful death. I have seen three widows, at 
 different times, burnt alive; and had repeated opportunities of 
 being present at similar immolations, but my courage failed me. . . . 
 
 " The burying alive of widows manifests, if that were possible, a 
 still more abominable state of feeling towards women than the 
 burning them alive. The weavers bury their dead. When, there- 
 fore, a widow of this tribe is deluded into the determination not to 
 survive her husband, she is buried alive with the dead body. In 
 this kind of immolation the children and relations dig the grave. 
 After certain ceremonies have been attended to, the poor widow 
 arrives, and is let down into the pit. She sits in the centre, taking 
 the dead body on her lap and encircling it with her arms. These 
 relations now begin to throw in the soil; and after a short space, 
 two of them descend into the grave, and tread the earth firmly 
 round the body of the widow. She sits a calm and unremonstrating 
 spectator of the horrid process. She sees the earth rising higher 
 and higher around her, without upbraiding her murderers, or making 
 the least effort to arise and make her escape. At length the earth 
 reaches her lips covers her head. The rest of the earth is then 
 hastily thrown in, and these children and relations mount the 
 grave, and tread down the earth upon the head of the suffocating 
 widow the mother! " 
 
 Before Carey, what had been done to turn the millions of 
 North India from such darkness as that? Nothing, beyond 
 the brief and impulsive efforts of Thomas. There does not 
 seem to have been there one genuine convert from any of the 
 Asiatic faiths ; there had never been even the nucleus of a native 
 church. 
 
 In South India, for the greater part of the century, the Coast 
 Mission, as it was called, had been carried on from Tranquebar 
 as a centre by the Lutherans whom, from Ziegenbalg to Schwartz, 
 Francke had trained at Halle and Friedrich IV. of Denmark had 
 sent forth to its East India Company's settlement. From the 
 baptism of the first convert in 1707 and translation of the New 
 Testament into Tamil, to the death in 1798 of Schwartz, with 
 whom Carey sought to begin a correspondence then taken up
 
 India as Carey Found It 55 
 
 by Guericke, the foundations were laid around Madras, in 
 Tanjore, and in Tinnevelli of a native church which now includes 
 nearly a million. But, when Carey landed, rationalism in 
 Germany and Denmark, and the Carnatic wars between the 
 English and French, had reduced the Coast Mission to a state 
 of inanition. Nor was Southern India the true or ultimate 
 battlefield against Brahmanism; the triumphs of Christianity 
 there were rather among the demon-worshipping tribes of 
 Dravidian origin than among the Aryan races till Dr. W. Miller 
 developed the Christian College. But the way for the harvest 
 now being reaped by the Evangelicals and Anglicans of the 
 Church of England, by the Independents of the London Mis- 
 sionary Society, the Wesleyans, and the Presbyterians of 
 Scotland and America, was prepared by the German Ziegenbalg 
 and Schwartz under Danish protection. The English Propaga- 
 tion 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 em- 
 ployed the sculptor Bacon to prepare the noble group of marble 
 which, in St. Mary's Church, Madras, expresses its gratitude to 
 Schwartz for his political services. 
 
 It was dive himself who brought to Calcutta the first mis- 
 sionary, Kiernander the Swede, but he was rather a chaplain, or 
 a missionary to the Portuguese, who were nominal Christians 
 of the lowest Romanist type. The French had closed the 
 Danish mission at Cuddalore, and in 1758 Calcutta was without 
 a Protestant clergyman to bury the dead or baptise or marry 
 the living. Two years before one of the two chaplains had 
 perished in the tragedy of the Black Hole, where he was found 
 lying hand in hand with his son, a young lieutenant. The 
 other had escaped down the river only to die of fever along with 
 many more. The victory of Plassey and the large compensation 
 paid for the destruction of Old Calcutta and its church induced 
 thousands of natives to flock to the new capital, while the 
 number of the European troops and officials was about 2000. 
 When chaplains were sent out, the Governor-General officially 
 wrote of them to the Court of Directors so late as 1795: " Our 
 clergy in Bengal, with some exceptions, are not respectable 
 characters." From the general relaxation of morals, he added, 
 " a black coat is no security." They were so badly paid from 
 5 to 2 3 a year, increased by 120 to meet the cost of living 
 in Calcutta after 1764 that they traded. Preaching was the 
 
 E
 
 56 Life of William Carey 
 
 least of the chaplains' duties; burying was the most onerous. 
 Anglo-Indian society, cut off from London, itself not much 
 better, by a six months' voyage, was corrupt. Warren Hastings 
 and Philip Francis, his hostile colleague in Council, lived in open 
 adultery. The majority of the officials had native women, and 
 the increase of their children, who lived in a state worse than 
 that of the heathen, became so alarming that the compensation 
 paid by the Mohammedan Government of Moorshedabad for 
 the destruction of the church was applied to the foundation of 
 the useful charity still known as the Free School. The fathers 
 not infrequently adopted the Hindoo pantheon along with the 
 zanana. The pollution, springing from England originally, was 
 rolled back into it in an increasing volume, when the survivors 
 retired as nabobs with fortunes, to corrupt social and political 
 life, till Pitt cried out ; and it became possible for Burke almost 
 to succeed in his eighteen years' impeachment of Hastings. 
 The literature of the close of the eighteenth century is full of 
 alarm lest the English character should be corrupted, and lest 
 the balance of the constitution should be upset. 
 
 Kiernander is said to have been the means of converting 
 209 heathens and 380 Romanists, of whom three were priests, 
 during the twenty-eight years of his Calcutta career. Claudius 
 Buchanan declares that Christian tracts had been translated into 
 Bengali one written by the Bishop of Sodor and Man and 
 that in the time of Warren Hastings Hindoo Christians had 
 preached to their countrymen in the city. The " heathen " 
 were probably Portuguese descendants, in whose language 
 Kiernander preached as the lingua franca of the time. He could 
 not even converse in Bengali or Hindostani, and when Charles 
 Grant went to him for information as to the way of a sinner's 
 salvation this happened " My anxious inquiries as to what 
 I should do to be saved appeared to embarrass and confuse him 
 exceedingly. He could not answer my questions, but he gave 
 me some good instructive books." On Kiernander's bank- 
 ruptcy, caused by his son when the father was blind, the 
 " Misson Church " was bought by Grant, who wrote that its 
 labours " have been confined to the descendants of Europeans, 
 and have hardly ever embraced a single heathen, so that a 
 mission to the Hindoos and Mohammedans would be a new 
 thing." The Rev. David Brown, who had been sent out the 
 year after as master and chaplain of the Military Orphan Society, 
 for the education of the children of officers and soldiers, and was 
 to become one of the Serampore circle of friends, preached to
 
 India as Carey Found It 57 
 
 Europeans only in the Mission Church. Carey could find no 
 trace of Kiernander's work among the natives six years after 
 his death. 1 The only converted Hindoo known of in Northern 
 India up to that time was Guneshan Dass, of Delhi, who when 
 a boy joined Clive's army, who was the first man of caste to 
 visit England, and who, on his return with the Calcutta Supreme 
 Court Judges in 1774 as Persian interpreter and translator, was 
 baptised by Kiernander, Mr. Justice Chambers being sponsor. 
 William Carey had no predecessor in India as the first ordained 
 Englishman who was sent to it as a missionary; he had no 
 predecessor in Bengal and Hindostan proper as the first mis- 
 sionary from any land to the people. Even the Moravians, 
 who in 1777 had sent two brethren to Serampore, Calcutta, and 
 Patna, had soon withdrawn them, and one of them became the 
 Company's botanist in Madras Dr. Heyne. Carey practically 
 stood alone at the first, while he unconsciously set in motion 
 the double revolution, which was to convert the Anglo-Indian 
 influence on England from corrupting heathenism to aggressive 
 missionary zeal, and to change the Bengal of Cornwallis into 
 the India of Bentinck, with all the possibilities that have made 
 it grow, thus far, into the India of the Lawrences. 
 
 1 Rev. A. T. Clarke succeeded Kiemander in 1 789 in the Old or Mission 
 Church, according to Miss Blechynden's Calcutta Past and Present (1905), 
 p. 84.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SIX YEARS IN NORTH BENGAL MISSIONARY AND 
 INDIGO PLANTER 
 
 1794-1799 
 
 Carey's two missionary principles Destitute in Calcutta Bandel and 
 Nuddea Applies in vain to be under-superintendent of the Botanic 
 Garden Housed by a native usurer Translation and preaching 
 work in Calcutta Secures a grant of waste land at Hasnabad 
 Estimate of the Bengali language, and appeal to the Society to work 
 in Asia and Africa rather than in America The Udny family 
 Carey's summary of his first year's experience Superintends the 
 indigo factory of Mudnabati Indigo and the East India Company's 
 monopolies Carey's first nearly fatal sickness Death of his child and 
 chronic madness of his wife Formation of first Baptist church in 
 India Early progress of Bible translation Sanskrit studies; the 
 Mahabarata The wooden printing-press set up at Mudnabati His 
 educational ideal; school- work The medical mission Lord Wellesley 
 Carey seeks a mission centre among the Bhooteas Describes his 
 first sight of a Sati Projects a mission settlement at Kidderpore. 
 
 CAREY was in his thirty-third year when he landed in Bengal. 
 Two principles regulated the conception, the foundation, and 
 the whole course of the mission which he now began. He had 
 been led to these by the very genius of Christianity itself, by 
 the example and teaching of Christ and of Paul, and by the 
 experience of the Moravian brethren. He had laid them down 
 in his Enquiry, and every month's residence during forty 
 years in India confirmed him in his adhesion to them. These 
 principles are that (i) a missionary must be one of the com- 
 panions and equals of the people to whom he is sent; and (2) 
 a missionary must as soon as possible become indigenous, self- 
 supporting, self-propagating, alike by the labours of the mission 
 and of the converts. Himself a man of the people yet a scholar, 
 a shoemaker and a schoolmaster yet a preacher and pastor to 
 whom the great Robert Hall gloried in being a successor, Carey 
 had led the two lives as Paul had done. Now that he was fairly 
 in Calcutta he resumed the divine toil, and ceased it not till he 
 entered on the eternal rest. He prepared to go up country to 
 Malda to till the ground among the natives of the rich district 
 around the ruined capital of Gour. He engaged as his pundit 
 
 58
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 59 
 
 and interpreter Ram Basu, one of the professing inquirers 
 whom Thomas had attracted in former days. Experience soon 
 taught him that, however correct his principle, Malda is not a 
 land where the white man can be a farmer. So he became, in 
 the different stages of his career, a captain of labour as an 
 indigo planter, a teacher of Bengali, and professor of Sanskrit 
 and Marathi, and the Government translator of Bengali. Nor 
 did he or his associates ever make the mistake or commit the 
 fraud of the Jesuit missionaries, whose idea of equality with 
 the people was not that of brotherhood in Christ, but that of 
 dragging down Christian doctrine, worship and civilisation, 
 to the level of idolatrous heathenism, and deluding the ignorant 
 into accepting the blasphemous compromise. 
 
 Alas ! Carey could not manage to get out of Calcutta and its 
 neighbourhood for five months. As he thought to live by 
 farming, Thomas was to practise his profession ; and their first 
 year's income of 150 had, in those days when the foreign ex- 
 changes 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-con- 
 demned, half-apologised for him by the shrewd reflection that 
 he was only fit to live at sea, where his daily business would be 
 before him, and daily provision would be made for him. Carey 
 found himself penniless. Even had he received the whole of 
 h' s ?5> as he really did in one way or other, what was that for 
 such a family as his at the beginning of their undertaking? 
 The expense of living at all in Calcutta drove the whole party 
 thirty miles up the river to Bandel, an old Portuguese suburb 
 of the Hoogli factory. There they rented a small house from 
 the German hotel-keeper, beside the Augustinian priory and 
 oldest church in North India, which dates from 1599 and is 
 still in good order. There they met Kiernander, then at the 
 great age of eighty-four. Daily they preached or talked to the 
 people. They purchased a boat for regular visitation of the 
 hamlets, markets, and towns which line both banks of the river. 
 With sure instinct Carey soon fixed on Nuddea, as the centre 
 of Brahmanical superstition and Sanskrit learning, where " to 
 build me a hut and live like the natives," language recalled to 
 us by the words of the dying Livingstone in the swamps of 
 Central Africa. There, in the capital of the last of the Hindoo 
 kings, beside the leafy tols or colleges of a river port which rivals 
 Benares, Poona, and Conjeeveram in sanctity, where Chaitanya 
 the Vaishnaiva reformer was born, Carey might have attacked
 
 60 Life of William Carey 
 
 Brahmanism in its stronghold. A passage in his journal shows 
 how he realised the position. Thomas, the pundit, and he 
 " sought the Lord by prayer for direction," and this much was 
 the result " Several of the most learned Pundits and Brahmans 
 wished us to settle there; and, as that is the great place for 
 Eastern learning, we seemed inclined, especially as it is the 
 bulwark of heathenism, which, if once carried, all the rest of 
 the country must be laid open to us." But there was no 
 available land there for an Englishman's cultivation. From 
 Bandel he wrote home these impressions of Anglo-Indian life 
 and missionary duty: 
 
 " 26th Dec. 1793. A missionary must be one of the com- 
 panions and equals of the people to whom he is sent, and many 
 dangers and temptations will be in his way. One or two pieces 
 of advice I may venture to give. The first is to be exceedingly 
 cautious lest the voyage prove a great snare. All the discourse 
 is about high life, and every circumstance will contribute to 
 unfit the mind for the work and prejudice the soul against the 
 people to whom he goes; and in a country like this, settled by 
 Europeans, the grandeur, the customs, and prejudices of the 
 Europeans are exceeding dangerous. They are very kind and 
 hospitable, but even to visit them, if a man keeps no table of 
 his own, would more than ten times exceed the allowance of a 
 mission; and all their discourse is about the vices of the natives, 
 so that a missionary must see thousands of people treating him 
 with the greatest kindness, but whom he must be entirely 
 different from in his life, his appearance in everything, or it is 
 impossible for him to stand their profuse way of living, being 
 so contrary to his character and so much above his ability. 
 This is a snare to dear Mr. Thomas, which will be felt by us 
 both in some measure. It will be very important to missionaries 
 to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather 
 inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, 
 and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set 
 before them, an inconstancy of mind being quite injurious 
 to it." 
 
 He had need of such faith and patience. Hearing of waste 
 land in Calcutta, he returned there only to be disappointed. 
 The Danish captain, knowing that he had written a botanical 
 work, advised him to take it to the doctor in charge of the 
 Company's Botanic Garden, and offer himself for a vacant 
 appointment to superintend part of it. The doctor, who and 
 whose successors were soon to be proud of his assistance on
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 61 
 
 equal terms, had to tell him that the office had been filled up, 
 but invited the weary man to dine with him. Houseless, with 
 his maddened wife, and her sister and two of his four children 
 down with dysentery, due to the bad food and exposure of six 
 weeks in the interor, Carey found a friend, appropriately 
 enough, in a Bengali money-lender. 1 Nelu Dutt, a banker who 
 had lent money to Thomas, offered the destitute family his 
 garden house in the north-eastern quarter of Manicktolla until 
 they could do better. The place was mean enough, but Carey 
 never forgot the deed, and he had it in his power long after to 
 help Nelu Dutt when in poverty. Such, on the other hand, 
 was the dislike of the Rev. David Brown to Thomas, that when 
 Carey had walked five miles in the heat of the sun to visit the 
 comparatively prosperous evangelical preacher, " I left him with- 
 out his having so much as asked me to take any refreshment." 
 
 Carey would not have been allowed to live in Calcutta as a 
 missionary. Forty years were to pass before that could be 
 possible without a Company's passport. But no one was aware 
 of the existence of the obscure vagrant, as he seemed, although 
 he was hard at work. All around him was a Mohammedan 
 community whom he addressed with the greatest freedom, and 
 with whom he discussed the relative merits of the Koran and 
 the Bible in a kindly spirit, " to recommend the Gospel and the 
 way of life by Christ." He had helped Thomas with a transla- 
 tion of the book of Genesis during the voyage, and now we find 
 this in his journal two months and a half after he had landed : 
 
 " Through the delays of my companion I have spent another 
 month, and done scarcely anything, except that I have added 
 to my knowledge of the language, and had opportunity of seeing 
 much more of the genius and disposition of the natives than I 
 otherwise could have known. This day finished the correction 
 of the first chapter of Genesis, which moonshi says is rendered 
 into very good Bengali. Just as we had finished it, a pundit 
 and another man from Nuddea came to see me. I showed it to 
 
 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 mis- 
 sionary knew it not. Mrs. Carey was a country-born woman, who, when 
 a girl, had married an officer of one of the East Indiamen, and with him, 
 her mother, and sister, had been shut up in the Black Hole, where, while 
 they perished, she is said to have retained life by swallowing her tears. 
 Dr. Bishop, of Merchant Taylors' School Clive's School wrote Latin 
 verses on the story, which thus conclude 
 
 ". . . Nescit sitiendo perire 
 Cui sic dat lacrymas quas bili.it ipsa fides." 
 
 See Echoes from Old Calcutta, by Dr. Busteed, C.I.E
 
 6 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 them; and the pundit seemed much pleased with the account of 
 the creation; only they have an imaginary place somewhere 
 beneath the earth, and he thought that should have been 
 mentioned likewise. . . . 
 
 " Was very weary, having walked in the sun about fifteen 
 or sixteen miles, yet had the satisfaction of discoursing with 
 some money-changers at Calcutta, who could speak English, 
 about the importance and absolute necessity of faith in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. One of them was a very crafty man, and 
 tried much to entangle me with hard questions; but at last, 
 rinding himself entangled, he desisted, and went to his old 
 occupation of money-changing again. If once God would by his 
 Spirit convince them of sin, a Saviour would be a blessing indeed 
 to them : but human nature is the same all the world over, and 
 all conviction fails except it is produced by the effectual working 
 of the Holy Spirit." 
 
 Ram Basu was himself in debt, was indeed all along a self- 
 interested inquirer. But the next gleam of hope came from 
 him, that the Carey family should move to the waste jungles of 
 the Soondarbans, the tiger-haunted swamps south-east of 
 Calcutta, and there cultivate a grant of land. With a sum of 
 16 borrowed from a native at twelve per cent, by Mr. Thomas, 
 a boat was hired, and on the fourth day, when only one more 
 meal remained, the miserable family and their stout-hearted 
 father saw an English-built house. As they walked up to it the 
 owner met them, and with Anglo-Indian hospitality invited 
 them all to become his guests. He proved to be Mr. Charles 
 Short, in charge of the Company's salt manufacture there. As 
 a deist he had no sympathy with Carey's enterprise, but he 
 helped the missionary none the less, and the reward came to 
 him in due time in the opening of his heart to the love of Christ. 
 He afterwards married Mrs. Carey's sister, and in England the 
 two survived the great missionary, to tell this and much more 
 regarding him. Here, at the place appropriately named Has- 
 nabad, 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. Know- 
 ing that the sahib's gun would keep off the tigers, natives 
 squatted around to the number of three or four thousand. 
 Such was the faith, the industry, and the modesty of the brave 
 little man that, after just three months, he wrote thus: 
 " When I know the language well enough to preach in it, I 
 have no doubt of having a stated congregation, and I much
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 63 
 
 hope to send you pleasing accounts. I can so far converse 
 in the language as to be understood in most things belonging 
 to eating and drinking, buying and selling, etc. My ear is 
 somewhat familiarised to the Bengali sounds. It is a language 
 of a very singular construction, having no plural except for 
 pronouns, and not a single preposition in it: but the cases of 
 nouns and pronouns are almost endless, all the words answering 
 to our prepositions being put after the word, and forming a new 
 case. Except these singularities, I find it an easy language. 
 I feel myself happy in my present undertaking; for, though I 
 never felt the loss of social religion so much as now, yet a 
 consciousness of having given up all for God is a support; and 
 the work, with all its attendant inconveniences, is to me a rich 
 reward. I think the Society would do well to keep their eye 
 towards Africa or Asia, countries which are not like the wilds of 
 America, where long labour will scarcely collect sixty people 
 to hear the Word : for here it is almost impossible to get out of 
 the way of hundreds, and preachers are wanted a thousand times 
 more than people to preach to. Within India are the Maratha 
 country and the northern parts to Cashmere, in which, as far as 
 I can learn, there is not one soul that thinks of God aright. . . . 
 My health was never better. The climate, though hot, is 
 tolerable; but, attended as I am with difficulties, I would not 
 renounce my undertaking for all the world." 
 
 It was at this time that he drew his strength often from the 
 experience of the first missionary, described by Isaiah, in all his 
 solitude: " Look unto Abraham your father, for I called him 
 alone and blessed him and increased him. For the Lord shall 
 comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places." The sun 
 of His comfort shone forth at last. 
 
 Carey's original intention to begin his mission near Malda 
 was now to be carried out. In the opening week of 1794 the 
 small English community in Bengal were saddened by the news 
 that, when crossing the Hoogli at Calcutta, a boat containing 
 three of its principal merchants and the wife of one of them, 
 had been upset, and all had been drowned. It turned out that 
 two of the men recovered, but Mr. R. Udny and his young wife 
 perished. His aged mother had been one of the godly circle in 
 the Residency at Malda to whom Thomas had ministered; and 
 Mr. G. Udny, her other son, was still the Company's commercial 
 Resident there. A letter of sympathy which Thomas sent to 
 them restored the old relations, and resulted in Mr. G. Udny 
 inviting first the writer and then Carey to become his assistants
 
 64 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 remark- 
 able opening in divine providence for our comfortable support, 
 I accepted it ... I shall likewise be joined with my colleague 
 again, and we shall unitedly engage in our work." Again: 
 " The conversion of the heathen is the object which above all 
 others I wish to pursue. If my situation at Malda should be 
 tolerable, I most certainly will publish the Bible in numbers." 
 On receiving the rejoinder to his acceptance of the offer he set 
 this down: " I am resolved to write to the Society that my 
 circumstances are such that I do not need future help from them, 
 and to devote a sum monthly for the printing of the Bengali 
 Bible." This he did, adding that it would be his glory and joy 
 to stand in the same relation to the Society as if he needed 
 support from them. He hoped they would be the sooner able 
 to send another mission somewhere to Sumatra or some of the 
 Indian Islands. From the first he lived with such simplicity 
 that he gave from one-fourth to one-third of his little income 
 to his own mission at Mudnabati. 
 
 Carey thus sums up his first year's experience before leaving 
 his jungle home on a three weeks' voyage up the Ganges, and 
 records his first deliberate and regular attempt to preach in 
 Bengali on the way. 
 
 " 8th April 1794. All my hope is in, and all my comfort 
 arises from, God; without His power no European could possibly 
 be converted, and His power can convert any Indian ; and when 
 I reflect that He has stirred me up to the work, and wrought 
 wonders to prepare the way, I can hope in His promises, and 
 am encouraged and strengthened. . . . 
 
 " ipth April. 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
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 65 
 
 sufficiently to interpret my preaching; my colleague separated 
 from me ; long delays and few opportunities for social worship ; 
 no woods to retire to, like Brainerd, for fear of tigers (no less 
 than twenty men in the department of Deharta, where I am, 
 have been carried away by them this season from the salt-works); 
 no earthly thing to depend upon, or earthly comfort, except 
 food and raiment. Well, I have God, and His Word is sure; 
 and though the superstitions of the heathen were a million times 
 worse than they are, if I were deserted by all, and persecuted by 
 all, yet my hope, fixed on that sure Word, will rise superior to 
 all obstructions, and triumph over all trials. God's cause will 
 triumph, and I shall come out of all trials as gold purified by 
 fire. I was much humbled to-day by reading Brainerd. 
 what a disparity betwixt me and him, he always constant, I as 
 inconstant as the wind ! 
 
 " 22nd April. Bless God for a continuance of the happy 
 frame of yesterday. I think the hope of soon acquiring the 
 language puts fresh life into my soul ; for a long time my mouth 
 has been shut, and my days have been beclouded with heaviness; 
 but now I begin to be something like a traveller who has been 
 almost beaten out in a violent storm, and who, with all his 
 clothes about him dripping wet, sees the sky begin to clear: so 
 I, with only the prospect of a more pleasant season at hand, 
 scarcely feel the sorrows of the present. 
 
 " 23rd. With all the cares of life, and all its sorrows, yet I 
 find that a life of communion with God is sufficient to yield 
 consolation in the midst of all, and even to produce a holy joy 
 in the soul, which shall make it to triumph over all affliction. 
 I have never yet repented of any sacrifice that I have made for 
 the Gospel, but find that consolation of mind which can come 
 from God alone. 
 
 " 26th May. This day kept Sabbath at Chandureea; had a 
 pleasant day. In the morning and afternoon addressed my 
 family, and in the evening began my work of publishing the 
 Word of God to the heathen. Though imperfect in the know- 
 ledge of the language, yet, with the help of moonshi, I con- 
 versed with two Brahmans in the presence of about two hundred 
 people, about the things of God. I had been to see a temple, 
 in which were the images of Dukkinroy, the god of the woods, 
 riding on a tiger ; Sheetulla, goddess of the smallpox, without a 
 head, riding on a horse without a head ; Punchanon, with large 
 ears; and Colloroy, riding on a horse. In another apartment 
 was Seeb, which was only a smooth post of wood, with two or
 
 66 Life of William Carey 
 
 three mouldings in it, like the base of a Tuscan pillar. I there- 
 fore 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 con- 
 founded, 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 begin- 
 ning. I inquired what I must do to be saved; he said I must 
 repeat the name of God a great many times. I replied, would 
 you, if your son had offended you, be so pleased with him as to 
 forgive him if he were to repeat the word ' father ' a thousand 
 times? This might please children or fools, but God is wise. 
 He told me that I must get faith; I asked what faith was, to 
 which he gave me no intelligible reply, but said I must obey 
 God. I answered, what are His commands? what is His will? 
 They said God was a great light, and as no one could see him, 
 he became incarnate, under the threefold character of Brhumma, 
 Bishno, and Seeb, and that either of them must be worshipped 
 in order to life. I told them of the sure Word of the Gospel, and 
 the way of life by Christ; and, night coming on, left them. I 
 cannot tell what effect it may have, as I may never see them 
 again." 
 
 At the beginning of the great rains in the middle of June 
 Carey joined Mr. Udny and his mother at the chief factory. On 
 each of the next two Sabbaths he preached twice in the hall of 
 the Residency of the Company, which excluded all Christian 
 missionaries by Act of Parliament. As an indigo planter he 
 received the Company's licence to reside for at least five years. 
 So on 26th June he began his secular duties by completing for 
 the season of indigo manufacture the buildings at Mudnabati, 
 and making the acquaintance of the ninety natives under his 
 charge. Both Mr. Udny and he knew well that he was above 
 all things a Christian missionary. " These will furnish a con- 
 gregation 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
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 67 
 
 only the most evil one is left, that of the growth, manufacture, 
 and sale of opium. The civil servants, who were termed 
 Residents, had not political duties with tributary sovereigns as 
 now, but from great factory-like palaces, and on large salaries, 
 made advances of money to contractors, native and European, 
 who induced the ryots to weave cloth, to breed and feed the 
 silkworm, and to grow and make the blue dye to which India had 
 long given the name of " indigo." Mr. Carey was already 
 familiar with the system of advances for salt, and the opium 
 monopoly was then in its infancy. The European contractors 
 were " interlopers," who introduced the most valuable cul- 
 tivation and processes into India, and yet with whom the 
 " covenanted " Residents were often at war. The Residents 
 had themselves liberty of private trade, and unscrupulous men 
 abused it. Clive had been hurried out thirty years before to 
 check the abuse, which was ruining not only the Company's 
 investments but the people. It had so spread on his departure 
 that even judges and chaplains shared in the spoils till Cornwallis 
 interfered. In the case of Mr. G. Udny and purely commercial 
 agents the evil was reduced to a minimum, and the practice had 
 been deliberately sanctioned by Sir John Shore on the ground 
 that it was desirable to make the interests of the Company and 
 of individuals go hand in hand. 
 
 The days when Europe got its cotton cloth from India, calling 
 it " calico," from Calicut, and its rich yellow silks, have long 
 since passed, although the latter are still supplied in an inferior 
 form, and the former is once more raising its head, from the 
 combination of machinery and cheap labour. For the old 
 abuses of the Company the Government by Parliament has to 
 some extent atoned by fostering the new cultures of tea, coffee, 
 and cinchona, jute and wheat. The system of inducing the 
 ryots to cultivate by advances, protected by a stringent con- 
 tract law, still exists in the case of opium. The indigo culture 
 system of Carey's time broke down in 1860 in the lower districts, 
 where, following the Company itself, the planter made cash 
 advances to the peasant, who was required to sow indigo on 
 land which he held as a tenant but often as a proprietor, to 
 deliver it at a fixed rate, and to bear the risk of the crop as well 
 as the exactions of the factory servants. It still exists in the 
 upper districts of Bihar, especially in Tirhoot, on a system com- 
 paratively free from economic objections. 
 
 The plant known as " Indigofera Tinctoria " is sown in 
 March in soil carefully prepared, grows to about 5 feet, is cut
 
 68 Life of William Carey 
 
 down early in July, is fermented in vats, and the liquor is beaten 
 till it precipitates the precious blue dye, which is boiled, drained, 
 cut in small cakes, and dried. From first to last the growth and 
 the manufacture are even more precarious than most tropical 
 crops. An even rainfall, rigorous weeding, the most careful 
 superintendence of the chemical processes, and conscientious 
 packing, are necessary. One good crop in three years will pay 
 where the factory is not burdened by severe interest on capital ; 
 one every other year will pay very well. Personally Carey had 
 more than the usual qualifications of a successful planter, 
 scientific knowledge, scrupulous conscientiousness and industry, 
 and familiarity with the native character, so soon as he acquired 
 the special experience necessary for superintending the manu- 
 facture. That experience he spared no effort to gain at once. 
 
 " ist, 2nd, and 3rd July. Much engaged in the necessary 
 business of preparing our works for the approaching season of 
 indigo-making, which will commence in about a fortnight. I 
 had on the evening of each of these days very precious seasons 
 of fervent prayer to God. I have been on these evenings much 
 drawn out in prayer for my dear friends at Leicester, and for 
 the Society that it may be prosperous ; likewise for the ministers 
 of my acquaintance, not only of the Baptist but other denomina- 
 tions. I was engaged for the churches in America and Holland, 
 as well as England, and much concerned for the success of the 
 Gospel among the Hindoos. At present I know not of any 
 success since I have been here. Many say that the Gospel is 
 the word of truth; but they abound so much in flattery and 
 encomiums, which are mere words of course, that little can be 
 said respecting their sincerity. The very common sins of lying 
 and avarice are so universal also, that no European who has not 
 witnessed it can form any idea of their various appearances: 
 they will stoop to anything whatsoever to get a few cowries, and 
 lie on every occasion. how desirable is the spread of the 
 Gospel ! 
 
 " 4th July. Rather more flat, perhaps owing to the excessive 
 heat; for in the rainy season, if there be a fine day, it is very 
 hot indeed. Such has been this day, and I was necessitated to be 
 out in it from morning till evening, giving necessary directions. 
 I felt very much fatigued indeed, and had no spirits left in the 
 evening, and in prayer was very barren. . . . 
 
 " Qth 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,
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 69 
 
 and the people seemed much affected with the Word. One day, 
 as Mr. Thomas and I were riding out, we saw a basket hung in a 
 tree, in which an infant had been exposed; the skull remained, 
 the rest having been devoured by ants." 
 
 Success in the indigo culture was indeed never possible in 
 Mudnabati. The factory stood on the river Tangan, within 
 what is now the district of Dinajpoor, thirty miles north of 
 Malda. To this day the revenue surveyors of Government 
 describe it as low and marshy, subject to inundation during 
 the rains, and considered very unhealthy. Carey had not been 
 there a fortnight when he had to make this record : 
 
 " 5th, 6th, yth July. Much employed in settling the affairs 
 of the buildings, etc., having been absent so long, and several 
 of our managing and principal people being sick. It is indeed 
 an awful time here with us now, scarcely a day but some are 
 seized with fevers. It is, I believe, owing to the abundance of 
 water, there being rice-fields all around us, in which they dam 
 up the water, so that all the country hereabouts is about a foot 
 deep in water ; and as we have rain, though moderate to what 
 I expected the rainy season to be, yet the continual moisture 
 occasions fevers in such situations where rice is cultivated. . . . 
 Felt at home and thankful these days. O that I may be very 
 useful! I must soon learn the language tolerably well, for I 
 am obliged to converse with the natives every day, having no 
 other persons here except my family." 
 
 Soon in September, the worst of all the months in Bengal, he 
 himself was brought near to the grave by a fever, one of the 
 paroxysms continuing for twenty-six hours without intermission, 
 " when providentially Mr. Udny came to visit us, not knowing 
 that I was ill, and brought a bottle of bark with him." He 
 slowly recovered, but the second youngest child, Peter, a boy 
 of five, was removed by dysentery, and caste made it long 
 difficult to find any native to dig his grave. But of this time 
 the faithful sufferer could write: 
 
 " Sometimes I enjoyed sweet seasons of self-examination and 
 prayer, as I lay upon my bed. Many hours together I sweetly 
 spent in contemplating subjects for preaching, and in musing 
 over discourses in Bengali; and when my animal spirits were 
 somewhat raised by the fever, I found myself able to reason and 
 discourse in Bengali for some hours together, and words and 
 phrases occurred much more readily than when I was in health. 
 When my dear child was ill I was enabled to attend upon him 
 night and day. though very dangerously ill myself, without much
 
 yo Life of William Carey 
 
 fatigue ; and now, I bless God that I feel a sweet resignation to 
 his will." 
 
 A still harder fate befell him. The monomania of his wife 
 became chronic. A letter which she wrote and sent by special 
 messenger called forth from Thomas this loving sympathy: 
 " You must endeavour to consider it a disease. The eyes and 
 ears of many are upon you, to whom your conduct is unim- 
 peachable with respect to all her charges; but if you show 
 resentment, they have ears, and others have tongues set on fire. 
 Were I in your case, I should be violent; but blessed be God, 
 who suits our burdens to our backs. Sometimes I pray 
 earnestly for you, and I always feel for you. Think of Job* 
 Think of Jesus. Think of those who were ' destitute, afflicted, 
 tormented.' " 
 
 A voyage up the Tangan in Mr. Udny's pinnace as far as the 
 north frontier, at a spot now passed by the railway to Darjeeling, 
 restored the invalid. " I am no hunter," he wrote, while 
 Thomas was shooting wild buffaloes, but he was ever adding to 
 his store of observations of the people, the customs and language. 
 Meanwhile he was longing for letters from Fuller and Pearce and 
 Ryland. At the end of January 1795 the missionary exile thus 
 talks of himself in his journal: " Much engaged in writing, 
 having begun to write letters to Europe; but having received 
 none, I feel that hope deferred makes the heart sick. However, 
 I am so fully satisfied of the firmness of their friendship that I 
 feel a sweet pleasure in writing to them, though rather of a for- 
 lorn 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. . . . gth May. I have added nothing to these memoirs 
 since the igth of April. Now I observe that for the last three 
 sabbaths my soul has been much comforted in seeing so large 
 a congregation, and more especially as many who are not our own 
 workmen come from the parts adjacent, whose attendance must 
 be wholly disinterested. I therefore now rejoice in seeing a 
 regular congregation of from two to six hundred people of all 
 descriptions Mussulmans, Brahmans and other classes of 
 Hindus, which I look upon as a favourable token from God. . . . 
 Blessed be God, I have at last received letters and other articles
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 71 
 
 from our friends in England. . . . from dear brethren Fuller, 
 Morris, Pearce, and Rippon, but why not from others? . . . 
 i4th June. I have had very sore trials in my own family, from 
 a quarter which I forbear to mention. Have greater need for 
 faith and patience than ever I had, and I bless God that I 
 have not been altogether without supplies of these graces. . . . 
 Mr. Thomas and his family spent one Lord's day with us, May 
 23rd. . . . We spent Wednesday, 26th, in prayer, and for a 
 convenient place assembled in a temple of Seeb, which was 
 near to our house. ... I was from that day seized with a 
 dysentery, which continued nearly a week with fearful violence ; 
 but then I recovered, through abundant mercy. That day of 
 prayer was a good day to our souls. We concerted measures for 
 forming a Baptist church." 
 
 To his sister he wrote, on the nth March, of the church, which 
 was duly formed of Europeans and Eurasians. No native con- 
 vert was made in this Dinapoor mission till 1806, after Carey 
 had removed to Serampore. " We have in the neighbourhood 
 about fifteen or sixteen serious persons, or those I have good 
 hopes of, all Europeans. With the natives I have very large 
 concerns ; almost all the fanners for nearly twenty miles round 
 cultivate indigo for us, and the labouring people working here 
 to the number of about five hundred, so that I have considerable 
 opportunity of publishing the Gospel to them. I have so much 
 knowledge of the language as to be able to preach to them for 
 about half an hour, so as to be understood, but am not able to 
 vary my subjects much. I tell them of the evil and universality 
 of sin, the sins of a natural state, the justice of God, the incarna- 
 tion 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 instruc- 
 tion in the things of God." 
 
 " It was always my opinion that missionaries may and must 
 support themselves after having been sent out and received a 
 little support at first, and in consequence I pursue a very little 
 worldly employment which requires three months' closish 
 attendance in the year; but this is in the rains the most 
 unfavourable season for exertion. I have a district of about 
 twenty miles square, where I am continually going from village 
 to village to publish the Gospel; and in this space are about 
 two hundred villages, whose inhabitants from time to time hear 
 the Word. My manner of travelling is with two small boats ; 
 one serves me to live in, and the other for cooking my food. I 
 
 r
 
 72 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 con- 
 venient for travelling." 
 
 Carey's first convert seems to have been Ignatius Fernandez,, 
 a Portuguese descendant who had prospered as a trader in 
 Dinapoor station. The first Protestant place of worship in 
 Bengal, outside of Calcutta, was built by him, in 1797, next to 
 his own house. There he conducted service both in English 
 and Bengali, whenever Carey and Thomas, and Fountain after- 
 wards, were unable to go out to the station, and in his house 
 Thomas and Fountain died. He remained there as a missionary 
 till his own death, four years before Carey's, when he left all his 
 property to the mission. The mission-house, as it is now, is a 
 typical example of the bungalow of one story, which afterwards 
 formed the first chapel in Serampore, and is still common as 
 officers' quarters in Barrackpore and other military stations. 
 
 Side by side with his daily public preaching and more private 
 conversations with inquirers in Bengali, Carey carried on the 
 work of Bible translation. As each new portion was prepared 
 it was tested by being read to hundreds of natives. The diffi- 
 culty was that he had at once to give a literary form to the rich 
 materials of the language, and to find in these or adapt from 
 them terms sufficiently pure and accurate to express the divine 
 ideas and facts revealed through the Hebrew and the Greek of 
 the original. He gives us this unconscious glimpse of himself 
 at work on this loftiest and most fruitful of tasks, which Jerome 
 had first accomplished for Latin Christendom, Ulfila for our 
 Scandinavian forefathers, Wiclif for the English, and Luther 
 for the Germans of the time. 
 
 " Now I must mention some of the difficulties under which 
 we labour, particularly myself. The language spoken by the 
 natives of this part, though Bengali, is yet so different from the 
 language itself, that, though I can preach an hour with tolerable 
 freedom so as that all who speak the language well, or can write 
 or read, perfectly understand me, yet the poor labouring people 
 can understand but little; and though the language is rich,, 
 beautiful, and expressive, yet the poor people, whose whole 
 concern has been to get a little rice to satisfy their wants, or to- 
 cheat their oppressive merchants and zameendars, have scarcely 
 a word in use about religion. They have no word for love, for 
 repent, and a thousand other things ; and every idea is expressed
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 73 
 
 either by quaint phrases or tedious circumlocutions. A native 
 who speaks the language well finds it a year's work to obtain 
 their idionj. This sometimes discourages me much; but blessed 
 be God I feel a growing desire to be always abounding in the 
 work of the Lord, and I know that my labour shall not be in 
 vain in the Lord. I am much encouraged by our Lord's ex- 
 pression, ' 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 considera- 
 tion a very large country, perhaps unthought of: I mean 
 Bhootan or Tibet. Were two missionaries sent to that country, 
 we should have it in our power to afford them much help. . . . 
 The day I received your letter I set about composing a grammar 
 and dictionary of the Bengal language to send to you. The 
 best account of Hindu mythology extant, and which is pretty 
 exact, is Sonnerat's Voyage, undertaken by order of the king 
 of France." 
 
 Without Sanskrit Carey found that he could neither master 
 its Bengali offshoot nor enrich that vernacular with the words 
 and combinations necessary for his translations of Scripture. 
 Accordingly, with his usual rapidity and industry, we find that 
 he had by April 1796 so worked his way through the intricate 
 difficulties of the mother language of the Aryans that he could 
 thus write to Ryland, with more than a mere scholar's enthu- 
 siasm, of one of the two great Vedic epics: " I have read a 
 considerable part of the Mahabarata, an epic poem written in 
 most beautiful language, and much upon a par with Homer; 
 and it was, like his Iliad, only considered as a great effort of 
 human genius, I should think it one of the first productions in 
 the world; but alas! it is the ground of faith to millions of the 
 simple sons of men, and as such must be held in the utmost
 
 74 Life of William Carey 
 
 abhorrence." At the beginning of 1798 he wrote to Sutcliff: 
 " I am learning the Sanskrit language, which, with only the 
 helps to be procured here, is perhaps the hardest language in 
 the world. To accomplish this, I have nearly translated 
 the Sanskrit grammar and dictionary into English, and have 
 made considerable progress in compiling a dictionary, Sanskrit, 
 including Bengali and English." 
 
 By this year he had completed his first translation of the 
 Bible except the historical books from Joshua to Job, and had 
 gone to Calcutta to obtain estimates for printing the New 
 Testament, of which he had reported to Mr. Fuller: " It has 
 undergone one correction, but must undergo several more. I 
 employ a pundit merely for this purpose, with whom I go 
 through the whole in as exact a manner as I can. He judges 
 of the style and syntax, and I of the faithfulness of the trans- 
 lation. I have, however, translated several chapters together, 
 which have not required any alteration in the syntax whatever : 
 yet I always submit this article entirely to his judgment. I 
 can also, by hearing him read, judge whether he understands 
 his subject by his accenting his reading properly and laying the 
 emphasis on the right words. If he fails in this, I immediately 
 suspect the translation; though it is not an easy matter for an 
 ordinary reader to lay the emphasis properly in reading Bengali, 
 in which there is no pointing at all. The mode of printing, i.e. 
 whether a printing-press, etc., shall be sent from England, or 
 whether it shall be printed here, or whether it shall be printed 
 at all, now rests with the Society." 
 
 Fuller was willing, but the ardent scholar anticipated him. 
 Seeing a wooden printing-press advertised in Calcutta for 40, 
 Carey at once ordered it. On its arrival in 1 798, " after worship " 
 he " retired and thanked God for furnishing us with a press." 
 When set up in the Mudnabati house its working was explained 
 to the natives, on whom the delighted missionary's enthusiasm 
 produced only the impression that it must be the idol of the 
 English. 
 
 But Carey's missionary organisation would not have been 
 complete without schools, and in planning these from the very 
 first he gives us the germs which blossomed into the Serampore 
 College of 1818 on the one hand, and the primary school circles 
 under native Christian inspectors on the other, a system carried 
 out since the Mutiny of 1857 by the Christian Literature Society, 
 and adopted by the state departments of public instruction. 
 
 " MUDNABATI, 2-]th Jarnwry 1795. Mr. Thomas and I
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 75 
 
 (between whom the utmost harmony prevails) have formed a 
 plan for erecting two colleges (Chowparis, Bengali), one here 
 and the other at his residence, where we intend to educate twelve 
 lads, viz. six Mussulmans and six Hindoos at each place. A 
 pundit is to have the charge of them, and they are to be taught 
 Sanskrit, Bengali, and Persian; the Bible is to be introduced, 
 and perhaps a little philosophy and geography. The time of 
 their education is to be seven years, and we find them meat, 
 clothing, lodging, etc. We are now inquiring for children 
 proper for the purpose. We have also determined to require 
 that the Society will advance money for types to print the 
 Bengali Bible, and make us their debtors for the sum, which we 
 hope to be able to pay off in one year; and it will also be 
 requisite to send a printing-press from England. We will, if our 
 lives are spared, repay the whole, and print the Bible at our 
 own expense, and I hope the Society will become our creditors 
 by paying for them when delivered. Mr. Thomas is now 
 preparing letters for specimens, which I hope will be sent by 
 this conveyance. 
 
 " We are under great obligation to Mr. G. Udny for putting 
 us in these stations. He is a very friendly man and a true 
 Christian. I have no spirit for politics here; for whatever the 
 East India Company may be in England, their servants and 
 officers here are very different ; we have a few laws, and nothing 
 to do but to obey." Of his own school he wrote in 1799 that it 
 consisted of forty boys. " The school would have been much 
 larger, had we been able to have borne the expense; but, as 
 among the scholars there are several orphans whom we wholly 
 maintain, we could not prudently venture on any further 
 expense. . . . The boys have hitherto learned to read and write, 
 especially parts of the Scriptures, and to keep accounts. We 
 may now be able to introduce some other useful branches of 
 knowledge among them. ... I trust these schools may tend 
 to promote curiosity and inquisitiveness among the rising 
 generation; qualities which are seldom found in the natives 
 of Bengal." 
 
 The Medical Mission completed the equipment. " I submit 
 it to the consideration of the Society whether we should not be 
 furnished with medicines gratis. No medicines will be sold by 
 us, yet the cost of them enters very deeply into our allowance. 
 The whole supply sent in the Earl Howe, amounting to 35, 
 besides charges amounting to thirty per cent., falls on me ; but 
 the whole will either be administered to sick poor, or given to
 
 j6 Life of William Carey 
 
 any neighbour who is in want, or used in our own families. 
 Neighbouring gentlemen have often supplied us. Indeed, con- 
 sidering the distance we are from medical assistance, the great 
 expensiveness of it far beyond our ability, and the number of 
 wretched, afflicted objects whom we continually see and who 
 continually apply for help, we ought never to sell a pennyworth. 
 Brother Thomas has been the instrument of saving numbers of 
 lives. His house is constantly surrounded with the afflicted; 
 and the cures wrought by him would have gained any physician 
 or surgeon in Europe the most extensive reputation. We 
 ought to be furnished yearly with at least half a hundredweight 
 of Jesuit's bark." 
 
 Around and as the fruit of the completely organised mission, 
 thus conducted by the ordained preacher, teacher, scholar, 
 scientist, printer, and licensed indigo planter in one station, and 
 by his medical colleague sixteen miles to the north of him at 
 Mahipal, there gathered many native inquirers. Besides the 
 planters, civil officials, and military officers, to whom he 
 ministered in Malda and Dinapoor stations, there was added 
 the most able and consistent convert, Mr. Cunninghame of 
 Lainshaw, the assistant judge, who afterwards in England 
 fought the battle of missions, and from his Ayrshire estate, 
 where he built a church, became famous as an expounder of 
 prophecy. Carey looked upon this as " the greatest event that 
 has occurred since our coming to this country." The appoint- 
 ment of Lord Mornington, soon to be known as the Marquis 
 Wellesley, " the glorious little man," as Metcalfe called him, 
 and hardly second to his younger brother Wellington, having 
 led Fuller to recommend that Carey should wait upon his 
 Excellency at Calcutta, this reply was received: " I would not, 
 however, have you suppose that we are obliged to conceal 
 ourselves, or our work: no such thing. We preach before 
 magistrates and judges; and were I to be in the company with 
 Lord Mornington, I should not hesitate to declare myself a 
 missionary to the heathen, though I would not on any account 
 return myself as such to the Governor-General in Council." 
 
 Two years before this, in 1797, Carey had written: "This 
 mission should be strengthened as much as possible, as its 
 situation is such as may put it in our power, eventually, to 
 spread the Gospel through the greatest part of Asia, and almost 
 all the necessary languages may be learned here." He had just 
 returned from his first long missionary tour among the Bhooteas, 
 who from Tibet had overrun the eastern Himalaya from Darjee-
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 77 
 
 ling to Assam. Carey and Thomas were received as Christian 
 Lamas by the Soobah or lieutenant-governor of the country 
 below the hills, which in 1865 we were compelled to annex and 
 now administer as Jalpaigori District. They seemed to have 
 been the first Englishmen who had entered the territory since 
 the political and commercial missions of Bogle and Buchanan- 
 Hamilton sent by Warren Hastings. 
 
 " The genuine politeness and gentleman-like behaviour of 
 the Soobah exceeded everything that can be imagined, and his 
 generosity was astonishing. He insisted on supplying all our 
 people with everything they wanted; and if we did but cast 
 our eyes to any object in the room, he immediately presented 
 us with one of the same sort. Indeed he seemed to interpret 
 our looks before we were aware ; and in this manner he presented 
 each of us that night with a sword, shield, helmet, and cup, 
 made of a very light beautiful wood, and used by all the Bhooteas 
 for drinking in. We admiring the wood, he gave us a large log 
 of it; which appears to be like fir, with a very dark beautiful 
 grain : it is full of a resin or turpentine, and burns like a candle 
 if cut into thin pieces, and serves for that use. In eating, the 
 Soobah imitated our manners so quickly and exactly, that though 
 he had never seen a European before, yet he appeared as free as 
 if he had spent his life with them. We ate his food, though I 
 confess the thoughts of the Jinkof's bacon made me eat rather 
 sparingly. We had much talk about Bhootan, and about the 
 Gospel. 
 
 " We found that he had determined to give all the country a 
 testimony of his friendship for us in a public manner; and 
 the next day was fixed on to perform the ceremony in our tent 
 on the market-place. Accordingly we got instructed in the 
 necessary etiquette; and informed him we were only coming a 
 short journey to see the country, were not provided with 
 English cloth, etc., for presents. The time being come, we were 
 waited on by the Soobah, followed by all his servants, both 
 Bhooteas and Hindus. Being seated, we exchanged each five 
 rupees and five pieces of betel, in the sight of the whole town; 
 and having chewed betel for the first time in our lives, we 
 embraced three times in the Eastern manner, and then shook 
 hands in the English manner; after which, he made us a present 
 of a piece of rich debang wrought with gold, each a Bhootan 
 blanket, and the tail of an animal called the cheer cow, as bushy 
 as a horse's, and used in the Hindu worship. ... In the morning, 
 the Soobah came with his usual friendship, and brought more
 
 y 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 presents, which we received, and took our leave. He sent us 
 away with every honour he could heap upon us; as a band of 
 music before us, guides to show us the way, etc. . . . The Soobah 
 is to pay us a visit in a little time, which I hope to improve for 
 the great end of settling a mission in that country." 
 
 Carey applied his unusual powers of detailed observation and 
 memory in noting the physical and mental characteristics of 
 these little Buddhists, the structure of the language and nature 
 of their books, beliefs, and government, all of which he after- 
 wards utilised. He was often in sight of snowy Kinchinjinga 
 (28,156 feet), behind Darjeeling, and when the Soobah, being sick, 
 afterwards sent messengers with gifts to induce him to return, 
 he wrote : " I hope to ascend those stupendous mountains, 
 which are so high as to be seen at a distance of 200 or 250 miles. 
 One of these distant mountains, which is seen at Mahipal, is 
 concealed from view by the tops of a nearer range of hills, when 
 you approach within sixty miles of them. The distant range 
 forms an angle of about ten degrees with the horizon." But 
 the time did not come for a mission to that region till the 
 sanitarium of Darjeeling became the centre of another British 
 district opened up by railway from Calcutta, and now the 
 aboriginal Lepchas are coming in large numbers into the church. 
 Subsequent communications from the Soobah informed them 
 of the Garos of Assam. 
 
 On his last visit to Calcutta, in 1799, " to get types cast for 
 printing the Bible," Carey witnessed that sight of widow-burning 
 which was to continue to disgrace alike the Hindoos and the 
 Company's Government until his incessant appeals in India 
 and in England led to its prevention in 1829. In a letter to 
 Dr. Ryland he thus describes the horrid rite : 
 
 " MUDNABATI, ist April 1799. As I was returning from 
 Calcutta I saw the Sahamaranam, or, a woman burning herself 
 with the corpse of her husband, for the first time in my life. We 
 were near the village of Noya Serai, or, as Rennell calls it in his 
 chart of the Hoogli river, Niaverai. Being evening, we got out 
 of the boat to walk, when we saw a number of people assembled 
 on the river-side. I asked them what they were met for, and 
 they told me to burn the body of a dead man. I inquired if his 
 wife would die with him; they answered Yes, and pointed to 
 the woman. She was standing by the pile, which was made of 
 large billets of wood, about two and a half feet high, four feet 
 long, and two wide, on the top of which lay the dead body of 
 her husband. Her nearest relation stood by her, and near her
 
 Six Years in North Bengal 79 
 
 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 deter- 
 mined 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 sweet- 
 meat above mentioned among the people, who picked it up and 
 ate it as a very holy thing. This being ended, and she having 
 mounted the pile and danced as above mentioned (N.B. The 
 dancing only appeared to be to show us her contempt of death, 
 and prove to us that her dying was voluntary), she lay down by 
 the corpse, and put one arm under its neck and the other over 
 it, when a quantity of dry cocoa-leaves and other substances 
 were heaped over them to a considerable height, and then Ghee, 
 or melted preserved butter, poured on the top. Two bamboos 
 were then put over them and held fast down, and fire put to the 
 pile, which immediately blazed very fiercely, owing to the dry 
 and combustible materials of which it was composed. No 
 sooner was the fire kindled than all the people set up a great 
 shout Hurree-Bol, Hurree-Bol, which is a common shout of 
 joy, and an invocation of Hurree, or Seeb. It was impossible 
 to have heard the woman had she groaned, or even cried aloud, 
 on account of the mad noise of the people, and it was impossible 
 for her to stir or struggle on account of the bamboos which were 
 held down on her like the levers of a press. We made much 
 objection to their using these bamboos, and insisted that it was 
 using force to prevent the woman from getting up when the fire 
 burned her. But they declared that it was only done to keep 
 the pile from falling down. We could not bear to see more, but 
 left them, exclaiming loudly against the murder, and full of 
 horror at what we had seen." In the same letter Carey com-
 
 80 Life of William Carey 
 
 municates the information he had collected regarding the Jews 
 and Syrian Christians of the Malabar coast. 
 
 Mr. G. Udny had now found his private indigo enterprise to 
 be disastrous. He resolved to give it up and retire to England. 
 Thomas had left his factory, and was urging his colleague to 
 try the sugar trade, which at that time meant the distillation 
 of rum. Carey rather took over from Mr. Udny the out-factory 
 of Kidderpore, twelve miles distant, and there resolved to 
 prepare for the arrival of colleagues, the communistic missionary 
 settlement on the Moravian plan, which he had advocated in 
 his Enquiry. Mr. John Fountain had been sent out as the first 
 reinforcement, but he proved to be almost as dangerous to the 
 infant mission from his outspoken political radicalism as 
 Thomas had been from his debts. Carey seriously contemplated 
 the setting up of his mission centre among the Bhooteas, so as 
 to be free from the East India Company. The authorities 
 would not license Fountain as his assistant. Would they allow 
 future missionaries to settle with him? Would they always 
 renew his own licence ? And what if he must cease altogether 
 to work with his hands, and give himself wholly to the work of 
 the mission as seemed necessary ? 
 
 Four new colleagues and their families were already on the 
 sea, but God had provided a better refuge for His servants till 
 the public conscience which they were about to quicken and 
 enlighten should cause the persecution to cease.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW CRUSADE SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD 
 1800 
 
 Effects of the news in England on the Baptists On the home churches 
 In the foundation of the London and other Missionary Societies In 
 Scotland In Holland and America The missionary home Joshua 
 Marshman, William Ward, and two others sent out Landing at the 
 lona 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 mis- 
 sionary administration realised for fifteen years Spiritual heroism 
 of the Brotherhood. 
 
 THE first two English missionaries to India seemed to those 
 who sent them forth to have disappeared for ever. For 
 fourteen months, in those days of slow Indiamen and French 
 privateers, no tidings of their welfare reached the poor praying 
 people of the midlands, who had been emboldened to begin the 
 heroic enterprise. The convoy, which had seen the Danish 
 vessel fairly beyond the French coast, had been unable to bring 
 back letters on account of the weather. At last, on the zgth 
 July 1794, Fuller, the secretary; Pearce, the beloved personal 
 friend of Carey; Ryland in Bristol; and the congregation at 
 Leicester, received the journals of the voyage and letters which 
 told of the first six weeks' experience at Balasore, in Calcutta, 
 Bandel, and Nuddea, just before Carey knew the worst of their 
 pecuniary position. The committee at once met. They sang 
 " with sacred joy " what has ever since been the jubilee hymn 
 of missions, that by William Williams 
 
 " O'er those gloomy hills of darkness." 
 
 They " returned solemn thanks to the everlasting God whose 
 mercy endureth for ever, for having preserved you from the 
 perils of the sea, and hitherto made your ways prosperous. Tn 
 reading the short account of your labours we feel something of 
 that spirit spoken of in the prophet, ' Thine heart shall fear 
 
 81
 
 82 Life of William Carey 
 
 and be enlarged.' We cordially thank you for your assiduity 
 in learning the languages, in translating, and in every labour of 
 love in which you have engaged. Under God we cheerfully 
 confide in your wisdom, fidelity, and prudence, with relation to 
 the seat of your labours or the means to carry them into effect. 
 If there be one place, however, which strikes us as of more 
 importance than the rest, it is Nuddea. But you must follow 
 where the Lord opens a door for you." The same spirit of 
 generous confidence marked the relations of Carey and the 
 committee so long as Fuller was secretary. When the news 
 came that the missionaries had become indigo planters, some 
 of the weaker brethren, estimating Carey by themselves, sent 
 out a mild warning against secular temptations, to which he 
 returned a half-amused and kindly reply. John Newton, then 
 the aged rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, on being consulted, 
 reassured them: " If the heart be fired with a zeal for God and 
 love to souls," he said, " such attention to business as circum- 
 stances 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 illus- 
 trated on a great scale, and to result in the foundation of the 
 catholic missionary enterprise of the evangelicals of England, 
 Scotland, Ireland, America, Germany, and France, which has 
 marked the whole nineteenth century. We find it first in Fuller 
 himself. In comforting Thomas during his extremest dejection 
 he quoted to him from his own journal of 1789 the record of a 
 long period of spiritual inactivity, which continued till Carey 
 compelled him to join in the mission. " Before this I did little 
 but pine over my misery, but since I have betaken myself to 
 greater activity for God, my strength has been recovered and 
 my soul replenished." " Your work is a great work, and the 
 eyes of the religious world are upon you. Your undertaking, 
 with that of your dear colleague, has provoked many. The 
 spirit of missions is gone forth. I wish it may never stop till 
 the Gospel is sent unto all the world." 
 
 Following the pietist Francke, who in 1710 published the 
 first missionary reports, and also the Moravians, Fuller and his
 
 The New Crusade 83 
 
 coadjutors issued from the press of J. W. Morris at Clipstone, 
 towards the end of 1794, No. I. of their Periodical Accounts 
 relative to a Society formed among the Particular Baptists for 
 Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen. That contained a 
 narrative of the foundation of the Society and the letters of 
 Carey up to i5th February 1794 from the Soondarbans. Six 
 of these Accounts appeared up to the year 1800, when they were 
 published as one volume with an index and illustrations. The 
 volume closes with a doggerel translation of one of several 
 Gospel ballads which Carey had written in Bengali in 1798. He 
 had thus early brought into the service of Christ the Hindoo love 
 of musical recitative, which was recently re-discovered as it 
 were and now forms an important mode of evangelistic work 
 when accompanied by native musical instruments. The 
 original has a curious interest and value in the history of the 
 Bengali language, as formed by Carey. As to the music he 
 wrote: " We sometimes have a melody that cheers my heart, 
 though it would be discordant upon the ears of an Englishman." 
 
 Such was the immediate action of the infant Baptist Society. 
 The moment Dr. Ryland read his letter from Carey he sent for 
 Dr. Bogue and Mr. Stephen, who happened to be in Bristol, to 
 rejoice with him. The three returned thanks to God, and then 
 Bogue and Stephen, calling on Mr. Hey, a leading minister, took 
 the first step towards the foundation of a similar organisation 
 of non-Baptists, since known as the London Missionary Society. 
 Immediately Bogue, the able Presbyterian, who had presided 
 over a theological school at Gosport from which missionaries 
 went forth, and who refused the best living in Edinburgh when 
 offered to him by Dundas, wrote his address, which appeared in 
 the Evangelical Magazine for September, calling on the churches 
 to send out at least twenty or thirty missionaries. In the 
 sermon of lofty eloquence which he preached the year after, he 
 declared that the missionary movement of that time would form 
 an epoch in the history of man, " the time will be ever re- 
 membered by us, and may it be celebrated by future ages as 
 the -<ra of Christian Benevolence." 
 
 On the same day the Rev. T. Haweis, rector of All Saints, 
 Aldwinkle, referring to the hundreds of ministers collected to 
 decide where the first mission should be sent, thus burst forth : 
 " Methinks I see the great Angel of the Covenant in the midst 
 of us, pluming his wings, and ready to fly through the midst of 
 heaven with his own everlasting Gospel, to every nation and 
 tribe and tongue and people." In Hindostan " our brethren
 
 84 Life of William Carey 
 
 the Baptists have at present prevented our wishes . . . there 
 is room for a thousand missionaries, and I wish we may be ready 
 with a numerous host for that or any other part of the earth." 
 
 " Scotland l was the next to take up the challenge sent by 
 Carey. Greville Ewing, then a young minister of the kirk in 
 Edinburgh, published in March 1796 the appeal of the Edinburgh 
 or Scottish Missionary Society, which afterwards sent John 
 Wilson to Bombay, and that was followed by the Glasgow 
 Society, to which we owe the most successful of the Kafir 
 missions in South Africa. Robert Haldane sold all that he had 
 when he read the first number of the Periodical Accounts, and 
 gave 35,000 to send a Presbyterian mission of six ministers 
 and laymen, besides himself, to do from Benares what Carey 
 had planned from Mudnabati; but Pitt as well as Dundas, 
 though his personal friends, threatened him with the Company's 
 intolerant Act of Parliament. Evangelical ministers of the 
 Church of England took their proper place in the new crusade, 
 and a year before the eighteenth century closed they formed the 
 agency, which has ever since been in the forefront of the host 
 of the Lord as the Church Missionary Society, with Carey's 
 friend, Thomas Scott, as its first secretary. The sacred enthu- 
 siasm 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 un- 
 extinguishable missionary flame in England and all the western 
 world, give us no little encouragement and animate our hearts." 
 To Sutcliff he had written eighteen months before that: " I 
 
 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. This meeting led to the foundation 
 of the Sabbath School and Destitute Sick Societies in Edinburgh. See 
 Lives of the Haldanes.
 
 The New Crusade 85 
 
 rejoice much at the missionary spirit which has lately gone forth : 
 surely it is a prelude to the universal spread of the Gospel! 
 Your account of the German Moravian Brethren's affectionate 
 regard towards me is very pleasing. I am not much moved by 
 what men in general say of me ; yet I cannot be insensible to the 
 regards of men eminent for godliness. . . . Staying at home is 
 now become sinful in many cases, and will become so more and 
 more. All gifts should be encouraged, and spread abroad." 
 
 The day was breaking now. Men as well as money were 
 offered for Carey's work. In Scotland especially Fuller found 
 that he had but to ask, but to appear in any evangelical pulpit, 
 and he would receive sums which, in that day of small things, 
 rebuked his little faith. Till the last Scotland was loyal to 
 Carey and his colleagues, and with almost a prevision of this he 
 wrote so early as 1797: " It rejoices my heart much to hear 
 of our brethren in Scotland having so liberally set themselves to 
 encourage the mission . ' ' They approved of his plans, and prayed 
 for him and his work. When Fuller called on Cecil for help, the 
 " churchy " evangelical told him he had a poor opinion of all 
 Baptists except one, the man who wrote The Gospel Worthy of 
 All Acceptation. When he learned that its author was before 
 him, the hasty offender apologised and offered a subscription. 
 "Not a farthing, sir!" was the reply, "you do not give in 
 faith; " but the persistent Cecil prevailed. Men, however, were 
 a greater want than money at that early stage of the modern 
 crusade. Thomas and Fountain had each been a mistake. So- 
 were the early African missionaries, with the exception of the 
 first Scotsman, Peter Greig. Of the thirty sent out by the 
 London Missionary Society in the Duff only four were fit for 
 ordination, and not one has left a name of mark. The Church 
 Mission continued to send out only Germans till 1815. In quick 
 succession four young men offered themselves to the Baptist 
 Society to go out as assistants to Carey, in the hope that the 
 Company would give them a covenant to reside Brunsdon and 
 Grant, two of Ryland's Bristol flock; Joshua Marshman with 
 his wife Hannah Marshman, and William Ward called by Carey 
 himself. 
 
 In nine months Fuller had them and their families shipped in 
 an American vessel, the Criterion, commanded by Captain 
 Wickes, a Presbyterian elder of Philadelphia, who ever after 
 promoted the cause in the United States. Charles Grant helped 
 them as he would have aided Carey alone. Though the most 
 influential of the Company's directors, he could not obtain a
 
 86 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 mis- 
 sionaries, rightly trusting to Danish protection. Charles Grant 
 had advised them well, but it is not easy now, as in the case of 
 their predecessors in 1795 and of their successors up to 1813, to 
 refrain from indignation that the British Parliament, and the 
 party led by William Pitt, should have so long lent all the weight 
 of their power to the East India Company in the vain attempt 
 to keep Christianity from the Hindoos. Ward's journal thus 
 simply tells the story of the landing of the missionaries at this 
 lona, this Canterbury of Southern Asia: 
 
 " Lord's-day, Oct. 13, 1799. Brother Brunsdon and I slept in 
 the open air on our chests. We arrived at Serampore this morning 
 by daylight, in health and pretty good spirits. We put up at 
 Myerr's, a Danish tavern to which we had been recommended. 
 No worship to-day. Nothing but a Portuguese church here. 
 
 " Oct. 14. Mr. Forsyth from Calcutta, missionary belonging to 
 the London Missionary Society, astonished us by his presence this 
 afternoon: He was wholly unknown, but soon became well known. 
 He gave us a deal of interesting information. He had seen brother 
 Carey, who invited him to his house, offered him the assistance of 
 his Moonshi, etc. 
 
 " Oct. 1 6. 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 condition that we appeared at the Police Office, or would con- 
 tinue at Serampore. All things considered we preferred the latter, 
 till the arrival of our friends from Kidderpore to whom we had 
 addressed letters. Captain Wickes called on Rev. Mr. Brown, who 
 very kindly offered to do anything for us in his power. Our Instruc- 
 tions with respect to our conduct towards Civil Government were 
 read to him. He promised to call at the Police Office afterwards, 
 and to inform the Master that we intended to stay at Serampore, 
 till we had leave to go up the country. Captain Wickes called at 
 the office afterwards, and they seemed quite satisfied with our 
 declaration by him. In the afternoon we went to Serampore. 
 
 " Oct. 19. I addressed a letter to the Governor to-day begging 
 his acceptance of the last number of our Periodical Accounts, and
 
 The New Crusade 87 
 
 informing him that we proposed having worship to-morrow in our 
 own house, from which we did not wish to exclude any person. 
 
 " Lord's-day, Oct. 20. This morning the Governor sent to inquire 
 the hours of our worship. About half-past ten he came to our 
 house with a number of gentlemen and their retinue. I preached 
 from Acts xx. 24. We had a very attentive congregation of Euro- 
 peans: several appeared affected, among whom was the Governor." 
 
 The text was well chosen from Paul's words to the elders of 
 Ephesus, as he turned his face towards the bonds and afflictions 
 that awaited him " But none of these things move me, neither 
 count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course 
 with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord 
 Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." It proved to 
 be a history of the three men thenceforth best known as the 
 Serampore Missionaries. Ward, too, the literary member of the 
 mission, composed the hymn which thus concluded : 
 
 " Yes, we are safe beneath Thy shade. 
 And shall be so 'midst India's heat: 
 What should a missionary dread, 
 For devils crouch at Jesus' feet. 
 
 " There, sweetest Saviour! let Thy cross 
 Win many Hindoo hearts to Thee; 
 This shall make up for every loss, 
 While Thou art ours eternally." 
 
 In his first letter to a friend in Hull Ward used language which 
 unconsciously predicted the future of the mission: " With a 
 Bible and a press posterity will see that a missionary will not 
 labour in vain, even in India." But one of their number, 
 Grant, was meanwhile removed by death, and, while they 
 waited for a month, Carey failed to obtain leave for them to 
 settle as his assistants in British territory. He had appealed 
 to Mr. Brown, and to Dr. Roxburgh, his friend in charge of the 
 Botanic Garden, to use his influence with the Government 
 through Colebrooke, the Oriental scholar, then high in the 
 service. But it was in vain. The police had seen with annoy- 
 ance the missionaries slip from their grasp because of the 
 liberality of the Governor-General of whom Carey had written 
 to Ryland a year before: " At Calcutta, I saw much dissipation; 
 but yet I think less than formerly. Lord Mornington has set 
 his face against sports, gaming, horse-racing, and working on 
 the Lord's-day; in consequence of which these infamous 
 practices are less common than formerly." The missionaries, 
 too, had at first been reported not as Baptist but as " Papist," 
 
 o
 
 88 Life of William Carey 
 
 and the emissaries of France, believed to be everywhere, must 
 be watched against. The brave little Governor let it be under- 
 stood that he would protect to the last the men who had been 
 committed to his care by the Danish consul in London. So 
 Ward obtained a Danish passport to enable him to visit 
 Dinapoor and consult with Carey. 
 
 It was Sunday morning when he approached the Mudnabati 
 factory, " feeling very unusual sensations," greatly excited. 
 4 ' At length I saw Carey ! He is less altered than I expected : 
 has rather more flesh than when in England, and, blessed be 
 God ! he is a young man still." It was a wrench to sacrifice his 
 own pioneer mission, property worth 500, the school, the 
 church, the inquirers, but he did not hesitate. He thus stated 
 the case on the other side: " At Serampore we may settle as 
 missionaries, which is not 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 to the Rajmahal Hills, round which 
 the great Ganges sweeps, Carey and Ward made the first 
 attempt to evangelise the Santal and other simple aboriginal 
 tribes, whom the officials Brown and Cleveland had partly tamed. 
 The Paharis are described, at that time, as without caste, 
 priests, or public religion, as living on Indian corn and by 
 hunting, for which they carry bows and arrows. " Brother 
 Carey was able to converse with them." Again, Ward's com- 
 ment on the Bengali services on the next Sunday, from the 
 boats, is " the common sort wonder how brother Carey can 
 know so much of the Shasters." " I long," wrote Carey from 
 the spot to his new colleagues, " to stay here and tell these social 
 and untutored heathen the good news from heaven. I have a 
 strong persuasion that the doctrine of a dying Saviour would, 
 under the Holy Spirit's influence, melt their hearts." From 
 Taljheri and Pokhuria, near that place, to Parisnath, Ranchi, 
 and Orissa, thousands of Santals and Kols have since been 
 gathered into the kingdom. 
 
 On the loth January 1800 Carey took up his residence at 
 Serampore, on the nth he was presented to the Governor, and 
 " he went out and preached to the natives." His apprentice-
 
 The New Crusade 89 
 
 ship was over; so began his full apostolate, instant in season and 
 out of season, to end only with his life thirty-four years after. 
 
 Thus step by step, by a way that he knew not, the shoemaker 
 lad who had educated himself to carry the Gospel to Tahiti, 
 had been sent to Bengal in spite of the Company which cast him 
 out of their ship, had starved in Calcutta, had built him a 
 wooden hut in the jungles of the Delta, had become indigo 
 planter in the swamps of Dinapoor that he might preach Christ 
 without interference, had been forced to think of seeking the 
 protection of a Buddhist in the Himalaya morass was driven 
 to begin anew in the very heart of the most densely peopled part 
 of the British Empire, under the jealous care of the foreign 
 European power which had a century before sent missionaries 
 to Tranquebar and taught Zinzendorf and the Moravians the 
 divine law of the kingdom; encouraged by a Governor, Colonel 
 Bie, who was himself a disciple of Schwartz. To complete this 
 catalogue of special providences we may add that, if Fuller had 
 delayed only a little longer, even Serampore would have been 
 found shut against the missionaries. For the year after, when 
 Napoleon's acts had driven us to war with Denmark, a detach- 
 ment of British troops, under Lord Minto's son, took possession 
 of Fredericksnagore, as Serampore was officially called, and of 
 the Danish East India Company's ship there, without opposition. 
 
 The district or county of Hoogli and Howrah, opposite 
 Calcutta and Barrackpore, of which Serampore is the central 
 port, swarms with a population, chiefly Hindoo but partly 
 Mussulman, unmatched for density in any other part of the 
 world. If, after years of a decimating fever, each of its 1701 square 
 miles still supports nearly a thousand human beings or double 
 the proportion of Belgium, we cannot believe that it was much 
 less dense at the beginning of the century. From Howrah, the 
 Surrey side of Calcutta, up to Hoogli the county town, the high 
 ridge of mud between the river and the old channel of the 
 Ganges to the west, has attracted the wealthiest and most 
 intellectually active of all the Bengalees. Hence it was here 
 that Portuguese and Dutch, French and English, and Danish 
 planted their early factories. The last to obtain a site of 
 twenty acres from the moribund Mussulman Government at 
 Moorshedabad was Denmark, two years before Plassey. In 
 the half century the hut of the first Governor sent from 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 45,000.
 
 90 Life of William Carey 
 
 Then they were much fewer, but then even more than now the 
 town was a centre of the Vishnoo-worship of Jagganath, second 
 only to that of Pooree in all India. Not far off, and now con- 
 nected with the port by railway, is the foul shrine of Tarakeswar, 
 which attracts thousands of pilgrims, many of them widows, who 
 measure the road with their prostrate bodies dripping from the 
 bath. Commercially Serampore sometimes distanced Calcutta 
 itself, for all the foreign European trade was centred in it during 
 the American and French wars, and the English civilians used 
 its investments as the best means of remitting their savings 
 home. When the missionaries landed there was nothing but a 
 Portuguese Catholic church in the settlement, and 'the Governor 
 was raising subscriptions for that pretty building in which 
 Carey preached till he died, and the spire of which the Governor- 
 General is said to have erected to improve the view of the town 
 from the windows of his summer palace at Barrackpore opposite. 
 Removed from the rural obscurity of a Bengali village, where 
 the cost of housing, clothing, and living was small, to a town in 
 the neighbourhood of the capital much frequented by Europeans, 
 Carey at once adapted the practical details of his communistic 
 brotherhood to the new circumstances. With such wisdom 
 was he aided in this by the business experience of Marshman 
 and Ward, that a settlement was formed which admitted of easy 
 development in correspondence with the rapid growth of the 
 mission. At first the community consisted of ten adults and 
 nine children. Grant had been carried off in a fever caused 
 by the dampness of their first quarters. The promising Bruns- 
 don was soon after removed by liver complaint caught from 
 standing on an unmatted floor in the printing-office. Fountain, 
 who at first continued the mission at Dinapoor, soon died there 
 a happy death. Thomas had settled at Beerbhoom, but joined 
 the Serampore brethren in time to do good though brief service 
 before he too was cut off. But, fortunately as it proved for the 
 future, Carey had to arrange for five families at the first, and 
 this is how it was done as described by Ward : 
 
 " The renting of a house, or houses, would ruin us. We hoped 
 therefore to have been able to purchase land, and build mat houses 
 upon it; but we can get none properly situated. We have in con- 
 sequence purchased of the Governor's nephew a large house in the 
 middle of the town for Rs.6ooo, 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.
 
 The New Crusade 91 
 
 It stands by the river-side upon a pretty large piece of ground, 
 walled round, with a garden at the bottom, and in the middle a 
 fine tank or pool of water. The price alarmed us, but we had no 
 alternative; and we hope this will form a comfortable missionary 
 settlement. Being near to Calcutta, it is of the utmost importance 
 to our school, our press, and our connection with England." 
 
 " From hence may the Gospel issue and pervade all India," 
 they wrote to Fuller. " We intend to teach a school, and 
 make what we can of our press. The paper is all arrived, and 
 the press, with the types, etc., complete. The Bible is wholly 
 translated, except a few chapters, so that we intend to begin 
 printing immediately, first the New and then the Old Testament. 
 We love our work, and will do all we can to lighten your 
 expenses." 
 
 This house-chapel, with two acres of garden land and separate 
 rooms on either side, continued till 1875 to be the nucleus of the 
 settlement afterwards celebrated all over South Asia and 
 Christendom. The chapel is still sacred to the worship of God, 
 The separate rooms to the left, fronting the Hoogli, became 
 enlarged into the stately residence of Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., 
 and his two successors in the Friend of India, while beyond were 
 the girl's school, now removed, the residence of Dr. Joshua 
 Marshman before his death, and the boys' school presented to 
 the mission by the King of Denmark. The separate rooms to 
 the right grew into the press; farther down the river was the 
 house of the Lady Rumohr who became Carey's second wife, 
 with the great paper-mill behind ; and, still farther, the second 
 park in which the Serampore College was built, with the prin- 
 cipal's house in which Carey died, and a hostel for the Native 
 Christian students behind. The whole settlement finally formed 
 a block of at least five acres, with almost palatial buildings, on 
 the right bank of the Hoogli, which, with a breadth of half a 
 mile when in flood, rolls between it and the Governor-General's 
 summer house and English-like park of Barrackpore. The 
 original two acres became Carey's Botanic Garden; the houses 
 he surrounded and connected by mahogany trees, which grew 
 to be of umbrageous beauty. His favourite promenade between 
 the chapel and the mill, and ultimately the college, was under 
 an avenue of his own planting, long known as " Carey's Walk." 
 
 The new colleagues who were to live with him in loving 
 brotherhood till death removed the last in 1837 were not long 
 in attracting him. The two were worthy to be associated with 
 him, and so admirably supplemented his own deficiencies that
 
 92 Life of William Carey 
 
 the brotherhood became the most potent and permanent force 
 in India. He thus wrote to Fuller his first impressions of them, 
 with a loving self-depreciation: " Brother Ward is the very- 
 man we wanted: he enters into the work with his whole soul. 
 I have much pleasure in him, and expect much from him. 
 Brother Marshman is a prodigy of diligence and prudence, as is 
 also his wife in the latter: learning the language is mere play 
 to him ; he has already acquired as much as I did in double the 
 time." After eight months of study and evangelising work they 
 are thus described: " Our brother Marshman, who is a true 
 missionary, is able to talk a little; he goes out frequently, nay 
 almost every day, and assaults the fortress of Satan. Brother 
 Brunsdon can talk a little, though not like Marshman. Brother 
 Ward is a great prize ; he does not learn the language so quickly ,_ 
 but he is so holy, so spiritual a man, and so useful among the 
 children." 
 
 Thus early did Carey note the value of Hannah Marshman, 
 the first woman missionary to India. Granddaughter of the 
 Baptist minister of Crockerton in Wiltshire, she proved to be 
 for forty-six years at once a loving wife, and the equal of the 
 three missionaries of Christ and of civilisation whom she aided 
 in the common home, in the schools, in the congregation, in the 
 Native Christian families, and even, at that early time, in purely 
 Hindoo circles. Without her the mission must have been one- 
 sided indeed. It gives us a pathetic interest to turn to her 
 household books, where we find entered with loving care and 
 thoughtful thrift all the daily details which at once form a 
 valuable contribution to the history of prices, and show how her 
 " prudence " combined with the heroic self-denial of all to 
 make the Serampore mission the light of India. Ward's 
 journal supplies this first sketch of the brotherhood, who 
 realised, more than probably any in Protestant, Romanist, or 
 Greek hagiology, the life of the apostolic community in 
 Jerusalem : 
 
 " January 18, 1800. This week we have adopted a set of rules 
 for the government of the family. All preach and pray in turn; 
 one superintends the affairs of the family for a month, and then 
 another; brother Carey is treasurer, and has the regulation of the 
 medicine chest; brother Fountain is librarian. Saturday evening 
 is devoted to adjusting differences, and pledging ourselves to love 
 one another. One of our resolutions is, that no one of us do 
 engage in private trade; but that all be done for the benefit of 
 the mission. . . . 
 
 " August i. Our labours for every day are now regularly
 
 The New Crusade 93 
 
 arranged. About six o'clock we rise; brother Carey to his garden ; 
 brother Marshman to his school at seven; brother Brunsdon, Felix, 
 and I, to the printing-office. At eight the bell rings for family 
 worship: we assemble in the hall; sing, read, and pray. Break- 
 fast. Afterwards, brother Carey goes to the translation, or reading 
 proofs: brother Marshman to school, and the rest to the printing- 
 office. Our compositor having left us, we do without: we print 
 three half-sheets of 2000 each in a week; have five pressmen, one 
 folder, and one binder. At twelve o'clock we take a luncheon; 
 then most of us shave and bathe, read and sleep before dinner, 
 which we have at three. After dinner we deliver our thoughts on 
 a text or question : this we find to be very profitable. Brother and 
 sister Marshman keep their schools till after two. In the afternoon, 
 if business be done in the office, I read and try to talk Bengali with 
 the brammhan. We drink tea about seven, and have little or no 
 supper. We have Bengali preaching once or twice in the week, 
 and on Thursday evening we have an experience meeting. On 
 Saturday evening we meet to compose differences and transact 
 business, after prayer, which is always immediately after tea. 
 Felix is very useful in the office; William goes to school, and part 
 of the day learns to bind. We meet two hours before breakfast 
 on the first Monday in the month, and each one prays for the 
 salvation of the Bengal heathen. At night we unite our prayers 
 for the universal spread of the Gospel." 
 
 The " Form of Agreement " which regulated the social 
 economy and spiritual enterprise of the brotherhood, and also 
 its legal relations to the Baptist Society in England, deserves 
 study, in its divine disinterestedness, its lofty aims, and its 
 kindly common sense. Fuller had pledged the Society in 1798 
 to send out 360 a year for the joint family of six missionaries, 
 their wives, and children. The house and land at Serampore 
 cost the Society Rs.6ooo. On Grant's death, leaving a widow 
 and two children, the five missionaries made the first volun- 
 tary 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-support- 
 ing. In the second year Carey's salary from the College of Fort- 
 William, and the growth of the schools and press, gave them a 
 surplus for mission extension. They not only paid for the 
 additional two houses and ground required by such extension, 
 but they paid back to the Society all that it had advanced for 
 the first purchase in the course of the next six years. They 
 acquired all the property for the Serampore Mission, duly inform-
 
 94 Life of William Carey 
 
 ing 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 pro- 
 perty in the families." But " to secure their own quiet occupa- 
 tion 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 brother- 
 hood to agree that " each shall regularly deduct a tenth of the 
 net product of his labour to form a fund in his own hands for 
 these purposes." We know nothing in the history of missions, 
 monastic or evangelical, which at all approaches this in adminis- 
 trative perfectness as well as in Christlike self-sacrifice. It 
 prevents secularisation of spirit, stimulates activity of all kinds, 
 gives full scope to local ability and experience, calls forth the 
 maximum of local support and propagation, sets the church at 
 home free to enter incessantly on new fields, provides permanence 
 as well as variety of action and adaptation to new circumstances, 
 and binds the whole in a holy bond of prayerful co-operation 
 and loving brotherhood. This Agreement worked for seventeen 
 years, with a success in England and India which we shall trace, 
 or as long as Fuller, Ryland, and Sutcliff lived " to hold the 
 ropes," while Carey, Marshman, and Ward excavated the mine 
 of Hindooismi 
 
 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, believ- 
 ing prayer, lies at the root of all personal godliness. A com- 
 petent knowledge of the languages current where a missionary 
 lives, a mild and winning temper, and a heart given up to God
 
 The New Crusade 95 
 
 in closet religion; these, these are the attainments which more 
 than all knowledge or all other gifts, will fit us to become the 
 instruments of God in the great work of human redemption. 
 Finally, let us give ourselves unreservedly to this glorious cause. 
 Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our strength, our 
 families, or even the clothes we wear are our own. Let us 
 sanctify them all to God and His cause. Oh! that He may 
 sanctify us for His work. Let us for ever shut out the idea of 
 laying up a cowrie (mite) for ourselves or our children. If we 
 give up the resolution which was formed on the subject of private 
 trade, when we first united at Serampore, the mission is from 
 that hour a lost cause. Let us continually watch against a 
 worldly spirit, and cultivate a Christian indifference towards 
 every indulgence. Rather let us bear hardness as good soldiers 
 of Jesus Christ. No private family ever enjoyed a greater 
 portion of happiness, even in the most prosperous gale of worldly 
 prosperity, than we have done since we resolved to have all 
 things in common. If we are enabled to persevere in the same 
 principles, we may hope that multitudes of converted souls will 
 have reason to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel 
 into this country." 
 
 Such was the moral heroism, such the spiritual aim of the 
 Serampore brotherhood ; how did it set to work ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 
 
 l8oO-l8lO 
 
 
 
 A carpenter the first Bengali convert Krishna Pal's confession Caste 
 broken for the first time Carey describes the baptism in the Hoogli 
 The first woman convert The first widow convert The first 
 convert of writer caste The first Christian Brahman The first 
 native chapel A Bengali " experience " meeting Carey founding a 
 new community as well as church Marriage difficulties solved The 
 first native Christian marriage feast in North India Hindoo Christian 
 death and burial The first Christian schools and school-books in 
 North India The first native Sunday school Boarding schools for 
 the higher education of country-born Christians Carey on the mixed 
 Portuguese, Eurasians, and Armenians The Benevolent Institution 
 for destitute children of all races A hundred schools English only 
 postponed Effect on native opinion and action The leaven of the 
 Kingdom The Mission breaks forth into five at the close of 1810. 
 
 FOR seven years Carey had daily preached Christ in Bengali 
 without a convert. He had produced the first edition of the 
 New Testament. He had reduced the language to literary 
 form. He had laid the foundations in the darkness of the pit 
 of Hindooism, while the Northamptonshire pastors, by prayer 
 and self-sacrifice, held the ropes. The last disappointment was 
 on 25th November 1800, when " the first Hindoo " catechumen, 
 Fakeer, offered himself for baptism, returned to his distant 
 home for his child, and appeared no more, probably " detained 
 by force." But on the last Sunday of that year Krishna Pal 
 was baptised in the Hoogli and his whole family soon followed 
 him. He was thirty-five years of age. Not only as the first 
 native Christian of North India of whom we have a reliable 
 account, but as the first missionary to Calcutta and Assam, and 
 the first Bengali hymn-writer, this man deserves study. 
 
 Carey's first Hindoo convert was three years younger than 
 himself, or about thirty-six, at baptism. Krishna Pal, born in 
 the neighbouring French settlement of Chandernagore, had 
 settled in the suburbs of Serampore, where he worked as a 
 carpenter. Sore sickness and a sense of sin led him to join the 
 Kharta-bhojas, one of the sects which, from the time of Gautama 
 Buddha, and of Chaitanya, the reformer of Nuddea, to that of 
 
 96
 
 First Converts and Schools 97 
 
 Nanak, founder of the Sikh brotherhood, have been driven into 
 dissent by the yoke of Brahmanism. Generally worshippers of 
 some form of Vishnoo, and occasionally, as in Kabeer's case, 
 influenced by the monotheism of Islam, these sects begin by 
 professing theism and opposition to caste, though Hindooism is 
 elastic enough to keep them always within its pale and ultimately 
 to absorb them again. For sixteen years Krishna Pal was 
 himself a gooroo of the Ghospara sect, of which from Carey's to 
 Duff's earlier days the missionaries had a hope which proved 
 vain. He recovered from sickness, but could not shake off the 
 sense of the burden of sin, when this message came to him, and, 
 to his surprise, through the Europeans " Jesus Christ came 
 into the world to save sinners." At the same time he happened 
 to dislocate his right arm by falling down the slippery side of 
 his tank when about to bathe. He sent two of the children to 
 the Mission House for Thomas, who immediately left the break- 
 fast table at which the brethren had just sat down, and soon 
 reduced the luxation, while the sufferer again heard the good 
 news that Christ was waiting to heal his soul, and he and his 
 neighbour Gokool received a Bengali tract. He himself thus 
 told the story: " In this paper I read that he who confesseth 
 and forsaketh his sins, and trusteth in the righteousness of 
 Christ, obtains salvation. The next morning Mr. Carey came 
 to see me, and after inquiring how I was, told me to come to his 
 house, that he would give me some medicine, by which, through 
 the blessing of God, the pain in my arm would be removed. I 
 went and obtained the medicine, and through the mercy of God 
 my arm was cured. From this time I made a practice of calling 
 at the mission house, where Mr. Ward and Mr. Felix Carey used 
 to read and expound the Holy Bible to me. One day Dr. 
 Thomas asked me whether I understood what I heard from Mr. 
 Ward and Mr. Carey. I said I understood that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ gave his life up for the salvation of sinners, and that I 
 believed it, and so did my friend Gokool. Dr. T. said, ' Then 
 I call you brother come and let us eat together in love.' At 
 this time the table was set for luncheon, and all the missionaries 
 and their wives, and I and Gokool, sat down and ate together." 
 The servants spread the news, most horrible to the people, 
 that the two Hindoos had " become Europeans," and they were 
 assaulted on their way home. Just thirty years after, in 
 Calcutta, the first public breach of caste by the young Brahman 
 students of Duff raised a still greater commotion, and resulted 
 in the first converts there. Krishna Pal and his wife, his wife's
 
 98 Life of William Carey 
 
 sister and his four daughters; Gokool, his wife, and a widow 
 of forty who lived beside them, formed the first group of Christian 
 Hindoos of caste in India north of Madras. Two years after 
 Krishna Pal sent to the Society this confession of his faith. 
 Literally translated, it is a record of belief such as Paul himself 
 might have written, illustrated by an apostolic life of twenty- 
 two years. The carpenter's confession and dedication has, in 
 the original, an exquisite tenderness, reflected also in the hymn l 
 which he wrote for family worship : 
 
 " SERAMPORE, izth 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.* I was the vilest of sinners: He hath saved me. Now 
 this word I will tell to the world. Going forth, I will proclaim the 
 love of Christ with rejoicing. To sinners I will say this word: 
 Here sinner, brother! Without Christ there is no help. Christ, 
 the world to save, gave his own soul ! Such love was never heard : 
 for enemies Christ gave his own soul ! Such compassion, where shall 
 we get? For the sake of saving sinners he forsook the happiness 
 of heaven. I will constantly stay near him. Being awakened by 
 this news, I will constantly dwell in the town of joy. In the Holy 
 Spirit I will live : yet in Christ's sorrow I will be sorrowful. I will 
 dwell along with happiness, continually meditating on this ; Christ 
 will save the world ! In Christ not taking refuge, there is no other 
 way of life. I was indeed a sinner, praise not knowing. This is 
 the representation of Christ's servant, 
 
 " KRISTNO." 
 
 Such is the first epistle of the Church of India. Thus the 
 first medical missionary had his reward; but the joy proved to 
 be too much for him. When Carey led Krishna and his own 
 
 1 Dr. Marshman's English translation is still used, beginning 
 
 " Oh! thou my soul forget no more 
 The Friend who all thy misery bore." 
 
 * 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.
 
 First Converts and Schools 99 
 
 son Felix down into the water of baptism the ravings of Thomas 
 in the schoolhouse on the one side, and of Mrs. Carey on the 
 other, mingled with the strains of the Bengali hymn of praise. 
 The Mission Journal, written by Ward, tells with graphic 
 simplicity how caste as well as idol-worship was overcome not 
 only by the men but the women representatives of a race whom, 
 thirty years after, Macaulay described as destitute of courage, 
 independence, and veracity, and bold only in deceit. Christ is 
 changing all that. 
 
 " Nov. 27. Krishna, the man whose arm was set, overtook Felix 
 and me, and said he would come to our house daily for instruction ; 
 for that we had not only cured his arm, but brought him the news 
 of salvation. . . . 
 
 " Dec. 5. Yesterday evening Gokool and Krishna prayed in my 
 room. This morning Gokool called upon us, and told us that his 
 wife and two or three more of his family had left him on account 
 of the gospel. He had eaten of Krishna's rice, who being of another 
 caste, Gokool had lost his. Krishna says his wife and family are 
 all desirous of becoming Christians. They declare their willingness 
 to join us, and obey all our Saviour's commands. Gokool and his 
 wife had a long talk; but she continued determined, and is gone 
 to her relations. 
 
 " Dec. 6. This morning brother Carey and I went to Krishna's 
 house. Everything was made very clean. The women sat within 
 the house, the children at the door, and Krishna and Gokool with 
 brother Carey and I in the court. The houses of the poor are only 
 calculated for sleeping in. Brother Carey talked; and the women 
 appeared to have learned more of the gospel than we expected. 
 They declared for Christ at once. This work was new, even to 
 brother Carey. A whole family desiring to hear the gospel, and 
 declaring in favour of it! Krishna's wife said she had received 
 great joy from it. 
 
 " Lord's-day, Dec. 7. This morning brother Carey went to 
 Krishna's house, and spoke to a yard full of people, who heard with 
 great attention though trembling with cold. Brother Brunsdon is 
 very poorly. Krishna's wife and her sister were to have been with 
 us in the evening; but the women have many scruples to sitting in 
 the company of Europeans. Some of them scarcely ever go out 
 but to the river; and if they meet a European run away. Some- 
 times when we have begun to speak in a street, some one desires 
 us to remove to a little distance; for the women dare not come by 
 us to fill their jars at the river. We always obey. . . . 
 
 "Dec. ii. Gokool, Krishna, and family continue to seek after 
 the Word, and profess their entire willingness to join us. The 
 women seem to have learnt that sin is a dreadful thing, and to have 
 received joy in hearing of Jesus Christ. We see them all every day 
 almost. They live but half a mile from us. We think it right to 
 make many allowances for ignorance, and for a state of mind pro- 
 duced by a corrupt superstition. We therefore cannot think of 
 demanding from them, previous to baptism, more than a profession
 
 I oo Life of William Carey 
 
 of dependence on Christ, from a knowledge of their need of Him, and 
 submission to Him in all things. We now begin to talk of baptism. 
 Yesterday we fixed upon the spot, before our gate, in the river. 
 We begin to talk also of many other things concerning the discipled 
 natives. This evening Felix and I went to Gokool's house. Krishna 
 and his wife and a brammhan were present. I said a little. Felix 
 read the four last chapters of John to them, and spoke also. We 
 sat down upon a piece of mat in the front of the house. (No chairs.) 
 It was very pleasant. To have natives who feel a little as we do 
 ourselves, is so new and different. The country itself seems to 
 wear a new aspect to me. . . . 
 
 "Dec. 13. This evening Felix and I went to see our friends 
 Gokool and Krishna. The latter was out. Gokool gave a pleasing 
 account of the state of his mind, and also of that of Krishna and 
 his family. While we were there, Gokool's gooroo (teacher) came 
 for the first time since his losing caste. Gokool refused to prostrate 
 himself at his feet while he should put his foot on his head; for 
 which his gooroo was displeased. . . . 
 
 " Dec. 22. This day Gokool and Krishna came to eat tiffin (what 
 in England is called luncheon) with us, and thus publicly threw 
 away their caste. Brethren Carey and Thomas went to prayer 
 with the two natives before they proceeded to this act. All our 
 servants were astonished: so many had said that nobody would 
 ever mind Christ or lose caste. Brother Thomas has waited fifteen 
 years, and thrown away much upon deceitful characters: brother 
 Carey has waited till hope of his own success has almost expired; 
 and after all, God has done it with perfect ease! Thus the door of 
 faith is open to the gentiles ; who shall shut it ? The chain of the 
 caste is broken; who shall mend it? " 
 
 Carey thus describes the baptism : " Dec. 29. Yesterday 
 was a day of great joy. I had the happiness to desecrate the 
 Gunga, by baptising the first Hindoo, viz. Krishna, and my 
 son Felix: some circumstances turned up to delay the baptism 
 of Gokool and the two women. Krishna's coming forward 
 alone, however, gave us very great pleasure, and his joy at both 
 ordinances was very great. The river runs just before our gate, 
 in front of the house, and, I think, is as wide as the Thames at 
 Gravesend. We intended to have baptised at nine in the 
 morning; but, on account of the tide, were obliged to defer it 
 till nearly one o'clock, and it was administered just after the 
 English preaching. The Governor and a good number of 
 Europeans were present. Brother Ward preached a sermon in 
 English, from John v. 39 ' Search the Scriptures.' We then 
 went to the water-side, where I addressed the people in Bengali ; 
 after having sung a Bengali translation of ' Jesus, and shall it 
 ever be ? ' and engaging in prayer. After the address I ad- 
 ministered the ordinance, first to my son, then to Krishna.
 
 First Converts and Schools 101 
 
 At half-past four I administered the Lord's Supper; and a time 
 of real refreshing it was. . . . 
 
 " Thus, you see, God is making way for us, and giving success 
 to the word of His grace ! We have toiled long, and have met 
 with many discouragements ; but, at last, the Lord has appeared 
 for us. May we have the true spirit of nurses, to train them up 
 in the words of faith and sound doctrine! I have no fear of 
 any one, however, in this respect, but myself. I feel much 
 concerned that they may act worthy of their vocation, and also 
 that they may be able to teach others. I think it becomes us 
 to make the most of every one whom the Lord gives us." 
 
 Jeymooni, Krishna's wife's sister, was the first Bengali woman 
 to be baptised, and Rasoo, his wife, soon followed; both were 
 about thirty-five years old. The former said she had found a 
 treasure in Christ greater than anything in the world. The 
 latter, when she first heard the good news from her husband, said 
 " there was no such sinner as I, and I felt my heart immediately 
 unite to Him. I wish to keep all His commands so far as I know 
 them." Gokool was kept back for a time by his wife, Komal, 
 who fled to her father's, but Krishna and his family brought in, 
 first the husband, then the wife, whose simplicity and frankness 
 attracted the missionaries. Unna, their widowed friend of forty, 
 was also gathered in, the first of that sad host of victims to 
 Brahmanical cruelty, lust, and avarice, to whom Christianity 
 has ever since offered the only deliverance. Of 124,000,000 of 
 women in India in 1 88 1, no fewer than 21,000,000 were returned 
 by the census as widows, of whom 669,000 were under nineteen 
 years, 286,000 were under fifteen, and 79,000 were under nine, 
 all figures undoubtedly within the appalling truth. Jeymooni 
 and Unna at once became active missionaries among their 
 country-women, not only in Serampore but in Chandernagore 
 and the surrounding country. 
 
 The year 1800 did not close without fruit from the other and 
 higher castes. Petumber Singh, a man of fifty of the writer 
 caste, had sought deliverance from sin for thirty years at many 
 a Hindoo shrine and in many a Brahmanical scripture. One 
 of the earliest tracts of the Serampore press fell into his hands, 
 and he at once walked forty miles to seek fuller instruction from 
 its author. His baptism gave Carey just what the mission 
 wanted, a good schoolmaster, and he soon proved to be, even 
 before Krishna in time, the first preacher to the people. Of 
 the same writer caste were Syam Dass, Petumber Mitter, and 
 his wife Draupadi, who was as brave as her young husband.
 
 IO2 Life of William Carey 
 
 The despised soodras were represented by Syam's neighbour, 
 Bharut, an old man, who said he went to Christ because he was 
 just falling into hell and saw no other way of safety. The first 
 Mohammedan convert was Peroo, another neighbour of Syam 
 Dass. From the spot on the Soondarbans where Carey first 
 began his life of missionary farmer, there came to him at the 
 close of 1802, in Calcutta, the first Brahman who had bowed his 
 neck to the Gospel in all India up to this time, for we can hardly 
 reckon Kiernander's case. Krishna Prosad, then nineteen, 
 " gave up his friends and his caste with much fortitude, and is 
 the first Brahman who has been baptised. The word of Christ's 
 death seems to have gone to his heart, and he continues to receive 
 the Word with meekness." The poita or sevenfold thread which, 
 as worn over the naked body, betokened his caste, he trampled 
 under foot, and another was given to him, that when preaching 
 Christ he might be a witness to the Brahmans at once that Christ 
 is irresistible and that an idol is nothing in the world. This he 
 voluntarily ceased to wear in a few years. Two more Brahmans 
 were brought in by Petumber Singhee in 1804, by the close of 
 which year the number of baptised converts was forty-eight, of 
 whom forty were native men and women. With the instinct of 
 a true scholar and Christian Carey kept to the apostolic practice, 
 which has been too often departed from he consecrated the 
 convert's name as well as soul and body to Christ. Beside the 
 " Hermes " of Rome to whom Paul sent his salutation, he kept 
 the " Krishna " of Serampore and Calcutta. 
 
 The first act of the first convert, Krishna Pal, was of his own 
 accord to build a house for God immediately opposite his own, 
 the first native meeting-house in Bengal. Carey preached the 
 first sermon in it to twenty natives besides the family. On the 
 side of the high road, along which the car of Jagganath is 
 dragged every year, the missionaries purchased a site and built 
 a preaching place, a school, a house for Gokool, and a room for 
 the old widow, at the cost of Captain Wickes, who had rejoiced 
 to witness their baptism. The Brahman who owned the neigh- 
 bouring 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,
 
 First Converts and Schools 103 
 
 the members of both churches meet together for solemn and 
 joyful communion, when the services are alternately in Bengali 
 and English. 
 
 The longing for converts now gave place to anxiety that they 
 might continue to be Christians indeed. As in the early 
 Corinthian Church, all did not perceive at once the solemnities 
 of the Lord's Supper. Krishna Pal, for instance, jealous because 
 the better educated Petumber had been ordained to preach 
 before him, made a schism by administering it, and so filled the 
 missionaries with grief and fear; but he soon became penitent. 
 Associated with men who gave their all to Christ, the native 
 members could not but learn the lesson of self-support, so 
 essential for a self-propagating church, and so often neglected 
 in the early history of missions, and even still. On baptism 
 Krishna received a new white dress with six shillings ; but such 
 a gift, beautiful in itself, was soon discontinued. A Moham- 
 medan convert asked assistance to cultivate a little ground 
 and rear silkworms, but, writes Mr. Ward bowed down with 
 missionary cares, " We are desirous to avoid such a precedent." 
 Although these first converts were necessarily missionaries 
 rather than pastors for a time, each preacher received no more 
 than six rupees a month while in his own village, and double 
 that when itinerating. Carey and his colleagues were ever on 
 the watch to foster the spiritual life and growth of men and 
 women born, and for thirty or fifty years trained, in all the ideas 
 and practices of a system which is the very centre of opposition 
 to teaching like theirs. This record of an " experience meeting " 
 of three men and five women may be taken as a type of Bengali 
 Christianity when it was but two years old, and as a contrast 
 to that which prevails a century after : 
 
 " Gokool. I have been the greatest of sinners, but I wish only 
 to think of the death of Christ. I rejoice that now people can no 
 longer despise the Gospel, and call us feringas ; but they begin to 
 judge for themselves. 
 
 " Krishna Prosad. I have this week been thinking of the power 
 of God, that he can do all things; and of the necessity of minding 
 all his commands. I have thought also of my mother a great deal, 
 who is now become old, and who is constantly crying about me, 
 thinking that I have dishonoured the family and am lost. Oh that 
 1 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. 
 
 H
 
 1 04 Life of William Carey 
 
 " 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 then- parents. People begin to be 
 able to judge a little now about the Christian ways. 
 
 " Jeymooni. In this country are many ways: the way of the 
 debtahs; the way of Jagganath, where all eat together; the way of 
 Ghospara, etc. Yet all these are vain. Yesoo Kreest's death, and 
 Yesoo Kreest's commands this is the way of life! I long to see 
 Kreest's kingdom grow. This week I had much joy in talking to 
 Gokool's mother, whose heart is inclined to judge about the way of 
 Kreest. When I was called to go and talk with her, on the way I 
 thought within myself, but how can I explain the way of Kreest? 
 I am but a woman, and do not know much. Yet I recollected that 
 the blessing does not come from us: God can bless the weakest 
 words. Many Bengali women coming from the adjoining houses, 
 sat down and heard the word; and I was glad in hoping that the 
 mercy of God might be found by this old woman. [Gokool's mother.] 
 
 " Komal. I am a great sinner; yet I have been much rejoiced 
 this week in Gokool's mother coming to inquire about the Gospel. 
 I had great sorrow when Gokool was ill ; and at one time I thought 
 he would have died; but God has graciously restored him. We 
 have worldly sorrow, but this lasts only for a time. 
 
 " Draupadi. This week I have had much sorrow on account of 
 Petumber. His mind is very bad : he sits in the house, and refuses 
 to work; and I know not what will become of him: yet Kreest's 
 death is a true word. 
 
 " Golook. I have had much joy in thinking of God's goodness to 
 our family. My sisters Onunda and Kesaree wish to be baptised, 
 and to come into the church. If I can believe in Kreest's death, 
 and keep his commands till death, then I shall be saved." 
 
 Carey was not only founding the Church of North India; he 
 was creating a new society, a community, which has its healthy 
 roots in the Christian family. Krishna Pal had come over with 
 his household, like the Philippian, and at once became his own 
 and their gooroo or priest. But the marriage difficulty was 
 early forced on him and on the missionaries. The first shape 
 which persecution took was an assault on his eldest daughter, 
 Golook, who was carried off to the house in Calcutta of the 
 Hindoo to whom in infancy she had been betrothed, or married 
 according to Hindoo law enforced by the Danish and British 
 courts. As a Christian she loathed a connection which was 
 both idolatrous and polygamous. But she submitted for a 
 time, continuing, however, secretly to pray to Christ when 
 beaten by her husband for openly worshipping Him, and refusing 
 toleat things offered to the idol. At last it became intolerable.
 
 First Converts and Schools 105 
 
 She fled to her father, was baptised, and was after a time joined 
 by her penitent husband. The subject of what was to be done 
 with converts whose wives would not join them occupied the 
 missionaries in discussion every Sunday during 1803, and they 
 at last referred it to Andrew Fuller and the committee. Practi- 
 cally 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. Dodd- 
 ridge'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 ist Corinthians vii. 
 
 In 1802 Carey drew up a form of agreement and of service 
 for native Christian marriages not unlike that of the Church of 
 England. The simple and pleasing ceremony in the case of 
 Syam Dass presented a contrast to the prolonged, expensive, 
 and obscene rites of the Hindoos, which attracted the people. 
 When, the year after, a Christian Brahman was united to a 
 daughter of Krishna Pal, in the presence of more than a hundred 
 Hindoos, the unity of all in Christ Jesus was still more marked : 
 
 "Apr. 4, 1803. This morning early we went to attend the 
 wedding of Krishna Prosad with Onunda, Krishna's second daughter. 
 Krishna gave him a piece of ground adjoining his dwelling, to build 
 him a house, and we lent Prosad fifty rupees for that purpose, which 
 he is to return monthly, out of his wages. We therefore had a 
 meeting for prayer in this new house, and many neighbours were 
 present. Five hymns were sung: brother Carey and Marshman 
 prayed in Bengali. After this we went under an open shed close to 
 the house, where chairs and mats were provided : here friends and 
 neighbours sat all around. Brother Carey sat at a table ; and after 
 a short introduction, in which he explained the nature of marriage, 
 and noticed the impropriety of the Hindoo customs in this respect, 
 he read 2 Cor. vi. 14-18, and also the account of the marriage at 
 Cana. Then he read the printed marriage agreement, at the close 
 of which Krishna Prosad and Onunda, with joined hands, one after 
 the other, promised love, faithfulness, obedience, etc. They then 
 signed the agreement, and brethren Carey, Marshman, Ward, 
 Chamberlain, Ram Roteen, etc., signed as witnesses. The whole 
 was closed with prayer by brother Ward. Everything was con- 
 ducted 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
 
 106 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 per- 
 formed. 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 con- 
 cluded with prayer: between ten and eleven we returned home 
 with joy. This was a glorious triumph over the caste ! A Brahman 
 married to a soodra, in the Christian way : Englishmen eating with 
 the married couple and their friends, at the same table, and at a 
 native house. Allowing the Hindoo chronology to be true, there 
 has not been such a sight in Bengal these millions of years! " 
 
 In the same year the approaching death of Gokool led the 
 missionaries to purchase the acre of ground, near the present 
 railway station, in which lies the dust of themselves and their 
 converts, and of a child of the Judsons, till the Resurrection. 
 Often did Carey officiate at the burial of Europeans in the Danish 
 cemetery. Previous to his time the only service there consisted 
 in the Government secretary dropping a handful of earth on the 
 coffin. In the native God's-acre, as in the Communion of the 
 Lord's Table, and in the simple rites which accompanied the 
 burial of the dead in Christ, the heathen saw the one lofty 
 platform of loving self-sacrifice to which the Cross raises all its 
 children : 
 
 " Oct. 7. Our dear friend Gokool is gone: he departed at two 
 this morning. At twelve he called the brethren around him to sing 
 and pray; was perfectly sensible, resigned, and tranquil. Some of 
 the neighbours had been persuading him the day before to employ 
 a native doctor; he however refused, saying he would have no 
 physician but Jesus Christ. On their saying, How is it that you 
 who have turned to Christ should be thus afflicted ? He replied, 
 My affliction is on account of my sins; my Lord does all things 
 well! Observing Komal weep (who had been a most affectionate 
 wife), he said, Why do you weep for me? Only pray, etc. From 
 the beginning of his illness he had little hope of recovery; yet he 
 never murmured, nor appeared at all anxious for medicine. His 
 answer constantly was, ' I am in my Lord's hands, I want no other 
 physician! ' His patience throughout was astonishing: I never 
 heard him say once that his pain was great. His tranquil and 
 happy end has made a deep impression on our friends: they say
 
 First Converts and Schools 107 
 
 one to another, ' May my mind be as Gokool's was ! ' When we 
 consider, too, that this very man grew shy of us three years ago, 
 because we opposed his notion that believers would never die, the 
 grace now bestowed upon him appears the more remarkable. 
 Knowing the horror the Hindoos have for a dead body, and how 
 unwilling they are to contribute any way to its interment, I had 
 the coffin made at our house the preceding day, by carpenters whom 
 we employ. They would not, however, carry it to the house. The 
 difficulty now was, to carry him to the grave. The usual mode of 
 Europeans is to hire a set of men (Portuguese), who live by it. 
 But besides that our friends could never constantly sustain that 
 expense, I wished exceedingly to convince them of the propriety of 
 doing that last kind office for a brother themselves. But as Krishna 
 had been ill again the night before, and two of our brethren were 
 absent with brother Ward, we could only muster three persons. I 
 evidently saw the only way to supply the deficiency; and brother 
 Carey being from home, I sounded Felix and William, and we 
 determined to make the trial ; and at five in the afternoon repaired 
 to the house. Thither were assembled all our Hindoo brethren and 
 sisters, with a crowd of natives that filled the yard, and lined the 
 street. We brought the remains of our dear brother out, whose 
 coffin Krishna had covered within and without with white muslin 
 at his own expense; then, in the midst of the silent and astonished 
 multitude, we improved the solemn moment by singing a hymn of 
 Krishna's, the chorus of which is ' Salvation by the death of Christ.' 
 Bhairub the brahman, Peroo the mussulman, Felix and I took up 
 the coffin; and, with the assistance of Krishna and William, con- 
 veyed it to its long home: depositing it in the grave, we sung two 
 appropriate hymns. After this, as the crowd was accumulating, I 
 endeavoured to show the grounds of our joyful hope even in death, 
 referring to the deceased for a proof of its efficacy: told them that 
 indeed he had been a great sinner, as they all knew, and for that 
 reason could find no way of salvation among them; but when he 
 heard of Jesus Christ, he received him as a suitable and all-sufficient 
 Saviour, put his trust in him, and died full of tranquil hope. After 
 begging them to consider their own state, we prayed, sung Moorad's 
 hymn, and distributed papers. The concourse of people was great, 
 perhaps 500: they seemed much struck with the novelty of the 
 scene, and with the love and regard Christians manifest to each 
 other, even in death; so different from their throwing their friends, 
 half dead and half living, into the river; or burning their body, 
 with perhaps a solitary attendant." 
 
 Preaching, teaching, and Bible translating were from the 
 first Carey's three missionary methods, and in all he led the 
 missionaries who have till the present followed him with a 
 success which he never hesitated to expect, as one of the " great 
 things " from God. His work for the education of the people of 
 India, especially in their own vernacular and classical languages, 
 was second only to that which gave them a literature sacred and 
 pure. Up to 1794, when at Mudnabati he opened the first
 
 io8 Life of William Carey 
 
 primary school worthy of the name in all India at his own cost, 
 and daily superintended it, there had been only one attempt to 
 improve upon the indigenous schools, which taught the children 
 of the trading castes only to keep rude accounts, or upon the tols 
 in which the Brahmans instructed their disciples for one-half the 
 year, while for the other half they lived by begging. That 
 attempt was made by Schwartz at Combaconum, the priestly 
 Oxford of South India, where the wars with Tipoo soon put an 
 end to a scheme supported by both the Raja of Tanjore and the 
 British Government. When Carey moved to Serampore and 
 found associated with him teachers so accomplished and enthu- 
 siastic as Marshman and his wife, education was not long in 
 taking its place in the crusade which was then fully organised 
 for the conversion of Southern and Eastern Asia. At Madras, 
 too, Bell had stumbled upon the system of " mutual instruction " 
 which he had learned from the easy methods of the indigenous 
 schoolmaster, and which he and Lancaster taught England to 
 apply to the clamant wants of the country, and to improve into 
 the monitorial, pupil - teacher and grant -in -aid systems. 
 Carey had all the native schools of the mission " conducted 
 upon Lancaster's plan." 
 
 In Serampore, and in every new station as it was formed, a 
 free school was opened. We have seen how the first educated 
 convert, Petumber, was made schoolmaster. So early as 
 October 1800 we find Carey writing home: " The children in 
 our Bengali free school, about fifty, are mostly very young. Yet 
 we are endeavouring to instil into their minds Divine truth, as 
 fast as their understandings ripen. Some natives have com- 
 plained that we are poisoning the minds even of their very 
 children." The first attempt to induce the boys to write out 
 the catechism in Bengali resulted, as did Duff's to get them to 
 read aloud the Sermon on the Mount thirty years after, in a 
 protest that their caste was in danger. But the true principles 
 of toleration and discipline were at once explained " that the 
 children will never be compelled to do anything that will make 
 them lose caste ; that though we abhor the caste we do not wish 
 any to lose it but by their own choice. After this we shall insist on 
 the children doing what they have been ordered." A few of the 
 oldest boys withdrew for a time, declaring that they feared 
 they would be sent on board ship to England, and the baptism 
 of each of the earlier converts caused a panic. But instruction 
 on honest methods soon worked out the true remedy. Two 
 years after we find this report: " The first class, consisting of
 
 First Converts and Schools 109 
 
 catechumens, are now learning in Bengali the first principles of 
 Christianity; and will hereafter be instructed in the rudiments 
 of history, geography, astronomy, etc. The second class, under 
 two other masters, learn to read and write Bengali and English. 
 The third class, consisting of the children of natives who have 
 not lost caste, learn only Bengali. This school is in a promis- 
 ing state, and is liberally supported by the subscriptions of 
 Europeans in this country." 
 
 Carey's early success led Mr. Creighton of Malda to open at 
 Goamalty several Bengali free schools, and to draw up a scheme 
 for extending such Christian nurseries all over the country at a 
 cost of 10 for the education of fifty children. Only by the year 
 1806 was such a scheme practicable, because Carey had trans- 
 lated the Scriptures, and, as Creighton noted, " a variety of 
 introductory and explanatory tracts and catechisms in the 
 Bengali and Hindostani tongues have already been circulated 
 in some parts of the country, and any number may be had gratis 
 from the Mission House, Serampore." As only a few of the 
 Brahman and writer castes could read, and not one woman, " a 
 general perusal of the Scriptures amongst natives will be im- 
 practicable till they are taught to read." But nothing was 
 done, save by the missionaries, till 1835, when Lord William 
 Bentinck received Adam's report on the educational destitution 
 of Bengal. 
 
 Referring to Creighton's scheme, Mr. Ward's journal thus 
 chronicles the opening of the first Sunday school in India in 
 July 1803 by Carey's sons: 
 
 " Last Lord's day a kind of Sunday school was opened, which 
 will be superintended principally by our young friends Felix and 
 William Carey, and John Fernandez. It will chiefly be confined to 
 teaching catechisms in Bengali and English, as the children learn 
 to read and write every day. I have received a letter from a 
 gentleman up the country, who writes very warmly respecting the 
 general establishment of Christian schools all over Bengal." 
 
 Not many years had passed since Raikes had begun Sunday 
 schools in England. Their use seems to have passed away 
 with the three Serampore missionaries for a time, and to have 
 been again extended by the American missionaries about 1870. 
 There are now above 200,000 boys and girls at such schools in 
 India, and three-fourths of these are non-Christians. 
 
 As from the first Carey drew converts from all classes, the 
 Armenians, the Portuguese, and the Eurasians, as well as the 
 natives of India, he and Mr. and Mrs. Marshman especially took
 
 1 1 o Life of William Carey 
 
 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 ist 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 Sanskirt " 
 lessons were included. " Particular attention will be paid to 
 the correct pronunciation of the English language " was added 
 for reasons which the mixed parentage of the pupils explains. 
 Such was the first sign of a care for the Eurasians not connected 
 with the army, which, as developed by Marshman and Mack, 
 began in 1823 to take the form of the Doveton College. The 
 boys' school was soon followed by a girls' school, through which 
 a stream of Christian light radiated forth over resident Christian 
 society, and from which many a missionary came. 
 
 Carey's description of the mixed community is the best we 
 have of its origin as well as of the state of European society in 
 India, alike when the Portuguese were dominant, and at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century when the East India Com- 
 pany were most afraid of Christianity: " The Portuguese are 
 a people who, in the estimation of both Europeans and natives, 
 are sunk below the Hindoos or Mussulmans. However, I am 
 of opinion that they are rated much too low. They are chiefly 
 descendants of the slaves of the Portuguese who first landed 
 here, or of the children of those Portuguese by their female 
 slaves ; and being born in their house, were made Christians in 
 their infancy by what is called baptism, and had Portuguese 
 names given them. It is no wonder that these people, despised 
 as they are by Europeans, and being consigned to the teachings 
 of very ignorant Popish priests, should be sunk into such a state 
 of degradation. So gross, indeed, are their superstitions, that 
 I have seen a Hindoo image-maker carrying home an image of 
 Christ on the cross between two thieves, to the house of a 
 Portuguese. Many of them, however, can read and write 
 English well and understand Portuguese. . . . 
 
 " Besides these, there are many who are the children of 
 Europeans by native women, several of which are well educated, 
 and nearly all of them Protestants by profession. These,
 
 First Converts and Schools 1 1 1 
 
 whether children of English, French, Dutch, or Danes, by 
 native women, are called Portuguese. Concubinage here is so 
 common, that few unmarried Europeans are without a native 
 woman, with whom they live as if married ; and I believe there 
 are but few instances of separation, except in case of marriage 
 with European women, in which case the native woman is 
 dismissed with an allowance : but the children of these marriages 
 are never admitted to table with company, and are universally 
 treated by the English as an inferior species of beings. Hence 
 they are often shame-faced yet proud and conceited, and 
 endeavour to assume that honour to themselves which is denied 
 them by others. This class may be regarded as forming a con- 
 necting link between Europeans and natives. The Armenians 
 are few in number, but chiefly rich. I have several times 
 conversed with them about religion: they hear with patience, 
 and wonder that any Englishman should make that a subject 
 of conversation." 
 
 While the Marshmans gave their time from seven in the 
 morning till three in the afternoon to these boarding-schools 
 started by Carey in 1800 for the higher education of the Eura- 
 sians, Carey himself, in Calcutta, early began to care for the 
 destitute. His efforts resulted in the establishment of the 
 " Benevolent Institution for the Instruction of Indigent 
 Children," which the contemporary Bengal civilian, Charles 
 Lushington, in his History extols as one of the monuments of 
 active and indefatigable benevolence due to Serampore. Here, 
 on the Lancaster system, and superintended by Carey, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Penney had as many as 300 boys and 100 girls under 
 Christian instruction of all ages up to twenty-four, and of every 
 race: " Europeans, native Portuguese, Armenians, Mugs, 
 Chinese, Hindoos, Mussulmans, natives of Sumatra, Mozambik, 
 and Abyssinia." This official reporter states that thus more 
 than a thousand youths had been rescued from vice and ignor- 
 ance 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
 
 1 1 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 most valuable and active man, superintends the boys, and a 
 very pious woman, a member of the church, is over the girls. 
 The Institution meets with considerable encouragement, and 
 is conducted upon Lancaster's plan. We meditate another for 
 instruction of Hindoo youths in the Sanskrit language, designing, 
 however, to introduce the study of the Sanskrit Bible into it; 
 indeed it is as good as begun; it will be in Calcutta. By 
 brother and sister Marshman's encouragement there are two 
 schools in our own premises at Serampore for the gratuitous 
 instruction of youth of both sexes, supported and managed 
 wholly by the male and female scholars in our own school. 
 These young persons appear to enter with pleasure into the 
 plan, contribute their money to its support, and give instruction 
 in turns to the children of these free schools. I trust we shall 
 be able to enlarge this plan, and to spread its influence far about 
 the country. Our brethren in the Isles of France and Bourbon 
 seem to be doing good; some of them are gone to Madagascar, 
 and, as if to show that Divine Providence watches over them, 
 the ship on which they went was wrecked soon after they had 
 landed from it. A number of our members are now gone to 
 Java; I trust their going thither will not be in vain. Brother 
 Chamberlain is, ere this, arrived at Agra. . . . We preach every 
 week in the Fort and in the public prison, both in English and 
 Bengali." 
 
 Carey had not been six months at Serampore when he saw 
 the importance of using the English language as a missionary 
 weapon, and he proposed this to Andrew Fuller. The other 
 pressing duties of a pioneer mission to the people of Bengal led 
 him to postpone immediate action in this direction; we shall 
 have occasion to trace the English influence of the press and 
 the college hereafter. But meanwhile the vernacular schools, 
 which soon numbered a hundred altogether, were most popular, 
 and then as now proved most valuable feeders of the infant 
 Church. Without them, wrote the three missionaries to the 
 Society, " the whole plan must have been nipped in the bud, 
 since, if the natives had not cheerfully sent their children, 
 everything else would have been useless. But the earnestness 
 with which they have sought these schools exceeds everything 
 we had previously expected. We are still constantly 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 founda-
 
 First Converts and Schools 1 1 3 
 
 tion of the new national or imperial civilisation. When the 
 time for English came, the foundations were at least above the 
 ground. Laid deep and strong in the very nature of the people, 
 the structure has thus far promised to be national rather than 
 foreign, though raised by foreign hands, while marked by the 
 truth and the purity of its Western architects. 
 
 The manifestation of Christ to the Bengalees could not be 
 made without rousing the hate and the opposition of the vested 
 interests of Brahmanism. So long as Carey was an indigo 
 planter as well as a proselytiser in Dinapoor and Malda he 
 met with no opposition, for he had no direct success. But when, 
 from Serampore, he and the others, by voice, by press, by school, 
 by healing the sick and visiting the poor, carried on the crusade 
 day by day with the gentle persistency of a law of nature, the 
 cry began. And when, by the breaking of caste and the denial 
 of Krishna's Christian daughter Golook to the Hindoo to whom 
 she had been betrothed from infancy, the Brahmans began 
 dimly to apprehend that not only their craft but the whole 
 structure of society was menaced, the cry became louder, and, 
 as in Ephesus of old, an appeal was made to the magistrates 
 against the men who were turning the world upside down. At 
 first the very boys taunted the missionaries in the streets with 
 the name of Jesus Christ. Then, after Krishna and his family 
 had broken caste, they were seized by a mob and hurried before 
 the Danish magistrate, who at first refused to hand over a 
 Christian girl to a heathen, and gave her father a guard to 
 prevent her from being murdered, until the Calcutta magistrate 
 decided that she must join her husband but would be protected 
 in the exercise of her new faith. The commotion spread over 
 the whole densely-peopled district. But the people were not 
 with the Brahmans, and the excitement sent many a sin-laden 
 inquirer to Serampore from a great distance. " The fire is now 
 already kindled for which our Redeemer expressed his strong 
 desire," wrote Carey to Ryland in March 1801. A year later 
 he used this language to his old friend Morris at Clipstone village : 
 
 " I think there is such a fermentation raised in Bengal by the 
 little leaven, that there is a hope of the whole lump by degrees 
 being leavened. God is carrying on his work; and though it 
 goes forward, yet no one can say who is the instrument. 
 Doubtless, various means contribute towards it; but of late the 
 printing and dispersing of New Testaments and small tracts 
 seem to have the greatest effect." 
 
 In a spirit the opposite of Jonah's the whole brotherhood,
 
 1 1 4 Life of William Carey 
 
 then consisting of the three, of Carey's son Felix, and of a new 
 missionary, Chamberlain, sent home this review of their position 
 at the close of 1804: 
 
 " We are still a happy, healthful, and highly favoured family. 
 But though we would feel incessant gratitude for these gourds, yet 
 we would not feel content unless Nineveh be brought to repentance. 
 We did not come into this country to be placed in what are called 
 easy circumstances respecting this world ; and we trust that nothing 
 but the salvation of souls will satisfy us. True, before we set off, 
 we thought we could die content if we should be permitted to see 
 the half of what we have already seen; yet now we seem almost as 
 far from the mark of our missionary high calling as ever. If three 
 millions of men were drowning, he must be a monster who should 
 be content with saving one individual only ; though for the deliver- 
 ance of that one he would find cause for perpetual gratitude." 
 
 In 1810 the parent mission at Serampore had so spread into 
 numerous stations and districts that a new organisation became 
 necessary. There were 300 converts, of whom 105 had been 
 added in that year. " Did you expect to see this eighteen years 
 ago? " wrote Marshman to the Society. " But what may we 
 not expect if God continues to bless us in years to come? " 
 Marshman forgot how Carey had, in 1792, told them on the 
 inspired evangelical prophet's authority to " expect great things 
 from God." Henceforth the one mission became fivefold for 
 a time.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO 
 AMBOYNA 
 
 1802-1817 
 
 The East India Company an unwilling partner of Carey Calcutta opened 
 to the Mission by his appointment as Government teacher of Bengali 
 Meeting of 1802 grows into the Lall Bazaar mission Christ- like 
 work among the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the soldiers and sailors 
 and the natives Krishna Pal first native missionary in Calcutta 
 Organisation of subordinate stations Carey's " United Missions in 
 India " The missionary staff thirty strong The native missionaries 
 The Bengali church self-propagatingCarey the pioneer of other 
 missionaries Benares Burma and Indo-China Felix Carey In- 
 structions to missionaries The missionary shrivelled into an am- 
 bassador Adoniram and Ann Judson Jabez Carey Mission to 
 Amboyna Remarkable letter from Carey to his third son. 
 
 THE short-sighted regulation of the East India Company, which 
 dreamed that it could keep Christianity out of Bengal by 
 shutting up the missionaries within the little territory of Danish 
 Serampore, could not be enforced with the same ease as the 
 order of a jailer. Under Danish passports, and often without 
 them, missionary tours were made over Central Bengal, aided 
 by its network of rivers. Every printed Bengali leaf of 
 Scripture or pure literature was a missionary. Every new 
 convert, even the women, became an apostle to their people, 
 and such could not be stopped. Gradually, as not only the 
 innocency but the positive political usefulness of the mis- 
 sionaries' character and work came to be recognised by the 
 local authorities, they were let alone for a time. And soon, by 
 the same historic irony which has marked so many of the 
 greatest reforms " He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh " 
 the Government of India became, though unwittingly, more 
 of a missionary agency than the Baptist Society itself. The 
 only teacher of Bengali who could be found for Lord Wellesley's 
 new College of Fort William was William Carey. The appoint- 
 ment, 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, 
 
 "5
 
 1 1 6 Life of William Carey 
 
 and supplied Carey with the only means yet lacking for the 
 translation of the Scriptures into all the languages of the farther 
 East. In spite of its own selfish fears the Company became a 
 principal partner in the Christianisation of India and China. 
 
 From the middle of the year 1801 and for the next thirty 
 years Carey spent as much of his time in the metropolis as in 
 Serampore. He was generally rowed down the eighteen miles 
 of the winding river to Calcutta at sunset on Monday evening 
 and returned on Friday night every week, working always by 
 the way. At first he personally influenced the Bengali traders 
 and youths who knew English, and he read with many such the 
 English Bible. His chaplain friends, Brown and Buchanan, 
 with the catholicity born of their presbyterian and evangelical 
 training, shared his sympathy with the hundreds of poor mixed 
 Christians for whom St. John's and even the Mission Church 
 made no provision, and encouraged him to care for them. In 
 1802 he began a weekly meeting for prayer and conversation in 
 the house of Mr. Rolt, and another for a more ignorant class in 
 the house of a Portuguese Christian. By 1803 he was able to 
 write to Fuller: " We have opened a place of worship in Calcutta, 
 where we have preaching twice on Lord's day in English, on 
 Wednesday evening in Bengali, and on Thursday evening in 
 English." He took all the work during the week and the 
 Sunday service in rotation with his brethren. The first church 
 was the hall of a well-known undertaker, approached through 
 lines of coffins and the trappings of woe. In time most of the 
 evangelical Christians in the city promised to relieve the mis- 
 sionaries of the expense if they would build an unsectarian 
 chapel more worthy of the object. This was done in Lall 
 Bazaar, a little withdrawn from that thoroughfare to this day 
 of the poor and abandoned Christians, of the sailors and soldiers 
 on leave, of the liquor-shops and the stews. There, as in 
 Serampore, at a time when the noble hospitals of Calcutta were 
 not, and the children of only the " services " were cared for, 
 " Brother Carey gave them medicine for their bodies and the 
 best medicine for their poor souls," as a contemporary widow 
 describes it. The site alone cost so much a thousand pounds 
 that only a mat chapel could be built. Marshman raised 
 another 1100 in ten days, and after delays caused by the 
 police Government sanctioned the building which Carey opened 
 on Sunday, ist January 1809. But he and his colleagues " not 
 episcopally ordained " were forbidden to preach to British 
 soldiers and to the Armenians and Portuguese. " Carey's
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres i 17 
 
 Baptist Chapel " is now its name. Here was for nearly a whole 
 generation a sublime spectacle the Northamptonshire shoe- 
 maker training the governing class of India in Sanskrit, Bengali, 
 and Marathi all day, and translating the Ramayana and the 
 Veda, and then, when the sun went down, returning to the 
 society of " the maimed, the halt, and the blind, and many with 
 the leprosy," to preach in several tongues the glad tidings of 
 the Kingdom to the heathen of England as well as of India, 
 and all with a loving tenderness and patient humility learned 
 in the childlike school of Him who said, " Wist ye not that I 
 must be about my Father's business? " 
 
 Street preaching was added to the apostolic agencies, and 
 for this prudence dictated recourse to the Asiatic and Eurasian 
 converts. We find the missionaries writing to the Society at 
 the beginning of 1807, after the mutiny at Vellore, occasioned 
 as certainly by the hatlike turban then ordered, as the mutiny 
 of Bengal half a century after was by the greased cartridges : 
 
 " We now return to Calcutta ; not, however, without a sigh. 
 How can we avoid sighing when we think of the number of perish- 
 ing souls which this city contains, and recollect the multitudes who 
 used of late to hang upon our lips; standing in the thick-wedged 
 crowd for hours together, in the heat of a Bengal summer, listening 
 to the word of life! We feel thankful, however, that nothing has 
 been found against us, except in the matters of our God. Conscious 
 of the most cordial attachment to the British Government, and of 
 the liveliest interest in its welfare, we might well endure reproach 
 were it cast upon us; but the tongue of calumny itself has not to 
 our knowledge been suffered to bring the slightest accusation against 
 us. We still worship at Calcutta in a private house, and our 
 congregation rather increases. We are going on with the chapel. 
 A family of Armenians also, who found it pleasant to attend divine 
 worship in the Bengali language, have erected a small place on 
 their premises for the sake of the natives." 
 
 Krishna Pal became the first native missionary to Calcutta, 
 where he in 1810 had preached at fourteen different places every 
 week, and visited forty-one families, to evangelise the servants 
 of the richer and bring in the members of the poorer. Sebuk 
 Ram was added to the staff. Carey himself thus sums up the 
 labours of the year 1811, when he was still the only pastor of 
 the Christian poor, and the only resident missionary to half a 
 million of natives: 
 
 " Calcutta is three miles long and one broad, very populous; 
 the environs are crowded with people settled in large villages, 
 resembling (for population, not elegance) the environs of
 
 1 1 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 Birmingham. The first is about a mile south of the city; at 
 nearly the same distance are the public jail and the general 
 hospital. Brother Gordon, one of our deacons, being the jailer, 
 we preach there in English every Lord's day. We did preach 
 in the Fort; but of late a military order has stopped us. 
 Krishna and Sebuk Ram, however, preach once or twice a week 
 in the Fort notwithstanding; also at the jail; in the house of 
 correction; at the village of Alipore, south of the jail; at a large 
 factory north of the city, where several hundreds are employed ; 
 and at ten or twelve houses in different parts of the city itself. 
 In several instances Roman Catholics, having heard the word, 
 have invited them to their houses, and having collected their 
 neighbours, the one or the other have received the word with 
 gladness. 
 
 " The number of inquirers constantly coming forward, 
 awakened by the instrumentality of these brethren, fills me 
 with joy. I do not know that I am of much use myself, but I 
 see a work which fills my soul with thankfulness. Not having 
 time to visit the people, I appropriate every Thursday evening 
 to receiving the visits of inquirers. Seldom fewer than twenty 
 come; and the simple confessions of their sinful state, the un- 
 varnished declaration of their former ignorance, the expressions 
 of trust in Christ and gratitude to him, with the accounts of their 
 spiritual conflicts often attended with tears which almost choke 
 their utterance, presents a scene of which you can scarcely 
 entertain an adequate idea. At the same time, meetings for 
 prayer and mutual edification are held every night in the week ; 
 and some nights, for convenience, at several places at the same 
 time: so that the sacred leaven spreads its influence through 
 the mass." 
 
 On his voyage to India Carey had deliberately contemplated 
 the time when the Society he had founded would influence not 
 only Asia, but Africa, and he would supply the peoples of Asia 
 with the Scriptures in their own tongues. The time had come 
 by 1804 for organising the onward movement, and he thus 
 describes it to Ryland : 
 
 " iqth December 1803. Another plan has lately occupied our 
 attention. It appears that our business is to provide materials 
 for spreading the Gospel, and to apply those materials. Trans- 
 lations, 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
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 119 
 
 furnished from us with a sum of money to begin and purchase 
 cloth or whatever other article the part produces in greatest 
 perfection: the whole to belong to the mission, and no part 
 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 Serampore (who must have a power of control 
 over the stations) must send a monthly account likewise to each 
 station, with advice, etc., as shall be necessary. A plan of this 
 sort appears to be more formidable than it is in reality. To 
 find proper persons will be the greatest difficulty ; but as it will 
 prevent much of that abrasion which may arise from a great 
 number of persons living in one house, so it will give several 
 brethren an opportunity of being useful, whose temper may not 
 be formed to live in a common family, and at the same time 
 connect them as much to the body as if they all lived together. 
 We have judged that about 2000 rupees will do to begin at each 
 place, and it is probable that God will enable us to find money 
 (especially if assisted in the translations and printing by our 
 brethren in England) as fast as you will be able to find men. 
 
 " This plan may be extended through a circular surface of a 
 thousand miles' radius, and a constant communication kept up 
 between the whole, and in some particular cases it may extend 
 ever farther. We are also to hope that God may raise up some 
 missionaries in this country who may be more fitted for the 
 work than any from England can be. At present we have not 
 concluded on anything, but when Brother Ward comes down 
 we hope to do so, and I think one station may be fixed on 
 immediately which Brother Chamberlain may occupy. -SA late 
 favourable providence will, I hope, enable us to begin, viz., the 
 College have subscribed for 100 copies of my Sanskrit Grammar, 
 which will be 6400 rupees or 800 pounds sterling. The motion 
 was very generously made by H. Colebrooke, Esq., who is 
 engaged in a similar work, and seconded by Messrs. Brown and 
 Buchanan; indeed it met with no opposition. It will scarcely 
 be printed off under twelve months more, but it is probable 
 that the greatest part of the money will be advanced. The 
 
 i
 
 I2O Life of William Carey 
 
 Maratha war and the subjugation of the country of Cuttak to 
 the English may be esteemed a favourable event for the spread- 
 ing of the Gospel, and will certainly contribute much to the 
 comfort of the inhabitants." 
 
 Two years later he thus anticipates the consent of the local 
 Government, in spite of the Company's determined hostility in 
 England, but the Vellore mutiny panic led to further delay : 
 
 " z$th December 1805. It has long been a favourite object 
 with me to fix European brethren in different parts of the country 
 at about two hundred miles apart, so that each shall be able to 
 visit a circle of a hundred miles' radius, and within each of the 
 circuits to place native brethren at proper distances, who will, 
 till they are more established, be under the superintendence of 
 the European brethren situated in the centre. Our brethren 
 concur with me in this plan. In consequence of this, I thought 
 it would be desirable to have leave of Government for them to 
 settle, and preach, without control, in any part of the country. 
 The Government look on us with a favourable eye ; and owing 
 to Sir G. Barlow, the Governor-General, being up the country, 
 Mr. Udny is Vice-President and Deputy-Governor. I therefore 
 went one morning, took a breakfast with him, and told him 
 what we were doing and what we wished to do. He, in a very 
 friendly manner, desired me to state to him in a private letter 
 all that we wished, and offered to communicate privately with 
 Sir G. Barlow upon the subject, and inform me of the result. 
 I called on him again last week, when he informed me that he 
 had written upon the subject and was promised a speedy reply. 
 God grant that it may be favourable. I know that Government 
 will allow it if their powers are large enough." 
 
 Not till 1810 could Carey report that " permission was 
 obtained of Government for the forming of a new station at 
 Agra, a large city in upper Hindostan, not far from Delhi and 
 the country of the Sikhs," to which Chamberlain and an assistant 
 were sent. From that year the Bengal became only the first of 
 " The United Missions in India." These were five in number, 
 each under its own separate brotherhood, on the same principles 
 of self-denial as the original, each a Lindisfarne sprung from the 
 parent lona. These five were the Bengal, the Burman, the 
 Orissa, the Bhootan, and the Hindostan Missions. The Bengal 
 mission was fourfold Serampore and Calcutta reckoned as one 
 station; the old Dinapoor and Sadamahal which had taken 
 the place of Mudnabati; Goamalty, near Malda; Cutwa, an 
 old town on the upper waters of the Hoogli; Jessor, the agri-
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 121 
 
 cultural capital of its lower delta; and afterwards Monghyr, 
 Berhampore, Moorshedabad, Dacca, Chittagong, and Assam. 
 The Bhootan missionaries were plundered and driven out. The 
 Hindostan mission soon included Gaya, Patna, Deegah, Ghazee- 
 pore, 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 Goojara- 
 tees under the yoke of Christ. China, where the East India 
 Company was still master, was cared for by the press, as we shall 
 see. Not content with the continent of Asia, Carey's mission, 
 at once forced by the intolerance which refused to allow new 
 missionaries to land in India proper, and led by the invitations 
 of Sir Stamford Raffles, extended to Java and Amboyna, 
 Penang, Ceylon, and even Mauritius. The elaborate review 
 of their position, signed by the three faithful men of Serampore, 
 at the close of 1817, amazes the reader at once by the magnitude 
 and variety of the operations, the childlike modesty of the 
 record, and the heroism of the toil which supplied the means. 
 
 At the time of the organisation into the Five United Missions 
 the staff of workers had grown to be thirty strong. From 
 England there were nine surviving, or Carey, Marshman, Ward, 
 Chamberlain, Mardon, Moore, Chater, Rowe, and Robinson. 
 Raised up in India itself there were seven the two sons of 
 Carey, Felix and William; Fernandez, his first convert at 
 Dinapoor; Peacock and Cornish, and two Armenians, Aratoon 
 and Peters; two were on probation for the ministry, Leonard 
 and Forder. Besides seven Hindoo evangelists also on probation, 
 there were five survivors of the band of converts called from 
 time to time to the ministry Krishna Pal, the first, who is entered 
 on the list as " the beloved " ; Krishna Dass, Ram Mohun, 
 Seeta Ram, and Seeta Dass. Carey's third son Jabez was soon 
 to become the most advanced of the three brothers away in far 
 Amboyna. His father had long prayed, and besought others 
 to pray, that he too might be a missionary. For the last fifteen 
 years of his life Jabez was his closest and most valued corre- 
 spondent. 
 
 But only less dear than his own sons to the heart of the father, 
 already in 1817 described in an official letter as " our aged 
 brother Carey," were the native missionaries and pastors, his 
 sons in the faith. He sent forth the educated Petumber Singh, 
 first in November 1802, to his countrymen at Sooksagar, and 
 " gave him a suitable and solemn charge: the opportunity was 
 very pleasant." In May 1803 Krishna Pal was similarly set
 
 122 Life of William Carey 
 
 apart. At the same time the young Brahman, Krishna Prosad, 
 " delivered his first sermon in Bengali, much to the satisfaction 
 of our brethren." Six months after, Ward reports of him in 
 Dinapoor: "The eyes of the people were fixed listening to 
 Prosad; he is becoming eloquent." In 1804 their successful 
 probation resulted in their formal ordination by prayer and the 
 laying on of the hands of the brethren, when Carey addressed 
 them from the divine words, " As my Father hath sent me so 
 send I you," and all commemorated the Lord's death till He 
 come. Krishna Dass was imprisoned unjustly, for a debt which 
 he had paid, but " he did not cease to declare to the native men 
 in power that he was a Christian, when they gnashed upon him 
 with their teeth. He preached almost all night to the prisoners, 
 who heard the word with eagerness." Two years after he was 
 ordained, Carey charged him as Paul had written to Timothy, 
 " in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the 
 quick and the dead," to be instant in season and out of season, 
 to reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching. 
 Ram Mohun was a Brahman, the fruit of old Petumber's 
 ministry, and had his ability as a student and preacher of the 
 Scriptures consecrated to Christ on the death of Krishna Prosad, 
 while the missionaries thus saw again answered the invocation 
 they had sung, in rude strains, in the ship which brought them 
 to India : 
 
 " Bid Brahmans preach the heavenly word 
 
 Beneath the banian's shade; 
 
 Oh let the Hindoo feel its power 
 
 And grace his soul pervade." 
 
 So early as 1806 the missionaries thus acknowledged the 
 value of the work of their native brethren, and made of all the 
 native converts a Missionary Church. In the delay and even 
 failure to do this of their successors of all Churches we see the 
 one radical point in which the Church in India has as yet come 
 short of its duty and its privilege : 
 
 " We have availed ourselves of the help of native brethren ever 
 since we had one who dared to speak in the name of Christ, and 
 their exertions have chiefly been the immediate means by which 
 our church has been increased. But we have lately been revolving 
 a plan for rendering their labours more extensively useful ; namely, 
 that of sending them out, two and two, without any European 
 brother. It appeared also a most desirable object to interest in 
 this work, as much as possible, the whole of the native church 
 among us: indeed, we have had much in them of this nature to 
 commend. In order, then, more effectually to answer this purpose,
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 123 
 
 we called an extraordinary meeting of all the brethren on Friday 
 evening, Aug. 8, 1806, and laid before them the following ideas: 
 
 " i. That the intention of the Saviour, in calling them out of 
 darkness into marvellous light, was that they should labour to the 
 uttermost in advancing his cause among their countrymen. 
 
 "2. That it was therefore their indispensable duty, both collec- 
 tively 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 support- 
 ing themselves, by giving themselves wholly to that work in which 
 it was equally the duty of all to take a share. 
 
 " 4. We therefore proposed to unite the support of itinerant 
 brethren with the care of the poor, and to throw them both upon 
 the church fund, as being both, at least in a heathen land, equally 
 the duty of a church. 
 
 " Every one of these ideas our native brethren entered into with 
 the greatest readiness and the most cordial approbation." 
 
 Carey's scheme so early as 1810 included not only the capital 
 of the Great Mogul, Surat far to the west, and Maratha Nagpoor 
 to the south, but Lahore, where Ranjeet Singh had consolidated 
 the Sikh power, Kashmeer, and even Afghanistan to which he 
 had sent the Pushtoo Bible. To set Chamberlain free for this 
 enterprise he sent his second son William to relieve him as 
 missionary in charge of Cutwa. " This would secure the gradual 
 perfection of the version of the Scriptures in the Sikh language, 
 would introduce the Gospel among the people, and would open 
 a way for introducing it into Kashmeer, and eventually to the 
 Afghans under whose dominion Kashmeer at present is." 
 Carey and his two colleagues took possession for Christ of the 
 principal centres of Hindoo and Mohammedan influence in India 
 only because they were unoccupied, and provided translations of 
 the Bible into the principal tongues, avowedly as a preparation 
 for other missionary agencies. All over India and the far East 
 he thus pioneered the way of the Lord, as he had written to 
 Ryland when first he settled in Serampore: " It is very prob- 
 able we may be only as pioneers to prepare the way for most 
 successful missionaries, who perhaps may not be at liberty to 
 attend to those preparatory labours in which we have been 
 occupied the translation and printing of the Scriptures," etc. 
 His heart was enlarged like his Master's on earth, and hence his 
 humbleness of mind. When the Church Missionary Society,
 
 I 24 Life of William Carey 
 
 for instance, occupied Agra as their first station in India, he 
 sent the Baptist missionary thence to Allahabad. To Benares 
 " Brother William Smith, called in Orissa under Brother John 
 Peters," the Armenian, was sent owing to his acquaintance with 
 the Hindi language; he was the means of bringing to the door 
 of the Kingdom that rich Brahman Raja Jay Narain Ghosal, 
 whom he encouraged to found in 1817 the Church Mission 
 College there which bears the name of this " almost Christian " 
 Hindoo, who was " exceedingly desirous of diffusing light 
 among his own countrymen." 
 
 The most striking illustrations of this form of Carey's self- 
 sacrifice are, however, to be found outside of India as it then 
 was, in the career of his other two sons in Burma and the Spice 
 Islands. The East India Company's panic on the Vellore 
 mutiny led Carey to plan a mission to Burma, just as he had 
 been guided to settle in Danish Serampore ten years before. 
 The Government of India had doubled his salary as Bengali, 
 Marathi, and Sanskrit Professor, and thus had unconsciously 
 supplied the means. Since 1795 tne port of Rangoon had been 
 opened to the British, although Colonel Symes had been insulted 
 eight years after, during his second embassy to Ava. Rangoon, 
 wrote the accurate Carey to Fuller in November 1806, is about 
 ten days' sail from Calcutta. " The Burman empire is about 
 eight hundred miles long, lying contiguous to Bengal on the 
 east; but is inaccessible by land, on account of the mountains 
 covered with thick forests which run between the two countries. 
 The east side of this empire borders upon China, Cochin China, 
 and Tongking, and may afford us the opportunity ultimately 
 of introducing the Gospel into those countries. They are quite 
 within our reach, and the Bible in Chinese will be understood by 
 them equally as well as by the Chinese themselves. About 
 twenty chapters of Matthew are translated into that language, 
 and three of our family have made considerable progress in it." 
 
 This was the beginning of Reformed missions to Eastern Asia. 
 A year was to pass before Dr. Robert Morrison landed at Macao. 
 From those politically aggressive and therefore opposed Jesuit 
 missions, which alone had worked in Anam up to this time, a 
 persecuted bishop was about to find an asylum at Serampore, 
 and to use its press and its purse for the publication of his 
 Dictionarium Anamitico - Latinum. The French have long 
 sought to seize an empire there. That, at its best, must prove 
 far inferior to the marvellous province and Christian Church of 
 Burma, of which Carey laid the foundation. Judson, and the
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 125 
 
 Governors Durand, Phayre, Aitchison, and Bernard, Henry 
 Lawrence's nephew, built well upon it. 
 
 On 24th January 1807 Mardon and Chater went forth, after 
 Carey had charged them from the words, " And thence sailed 
 to Antioch from whence they had been recommended to the 
 grace of God, which they fulfilled." Carey's eldest son Felix 
 soon took the place of Mardon. The instructions, which bear 
 the impress of the sacred scholar's pen, form a model still for 
 all missionaries. These two extracts give counsels never more 
 needed than now: 
 
 " 4. With respect to the Burman language, let this occupy your 
 most precious time and your most anxious solicitude. Do not be 
 content with acquiring this language superficially, but make it your 
 own, root and branch. To become fluent in it, you must atten- 
 tivly 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 espe- 
 cially we would call your very close attention, viz. the strictest and 
 most rigid economy, and the cultivation of brotherly love. 
 
 " Remember, that the money which you will expend is neither 
 ours nor yours, for it has been consecrated to God; and every 
 unnecessary expenditure will be robbing God, and appropriating to 
 unnecessary secular uses what is sacred, and consecrated to Christ 
 and his cause. In building, especially, remember that you are poor 
 men, and have chosen a life of poverty and self-denial, with Christ 
 and his missionary servants. If another person is profuse in 
 expenditure, the consequence is small, because his property would 
 perhaps fall into hands where it might be devoted to the purposes 
 of iniquity; but missionary funds are in their very circumstances 
 the most sacred and important of any thing of this nature on earth. 
 We say not this, Brethren, because we suspect you, or any of our 
 partners in labour; but we perceive that when you have done all, 
 the Rangoon mission will lie heavy upon the Missionary Funds, 
 and the field of exertion is very wide."
 
 r 26 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 Burman, not un- 
 worthy 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 direction." He 
 prepared a folio dictionary of Burmese and Pali, translated 
 several of the Buddhist Sootras into English, and several books 
 of Holy Scripture into the vernacular. His medical and 
 linguistic skill so commended him to the king that he was 
 loaded with honours and sent as Burmese ambassador to the 
 Governor-General in 1814, when he withdrew from the Christian 
 mission. On his way back up the Irawadi he alone was saved 
 from the wreck of his boat, in which his second wife and children 
 and the MS. of his dictionary went down. Of this his eldest 
 son, who " procured His Majesty's sanction for printing the 
 Scriptures in the Burman and adjacent languages, which step 
 he highly approved," and at the same time " the orders of my 
 rank, which consist of a red umbrella with an ivory top, gold 
 betel box, gold lefeek cup, and a sword of state," the father 
 wrote lamenting to Ryland : " Felix is shrivelled from a mis- 
 sionary into an ambassador." To his third son the sorrowing 
 father said: " The honours he has received from the Burmese 
 Government have not been beneficial to his soul. Felix is 
 certainly not so much esteemed since his visit as he was before 
 it. It is a very distressing thing to be forced to apologise for 
 those you love." Mr. Chater had removed to Ceylon to begin 
 a mission in Colombo. 
 
 In July 1813, when Felix Carey was in Ava, two young 
 Americans, Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, tempest-tossed 
 and fleeing before the persecution of the East India Company, 
 found shelter in the Mission House at Rangoon. Judson was 
 one of a band of divinity students of the Congregational Church 
 of New England, whose zeal had almost compelled the institu- 
 tion of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He, his wife,
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 1 27 
 
 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. i, 1814. Brother Ward wishes to have an idea 
 of the probable expense of each station; on which I take occasion 
 to say that it would be more gratifying to me, as presenting a less 
 temptation, and as less dangerous to my habits of economy and my 
 spiritual welfare, to have a limited monthly allowance. I fear 
 that, if I am allowed as much as I want, my wants will enlarge 
 with their gratification, and finally embrace many things, which at 
 first I should have thought incompatible with economical manage- 
 ment, as well as with that character among the heathen which it 
 becomes the professed followers of Him who for our sakes became 
 poor, even to sustain. It is better for a missionary, especially a 
 young man, to have rather too little than rather too much. Your 
 case, on coming out from England, was quite different from mine. 
 You had all that there was, and were obliged to make the most of it. 
 
 " If these things meet the ideas of the brethren, I will be obliged 
 to them to say, what sum, in Sicca Rupees, payable in Bengal, they 
 think sufficient for a small family in Rangoon sufficient to meet 
 all common expenses, and indeed all that will be incurred at present, 
 except that of passages by sea. You have all the accounts before 
 you, especially of things purchased in Bengal, which I have not; 
 and from having seen the mission pass through various changes, 
 will be more competent to make an estimate of expense than I am. 
 And while you are making this estimate for one family, say also 
 what will be sufficient for two small families, so that if Brother 
 Rice, or any other should soon join me, it may not be necessary to 
 bring the subject again under consideration. This sum I will 
 receive under the same regulations as other stations are subject to, 
 and which I heartily approve. And if, on experiment, it be found 
 much too large, I shall be as glad to diminish it, as to have you 
 increase it, if it be found much too small. 
 
 " Sept. 7. Since writing the above, we have received the dis- 
 tressing 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 jist of August, about noon, she was over- 
 taken 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
 
 128 Life of William Carey 
 
 several men in all, ten persons, perished. Every article of pro- 
 perty 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 dis- 
 pensation may prove a paternal chastisement from his Heavenly 
 Father, and be sanctified to his soul." 
 
 While Judson wrote to Serampore, which he once again 
 visited, leaving the dust of a child in the mission burial-ground, 
 " I am glad to hear you say that you will not abandon this 
 mission," Carey pressed on to the " regions beyond." Judson 
 lived till 1850 to found a church and to prepare a Burmese 
 dictionary, grammar, and translation of the Bible so perfect 
 that revision has hardly been necessary up to the present day. 
 He and Hough, a printer who joined him, formed themselves 
 into a brotherhood on the same self-denying principles as that 
 of Serampore, whom they besought to send them frequent 
 communications to counsel, strengthen, and encourage them. 
 On 28th September 1814 Judson again wrote to Carey from 
 Rangoon : 
 
 " DEAR BROTHER CAREY If copies of Colebrooke's Sungskrita 
 Dictionary, and your Sungskrita Grammar are not too scarce, I 
 earnestly request a copy of each. I find it will be absolutely neces- 
 sary for me to pick up a little of the Pali, chiefly on account of 
 many theological terms, which have been incorporated from that 
 language into the Burman. I have found a dictionary, which I 
 suppose is the same as that which Mr. Colebrooke translated, 
 adapted to the Burman system. This I intend to read. I want 
 also Leyden's Vocabulary, and a copy or two of your son's grammar, 
 when it is completed. I gave your son on his going up to Ava, my 
 copy of Campbell's Gospels, together with several other books, all 
 of which are now lost. The former I chiefly regret, and know not 
 whence I can procure another copy. 
 
 " There is a vessel now lying here, which is destined to take 
 round an Ambassador from this Government to Bengal. He
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 129 
 
 expects to go in about a month, as he told me. He is now waiting 
 for final instructions from Ava. If Felix be really to be sent to 
 Bengal again, I think it most probable that he will be ordered to 
 accompany this ambassador. 
 
 " Mrs. J. was on the point of taking passage with Captain Hitchins, 
 to obtain some medical advice in Bengal; but she has been a little 
 better for a few days, and has given up the plan for the present. 
 This is a delightful climate. We have now seen all the seasons, 
 and can therefore judge. The hot weather in March and April is 
 the chief exception. Nature has done everything for this country; 
 and the Government is very indulgent to all foreigners. When we 
 see how we are distinguished above all around, even in point of 
 worldly comforts, we feel that we want gratitude. O that we may 
 be faithful in the improvement of every mercy, and patient under 
 every trial which God may have in store for us. We know not 
 how the Gospel can ever be introduced here: everything, in this 
 respect, appears as dark as midnight." 
 
 By 1816 Judson had prepared the Gospel of Matthew in 
 Burmese, following up short tracts " accommodated to the 
 optics of a Burman." 
 
 Carey's third son Jabez was clerk to a Calcutta attorney at 
 the time, in 1812, when Dr. Ryland preached in the Dutch 
 Church, Austin Friars, the anniversary sermon on the occasion 
 of the removal of the headquarters of the Society to London. 
 Pausing in the midst of his discourse, after a reference to Carey, 
 the preacher called on the vast congregation silently to pray 
 for the conversion of Jabez Carey. The answer came next year 
 in a letter from his father: " My son Jabez, who has been 
 articled to an attorney, and has the fairest prospects as to this 
 world, is become decidedly religious, and prefers the work of the 
 Lord to every other." Lord Minto's expeditions of 1810 and 
 1811 had captured the islands swept by the French privateers 
 from Madagascar to Java, and there was soon an end of the 
 active hostility of the authorities to Christianity. Sir Stamford 
 Raffles governed Java in the spirit of a Christian statesman. 
 The new Governor-General, Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of 
 Hastings, proved to be the most enlightened and powerful friend 
 the mission had had. In these circumstances, after the charter 
 of 1813 had removed the legislative excuse for intolerance, Dr. 
 Carey was asked by the Lieutenant-Governor to send mis- 
 sionaries and Malay Bibles to the fifty thousand natives of 
 Amboyna. The Governor-General repeated the request officially. 
 Jabez Carey was baptised, married, and despatched at the cost 
 of the state before he could be ordained. Amboyna, it will be 
 perceived, was not in India, but far enough away to give the
 
 130 Life of William Carey 
 
 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: 
 
 " 2^th 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. 
 
 " is*. Pay the utmost attention at all times to the state of 
 your own mind both towards God and man: cultivate an 
 intimate acquaintance with your own heart; labour to obtain 
 a deep sense of your depravity and to trust always in Christ; 
 be pure in heart, and meditate much upon the pure and holy 
 character of God; live a life of prayer and devotedness to God; 
 cherish every amiable and right disposition towards men; be 
 mild, gentle, and unassuming, yet firm and manly. As soon 
 as you perceive anything wrong in your spirit or behaviour set 
 about correcting it, and never suppose yourself so perfect as to 
 need no correction. 
 
 " 2nd. You are now a married man, be not satisfied with 
 conducting yourself towards your wife with propriety, but let 
 love to her be the spring of your conduct towards her. Esteem 
 her highly, and so act that she may be induced thereby to 
 esteem you highly. The first impressions of love arising from 
 form and beauty will soon wear off, but the esteem arising from 
 excellency of disposition and substance of character will endure 
 and increase. Her honour is now yours, and she cannot be 
 insulted without your being degraded. I hope as soon as you 
 get on board, and are settled in your cabin, you will begin and 
 end each day by uniting together to pray and praise God. Let 
 religion always have a place in your house. If the Lord bless 
 you with children, bring them up in the fear of God, and be 
 always an example to others of the power of godliness. This 
 advice I give also to Eliza, and if it is followed you will be happy. 
 
 " yd,. Behave affably and genteelly to all, but not cringingly 
 towards any. Feel that you are a man, and always act with 
 that dignified sincerity and truth which will command the 
 esteem of all. Seek not the society of worldly men, but when 
 called to be with them act and converse with propriety and 
 dignity. To do this labour to gain a good acquaintance with 
 history, geography, men, and things. A gentleman is the next
 
 Calcutta and the Mission Centres 1 3 1 
 
 best character after a Christian, and the latter includes the 
 former. Money never makes a gentleman, neither does a fine 
 appearance, but an enlarged understanding joined to engaging 
 manners. 
 
 " 4th. On your arrival at Amboyna your first business must 
 be to wait on Mr. Martin. You should first send a note to 
 inform him of your arrival, and to inquire when it will suit him 
 to receive you. Ask his advice upon every occasion of im- 
 portance, and communicate freely to him all the steps you take. 
 
 " 5/A. As soon as you are settled begin your work. Get a 
 Malay who can speak a little English, and with him make a 
 tour of the island, and visit every school. Encourage all you 
 see worthy of encouragement, and correct with mildness, yet 
 with firmness. Keep a journal of the transactions of the schools, 
 and enter each one under a distinct head therein. Take account 
 of the number of scholars, the names of the schoolmasters, 
 compare their progress at stated periods, and, in short, consider 
 this as the work which the Lord has given you to do. 
 
 " 6th. Do not, however, consider yourself as a mere super- 
 intendent of schools; consider yourself as the spiritual instructor 
 of the people, and devote yourself to their good. God has 
 committed the spiritual interests of this island 20,000 men or 
 more to you; a vast charge, but He can enable you to be 
 faithful to it. Revise the catechism, tracts, and school-books 
 used among them, and labour to introduce among them sound 
 doctrine and genuine piety. Pray with them as soon as you can, 
 and labour after a gift to preach to them. I expect you will 
 have much to do with them respecting baptism. They all think 
 infant sprinkling right, and will apply to you to baptise their 
 children; you must say little till you know something of the 
 language, and then prove to them from Scripture what is the right 
 mode of baptism and who are the proper persons to be baptised. 
 Form them into Gospel churches when you meet with a few who 
 truly fear God; and as soon as you see any fit to preach to 
 others, call them to the ministry and settle them with the 
 churches. You must baptise and administer the Lord's Supper 
 according to your own discretion when there is a proper occasion 
 for it. Avoid indolence and love of ease, and never attempt to 
 act the part of the great and gay in this world. 
 
 " yth. Labour incessantly to become a perfect master of the 
 Malay language. In order to this, associate with the natives, 
 walk out with them, ask the name of everything you see, and 
 note it down; visit their houses, especially when any of them
 
 132 Life of William Carey 
 
 are sick. Every night arrange the words you get in alpha- 
 betical 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. 
 
 " Sth. 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. 
 
 " qth. I come now to things of inferior importance, but which 
 I hope you will not neglect. I wish you to learn correctly the 
 number, size, and geography of the islands; the number and 
 description of inhabitants; their customs and manners, and 
 everything of note relative to them ; and regularly communicate 
 these things to me. 
 
 " Your great work, my dear Jabez, is that of a Christian 
 minister. You would have been solemnly set apart thereto if 
 you could have stayed long enough to have permitted it. The 
 success of your labours does not depend upon an outward 
 ceremony, nor does your right to preach the Gospel or ad- 
 minister the ordinances of the Gospel depend on any such thing, 
 but only on the Divine call expressed in the Word of God. The 
 Church has, however, in their intentions and wishes borne a 
 testimony to the grace given to you, and will not cease to pray 
 for you that you may be successful. May you be kept from all 
 temptations, supported under every trial, made victorious in 
 every conflict; and may our hearts be mutually gladdened with 
 accounts from each other of the triumphs of Divine grace. God 
 has conferred a great favour upon you in committing to you this 
 ministry. Take heed to it therefore in the Lord that thou 
 fulfil it. We shall often meet at the throne of grace. Write 
 'me by every opportunity, and tell Eliza to write to your 
 mother. 
 
 " Now, my dear Jabez, I commit you both to God, and to the 
 word of His grace, which is able to make you perfect in the 
 knowledge of His will. Let that word be near your heart. I 
 give you both up to God, and should I never more see you on 
 earth I trust we shall meet with joy before His throne of glory 
 at last." 
 
 Under both the English and the Dutch for a time, to whom 
 the island was restored, Jabez Carey proved to be a successful 
 missionary, while he supported the mission by his official
 
 Calcutta and the .Mission Centres 133 
 
 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 philan- 
 thropy 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 missionary 
 and state superintendent of schools. Carey wrote from his 
 own experience, and he unwittingly painted his own character. 
 The peasant bearing of his early youth showed itself throughout 
 his life in a certain shyness, which gave a charm to his converse 
 with old and young. Occasionally, as in a letter which he 
 wrote to his friend Pearce of Birmingham, at a time when he 
 did not know whether his distant correspondent was alive or 
 dead, he burst forth into an unrestrained enthusiasm of affection 
 and service. But his was rather the even tenor of domestic 
 devotion and friendly duty, unbroken by passion or coldness, 
 and ever lighted up by a steady geniality. The colleagues who 
 were associated with him for the third of a century worshipped 
 him in the old English sense of the word. The younger com- 
 mittee-men and missionaries who came to the front on the 
 death of Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland, in all their mistaken 
 conflicts with these colleagues, always tried to separate Carey 
 from those they denounced, till even his saintly spirit burst 
 forth into wrath at the double wrong thus done to his coadjutors. 
 His intercourse with the chaplains and bishops of the Church of 
 England, and with the missionaries of other Churches and 
 
 134
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 135 
 
 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 asso- 
 ciated 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 gentlemanli- 
 ness so seen as in his relations with his first wife, above whom 
 grace and culture had immeasurably raised him, while she never 
 learned to share his aspirations or to understand his ideals. 
 Not only did she remain to the last a peasant woman, with a 
 reproachful tongue, but the early hardships of Calcutta and the 
 fever and dysentery of Mudnabati clouded the last twelve years 
 of her life with madness. Never did reproach or complaint 
 escape his lips regarding either her or Thomas, whose eccentric 
 impulses and oft-darkened spirit were due to mania also. Of 
 both he was the tender nurse and guardian when, many a time, 
 the ever-busy scholar would fain have lingered at his desk 
 or sought the scanty sleep which his jealous devotion to his 
 Master's business allowed him. The brotherhood arrangement, 
 the common family, Ward's influence over the boys, and 
 Hannah Marshman's housekeeping relieved him of much that 
 his wife's illness had thrown upon him'at Mudnabati, so that a 
 colleague describes him, when he was forty-three years of age, 
 as still looking young in spite of the few hairs on his head, after 
 eleven years in Lower Bengal of work such as never Englishman 
 had before him. But almost from the first day of his early 
 married life he had never known the delight of daily converse 
 with a wife able to enter into his scholarly pursuits, and ever to 
 stimulate him in his heavenly quest. When the eldest boy, 
 Felix, had left for Burma in 1807 the faithful sorrowing husband 
 wrote to him: " Your poor mother grew worse and worse from 
 the time you left us, and died on the yth December about seven 
 o'clock in the evening. During her illness she was almost 
 always asleep, and I suppose during the fourteen days that she 
 lay in a severe fever she was not more than twenty-four hours 
 awake. She was buried the next day in the missionary burying- 
 ground." 
 
 About the same time that Carey himself settled in Serampore 
 there arrived the Lady Rumohr. She built a house on the 
 Hoogli bank immediately below that of the missionaries, whose 
 society she sought, and by whom she was baptised. On the 
 9th May 1808 she became Carey's wife; and in May 1821 she 
 
 K
 
 136 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 repre- 
 sentative of a historic family. Her wakefulness when a sickly 
 girl of fifteen saved the whole household from destruction by 
 fire, but she herself became so disabled that she could never 
 walk up or down stairs. She failed to find complete recovery 
 in the south of Europe, and her father's friend, Mr. Anker, a 
 director of the Danish East India Company, gave her letters to 
 his brother, then Governor of Tranquebar, in the hope that the 
 climate of India might cause her relief. The Danish ship 
 brought her first to Serampore, where Colonel Bie introduced her 
 to the brotherhood, and there she resolved to remain. She 
 knew the principal languages of Europe ; a copy of the Pensees of 
 Pascal, given to her by Mr. Anker before she sailed, for the first 
 time quickened her conscience. She speedily learned English, 
 that she might join the missionaries in public worship. The 
 barren orthodoxy of the Lutheranism in which she had been 
 brought up had made her a sceptic. This soon gave way to the 
 evangelical teaching of the same apostle who had brought 
 Luther himself to Christ. She became a keen student of the 
 Scriptures, then an ardent follower of Jesus Christ. 
 
 On her marriage to Dr. Carey, in May 1808, she made over 
 her house to the mission, and when, long after, it became famous 
 as the office of the weekly Friend of India, the rent was sacredly 
 devoted to the assistance of native preachers. She learned 
 Bengali that she might be as a mother to the native Christian 
 families. She was her husband's counsellor in all that related 
 to the extension of the varied enterprise of the brethren. 
 Especially did she make the education of Hindoo girls her own 
 charge, both at Serampore and Cutwa. Her leisure she gave 
 to the reading of French Protestant writers, such as Saurin and 
 Du Moulin. She admired, wrote Carey, " Massillon's language, 
 his deep knowledge of the human heart, and his intrepidity in 
 reproving sin; but felt the greatest dissatisfaction with his 
 total neglect of his Saviour, except when He is introduced to 
 give efficacy to works of human merit. These authors she read 
 in their native language, that being more familiar to her than 
 English. She in general enjoyed much of the consolations of 
 religion. Though so much afflicted, a pleasing cheerfulness 
 generally pervaded her conversation. She indeed possessed
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 137 
 
 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), not- 
 withstanding the weakness of her constitution." 
 
 It is a pretty picture, the delicate invalid lady, drawn along 
 the mall morning and evening, to enjoy the river breeze, on her 
 way to and from the schools and homes of the natives. But 
 her highest service was, after all, to her husband, who was doing 
 a work for India and for humanity, equalled by few, if any. 
 When, on one occasion, they were separated for a time while 
 she sought for health at Monghyr, she wrote to him the tenderest 
 yet most courtly love-letters. 
 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, I felt very much in parting with thee, 
 and feel much in being so far from thee. ... I am sure thou wilt 
 be happy and thankful on account of my voice, which is daily 
 getting better, and thy pleasure greatly adds to mine own. 
 
 " I hope you will not think I am writing too often; I rather 
 trust you will be glad to hear of me. . . . Though my journey 
 is very pleasant, and the good state of my health, the freshness 
 of the air, and the variety of objects enliven my spirits, yet I 
 cannot help longing for you. Pray, my love, take care of your 
 health that I may have the joy to find you well. 
 
 " I thank thee most affectionately, my dearest love, for thy 
 kind letter. Though the journey is very useful to me, I cannot 
 help feeling much to be so distant from you, but I am much 
 with you in my thoughts. . . . The Lord be blessed for the kind 
 protection He has given to His cause in a time of need. May 
 He still protect and guide and bless His dear cause, and give us 
 all hearts growing in love and zeal. ... I felt very much affected 
 in parting with thee. I see plainly it would not do to go far 
 from you; my heart cleaves to you. I need not say (for I hope 
 you know my heart is not insensible) how much I feel your 
 kindness in not minding any expense for the recovery of my 
 health. You will rejoice to hear me talk in my old way, and 
 not in that whispering manner. 
 
 " I find so much pleasure in writing to you, my love, that I 
 cannot help doing it. I was nearly disconcerted by Mrs. 
 laughing at my writing so often; but then, I thought, I feel so 
 much pleasure in receiving your letters that I may hope you
 
 138 Life of William Carey 
 
 do the same. I thank thee, my love, for thy kind letter. I need 
 not say that the serious part of it was welcome to me, and the 
 more as I am deprived of all religious intercourse. ... I shall 
 greatly rejoice, my love, in seeing thee again; but take care 
 of your health that I may find you well. I need not say how 
 much you are in my thoughts day and night." 
 
 His narrative of their intercourse, written after her death, 
 lets in a flood of light on his home life: 
 
 " During the thirteen years of her union with Dr. Carey, they 
 had enjoyed the most entire oneness of mind, never having a 
 single circumstance which either of them wished to conceal from 
 the other. Her solicitude for her husband's health and comfort 
 was unceasing. They prayed and conversed together on those 
 things which form the life of personal religion, without the least 
 reserve; and enjoyed a degree of conjugal happiness while thus 
 continued to each other, which can only arise from a union of 
 mind grounded on real religion. On the whole, her lot in India 
 was altogether a scene of mercy. Here she was found of the 
 Saviour, gradually ripened for glory, and after having her life 
 prolonged beyond the expectation of herself and all who knew 
 her, she was released from this mortal state almost without the 
 consciousness of pain, and, as we most assuredly believe, had 
 ' an abundant entrance ministered unto her into the kingdom 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' " 
 
 When, on 24th June 1809, Carey announced at the dinner 
 table that he had that morning finished the Bengali translation 
 of the whole Bible, and he was asked how much more he thought 
 of doing, he answered: " The work I have allotted to myself, 
 in translating, will take me about twenty years." But he had 
 kept the bow too long and too tightly bent, and it threatened 
 to snap. That evening he was seized with bilious fever, and on 
 the eighteenth day thereafter his life was despaired of. " The 
 goodness of God is eminently conspicuous in raising up our 
 beloved brother Carey," wrote Marshman. " God has raised 
 him up again and restored him to his labours; may he live to 
 accomplish all that is in his heart," wrote Rowe. He was at 
 once at his desk again, in college and in his study. " I am this 
 day forty-eight years old," he wrote to Ryland on the iyth 
 August, and sent him the following letters, every line of which 
 reveals the inner soul of the writer: 
 
 " CALCUTTA, i6th 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
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 139 
 
 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, except- 
 ing seasons of delirium, seemed to be nearly stupid; perhaps 
 some of this arose from the weak state to which I was reduced, 
 which was so great that Dr. Hare, one of the most eminent 
 physicians in Calcutta, who was consulted about it, apprehended 
 more danger from that than from the fever. I, however, had 
 scarcely a thought of death or eternity, or of life, or anything 
 belonging thereto. In my delirium, greatest part of which I 
 perfectly remember, I was busily employed in carrying a com- 
 mission from God to all the princes and governments in the 
 world, requiring them instantly to abolish every political 
 establishment of religion, and to sell the parish and other 
 churches to the first body of Christians that would purchase 
 them. Also to declare war infamous, to esteem all military 
 officers as men who had sold themselves to destroy the human 
 race, to extend this to all those dead men called heroes, 
 defenders of their country, meritorious officers, etc. 1 I was 
 attended by angels in all my excursions, and was universally 
 successful. A few princes in Germany were refractory, but my 
 attendants struck them dead instantly. I pronounced the 
 doom of Rome to the Pope, and soon afterwards all the territory 
 about Rome, the March of Ancona, the great city and all its 
 riches sank into that vast bed of burning lava which heats 
 Nero's bath. These two considerations were the delirious 
 wanderings of the mind, but I hope to feel their force, to pray 
 and strive for their accomplishment to the end of my life. But 
 it is now time to attend to something not merely ideal. 
 
 " The state of the world occupied my thoughts more and 
 more; I mean as it relates to the spread of the Gospel. The 
 harvest truly is great, and labourers bear scarcely any pro- 
 portion 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 
 
 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."
 
 140 Life of William Carey 
 
 attention to the conduct of men when harvest was approaching, 
 for that being the season upon which all the hopes of men hang 
 for temporal supplies, they provide men and measures in time 
 for securing it. Afterwards directing their attention to that 
 which so occupied His own as to be His meat and drink, He said, 
 ' Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields (of souls to be 
 gathered in), for they are white already to harvest.' After so 
 many centuries have elapsed and so many fields full of this harvest 
 have been lost for want of labourers to gather it in, shall we not 
 at last reflect seriously on our duty? Hindostan requires ten 
 thousand ministers of the Gospel, at the lowest calculation, 
 China as many, and you may easily calculate for the rest of the 
 world. I trust that many will eventually be raised up here, 
 but be that as it may the demands for missionaries are pressing 
 to a degree seldom realised. England has done much, but not 
 the hundredth part of what she is bound to do. In so great 
 a want of ministers ought not every church to turn its attention 
 chiefly to the raising up and maturing of spiritual gifts with 
 the express design of sending them abroad? Should not this 
 be a specific matter of prayer, and is there not reason to labour 
 hard to infuse this spirit into the churches ? 
 
 " A mission into Siam would be comparatively easy of intro- 
 duction and support on account of its vicinity to Prince of 
 Wales Island, from which vessels can often go in a few hours. 
 A mission to Pegu and another to Arakan would not be difficult 
 of introduction, they being both within the Burman dominions. 
 Missions to Assam and Nepal should be speedily tried. Brother 
 Robinson is going to Bhootan. I do not know anything about 
 the facility with which missions could be introduced into Cochin 
 China, Cambodia, and Laos, but were the trial made I believe 
 difficulties would remove. It is also very desirable that the 
 Burman mission should be strengthened. There is no full 
 liberty of conscience, and several stations might be occupied; 
 even the borders of China might be visited from that country if 
 an easier entrance into the heart of the country could not be 
 found. I have not mentioned Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, 
 the Philippines, or Japan, but all these countries must be sup- 
 plied with missionaries. This is a very imperfect sketch of the 
 wants of Asia only, without including the Mahometan countries ; 
 but Africa and South America call as loudly for help, and the 
 greatest part of Europe must also be holpen by the Protestant 
 churches, being nearly as destitute of real godliness as any 
 heathen country on the earth. What a pressing call, then, is
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 141 
 
 here for labourers in the spiritual harvest, and what need that 
 the attention of all the churches in England and America should 
 be drawn to this very object !" ^ 
 
 Two years after the establishment of the mission at Serampore, 
 David Brown, the senior chaplain and provost of Fort William 
 College, took possession of Aldeen House, which he occupied till 
 the year of his death in 1812. The house is the first in the settle- 
 ment reached by boat from Calcutta. Aldeen is five minutes' 
 walk south of the Serampore Mission House, and a century ago 
 there was only a park between them. The garden slopes down 
 to the noble river, and commands the beautiful country seat of 
 Barrackpore, which Lord Wellesley had just built. The house 
 itself is embosomed in trees, the mango, the teak, and the 
 graceful bamboo. Just below it, but outside of Serampore, 
 are the deserted temple of Bullubpoor and the Ghat of the same 
 name, a fine flight of steps up which thousands of pilgrims flock 
 every June to the adjoining shrine and monstrous car of 
 Jagganath. David Brown had not been long in Aldeen when 
 he secured the deserted temple and converted it into a Christian 
 oratory, ever since known as Henry Martyn's Pagoda. For 
 ten years Aldeen and the pagoda became the meeting-place of 
 Carey and his Nonconformist friends, with Claudius Buchanan, 
 Martyn, Bishop Corrie, Thomason, and the little band of 
 evangelical Anglicans who, under the protection of Lords 
 Wellesley and Hastings, sweetened Anglo-Indian society, and 
 made the names of " missionary " and of " chaplain " synony- 
 mous. 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.
 
 142 Life of William Carey 
 
 " Yet gladdened seemed to flow thy tide 
 
 Where opens on the view Aldeen; 
 For there to grace thy palmy side 
 
 Loved England's purest joys were seen. 
 
 " Yon dome, 'neath which in former days 
 
 Grim idols marked the pagan shrine, 
 Has swelled the notes of pious praise, 
 Attuned to themes of love divine." 
 
 We find this allusion to the place in Carey's correspondence 
 with Dr. Ryland: " 2oth January 1807. It would have done 
 your heart good to have joined us at our meetings at the pagoda. 
 From that place we have successively recommended Dr. Taylor 
 to the work of the Lord at Bombay, Mr. Martyn to his at 
 Dinapoor, Mr. Corrie to his at Chunar, Mr. Parsons to his at 
 Burhampore, Mr. Des Granges to his at Vizagapatam, and our 
 two brethren to theirs at Rangoon, and from thence we soon 
 expect to commend Mr. Thomason to his at Madras. In these 
 meetings the utmost harmony prevails and a union of hearts 
 unknown between persons of different denominations in Eng- 
 land." Dr. Taylor and Mr. Des Granges were early missionaries 
 of the London Society; the Rangoon brethren were Baptists; 
 the others were Church of England chaplains. Sacramen- 
 tarianism and sacerdotalism had not then begun to afflict the 
 Church of India. There were giants in those days, in Bengal, 
 worthy of Carey and of the one work in which all were the 
 servants of one Master. 
 
 Let us look a little more closely at Henry Martyn's Pagoda. 
 It is now a picturesque ruin, which the peepul tree that is 
 entwined among its fine brick masonry, and the crumbling 
 river-bank, may soon cause to disappear for ever. The ex- 
 quisite tracery of the moulded bricks may be seen, but not the 
 few figures that are left of the popular Hindoo idols just where 
 the two still perfect arches begin to spring. The side to the 
 river has already fallen down, and with it the open platform 
 overhanging the bank on which the missionary sat in the cool 
 of the morning and evening, and where he knelt to pray for the 
 people. We have accompanied many a visitor there, from Dr. 
 Duff to Bishop Cotton, and John Lawrence, and have rarely 
 seen one unmoved. This pagoda had been abandoned long 
 before by the priests of Radhabullub, because the river had 
 encroached to a point within 300 feet of it, the limit within 
 which no Brahman is allowed to receive a gift or take his food. 
 The little black doll of an idol, which is famous among Hindoos
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 143 
 
 alike for its sanctity and as a work of art for had it not been 
 miraculously wafted to this spot like the Santa Casa to Loretto ? 
 was removed with great pomp to a new temple after it had 
 paid a visit to Clive's moonshi, the wealthy Raja Nobokissen in 
 Calcutta, who sought to purchase it outright. 
 
 In this cool old pagoda Henry Martyn, on one of his earliest 
 visits to Aldeen after his arrival as a chaplain in 1806, found an 
 appropriate residence. Under the vaulted roof of the shrine a 
 place of prayer and praise was fitted up with an organ, so that, 
 as he wrote, " the place where once devils were worshipped has 
 now become a Christian oratory." Here, too, he laid his plans 
 for the evangelisation of the people. When suffering from one 
 of his moods of depression as to his own state, he thus writes of 
 this place: " I began to pray as on the verge of eternity; and 
 the Lord was pleased to break my hard heart. I lay in tears, 
 interceding for the unfortunate natives of this country; think- 
 ing within myself that the most despicable soodra of India was of 
 as much value in the sight of God as the King of Great Britain." 
 It was from such supplication that he was once roused by the 
 blaze of a Suttee's funeral pyre, on which he found that the 
 living widow had been consumed with the dead before he could 
 interfere. He could hear the hideous drums and gongs and 
 conch-shells of the temple to which Radhabullub had been 
 removed. There he often tried to turn his fellow-creatures to 
 the worship of the one God, from their prostrations " before a 
 black image placed in a pagoda, with lights burning around it," 
 whilst, he says, he " shivered as if standing, as it were, in the 
 neighbourhood of hell." It was in the deserted pagoda that 
 Brown, Corrie, and Parsons met with him to commend him 
 to God before he set out for his new duties at Dinapoor. 
 " My soul," he writes of this occasion, " never yet had such 
 divine enjoyment. I felt a desire to break from the body, and 
 join the high praises of the saints above. May I go ' in the 
 strength of this many days.' Amen." " I found my heaven 
 begun on earth. No work so sweet as that of praying and 
 living wholly to the service of God." And as he passed by the 
 Mission House on his upward voyage, with true catholicity " Dr. 
 Marshman could not resist joining the party : and after going a 
 little way, left them with prayer." Do we wonder that these 
 men have left their mark on India ? 
 
 As years went by, the temple, thus consecrated as a Christian 
 oratory, became degraded in other hands. The brand " pagoda 
 distillery " for a time came to be known as marking the rum
 
 1 44 Life of William Carey 
 
 manufactured there. The visits of so many Christian pilgrims 
 to the spot, and above all, the desire expressed by Lord Lawrence 
 when Governor-General to see it, led the Hindoo family who 
 own the pagoda to leave it at least as a simple ruin. 
 
 Corrie, afterwards the first bishop of Madras, describes the 
 marriage of Des Granges in the oratory, and gives us a glimpse 
 of life in the Serampore Mission House : 
 
 " 1806. Calcutta strikes me as the most magnificent city in the 
 world; and I am made most happy by the hope of being instru- 
 mental to the eternal good of many. A great opposition, I find, is 
 raised against Martyn and the principles he preaches. . . . Went 
 up to Serampore yesterday, and in the evening was present at the 
 marriage of Mr. Des Granges. Mr. Brown entered into the concern 
 with much interest. The pagoda was fixed on, and lighted up for 
 the celebration of the wedding; at eight o'clock the parties came 
 from the Mission House*;[at Serampore], attended by most of the 
 family. Mr. Brown commenced with the hymn, ' Come, gracious 
 Spirit, heavenly dove! ' A divine influence seemed to attend us, 
 and most delightful were my sensations. The circumstance of so 
 many being engaged in spreading the glad tidings of salvation, 
 the temple of an idol converted to the purpose of Christian worship, 
 and the Divine presence felt among us, filled me with joy un- 
 speakable. 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. Marsh- 
 man were felt very powerfully. He is a most lively, sanguine 
 missionary; his conversation made my heart burn within me, and 
 I find desires of spreading the Gospel growing stronger daily, and 
 my zeal in the cause more ardent. ... I went to the Mission House, 
 and supped at the same table with about fifty native converts. 
 The triumph of the Cross was most evident in breaking down their 
 prejudices, and uniting them with those who formerly were an 
 abomination in their eyes. After supper they sang a Bengali hymn, 
 many of them with tears of joy; and they concluded with prayer 
 in Bengali, with evident earnestness and emotion. My own feelings 
 were too big for utterance. O may the time be hastened when 
 every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the 
 Father ! 
 
 " On Friday evening [Oct. loth], 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 ex- 
 press. 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's Farrtily and Friends 145 
 
 Carey, who was earnest in prayer for Mr. Brown : the petition that 
 ' having laboured for many years without encouragement or sup- 
 port, in the evening it might be light,' seemed much to affect his 
 own mind, and greatly impressed us all. Afterwards we supped 
 together at Mr. Brown's. . . . 
 
 " i jth Oct. I came to Serampore to dinner. Had a pleasant 
 sail up the river: the time passed agreeably in conversation. In 
 the evening a fire was kindled on the opposite bank; and we soon 
 perceived that it was a funeral pile, on which the wife was burning 
 with the dead body of her husband. It was too dark to distinguish 
 the miserable victim. . . . On going out to walk with Martyn to 
 the pagoda, the noise so unnatural, and so little calculated to excite 
 joy, raised in my mind an awful sense of the presence and influence 
 of evil spirits." 
 
 Corrie married the daughter of Mrs. Ellerton, who knew 
 Serampore and Carey well. It was Mr. Ellerton who, when an 
 indigo-planter at Malda, opened the first Bengali school, and 
 made the first attempt at translating the Bible into that 
 vernacular. His young wife, early made a widow, witnessed 
 accidentally the duel in which Warren Hastings shot Philip 
 Francis. She was an occasional visitor at Aldeen, and took 
 part in the pagoda services. Fifty years afterwards, not long 
 before her death at eighty-seven, Bishop Wilson, whose guest 
 she was, wrote of her: " She made me take her to Henry 
 Martyn's pagoda. She remembers the neighbourhood, and 
 Gharetty Ghat and House in Sir Eyre Coote's time (1783). 
 The ancient Governor of Chinsurah and his fat Dutch wife are 
 still in her mind. When she visited him with her first husband 
 (she was then sixteen) the old Dutchman cried out, ' Oh, if you 
 would find me such a nice little wife I would give you ten 
 thousand rupees.' " 
 
 It was in Martyn's pagoda that Claudius Buchanan first 
 broached his plan of an ecclesiastical establishment for India, 
 and invited the discussion of it by Carey and his colleagues. 
 Such a scheme came naturally from one who was the grandson 
 of a Presbyterian elder of the Church of Scotland, converted in 
 the Whitefield revival at Cambuslang. It had been suggested 
 first by Bishop Porteous when he reviewed the Company's 
 acquisitions in Asia. It was encouraged by Lord Wellesley, 
 who was scandalised on his arrival in India by the godlessness 
 of the civil servants and the absence of practically any provision 
 for the Christian worship and instruction of its officers and 
 soldiers, who were all their lives without religion, not a tenth of 
 them ever returning home. Carey thus wrote, at Ryland's 
 request, of the proposal, which resulted in the arrival in Calcutta
 
 1 46 Life of William Carey 
 
 of Bishop Middleton and Dr. Bryce in 1814: " I have no opinion 
 of Dr. Buchanan's scheme for a religious establishment here, 
 nor could I from memory point out what is exceptionable in his 
 memoir. All his representations must be taken with some 
 grains of allowance." When, in the Aldeen discussions, Dr. 
 Buchanan told Marshman that the temple lands would eventually 
 answer for the established churches and the Brahmans' lands 
 for the chaplains, the stout Nonconformist replied with emphasis, 
 " You will never obtain them." We may all accept the con- 
 version of the idol shrine into a place of prayer as Gregory I. 
 taught Augustine of Canterbury to transform heathen temples 
 into Christian churches as presaging the time when the vast 
 temple and mosque endowments will be devoted by the people 
 themselves to their own moral if not spiritual good through 
 education, both religious and secular. 
 
 The change wrought in seventeen years by Carey and such 
 associates as these on society in Bengal, both rich and poor, 
 became marked by the year 1810. We find him writing of it 
 thus: " When I arrived I knew of no person who cared about 
 the Gospel except Mr. Brown, Mr. Udny, Mr. Creighton, Mr. 
 Grant, and Mr. Brown an indigo-planter, besides Brother 
 Thomas and myself. There might be more, and probably were, 
 though unknown to me. There are now in India thirty-two 
 ministers of the Gospel. Indeed, the Lord is doing great things 
 for Calcutta; and though infidelity abounds, yet religion is the 
 theme of conversation or dispute in almost every house. A 
 few weeks ago (October 1810), I called upon one of the Judges 
 to take breakfast with him, and going rather abruptly upstairs, 
 as I had been accustomed to do, I found the family just going 
 to engage in morning worship. I was of course asked to engage 
 in prayer, which I did. I afterwards told him that I had 
 scarcely witnessed anything since I had been in Calcutta which 
 gave me more pleasure than what I had seen that morning. 
 The change in this family was an effect of Mr. Thomason's 
 ministry. . . . About ten days ago I had a conversation with 
 one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, Sir John Boyd, upon 
 religious subjects. Indeed there is now scarcely a place where 
 you can pay a visit without having an opportunity of saying 
 something about true religion." 
 
 Carey's friendly intercourse, by person and letter, was not 
 confined to those who were aggressively Christian or to Christian 
 and ecclesiastical questions. As we shall soon see, his literary 
 and scientific pursuits led him to constant and familiar converse
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 147 
 
 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 1 793 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 burn- 
 ing of the press, to be hereafter described, which led even bitter 
 enemies of the mission like Major Scott Waring to subscribe for 
 its restoration, gave the desired sympathetic voice, so that 
 Fuller wrote to the missionaries: " The public is now giving us 
 their praises. Eight hundred guineas have been offered for 
 Dr. Carey's likeness. . . . When you pitched your tents at 
 Serampore you said, ' We will not accumulate riches but devote 
 all to God for the salvation of the heathen.' God has given 
 you what you desired and what you desired not. Blessed men,. 
 God will bless you and make you a blessing. I and others of 
 us may die, but God will surely visit you. . . . Expect to be 
 highly applauded, bitterly reproached, greatly moved, and much, 
 tried in every way. Oh that, having done all, you may stand ! " 
 
 Carey was, fortunately for posterity, not rebellious in the 
 matter of the portrait; he was passive. As he sat in his room 
 in the college of Fort William, his pen in hand, his Sanskrit 
 Bible before him, and his Brahman pundit at his left hand, the 
 saint and the scholar in the ripeness of his powers at fifty was 
 transferred to the canvas which has since adorned the walls of 
 Regent's Park College. A line engraving of the portrait was 
 published in England the year after at a guinea, and widely 
 purchased, the profit going to the mission. The painter was 
 Home, famous in his day as the artist whom Lord Cornwallis 
 had engaged during the first war with Tipoo to prepare those 
 Select Views in Mysore, the Country of Tipoo Sidlaun, 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,.
 
 1 48 Life of William Carey 
 
 who went forth in 1807 to Dinapoor to begin his independent 
 career as a missionary by the side of Fernandez. 
 
 " 2nd April 1807. We have the greatest encouragement to 
 go forward in the work of our Lord Jesus, because we have every 
 reason to conclude that it will be successful at last. It is the 
 cause which God has had in His mind from eternity, the cause 
 for which Christ shed His blood, that for which the Spirit and 
 word of God were given, that which is the subject of many great 
 promises, that for which the saints have been always praying, 
 and which God Himself bears an infinite regard to in His dis- 
 pensations 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, zgth September 1808. A ship is just arrived 
 which brings the account that Buonaparte has taken possession 
 of the whole kingdom of Spain, and that the Royal family of 
 that country are in prison at Bayonne. It is likely that Turkey 
 is fallen before now, and what will be the end of these wonders 
 we cannot tell. I see the wrath of God poured out on the 
 nations which have so long persecuted His Gospel, and prevented 
 the spread of His truth. Buonaparte is but the minister of the 
 Divine vengeance, the public executioner now employed to 
 execute the sentence of God upon criminal men. He, however, 
 has no end in view but the gratifying his own ambition." 
 
 " 22nd December 1808. DEAR WILLIAM Be steadfast. . . . 
 Walk worthy of your high calling, and so as to be a pattern to 
 others who may engage in similar undertakings. Much depends 
 upon us who go first to the work of the Lord in this country; 
 and we have reason to believe that succeeding Ministers of the 
 Gospel in this country will be more or less influenced by our 
 example. . . . All, even the best of men, are more likely to be 
 influenced by evil example than benefited by good: let it, 
 therefore, be your business and mine to live and act for God in 
 all things and at all times. 
 
 " I am very glad you wrote to Jabez and Jonathan. that 
 I could see them converted ! " 
 
 " y>th 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
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 149 
 
 knee, and produces a large red flower. Put half a dozen plants 
 in pots (with a hole in the bottom). There is at Sadamahal 
 (for I found it there) a plant which produces a flower like Bhayt, 
 of a pale bluish colour, almost white ; and indeed several other 
 things there. Try and bring something. Can't you bring the 
 grasshopper which has a saddle on its back, or the bird which 
 has a large crest which he opens when he settles on the ground ? 
 I want to give you a little taste for natural objects. Felix is 
 very good indeed in this respect." 
 
 " 26th April 1809. You, my dear William, are situated in a 
 post which is very dear to my remembrance because the first 
 years of my residence in India were spent in that neighbourhood. 
 I therefore greatly rejoice in any exertions which you are enabled 
 to make for the cause of our Redeemer. . . . Should you, 
 after many years' labour, be instrumental in the conversion of 
 only one soul, it would be worth the work of a whole life. . . . 
 I am not sure that I have been of real use to any one person since 
 I have been in this country, yet I dare not give up the work 
 in which I am engaged. Indeed, notwithstanding all the dis- 
 couragements 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, ist November 1809. Yesterday was the day for 
 the Chinese examination, at which Jabez acquitted himself 
 with much honour. I wish his heart were truly set on God. 
 One of the greatest blessings which I am now anxious to see 
 before my death is the conversion of him and Jonathan, and 
 their being employed in the work of the Lord. 
 
 " Now, dear William, what do we live for but to promote the 
 cause of our dear Redeemer in the world ? If that be carried on 
 we need not wish for anything more ; and if our poor labours are 
 at all blessed to the promotion of that desirable end, our lives 
 will not be in vain. Let this, therefore, be the great object of
 
 150 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 conversion 
 of one soul, still the pleasure of labouring in the work of the 
 Lord is greater than that of any other undertaking in the world, 
 and is of itself sufficient to make it the work of our choice. I 
 hope Sebuk Ram is arrived before now, and that you will find 
 him to be a blessing to you in your work. Try your utmost to 
 make him well acquainted with the Bible, labour to correct 
 his mistakes, and to establish him in the knowledge of the 
 truth. 
 
 " You may always enclose a pinch of seeds in a letter." 
 " I'jth January 1810. Felix went with Captain Canning, 
 the English ambassador to the Burman Empire, to the city of 
 Pegu. On his way thither he observed to Captain Canning that 
 he should be greatly gratified in accompanying the Minister to 
 the mountains of Martaban and the country beyond them. 
 Captain Canning at his next interview with the Minister men- 
 tioned this to him, which he was much pleased with, and 
 immediately ordered several buffalo-carts to be made ready, 
 and gave him a war-boat to return to Rangoon to bring his 
 baggage, medicines, etc. He had no time to consult Brother 
 Chater before he determined on the journey, and wrote to me 
 when at Rangoon, where he stayed only one night, and returned 
 to Pegu the next morning. He says the Minister has now nearly 
 the whole dominion over the Empire, and is going to war. He 
 will accompany the army to Martaban, when he expects to stay 
 with the Minister there. He goes in great spirits to explore 
 those countries where no European has been before him, and 
 where he goes with advantages and accommodations such as a 
 traveller seldom can obtain. Brother and Sister Chater do not 
 approve of his undertaking, perhaps through fear for his safety. 
 I feel as much for that as any one can do, yet I, and indeed 
 Brethren Marshman, Ward, and Rowe, rejoice that he has 
 undertaken the journey. It will assist him in acquiring the 
 language ; it will gratify the Minister, it will serve the interests 
 of literature, and perhaps answer many other important pur- 
 poses, as it respects the mission; and as much of the way will 
 be through uninhabited forests, it could not have been safely 
 undertaken except with an army. He expects to be absent 
 three months. I shall feel a great desire to hear from him
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 151 
 
 when he returns, and I doubt not but you will join me in prayer 
 for his safety both of mind and body. . . . 
 
 " One or two words about natural history. Can you not get 
 me a male and female khokora I mean the great bird like a 
 kite, which makes so great a noise, and often carries off a duck 
 or a kid? I believe it is an eagle, and want to examine it. 
 Send me also all the sorts of ducks and waterfowls you can get, 
 and, in short, every sort of bird you can obtain which is not 
 common here. Send their Bengali names. Collect me all the 
 sorts of insects, and serpents, and lizards you can get which are 
 not common here. Put all the insects together into a bottle of 
 rum, except butterflies, which you may dry between two papers, 
 and the serpents and lizards the same. I will send you a small 
 quantity of rum for that purpose. Send all the country names. 
 Let me have the birds alive; and when you have got a good 
 boat-load send a small boat down with them under charge of a 
 careful person, and I will pay the expenses. Spare no pains to 
 get me seeds and roots, and get Brother Robinson to procure 
 what he can from Bhootan or other parts. 
 
 " Remember me affectionately to Sebuk Ram and his wife, 
 and to all the native brethren and sisters." 
 
 " 5/A February 1810. Were you hunting the buffalo, or did 
 it charge you without provocation? I advise you to abstain 
 from hunting buffaloes or other animals, because, though I 
 think it lawful to kill noxious animals, or to kill animals for 
 food, yet the unnecessary killing of animals, and especially the 
 spending much time in the pursuit of them, is wrong, and your 
 life is too valuable to be thrown away by exposing it to such 
 furious animals as buffaloes and tigers. If you can kill them 
 without running any risk 'tis very well, but it is wrong to expose 
 yourself to danger for an end so much below that to which you 
 are devoted. . . . 
 
 " I believe the cause of our Redeemer increases in the earth, 
 and look forward to more decided appearances of divine power. 
 The destruction of the temporal power of the Pope is a glorious 
 circumstance, and an answer to the prayers of the Church for 
 centuries past. . . . 
 
 " I send you a small cask of rum to preserve curiosities in, 
 and a few bottles ; but your best way will be to draw off a couple 
 of gallons of the rum, which you may keep for your own u$e, 
 and then put the snakes, frogs, toads, lizards, etc., into the 
 cask, and send them down. I can easily put them into proper 
 bottles, etc., afterwards. You may, however, send one or 
 
 L
 
 152 Life of William Carey 
 
 two of the bottles filled with beetles, grasshoppers, and other 
 insects." 
 
 In the absence of Mr. Fernandez, the pastor, William had 
 excluded two members of the Church. 
 
 " 4th April 1810. A very little knowledge of human nature 
 will convince you that this would have been thought an affront 
 in five instances out of six. You would have done better to 
 have advised them, or even to have required them to have kept 
 from the Lord's table till Mr. Fernandez's return, and to have 
 left it to him to preside over the discipline of the church. You, 
 no doubt, did it without thinking of the consequences, and in 
 the simplicity of your heart, and I think Mr. Fernandez is wrong 
 in treating you with coolness, when a little conversation might 
 have put everything to rights. Of that, however, I shall say 
 no more to you, but one of us shall write to him upon the subject 
 as soon as we can. 
 
 " The great thing to be done now is the effecting of a recon- 
 ciliation between you, and whether you leave Sadamahal, or 
 stay there, this is absolutely necessary. In order to this you 
 both must be willing to make some sacrifice of your feelings ; 
 and as those feelings, which prevent either of you from making 
 concessions where you have acted amiss, are wrong, the sooner 
 they are sacrificed the better. I advise you to write to Mr. 
 Fernandez immediately, and acknowledge that you did wrong 
 in proceeding to the exclusion of the members without having 
 first consulted with him, and state that you had no intention of 
 hurting his feelings, but acted from what you thought the 
 urgency of the case, and request of him a cordial reconciliation. 
 I should like much to see a copy of the letter you send to him. 
 I have no object in view but the good of the Church, and would 
 therefore rather see you stoop as low as you can to effect a 
 reconciliation, than avoid it through any little punctilio of 
 honour or feeling of pride. You will never repent of having 
 humbled yourself to the dust that peace may be restored, 
 nothing will be a more instructive example to the heathen 
 around you, nothing will so completely subdue Brother 
 Fernandez's dissatisfaction, and nothing will make you more 
 respected in the Church of God. 
 
 "It is highly probable that you will some time or other be 
 removed to another situation, but it cannot be done till you are 
 perfectly reconciled to each other, nor can it possibly be done 
 till some time after your reconciliation, as such a step would be 
 considered by all as an effect of resentment or dissatisfaction,
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 153 
 
 and would be condemned by every thinking person. We shall 
 keep our minds steadily on the object, and look out for a proper 
 station ; but both we and you must act with great caution and 
 tenderness in this affair. For this reason also I entreat you not 
 to withdraw yourself from the church, or from any part of your 
 labours, but go on steadily in the path of duty, suppress and 
 pray against every feeling of resentment, and bear anything 
 rather than be accessory to a misunderstanding, or the perpetuat- 
 ing of one. ' Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ, 
 who made himself of no reputation.' I hope what I have said 
 will induce you to set in earnest about a reconciliation with 
 Brother Fernandez, and to spare no pains or concession (con- 
 sistent with truth) to effect it." 
 
 William had applied to be transferred to Serampore. 
 
 " yd August 1811. The necessities of the mission must be 
 consulted before every other consideration. Native brethren 
 can itinerate, but Europeans must be employed to open new 
 missions and found new stations. For were we to go upon the 
 plan of sending Europeans where natives could possibly be 
 employed, no subscriptions or profits could support them. We 
 intend to commence a new station at Dacca, and if you prefer 
 that to Cutwa you may go thither. One of the first things to 
 be done there will be to open a charity school, and to overlook 
 it. Dacca itself is a very large place, where you may often 
 communicate religious instructions without leaving the town. 
 There are also a number of Europeans there, so that Mary 
 would not be so much alone, and at any rate help would be 
 near. We can obtain the permission of Government for you to 
 settle there. 
 
 " I ought, however, to say that I think there is much guilt in 
 your fears. You and Mary will be a thousand times more safe 
 in committing yourselves to God in the way of duty .than in 
 neglecting obvious duty to take care of yourselves. You see 
 what hardships and dangers a soldier meets in the wicked trade 
 of war. They are forced to leave home and expose themselves 
 to a thousand dangers, yet they never think of objecting, and 
 in this the officers are in the same situation as the men. I will 
 engage to say that no military officer would ever refuse to go 
 any whither on service because his family must be exposed to 
 danger in his absence; and yet I doubt not but many of them 
 are men who have great tenderness for their wives and families. 
 However, they must be men and their wives must be women. 
 Your undertaking is infinitely superior to theirs in importance.
 
 154 Life of William Carey 
 
 They go to kill men, you to save them. If they leave their 
 families to chance for the sake of war, surely you can leave 
 yours to the God of providence while you go about His work. 
 I speak thus because I am much distressed to see you thus waste 
 away the flower of your life in inactivity, and only plead for it 
 what would not excuse a child. Were you in any secular 
 employment you must go out quite as much as we expect you 
 to do in the Mission. I did so when at Mudnabati, which was 
 as lonesome a place as could have been thought of, and when 
 I well knew that many of our own ryots were dakoits 
 (robbers)." 
 
 William finally settled at Cutwa, higher up the Hoogli than 
 Serampore, and did good service there. 
 
 " ist December 1813. I have now an assistant at College, 
 notwithstanding which my duties are quite as heavy as they 
 ever were, for we are to receive a number of military students 
 I suppose thirty at least. The translation, and printing also, 
 is now so much enlarged that I am scarcely able to get through 
 the necessary labour of correcting proofs and learning the 
 necessary languages. All these things are causes of rejoicing 
 more than of regret, for they are the very things for which I 
 came into the country, and to which I wish to devote my latest 
 breath. . . . Jabez has offered himself to the Mission, a circum- 
 stance 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 : 
 
 " ^th June 1821. MY DEAR JONATHAN I feel your affec- 
 tionate care for me very tenderly. I have just received very 
 affectionate letters from William and Brother Sutton (Orissa). 
 Lord and Lady Hastings wrote to Brother Marshman, thinking 
 it would oppress my feelings to write to me directly, to offer 
 their kind condolence to me through him. Will you have the 
 goodness to send five rupees to William for the Cutwa school, 
 which your dear mother supported. I will repay you soon, 
 but am now very short of money. I am your very affectionate 
 father, W. CAREY." 
 
 Of the many descendants of Dr. Carey, one great grandson 
 is now an ordained missionary in Bengal, another a medical
 
 Carey's Family and Friends 155 
 
 missionary in Delhi, and a third is a member of the Civil 
 Service, who has distinguished himself by travels in Northern 
 Tibet and Chinese Turkestan, which promise to unveil much 
 of the unexplored regions of Asia to the scholar and the 
 missionary. 
 
 Thus far we have confined our study of William Carey to 
 his purely missionary career, and that in its earlier half. We 
 have now to see him as the scholar, the Bible translator, 
 the philanthropist, the agriculturist, and the founder of a 
 University.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI 
 1801-1830 
 
 Carey the only Sanskrit scholar in India besides Colebrooke The motive 
 of the missionary scholar Plans translation of the sacred books of 
 the East Comparative philology from Leibniz to Carey Hindoo 
 and Mohammedan codes and colleges of Warren Hastings The 
 Marquis Wellesley The College of Fort William founded Char- 
 acter of the Company's civil and military servants Curriculum of 
 study, professors and teachers The vernacular languages Carey's 
 account of the college and his appointment How he studied Sanskrit 
 College Disputation Day in the new Government House Carey's 
 Sanskrit speech Lord Wellesley's eulogy Sir James Mackintosh 
 Carey's pundits He projects the Biblioiheca Asiatica On the Com- 
 mittee of the Bengal Asiatic Society Edition and translation of the 
 Ramayana epic The Hitppadesa 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 
 made the vehicle of the teaching of Christ, of the thought of 
 Paul, of the revelation of John. Of the Sanskrit, hitherto 
 concealed from alien eyes or diluted only through the Persian, 
 he had prepared a grammar and begun a dictionary, while he 
 had continually used its great epics in preaching to the Brahmans, 
 as Paul had quoted the Greek poets on the Areopagus. And all 
 this he had done as the missionary of Christ and the scholar 
 afterwards. Reporting to Ryland, in August 1800, the publica- 
 tion of the Gospels and of " several small pieces " in Bengali, 
 he excused his irregularity in keeping a journal, " for in the 
 printing I have to look over the copy and correct the press, 
 which is much more laborious than it would be in England, 
 because spelling, writing, printing, etc., in Bengali is almost a 
 new thing, and we have in a manner to fix the orthography." 
 A little later, in a letter to Sutcliff, he used language regarding 
 
 156
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 157 
 
 the sacred books of the Hindoos which finds a parallel more than 
 eighty years after in Professor Max Miiller'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 Miiller calls attention to the " real mischief that has 
 been and is still being done by the enthusiasm of those pioneers 
 who have opened the first avenues through the bewildering 
 forests of the sacred literature of the East." He declares that 
 " Eastern nations themselves would not tolerate, in any of 
 their classical literary compositions, such violations of the 
 simplest rules of taste as they have accustomed themselves to 
 tolerate, if not to admire, in their sacred books." And he is 
 compelled to leave untranslated, while he apologises for them, 
 the frequent allusions to the sexual aspects of nature, " parti- 
 cularly in religious books." The revelations of the Maharaj 
 trial in Bombay are the practical fruit of all this. 
 
 " CALCUTTA, 17 th March 1802. I have been much astonished 
 lately at the malignity of some of the infidel opposers of the 
 Gospel, to see how ready they are to pick every flaw they can in 
 the inspired writings, and even to distort the meaning, that they 
 may make it appear inconsistent; while these very persons will 
 labour to reconcile the grossest contradictions in the writings 
 accounted sacred by the Hindoos, and will stoop to the meanest 
 artifices in order to apologise for the numerous glaring false- 
 hoods and horrid violations of all decency and decorum, which 
 abound in almost every page. Any thing, it seems, will do 
 with these men but the word of God. They ridicule the 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 interested Brahmans) exposed to view, has induced 
 me, among other things, to write the Sanskrit grammar, and to 
 begin a dictionary of that language. I sincerely pity the poor 
 people, who are held by the chains of an implicit faith in the 
 grossest of lies; and can scarcely help despising the wretched 
 infidel who pleads in their favour and tries to vindicate them. 
 I have long wished to obtain a copy of the Veda ; and am now 
 in hopes I shall be able to procure all that are extant. A 
 Brahman this morning offered to get them for me for the sake
 
 158 Life of William Carey 
 
 of money. If I succeed, I shall be strongly tempted to publish 
 them with a translation, pro bono publico." 
 
 It was not surprising that the Governor-General, even if he 
 had been less enlightened than Lord Wellesley, found in this 
 missionary interloper, as the East India Company officially 
 termed the class to which he belonged, the only man fit to be 
 Professor of Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi in the College of 
 Fort William, and also translator of the laws and regulations of 
 the Government. 
 
 In a memoir read before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 
 which he had founded in the first year of the eighteenth century, 
 Leibniz first sowed the seed of the twin sciences of comparative 
 philology and ethnology, to which we owe the fruitful results 
 of the historical and critcal school. That century was passed 
 in the necessary collection of facts, of data. Carey introduced 
 the second period, so far as the learned and vernacular languages 
 of North India are concerned of developing from the body of 
 facts which his industry enormously extended, the principles 
 upon which these languages were constructed, besides applying 
 these principles, in the shape of grammars, dictionaries, and 
 translations, to the instruction and Christian civilisation alike 
 of the learned and of the millions of the people. To the last, as 
 at the first, he was undoubtedly only what he called himself, 
 a pioneer to prepare the way for more successful civilisers and 
 scholars. But his pioneering was acknowledged by contem- 
 porary x and later Orientalists, like Colebrooke and H. H. 
 Wilson, to be of unexampled value in the history of scientific 
 research and industry, while the succeeding pages will show 
 that in its practical results the pioneering came as nearly to 
 victory as is possible, until native India lives its own national 
 Christian life. 
 
 When India first became a united British Empire under one 
 Governor-General and the Regulating Act of Parliament of 
 1773, Warren Hastings had at once carried out the provision he 
 himself had suggested for using the moulavies and pundits in 
 the administration of Mussulman and Hindoo law. Besides 
 colleges in Calcutta and Benares to train such, he caused those 
 codes of Mohammedan and Brahmanical law to be prepared 
 
 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." .
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 159 
 
 which afterwards appeared as The Hedaya and The Code of 
 Gentoo Laws. The last was compiled in Sanskrit by pundits 
 summoned from all Bengal and maintained in Calcutta at the 
 public cost, each at a rupee a day. It was translated through 
 the Persian, the language of the courts, by the elder Halhed 
 into English in 1776. That was the first step in English 
 Orientalism. The second was taken by Sir William Jones, a 
 predecessor worthy of Carey, but cut off all too soon while still 
 a young man of thirty-four, when he founded the Bengal Asiatic 
 Society in 1784 on the model of Boyle's Royal Society. The 
 code of Warren Hastings had to be arranged and supplemented 
 into a reliable digest of the original texts, and the translation of 
 this work, as done by pundit Jaganatha, was left, by the death 
 of Jones, to Colebrooke, who completed it in 1797. Charles 
 Wilkins had made the first direct translation from the Sanskrit 
 into English in 1785, when he published in London The Bhagavat- 
 Geeta or Dialogue of Krishna and Arfoon, and his is the im- 
 perishable honour thus chronicled by a contemporary poetaster : 
 
 " But he performed a yet more noble part, 
 He gave to Asia typographic art." 
 
 In Bengali Halhed had printed at Hoogli in 1783, with types 
 cut by Wilkins, the first grammar, but it had become obsolete 
 and was imperfect. Such had been the tentative efforts of the 
 civilians and officials of the Company when Carey began anew 
 the work from the only secure foundation, the level of daily 
 sympathetic intercourse with the people and their Brahmans, 
 with the young as well as the old. 
 
 The Marquis Wellesley was of nearly the same age as Carey, 
 whom he soon learned to appreciate and to use for the highest 
 good of the empire. Of the same name and original English 
 descent as John and Charles Wesley, the Governor-General was 
 the eldest and not the least brilliant of the Irish family which, 
 besides him, gave to the country the Duke of Wellington and 
 Lord Cowley. While Carey was cobbling shoes in an unknown 
 hamlet of the Midlands and was aspiring to convert the world, 
 young Wellesley was at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, 
 acquiring the classical scholarship which, as we find its fruits in 
 his Primiti(B et Reliquicc, 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
 
 1 60 Life of William Carey 
 
 the Board of Control, where he learned to fight the directors 
 of the East India Company, and he landed at Calcutta in 1798, 
 just in time to save the nascent empire from ruin by the second 
 Mysore war and the fall of Tipoo at Seringapatam. Like that 
 other marquis who most closely resembled him half a century 
 after, the Scottish Dalhousie, his hands were no sooner freed 
 from the uncongenial bonds of war than he became even more 
 illustrious by his devotion to the progress which peace makes 
 possible. He created the College of Fort William, dating the 
 foundation of what was fitted and intended to be the greatest 
 seat of learning in the East from the first anniversary of the 
 victory of Seringapatam. So splendidly did he plan, so wisely 
 did he organise, and with such lofty aims did he select the 
 teachers of the college, that long after his death he won from 
 De Quincey the impartial eulogy, that of his three services to 
 his country and India this was the " first, to pave the way for 
 the propagation of Christianity mighty service, stretching to 
 the clouds, and which in the hour of death must have given him 
 consolation." 
 
 When Wellesley arrived at Calcutta he had been shocked 
 by the sensual ignorance of the Company's servants. Sunday 
 was universally given up to horse-racing and gambling. Boys 
 of sixteen were removed from the English public schools where 
 they had hardly mastered the rudiments of education to become 
 the magistrates, judges, revenue collectors, and governors of 
 millions of natives recently brought under British sway. At a 
 time when the passions most need regulation and the conscience 
 training, these lads found themselves in India with large incomes, 
 flattered by native subordinates, encouraged by their superiors 
 to lead lives of dissipation, and without the moral control even 
 of the weakest public opinion. The Eton boy and Oxford man 
 was himself still young, and he knew the world, but he saw that 
 all this meant ruin to both the civil and military services, and 
 to the Company's system. The directors addressed in a public 
 letter, dated 25th May 1798, " an objurgation on the character 
 and conduct " of their servants. They re-echoed the words of 
 the new Governor-General in their condemnation of a state of 
 things, " highly discreditable to our Government, and totally 
 incompatible with the religion we profess." Such a service as 
 this, preceding the creation of the college, led Pitt's other friend, 
 Wilberforce, in the discussions on the charter of 1813, to ascribe 
 to Lord Wellesley, when summoning him to confirm and revise 
 it, the system of diffusing useful knowledge of all sorts as the
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 161 
 
 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 Parlia- 
 ment. They must be educated in India itself, and trained to 
 be equal to the responsibilities and temptations of their position. 
 If appointed by patronage at home when still at school, they 
 must be tested after training in India so that promotion shall 
 depend on degrees of merit. Lord Wellesley anticipated the 
 modified system of competition which Macaulay offered to the 
 Company in 1853, and the refusal of which led to the unre- 
 stricted system which has prevailed with varying results since 
 that time. Nor was the college only for the young civilians as 
 they arrived. Those already at work were to be encouraged to 
 study. Military officers were to be invited to take advantage 
 of an institution which was intended to be " the university of 
 Calcutta," " a light amid the darkness of Asia," and that at a 
 time when in all England there was not a military college. 
 Finally, the college was designed to be a centre of Western 
 learning in an Eastern dress for the natives of India and 
 Southern Asia, alike as students and teachers. A noble site 
 was marked out for it on the stately sweep of Garden Reach, 
 where every East Indiaman first dropped its anchor, and the 
 building was to be worthy of the founder who erected 
 Government House. 
 
 The curriculum of study included Arabic, Persian, and 
 Sanskrit; Bengali, Marathi, Hindostani (Hindi), Telugoo, 
 Tamil, and Kanarese; English, the Company's, Mohammedan 
 and Hindoo law, civil jurisprudence, and the law of nations; 
 ethics ; political economy, history, geography, and mathematics ; 
 the Greek, Latin, and English classics, and the modern languages 
 of Europe; the history and antiquities of India; natural history, 
 botany, chemistry, and astronomy. The discipline was that of 
 the English universities as they then were, under the Governor- 
 General himself, his colleagues, and the appellate judges. The 
 senior chaplain, the Rev. David Brown, was provost in charge
 
 1 62 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 con- 
 stitution of the college at first, to which Buchanan had applied 
 the English Test Act, and his own modesty, led Carey to accept 
 of his appointment, which was thus gazetted: "The Rev. 
 William Carey, teacher of the Bengali and Sanskrit languages." 
 
 The first notice of the new college which we find in Carey's 
 correspondence is this, in a letter to Sutcliff dated 27th November 
 1800: " There is a college erected at Fort William, of which the 
 Rev. D. Brown is appointed provost, and C. Buchanan classical 
 tutor: all the Eastern languages are to be taught in it." "All" 
 the languages of India were to be taught, the vernacular as well 
 as the classical and purely official. This was a reform not less 
 radical and beneficial in its far-reaching influence, and not less 
 honourable to the scholarly foresight of Lord Wellesley, than 
 Lord William Bentinck's new era of the English language thirty- 
 five years after. The rulers and administrators of the new 
 empire were to begin their career by a three years' study of the 
 mother tongue of the people, to whom justice was administered 
 in a language foreign alike to them and their governors, and of 
 the Persian language of their foreign Mohammedan conquerors. 
 That the peoples of India, " every man in his own language," 
 might hear and read the story of what the one true and living 
 God had done for us men and our salvation, Carey had nine 
 years before given himself to acquire Bengali and the Sanskrit 
 of which it is one of a numerous family of daughters, as the 
 tongues of the Latin nations of Europe and South America are 
 of the offspring of the speech of Caesar and Cicero. Now, 
 following the missionary pioneer, as educational, scientific, and 
 even political progress has ever since done in the India which 
 would have kept him out, Lord Wellesley decreed that, like the 
 missionary, the administrator and the military officer shall 
 master the language of the people. The five great vernaculars 
 of India were accordingly named, and the greatest of all, the 
 Hindi, which was not scientifically elaborated till long after, 
 was provided for under the mixed dialect or lingua franca 
 known as Hindostani. 
 
 When Carey and his colleagues were congratulating them-
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 163 
 
 selves on a reform which has already proved as fruitful of results 
 as the first century of the Renascence of Europe, he little thought, 
 in his modesty, that he would be recognised as the only man 
 who was fit to carry it out. Having guarded the college, as 
 they thought, by a test, Brown and Buchanan urged Carey to 
 take charge of the Bengali and Sanskrit classes as " teacher " 
 on Rs. 500 a month or 700 a year. Such an office was entirely 
 in the line of the constitution of the missionary brotherhood. 
 But would the Government which had banished it to Serampore 
 recognise the aggressively missionary character of Carey, who 
 would not degrade his high calling by even the suspicion of a 
 compromise ? To be called and paid as a teacher rather than as 
 the professor whose double work he was asked to do, was nothing 
 to the modesty of the scholar who pleaded his sense of unfitness 
 for the duties. His Master, not himself, was ever Carey's first 
 thought, and the full professorship, rising to 1800 a year, was 
 soon conferred on the man who proved himself to be almost as 
 much the college in his own person as were the other professors 
 put together. A month after his appointment he thus told the 
 story to Dr. Ryland in the course of a long letter devoted 
 chiefly to the first native converts : 
 
 " SERAMPORE, i$th 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 ex- 
 planation, 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 in- 
 stitution, but never entertained a thought that I should be called 
 to fill a station in it. To my great surprise I was asked to under- 
 take the Bengali professorship. One morning a letter from Mr. 
 Brown came, inviting me to cross the water, to have some 
 conversation with him upon this subject. I had but just time 
 to call our brethren together, who were of opinion that, for 
 several reasons, I ought to accept it, provided it did not interfere 
 with the work of the mission. I also knew myself to be incapable 
 of filling such a station with reputation and propriety. I, 
 however, went over, and honestly proposed all my fears and 
 objections. Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Buchanan were of opinion 
 that the cause of the mission would be furthered by it; and I
 
 1 64 Life of William Carey 
 
 was not able to reply to their arguments. I was convinced that 
 it might. As to my ability, they could not satisfy me; but 
 they insisted upon it that they must be the judges of that. 
 I therefore consented, with fear and trembling. They proposed 
 me that day, or the next, to the Governor-General, who is patron 
 and visitor of the college. They told him that I had been a 
 missionary in the country for seven years or more; and as a 
 missionary I was appointed to the office. A clause had been 
 inserted in the statutes to accommodate those who are not of 
 the Church of England (for all professors are to take certain 
 oaths, and make declarations); but, for the accommodation of 
 such, two other names were inserted, viz., lecturers and teachers, 
 who are not included under that obligation. When I was 
 proposed, his lordship asked if I was well affected to the state, 
 and capable of fulfilling the duties of the station; to which Mr. 
 B. replied that he should never have proposed me if he had had 
 the smallest doubt on those heads. I wonder how people can 
 have such favourable ideas of me. I certainly am not dis- 
 affected to the state; but the other is not clear to me. 
 
 " When the appointment was made, I saw that I had a very 
 important charge committed to me, and no books or helps 
 of any kind to assist me. I therefore set about compiling a 
 grammar, which is now half printed. I got Ram Basu to 
 compose a history of one of their kings, the first prose book ever 
 written in the Bengali language; which we are also printing. 
 Our pundit has also nearly translated the Sanskrit fables, one 
 or two of which Brother Thomas sent you, which we are also 
 going to publish. These, with Mr. Foster's vocabulary, will 
 prepare the way to reading their poetical books ; so that I hope 
 this difficulty will be gotten through. But my ignorance of the 
 way of conducting collegiate exercises is a great weight upon my 
 mind. I have thirteen students in my class; I lecture twice a 
 week, and have nearly gone through one term, not quite two 
 months. It began 4th May. Most of the students have gotten 
 through the accidents, and some have begun to translate Bengali 
 into English. The examination begins this week. I am also 
 appointed teacher of the Sanskrit language; and though no 
 students have yet entered in that class, yet I must prepare for 
 it. I am, therefore, writing a grammar of that language, which 
 I must also print, if I should be able to get through with it, and 
 perhaps a dictionary, which I began some years ago. I say all 
 this, my dear brother, to induce you to give me your advice 
 about the best manner of conducting myself in this station, and
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 165 
 
 to induce you to pray much for me, that God may, in all things, 
 be glorified by me. We presented a copy of the Bengali New 
 Testament to Lord Wellesley, after the appointment, through 
 the medium of the Rev. D. Brown, which was graciously received. 
 We also presented Governor Bie with one. 
 
 " Serampore is now in the hands of the English. It was 
 taken while we were in bed and asleep; you may therefore 
 suppose that it was done without bloodshed. You may be 
 perfectly easy about us : we are equally secure under the English 
 or Danish Government, and I am sure well disposed to both." 
 
 For seven years, since his first settlement in the Dinapoor 
 district, Carey had given one-third of his long working day to 
 the study of Sanskrit. In 1796 he reported: " I am now 
 learning the Sanskrit language, that I may be able to read 
 their Shasters for myself; and I have acquired so much of the 
 Hindi or Hindostani as to converse in it and speak for some 
 time intelligibly. . . . Even the language of Ceylon has so 
 much affinity with that of Bengal that out of twelve words, 
 with the little Sanskrit that I know, I can understand five or 
 six." In 1798 he wrote: " I constantly employ the forenoon 
 in temporal affairs; the afternoon in reading, writing, learning 
 Sanskrit, etc.; and the evening by candle light in translating 
 the Scriptures. . . . Except I go out to preach, which is often 
 the case, I never deviate from this rule." Three years before 
 that he had been able to confute the Brahmans from their own 
 writings; in 1798 he quoted and translated the Rig Veda and 
 the Purana in reply to a request for an account of the beliefs 
 of the priesthood, apologising, however, with his usual self- 
 depreciation: " I am just beginning to see for myself by reading 
 the original Shasters." In 1799 we find him reading the Mahab- 
 harata epic with the hope of finding some allusion or fact which 
 might enable him to equate Hindoo chronology with reliable 
 history, as Dr. John Wilson of Bombay and James Prinsep 
 did a generation later, by the discovery of the name of Antiochus 
 the Great in two of the edicts of Asoka, written on the Girnar 
 rock. 
 
 By September 1804 Carey had completed the first three years' 
 course of collegiate training in Sanskrit. The Governor- 
 General summoned a brilliant assembly to listen to the disputa- 
 tions 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 com- 
 pleted only the year before at a cost of 140,000, was the scene,
 
 1 66 Life of William Carey 
 
 in " the southern room on the marble floor," where, ever since, 
 all through the century, the Sovereign's Viceroys have received 
 the homage of the tributary kings of our Indian empire. There, 
 from Dalhousie and Canning to Lawrence and Mayo, and their 
 still surviving successors, we have seen pageants and durbars 
 more splendid, and representing a wider extent of territory, 
 from Yarkand to Bangkok, than even the Sultanised Englishman, 
 as Sir James Mackintosh called Wellesley, ever dreamed of in 
 his most imperial aspirations. There councils have ever since 
 been held, and laws have been passed affecting the weal of from 
 two to three hundred millions of our fellow-subjects. There, too, 
 we have stood with Duff and Cotton, Ritchie and Outram, repre- 
 senting the later University of Calcutta which Wellesley would 
 have anticipated. But we question if, ever since, the marble 
 hall of the Governor-General's palace has witnessed a sight more 
 profoundly significant than that of William Carey addressing 
 the Marquis Wellesley in Sanskrit, and in the presence of the 
 future Duke of Wellington, in such words as follow. 
 
 The seventy students, their governors, officers, and professors, 
 rose to their feet, when, at ten o'clock on Thursday the 2oth 
 of September 1804, His Excellency the Visitor entered the room, 
 accompanied, as the official gazette duly chronicles, by " the 
 Honourable the Chief Justice, the judges of the Supreme Court, 
 the members of the Supreme Council, the members of the Council 
 of the College, Major-General Cameron, Major-General the 
 Honourable Arthur Wellesley, Major-General Dowdeswell, and 
 Solyman Aga, the envoy from Baghdad. All the principal civil 
 and military officers at the Presidency, and many of the British 
 inhabitants, were present on this occasion; and also many 
 learned natives." 
 
 After Romer had defended, in Hindostani, the thesis that the 
 Sanskrit is the parent language in India, and Swinton, in Persian, 
 that the poems of Hafiz are to be understood in a figurative or 
 mystical sense, there came a Bengali declamation by Tod senior 
 on the position that the translations of the best works extant 
 in the Sanskrit with the popular languages of India would 
 promote the extension of science and civilisation, opposed by 
 Hayes ; then Carey, as moderator, made an appropriate Bengali 
 speech. A similar disputation in Arabic and a Sanskrit declama- 
 tion followed, when Carey was called on to conclude with a 
 speech in Sanskrit. Two days after, at a second assemblage 
 of the same kind, followed by a state dinner, Lord Wellesley 
 presented the best students with degrees of merit inscribed on
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 1 67 
 
 vellum in Oriental characters, and delivered an oration, in which 
 he specially complimented the Sanskrit classes, urged more 
 general attention to the Bengali language, and expressed satis- 
 faction that a successful beginning had been made in the study 
 of Marathi. 
 
 It was considered a dangerous experiment for a missionary, 
 speaking in Sanskrit, to avow himself such not only before the 
 Governor-General in official state but before the Hindoo and 
 Mohammedan nobles who surrounded him. We may be sure 
 that Carey would not show less of his Master's charity and 
 wisdom than he had always striven to do. But the necessity 
 was the more laid on him that he should openly confess his 
 great calling, for he had told Fuller on Lord Wellesley's arrival 
 he would do so if it were possible. Buchanan, being quite as 
 anxious to bring the mission forward on this occasion, added 
 much to the English draft " the whole of the flattery is his," 
 wrote Carey to Fuller and sent it on to Lord Wellesley with 
 apprehension. This answer came back from the great Pro- 
 consul: " I am much pleased with Mr. Carey's truly original 
 and excellent speech. I would not wish to have a word altered. 
 I esteem such a testimony from such a man a greater honour 
 than the applause of Courts and Parliaments." 
 
 " MY LORD, it is just that the language which has been first 
 cultivated under your auspices should primarily be employed in 
 gratefully acknowledging the benefit, and in speaking your praise. 
 This ancient language, which refused to disclose itself to the former 
 Governors of India, unlocks its treasures at your command, and 
 enriches the world with the history, learning, and science of a 
 distant age. The rising importance of our collegiate institution has 
 never been more clearly demonstrated than on the present occasion ; 
 and thousands of the learned in distant nations will exult in this 
 triumph of literature. 
 
 " What a singular exhibition has been this day presented to us! 
 In presence of the supreme Governor of India, and of its most 
 learned and illustrious characters, Asiatic and European, an 
 assembly is convened, in which no word of our native tongue is 
 spoken, but public discourse is maintained on interesting subjects 
 in the languages of Asia. The colloquial Hindostani, the classic 
 Persian, the commercial Bengali, the learned Arabic, and the 
 primaeval Sanskrit are spoken fluently, after having been studied 
 grammatically, by English youth. Did ever any university in 
 Europe, or any literary institution in any other age or country, 
 exhibit a scene so interesting as this? And what are the circum- 
 stances 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 
 
 M
 
 1 68 Life of William Carey 
 
 these languages are spoken, they apply their acquisitions imme- 
 diately 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 sup- 
 pliant native immediate access to his principal; and by their 
 elucidating the spirit of the regulations of our Government by oral 
 communication, and by written explanations, varied according to 
 the circumstances and capacities of the people. 
 
 " The acquisitions of our students are appreciated at this moment 
 by those learned Asiatics now present in this assembly, some of 
 them strangers from distant provinces; who wonder every man to 
 hear in his own tongue important subjects discussed, and new and 
 noble principles asserted, by the youth of a foreign land. The 
 literary proceedings of this day amply repay all the solicitude, 
 labour, and expense that have been bestowed on this institution. 
 If the expense had been a thousand times greater, it would not 
 have equalled the immensity of the advantage, moral and political, 
 that will ensue. 
 
 " I, now an old man, have lived for a long series of years among 
 the Hindoos. I have been in the habit of preaching to multitudes 
 daily, of discoursing with the Brahmans on every subject, and of 
 superintending schools for the instruction of the Hindoo youth. 
 Their language is nearly as familiar to me as my own. This close 
 intercourse with the natives for so long a period, and in different 
 parts of our empire, has afforded me opportunities of information 
 not inferior to those which have hitherto been presented to any 
 other person. I may say indeed that their manners, customs, 
 habits, and sentiments are as obvious to me as if I was myself a 
 native. And knowing them as I do, and hearing as I do their 
 daily observations on our government, character, and principles, I 
 am warranted to say (and I deem it my duty to embrace the 
 public opportunity now afforded me of saying it) that the institu- 
 tion 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, pos- 
 sessing such utility for its basis, or pervading such a vast portion 
 of the habitable globe. My lord, you have raised a monument of 
 fame which no length of time or reverse of fortune is able to destroy;
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 169 
 
 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 ob- 
 tained 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 civilisa- 
 tion, security, and happiness, by enlarging the bounds of Oriental 
 literature and thereby diffusing the spirit of Christian principles 
 throughout the nations of Asia. These youth, who have lived so 
 long amongst us, whose unwearied application to their studies we 
 have all witnessed, whose moral and exemplary conduct has, in so 
 solemn a manner, been publicly declared before this august assembly, 
 on this day; and who, at the moment of entering on the public 
 service, enjoy the fame of possessing qualities (rarely combined) 
 constituting a reputation of threefold strength for public men, 
 genius, industry, and virtue; these illustrious scholars, my lord, 
 the pride of their country, and the pillars of this empire, will record 
 your name in many a language and secure your fame for ever. 
 Your fame is already recorded in their hearts. The whole body of 
 youth of this service hail you as their father and their friend. Your 
 honour will ever be safe in their hands. No revolution of opinion 
 or change of circumstances can rob you of the solid glory derived 
 from the humane, just, liberal, and magnanimous principles which 
 have been embodied by your administration. 
 
 " To whatever situation the course of future events may call you, 
 the youth of this service will ever remain the pledges of the wisdom 
 and purity of your government. Your evening of life will be con- 
 stantly cheered with new testimonies of their reverence and affec- 
 tion, with new proofs of the advantages of the education you have 
 afforded them, and with a demonstration of the numerous benefits, 
 moral, religious, and political, resulting from this institution; 
 benefits which will consolidate the happiness of millions of Asia, 
 with the glory and welfare of our country." 
 
 The Court of Directors had never liked Lord Wellesley, 
 and he had, in common with Colebrooke, keenly wounded them 
 by proposing a free trade movement against their monopoly. 
 They ordered that his favourite college should be immediately 
 abolished. He took good care so to protract the operation as 
 to give him time to call in the aid of the Board of Control, 
 which saved the institution, but confined it to the teaching of 
 languages to the civilians of the Bengal Presidency only. The 
 Directors, when thus overruled chiefly by Pitt, created a similar 
 college at Haileybury, which continued till the open competitive 
 system of 1854 swept that also away; and the Company 
 itself soon followed, as the march of events had made it an 
 anachronism. 
 
 The first law professor at Haileybury was James Mackintosh, 
 an Aberdeen student who had leaped into the front rank of
 
 170 Life of William Carey 
 
 publicists and scholars by his answer to Burke, in the Vindicice 
 GalliccB, and his famous defence of M. Peltier accused of a libel 
 on Napoleon Buonaparte. Knighted and sent out to Bombay 
 as its first recorder, Sir James Mackintosh became the centre 
 of scholarly society in Western India, as Sir William Jones had 
 been in Bengal. He was the friend of Robert Hall, the younger, 
 who was filling Carey's pulpit in Leicester, and he soon became 
 the admiring correspondent of Carey himself. His first act 
 during his seven years' residence in Bombay was to establish 
 the " Literary Society." He drew up a " Plan of a comparative 
 vocabulary of Indian languages," to be filled up by the officials 
 of every district, like that which Carey had long been elaborating 
 for his own use as a philologist and Bible translator. In his first 
 address to the Literary Society he thus eulogised the College of 
 Fort William, though fresh from a chair in its English rival, 
 Haileybury: "The original plan was the most magnificent 
 attempt ever made for the promotion of learning in the East. . . . 
 Even in its present mutilated state we have seen, at the last 
 public exhibition, Sanskrit declamation by English youth, a 
 circumstance so extraordinary, that if it be followed by suitable 
 advances it will mark an epoch in the history of learning." 
 
 Carey continued till 1831 to be the most notable figure in the 
 College of Fort William. He was the centre of the learned 
 natives whom it attracted, as pundits and moonshees, as in- 
 quirers and visitors. His own special pundit was the chief one, 
 Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar, whom Home has immortalised in 
 Carey's portrait. In the college for more than half the week, 
 as in his study at Serampore, Carey exhausted three pundits 
 daily. His college-room was the centre of incessant literary 
 work, as his Serampore study was of Bible translation. When 
 he declared that the college staff had sent forth one hundred 
 original volumes in the Oriental languages and literature, he 
 referred to the grammars and dictionaries, the reading-books, 
 compilations, and editions prepared for the students by the 
 professors and their native assistants. But he contributed the 
 largest share, and of all his contributions the most laborious 
 and valuable was this project of the Bibliotheca Asiatica. 
 
 " 24ih July, 1805. By the enclosed Gazette you will see that 
 the Asiatic Society and the College have agreed to allow us a 
 yearly stipend for translating Sanskrit works : this will maintain 
 three missionary stations, and we intend to apply it to that 
 purpose. An augmentation of my salary has been warmly 
 recommended by the College Council, but has not yet taken
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 171 
 
 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 there- 
 fore 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 im- 
 mediately communicated the matter to Sir John Anstruther, 
 who is president of the Asiatic Society. Sir John had then been 
 drawing out a proposal to Lord Wellesley to form a catalogue 
 raisonne of the ancient Hindoo books, which he sent to me, 
 and entering warmly into my plan, desired that I would send 
 in a set of proposals. After some amendments it was agreed 
 that the College of Fort William and the Asiatic Society 
 should subscribe in equal shares 300 rupees a month to defray 
 the current expenses, that we should undertake any work ap- 
 proved of by them, and print the original with an English trans- 
 lation on such paper and with such a type as they shall approve ; 
 the copy to be ours. They have agreed to recommend the work 
 to all the learned bodies in Europe. I have recommended the 
 Ramayana to begin with, it being one of the most popular of 
 all the Hindoo books accounted sacred. The Veda are so 
 excessively insipid that, had we begun with them, we should 
 have sickened the public at the outset. The Ramayana will 
 furnish the best account of Hindoo mythology that any one 
 book will, and has extravagancy enough to excite a wish to read 
 it through." 
 
 In 1807 Carey became one of the most active members of the 
 Bengal Asiatic Society. His name at once appears as one of 
 the Committee of Papers. In the ninth volume of the Asiatic 
 Researches for that year, scholars were invited to communicate 
 translations and descriptive accounts of Asiatic books. Carey's 
 edition of The Ramayana of Valmeeki, in the original Sanskrit, 
 with a prose translation and explanatory notes, appeared from 
 the Serampore press in three successive quartos from 1806 to 
 1810. The translation was done by " Dr. Carey and Joshua 
 Marshman." Until Gorresio published his edition and Italian 
 translation of the whole poem this was the first and only attempt 
 to open the seal of the second great Sankrit epic to the European
 
 172 Life of William Carey 
 
 world. In 1802 Carey had encouraged the publication at his 
 own press of translations of both the Mahabharata and the 
 Ramayana into Bengali. Carey's Ramayana excited a keen 
 interest not only among the learned of Europe, but among 
 poetical students. Southey eagerly turned to it for materials 
 for his Curse of Kehama, in the notes to which he makes long 
 quotations from " the excellent and learned Baptist missionaries 
 of Serampore." Dean Milman, when professor of poetry in 
 Oxford, drew from the same storehouse many of the notes with 
 which he enriched his verse translations from both epics. 
 A. W. von Schlegel, the death of whose eldest brother at Madras 
 early led him to Oriental studies, published two books with a 
 Latin translation. Mr. Ralph T. H. Griffith most pleasantly 
 opened the treasures of this epic to English readers in his verse 
 translations published since 1868. Carey's translation has 
 always been the more rare that the edition despatched for sale 
 in England was lost at sea, and only a few presentation copies 
 are extant, one of which is in the British Museum. 
 
 Careys contributions to Sanskrit scholarship were not con- 
 fined to what he published or to what appeared under his own 
 name. We are told by H. H. Wilson that he had prepared for 
 the press translations of treatises on the metaphysical system 
 called Sankhya. " It was not in Dr. Carey's nature to volunteer 
 a display of his erudition, and the literary labours already 
 adverted to arose in a great measure out of his connection with 
 the college of Calcutta, or were suggested to him by those whose 
 authority he respected, and to whose wishes he thought it 
 incumbent upon him to attend. It may be added that Dr. 
 Carey spoke Sanskrit with fluency and correctness." 
 
 He edited for the college the Sanskrit text of the Hitopadesa, 
 from six MSS. recensions of this the first revelation to Europe 
 of the fountain of Aryan folk-tales, of the original of Pilpay's 
 Fables. 1 H. H. Wilson remarks that the errors are not more 
 than might have been expected from the variations and defects 
 
 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 A ccount of their 
 Literary History, with an English Translation of the later Syriac Version 
 of the Same, and Notes. The heroic scholar and humble follower of Christ, 
 having given himself and his all to found a Mission to the Mohammedans of 
 South Arabia, at Sheikh Othman, near Aden, died there, on nth 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 United 
 Free Church of Scotland carry on in his name.
 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Etc. 173 
 
 of the manuscripts and the novelty of the task, for this was the 
 first Sanskrit book ever printed in the Devanagari character. 
 To this famous work Carey added an abridgment of the prose 
 Adventures of Ten Princes (the Dasa Kumara Carita), and of 
 Bhartri-hari's Apophthegms. Colebrooke records his debt to 
 Carey for carrying through the Serampore press the Sanskrit 
 dictionary of Amara Sinha, the oldest native lexicographer, with 
 an English interpretation and annotations. But the magnum 
 opus cif Carey was what in 1811 he described as A Universal 
 Dictionary of the Oriental Languages, derived from the Sanskrit, 
 of which that language is to be the groundwork. The object for 
 which he had been long collecting the materials of this mighty 
 work was the assisting of " Biblical students to correct the 
 translation of the Bible in the Oriental languages after we are 
 dead." 
 
 Through the College of Fort William during thirty long years 
 Carey influenced the ablest men in the Bengal Civil Service, and 
 not a few in Madras and Bombay. " The college must stand 
 or the empire must fall," its founder had written to his friends 
 in the Government, so convinced was he that only thus could 
 proper men be trained for the public service and the welfare of 
 our native subjects be secured. How right he was Carey's 
 experience proved. The young civilians turned out after the 
 first three years' course introduced that new era in the adminis- 
 tration of India which has converted traders into statesmen 
 and filibusters into soldier-politicals, so that the East Indian 
 services stand alone in the history of the administration of 
 imperial dependencies for spotless integrity and high average 
 ability. Contrast with the work of these men, from the days 
 of Wellesley, the first Minto, and Dalhousie, from the time of 
 Canning to Lawrence and the second Minto, the provincial 
 administration of imperial Rome, of Spain and Portugal at 
 their best, of even the Netherlands and France. For a whole 
 generation of thirty years the civilians who studied Sanskrit, 
 Bengali, and Marathi came daily under the gentle spell of Carey, 
 who, though he had failed to keep the village school of Moulton 
 in order, manifested the learning and the modesty, the efficiency 
 and the geniality, which won the affectionate admiration of his 
 students in Calcutta. 
 
 A glance at the register of the college for its first five years 
 reveals such men as these among his best students. The first 
 Bengali prizeman of Carey was W. Butterworth Bayley, whose, 
 long career of blameless uprightness and marked ability cul-
 
 174 Life of William Carey 
 
 initiated in the temporary seat of Governor-General, and who was 
 followed in the service by a son worthy of him. The second 
 was that Brian H. Hodgson who, when Resident of Nepal, of 
 all his contemporaries won for himself the greatest reputation as 
 a scholar, who fought side by side with the Serampore brother- 
 hood the battle of the vernaculars of the people. Charles, after- 
 wards Lord Metcalfe, had been the first student to enter the 
 college. He was on its Persian side, and he learned while still 
 under its discipline that " humility, patience, and obedience to 
 the divine will " which unostentatiously marked his brilliant 
 life and soothed his spirit in the agonies of a fatal disease. He 
 and Bayley were inseparable. Of the first set, too, were 
 Richard Jenkins, who was to leave his mark on history as 
 Nagpoor Resident and author of the Report of 1826; and 
 Romer, who rose to be Governor of Bombay for a time. In those 
 early years the two Birds passed through the classes Robert 
 Mertins Bird, who was to found the great land revenue school 
 of Hindostan ; and Wilberforce Bird, who governed India while 
 Lord Ellenborough played at soldiers, and to whom the legal 
 suppression of slavery in Southern Asia is due. Names of men 
 second to those, such as Elliot and Thackeray, Hamilton and 
 Martin, the Shakespeares and Plowdens, the Moneys, the 
 Rosses and Keenes, crowd the honour lists. One of the last to 
 enjoy the advantages of the college before its abolition was John 
 Lawrence, who used to confess that he was never good at 
 languages, but whose vigorous Hindostani made many an ill- 
 doing Raja tremble, while his homely conversation, interspersed 
 with jokes, encouraged the toiling ryot. 
 
 These, and men like these, sat at the feet of Carey, where 
 they learned not only to be scholars but to treat the natives 
 kindly, and some of them even as brethren in Christ. Then 
 from teaching the future rulers of the East, the missionary- 
 professor turned to his Bengali preaching and his Benevolent 
 Institution, to his visits to the prisoners and his intercourse 
 with the British soldiers in Fort William. And when the four 
 days' work in Calcutta was over, the early tide bore him swiftly 
 up the Hoogli to the study where, for the rest of the week, he 
 gave himself to the translation of the Bible into the languages 
 of the people and of their leaders.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST BIBLE TRANSLATION 
 1801-1832 
 
 The Bible Carey's missionary weapon Other vernacular translators 
 Carey's modest but just description of his labours His philological 
 key Type-cutting and type-casting by a Hindoo blacksmith The 
 first manufacture of paper and steam-engines in the East Carey 
 takes stock of the translation work at the opening of 1808 In his 
 workshop A seminary of Bible translators William Yates, 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 Bunnan 
 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 manu- 
 scripts 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 character and aims as Carey and Clark- 
 son on the one side and Napoleon and Wellington on the other. 
 Carey stood alone in his persistent determination that the 
 Church should evangelise the world. He was no less singular in 
 the means which he insisted on as the first essential condition 
 of its evangelisation the vernacular translation of the Bible. 
 From the Scriptures alone, while yet a journeyman shoemaker 
 of eighteen, " he had formed his own system," and had been 
 filled with the divine missionary idea. That was a year before 
 the first Bible Society was formed in 1780 to circulate the 
 English Bible among soldiers and sailors; and, a quarter of a 
 century before his own success led to the formation in 1804 of 
 the British and Foreign Bible Society. From the time of his 
 
 175
 
 1 76 Life of William Carey 
 
 youth, when he realised the self-evidencing power of the Bible, 
 Carey's unbroken habit was to begin every morning by reading 
 one chapter of the Bible, first in English, and then in each of the 
 languages, soon, numbering six, which he had himself learned. 
 
 Hence the translation of the Bible into all the languages and 
 principal dialects of India and Eastern Asia was the work 
 above all others to which Carey set himself from the time, in 
 1793, when he acquired the Bengali. He preached, he taught, 
 he " discipled " in every form then reasonable and possible, 
 and in the fullest sense of his Master's missionary charge. But 
 the one form of most pressing and abiding importance, the 
 condition without which neither true faith, nor true science, 
 nor true civilisation could exist or be propagated outside of the 
 narrow circle to be reached by the one herald's voice, was the 
 publishing of the divine message in the mother tongues of the 
 millions of Asiatic men and women, boys and girls, and in the 
 learned tongues also of their leaders and priests. Wyclif had 
 first done this for the English-reading races of all time, trans- 
 lating from the Latin, and so had begun the Reformation, 
 religious and political, not only in Britain but in Western 
 Christendom. Erasmus and Luther had followed him the 
 former in his Greek and Latin New Testament and in his 
 Paraphrase of the Word for " women and cobblers, clowns, 
 mechanics, and even the Turks "; the latter in his great ver- 
 nacular translation of the edition of Erasmus, who had never 
 ceased to urge his contemporaries to translate the Scriptures 
 " into all tongues." Tyndale had first given England the Bible 
 from the Hebrew and the Greek. And now one of these cobblers 
 was prompted and enabled by the Spirit who is the author of the 
 truth in the Scriptures, to give to South and Eastern Asia the 
 sacred books which its Syrian sons, from Moses and Ezra to 
 Paul and John, had been inspired to write for all races and all 
 ages. Emphatically, Carey and his later coadjutors deserve 
 the language of the British and Foreign Bible Society, when, in 
 1827, it made to Serampore a last grant of money for trans- 
 lation " Future generations will apply to them the words of 
 the translators of the English Bible ' Therefore blessed be 
 they and most honoured their names that break the ice and 
 give the onset in that which helped them forward to the saving 
 of souls. Now what can be more available thereto than to 
 deliver God's book unto God's people in a tongue which they 
 understand? ' : Carey might tolerate interruption when 
 engaged in other work, but for forty years he never allowed
 
 The Wyclif of the East 
 
 '77 
 
 anything to shorten the time allotted to the Bible work. " You, 
 madam," he wrote in 1797 to a lady as to many a correspondent, 
 " will excuse my brevity when I inform you that all my time 
 for writting letters is stolen from the work of transcribing the 
 Scriptures into the Bengali language." 
 
 From no mere humility, but with an accurate judgment in 
 the state of scholarship and criticism at the opening of last 
 century, Carey always insisted that he was a forerunner, break- 
 ing up the way for successors like Yates, Wenger, and Rouse, 
 who, in their turn, must be superseded by purely native Tyndales 
 and Luthers in the Church of India. He more than once depre- 
 cated the talk of his having translated the Bible into forty 
 languages and dialects. 1 As we proceed that will be apparent 
 
 THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS. 
 MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE 
 
 First 
 
 
 Published in 
 
 1801. 
 
 BENGALI New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9. 
 
 1811. 
 
 Ooriya ,, ,, in 1819. 
 
 1824. 
 
 Maghadi ,, only. 
 
 1815-19. 
 
 Assamese ,, ,, in 1832. 
 
 1824. 
 
 Khasi. 
 
 1814-24. 
 
 Manipoori. 
 
 1808. 
 
 SANSKRIT ., in 1811-18. 
 
 1809-1 1. 
 
 HINDI ,, ,, in 1813-18. 
 
 1822-32. 
 
 Bruj-bhasa ,, only. 
 
 1815-22. 
 
 Kanouji ,, ,, 
 
 1820. 
 
 Khosali Gospel of Matthew only. 
 
 1822. 
 
 Oodeypoori New Testament only. 
 
 1815. 
 
 Jeypoori 
 
 
 1821. 
 
 Bhugeli 
 
 
 1821. 
 
 Marwari 
 
 
 1822. 
 
 Haraoti 
 
 
 1823. 
 
 Bikaneri 
 
 
 1823. 
 
 Oojeini 
 
 
 1824. 
 
 Bhatti 
 
 
 1832. 
 
 Pal pa 
 
 
 1826. 
 
 Kumaoni 
 
 
 1832. 
 
 Gurhwali 
 
 
 1821. 
 
 Nepalese 
 
 
 1811. 
 
 MARATHI 
 
 Old Testament in 1820. 
 
 1820. 
 
 Goojarati 
 
 only. 
 
 1819. 
 
 Konkan 
 
 Pentateuch in 1821. 
 
 1815. 
 
 PANJABI 
 
 and His 
 
 
 torical Books in 1822. 
 
 1819. 
 
 Mooltani New Testament. 
 
 1825. 
 
 Sindhi Gospel of Matthew only.
 
 178 Life of William Carey 
 
 which he did with his own hand, that which his colleagues accom- 
 plished, that which he revised and edited both of their work and 
 of the pundits', and that which he corrected and printed for 
 others at the Serampore press under the care of Ward. It is to 
 these four lines of work, which centred in him, as most of them 
 originally proceeded from his conception and advocacy, that the 
 assertion as to the forty translations is strictly applicable. The 
 Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit translations were his own. 
 The Chinese was similarly the work of Marshman. The Hindi 
 versions, in their many dialects, and the Ooriya, were blocked out 
 by his colleagues and the pundits. He saw through the press 
 the Hindostani, Persian, Malay, Tamil, and other versions of the 
 whole or portions of the Scriptures. He ceased not, night and 
 day, if by any means, with a loving catholicity, the Word of 
 God might be given to the millions. 
 
 Writing in 1904 on the centenary of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, Mr. George A. Grierson, C.I.E., Ph.D., D.Litt., 
 the head of the Linguistic Survey of India, sums up authorita- 
 tively the work of Carey and his assistants. " The great-hearted 
 band of Serampore missionaries issued translations of the Bible 
 or of the New Testament in more than forty languages. Before 
 them the number of Protestant versions of the Bible in the 
 speeches of India could be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
 The Dutch of Ceylon undertook a Tamil New Testament in 1688, 
 which was followed in 1715 by another version from the pen of 
 Ziegenbalg. The famous missionary, Schultze, between 1727 
 and 1732 made a Telugu version which was never printed, and 
 later, between 1745 and 1758, he published at Halle a Hindostani 
 translation of the New Testament and of a portion of Genesis. 
 
 First 
 Published in 
 
 1820. Kashmeeri New Testament; and Old Testament to 
 
 2nd Book of Kings. 
 1820-26. Dogri New Testament only. 
 
 1819. PUSHTOO New Test, and Old Test. Historical Books. 
 1815. BALOOCHI ,, Three Gospels. 
 
 1818. TELUGOO ,, and Pentateuch in 1820. 
 
 1822. KANARESE ,, only. 
 
 MALDIVIAN Four Gospels. 
 
 EDITED AND PRINTED ONLY BY CAREY 
 
 Persian. Singhalese. 
 
 Hindostani. Chinese (Dr. Marshman's). 
 
 Malayalam. Javanese. 
 
 Burmese Matthew's Gospel. Malay.
 
 The Wyclif of the East 179 
 
 A manuscript version of portions of the Bible in Bengali was 
 made by Thomas in 1791 ; and then the great Serampore series 
 began with Carey's Bengali New Testament published in 1801. 
 Most of these Serampore versions were, it is true, first attempts 
 and have been superseded by more accurate versions, but the 
 first step is always the most important one, and this was taken 
 by Carey and his brethren." 
 
 Carey's correspondent in this and purely scholarly subjects 
 was Dr. Ryland, an accomplished Hebraist and Biblical critic 
 for that day, at the head of the Bristol College. Carey's 
 letters, plentifully sprinkled with Hebrew and Greek, show the 
 jealousy with which he sought to convey the divine message 
 accurately, and the unwearied sense of responsibility under 
 which he worked. Biblical criticism, alike as to the original 
 text and to the exegesis of the sacred writings, is so very modern 
 a science, that these letters have now only a historical interest. 
 But this communication to Ryland shows how he worked from 
 the first: 
 
 " CALCUTTA, itfh Dec. 1803. We some time ago engaged in 
 an undertaking, of which we intended to say nothing until it 
 was accomplished; but an unforeseen providence made it 
 necessary for us to disclose it. It is as follows: About a year 
 and a half ago, some attempts were made to engage Mr. Gilchrist 
 in the translation of the Scriptures into the Hindostani language. 
 By something or other it was put by. The Persian was also at 
 the same time much talked of, but given up, or rather not 
 engaged in. At this time several considerations prevailed on 
 us to set ourselves silently upon a translation into these lan- 
 guages. We accordingly hired two moonshees to assist us in it, 
 and each of us took our share; Brother Marshman took 
 Matthew and Luke ; Brother Ward, Mark and John ; and myself 
 the remaining part of the New Testament into Hindostani. I 
 undertook no part of the Persian ; but, instead thereof, engaged 
 in translating it into Maharastra, commonly called the Mahratta 
 language, the person who assists me in the Hindostani being a 
 Mahratta. Brother Marshman has finished Matthew, and, 
 instead of Luke, has begun the Acts. Brother Ward has done 
 part of John, and I have done the Epistles, and about six chapters 
 of the Revelation; and have proceeded as far as the second 
 epistle of the Corinthians in the revisal: they have done a few 
 chapters into Persian, and I a few into Mahratta. Thus the 
 matter stood, till a few days ago Mr. Buchanan informed me 
 that a military gentleman had translated the Gospels into
 
 180 Life of William Carey 
 
 Hindostani and Persian, and had made a present of them to 
 the College, and that the College Council had voted the printing 
 of them. This made it necessary for me to say what we had 
 been about ; and had it not been for this circumstance we should 
 not have said anything till we had got the New Testament at 
 least pretty forward in printing. I am very glad that Major 
 Colebrooke has done it. We will gladly do what others do not 
 do, and wish all speed to those who do anything in this way. 
 We have it in our power, if our means would do for it, in the 
 space of about fifteen years to have the word of God translated 
 and printed in all the languages of the East. Our situation is 
 such as to furnish us with the best assistance from natives of 
 the different countries. We can have types of all the different 
 characters cast here; and about 700 rupees per month, part of 
 which I hope we shall be able to furnish, would complete the 
 work. The languages are the Hindostani (Hindi), Maharastra, 
 Ooriya, Telinga, Bhotan, Burman, Chinese, Cochin Chinese, 
 Tongkinese, and Malay. On this great work we have fixed our 
 eyes. Whether God will enable us to accomplish it, or any 
 considerable part of it, is uncertain." 
 
 But all these advantages, his own genius for languages, his 
 unconquerable plodding directed by a divine motive, his 
 colleagues' co-operation, the encouragement of learned societies 
 and the public, and the number of pundits and moonshees 
 increased by the College of Fort William, would have failed to 
 open the door of the East to the sacred Scriptures had the 
 philological key of the Sanskrit been wanting or undiscovered. 
 In the preface to his Sanskrit grammar, quoted by the Quarterly 
 Review with high approbation, Carey wrote that it gave him 
 the meaning of four out of every five words of the principal 
 languages of the whole people of India : " The peculiar grammar 
 of any one of these may be acquired in a couple of months, and 
 then the language lies open to the student. The knowledge of 
 four words in five enables him to read with pleasure, and renders 
 the acquisition of the few new words, as well as the idiomatic 
 expressions, a matter of delight rather than of labour. Thus 
 the Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, 
 is so much like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali 
 pundit is almost equal to the correction of an Orissa proof sheet; 
 and the first time that I read a page of Goojarati the meaning 
 appeared so obvious as to render it unnecessary to ask the pundit 
 questions." 
 
 The mechanical apparatus of types, paper, and printing seem
 
 The Wyclif of the East 1 8 1 
 
 to have been provided by the same providential foresight as the 
 intellectual and the spiritual. We have seen how, when he 
 was far enough advanced in his translation, Carey amid the 
 swamps of Dinapoor looked to England for press, type, paper, 
 and printer. He got the last, William Ward, a man of his own 
 selection, worthy to be his colleague. But he had hardly 
 despatched his letter when he found or made all the rest in 
 Bengal itself. It was from the old press bought in Calcutta, 
 set up in Mudnabati, and removed to Serampore, that the first 
 edition of the Bengali New Testament was printed. The few 
 rare and venerable copies have now a peculiar bibliographic 
 interest; the type and the paper alike are coarse and blurred. 
 
 Sir Charles Wilkins, the Caxton of India, had with his own 
 hands cut the punches and cast the types from which Halhed's 
 Bengali grammar was printed at Hoogli in 1778. He taught 
 the art to a native blacksmith, Panchanan, who went to Seram- 
 pore in search of work just when Carey was in despair for a 
 fount of the sacred Devanagari type for his Sanskirt grammar, 
 and for founts of the other languages besides Bengali which had 
 never been printed. They thus tell the story in a Memoir 
 Relative to the Translations, published in 1807: 
 
 " It will be obvious that in the present state of things in India 
 it was in many instances necessary to cast new founts of types in 
 several of these languages. Happily for us and India at large 
 Wilkins had led the way in this department; and by persevering 
 industry, the value of which can scarcely be appreciated, under the 
 greatest disadvantages with respect to materials and workmen, had 
 brought the Bengali to a high degree of perfection. Soon after our 
 settling at Serampore the providence of God brought to us the very 
 artist who had wrought with Wilkins in that work, and in a great 
 measure imbibed his ideas. By his assistance we erected a letter- 
 foundry; and although he is now dead, he had so fully communi- 
 cated 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 1 500 rupees, 
 exclusive of metal and casting. 
 
 " In the Orissa we have been compelled also to cast a new fount of 
 types, as none before existed in that character. The fount consists 
 of about 300 separate combinations, and the whole expense of
 
 1 82 Life of William Carey 
 
 cutting and casting has amounted to at least 1000 rupees. The 
 character, though distinct, is of a moderate size, and will comprise 
 the whole New Testament in about 700 pages octavo, which is 
 about a fourth less than the Bengali. Although in the Mahratta 
 country the Devanagari character is well known to men of educa- 
 tion, 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 dic- 
 tionary. This character is moderate in size, distinct and beautiful. 
 It will comprise the New Testament in perhaps a less number of 
 pages than the Orissa. The expense of casting, etc., has been much 
 the same. We stand in need of three more founts; one in the 
 Burman, another in the Telinga and Kernata, and a third in the 
 Seek's character. These, with the Chinese characters, will enable 
 us to go through the work. An excellent and extensive fount of 
 Persian we received from you, dear brethren, last year." 
 
 Panchanan's apprentice, Monohur, continued to make elegant 
 founts of type in all Eastern languages for the mission and for 
 sale to others for more than forty years, becoming a benefactor 
 not only to literature but to Christian civilisation to an extent 
 of which he was unconscious, for he remained a Hindoo of the 
 blacksmith caste. In 1839, when he first went to India as a 
 young missionary, the Rev. James Kennedy x 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 
 
 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 
 
 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 
 Pry 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 tune 
 
 in the twenty centuries of the history of Chinese printing. This forms an 
 <era in the history of Chinese literature, he justly remarks.
 
 The Wyclif of the East 183 
 
 and white ant, so that the first sheets of a work which lingered 
 in the press were sometimes devoured by these insects before 
 the last sheets were printed off. Carey used to preserve his 
 most valuable manuscripts by writing on arsenicated paper, 
 which became of a hideous yellow colour, though it is to this 
 alone we owe the preservation in the library of Serampore 
 College of five colossal volumes of his polyglot dictionary 
 prepared for the Bible translation work. Many and long were 
 the experiments of the missionaries to solve the paper difficulty, 
 ending in the erection of a tread-mill on which relays of forty 
 natives reduced the raw material in the paper-engine, until one 
 was accidentally killed. 
 
 The enterprise of Mr. William Jones, who first worked the 
 Raneegunj coal-field, suggested the remedy in the employment 
 of a steam-engine. One of twelve-horse power was ordered 
 from Messrs. Thwaites and Rothwell of Bolton. This was the 
 first ever erected in India, and it was a purely missionary 
 locomotive. The " machine of fire," as they called it, brought 
 crowds of natives to the mission, whose curiosity tried the 
 patience of the engineman imported to work it; while many a 
 European who had never seen machinery driven by steam came 
 to study and to copy it. The date was the 27th of March 1820, 
 when " the engine went in reality this day." From that time 
 till 1865 Serampore became the one source of supply for local 
 as distinguished from imported and purely native hand-made 
 paper. Even the cartridges of Mutiny notoriety in 1857 were 
 from this factory, though it had long ceased to be connected 
 with the mission. 
 
 Dr. Carey thus took stock of the translating enterprise in a 
 letter to Dr. Ryland: 
 
 " 22nd January 1808. Last year may be reckoned among 
 the most important which this mission has seen not for the 
 numbers converted among the natives, for they have been 
 fewer than in some preceding years, but for the gracious care 
 which God has exercised towards us. We have been enabled 
 to carry on the translation and printing of the Word of God 
 in several languages. The printing is now going on in six and 
 the translation into six more. The Bengali is all printed except 
 from Judges vii. to the end of Esther; Sanskrit New Testament 
 to Acts xxvii. ; Orissa to John xxi. ; Mahratta, second edition, 
 to the end of Matthew; Hindostani (new version) to Mark v., 
 and Matthew is begun in Goojarati. The translation is nearly 
 carried on to the end of John in Chinese, Telinga, Kurnata, and 
 
 N
 
 184 Life of William Carey 
 
 the language of the Seeks. It is carried on to a pretty large 
 extent in Persian and begun in Burman. The whole Bible was 
 printed in Malay at Batavia some years ago. The whole is 
 printed in Tamil, and the Syrian Bishop at Travancore is now 
 superintending a translation from Syriac into Malay ala. I 
 learnt this week that the language of Kashmeer is a distinct 
 language. 
 
 " I have this day been to visit the most learned Hindoo now 
 living; he speaks only Sanskrit, is more than eighty years old, 
 is acquainted with the writings and has studied the sentiments 
 of all their schools of philosophy (usually called the Darshunas 
 of the Veda). He tells me that this is the sixteenth time that 
 he has travelled from Rameshwaram to Harhu (viz. from the 
 extreme cape of the Peninsula to Benares). He was, he says, 
 near Madras when the English first took possession of it. This 
 man has given his opinion against the burning of women." 
 
 Four years later, in another letter to Ryland, he takes us 
 into his confidence more fully, showing us not only his sacred 
 workshop, but ingenuously revealing his own humility and 
 self-sacrifice: " loth December 1811. I have of late been much 
 impressed with the vast importance of laying a foundation for 
 Biblical criticism in the East, by preparing grammars of the 
 different languages into which we have translated or may 
 translate the Bible. Without some such step, they who follow 
 us will have to wade through the same labour that I have, in 
 order to stand merely upon the same ground that I now stand 
 upon. If, however, elementary books are provided, the labour 
 will be greatly contracted ; and a person will be %ble in a short 
 time to acquire that which has cost me years of study and toil. 
 
 " The necessity which lies upon me of acquiring so many 
 languages, obliges me to study and write out the grammar of 
 each of them, and to attend closely to their irregularities and 
 peculiarities. I have therefore already published grammars 
 of three of them; namely, the Sanskrit, the Bengali, and the 
 Mahratta. To these I have resolved to add grammars of the 
 Telinga, Kurnata, Orissa, Punjabi, Kashmeeri, Goojarati, 
 Nepalese, and Assam languages. Two of these are now in the 
 press, and I hope to have two or three more of them out by the 
 end of the next year. 
 
 " This may not only be useful in the way I have stated, but 
 may serve to furnish an answer to a question which has 
 been more than once repeated, ' How can these men translate 
 into so great a number of languages? ' Few people know
 
 The Wyclif of the East 185 
 
 what may be done till they try, and persevere in what they 
 undertake. 
 
 " I am now printing a dictionary of the Bengali, which will 
 be pretty large, for I have got to page 256, quarto, and am not 
 near through the first letter. That letter, however, begins 
 more words than any two others. 
 
 " To secure the gradual perfection of the translations, I 
 have also in my mind, and indeed have been long collecting 
 materials for, An Universal Dictionary of the Oriental languages 
 derived from the Sanskrit. I mean to take the Sanskrit, of course, 
 as the groundwork, and to give the different acceptations of 
 every word, with examples of their application, in the manner 
 of Johnson, and then to give the synonyms in the different 
 languages derived from the Sanskrit, with the Hebrew and 
 Greek terms answering thereto ; always putting the word derived 
 from the Sanskrit term first, and then those derived from other 
 sources. I intend always to give the etymology of the Sanskrit 
 term, so that that of the terms deduced from it in the cognate 
 languages will be evident. This work will be great, and it is 
 doubtful whether I shall live to complete it; but I mean to 
 begin to arrange the materials, which I have been some years 
 collecting for this purpose, as soon as my Bengali dictionary 
 is finished. Should I live to accomplish this, and the 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 important. Such 
 a man was found in William Yates, born in 1792, and in the 
 county, Leicestershire, in which Carey brought the Baptist 
 mission to the birth. Yates was in his early years also a shoe- 
 maker, and member of Carey's old church in Harvey Lane, 
 when under the great Robert Hall, who said to the youth's 
 father, " Your son, sir, will be a great scholar and a good 
 preacher, and he is a holy young man." In 1814 he became the 
 last of the young missionaries devoted to the cause by Fuller, 
 soon to pass away, Ryland, and Hall. Yates had not been many
 
 1 86 Life of William Carey 
 
 months at Serampore when, with the approval of his brethren, 
 Carey wrote to Fuller, on i7th May 1815 : " I am much inclined 
 to associate him with myself in the translations. My labour is 
 greater than at any former period. We have now translations 
 of the Bible going forward in twenty-seven languages, all of 
 which are in the press except two or three. The labour of 
 correcting and revising all of them lies on me." By September 
 we find Yates writing : " Dr. Carey sends all the Bengali proofs 
 to me to review. I read them over, and if there is anything 
 I do not understand, or think to be wrong, I mark it. We then 
 converse over it, and if it is wrong, he alters it; but if not, he 
 shows me the reason why it is right, and thus will initiate me 
 into the languages as fast as I can learn them. He wishes me 
 to begin the Hindi very soon. Since I have been here I have 
 read three volumes in Bengali, and they have but six of con- 
 sequence in prose. There are abundance in Sanskrit." " Dr. 
 Carey has treated me with the greatest affection and kindness, 
 and told me he will give me every information he can, and do 
 anything in his power to promote my happiness." What 
 Baruch was to the prophet Jeremiah, that Yates might have 
 been to Carey, who went so far in urging him to remain for life 
 in Serampore as to say, " if he did not accept the service it 
 would be, in his judgment, acting against Providence, and the 
 blessing of God was not to be expected." Yates threw in his 
 lot with the younger men who, in Calcutta after Fuller's death, 
 began the Society's as distinct from the Serampore mission. 
 If Carey was the Wyclif and Tyndale, Yates was the Coverdale 
 of the Bengali and Sanskrit Bible. Wenger, their successor, 
 was worthy of both. Bengal still waits for the first native 
 revision of the great work which these successive pioneers have 
 gradually improved. When shall Bengal see its own Luther? 
 
 The Bengali Bible was the first as it was the most important 
 of the translations. The province, or lieutenant-governorship 
 then had the same area as France, and contained more than 
 double its population, or eighty millions. Of the three principal 
 vernaculars, Bengali is spoken by forty-five millions of Hindoos 
 and Mohammedans. It was for all the natives of Bengal and 
 of India north of the Dekhan (" south ") tableland, but especially 
 for the Bengali-speaking people, that William Carey created a 
 literary language a century ago. 
 
 The first Bengali version of the whole New Testament Carey 
 translated from the original Greek before the close of 1796. 
 The only English commentary used was the Family Expositor
 
 The Wyclif of the East 1 87 
 
 of Doddridge, published in 1738, and then the most critical 
 in the language. Four times he revised the manuscript, with 
 a Greek concordance in his hand, and he used it not only with 
 Ram Basu by his side, the most accomplished of early Bengali 
 scholars, but with the natives around him of all classes. By 
 1800 Ward had arrived as printer, the press was perfected at 
 Serampore, and the result of seven years of toil appeared in 
 February 1801, in the first edition of 2000 copies, costing 
 612. The printing occupied nine months. The type was set 
 up by Ward and Carey's son Felix with their own hands ; " for 
 about a month at first we had a Brahman compositor, but we 
 were quite weary of him. We kept four pressmen constantly 
 employed." A public subscription had been opened for the 
 whole Bengali Bible at Rs. 32, or 4 a copy as exchange then was, 
 and nearly fifty copies had been at once subscribed for. It was 
 this edition which immediately led to Carey's appointment to 
 the College of Fort William, and it was that appointment which 
 placed Carey in a position, philological and financial, to give 
 the Bible to the peoples of the farther East in their own tongue. 
 Some loving memories cluster round the first Bengali version 
 of the New Testament which it is well to collect. On Tuesday, 
 1 8th March 1800, Ward's journal 1 records: "Brother Carey 
 took an impression at the press of the first page in Matthew." 
 The translator was himself the pressman. As soon as the whole 
 of this Gospel was ready, 500 copies of it were struck off for 
 immediate circulation, " which we considered of importance 
 as containing a complete life of the Redeemer." Four days 
 after an advertisement in the official Calcutta Gazette, announcing 
 that the missionaries had established a press at Serampore and 
 were printing the Bible in Bengali, roused Lord Wellesley, who 
 had fettered the press in British India. Mr. Brown was able 
 to inform the Governor-General that this very Serampore press 
 had refused to print a political attack on the English Government, 
 and that it was intended for the spiritual instruction only of the 
 natives. This called forth the assurance from that liberal states- 
 man that he was personally favourable to the conversion of the 
 heathen. When he was further told that such an Oriental press 
 would be invaluable to the College of Fort William, he not only 
 withdrew his opposition but made Carey first teacher of Bengali. 
 
 1 The fervent printer thus wrote to his Hull friends: "To give to a 
 man a New Testament who never saw it, who has been reading lies as the 
 Word of God; to give him these everlasting lines which angels would be 
 glad to read this, this is my blessed work."
 
 1 88 Life of William Carey 
 
 It was on the yth February 1801 that the last sheet with the 
 final corrections was put into Carey's hands. When a volume 
 had been bound it was reverently offered to God by being placed 
 on the Communion-table of the chapel, and the mission families 
 and the new-made converts gathered around it with solemn 
 thanksgiving to God led by Krishna Pal. Carey preached from 
 the words (Col. iii. n) " Let the Word of Christ dwell in you 
 richly in all wisdom." The centenary was celebrated in Calcutta 
 in 1901, under Dr. Rouse, whose fine scholarship had just 
 revised the translation. 
 
 When the first copies reached England, Andrew Fuller 
 sent one to the second Earl Spencer, the peer who had used 
 the wealth of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, to collect the great 
 library at Althorp. Carey had been a poor tenant of his, though 
 the Earl knew it not. When the Bengali New Testament 
 reached him, with its story, he sent a cheque for 50 to help to 
 translate the Old Testament, and he took care that a copy 
 should be presented to George III., as by his own request. Mr. 
 Bowyer was received one morning at Windsor, and along with 
 the volume presented an address expressing the desire that His 
 Majesty might live to see its principles universally prevail 
 throughout his Eastern dominions. On this the lord in waiting 
 whispered a doubt whether the book had come through the proper 
 channel. At once the king replied that the Board of Control had 
 nothing to do with it, and turning to Mr. Bowyer said, " I am 
 greatly pleased to find that any of my subjects are employed in 
 this manner." 
 
 This now rare volume, to be found on the shelves of the 
 Serampore College Library, where it leads the host of the Carey 
 translations, is coarse and unattractive in appearance compared 
 with its latest successors. In truth the second edition, which 
 appeared in 1806, was almost a new version. The criticism 
 of his colleagues and others, especially of a ripe Grecian like 
 Dr. Marshman, the growth of the native church, and his own 
 experience as a Professor of Sanskrit and Marathi as well as 
 Bengali, gave Carey new power in adapting the language to 
 the divine ideas of which he made it the medium. But the first 
 edition was not without its self-evidencing power. Seventeen 
 years after, when thehnission 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 truth- 
 fulness, and, as searching for a true teacher come from God, 
 called themselves " Satya-gooroos." They traced their new
 
 The Wyclif of the East 1 89 
 
 faith to a much-worn book kept in a wooden box in one of their 
 villages. No one could say whence it had come ; all they knew 
 was that they had possessed it for many years. It was Carey's 
 first Bengali version of the New Testament of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. In the wide and elastic bounds of 
 Hindooism, and even, as we shall see, amid fanatical Mussulmans 
 beyond the frontier, the Bible, dimly understood without a 
 teacher, has led to puritan sects like this, as to earnest inquirers 
 like the chamberlain of Queen Candace. 
 
 The third edition of the Bengali Testament was published 
 in 1811 in folio for the use of the native congregations by 
 that time formed. The fourth, consisting of 5000 copies, 
 appeared in 1816, and the eighth in 1832. The venerable 
 scholar, like Columba at lona 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 Testa- 
 ment from the Hebrew appeared in portions from 1802 to 1809. 
 Such was the ardour of the translator, that he had finished the 
 correction of his version of the first chapter of Genesis in January 
 1794. When he read it to two pundits from Nuddea, he told 
 Fuller in his journal of that month they seemed much pleased 
 with the account of the creation, but they objected to the 
 omission of patala, their imaginary place beneath the earth, 
 which they thought should have been mentioned. At this early 
 period Carey saw the weakness of Hindooism as a pretended 
 revelation, from its identification with false physics, just as 
 Duff was to see and use it afterwards with tremendous effect, 
 and wrote: " There is a necessity of explaining to them several 
 circumstances relative to geography and chronology, as they 
 have many superstitious opinions on those subjects which are 
 closely connected with their systems of idolatry." The Bengali 
 Bible was the result of fifteen years' sweet toil, in which Marsh- 
 man read the Greek and Carey the Bengali; every one of their 
 colleagues examined the proof sheets, and Carey finally wrote 
 with his own pen the whole of the five octavo volumes. In the 
 forty years of his missionary career Carey prepared and saw 
 through the press five editions of the Old Testament and eight 
 editions of the New in Bengali. 
 
 The Sanskrit version was translated from the original, and 
 written out by the toiling scholar himself. Sir William Jones 
 is said to have been able to secure his first pundit's help only by
 
 190 Life of William Carey 
 
 paying him Rs. 500 a month, or 700 a year. Carey engaged 
 and trained his many pundits at a twentieth of that sum. He 
 well knew that the Brahmans would scorn a book in the language 
 of the common people. " What," said one who was offered the 
 Hindi version, " even if the books should contain divine know- 
 ledge, they are nothing to us. The knowledge of God contained 
 in them is to us as milk in a vessel of dog's skin, utterly polluted." 
 But, writes the annalist of Biblical Translations in India, Carey's 
 Sanskrit version was cordially received by the Brahmans. 
 Destroyed in the fire in 1812, the Old Testament historical 
 books were again translated, and appeared in 1815. In 1827 
 the aged saint had strength to bring out the first volume of a 
 thorough revision, and to leave the manuscript of the second 
 volume, on his death, as a legacy to his successors, Yates and 
 Wenger. Against Vedas and Upanishads, Brahmanas and 
 Epics, he set the Sanskrit Bible. 
 
 The whole number of completely translated and published 
 versions of the sacred Scriptures which Carey sent forth was 
 twenty-eight. Of these seven included the whole Bible, and 
 twenty-one contained the books of the New Testament. Each 
 translation has a history, a spiritual romance of its own. Each 
 became almost immediately a silent but effectual missionary 
 to the peoples of Asia, as well as the scholarly and literary 
 pioneer of those later editions and versions from which the 
 native churches of farther Asia derive the materials of their 
 lively growth. 
 
 The Ooriya version was almost the first to be undertaken 
 after the Bengali, to which language it bears the same relation 
 as rural Scotch to English, though it has a written character 
 of its own. What is now the Orissa division of Bengal, separat- 
 ing it from Madras to the south-west, was added to the empire 
 in 1803. This circumstance, and the fact that its Pooree district, 
 after centuries of sun-worship and then shiva-worship, had 
 become the high-place of the vaishnava cult of Jaganath and 
 his car, which attracted and often slew hundreds of thousands 
 of pilgrims every year, led Carey to prepare at once for the press 
 the Ooriya Bible. The chief pundit, Mritunjaya, skilled in 
 both dialects, first adapted the Bengali version to the language 
 of the Ooriyas, which was his own. Carey then took the 
 manuscript, compared it with the original Greek, and corrected 
 it verse by verse. The New Testament was ready in 1809, 
 and the Old Testament in 1815, the whole in four volumes. 
 Large editions were quickly bought up and circulated. These
 
 The Wyclif of the East 1 9 1 
 
 led to the establishment of the General Baptist Society's mis- 
 sionaries at Cuttak, the capital. 
 
 In 1814 the Serampore Bible translation college, as we may 
 call it, began the preparation of the New Testament in Maghadi, 
 another of the languages allied to the Bengali, and derived from 
 the Sanskrit through the Pali, because that was the vernacular 
 of Buddhism in its original seat; an edition of 1000 copies 
 appeared in 1824. It was intended to publish a version in 
 the Maithili language of Bihar, which has a literature stretch^ 
 ing back to the fourteenth century, that every class might have 
 the Word of God in their own dialect. But Carey's literary 
 enthusiasm and scholarship had by this time done so much to 
 develop and extend the power of Bengali proper, that it had 
 begun to supersede all such dialects, except Ooriya and the 
 northern vernaculars of the valley of the Brahmapootra. In 
 1810 the Serampore press added the Assamese New Testament 
 to its achievements. In 1819 the first edition appeared, in 
 1826 the province became British, and in 1832 Carey had the 
 satisfaction of issuing the Old Testament, and setting apart 
 Mr. Rae, a Scottish soldier, who had settled there, as the first 
 missionary at Gowhatti. To these must be added, as in the 
 Bengali character though non- Aryan languages, versions in Khasi 
 and Manipoori, the former for the democratic tribes of the Khasia 
 hills among whom the Welsh Calvinists have since worked, 
 and the latter for the curious Hindoo snake-people on the border 
 of Burma, who have taught Europe the game of polo. 
 
 Another immediate successor of the Bengali translation was 
 the Marathi, of which also Carey was professor in the College 
 of Fort William. By 1804 he was himself hard at work on this 
 version, by 181 1 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 Lieu- 
 tenant Moxon in the army there. In 1812 Carey sent the mis- 
 sionary 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 j)f 
 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 trans- 
 lation, 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
 
 192 Life of William Carey 
 
 coast-range known as the Sahyadri or " delectable " mountains, 
 had nearly wrested the whole peninsula from the Mohammedans, 
 and had almost anticipated the life-giving rule of the British, 
 first at Panipat and then as Assye. Meanwhile new missionaries 
 had been taking possession of those western districts where the 
 men of Serampore had sowed the first seed and reaped the first 
 fruits. The charter of 1813 made it possible for the American 
 Missionaries to land there, and for the local Bible Society to 
 spring into existence. Dr. John Wilson and his Scottish col- 
 leagues followed them. Carey and his brethren welcomed these 
 and retired from that field, confining themselves to providing, 
 during the next seven years, a Goojarati version for the millions 
 of Northern Bombay, including the hopeful Parsees, and 
 resigning that, too, to the London Missionary Society after 
 issuing the New Testament in 1820. 
 
 Mr. Christopher Anderson justly remarks, in his Annals of 
 the English Bible, published half a century ago: "Time will 
 show, and in a very singular manner, that every version, without 
 exception, which came from Carey's hands, has a value affixed 
 to it which the present generation, living as it were too near an 
 object, is not yet able to estimate or descry. Fifty years hence 
 the character of this extraordinary and humble man will be 
 more correctly appreciated." 
 
 In none of the classes of languages derived from the Sanskrit 
 was the zeal of Carey and his associates so remarkable as in the 
 Hindi. So early as 1796 he wrote of this the most widely 
 extended offspring of the Sanskrit: " I have acquired so much 
 of the Hindi as to converse in it and preach for some time 
 intelligibly. ... It is the current language of all the west from 
 Rajmahal to Delhi, and perhaps farther. With this I can be 
 understood nearly all over Hindostan." By the time that he 
 issued the sixth memoir of the translations Chamberlain's 
 experiences in North- Western India led Carey to write that he 
 had ascertained the existence of twenty dialects of Hindi, with 
 the same vocabulary but different sets of terminations. The 
 Bruj or Brijbhasa Gospels were finished in 1813, two years after 
 Chamberlain had settled in Agra, and the New Testament was 
 completed nine years after. This version of the Gospels led 
 the Brahman priest, Anand Masih, to Christ. In their eager- 
 ness 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
 
 The Wyclif of the East 193 
 
 Gospels appeared, will be found at page 177. The parent 
 Hindi translation was made by Carey with his own hand from 
 the original languages between 1802 and 1807, and ran through 
 many large editions till Mr. Chamberlain's was preferred by 
 Carey himself in 1819. 
 
 We may pass over the story of the Dravidian versions, the 
 Telugoo l 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 em- 
 bedded. The writer was at the time in the Gundapoor country, 
 of which Kulachi is the trade-centre between the Afghan pass 
 of Ghwalari and Dera Ismail Kan, where the dust of Sir Henry 
 Durand now lies : 
 
 " A highly interesting circumstance connected with the 
 Indian trade came under my notice. Ali Khan, Gundapoor, 
 the uncle of the present chief, Gooldad Khan, told me he could 
 remember well, as a youth, being sent by his father and elder 
 brother with a string of Cabul horses to the fair of Hurdwar , on 
 the Ganges. He also showed me a Pushtoo version of the Bible, 
 printed at Serampore in 1818, which he said had been given him 
 thirty years before at Hurdwar by an English gentleman, who 
 told him to ' take care of it, and neither fling it into the fire nor 
 the river; but hoard it up against the day when the British 
 should be rulers of his country ! ' Ali Khan said little to any- 
 body of his possessing this book, but put it carefully by in a 
 linen cover, and produced it with great mystery when I came to 
 settle the revenue of his nephew's country, ' thinking that the 
 time predicted by the Englishman had arrived ! ' The only 
 person, I believe, to whom he had shown the volume was a 
 Moolluh, who read several passages in the Old Testament, and 
 
 1 In 1795 Captain Dodds, a Madras officer from Scotland, translated 
 part of the Bible into Telugoo, and, lingering on in the country to complete 
 the work, died seven days after the date of his letter on the subject in the 
 Missionary Magazines of 1796.
 
 1 94 Life of William Carey 
 
 and told All Khan ' it was a true story, and was all about their 
 own Muhommudan prophets, Father Moses and Father Noah.' 
 
 " I examined the book with great interest. It was not 
 printed in the Persian character, but the common Pushtoo 
 language of Afghanistan; and was the only specimen I had 
 ever seen of Pushtoo reduced to writing. The accomplishment 
 of such a translation was a highly honourable proof of the zeal 
 and industry of the Serampore mission ; and should these pages 
 ever meet the eye of Mr. John Marshman, of Serampore, 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.' " 
 
 Hurdwar, as the spot at which the Ganges debouches into the 
 plains, is the scene of the greatest pilgrim gathering in India, 
 especially every twelfth year. Then three millions of people 
 used to assemble, and too often carried, all over Asia, cholera 
 which extended to Europe. The missionaries made this, like 
 most pilgrim resorts, a centre of preaching and Bible circula- 
 tion, and doubtless it was from Thompson, Carey's Missionary 
 at Delhi, that this copy of the Pushtoo Bible was received. It 
 was begun by Dr. Leyden, and continued for seven years by 
 the same Afghan maulavee under Carey, in the Arabic character. 
 The Punjabi Bible, nearly complete, issued first in 1815, had 
 become so popular by 1820 as to lead Carey to report of the 
 Sikhs that no one of the nations of India had discovered a 
 stronger desire for the Scriptures than this hardy race. At 
 Amritsar and Lahore " the book of Jesus is spoken of, is read, 
 and has caused a considerable stir in the minds of the people." 
 A Thug, asked how he could have committed so many murders, 
 pointed to it and said, " If I had had this book I could not have 
 done it." A fakeer, forty miles from Lodiana, read the book, 
 founded the community of worshippers of the Sachi Pite Isa, 
 and suffered much persecution in a native State. 
 
 When Felix Carey returned to Serampore in 1812 to print his 
 
 Burmese version of the Gospel of Matthew and his Burmese 
 
 grammar, his father determined to send the press at which they 
 
 were completed to Rangoon. The three missionaries despatched 
 
 1 Then Editor of the Friend of India.
 
 The Wyclif of the East 195 
 
 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 Seram- 
 pore a printing-press, like that at Rangoon, for his own palace 
 at Ava, with workmen to use it. In this Carey saw the begin- 
 ning of a mission in the Burman capital, but God had other 
 designs which the sons and daughters of America, following 
 Judson first of all, are still splendidly developing, from Rangoon 
 to Kareng-nee, Siam, and China. The ship containing the 
 press sank in the Rangoon river, and the first Burmese war 
 soon followed. 
 
 Three months after the complete and magnificent plan of 
 translating the Bible into all the languages of the far East, 
 which the assistance of his two colleagues and the college of 
 Fort William led Carey to form, had been laid before Fuller in 
 Northamptonshire, the British and Foreign Bible Society was 
 founded in London. Joseph Hughes, the Nonconformist who 
 was its first secretary, had been moved by the need of the Welsh 
 for the Bible in their own tongue. But the ex-Governor- 
 General, Lord Teignmouth, became its first president, and the 
 Serampore translators at once turned for assistance to the new 
 organisation whose work Carey had individually been doing 
 for ten years at the cost of his two associates and himself. The 
 catholic Bible Society at once asked Carey's old friend, Mr. 
 Udny, then a member of the Government in Calcutta, to form 
 a corresponding committee there of the three missionaries 
 their chaplain friends, Brown and Buchanan, and himself. 
 The chaplains delayed the formation of the committee till 
 1809, but liberally helped meanwhile in the circulation of the 
 other appeals issued from Serampore, and even made the 
 proposal which resulted in Dr. Marshman's wonderful version 
 of the Bible in Chinese and Ward's improvements in Chinese 
 printing. To the principal tributary sovereigns of India Dr. 
 Buchanan sent copies of the vernacular Scriptures already 
 published. 
 
 From 1809 till 1830, or practically through the rest of Carey's 
 life, the co-operation of Serampore and the Bible Society was 
 honourable to both. Carey loyally clung to it when in 1811, 
 under the spell of Henry Marty n's sermon on Christian India,
 
 196 Life of William Carey 
 
 the chaplains established the Calcutta Auxiliary Bible Society 
 in order to supersede its corresponding committee. In the 
 Serampore press the new auxiliary, like the parent Society, 
 found the cheapest and best means of publishing editions of 
 the New Testament in Singhalese, Malayalam, and Tamil. 
 The press issued also the Persian New Testament, first of the 
 Romanist missionary, Sebastiani " though it be not wholly 
 free from imperfections, it will doubtless do much good," wrote 
 Dr. Marshman to Fuller and then of Henry Martyn, whose 
 assistant, Sabat, was trained at Serampore. Those three of 
 Serampore had a Christ-like tolerance, which sprang from the 
 divine charity of their determination to live only that the Word 
 of God might sound out through Asia. When in 1830 this 
 auxiliary which had at first sought to keep all missionaries 
 out of its executive in order to conciliate men like Sydney 
 Smith's brother, the Advocate-General of Bengal refused to 
 use the translations of Carey and Yates, and inclined to an 
 earlier version of Ellerton, because of the translation or trans- 
 literation of the Greek words for " baptism," these two scholars 
 acted thus, as described by the Bible Society's annalist they, 
 " with a liberality which does them honour, permitted the use 
 of their respective versions of the Bengali Scriptures, with such 
 alterations as were deemed needful in the disputed word for 
 ' baptism,' they being considered in no way parties to such 
 alterations." From first to last the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society, to use its own language, " had the privilege of aiding 
 the Serampore brethren by grants, amounting to not less than 
 13,500." Of this 1475 had been raised by Mr. William Hey, 
 F.R.S., a surgeon at Leeds, who had been so moved by the 
 translation memoir of 1816 as to offer 500 for the publication 
 of a thousand copies of every approved first translation of the 
 New Testament into any dialect of India. It was with this 
 assistance that most of the Hindi and the Pushtoo and Punjabi 
 versions were produced. 
 
 The cold season of 1811-12 was one ever to be remembered. 
 Death entered the home of each of the staff of seven missionaries 
 and carried off wife or children. An earthquake of unusual 
 violence alarmed the natives. Dr. Carey had buried a grandson, 
 and was at his weekly work in the college at Calcutta. The 
 sun had just set on the evening of the nth 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 Wyclif of the East 1 97 
 
 the north end of the long printing-office. The south rooms 
 were filled with paper and printed materials. Close beyond was 
 the paper-mill. The Bible-publishing enterprise was at its 
 height. Fourteen founts of Oriental types, new supplies of 
 Hebrew, Greek, and English types, a vast stock of paper from 
 the Bible Society, presses, priceless manuscripts of dictionaries, 
 grammars, and translations, and, above all, the steel punches 
 of the Eastern letters all were there, with the deeds and account- 
 books of the property, and the iron safe containing notes and 
 rupees. Suffocating smoke burst from the long type-room into 
 the office. Rushing through it to observe the source of the fire, 
 he was arrested at the southern rooms by the paper store. 
 Returning with difficulty and joined by Marshman and the 
 natives, he had every door and window closed, and then mount- 
 ing the south roof, he had water poured through it upon the 
 burning mass for four hours, with the most hopeful prospect of 
 arresting the ruin. While he was busy with Marshman in re- 
 moving the papers in the north end some one opened a window, 
 when the air set the entire building on flame. By midnight 
 the roof fell in along its whole length, and the column of fire leapt 
 up towards heaven. With " solemn serenity " the members 
 of the mission family remained seated in front of the desolation. 
 
 The ruins were still smoking when next evening Dr. Carey 
 arrived from Calcutta, which was ringing with the sad news. 
 The venerable scholar had suffered most, for his were the 
 manuscripts; the steel punches were found uninjured. The 
 Sikh and Telugoo grammars and ten Bible versions in the press 
 were gone. Second editions of Confucius, A Dissertation on the 
 Chinese Language, and of Ward on the Hindoos, and smaller 
 works were destroyed. The translation of the Ramayana, on 
 which he and Marshman had been busy for a year, was stopped 
 for ever; fifty years after the present writer came upon some 
 charred sheets of the fourth volume, which had been on the 
 press and rescued. The Circular Letter for April 1812 is printed 
 on paper scorched at the edge. Worst of all was the loss of that 
 polyglot dictionary of all the languages derived from the Sanskrit 
 which, if Carey had felt any of this world's ambition, would have 
 perpetuated his name in the first rank of philologists. 
 
 With the delicacy which always marked him Dr. Marshman 
 had himself gone down to Calcutta next morning to break the 
 news to Carey, who received it with choking utterance. The 
 two then called on the friendly chaplain, Thomason, who burst 
 into tears. When the afternoon tide enabled the three to reach
 
 198 Life of William Carey 
 
 Serampore, after a two hours' hard pull at the flood, they found 
 Ward rejoicing. He had been all day clearing away the rubbish, 
 and had just discovered the punches and matrices unharmed. 
 The five presses too were untouched. He had already opened out 
 a long warehouse nearer the river-shore, the lease of which had 
 fallen in to them, and he had already planned the occupation 
 of that uninviting place in which the famous press of Serampore 
 and, at the last, the Friend of India weekly newspaper found a 
 home till 1875. The description of the scene and of its effect 
 on Carey by an eye-witness like Thomason has a value of its 
 own: 
 
 "The year 1812 was ushered in by an earthquake which was 
 preceded by a loud noise; the house shook; the oil in the lamps 
 on the walls was thrown out; the birds made a frightful noise; the 
 natives ran from their houses, calling on the names of their gods; 
 the sensation is most awful; we read the forty-sixth Psalm. This 
 fearful prodigy was succeeded by that desolating disaster, the 
 Serampore fire. I could scarcely believe the report; it was like a 
 blow on the head which stupefies. I flew to Serampore to witness 
 the desolation. The scene was indeed affecting. The immense 
 printing-office, two hundred feet long and fifty broad, reduced to a 
 mere shell. The yard covered with burnt quires of paper, the loss 
 in which article was immense. Carey walked with me over the 
 smoking ruins. The tears stood in his eyes. ' In one short evening,' 
 said he, ' the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable 
 are the ways of God! I had lately brought some things to the 
 utmost perfection of which they seemed capable, and contemplated 
 the missionary establishment with perhaps too much self-con- 
 gratulation. The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more 
 simply to Hun.' Who could stand in such a place, at such a time, 
 with such a man, without feelings of sharp regret and solemn 
 exercise of mind. I saw the ground strewed with half-consumed 
 paper, on which in the course of a very few months the words of 
 life would have been printed. The metal under our feet amidst the 
 ruins was melted into misshapen lumps the sad remains of beauti- 
 ful 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: 
 " 2th March 1812. The loss is very great, and will long be 
 severely felt; yet I can think of a hundred circumstances which 
 would have made it much more difficult to bear. The Lord has 
 smitten us, he had a right to do so, and we deserve his corrections. 
 I wish to submit to His sovereign will, nay, cordially to acquiesce
 
 The Wyclif of the East 199 
 
 therein, and to examine myself rigidly to see what in me has 
 contributed to this evil. 
 
 " I now, however, turn to the bright side; and here I might 
 mention what still remains to us, and the merciful circum- 
 stances which attend even this stroke of God's rod; but I will 
 principally notice what will tend to cheer the heart of every 
 one who feels for the cause of God. Our loss, so far as I can see, 
 is reparable in a much shorter time than I should at first have 
 supposed. The Tamil fount of types was the first that we began 
 to recast. I expect it will be finished by the end of this week, 
 just a fortnight after it was begun. The next will be the small 
 Devanagari, for the Hindostani Scriptures, and next the larger 
 for the Sanskrit. I hope this will be completed in another 
 month. The other founts, viz., Bengali, Orissa, Sikh, Telinga, 
 Singhalese, Mahratta, Burman, Kashmeerian, Arabic, Persian, 
 and Chinese, will follow in order, and will probably be finished 
 in six or seven months, except the Chinese, which will take more 
 than a year to replace it. I trust, therefore, that we shall not 
 be greatly delayed. Our English works will be delayed the 
 longest; but in general they are of the least importance. Of 
 MSS. burnt I have suffered the most; that is, what was actually 
 prepared by me, and what owes its whole revision for the press 
 to me, comprise the principal part of the MSS. consumed. The 
 ground must be trodden over again, but no delay in printing 
 need arise from that. The translations are all written out first 
 by pundits in the different languages, except the Sanskrit which 
 is dictated by me to an amanuensis. The Sikh, Mahratta, 
 Hindostani, Orissa, Telinga, Assam, and Kurnata are re- 
 translating in rough by pundits who have been long accustomed 
 to their work, and have gone over the ground before. I follow 
 them in revise, the chief part of which is done as the sheets pass 
 through the press, and is by far the heaviest part of the work. 
 Of the Sanskrit only the second book of Samuel and the first 
 book of Kings were lost. Scarcely any of the Orissa, and none 
 of the Kashmeerian or of the Burman MSS. were lost copy for 
 about thirty pages of my Bengali dictionary, the whole copy of 
 a Telinga grammar, part of the copy of the grammar of Punjabi 
 or Sikh language, and all the materials which I had been long 
 collecting for a dictionary of all the languages derived from the 
 Sanskrit. I hope, however, to be enabled to repair the loss, and 
 to complete my favourite scheme, if my life be prolonged." 
 
 Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their work, 
 dream that this fire would prove to be the means of making 
 
 o
 
 200 Life of William Carey 
 
 them and their work famous all over Europe and America as 
 well as India. Men of every Christian school, and men 
 interested only in the literary and secular side of their enter- 
 prise, had their active sympathy called out. The mere money 
 loss, at the exchange of the day, was not under ten thousand 
 pounds. In fifty days this was raised in England and Scotland 
 alone, till Fuller, returning from his last campaign, entered the 
 room of his committee, declaring " we must stop the contribu- 
 tions." In Greenock, for instance, every place of worship on 
 one Sunday collected money. In the United States Mr. Robert 
 Ralston, a Presbyterian, a merchant of Philadelphia, who as 
 Carey's correspondent had been the first American layman to 
 help missions to India, and Dr. Staughton, who had taken an 
 interest in the formation of the Society in 1792 before he 
 emigrated, had long assisted the translation work, and now that 
 Judson was on his way out they redoubled their exertions. In 
 India Thomason's own congregation sent the missionaries 800, 
 and Brown wrote from his dying bed a message of loving help. 
 The newspapers of Calcutta caught the enthusiasm; one lead- 
 ing article concluded with the assurance that the Serampore 
 press would, " like the phoenix of antiquity, rise from its ashes, 
 winged with new strength, and destined, in a lofty and long- 
 enduring flight, widely to diffuse the benefits of knowledge 
 throughout the East." The day after the fire ceased to smoke 
 Monohur was at the task of casting type from the lumps of the 
 molten metal. 
 
 In two months after the first intelligence Fuller was able to 
 send as " feathers of the phoenix " slips of sheets of the Tamil 
 Testament, printed from these types, to the towns and churches 
 which had subscribed. Every fortnight a fount was cast; in a 
 month all the native establishment was at work night and day. 
 In six months the whole loss in Oriental types was repaired. 
 The Ramayana version and Sanskrit polyglot dictionary were 
 never resumed. But of the Bible translations and grammars, 
 Carey and his two heroic brethren wrote: "We found, on 
 making the trial, that the advantages in going over the same 
 ground a second time were so great that they fully counter- 
 balanced the time requisite to be devoted thereto in a second 
 translation." The fire, in truth, the cause of which was never 
 discovered, and insurance against which did not exist in India, 
 had given birth to revised editions.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY 
 
 The growth of a language Carey identified with the transition stage of 
 Bengali First printed books Carey's own works His influence on 
 indigenous writers His son's works Bengal the first heathen country 
 to receive the press The first Bengali newspaper The monthly and 
 quarterly Friend of India The Hindoo revival of the eighteenth 
 century fostered by the East India Company Carey's three memorials 
 to Government on female infanticide, voluntary drowning, and widow- 
 burning What Jonathan Duncan and Col. Walker had done 
 Wellesley's regulation to prevent the sacrifice of children Beginning 
 of the agitation against the Suttee crime Carey's pundits more 
 enlightened than the Company's judges Humanity triumphs in 1832 
 Carey's share in Ward's book on the Hindoos The lawless 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 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 
 
 201
 
 202 Life of William Carey 
 
 by a national language and literature lighted up with the ideas 
 of the Book which he is the first to translate. 
 
 This was what Carey did for the speech of the Bengalees. 
 To them, as the historians of the fast approaching Christian 
 future will recognise, he was made what the Saxon Boniface had 
 become to the Germans, or the Northumbrian Baeda and 
 Wyclif to the English. The transition period of English, from 
 1150 when its modern grammatical form prevailed, to the 
 fifteenth century when the rich dialects gave place to the 
 literary standard, has its central date in 1362. Then Edward 
 the Third made English take the place of French as the public 
 language of justice and legislation, closely followed by Wyclif 's 
 English Bible. Carey's one Indian life of forty years marks 
 the similar transition stage of Bengali, including the parallel 
 regulation of 1829, which abolished Persian, made by the 
 Mohammedan conquerors the language of the courts, and put in 
 its place Bengali and the vernaculars of the other provinces. 
 
 When Carey began to work in Calcutta and Dinapoor in 
 1792-93 Bengali had no printed and hardly any written literature. 
 The very written characters were justly described by Colebrooke 
 as nothing else but the difficult and beautiful Sanskrit Devana- 
 gari 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 Bengali though " it arose from the tomb of the 
 Sanskrit," as Italian did from Latin under Dante's inspiration 
 as fit only for " demons and women." In the generation 
 before Carey there flourished at the same Oxford of India, as 
 Nuddea has been called, Raja Krishna Rai, who did for Bengali 
 what our own King Alfred accomplished for English prose. 
 Moved, however, chiefly by a zeal for Hindooism, which caused 
 him to put a Soodra to death for marrying into a Brahman 
 family, he himself wrote the vernacular and spent money in 
 gifts, which " encouraged the people to study Bengali with 
 unusual diligence." But when, forty years after that, Carey 
 visited Nuddea he could not discover more than forty separate 
 works, all in manuscript, as the whole literature of 30,000,000 
 of people up to that time. A press had been at work on the 
 opposite side of the river for fifteen years, but Halhed's grammar 
 was still the only as it was the most ancient printed book. One 
 
 1 The Chaitanya Charita Amrita, by Krishna Dass in 1557, was the first 
 of importance.
 
 Literature and Humanity 203 
 
 Baboo Ram, from Upper India, was the first native who estab- 
 lished a press in Calcutta, and that only under the influence of 
 Colebrooke, to print the Sanskrit classics. The first Bengali 
 who, on his own account, printed works in the vernacular on 
 trade principles, was Gunga Kishore, whom Carey and Ward 
 had trained at Serampore. He soon made so large a fortune 
 by his own press that three native rivals had sprung up by 1820, 
 when twenty -seven separate books, or 15,000 copies, had been 
 sold to natives within ten years. 
 
 For nearly all these Serampore supplied the type. But all 
 were in another sense the result of Carey's action. His first 
 edition of the Bengali New Testament appeared in 1801, his 
 Grammar in the same year, and at the same time his Colloquies, 
 or " dialogues intended to facilitate the acquiring of the Bengali 
 language," which he wrote out of the abundance of his know- 
 ledge of native thought, idioms, and even slang, to enable 
 students to converse with all classes of society, as Erasmus had 
 done in another way. His Dictionary of 80,000 words began to 
 appear in 1815. Knowing, however, that in the long run the 
 literature of a nation must be of indigenous growth, he at once 
 pressed the natives into this service. His first pundit, Ram 
 Basu, was a most accomplished Bengali scholar. This able man, 
 who lacked the courage to profess Christ in the end, wrote the 
 first tract, the Gospel Messenger, and the first pamphlet expos- 
 ing Hindooism, both of which had an enormous sale and caused 
 much excitement. On the historical side Carey induced him to 
 publish in 1801 the Life of Raja Pratapaditya, the last king of 
 Sagar Island. At first the new professor could not find reading 
 books for his Bengali class in the college of Fort William. He, 
 his pundits, especially Mritunjaya who has been compared in his 
 physique and knowledge to Dr. Samuel Johnson, and even the 
 young civilian students, were for many years compelled to write 
 Bengali text-books, including translations of Virgil's /Eneid 
 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
 
 204 Life of William Carey 
 
 coadjutor of Ram Komal Sen, as the author of the first volume 
 of a Bengali encyclopaedia on anatomy, as the translator of 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim, Goldsmith's History of England, and Mill's 
 History of India. 
 
 Literature cannot be said to exist for the people till the 
 newspaper appears. Bengal was the first non-Christian country 
 into which the press had ever been introduced. Above all 
 forms of truth and faith Christianity seeks free discussion; in 
 place of that the missionaries lived under a shackled press law 
 tempered by the higher instincts of rulers like Wellesley, 
 Hastings, and Bentinck, till Macaulay and Metcalfe gained for 
 it liberty. When Dr. Marshman in 1818 proposed the publica- 
 tion of a Bengali periodical, Dr. Carey, impressed by a quarter 
 of a century's intolerance, consented only on the condition that 
 it should be a monthly magazine, and should avoid political 
 discussion. Accordingly the Dig-darshan appeared, anticipating 
 in its contents and style the later Penny and Saturday Magazines, 
 and continued for three years. Its immediate success led to the 
 issue from the Serampore press on the 3ist May 1818, of " the 
 first newspaper ever printed in any Oriental language " the 
 Samachar Darpan, or News Mirror. 
 
 It was a critical hour when the first proof of the first number 
 was laid before the assembled brotherhood at the weekly 
 meeting on Friday evening. Dr. Carey, fearing for his spiritual 
 work, but eager for this new avenue to the minds of the people 
 who were being taught to read, and had little save their own 
 mythology, consented to its publication when Dr. Marshman 
 promised to send a copy, with an analysis of its contents in 
 English, to the Government, and to stop the enterprise if it 
 should be officially disapproved. Lord Hastings was fighting 
 the Pindarees, and nothing was said by his Council. On his 
 return he declared that " the effect of such a paper must be 
 extensively and importantly useful." He allowed it to circulate 
 by post at one-fourth the then heavy rate. The natives 
 welcomed their first newspaper. Although it avoided religious 
 controversy, in a few weeks an opposition journal was issued 
 by a native, who sought to defend Hindooism under the title 
 of the Destroyer of Darkness. To the Darpan the educated 
 natives looked as the means of bringing the oppression of their 
 own countrymen to the knowledge of the public and the authori- 
 ties. Government found it most useful for contradicting silly 
 rumours and promoting contentment if not loyalty. The paper
 
 Literature and Humanity 205 
 
 gave a new development to the Bengali language as well as to 
 the moral and political education of the people. 
 
 The same period of liberty to the press and to native advance- 
 ment, with which the names of the Marquis of Hastings and his 
 accomplished wife will ever be associated, saw the birth of an 
 English periodical which, for the next fifty-seven years, was 
 to become not merely famous but powerfully useful as the 
 Friend of India. The title was the selection of Dr. Marshman, 
 and the editorial management was his and his able son's down 
 to 1852, when it passed into the hands of Mr. Meredith Townsend, 
 long the most brilliant of English journalists, and finally into 
 those of the present writer. For some years a monthly and for 
 a time a quarterly magazine till 1835, when Mr. John Marshman 
 made it the well-known weekly, this journal became the means 
 through which Carey and the brotherhood fought the good 
 fight of humanity. In the monthly and quarterly Friend, 
 moreover, reprinted as much of it was in London, the three 
 philanthropists brought their ripe experience and lofty principles 
 to bear on the conscience of England and of educated India 
 alike. As, on the Oriental side, Carey chose for his weapon the 
 vernacular, on the other he drew from Western sources the 
 principles and the thoughts which he clothed in a Bengali dress. 
 We have already seen how Carey at the end of the eighteenth 
 century found Hindooism at its worst. Steadily had the 
 Pooranic corruption and the Brahmanical oppression gone on 
 demoralising the whole of Hindoo society. In the period of 
 virtual anarchy, which covered the seventy-five years from the 
 death of Aurangzeb to the supremacy of Warren Hastings and 
 the reforms of Lord Cornwallis, the healthy zeal of Islam against 
 the idolatrous abominations of the Hindoos had ceased. In 
 its place there was not only a wild license amounting to an 
 undoubted Hindoo revival, marked on the political side by the 
 Maratha ascendency, but there came to be deliberate encourage- 
 ment of the worst forms of Hindooism by the East India Com- 
 pany and its servants. That " the mischievous reaction " on 
 England from India its idolatry, its women, its nabobs, its 
 wealth, its absolutism was prevented, and European civilisa- 
 tion was " after much delay and hesitation " brought to bear 
 on India, was due indeed to the legislation of Governor-Generals 
 from Cornwallis to Bentinck, but much more, to the persistent 
 agitation of Christian missionaries, notably Carey and Duff. 
 For years Carey stood alone in India as Grant and Wilberforce 
 did in England, in the darkest hour of England's moral degrada-
 
 206 Life of William Carey 
 
 tion and spiritual death, when the men who were shaping the 
 destinies of India were the Hindooising Stewarts and Youngs, 
 Prendergasts, Twinings, and Warings, some of whom hated 
 missions from the dread of sedition, others because their hearts 
 " seduced by fair idolatresses had fallen to idols foul." 
 
 The most atrociously inhuman of all the Brahmanical customs, 
 and yet the most universal, from the land of the five rivers at 
 Lahore to the far spice islands at Bali, was the murder of widows 
 by burning or burying them alive with the husband's corpse. 
 We have seen how the first of the many such scenes which he 
 was doomed to witness for the next thirty years affected Carey. 
 After remonstrances, which the people met first by argument 
 and then by surly threats, Carey wrote: " I told them I would 
 not go, that I was determined to stay and see the murder, and 
 that I should certainly bear witness of it at the tribunal of God." 
 And when he again sought to interfere because the two stout 
 bamboos always fixed for the purpose of preventing the victim's 
 escape were pressed down on the shrieking woman like levers, 
 and they persisted, he wrote: " We could not bear to see more, 
 but left them exclaiming loudly against the murder and full of 
 horror at what we had seen." The remembrance of that sight 
 never left Carey. His naturally cheerful spirit was inflamed 
 to indignation all his life through, till his influence, more than 
 that of any other one man, at last prevailed to put out for ever 
 the murderous pyre. Had Lord Wellesley remained Governor- 
 General a year longer Carey would have succeeded in 1808, 
 instead of having to wait till 1829, and to know as he waited 
 and prayed that literally every day saw the devilish smoke 
 ascending along the banks of the Ganges, and the rivers and 
 pools considered sacred by the Hindoos. Need we wonder that 
 when on a Sunday morning the regulation of Lord William 
 Bentinck prohibiting the crime reached him as he was meditating 
 his sermon, he sent for another to do the preaching, and taking 
 his pen in his hand, at once wrote the official translation, and 
 had it issued in the Bengali Gazette that not another day might 
 be added to the long black catalogue of many centuries ? 
 
 On the return of the Marquis Wellesley to Calcutta from 
 the Tipoo war, and his own appointment to the College of Fort 
 William, Carey felt that his time had come to prevent the 
 murder of the innocents all over India in the three forms of 
 female infanticide, voluntary drowning, and widow-burning or 
 burying alive. His old friend, Udny, having become a member 
 of Council or colleague of the Governor-General, he prepared
 
 Literature and Humanity 207 
 
 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 : 
 
 " 2"jth 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 multi- 
 tudes of Hindoos, chiefly wives with children and widows with 
 heavy hearts, assembled to wash away their sins to sacrifice the 
 fruit of their body for the sin of their soul. Since 1794, when 
 Thomas and he had found in a basket hanging on a tree the bones 
 of an infant exposed, to be devoured by the white ants, by some 
 mother too poor to go on pilgrimage to a sacred river-spot, 
 Carey had known this unnatural horror. He and his brethren 
 had planned a preaching tour to Sagar, where not only mothers 
 drowned their first born in payment of avow, with the encourage- 
 ment of the Brahmans, but widows and even men walked into 
 the deep sea and drowned themselves at the spot where Ganga 
 and Sagar kiss each other, " as the highest degree of holiness, 
 and as securing immediate heaven." The result of Carey's 
 memorial was the publication of the Regulation for preventing 
 the sacrifice of children at Sagar and other places on the Ganges : 
 " It has been represented to the Governor-General in Council 
 that a criminal and inhuman practice of sacrificing children, by 
 exposing them to be drowned or devoured by sharks, prevails. . . . 
 Children thrown into the sea at Sagar have not been generally 
 rescued . . . but the sacrifice has been effected with circum- 
 stances of peculiar atrocity in some instances. This practice
 
 208 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 recom- 
 mendation of Sati, literally the " method of purity " which the 
 Hindoo shastras require when they recommend the bereaved 
 wife to burn with her husband. Surely, reasoned the Rajpoots, 
 we may destroy a daughter by abortion, starvation, suffocation, 
 strangulation, or neglect, of whose marriage in the line of caste 
 and dignity of family there is little prospect, if a widow may be 
 burned to preserve her chastity ! 
 
 In answer to Carey's third memorial Lord Wellesley took 
 the first step, on 5th February 1805, in the history of British 
 India, two centuries after Queen Elizabeth had given the 
 Company its mercantile charter, and half a century after 
 Plassey had given it political power, to protect from murder 
 the widows who had been burned alive, at least since the time 
 of Alexander the Great. This was the first step in the history 
 of British but not of Mohammedan India, for our predecessors 
 had by decree forbidden and in practice discouraged the crime. 
 Lord Wellesley's colleagues were still the good Udny, the great 
 soldier Lord Lake and Sir George Barlow. The magistrate of 
 Bihar had on his own authority prevented a child-widow of 
 twelve, when drugged by the Brahmans, from being burned 
 alive, after which, he wrote, " the girl and her friends were 
 extremely grateful for my interposition." Taking advantage 
 of this case, the Government asked the appellate judges, all 
 Company's servants, to " ascertain how far the practice is 
 founded on the religious opinions of the Hindoos. If not 
 founded on any precept of their law, the Governor-General in 
 Council hopes that the custom may gradually, if not immediately, 
 be altogether abolished. If, however, the entire abolition 
 should appear to the Court to be impracticable in itself, or in- 
 expedient, as offending any established religious opinion of the 
 Hindoos," the Court were desired to consider the best means of 
 preventing the abuses, such as the use of drugs and the sacrifice 
 of those of immature age. But the preamble of this reference 
 to the judges declared it to be one of the fundamental principles 
 of the British Government to consult the religious opinions of 
 the natives, " consistently with the principles of morality, reason, 
 and humanity." There spoke Carey and Udny, and Wellesley
 
 Literature and Humanity 209 
 
 himself. But for another quarter of a century the funeral 
 pyres were to blaze with the living also, because that caveat 
 was set aside, that fundamental maxim of the constitution of 
 much more than the British Government of the conscience of 
 humanity, was carefully buried up. The judges asked the 
 pundits whether the woman is " enjoined " by the shaster 
 voluntarily to burn herself with the body of her husband. They 
 replied " every woman of the four castes is permitted to burn 
 herself," except in certain cases enumerated, and they quoted 
 Manoo, who is against the custom in so far as he says that a 
 virtuous wife ascends to heaven if she devotes herself to pious 
 austerities after the decease of her lord. 
 
 This opinion would have been sufficient to give the requisite 
 native excuse to Government for the abolition, but the Nizamat 
 Adawlat judges urged the " principle " of " manifesting every 
 possible indulgence to the religious opinions and prejudices of 
 the natives," ignoring morality, reason, and humanity alike. 
 Lord Wellesley's long and brilliant administration of eight years 
 was virtually at an end: in seven days he was to embark for 
 home. The man who had preserved the infants from the sharks 
 of Sagar had to leave the widows and their children to be saved 
 by the civilians Carey and he had personally trained, Metcalfe 
 and Bayley, who by 1829 had risen to Council and become 
 colleagues of Lord W. Bentinck. But Lord Wellesley did this 
 much, he declined to notice the so-called " prohibitory regula- 
 tions " recommended by the civilian judges. These, when 
 adopted in the year 1812, made the British Government 
 responsible by legislation for every murder thereafter, and 
 greatly increased the number of murders. From that date the 
 Government of India decided " to allow the practice," as 
 recognised and encouraged by the Hindoo religion, except in 
 cases of compulsion, drugging, widows under sixteen, and proved 
 pregnancy. The police natives were to be present, and to 
 report every case. At the very time the British Parliament 
 were again refusing in the charter discussions of 1813 for another 
 twenty years to tolerate Christianity in its Eastern dependency, 
 the Indian legislature legalised the burning and burying alive 
 of widows, who numbered at least 6000 in nine only of the next 
 sixteen years, from 1815 to 1823 inclusive. 
 
 From Plassey in 1757 to 1829, three quarters of a century, 
 Christian England was responsible, at first indirectly and then 
 most directly, for the known immolation of at least 70,000 
 Hindoo widows. Carey was the first to move the authorities;
 
 2 1 o Life of William Carey 
 
 Udny and Wellesley were the first to begin action against an 
 atrocity so long continued and so atrocious. While the 
 Governor-Generals and their colleagues passed away, Carey and 
 his associates did not cease to agitate in India and to stir up 
 Wilberforce and the evangelicals in England, till the victory was 
 gained. The very first number of the Friend of India published 
 their essay on the burning of widows, which was thereafter 
 quoted on both sides of the conflict, as " a powerful and convinc- 
 ing statement of the real facts and circumstances of the case," 
 in Parliament and elsewhere. Nor can we omit to record the 
 opinion of Carey's chief pundit, with whom he spent hours every 
 day as a fellow-worker. The whole body of law-pundits wrote 
 of Sati as only " permitted." Mritunjaya, described as the 
 head jurist of the College of Fort William and the Supreme Court, 
 decided that, according to Hindooism, a life of mortification is 
 the law for a widow. At best burning is only an alternative for 
 mortification, and no alternative can have the force of direct 
 law. But in former ages nothing was ever heard of the practice, 
 it being peculiar to a later and more corrupt era. " A woman's 
 burning herself from the desire of connubial bliss ought to be 
 rejected with abhorrence," wrote this colossus of pundits. Yet 
 before he was believed, or the higher law was enforced, as it has 
 ever since been even in our tributary States, mothers had burned 
 with sons, and forty wives, many of them sisters, at a time, with 
 polygamous husbands. Lepers and the widows of the devotee 
 class had been legally buried alive. Magistrates, who were men 
 like Metcalfe, never ceased to prevent widow-murder on any 
 pretext, wherever they might be placed, in defiance of their own 
 misguided Government. 
 
 Though from 4th December 1829 memorable date, to be 
 classed with that on which soon after 800,000 slaves were set 
 free " the Ganges flowed unblooded to the sea " for the first 
 time, the fight lasted a little longer. The Calcutta " orthodox " 
 formed a society to restore their right of murdering their widows, 
 and found English lawyers ready to help them in an appeal to 
 the Privy Council under an Act of Parliament of 1797. The 
 Darpan weekly did good service in keeping the mass of the 
 educated natives right on the subject. The Privy Council, at 
 which Lord Wellesley and Charles Grant, venerable in years 
 and character, were present, heard the case for two days, and 
 on 24th June 1832 dismissed the petition! 
 
 Though the greatest, this was only one of the crimes against 
 humanity and morality which Carey opposed all his life with
 
 Literature and Humanity 21 1 
 
 a practical reasonableness till he saw the public opinion he had 
 done so much to create triumph. He knew the people of India, 
 their religious, social, and economic condition, as no Englishman 
 before him had done. He stood between them and their foreign 
 Government at the beginning of our intimate contact with all 
 classes as detailed administrators and rulers. The outcome of 
 his peculiar experience is to be found not only in the writings 
 published under his own name but in the great book of his 
 colleague William Ward, every page of which passed under his 
 careful correction as well as under the more general revision of 
 Henry Martyn. Except for the philosophy of Hindooism, the 
 second edition of A View of the History, Literature, and Mytho- 
 logy 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 un- 
 rivalled as the best authority on the character and daily life 
 and beliefs of the 200,000,000 to whom Great Britain had been 
 made a terrestrial providence, till Christianity teaches them to 
 govern themselves and to become to the rest of Asia missionaries 
 of nobler truth than that wherewith their Buddhist fathers 
 covered China and the farther East. 
 
 All the crimes against humanity with which the history of 
 India teems, down to the Mutiny and the records of our courts 
 and tributary states at this hour, are directly traceable to 
 lawless supernaturalism like that of the civilised world before 
 the triumph of Christianity. In nothing does England's ad- 
 ministration of India resemble Rome's government of its pro- 
 vinces in the seven centuries from the reduction of Sicily, 
 240 B.C., to the fall of the Western Empire, 476 A.D., so much 
 as in the relation of nascent Christianity to the pagan cults 
 which had made society what it was. Carey and the brother- 
 hood stood alone in facing, in fighting with divine weapons, in 
 winning the first victories over the secular as well as spiritual 
 lawlessness which fell before Paul and his successors down to 
 Augustine and his City of God. The gentle and reasonable but 
 none the less divinely indignant father of modern missions brings 
 against Hindoo and Mohammedan society accusations no more 
 railing than those in the opening passage of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, and he brings these only that, following Paul, he may 
 declare the more excellent way. 
 
 As Serampore, or its suburbs, is the most popular centre 
 of Jaganath worship next to Pooree in Orissa, the cruelty and 
 oppression which marked the annual festival were ever before
 
 2 1 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 the missionaries' eyes. In 1813 we find Dr. Claudius Buchanan 
 establishing his veracity as an eye-witness of the immolation 
 of drugged or voluntary victims under the idol car, by this 
 quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to describe at that 
 time to his English readers, as a man of unquestionable integrity, 
 long held in estimation by the most respectable characters in 
 Bengal, and possessing very superior opportunities of knowing 
 what is passing in India generally : " Idolatry destroys more than 
 the sword, yet in a way which is scarcely perceived. The 
 numbers who die in their long pilgrimages, either through want 
 or fatigue, or from dysenteries and fevers caught by lying out, 
 and want of accommodation, is incredible. I only mention 
 one idol, the famous Juggernaut in Orissa, to which twelve or 
 thirteen pilgrimages are made every year. It is calculated that 
 the number who go thither is, on some occasions, 600,000 persons, 
 and scarcely ever less than 100,000. I suppose, at the lowest 
 calculation, that in the year 1,200,000 persons attend. Now, 
 if only one in ten died, the mortality caused by this one idol 
 would be 120,000 in a year; but some are of opinion that not 
 many more than one in ten survive and return home again. 
 Besides these, I calculate that 10,000 women annually burn 
 with the bodies of their deceased husbands, and the multitudes 
 destroyed in other methods would swell the catalogue to an 
 extent almost exceeding credibility." 
 
 After we had taken Orissa from the Marathas the priests of 
 Jaganath declared that the night before the conquest the god 
 had made known its desire to be under British protection. This 
 was joyfully reported to Lord Wellesley's Government by the 
 first British commissioner. At once a regulation was drafted 
 vesting the shrine and the increased pilgrim-tax in the Christian 
 officials. This Lord Wellesley indignantly refused to sanction, 
 and it was passed by Sir George Barlow in spite of the protests 
 of Carey's friend, Udny. In Conjeeveram a Brahmanised civilian 
 named Place had so early as 1796 induced Government to under- 
 take the payment of the priests and prostitutes of the temples, 
 under the phraseology of " churchwardens " and " the manage- 
 ment 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,
 
 Literature and Humanity 213 
 
 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 Char ok, or swinging festival, has been frequently witnessed 
 by the present writer in Calcutta itself. The orgie has been 
 suppressed by the police in great cities, although it has not 
 ceased in the rural districts. In 1814 the brotherhood thus - 
 wrote home : 
 
 " This abominable festival was held, according to the annual 
 custom, on the last day of the Hindoo year. There were fewer 
 gibbet posts erected at Serampore, but we hear that amongst the 
 swingers was one female. A man fell from a stage thirty cubits 
 high and broke his back; and another fell from a swinging post, 
 but was not much hurt. Some days after the first swinging, certain 
 natives revived the ceremonies. As Mr. Ward was passing through 
 Calcutta he saw several Hindoos hanging by the heels over a slow 
 fire, as an act of devotion. Several Hindoos employed in the 
 printing-office applied this year to Mr. Ward for protection, to 
 escape being dragged into these pretendedly voluntary practices. 
 This brought before us facts which we were not aware of. It seems 
 that the landlords of the poor and other men of property insist 
 upon certain of their tenants and dependants engaging in these 
 practices, and that they expect and compel by actual force multi- 
 tudes every year to join the companies of sunyassees in parading 
 the streets, piercing their sides, tongues, etc. To avoid this com- 
 pulsion, many poor young men leave their houses and hide them- 
 selves; but they are sure of being beaten if caught, or of having 
 their huts pulled down. The influence and power of the rich have 
 a great effect on the multitude in most of the idolatrous festivals. 
 When the lands and ric"hes of the country were in few hands, this 
 influence carried all before it. It is still very widely felt, in com- 
 pelling dependants to assist at public shows, and to contribute 
 towards the expense of splendid ceremonies." 
 
 The Ghat murders, caused by the carrying of the dying to- 
 the Ganges or a sacred river, and their treatment there, continue 
 to this day, although Lord Lawrence attempted to interfere. 
 Ward estimated the number of sick whose death is hastened on 
 the banks of the Ganges alone at five hundred a year, in his 
 anxiety to " use no unfair means of rendering even idolatry 
 detestable," but he admits that, in the opinion of others, this 
 estimate is far below the truth. We believe, from our own 
 recent experience, that still it fails to give any just idea of the 
 destruction of parents by children in the name of religion. 
 
 One class who had been the special objects of Christ's healing
 
 2 1 4 Life of William Carey 
 
 power and divine sympathy was specially interesting to Carey 
 in proportion to their misery and abandonment by their own 
 people lepers. When at Cutwa in 1812, where his son was 
 stationed as missionary, he saw the burning of a leper, which he 
 thus described: " A pit about ten cubits in depth was dug and 
 a fire placed at the bottom of it. The poor man rolled himself 
 into it; but instantly, on feeling the fire, begged to be taken out, 
 and struggled hard for that purpose. His mother and sister, 
 however, thrust him in again; and thus a man, who to all ap- 
 pearance might have survived several years, was cruelly burned 
 to death. I find that the practice is not uncommon in these 
 parts. Taught that a violent end purifies the body and ensures 
 transmigration into a healthy new existence, while natural 
 death by disease results in four successive births, and a fifth 
 as a leper again, the leper, like the even more wretched widow, 
 has always courted suicide." Carey did not rest until he had 
 brought about the establishment of a leper hospital in Calcutta, 
 near what became the centre of the Church Missionary Society's 
 work, and there benevolent physicians, like the late Dr. Kenneth 
 Stuart, and Christian people, have made it possible to record, 
 as in Christ's days, that the leper is cleansed and the poor have 
 the Gospel preached to them. 
 
 By none of the many young civilians whom he trained, or, 
 in the later years of his life, examined, was Carey's humane 
 work on all its sides more persistently carried out than by John 
 Lawrence in the Punjab. When their new ruler first visited 
 their district, the Bedi clan amazed him by petitioning for leave 
 to destroy their infant daughters. In wrath he briefly told them 
 he would hang every man found guilty of such murder. When 
 settling the land revenue of the Cis-Sutlej districts he caused 
 each farmer, as he touched the pen in acceptance of the assess- 
 ment, to recite this formula 
 
 " Bewa mat jalao, 
 Beti mat maro, 
 Korhi mat dabao" 
 
 (" Thou shalt not burn thy widow, thou shalt not kill thy daughters, 
 thou shalt not bury thy lepers.") 
 
 From the hour of Carey's conversion he never omitted to 
 remember in prayer the slave as well as the heathen. The same 
 period which saw his foundation of modern missions witnessed 
 the earliest efforts of his contemporary, Thomas Clarkson of 
 Wisbeach, in the neighbouring county of Cambridge, to free the
 
 Literature and Humanity 215 
 
 slave. But Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and their associates 
 were so occupied with Africa that they knew not that Great 
 Britain was responsible for the existence of at least nine millions 
 of slaves in India, many of them brought by Hindoo merchants 
 as well as Arabs from Eastern Africa to fill the hareems of 
 Mohammedans, and do domestic service in the zananas of 
 Hindoos. The startling fact came to be known only slowly 
 towards the end of Carey's career, when his prayers, continued 
 daily from 1779, were answered in the freedom of all our West 
 India slaves. The East India answer came after he had passed 
 away, in Act V. of 1843, which for ever abolished the legal status 
 of slavery in India. The Penal Code has since placed the prsedial 
 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 givin to the heathen 
 and the slaves, Christ's freedom which had up till then remained 
 
 "... unsung 
 
 By poets, and by senators unpraised, 
 Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers 
 Of earth and hell confederate take away; 
 A liberty which persecution, fraud, 
 Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind: 
 Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL 
 AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA 
 
 Carey's relation to science and economics State of the peasantry Carey 
 a careful scientific observer Specially a botanist Becomes the friend 
 of Dr. Roxburgh of the Company's Botanic Garden Orders seeds and 
 instruments of husbandry All his researches subordinate to his 
 spiritual mission His eminence as a botanist acknowledged in the 
 history of the science His own botanic garden and park at Serampore 
 The poet Montgomery on the daisies there Borneo Carey's paper 
 in the Asiatic Researches on the state of agriculture in Bengal The 
 first to advocate Forestry in India Founds the Agri-Horticultural 
 Society of India Issues queries on agriculture and horticulture 
 Remarkable results of his action On the manufacture of paper 
 His expanded address on agricultural reform His political foresight 
 on the importance of European capital and the future of India An 
 official estimate of the results in the present day On the usury of the 
 natives and savings banks His academic and scientific honours 
 Destruction of his house and garden by the Damoodar flood of 1823 
 Report on the Horticultural Society's garden The Society honours 
 its founder. 
 
 NOT only was the first Englishman., who in modern times 
 became a missionary, sent to India when he desired to go 
 to Tahiti or West Africa; and sent to Bengal from which all 
 Northern India was to be brought under British rule; and to 
 Calcutta with a safe asylum at Danish Serampore then the 
 metropolis and centre of all Southern Asia; but he was sent 
 at the very time when the life of the people could best be purified 
 and elevated on its many sides, and he was specially fitted to 
 influence each of these sides save one. An ambassador for Christ 
 above all things like Paul, but, also like him, becoming all things 
 to all men that he might win some to the higher life, Carey was 
 successively, and often at the same time, a captain of labour, 
 a schoolmaster, a printer, the developer of the vernacular speech, 
 the expounder of the classical language, the translator of both 
 into English and of the English Bible into both, the founder 
 of a pure literature, the purifier of society, the watchful philan- 
 thropist, 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 
 
 216
 
 What Carey Did for Science 217 
 
 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 applica- 
 tion of these principles to the course of God's providence and 
 the consciences of men. In what he did for science, for literature, 
 and for humanity, as in what he abstained from doing in the 
 practical region of public life, the first English missionary was 
 an example to all of every race who have followed him in the 
 past century. From Carey to Livingstone, alike in Asia and 
 Africa, the greatest Christian evangelists have been those who 
 have made science and literature the handmaids of missions. 
 
 Apart from the extreme south of the peninsula of India, 
 where the Danish missionaries had explored with hawk's eyes, 
 almost nothing was known of its plants and animals, its men, 
 as well as its beasts, when Carey found himself in a rural district 
 of North Bengal in the closing decade of the eighteenth century. 
 Nor had any writer, official or missionary, anywhere realised the 
 state of India and the needs of the Hindoo and Mohammedan 
 cultivators as flowing from the relation of the people to the soil. 
 India was in truth a land of millions of peasant proprietors on 
 five-acre farms, rack-rented or plundered by powerful middle- 
 men, both squeezed or literally tortured by the Government of 
 the day, and driven to depend on the usurer for even the seed 
 for each crop. War and famine had alternated in keeping 
 down the population. Ignorance and fear had blunted the 
 natural shrewdness of. the cultivator. A foul mythology, a 
 saddening demon-worship, and an exacting social system, 
 covered the land as with a pall. What even Christendom was 
 fast becoming in the tenth century, India had been all through 
 the eighteen Christian centuries. 
 
 The boy who from eight to fourteen " chose to read books 
 of science, history, voyages, etc., more than others " ; the youth 
 whose gardener uncle would have had him follow that calling, 
 but whose sensitive skin kept him within doors, where he fitted 
 up a room with his botanical and zoological museum; the 
 shoemaker-preacher who made a garden around every cottage- 
 manse in which he lived, and was familiar with every beast, 
 bird, insect, and tree in the Midlands of England, became a 
 scientific observer from the day he landed at Calcutta, an agri- 
 cultural reformer from the year he first built a wooden farmhouse 
 in the jungle, as the Manitoba emigrant now does under very
 
 2 1 8 Life of William Carey 
 
 different skies, and then began to grow and make indigo amid 
 the peasantry at Dinapoor. He thus unconsciously reveals 
 himself and his method of working in a letter to Morris of 
 Clipstone : 
 
 " MUDNABATI, $th December 1797. To talk of continuance 
 of friendship and warm affection to you would be folly. I 
 love you; and next to seeing your face, a letter from you is 
 one of my greatest gratifications. I see the handwriting, and 
 read the heart of my friend ; nor can the distance of one-fourth 
 of the globe prevent a union of hearts. 
 
 " Hitherto I have refrained from writing accounts of the 
 country, because I concluded that those whose souls were 
 panting after the conversion of the heathen would feel but 
 little gratified in having an account of the natural productions 
 of the country. But as intelligence of this kind has been fre- 
 quently solicited by several of my friends, I have accordingly 
 opened books of observation, which I hope to communicate when 
 they are sufficiently authenticated and matured. I also intend 
 to assign a peculiar share to each of my stated correspondents. 
 To you I shall write some accounts of the arts, utensils, and 
 manufactures of the country ; to Brother Sutcliff their mythology 
 and religion; to Brother Ryland the manners and customs of the 
 inhabitants ; to Brother Fuller the productions of the country ; 
 to Brother Pearce the language, etc.; and to the Society a joint 
 account of the mission." 
 
 He had " separate books for every distinct class, as birds, 
 beasts, fishes, reptiles, etc." Long before this, on i3th March 
 1795, he had written to the learned Ryland, his special corre- 
 spondent on subjects of science and on Hebrew, his first im- 
 pressions of the physiography of Bengal, adding: " The natural 
 history of Bengal would furnish innumerable novelties to a 
 curious inquirer. I am making collections and minute descrip- 
 tions 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.
 
 What Carey Did for Science 219 
 
 Ants are the most omnivorous of all insects; we have eight or 
 ten sorts very numerous. The termes, or white ants, destroy 
 everything on which they fasten; they will eat through an oak 
 chest in a day or two and devour all its contents. Butterflies 
 are not so numerous as in England, but I think all different. 
 Common flies and mosquitoes (or gnats) are abundant, and the 
 latter so tormenting as to make one conclude that if the flies 
 in Egypt were mosquitoes, the plague must be almost insup- 
 portable. Here are beetles of many species; scorpions of two 
 sorts, the sting of the smallest not mortal ; land crabs in abun- 
 dance, and an amazing number of other kinds of insects. Fish 
 is very plentiful, and the principal animal food of the inhabitants. 
 I find fewer varieties of vegetables than I could have conceived 
 in so large a country. Edible vegetables are scarce, and fruit 
 far from plentiful. You will perhaps wonder at our eating many 
 things here which no one eats in England: as arum, three or 
 four sorts, and poppy leaves (Papaver somniferum). We also 
 cut up mallows by the bushes for our food (Job xxx. 4). 
 Amaranths, of three sorts, we also eat, besides capsicums, 
 pumpkins, gourds, calabashes, and the egg-plant fruit; yet 
 we have no hardships in these respects. Rice is the staple 
 article of food. . . . 
 
 " My love to the students. God raise them up for great 
 blessings. Great things are certainly at hand." 
 
 But he was also an erudite botanist. Had he arrived in 
 Calcutta a few days earlier than he did, he would have been 
 appointed to the place for which sheer poverty led him to apply, 
 in the Company's Botanical Garden, established on the right 
 bank of the Hoogli a few miles below Calcutta, by Colonel 
 Alexander Kyd, for the collection of indigenous and acclimatisa- 
 tion 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 man- 
 hood. 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 assortment of all garden and flowering 
 seeds, and^seeds of fruit trees, that you can possibly procure;
 
 22o Life of William Carey 
 
 and let them be packed in papers, or bottles well stopped, which 
 is the best method. All these things, at whatever price you can 
 procure them, and the seeds of all sorts of field and forest trees, 
 etc., I will regularly remit you the money for every year; and 
 I hope that I may depend upon the exertions of my numerous 
 friends to procure them. Apply to London seedsmen and others, 
 as it will be a lasting advantage to this country ; and I shall have 
 it in my power to do this for what I now call my own country. 
 Only take care that they are new and dry." Again he addressed 
 Fuller on 22nd June 1797: 
 
 " MY VERY DEAR BROTHER I have yours of August 9, 16, 
 which informs me that the seeds, etc., were shipped. I have 
 received those seeds and other articles in tolerable preservation, 
 and shall find them a very useful article. An acquaintance 
 which I have formed with Dr. Roxburgh, Superintendent of 
 the Company's Botanic Garden, and whose wife is daughter 
 of a missionary on the coast, may be of future use to the mission, 
 and make that investment of vegetables more valuable." 
 
 Thus towards the close of his six years' sacrifice for the 
 people of Dinapoor does he estimate himself and his scientific 
 pursuits in the light of the great conflict to which the Captain 
 of Salvation had called him. He is opening his heart to Fuller 
 again, most trusted of all: 
 
 " MUDNABATI, ijth July 1799. Respecting myself I have 
 nothing interesting to say; and if I had, it appears foreign to 
 the design of a mission for the missionaries to be always speaking 
 of their own experiences. I keep several journals, it is true, 
 relating to things private and public, respecting the mission, 
 articles of curiosity and science; but they are sometimes 
 continued and sometimes discontinued: besides, most things 
 contained in them are of too general or trivial a nature to send 
 to England, and I imagine could have no effect, except to mock 
 the expectations of our numerous friends, who are waiting to 
 hear of the conversion of the heathen and overthrow of Satan's 
 kingdom. 
 
 " I therefore only observe, respecting myself, that I have 
 much proof of the vileness of my heart, much more than I thought 
 of till lately: and, indeed, I often fear that instead of being 
 instrumental in the conversion of the heathen, I may some 
 time dishonour the cause in which I am engaged. I have 
 hitherto had much experience of the daily supports of a gracious 
 God ; but I am conscious that if those supports were intermitted 
 but for a little time, my sinful dispositions would infallibly
 
 What Carey Did for Science 221 
 
 predominate. At present I am kept, but am not one of those 
 who are strong and do exploits. 
 
 " I have often thought that a spirit of observation is necessary 
 in order to our doing or communicating much good; and were 
 it not for a very phlegmatic habit, I think my soul would be 
 richer. I, however, appear to myself to have lost much of my 
 capacity for making observations, improvements, etc., or of 
 retaining what I attend to closely. For instance, I have been 
 near three years learning the Sanskrit language, yet know very 
 little of it. This is only a specimen of what I feel myself to be 
 in every respect. I try to observe, to imprint what I see and 
 hear on my memory, and to feel my heart properly affected with 
 the circumstances; yet my soul is impoverished, and I have 
 something of a lethargic disease cleaving to my body. . . . 
 
 " I would communicate something on the natural history of 
 the country in addition to what I have before written; but no 
 part of that pleasing study is so familiar to me as the vegetable 
 world." 
 
 His letters of this period to Fuller on the fruits of India, and 
 to Morris on the husbandry of the natives, might be quoted 
 still as accurate and yet popular descriptions of the mango, 
 guava, and custard apple; plantain, jack, and tamarind; 
 pomegranate, pine-apple, and rose-apple; papaya, date, and 
 cocoa-nut; citron, lime, and shaddock. Of many of these, 
 and of foreign fruits which he introduced, it might be said he 
 found them poor, and he cultivated them till he left to succeeding 
 generations a rich and varied orchard. 
 
 While still in Dinapoor, he wrote on ist 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 i i 
 September, October, November, or December, would be a great 
 acquisition, as is every European production. Nuts, filberts, 
 acorns, etc., would be the same. We have lately obtained the 
 cinnamon tree, and nutmeg tree, which Dr. Roxburgh very 
 obligingly sent to me. Of timber trees I mention the sissoo, 
 the teak, and the saul tree, which, being an unnamed genus, 
 Dr. Roxburgh, as a mark of respect to me, has called Careya 
 saulea." 
 
 The publication of the last name caused Carey's sensitive 
 modesty extreme annoyance. " Do not print the names of 
 Europeans. I was sorry to see that you printed that Dr. 
 Roxburgh had named the saul tree by my name, As he is in
 
 222 Life of William Carey 
 
 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, notwithstand- 
 ing his own humility and the accidents of time. For Dr. 
 Roxburgh gave the name of Careya to an interesting genus of 
 Myrtacece. The great French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert 
 duly commemorates the labours of Dr. Carey in the Musee 
 Botanique. 
 
 It was in Serampore that the gentle botanist found full scope 
 for the one recreation which he allowed himself, in the interest 
 of his body as well as of his otherwise overtasked spirit. There 
 he had five acres of ground laid out, and, in time, planted on the 
 Linnsean system. The park around, from which he had the 
 little paradise carefully walled in, that Brahmani bull and 
 villager's cow, nightly jackal and thoughtless youth, might not 
 intrude, he planted with trees then rare or unknown in lower 
 Bengal, the mahogany and deodar, the teak and tamarind, the 
 carob and eucalyptus. The fine American Mahogany has so 
 thriven that the present writer was able, seventy years after the 
 trees had been planted, to supply Government with plentiful 
 seed. The trees of the park were so placed as to form a noble 
 avenue, which long shaded the press and was known as Carey's 
 Walk. The umbrageous tamarind formed a dense cover, under 
 which more than one generation of Carey's successors rejoiced 
 as they welcomed visitors to the consecrated spot from all parts 
 of India, America, and Great Britain. Foresters like Sir D. 
 Brandis and Dr. Cleghorn at various times visited this arboretum, 
 and have referred to the trees, whose date of planting is known, 
 for the purpose of recording the rate of growth. 
 
 For the loved garden Carey himself trained native peasants 
 who, with the mimetic instinct of the Bengali, followed his 
 instructions like those of their own Brahmans, learned the 
 Latin names, and pronounced them with their master's very 
 accent up till a late date, when Hullodhur, the last of them, 
 passed away. The garden with its tropical glories and more 
 modest exotics, every one of which was as a personal friend, 
 and to him had an individual history, was more than a place of 
 recreation. It was his oratory, the scene of prayer and medita- 
 tion, the place where he began and ended the day of light
 
 What Carey Did for Science 123 
 
 with God. What he wrote in his earlier journals and letters of 
 the sequestered spot at Mudnabati was true in a deeper and 
 wider sense of the garden of Serampore : " 2yd September, Lord's 
 Day. Arose about sunrise, and, according to my usual practice, 
 walked into my garden for meditation and prayer till the 
 servants came to family worship." We have this account from 
 his son Jonathan: 
 
 " In objects of nature my father was exceedingly curious. His 
 collection of mineral ores, and other subjects of natural history, was 
 extensive, and obtained his particular attention in seasons of leisure 
 and recreation. The science of botany was his constant delight and 
 study; and his fondness for his garden remained to the last. No 
 one was allowed to interfere in the arrangements of this his favourite 
 retreat; and it is here he enjoyed his most pleasant moments of 
 secret devotion and meditation. The arrangements made by him 
 were on the Linnaean system; and to disturb the bed or border of 
 the garden was to touch the apple of his eye. The garden formed 
 the best and rarest botanical collection of plants in the East; to 
 the extension of which, by his correspondence with persons of 
 eminence in Europe and other parts of the world, his attention was 
 constantly directed; and, in return, he supplied his correspondents 
 with rare collections from the East. It was painful to observe with 
 what distress my father quitted this scene of his enjoyments, when 
 extreme weakness, during his last illness, prevented his going to his 
 favourite retreat. Often, when he was unable to walk, he was 
 drawn into the garden in a chair placed on a board with four wheels. 
 
 " In order to prevent irregularity in the attendance of the 
 gardeners he was latterly particular in paying their wages with his 
 own hands; and on the last occasion of doing so, he was much 
 affected that his weakness had increased and confined him to the 
 house. But, notwithstanding he had closed this part of his earthly 
 scene, he could not refrain from sending for his gardeners into the 
 room where he lay, and would converse with them about the plants ; 
 and near his couch, against the wall, he placed the picture of a 
 beautiful shrub, upon which he gazed with delight. 
 
 " On this science he frequently gave lectures, which were well 
 attended, and never failed to prove interesting. His publication of 
 Roxburgh's Flora Indica is a standard work with botanists. Of 
 his botanical friends he spoke with great esteem; and never failed 
 to defend them when erroneously assailed. He encouraged the 
 study of the science wherever a desire to acquire it was manifested. 
 In this particular he would sometimes gently reprove those who 
 had no taste for it; but he would not spare those who attempted 
 to undervalue it. His remark of one of his colleagues was keen and 
 striking. When the latter somewhat reprehended Dr. Carey,) to 
 the medical gentleman attending him, for exposing himself so much 
 in the garden, he immediately replied, that his colleague was 
 conversant with the pleasures of a garden, just as an animal was 
 with the grass in the field." 
 
 As from Dinapoor, so from Serampore after his settlement
 
 224 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 any- 
 where out of the reach of salt water, and the seeds in a separate 
 small box. You need not be at any expense, any friend will 
 supply these things. The cowslips and daisies of your fields 
 would be great acquisitions here." What the daisies of the 
 English fields became to Carey, and how his request was long 
 after answered, is told by James Montgomery, the Moravian, 
 who formed after Cowper the second poet of the missionary 
 reformation : 
 
 THE DAISY IN INDIA 
 
 " A friend of. mine, a scientific botanist, residing near Sheffield, 
 had sent a package of sundry kinds of British seeds to the learned 
 and venerable Doctor WILLIAM CAREY. Some of the seeds had 
 been enclosed in a bag, containing a portion of their native earth. 
 In March 1821 a letter of acknowledgment was received by his 
 correspondent from the Doctor, who was himself well skilled in 
 botany, and had a garden rich in plants, both tropical and European. 
 In this enclosure he was wont to spend an hour every morning, 
 before he entered upon those labours and studies which have 
 rendered his name illustrious both at home and abroad, as one of 
 the most accomplished of Oriental scholars and a translator of the 
 Holy Scriptures into many of the Hindoo languages. In the letter 
 aforementioned, which was shown to me, the good man says: 
 ' That I might be sure not to lose any part of your valuable present, 
 I shook the bag over a patch of earth in a shady place : on visiting 
 which a few days afterwards I found springing up, to my inex- 
 pressible 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 he 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.
 
 What Carey Did for Science 225 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " Thrice welcome, little English flower! 
 To this resplendent hemisphere, 
 Where Flora's giant offspring tower 
 In gorgeous liveries all the year: 
 Thou, only thou, art little here, 
 Like worth unfriended and unknown, 
 Yet to my British heart more dear 
 Than all the torrid zone. 
 
 " Thrice welcome, little English flower! 
 Of early scenes beloved by me, 
 While happy in my father's bower, 
 Thou shalt the blythe memorial be; 
 The fairy sports of infancy, 
 Youth's golden age, and manhood's prime. 
 Home, country, kindred, friends, with thee, 
 I find hi 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
 
 226 Life of William Carey 
 
 all the animals you have sent. I know of no remedy for the 
 living animals dying, but by a little attention to packing them 
 you may send skins of birds and animals of every kind, and also 
 seeds and roots. I lately received a parcel of seeds from Moore 
 (a large boy who, you may remember, was at school when the 
 printing-office was burnt), every one of which bids fair to grow. 
 He is in some of the Malay islands. After all you have greatly 
 contributed to the enlargement of my collection." 
 
 " I'jth September 1816. I approve much of Bencoolen as a 
 place for your future labours, unless you should rather choose 
 the island of Borneo. . . . The English may send a Resident 
 thither after a time. I mention this from a conversation I had 
 some months ago on the subject with Lord Moira, who told me 
 that there is a large body of Chinese on that island." They 
 " applied to the late Lieut.-Governor of Java, requesting that 
 an English Resident may be sent to govern them, and offering 
 to be at the whole expense of his salary and government. The 
 Borneo business may come to nothing, but if it should succeed 
 it would be a glorious opening for the Gospel in that large 
 island. Sumatra, however, is larger than any one man could 
 occupy." As we read this we see the Serampore apostle's hope 
 fulfilled after a different fashion, in Rajah Brooke's settlement 
 at Sarawak, in the charter of the North Borneo Company, in the 
 opening up of New Guinea and in the civilisation of the Philip- 
 pines by the United States of America. 
 
 To Roxburgh and his Danish successor Wallich, to Voigt 
 who succeeded Wallich in Serampore, and hundreds of corre- 
 spondents in India and Germany, Great Britain and America, 
 Carey did many a service in sending plants and what was a 
 greater sacrifice for so busy a man writing letters. What he 
 did for the Hortus Bengalensis may stand for all. 
 
 When, in 1814, Dr. Roxburgh was sent to sea almost dying, 
 Dr. Carey edited and printed at his own press that now very 
 rare volume, the Hortus Bengalensis, or a Catalogue of the Plants 
 of the Honourable East India Company's Botanic Garden in 
 Calcutta. Carey's introduction of twelve large pages is perhaps 
 his most characteristic writing on a scientific subject. His 
 genuine friendliness and humility shine forth in the testimony 
 he bears to the abilities, zeal, and success of the great botanist 
 who, in twenty years, had created a collection of 3200 species. 
 Of these 3000 at least had been given by the European residents 
 in India, himself most largely of all. Having shown in detail 
 the utility of botanical gardens, especially in all the foreign
 
 What Carey Did for Science 227 
 
 settlements of Great Britain, he declared that only a beginning 
 had been made in observing and cataloguing the stock of 
 Asiatic productions. He urged English residents all over India 
 to set apart a small plot for the reception of the plants of their 
 neighbourhood, and when riding about the country to mark 
 plants, which their servants could bring on to the nursery, 
 getting them to write the native name of each. He desiderated 
 gardens at Hurdwar, Delhi, Dacca, and Sylhet, where plants 
 that will not live at Calcutta might prosper, a suggestion which 
 was afterwards carried out by the Government in establishing 
 a garden at Saharanpoor, in a Sub-Himalayan region, which has 
 been successfully directed by Royle, Falconer, and Jameson. 
 
 On Dr. Roxburgh's death in 1815 Dr. Carey waited to see 
 whether an English botanist would publish the fruit of thirty 
 years' labour of his friend in the description of more than 2000 
 plants, natives of Eastern Asia. At his own risk he then, in 
 1820, undertook this publication, or the Flora Indica, placing on 
 the title-page, " All Thy works praise Thee, Lord David." 
 When the Roxburgh MSS. were made over to the library of the 
 Botanic Garden at Calcutta, the fourth and final volume 
 appeared with this note regarding the new edition : " The work 
 was printed from MSS. in the possession of Dr. Carey, and it 
 was carried through the press when he was labouring under the 
 debility of great age. . . . The advanced age of Dr. Carey did 
 not admit of any longer delay." 
 
 His first public attempt at agricultural reform was made in 
 the paper which he contributed to the Transactions of the 
 Bengal Asiatic Society, and which appeared in 1811 in the 
 tenth volume of the Asiatic Researches. In the space of an 
 ordinary Quarterly Review article he describes the " State of 
 Agriculture in the District of Dinapoor," and urges improve- 
 ments such as only the officials, settlers, and Government could 
 begin. The soils, the " extremely poor " people, their " pro- 
 portionally simple and wretched farming utensils," the cattle, 
 the primitive irrigation alluded to in Deuteronomy as " watering 
 with the foot," and the modes of ploughing and reaping, are 
 rapidly sketched and illustrated by lithographed figures drawn 
 to scale. In greater detail the principal crops are treated. The 
 staple crop of rice in its many varieties and harvests at different 
 seasons is lucidly brought before the Government, in language 
 which it would have been well to remember or reproduce in 
 the subsequent avoidable famines of Orissa and North Bihar. 
 Indigo is set before us with the skill of one who had grown and
 
 228 Life of William Carey 
 
 manufactured it for years. The hemp and jute plants are en- 
 larged on in language which unconsciously anticipates the vast 
 and enriching development given to the latter as an export and 
 a local manufacture since the Crimean War. An account of 
 the oil-seeds and the faulty mode of expressing the oil, which 
 made Indian linseed oil unfit for painting, is followed by remarks 
 on the cultivation of wheat, to which subsequent events have 
 given great importance. Though many parts, even of Dina- 
 poor, were fit for the growth of wheat and barley, the natives 
 produced only a dark variety from bad seed. " For the purpose 
 of making a trial I sowed Patna wheat on a large quantity of 
 land in the year 1798, the flour produced from which was of 
 a very good quality." The pulses, tobacco, the egg-plant, the 
 capsicums, the cucumbers, the arum roots, turmeric, ginger, 
 and sugar-cane, all pass in review in a style which the non- 
 scientific reader may enjoy and the expert must appreciate. 
 Improvements in method and the introduction of the best kinds 
 of plants and vegetables are suggested, notwithstanding " the 
 poverty, prejudices, and indolence of the natives." 
 
 This paper is most remarkable, however, for the true note 
 which its writer was the first to strike on the subject of forestry. 
 If we reflect that it was not till 1846 that the Government made 
 the first attempt at forest conservancy, in order to preserve the 
 timber of Malabar for the Bombay dockyard; and not till the 
 conquest of Pegu, in 1855, that the Marquis of Dalhousie was 
 led by the Friend of India to appoint Dietrich Brandis of Bonn 
 to care for the forests of Burma, and Dr. Cleghorn for those of 
 South India, we shall appreciate the wise foresight of the 
 missionary-scholar, who, having first made his own park a 
 model of forest teaching, wrote such words as these early in the 
 century : " The cultivation of timber has hitherto, I believe, 
 been wholly neglected. Several sorts have been planted . . . 
 all over Bengal, and would soon furnish a very large share of 
 the timber used in the country. The sissoo, the Andaman red- 
 wood, the teak, the mahogany, the satin-wood, the chikrasi, the 
 toona, and the sirisha should be principally chosen. The 
 planting of these trees single, at the distance of a furlong from 
 each other, would do no injury to the crops of corn, but would, 
 by cooling the atmosphere, rather be advantageous. In many 
 places spots now unproductive would be improved by clumps 
 or small plantations of timber, under which ginger and turmeric 
 might be cultivated to great advantage. In some situations 
 saul . . . would prosper. Indeed the improvements that might
 
 What Carey Did for Science 229 
 
 be made in this country by the planting of timber can scarcely 
 be calculated. Teak is at present brought from the Burman 
 dominions. . . . The French naturalists have already begun to 
 turn their attention to the culture of this valuable tree as an 
 object of national utility. This will be found impracticable in 
 France, but may perhaps be attempted somewhere else. To 
 England, the first commercial country in the world, its 
 importance must be obvious." 
 
 Ten years passed, Carey continued to watch and to extend 
 his agri-horticultural experiments in his own garden, and to 
 correspond with botanists in all parts of the world, but still 
 nothing was done publicly in India. At last, on i5th April 
 1820, when " the advantages arising from a number of persons 
 uniting themselves as a Society for the purpose of carrying 
 forward any undertaking " were generally acknowledged, the 
 shoemaker and preacher who had a generation before tested 
 these advantages in the formation of the first Foreign Mission 
 Society, issued a Prospectus of an Agricultural and Horticultural 
 Society in India, from the " Mission House, Serampore." The 
 prospectus thus concluded: " Both in forming such a Society 
 and in subsequently promoting its objects, important to the 
 happiness of the country as they regard them, the writer and 
 his colleagues will be happy in doing all their other avocations 
 will permit." Native as well as European gentlemen were 
 particularly invited to co-operate. "It is peculiarly desirable 
 that native gentlemen should be eligible as members of 'the 
 Society, because one of its chief objects will be the improvement 
 of their estates and of the peasantry which reside thereon. 
 They should therefore not only be eligible as members but also 
 as officers of the Society in precisely the same manner as 
 Europeans." At the first meeting in the Town Hall of Calcutta, 
 Carey and Marshman found only three Europeans beside them- 
 selves. 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 i4th September, when the 
 constitution was drawn up on the lines laid down in the pro- 
 spectus, it being specially provided " that gentlemen of every 
 nation be eligible as members." 
 
 At the next meeting Dr. Carey was requested to draw up a 
 series of queries, which were circulated widely, in order to obtain 
 " correct information upon every circumstance which is con- 
 nected with the state of agriculture and horticulture in the 
 various provinces of India." The twenty queries show a grasp
 
 230 Life of William Carey 
 
 of principles, a mastery of detail, and a kindliness of spirit which 
 reveal the practical farmer, the accomplished observer, and the 
 thoughtful philanthropist all in one. One only we may quote : 
 "19. In what manner do you think the comforts of the peasantry 
 around you could be increased, their health better secured, and 
 their general happiness promoted? " The Marquis of Hastings 
 gladly became patron, and ever since the Government has made 
 a grant to the Society. His wife showed such an interest in its 
 progress that the members obtained her consent to sit to Chinnery 
 for her portrait to fill the largest panel in the house at Titigur. 
 Lord Hastings added the experimental farm, formed near Bar- 
 rackpore, to the Botanic Garden, with an immediate view to its 
 assisting the Agricultural Society in their experiments and pur- 
 suits. The Society became speedily popular, for Carey watched 
 its infancy with loving solicitude, and was the life of its 
 meetings. In the first eighty-seven years of its existence seven 
 thousand of the best men in India have been its members, of 
 whom seven hundred are Asiatics. Agriculturists, military and 
 medical officers, civilians, clergy, and merchants, are repre- 
 sented on its roll in nearly equal proportions. The one Society 
 has grown into three in India, and formed the model for the 
 Royal Agricultural Society of England, which was not founded 
 till 1838. 
 
 Italy and Scotland alone preceded Carey in this organisation, 
 and he quotes with approbation the action of Sir John Sinclair 
 in 1790, which led to the first inquiry into the state of British 
 agriculture. The Transactions which Carey led the Society 
 to promise to publish in English, Bengali, and Hindostani, 
 have proved to be only the first of a series of special periodicals 
 representing Indian agriculture generally, tea, and forestry. 
 The various Governments in India have economic museums; 
 and the Government of India, under Lord Mayo, established 
 a Revenue and Agricultural Department expanded by Lord 
 Curzon. Carey's early proposal of premiums, each of a hundred 
 rupees, or the Society's gold medal, for the most successful 
 cultivation on a commercial scale of coffee and improved cotton, 
 for the successful introduction of European fruits, for the im- 
 provement 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 pre- 
 sented by " Rev. Dr. Carey in the chair " with the gold medal 
 for 80 Ibs. of coffee grown there. Carey's own head gardener
 
 What Carey Did for Science 231 
 
 became famous for his cabbages; and we find this sentence in 
 the Society's Report just after the founder's death: "Who 
 would have credited fifteen years ago that we could have ex- 
 hibited vegetables in the Town Hall of Calcutta equal to the 
 choicest in Covent Garden ? " The berries two centuries ago 
 brought from Arabia in his wallet by the pilgrim Baba Booden 
 to the hills of Mysore, which bear his name, have, since that 
 Dacca experiment, covered the uplands of South India and 
 Ceylon. Before Carey died he knew of the discovery of the 
 indigenous tea-tree in its original home on the Assam border of 
 Tibet a discovery which has put India in the place of China as 
 a producer. 
 
 In the Society's Proceedings for gth 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 him- 
 self without the aid of any European artist." At the next 
 meeting, when 109 malees or native gardeners competed at 
 the annual exhibition of vegetables, the steam engine was 
 submitted and pronounced " useful for irrigating lands made 
 upon the model of a large steam engine belonging to the mis- 
 sionaries at Serampore." A premium of Rs. 50 was presented 
 to the ingenious blacksmith as an encouragement to further 
 exertions of his industry. When in 1832 the afterwards well- 
 known Lieutenant-Governor Thomason was deputy-secretary 
 to Government, he applied to the Society for information 
 regarding the manufacture of paper. Dr. Carey and Ram 
 Komal Sen were referred to, and the former thus replied in 
 his usual concise and clear manner: 
 
 " When we commenced paper-making several years ago, having 
 then no machinery, we employed a number of native papermakers 
 to make it in the way to which they had been accustomed, with 
 the exception of mixing conjee or rice gruel with the pulp and using 
 it as sizing; our object being that of making paper impervious to 
 insects. Our success at first was very imperfect, but the process 
 was conducted as follows: 
 
 " A quantity of sunn, viz., the fibres of Crotolaria juncea, was 
 steeped repeatedly in limewater, and then exposed to the air by 
 spreading it on the grass; it was also repeatedly pounded by the 
 dhenhi 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 
 
 Q
 
 232 Life of William Carey 
 
 on the grass to dry: this finished the process with us; but for the 
 native market this paper is afterwards sized by holding a number 
 of sheets by the edge and dipping them carefully in conjee, so as to 
 keep the sheets separate. They are afterwards dried, folded, and 
 pressed by putting them between two boards, the upper board of 
 which is loaded with one or more large stones. 
 
 " In the English method the pulp is prepared by the mill and 
 put into cisterns; the frames are made of fine wire, and the work- 
 man stands by the cistern and takes up the pulp on the frames. 
 The sheets when sufficiently dry are hung on lines to dry com- 
 pletely, after which they are sized, if sizing be required. 
 
 " We now make our paper by machinery, in which the pulp is let 
 to run on a web of wire, and passing over several cylinders, the last 
 of which is heated by steam, it is dried and fit for use in about two 
 minutes from its having been in a liquid state." 
 
 Since that reply the Government of India, under the pressure 
 of the home authorities, has alternately discouraged and fostered 
 the manufacture of paper on the spot. At present it is in the 
 wiser position of preferring to purchase its supplies in India, 
 at once as being cheaper, and that it may develop the use of the 
 many paper-making fibres there. Hence at the Calcutta 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 gradu- 
 ally crushed by the expensive and unsatisfactory contracts made 
 at home by the India Office. The neighbouring Bally mills seem 
 to flourish since the abandonment of that virtual monopoly, 
 and Carey's anticipations as to the utilisation of the plantain 
 and other fibres of India are being realised nearly a century 
 after he first formed them. 
 
 Carey expanded and published his " Address respecting an 
 Agricultural Society in India " in the quarterly Friend of India. 
 He still thinks it necessary to apologise for his action by quoting 
 his hero, Brainerd, who was constrained to assist his Indian 
 converts with his counsels in sowing their maize and arranging 
 their secular concerns. " Few," he adds with the true breadth 
 of genius which converted the Baptist shoemaker into the 
 Christian statesman and scholar, " who are extensively ac- 
 quainted 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
 
 What Carey Did for Science 233 
 
 industry till Lord W. Bentinck's time and later. The English 
 Government levied an unequal scale of duties on the staples 
 of the East and West Indies, against which the former petitioned 
 in vain. The East India Company kept the people in ignorance, 
 and continued to exclude the European capitalist and captain 
 of labour. The large native landholders were as uneducated 
 as the cultivators. Before all Carey set these reforms: close 
 attention to the improvement of land, the best method of 
 cropping land, the introduction of new and useful plants, the 
 improvement of the implements of husbandry, the improvement 
 of live stock, the bringing of waste lands under cultivation, the 
 improvement of horticulture. He went on to show that, in 
 addition to the abundance which an improved agriculture would 
 diffuse throughout the country, the surplus of grain exported, 
 besides " her opium, her indigo, her silk, and her cotton," would 
 greatly tend to enrich India and endear Britain to her. " What- 
 ever may be thought of the Government of Mr. Hastings and 
 those who immediately preceded him for these last forty years, 
 India has certainly enjoyed such a Government as none of the 
 provinces of the Persian or the Roman Empire ever enjoyed for 
 so great a length of time in succession, and, indeed, one almost 
 as new in the annals of modern Europe as in those of India." 
 
 Carey found one of the greatest obstacles to agricultural 
 progress to be the fact that not one European owned a single 
 foot of the soil, " a singular fact in the history of nations," 
 removed only about the time of his own death. His remarks 
 on this have a present significance : 
 
 " It doubtless originated in a laudable care to preserve our Indian 
 fellow-subjects from insult and violence, which it was feared could 
 scarcely be done if natives of Britain, wholly unacquainted with the 
 laws and customs of the people, were permitted to settle 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 Euro- 
 peans 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
 
 234 Life of William Carey 
 
 again under the dominion of any one or any number of native 
 princes, all hope of mental improvement, or even of security for 
 person or property, will at once vanish. Nothing could be then 
 expected but scenes of rapine, plunder, bloodshed, and violence, till 
 its inhabitants were sealed over to irremediable wretchedness, 
 without the most distant ray of hope respecting the future. And 
 were it severed from Britain in any other way, the reverse felt in 
 India would be unspeakably great. At present all the learning, the 
 intelligence, the probity, the philanthropy, the weight of character 
 existing in Britain, are brought to bear on India. There is scarcely 
 an individual sustaining a part in the administration of affairs who 
 does not feel the weight of that tribunal formed by the suffrages of 
 the wise and the good in Britain, though he be stationed in the 
 remotest parts of India. Through the medium of a free press the 
 wisdom, probity, and philanthropy which pervade Britain exercise 
 an almost unbounded sway over every part of India, to the incal- 
 culable advantage of its inhabitants; constituting a triumph of 
 virtue and wisdom thus unknown to the ancients, and which will 
 increase in its effects in exact proportion to the increase in Britain 
 of justice, generosity, and love to mankind. Let India, however, be 
 severed from Britain, and the weight of these is felt no more. . . . 
 
 " It is a fact that in case of outrage or injury it is in most cases 
 easier for a native to obtain justice against a European, than for 
 a European to obtain redress if insulted or wronged by a native. 
 This circumstance, attended as it may be with some inconvenience, 
 reflects the highest honour on the British name; it is a fact of 
 which India affords almost the first instance on record in the annals 
 of history. Britain is nearly the first nation in whose foreign 
 Courts of Justice a tenderness for the native inhabitants habitually 
 prevails over all the partialities arising from country and education. 
 If there ever existed a period, therefore, in which a European could 
 oppress a native of India with impunity, that time is passed away 
 we trust for ever. That a permission of this nature might tend 
 to sever India from Britain after the example of America is of all 
 things the most improbable. . . . 
 
 " Long before the number of British landholders in India shall 
 have become considerable, Penang and the Eastern Isles, Ceylon, 
 the Cape, and even the Isles of New South Wales, may in European 
 population far exceed them in number; and unitedly, if not singly, 
 render the most distant step of this nature as impracticable, as it 
 would be ruinous, to the welfare and happiness of India. . . . 
 
 " British-born landholders would naturally maintain all their 
 national attachments, for what Briton can lose them? and derive 
 their happiness from corresponding with the wise and good at home. 
 If sufficiently wealthy, they would no doubt occasionally visit 
 Britain, where indeed it might be expected that some of them 
 would reside for years together, as do the owners of estates in the 
 West Indies. While Britain shall remain what she now is, it will 
 be impossible for those who have once felt the force of British 
 attachments, ever to forego them. Those feelings would animate 
 their minds, occupy their conversation, and regulate the education 
 and studies of their children, who would be in general sent home
 
 What Carey Did for Science 235 
 
 that they might there imbibe all those ideas of a moral and intel- 
 lectual nature for which our beloved country is so eminent. Thus 
 a new intercourse would be established between Britain and the 
 proprietors of land in India, highly to the advantage of both 
 countries. While they derived their highest happiness from the 
 religion, the literature, the philanthropy and public spirit of Britain, 
 they would, on the other hand, be able to furnish Britain with the 
 most accurate and ample information relative to the state of things 
 in a country in which the property they held there constrained 
 them to feel so deep an interest. The fear of all oppression being 
 out of the question, while it would be so evidently the interest not 
 only of every Briton but of every Christian, whether British or 
 native, to secure the protecting aid of Britain, at least as long as 
 two-thirds of the inhabitants of India retained the Hindoo or Mussul- 
 man system of religion, few things would be more likely to cement 
 and preserve the connection between both countries than the 
 existence of such a class of British-born landholders in India." 
 
 It is profitable to read this in the light of subsequent events 
 of the Duff-Bentinck reforms, the Sepoy mutiny, the govern- 
 ment of the Queen-Empress, the existence of more than three 
 millions of Christians in India, the social and commercial 
 development due to the non-officials from Great Britain and 
 America, and the administrative progress under Lord Curzon 
 and Lord Minto. 
 
 There is one evil which Carey never ceased to point out, but 
 which the very perfection of our judicial procedure and the 
 temporary character of our land assessments have intensified 
 " the borrowing system of the natives." While 12 per cent, 
 is the so-called legal rate of interest, it is never below 36, and 
 frequently rises to 72 per cent. Native marriage customs, the 
 commercial custom of " advances," agricultural usage, and our 
 civil procedure combine to sink millions of the peasantry lower 
 than they were, in this respect, in Carey's time. For this, too, 
 he had a remedy so far as it was in his power to mitigate an evil 
 which only practical Christianity will cure. He was the first 
 to apply in India that system of savings banks which the 
 Government has of late sought to encourage. 
 
 At a time when the English and even Scottish universities 
 denied their honorary degrees to all British subjects who were 
 not of the established churches, Brown University, in the United 
 States Judson's spontaneously sent Carey the diploma of 
 Doctor of Divinity. That was in the year 1807. In 1823 he 
 was elected a corresponding member of the Horticultural Society 
 of London, a member of the Geological Society, and a Fellow 
 of the Linnaean Society. To him the latter year was ever
 
 236 Life of William Carey 
 
 memorable, not for such honours which he had not sought, but 
 for a flood of the Damoodar river, which, overflowing its em- 
 bankments and desolating the whole country between it and 
 the Hoogli, submerged his garden and the mission grounds with 
 three feet of water, swept away the botanic treasures or buried 
 them under sand, and destroyed his own house. Carey was 
 lying in bed at the time, under an apparently fatal fever follow- 
 ing dislocation of the hip-joint. He had lost his footing when 
 stepping from his boat. Surgical science was then less equal 
 to such a case than it is now, and for nine days he suffered agony, 
 which on the tenth resulted in fever. When hurriedly carried 
 out of his tottering house, which in a few hours was scoured 
 away by the rush of the torrent into a hole fifty feet deep, his 
 first thought was of his garden. For six months he used 
 crutches, but long before he could put foot to the ground he 
 was carefully borne all over the scene of desolation. His noble 
 collection of exotic plants, unmatched in Asia save in the 
 Company's garden, was gone. His scientific arrangement of 
 orders and families was obliterated. It seemed as if the fine 
 barren sand of the mountain torrent would make the paradise 
 a desert for ever. The venerable botanist was wounded in his 
 keenest part, but he lost not an hour in issuing orders and 
 writing off for new supplies of specimens and seeds, which years 
 after made the place as lovely if not so precious, as before. He 
 thus wrote to Dr. Ryland : 
 
 " SERAMPORE, iind 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 ist of October I went to Calcutta 
 to preach, and returned with another friend about midnight. 
 When I got out of the boat close to our own premises, my foot 
 slipped and I fell; my friend also fell in the same place. I 
 however perceived that I could not rise, nor even make the 
 smallest effort to rise. The boatmen carried me into the house, 
 and laid me on a couch, and my friend, who was a medical man, 
 examined my hurt. From all this affliction I am, through 
 mercy, nearly restored. I am still very weak, and the injured 
 limb is very painful. I am unable to walk two steps without 
 crutches; yet my strength is sensibly increasing, and Dr. Mellis, 
 who attended me during the illness, says he has no doubts of 
 my perfect recovery.
 
 What Carey Did for Science 237 
 
 " 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 founda- 
 tion and wall of the house itself. This was a signal for me to 
 remove; and a house built for a professor in the College being 
 empty, I removed to it, and through mercy am now comfortably 
 settled there. 
 
 " I have nearly filled my letter with this account, but I must 
 give you a short account of the state of my mind when I could 
 think, and that was generally when excited by an access of 
 friends; at other times I could scarcely speak or think. I 
 concluded one or two days that my death was near. I had no 
 joys; nor any fear of death, or reluctance to die; but never was 
 I so sensibly convinced of the value of an ATONING Saviour as 
 then. I could only say, ' Hangs my helpless soul on thee ; ' 
 and adopt the language of the first and second verses of the 
 fifty -first Psalm, which I desired might be the text for my 
 funeral sermon. A life of faith in Christ as the Lamb of God 
 who taketh away the sin of the world, appeared more than 
 ordinarily important to my mind, and I expressed these feelings 
 to those about me with freedom and pleasure. 
 
 " Now, through the gracious providence of God, I am again
 
 238 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 ex- 
 tended, and I trust in as prosperous a state as at any former time. 
 There are now many of other denominations employed in 
 Missions, and I rejoice to say that we are all workers together 
 in the work. The native churches were never in a better state, 
 and the face of the Mission is in every respect encouraging. 
 Give my love to all who know me. I am very affectionately 
 yours, W. CAREY." 
 
 Still more severe and disastrous in its effects was the cyclone 
 of 1831. The former had desolated the open garden, but this 
 laid low some of the noblest trees which, in their fall, crushed 
 his splendid conservatory. One of his brethren represents the 
 old man as weeping over the ruin of the collections of twenty 
 years. Again the Hoogli, lashed into fury and swollen by the 
 tidal wave, swept away the lately-formed road, and, cutting off 
 another fourth of the original settlement of the Mission, im- 
 perilled the old house of Mr. Ward. Its ruins were levelled to 
 form another road, and ever since the whole face of the right 
 bank of the river has been a source of apprehension and expense. 
 Just before this, Dr. Staughton had written from America that 
 the interest on the funds raised there by Ward for the College 
 would not be sent until the trustees were assured that the money 
 was not to be spent on the teaching of science in the College, 
 but only on the theological education of Hindoo converts. " I 
 must confess," was Carey's reply, " I never heard anything more 
 illiberal. Pray can youth be trained up for the Christian 
 ministry without science ? Do you in America train up youths 
 for it without any knowledge of science? " 
 
 One of Dr. Carey's latest visits to Calcutta was to inspect 
 the Society's Garden then at Alipore, and to write the elaborate 
 report of the Horticultural Committee which appeared in the 
 second volume of the Transactions after his death. He there 
 records the great success of the cultivation of the West India 
 arrowroot. This he introduced into his own garden, and after 
 years of discontinued culture we raised many a fine crop from 
 the old roots. The old man " cannot but advert, with feelings 
 of the highest satisfaction, to the display of vegetables on the 
 1 3th January 1830, a display which would have done honour 
 to any climate, or to any, even the most improved system of
 
 What Carey Did for Science 239 
 
 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 advanc- 
 ing the prosperity of India, and especially so on the members 
 of the Society. He concluded his address by this motion: 
 ' That the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, duly 
 estimating the great and important services rendered to the 
 interests of British India by the founder of the institution, the 
 late Reverend Dr. William Carey, who unceasingly applied his 
 great talents, abilities, and influence in advancing the happiness 
 of India more especially by the spread of an improved system 
 of husbandry and gardening desire to mark, by some per- 
 manent record, their sense of his transcendent worth, by placing 
 a marble bust to his memory in the Society's new apartments 
 at the Metcalfe Hall, there to remain a lasting testimony to 
 the pure and disinterested zeal and labours of so illustrious a 
 character: that a subscription, accordingly, from among the 
 members of the Society, be urgently recommended for the 
 accomplishment of the above object.' " 
 
 One fact in the history of the marble bust of Carey, which 
 since 1845 has adorned the hall of the Agricultural Society of 
 India, would have delighted the venerable missionary. Follow- 
 ing the engraving from Home's portrait, and advised by one of 
 the sons, Nobo Koomar Pal, a self-educated Bengali artist, 
 modelled the clay. The clay bust was sent to England for the 
 guidance of Mr. J. C. Lough, the sculptor selected by Dr. Royle 
 to finish the work in marble. Mr. Lough had executed the 
 Queen's statue for the Royal Exchange, and the monument with 
 a reclining figure of Southey. In sending out the marble bust 
 of Carey to Calcutta Dr. Royle wrote, " I think the bust an 
 admirable one; General Macleod immediately recognised it as 
 one of your much esteemed Founder." 
 
 The Bengal Asiatic Society, on the motion of the Lord 
 Bishop and Colonel Sir Jer. Bryant, entered these words on 
 their Journal : " The Asiatic Society cannot note upon their 
 proceedings the death of the Rev. W. Carey, D.D., so long an 
 active member and an ornament of this Institution, distinguished
 
 240 Life of William Carey 
 
 alike for his high attainments in the Oriental languages, for 
 his eminent services in opening the stores of Indian literature 
 to the knowledge of Europe, and for his extensive acquaintance 
 with the sciences, the natural history and botany of this country, 
 and his useful contributions on every hand towards the pro- 
 motion of the objects of the Society, without placing on record 
 this expression of their high sense of his value and merits as a 
 scholar and a man of science ; their esteem for the sterling and 
 surpassing religious and moral excellencies of his character, and 
 their sincere grief for his irreparable loss."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 AND AMERICA 
 
 1813-1830 
 
 Carey's relation to the new era The East India Company's Charters of 
 1793, 1813, and 1833 His double influence on the churches and public 
 opinion The great missionary societies Missionary journals and 
 their readers Bengal and India recognised as the most important 
 mission fields -Influence on Robert Haldane^ Reflex effect of foreign 
 on home missions Carey's power over individuals Melville Home 
 and Douglas of Cavers Henry Martyn Charles Simeon and Stewart 
 of Moulin Robert Hall and John Foster Heber and Chalmers 
 William Wilberforce on Carey Mr. Prendergast and the tub story 
 Last persecution by the Company's Government Carey on the 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 
 Political value of Carey's labours Andrew Fuller's death A model 
 foreign mission secretary His friendship with Carey The sixteen 
 years' dispute Dr.Carey's position His defence of Marshman His 
 chivalrous self-sacrifice His forgiveness of the younger brethren in 
 Calcutta His fidelity to righteousness and to friendship. 
 
 HIMSELF the outcome of the social and political forces which 
 began in the French Revolution, and are still at work, William 
 Carey was made a living personal force to the new era. The 
 period which was introduced in 1783 by the Peace of Versailles 
 in Europe following the Independence of the United States of 
 America, was new on every side in politics, in philosophy, in 
 literature, in scientific research, in a just and benevolent regard 
 for the peoples of every land, and in the awakening of the 
 churches from the sleep of formalism. Carey was no thinker, 
 but with the reality and the vividness of practical action and 
 personal sacrifice he led the English-speaking races, to whom 
 the future of the world was then given, to substitute for the 
 dreams of Rousseau and all other theories the teaching of Christ 
 as to His kingdom within each man, and in the progress of 
 mankind. 
 
 241
 
 242 Life of William Carey 
 
 Set free from the impossible task of administering North 
 America on the absolutist system which the Georges would fain 
 have continued, Great Britain found herself committed to the 
 duty of doing for India what Rome had done for Europe. 
 England was compelled to surrender the free West to her own 
 children only that she might raise the servile and idolatrous 
 East to such a Christian level as the genius of its peoples could 
 in time enable them to work out. But it took the thirty years 
 from 1783 to 1813 to convince British statesmen, from Pitt to 
 Castlereagh, that India is to be civilised not according to its 
 own false systems, but by truth in all forms, spiritual and moral, 
 scientific and historical. It took other twenty years, to the 
 Charter of 1833, to complete the conversion of the British 
 Parliament to the belief that the principles of truth and freedom 
 are in their measure as good for the East as for the West. At 
 the beginning of this new period William Pitt based his motion 
 for Parliamentary reform on this fact, that " our senators are 
 no longer the representatives of British virtue but of the vices 
 and pollutions of the East." At the close of it Lord William 
 Bentinck, Macaulay, and Duff, co-operated in the decree which 
 made truth, as most completely revealed through the English 
 language and literature, the medium of India's enlightenment. 
 William Carey's career of fifty years, from his baptism in 1783 
 and the composition of his Enquiry to his death in 1834, covered 
 and influenced more than any other one man's the whole time; 
 and he represented in it an element of permanent healthy 
 nationalisation which these successors overlooked, the use of 
 the languages of the peoples of India as the only literary channels 
 for allowing the truth revealed through English to reach the 
 millions of the people. 
 
 It was by this means that Carey educated Great Britain and 
 America to rise equal to the terrible trust of jointly creating a 
 Christian Empire of India, and ultimately a series of self- 
 governing Christian nations in Southern and Eastern Asia. 
 He consciously and directly roused the Churches of all names 
 to carry out the commission of their Master, and to seek the 
 promised impulse of His Spirit or Divine Representative on 
 earth, that they might do greater things than even those which 
 He did. And he, less directly but not less consciously, brought 
 the influence of public opinion, which every year purified and 
 quickened, to bear upon Parliament and upon individual states- 
 men, aided in this up till 1815 by Andrew Fuller. He never 
 set foot in England again, and the influence of his brethren
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 243 
 
 Ward and Marshman during their visits was largely neutralised 
 by some leaders of their own church. But Carey's character 
 and career, his letters and writings, his work and whole 
 personality, stood out in England, Scotland, and America as 
 the motive power which stimulated every church and society, 
 and won the triumph of toleration in the charter of 1813, of 
 humanity, education, and administrative reform in the legis- 
 lation of Lord William Bentinck. 
 
 We have already seen how the immediate result of Carey's 
 early letters was the foundation on a catholic basis of the 
 London Missionary Society, which now represents the great 
 Nonconformist half of England; of the Edinburgh or Scottish 
 and Glasgow Societies, through which the Presbyterians sent 
 forth missionaries to West and South Africa and to Western 
 India, until their churches acted as such; of the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society which the evangelical members of the Church 
 of England have put in the front of all the societies; and of 
 Robert Haldane's splendid self-sacrifice in selling all that he 
 had to lead a large Presbyterian mission to Hindostan. Soon 
 (1797) the London Society became the parent of that of the 
 Netherlands, and of that which is one of the most extensive 
 in Christendom, the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions. The latter, really founded (1810) by Judson 
 and some of his fellow-students, gave birth (1814) to the almost 
 equally great American Baptist Union when Judson and his 
 colleague became Baptists, and the former was sent by Carey 
 to Burma. The Religious Tract Society (1799), and the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society (1804) each a handmaid of the 
 missionary agencies sprang as really though less directly from 
 Carey's action. Such organised efforts to bring in heathen and 
 Mohammedan peoples led in 1809 to the at first catholic work 
 begun by the London Society for promoting Christianity among 
 the Jews. The older Wesleyan Methodist and Gospel Propaga- 
 tion Societies, catching the enthusiasm as Carey succeeded in 
 opening India and the East, entered on a new development 
 under which the former in 1813, and the latter in 1821, no- 
 longer confined their operations to the slaves of America and 
 the English of the dispersion in the colonies and dependencies 
 of Great Britain. In 1815 Lutheran Germany also, which had 
 cast out the Pietists and the Moravian brethren as the Church 
 of England had rejected the Wesleyans, founded the principal 
 representative of its evangelicalism at Basel. The succeeding 
 years up to Carey's death saw similar missionary centres formed.
 
 244 Life of William Carey 
 
 or reorganised, in Leipzig (1819), Berlin (1823), and Bremen 
 (I836). 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 familiar class 
 of foreign missionary periodicals. The few magazines then 
 existing, like the Evangelical, became filled with a new spirit 
 of earnest aggressiveness. In 1796 there appeared in Edinburgh 
 The Missionary Magazine, " a periodical publication intended 
 as a repository of discussion and intelligence respecting the 
 progress of the Gospel throughout the world." The editors 
 close their preface in January 1797 with this statement: " With 
 much pleasure they have learned that there was never a greater 
 number of religious periodical publications carried on than at 
 present, and never were any of them more generally read. The 
 aggregate impression of those alone which are printed in Britain 
 every month considerably exceeds thirty thousand." The 
 first article utilises the facts sent home by Dr. Carey as the 
 fruit of his first two years' experience, to show " The Peculiar 
 Advantages of Bengal as a Field for Missions from Great Britain." 
 After describing, in the style of an English statesman, the im- 
 mense population, the highly civilised state of society, the eager- 
 ness of the natives in the acquisition of knowledge, and the 
 principles which the Hindoos and Mohammedans hold in common 
 with Christians, the writer thus continues : 
 
 " The attachment of both the Mohammedans and Hindoos to their 
 ancient systems is lessening every day. We have this information 
 from the late Sir William Jones, one of the Judges of that country, 
 a name dear to literature, and a lover of the religion of Jesus. The 
 Mussulmans in Hindostan are in general but little acquainted with 
 their system, and by no means so zealous for it as their brethren 
 in the Turkish and Persian empires. Besides, they have not the 
 strong arm of civil authority to crush those who would convert 
 them. Mr. Carey's letters seem to intimate the same relaxation 
 among the Hindoos. This decay of prejudice and bigotry will at 
 least incline them to listen with more patience, and a milder temper, 
 to the doctrines and evidences of the Christian religion. The degree 
 
 1 Nor was his influence confined to the Protestant division of Christen- 
 dom. When, on the Restoration of 1815, France became once more 
 aggressively Romanist for a time, the Association for the Propagation of the 
 Faith was founded at Lyons and Paris, avowedly on the model of the 
 Baptist Missionary Society, and it now raises a quarter of a million sterling 
 a year for its missions. The expression in an early number of its A nnales 
 is: " C'est 1'Angleterre qui a fourni 1'idee modele," etc. " LaSocietedes 
 Anabaptistes a forme pour ses Missions des Societes," etc.
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 245 
 
 of adhesion to their castes, which still remains, is certainly un- 
 favourable, and must be considered as one of Satan's arts to render 
 men unhappy; but it is not insuperable. The Roman Catholics 
 have gained myriads of converts from among them. The Danish 
 missionaries record their thousands too: and one (Schwartz) of the 
 most successful missionaries at present in the world is labouring 
 in the southern part of Hindostan. Besides a very considerable 
 number who have thrown aside their old superstition, and make a 
 profession of the Christian religion, he computes that, in the course 
 of his ministry, he has been the instrument of savingly converting 
 two thousand persons to the faith of Christ. Of these, above five 
 hundred are Mohammedans: the rest are from among the different 
 castes of the Hindoos. In addition to these instances, it is proper 
 to notice the attention which the Hindoos are paying to the two 
 Baptist missionaries, and which gives a favourable specimen of 
 their readiness to listen to the preaching of the Gospel. . . . 
 
 " Reflect, O disciple of Jesus! on what has been presented to 
 thy view. The cause of Christ is thy own cause. Without deep 
 criminality thou canst not be indifferent to its success. Rejoice 
 that so delightful a field of missions has been discovered and ex- 
 hibited. 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, // 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, determined to turn the very centre of Hindooism, 
 Benares, into a second Serampore. Defeated by one set of 
 Directors of the East India Company, he waited for the election 
 of their successors, only to find the East India Company as 
 hostile to the Scottish gentleman as they had been to the English 
 shoemaker four years before. 
 
 The formation of the great Missionary and Bible Societies 
 did not, as in the case of the Moravian Brethren and the Wes- 
 leyans, 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
 
 246 Life of William Carey 
 
 extensive scale. Not merely did the Haldanes and their agents, 
 following Whitefield and the Scottish Secession of 1733, become 
 the evangelists of the north when they were not suffered to 
 preach the Gospel in South Asia ; every member of the churches 
 of Great Britain and America, as he caught the enthusiasm of 
 humanity, in the Master's sense, from the periodical accounts 
 sent home from Serampore, and soon from Africa and the South 
 Seas, as well as from the Red Indians and Slaves of the West, 
 began to work as earnestly among the neglected classes around 
 him, as to pray and give for the conversion of the peoples abroad. 
 From first to last, from the early days of the Moravian influence 
 on Wesley and Whitefield, and the letters of Carey, to the suc- 
 cessive visits to the home churches of missionaries like Duff 
 and Judson, Ellis and Williams, Moffat and Livingstone, it is 
 the enterprise of foreign missions which has been the leaven of 
 Christendom no less really than of the rest of the world. Does 
 the fact that at the close of the year 1796 there were more than 
 thirty thousand men and women in Great Britain who every 
 month read and prayed about the then little known world of 
 heathenism, and spared not their best to bring that world to 
 the Christ whom they had found, seem a small thing? How 
 much smaller, even to contemptible insignificance, must those 
 who think so consider the arrival of William Carey in Calcutta 
 to be three years before ! Yet the thirty thousand sprang from 
 the one, and to-day the thirty thousand have a vast body of 
 Christians really obedient to the Master, in so far as, banded 
 together in five hundred churches and societies, they have 
 sent out eighteen thousand missionaries instead of one or 
 two; they see eighty thousand Asiatics, Africans, and Poly- 
 nesians proclaiming the Christ to their countrymen, and their 
 praying is tested by their giving annually a sum of 5,000,000, 
 to which every year is adding. 
 
 The influence of Carey and his work on individual men and 
 women in his generation was even more marked, inasmuch as 
 his humility kept him so often from magnifying his office and 
 glorifying God as the example of Paul should have encouraged 
 him to do. Most important of all for the cause, he personally 
 called Ward to be his associate, and his writings drew Dr. and Mrs. 
 Marshman to his side, while his apostolic charity so developed 
 and used all that was good in Thomas and Fountain, that not 
 even in the churches of John and James, Peter and Paul, 
 Barnabas and Luke, was there such a brotherhood. When 
 troubles came from outside he won to himself the younger
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 247 
 
 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 Home, 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. Re- 
 ferring to the English churches, Established and Nonconformist, 
 he wrote: " Except the Reverend Mr. Carey and a friend who 
 accompanies him, I am not informed of any . . . ministers who 
 are engaged in missions." Such was the impression made by 
 Carey on John Newton that, in 1802, he rebuked his old curate, 
 Claudius Buchanan, for depreciating the Serampore missionaries, 
 adding, " I do not look for miracles, but if God were to work 
 one in our day, I should not wonder if it were in favour of Dr. 
 Carey." 
 
 The Serampore Mission, at an early period, called forth the 
 admiration of the Scottish philanthropist and essayist, James 
 Douglas of Cavers, whose Hints on Missions (1822), a book 
 still full of suggestiveness, contains this passage: " Education 
 and the press have only been employed to purpose of very 
 late years, especially by the missionaries of Serampore; every 
 year they have been making some improvements upon their 
 former efforts, and ... it only requires to increase the number 
 of printing presses, schools, teachers, translators, and professors, 
 to accelerate to any pitch the rate of improvement. ... To 
 attempt to conveit the world without educating it, is grasping 
 at the end and neglecting the means." Referring to what Carey 
 had begun and the Serampore College had helped to develop 
 in Asia, as in Africa and America, Douglas of Cavers well 
 described the missionary era, the new crusade : " The Reforma- 
 tion itself needed anew a reform in the spirit if not in the letter. 
 That second Reformation has begun; it makes less noise than 
 that of Luther, but it spreads wider and deeper; as it is more 
 intimate it will be more enduring. Like the Temple of Solomon, 
 it is rising silently, without the din of pressure or the note of 
 previous preparation, but notwithstanding it will be not less 
 complete in all its parts nor less able to resist the injuries of 
 time ! " 
 
 Henry Marty n died, perhaps the loftiest and most loving 
 spirit of the men whom Carey drew to India. Son of a Cornish 
 miner-captain, after passing through the Truro Grammar School,
 
 248 Life of Williaru Carey 
 
 he was sixteen the age at which Carey became a shoemaker's 
 apprentice when he was entered at St. John's, and made that 
 ever since the most missionary of all the colleges of Cambridge. 
 When not yet twenty he came out Senior Wrangler. His 
 father's death drove him to the Bible, to the Acts of the Apostles, 
 which he began to study, and the first whisper of the call of 
 Christ came to him in the joy of the Magnificat as its strains 
 pealed through the chapel. Charles Simeon's preaching drew 
 him to Trinity Church. In the vicarage, when he had come to be 
 tutor of his college, and was preparing for the law, he heard much 
 talk of William Carey, of his self-sacrifice and his success in India. 
 It was the opening year of the nineteenth century, the Church 
 Missionary Society had just been born as the fruit partly of a 
 paper written by Simeon four years previously, and he offered 
 himself as its first English missionary. He was not twenty-one, 
 he could not be ordained for two years. Meanwhile a calamity 
 made him and his unmarried sister penniless; he loved Lydia 
 Grenfell with a pure passion which enriched while it saddened 
 his short life, and a chaplaincy became the best mode in every 
 way of his living and dying for India. What a meeting must 
 that have been between him and Carey when, already stricken 
 by fever, he found a sanctuary in Aldeen, and learned at Seram- 
 pore the sweetness of telling to the natives of India in one of their 
 own tongues the love of God. William Carey and Henry Martyn 
 were one in origin, from the people; in industry, as scholars; 
 in genius, as God-devoted; in the love of a great heart not 
 always returned. The older man left the church of his fathers 
 because there was no Simeon and no missionary society, and he 
 made his own university; he laid the foundation of English 
 missions deep and broad in no sect but in Christ, to whom he 
 and Martyn alike gave themselves. 
 
 The names of Carey and Simeon, thus linked to each other by 
 Martyn, find another pleasant and fruitful tie in the Rev. 
 Alexander Stewart, D.D., Gaelic scholar and Scottish preacher. 
 It was soon after Carey went out to India that Simeon, travelling 
 in the Highlands, spent a Sunday in the manse of Moulin, where 
 his personal intercourse and his evening sermon after a season of 
 Communion were blessed to the evangelical enlightenment of 
 Stewart. Moulin was the birthplace ten years after of Alexander 
 Duff, whose parents previously came under the power of the 
 minister's new-found light. 1 Like Simeon, Dr. Stewart thence- 
 forth became a warm supporter of foreign missions. Finding in 
 
 1 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., chapter i.
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 249 
 
 the Periodical Accounts a letter in which Carey asked Fuller to 
 send him a copy of Van der Hooght's edition of the Hebrew 
 Bible because of the weakness of his eyesight, Dr. Stewart 
 at once wrote offering his own copy. Fuller gladly accepted 
 the kindness. " I with great pleasure/' writes Dr. Stewart, 
 " followed the direction, wrote a letter of some length to Carey, 
 and sent off my parcel to London. I daresay you remember 
 my favourite Hebrew Bible in two volumes. I parted with it 
 with something of the same feelings that a pious parent might 
 do with a favourite son going on a mission to the heathen with 
 a little regret but with much goodwill." This was the beginning 
 of an interesting correspondence with Carey and Fuller. 
 
 Next to Andrew Fuller, and in the region of literature, general 
 culture and eloquence before him, the strongest men among 
 the Baptists were the younger Robert Hall and John Foster. 
 Both were devoted to Carey, and were the most powerful of 
 the English advocates of his mission. The former, for a time, 
 was led to side with the Society in some of the details of its 
 dispute with Dr. Marshman, but his loyalty to Carey and the 
 principles of the mission fired some of the most eloquent orations 
 in English literature. John Foster's shrewder common sense 
 never wavered, but inspired his pen alike in the heat of con- 
 troversy 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.
 
 250 Life of William Carey 
 
 Of all the publicists in the United Kingdom during Carey's 
 long career the foremost was William Wilberforce; he was not 
 second even to Charles Grant and his sons. Defeated in carrying 
 into law the " pious clauses " of the charter which would have 
 opened India to the Christian missionary and schoolmaster 
 in 1793, he nevertheless succeeded by his persuasive eloquence 
 and the weight of his character in having them entered as 
 Resolutions of the House of Commons. He then gave himself 
 successfully to the abolition of the slave-trade. But he always 
 declared the toleration of Christianity in British India to be 
 " that greatest of all causes, for I really place it before the 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 apathy of public opinion, and especially of the 
 dumb churches. But in the next twenty years Carey changed 
 all that. Not merely was Andrew Fuller ever on the watch 
 with pen and voice, but all the churches were roused, the Estab- 
 lished to send out bishops and chaplains, the Nonconformist and 
 Established Evangelicals together to secure freedom for mis- 
 sionaries 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 i6th July 1813, 
 when he used the name of Carey to defeat an attempt of the 
 Company to prevent toleration by omitting the declaratory 
 clauses of the Resolution, which would have made it imply 
 that the privilege should never be exerted though the power of 
 licensing missionaries was nominally conceded. 
 
 " One great argument of his opponents was grounded on the 
 enthusiastic character which they imputed to the missionary body. 
 India hitherto has seen no missionary who was a member of the 
 English Church, and imputations could be cast more readily on 
 ' Anabaptists and fanatics.' These attacks Mr. Wilberforce indig- 
 nantly refuted, and well had the noble conduct of the band at 
 Serampore deserved this vindication. ' I do not know,' he often 
 said, ' a finer instance of the moral sublime, than that a poor 
 cobbler working in his stall should conceive the idea of converting 
 the Hindoos to Christianity; yet such was Dr. Carey. . Why, 
 Milton's planning his Paradise Lost in his old age and blindness was
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 251 
 
 nothing to it. And then when he had gone to India, and was 
 appointed by Lord Wellesley to a lucrative and honourable station 
 in the college of Fort William, with equal nobleness of mind he 
 made over all his salary (between ^1000 and ^1500 per annum) to 
 the general objects of the mission. By the way, nothing ever gave 
 me a more lively sense of the low and mercenary standard of your 
 men of honour, than the manifest effect produced upon the House 
 of Commons by my stating this last circumstance. It seemed to be 
 the only thing which moved them.' Dr. Carey had been especially 
 attacked, and ' a few days afterwards the member who had made 
 this charge came to me, and asked me in a manner which in a noted 
 duellist could not be mistaken, " Pray, Mr. Wilberforce, do you 
 know a Mr. Andrew Fuller, who has written to desire me to retract 
 the statement which I made with reference to Dr. Carey ? " " Yes," 
 I answered with a smile, " I know him perfectly, but depend upon 
 it you will make nothing of him in your way; he is a respectable 
 Baptist minister at Kettering." In due time there came from 
 India an authoritative contradiction of the slander. It was sent to 
 me, and for two whole years did I take it in my pocket to the 
 House of Commons to read it to the House whenever the author of 
 the accusation should be present; but during that whole time he 
 never once dared show himself in the House.' " 
 
 The slanderer was a Mr. Prendergast, who affirmed that Dr. 
 Carey's conduct had changed so much for the worse since the 
 departure of Lord Wellesley, that he himself had seen the mis- 
 sionary 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. Mont- 
 gomerie Campbell had asserted that when Schwartz was in the 
 heat of his discourse in a certain village and had taken off his 
 stock, " that and his gold buckle were stolen by one of his 
 virtuous and enlightened congregation; in such a description 
 of natives did the doctrine of the missionaries operate." Before 
 Dr. Carey's exposure could reach England this " tub " story 
 became the stock argument of the anti-christian orators. The 
 Madras barrister, Marsh, who was put up to answer Wilberforce, 
 was driven to such language as this: 
 
 " Your struggles are only begun when you have converted one 
 caste; never will the scheme of Hindoo conversion be realised till 
 you persuade an immense population to suffer by whole tribes the 
 severest martyrdom that has yet been sustained for the sake of 
 religion and are the missionaries whom this bill will let loose on 
 India fit engines for the accomplishment of this great revolution? 
 Will these people, crawling from the holes and caverns of their 
 original destinations, apostates from the loom and the anvil he 
 should have said the awl and renegades from the lowest handicraft
 
 252 Life of William Carey 
 
 employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they 
 will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter 
 into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that 
 presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended 
 but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of tub preachers 
 in the conflict? " 
 
 Lord Wellesley's eulogy of the Serampore mission in the House 
 of Lords was much more pronounced than appears from the 
 imperfect report. But even in that he answered the Brahmanised 
 member of the House of Commons thus : 
 
 " With regard to the missionaries, he must say that while he was 
 in India he never knew of any danger arising from their proceedings, 
 neither had he heard of any impression produced by them in the way 
 of conversion. The greater number of them were in the Danish 
 settlement of Serampore; but he never heard of any convulsions 
 or any alarm produced by them. Some of them, particularly Mr. 
 Carey, were very learned men, and had been employed in the 
 College of Fort William. He had always considered the missionaries 
 who were in India in his time a quiet, orderly, discreet, and learned 
 body; and he had employed them in the education of youth and 
 the translation of the Scriptures into the eastern languages. He 
 had thought it his duty to have the Sacred Scriptures translated 
 into the languages of the East, and to give the learned natives 
 employed in the translation the advantage of access to the sacred 
 fountain of divine truth. He thought a Christian governor could 
 not have done less; and he knew that a British governor ought 
 not to do more." 
 
 Carey's letters to Fuller in 1810-12 are filled with importunate 
 appeals to agitate, so that the new charter might legalise 
 Christian mission work in India. Fuller worked outside of the 
 House as hard as Wilberforce. In eight weeks of the session 
 no fewer than nine hundred petitions were presented, in twenties 
 and thirties, night after night, till Lord Castlereagh exclaimed, 
 " This is enough, Mr. Fuller." There was more reason for Carey's 
 urgency than he knew at the time he was pressing Fuller. The 
 persecution of the missionaries in Bengal, excused by the Vellore 
 mutiny, which had driven Judson to Burma and several other 
 missionaries elsewhere, was renewed by the Indian Government's 
 secretaries and police. The Ministry had informed the Court 
 of Directors that they had resolved to permit Europeans to 
 settle in India, yet after five weeks' vacillation the Governor- 
 General yielded to his subordinates so far as to issue an order 
 on 5th March 1812, for the expulsion of three missionaries, 
 an order which was so executed that one of them was conducted 
 like a felon through the streets and lodged in the native jail for 
 two hours. Carey thus wrote to Ryland on the persecution :
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 253 
 
 " CALCUTTA, iqth April 1813. Before this reaches you it is 
 probable that you will have heard of the resolution of Govern- 
 ment respecting our brethren Johns, Lawson, and Robinson, 
 and will perhaps have even seen Brother Johns, who was by 
 that cruel order sent home on the Castlereagh. Government 
 have agreed that Brother Lawson shall stay till the pleasure of 
 the Court of Directors is known, to whom a reference will be 
 made. Brother Robinson was gone down the river, and was on 
 board a ship bound to Java when the order was issued; he 
 therefore got out without hearing of it, but I understand it 
 will be sent thither after him. Jehovah reigneth ! 
 
 " Since Brother Johns's departure I have tried to ascertain 
 the cause of the severity in Government. I had a long con- 
 versation with H. T. Colebrooke, Esq., who has been out of 
 Council but a few months, upon the matter. I cannot learn 
 that Government has any specific dislike to us, but find that 
 ever since the year 1807 the orders of the Court of Directors to 
 send home all Europeans not in the service of Her Majesty or 
 the Company, and who come out without leave of the Directors, 
 have been so peremptory and express that Government cannot 
 now overlook any circumstance which brings such persons to 
 notice. Notwithstanding the general way in which the Court 
 of Directors have worded their orders, I cannot help putting 
 several circumstances together, which make me fear that our 
 Mission was the cause of the enforcement of that general law 
 which forbids Europeans to remain in India without the leave 
 of the Court of Directors. 
 
 " Whether Twining's pamphlet excited the alarm, or was 
 only an echo of the minds of a number of men hostile to religion, 
 I cannot say, but if I recollect dates aright the orders of the 
 Court of Directors came as soon as possible after that pamphlet 
 was published; and as it would have been too barefaced to 
 have given a specific order to send home missionaries, they 
 founded their orders on an unjust and wicked clause in the 
 charter, and so enforced it that it should effectually operate on 
 missionaries. 
 
 " I hope the friends of religion will persevere in the use of 
 all peaceful and lawful means to prevail on the legislature to 
 expunge that clause, or so to modify it that ministers of the 
 Gospel may have leave to preach, form and visit churches, and 
 perform the various duties of their office without molestation, 
 and that they may have a right to settle in and travel over any 
 part of India for that purpose. Nothing can be more just than
 
 254 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 clergy- 
 man, has likewise hard work to stand his ground. 
 
 " I trust, however, it is too late to eradicate the Gospel from 
 Bengal. The number of those born in the country who preach 
 the Word is now very considerable. Fifteen of this description 
 preach constantly, and seven or eight more occasionally exhort 
 their countrymen, besides our European brethren. The Gospel 
 is stationed at eighteen or twenty stations belonging to our 
 Mission alone, and at several of them there are churches. The 
 Bible is either translated or under translation into twenty-four 
 of the languages of the East, eighteen of which we are employed 
 about, besides printing most of the others. Thirteen out of 
 these eighteen are now in the press, including a third edition of 
 the Bengali New Testament. Indeed, so great is the demand 
 for Bibles that though we have eight presses constantly at work 
 I fear we shall not have a Bengali New Testament to sell or give 
 away for the next twelve months, the old edition being entirely 
 out of print. We shall be in almost the same predicament with 
 the Hindostani. We are going to set up two more presses, 
 which we can get made in Calcutta, and are going to send another 
 to Rangoon. In short, though the publishing of the Word of 
 God is a political crime, there never was a time when it was 
 so successful. ' Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, 
 saith the Lord.' 
 
 " Through divine mercy we are all well, and live in peace and 
 love. A small cloud which threatened at the time Brother 
 Johns left us has mercifully blown over, and we are now in the 
 utmost harmony. I will, if possible, write to my nephew 
 Eustace by these ships, but I am so pressed for time that I can 
 never promise to write a letter. The Lord has so blessed us 
 that we are now printing in more languages than we could do 
 before the fire took place. 
 
 " Give my love to Eustace, also to all who recollect or think 
 of me. I am now near fifty-two years of age; yet through 
 mercy I am well and am enabled to keep close to work twelve 
 or fourteen hours a day. I hope to see the Bible printed in
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 255 
 
 most of the languages in which it is begun. I am, very affec- 
 tionately yours, WM. CAREY." 
 
 Carey had previously written thus to Fuller: " The fault lies 
 in the clause which gives the Company power thus to send home 
 interlopers, and is just as reasonable as one which should forbid 
 all the people in England a select few excepted to look at 
 the moon. I hope this clause will be modified or expunged in 
 the new charter. The prohibition is wrong, and nothing that 
 is morally wrong can be politically right." 
 
 It was left to the charter of 1853 fully to liberalise the 
 Company, but each step was taken too late to save it from 
 the nemesis of 1857 and extinction in 1858. " Let no man 
 think," Wilberforce had said to the House of Commons in 1813, 
 " that the petitions which have loaded our table have been 
 produced by a burst of momentary enthusiasm. While the 
 sun and moon continue to shine in the firmament so long will 
 this object be pursued with unabated ardour until the great 
 work be accomplished." 
 
 The opposition of Anglo-Indian officials and lawyers, which 
 vainly used no better weapons than such as Mr. Prendergast 
 and his " tub " fabrication, had been anticipated and encouraged 
 by the Edinburgh Review. That periodical was at the height 
 of its influence in 1808, the year before John Murray's Quarterly 
 was first published. The Rev. Sydney Smith, as the literary 
 and professional representative of what he delighted to call 
 " the cause of rational religion," was the foe of every form of 
 earnest Christianity, which he joined the mob in stigmatising 
 as " Methodism." He was not unacquainted with Indian 
 politics, for his equally clever brother, known as Bobus Smith, 
 was long Advocate-General in Calcutta, and left a very con- 
 siderable fortune made there to enrich the last six years of the 
 Canon's life. Casting about for a subject on which to exercise 
 at once his animosity and his fun, he found it in the Periodical 
 Accounts, wherein Fuller had undoubtedly too often published 
 letters and passages of journals written only for the eye of the 
 private friend. Carey frequently remonstrated against the 
 publicity given to some of his communications, and the fear 
 of this checked his correspondence. In truth, the new-born 
 enthusiasm was such that, at first, the Committee kept nothing 
 back. It was easy for a litterateur like Sydney Smith in those 
 days to extract passages and to give them such headings as 
 " Brother Carey's Piety at Sea," " Hatred of the Natives to the
 
 256 Life of William Carey 
 
 Gospel." Smith produced an article which, as republished in 
 his collected essays, has a historical value as a test of the bitter- 
 ness of the hate which the missionary enterprise had to meet in 
 secular literature till the death of Livingstone, Wilson, and 
 Duff opened the eyes of journalism to the facts. In itself it 
 must be read in the light of its author's own criticism of his 
 articles, thus expressed in a letter to Francis Jeffrey, and of 
 the regret that he had written it which, Jeffrey told Dr. Marsh- 
 man, he lived to utter: " Never mind; let them " (his articles) 
 " go away with their absurdity unadulterated and pure. If / 
 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 mis- 
 sonaries " A mass of fat and muscularity, with massive 
 Roman nose, piercing hazel eyes, shrewdness and fun not 
 humour or even wit seemingly without soul altogether." 
 
 The attack called forth a reply by Mr. Styles so severe that 
 Sydney Smith wrote a rejoinder which began by claiming credit 
 for " rooting out a nest of consecrated cobblers." Sir James 
 Mackintosh, then in Bombay, wrote of a similar assault by 
 Mr. Thomas Twining on the Bible Societies, that it " must 
 excite general indignation. The only measure which he could 
 consistently propose would be the infliction of capital punish- 
 ment on the crime of preaching or embracing Christianity in 
 India, for almost every inferior degree of persecution is already 
 practised by European or native anti-christians. But it fell 
 to Southey, in the very first number of the Quarterly Review, 
 in April 1809, to deal with the Rev. Sydney Smith, and to 
 defend Carey and the Brotherhood as both deserved. The 
 layman's defence was the more effective for its immediate 
 purpose that he started from the same prejudice as that of the 
 reverend Whig rationalist " the Wesleyans, the Orthodox 
 dissenters of every description, and the Evangelical churchmen 
 may all be comprehended under the generic name of Methodists. 
 The religion which they preach is not the religion of our fathers, 
 and what they have altered they have made worse." But 
 Southey had himself faith as well as a literary canon higher 
 than that of his opponent who wrote only to " please " his 
 patrons. He saw in these Methodists alone that which he 
 appreciated as the essence of true faith " that spirit of enthu- 
 siasm by which Europe was converted to Christianity they
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 257 
 
 have in some measure revived, and they have removed from 
 Protestantism a part of its reproach." He proceeded to tell 
 how " this Mission, which is represented by its enemies as so 
 dangerous to the British Empire in India, and thereby, according 
 to a logic learnt from Buonaparte, to England also, originated 
 in a man by name William Carey, who till the twenty-fourth 
 year of his age was a working shoemaker. Sectarianism has 
 this main advantage over the Established Church, that its 
 men of ability certainly find their station, and none of its talents 
 are neglected or lost. Carey was a studious and pious man, 
 his faith wrong, his feelings right. He made himself com- 
 petently versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He is now 
 probably a far more learned orientalist than any European has 
 ever been before him, and has been appointed Professor of 
 Sanskrit and Bengali at the College of Fort William." Then 
 follow a history of the Mission written in a style worthy of the 
 author of the Life of Nelson, and these statements of the political 
 and the purely missionary questions, which read now almost as 
 predictions : 
 
 " The first step towards winning the natives to our religion is to 
 show them that we have one. This will hardly be done without a 
 visible church. There would be no difficulty in filling up the estab- 
 lishment, however ample; but would the archbishop, bishops, 
 deans, and chapters of Mr. Buchanan's plan do the work of mis- 
 sionaries? Could the Church of England supply missionaries? 
 where are they to be found among them? In what school for the 
 promulgation of sound and orthodox learning are they trained up ? 
 There is ability and there is learning in the Church of England, but 
 its age of fermentation has long been over; and that zeal which 
 for this work is the most needful is, we fear, possessed only by the 
 Methodists. . . . 
 
 " Carey and his son have been in Bengal fourteen years, the other 
 brethren only nine; they had all a difficult language to acquire 
 before they could speak to a native, and to preach and argue in it 
 required a thorough and familiar knowledge. Under these circum- 
 stances the wonder is, not that they have done so little, but that 
 they have done so much; for it will be found that, even without 
 this difficulty to retard them, no religious opinions have spread 
 more rapidly in the same time, unless there was some remarkable 
 folly or extravagance to recommend them, or some powerful worldly 
 inducement. Their progress will be continually accelerating; the 
 difficulty is at first, as in introducing vaccination into a distant 
 land; when the matter has once taken one subject supplies infection 
 for all around him, and the disease takes root in the country. The 
 husband converts the wife, the son converts the parent, the friend 
 his friend, and every fresh proselyte becomes a missionary in his 
 own neighbourhood. Thus their sphere of influence and of action
 
 258 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 pro- 
 tection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for their 
 own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and 
 there is as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would 
 be of their shrinking from it, if the cause of God and man require 
 the sacrifice. But the converts ought to be protected from violence, 
 and all cramming with cow-dung prohibited on pain of retaliation 
 with beef -tea. 
 
 " Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which the 
 scoffers and alarmists have represented the missionaries. We, who 
 have thus vindicated them, are neither blind to what is erroneous 
 in their doctrine or ludicrous in their phraseology; but the anti- 
 missionaries cull out from their journals and letters all that is 
 ridiculous sectarian, and trifling; call them fools, madmen, tinkers, 
 Calvinists, and schismatics; and keep out of sight their love of 
 man, and their zeal for God, their self-devotement, their inde- 
 fatigable industry, and their unequalled learning. These low-born 
 and low-bred mechanics have translated the whole Bible into 
 Bengali, and have by this time printed it. They are printing the 
 New Testament in the Sanskrit, the Orissa, Mahratta, Hindostan, 
 and Guzarat, and translating it into Persic, Telinga, Karnata, 
 Chinese, the language of the Sieks and of the Burmans, and in four 
 of these languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary 
 as this is, it will appear more so when it is remembered that of 
 these men one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at 
 Hull, and a third the master of a charity-school at Bristol. Only 
 fourteen years have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in 
 India, and in that time have these missionaries acquired this gift 
 of tongues; in fourteen years these low-born, low-bred mechanics 
 have done more towards spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures 
 among the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted, 
 by all the princes and potentates of the world and all the uni- 
 versities and establishments into the bargain. 
 
 " Do not think to supersede the Baptist missionaries till you can 
 provide from your own church such men as these, and, it may be 
 added, such women also as their wives." 
 
 Soon after the Charter victory had been gained " that fierce 
 and fiery Calvinist," whose dictum Southey adopted, that the 
 question in dispute is not whether the natives shall enjoy 
 toleration, but whether that toleration shall be extended to the 
 teachers of Christianity, Andrew Fuller, entered into rest on the 
 7th May 1815, at the age of sixty-two. Sutcliff of Olney had 
 been the first of the three to be taken away 1 a year before, at the 
 
 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
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 259 
 
 same age. The scholarly Dr. Ryland of Bristol was left alone, 
 and the home management of the Mission passed into the hands 
 of another generation. Up to Fuller's death that management 
 had been almost ideally perfect. In 1812 the Committee had 
 been increased by the addition of nineteen members, to represent 
 the growing interest of the churches in Serampore, and to meet 
 the demand of the " respectable " class who had held aloof at the 
 first, who were eager that the headquarters of so renowned an 
 enterprise should be removed to London. But Fuller prevailed 
 to keep the Society a little longer at Kettering, although he 
 failed to secure as his assistant and successor the one man 
 whose ability, experience, and prudence would have been equal 
 to his own, and have prevented the troubles that followed 
 Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated a 
 letter to Ryland wherein he thus referred to the evangelical 
 doctrine of grace which he had been the one English theologian 
 of his day to defend from the hyper-calvinists, and to use as 
 the foundation of the modern missionary enterprise: " I have 
 preached and written much against the abuse of the doctrine 
 of grace, but that doctrine is all my salvation and all my desire. 
 I have no other hope than from salvation by mere sovereign, 
 efficacious grace through the atonement of my Lord and Saviour: 
 with this hope I can go into eternity with composure. We have 
 some who have been giving it out of late that if Sutcliff and 
 some others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan 
 Edwards they would have been more useful. If those who talk 
 thus had preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards 
 did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be 
 double what it is. It is very singular that the Mission to the 
 East originated with one of these principles, and without 
 pretending to be a prophet, I may say if it ever falls into the 
 hands of men who talk in this strain (of hyper-calvinism) it will 
 soon come to nothing." 
 
 Andrew Fuller was not only the first of Foreign Mission 
 Secretaries; he was a model for all. To him his work was 
 spiritual life, and hence, though the most active preacher and 
 writer of his day, he was like Carey in this, that his working day 
 
 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."
 
 260 Life of William Carey 
 
 was twice as long as that of most men, and he could spend half 
 of his time in the frequent journeys all over the kingdom to 
 raise funds, in repeated campaigns in London to secure toleration, 
 and in abundant letters to the missionaries. His relation to 
 the Committee, up to the last, was equally exemplary. In the 
 very earliest missionary organisation in England it is due to 
 him that the line was clearly drawn between the deliberative 
 and judicial function which is that of the members, and the 
 executive which is that of the secretary. Wisdom and efficiency, 
 clearness of perception and promptitude of action, were thus 
 combined. Fuller's, too, was the special merit of realising that, 
 while a missionary committee or church are fellow-workers only 
 with the men and women abroad, the Serampore Brotherhood 
 was a self-supporting, and to that extent a self-governing body 
 in a sense true of no foreign mission ever since. The two 
 triumvirates, moreover, consisted of giants Carey, Marshman, 
 and Ward abroad; Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland at home. To 
 Carey personally the death of Fuller was more than to any 
 other. For almost the quarter of a century he had kept his 
 vow that he would hold the rope. When Pearce died all too 
 soon there was none whom Carey loved like Fuller, while Fuller's 
 devotion to Carey was all the greater that it was tempered by 
 a wise jealousy for his perfectness. So early as 1797, Fuller 
 wrote thus to the troublesome Fountain: " It affords us good 
 hope of your being a useful missionary that you seem to love 
 and revere the counsels of Brother Carey. A humble, peaceful, 
 circumspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous 
 conduct like his will render you a blessing to society. Brother 
 Carey is greatly respected and beloved by all denominations 
 here. I will tell you what I have foreborne to tell him lest it 
 should hurt his modesty. Good old Mr. Newton says: 'Mr. 
 Carey has favoured me with a letter, which, indeed, I accept as 
 a favour, and I mean to thank him for it. I trust my heart as 
 cordially unites with him as though I were a brother Baptist 
 myself. I look to such a man with reverence. He is more to 
 me than bishop or archbishop ; he is an apostle. May the Lord 
 make all who undertake missions like-minded with Brother 
 Carey ! ' ' As the home administrator, no less than as the 
 theological controversialist, Anrdew 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
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 261 
 
 of the Rev. John Dyer. Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., has 
 written the detailed history of that controversy not only with 
 filial duty, but with a forgiving charity which excites our 
 admiration for one who suffered more from it than all his 
 predecessors in the Brotherhood, of which he was the last 
 representative. The Society has long since ceased to approve 
 of that period. Its opinion has become that of Mr. Marshman, 
 to which a careful perusal of all the documents both in Seram- 
 pore and England has led us " Had it been possible to create 
 a dozen establishments like that of Serampore, each raising 
 and managing its own funds, and connected with the Society as 
 the centre of unity in a common cause, it ought to have been a 
 subject of congratulation and not of regret." The whole policy 
 of every missionary church and society is now and has long 
 been directed to creating self-supporting and self-propagating 
 missions, like Serampore, that the regions beyond may be 
 evangelised whether these be colleges of catechumens and 
 inquirers, like those of Duff and Wilson, Hislop and Dr. Miller 
 in India, and of Govan and Dr. Stewart in Lovedale, Kafraria; 
 or the indigenous churches of the West Indies, West Africa, the 
 Pacific Ocean, and Burma. To us the long and bitter dispute 
 is now of value only in so far as it brings out in Christ-like relief 
 the personality of William Carey. 
 
 At the close of 1814 Dr. Carey had asked Fuller to pay 50 
 a year to his father, then in his eightieth year, and 20 to his 
 (step) mother if she survived the old man. Protesting that an 
 engraving of his portrait had been published in violation of 
 the agreement which he had made with the artist, he agreed 
 to the wish of each of his relatives for a copy. To these requests 
 Fuller had replied : " You should not insist on these things being 
 charged to you, nor yet your father's 50, nor the books, nor 
 anything necessary to make you comfortable, unless it be to be 
 paid out of what you would otherwise give to the mission. To 
 insist on their being paid out of your private property seems to 
 be dictated by resentment. It is thus we express our indigna- 
 tion when we have an avaricious man to deal with." 
 
 The first act of the Committee, after Fuller's funeral, led 
 Dr. Ryland to express to Carey his unbounded fears for the 
 future. There were two difficulties. The new men raised the 
 first question, in what sense the Serampore property belonged 
 to the Society ? They then proceeded to show how they would 
 answer it, by appointing the son of Samuel Pearce to Serampore 
 as Mr. Ward's assistant. On both sides of their independence,
 
 262 Life of William Carey 
 
 as trustees of the property which they had created and gifted 
 to the Society on this condition, and as a self-supporting, self- 
 elective brotherhood, it became necessary, for the unbroken 
 peace of the mission and the success of their work, that they 
 should vindicate their moral and legal position. The correspon- 
 dence fell chiefly to Dr. Marshman. Ward and he successively 
 visited England, to which the controversy was transferred, with 
 occasional references to Dr. Carey in Serampore. All Scotland, 
 led by Christopher Anderson, Chalmers, and the Haldanes 
 all England, except the Dyer faction and Robert Hall for a time, 
 among the Baptists, and nearly all America, held with the 
 Serampore men; but their ever-extending operations were 
 checked by the uncertainty, and their hearts were nearly 
 broken. The junior missionaries in India formed a separate 
 union and congregation by themselves in Calcutta, paid by the 
 Society, though professing to carry out the organisation of the 
 Serampore Brotherhood in other respects. The Committee's 
 controversy lasted sixteen years, and was closed in 1830, after 
 Ward's death, by Carey and Marshman drawing up a new 
 trust-deed, in which, having vindicated their position, the old 
 men made over properties which had cost them 7800 to eleven 
 trustees in England, stipulating only that they should occupy 
 them rent free till death, and that their colleagues who were 
 John Marshman and John Mack, of Edinburgh University 
 might continue in them for three years thereafter, paying rent 
 to the Society. Such self-sacrifice would be pronounced 
 heroic, but it was only the outcome of a life of self-devotion, 
 marked by the spirit of Him who spake the Sermon on the Mount, 
 and said to the first missionaries He sent forth: " Be wise as 
 serpents, harmless as doves." The story is completed by the 
 fact that John Marshman, on his father's death, again paid the 
 price of as much of the property as the Hoogli had not swallowed 
 up when the Committee were about to put it in the market. 
 
 Such was Dr. Carey's position in the Christian world that the 
 Dyer party considered it important for their interest to separate 
 him from his colleagues, and if not to claim his influence for their 
 side, at least to neutralise it. By trying to hold up Dr. Marsh- 
 man to odium, they roused the righteous indignation of Carey, 
 while outraging his sense of justice by their blows at the 
 independence of the Brotherhood. Dr. Marshman, when in 
 England, met this course by frankly printing the whole private 
 correspondence of Carey on the subject of the property, or 
 thirty-two letters ranging from the year 1815 to 1828. One of
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 263 
 
 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, isth July 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR BROTHER I am sorry you addressed your letter 
 of January the gth to me alone, because it places me in a most 
 awkward situation, as it respects my elder brethren, with whom 
 I have acted in concert for the last nineteen years, with as great 
 a share of satisfaction and pleasure as could reasonably be 
 expected from a connection with imperfect creatures, and whom 
 I am thereby called to condemn contrary to my convictions, or 
 to justify at the expense of their accusers. It also places me in 
 a disagreeable situation as it respects my younger brethren, 
 whom I highly respect as Christians; but whose whole conduct, 
 as it respects the late unhappy differences, has been such as 
 makes it impossible for me to do otherwise than condemn it. ... 
 
 " You ask, ' Is there no ground for the charges of profusion, 
 etc., preferred against Brother Marshman ? ' Brother Marsh- 
 man has always been ardently engaged in promoting the cause 
 of God in India, and, being of a very active mind, has generally 
 been chosen by us to draw up our Reports, to write many of our 
 public letters, to draw up plans for promoting the objects of the 
 mission, founding and managing schools, raising subscriptions, 
 and other things of a like nature ; so that he has taken a more 
 active part than Brother Ward or myself in these public acts 
 of the mission. These things placed him in the foreground, and 
 it has been no uncommon thing for him to bear the blame of 
 those acts which equally belong to Brother Ward and myself, 
 merely because he was the instrument employed in performing 
 them. 
 
 " The charge of profusion brought against Dr. Marshman 
 is more extensive than you have stated in your letter. He is 
 charged with having his house superbly furnished, with keeping 
 several vehicles for the use of his family, and with labouring to 
 aggrandise and bring them into public notice to a culpable extent. 
 The whole business of furniture, internal economy, etc., of the 
 
 s
 
 264 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 have not been guilty of such misrepresentation. Lord 
 Hastings's table costs more in one day than Brother Marshman's 
 in ten. 
 
 " The following statement may explain the whole business 
 of Brother Marshman's furniture, etc., which you have all been 
 so puzzled to account for, and have certainly accounted for in a 
 way that is not the true one. We have, you know, a very large 
 school, perhaps the largest in India. In this school are children 
 of persons of the first rank in the country. The parents or 
 guardians of these children frequently call at the Mission-house, 
 and common propriety requires that they should be respectfully 
 received, and invited to take a breakfast or dinner, and some- 
 times to continue there a day or two. It is natural that persons 
 who visit the Mission-house upon business superintended by 
 Brother Marshman should be entertained at his house rather 
 than elsewhere. Till within the last four or five years we had 
 no particular arrangement for the accommodation of visitors 
 who came to see us; but as those who visited us on business 
 were entertained at Brother Marshman's, it appeared to be the 
 most eligible method to provide for the entertainment of other 
 visitors there also ; but at that time Brother Marshman had not 
 a decent table for persons of the above description to sit down 
 to. We, therefore, voted him a sum to enable him to provide 
 such articles as were necessary to entertain them with decency ; 
 and I am not aware that he has been profuse, or that he has 
 provided anything not called for by the rules of propriety. I 
 have no doubt but Brother Ward can enumerate and describe 
 all these articles of furniture. It is, however, evident that you 
 must be very imperfect judges of their necessity, unless you could 
 at the same time form a just estimate of the circumstances in 
 which we stand. It ought also to be considered that all these 
 articles are public property, and always convertible into their
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 265 
 
 full value in cash. I hope, however, that things are not yet come 
 to that pass, that a man who, with his wife, has for nineteen or 
 twenty years laboured night and day for the mission, who by 
 their labour disinterestedly contribute between 2000 and 3000 
 rupees monthly to it, and who have made sacrifices which, if 
 others have not seen, Brother Ward and I have, sacrifices 
 which ought to put to the blush all his accusers, who, notwith- 
 standing their cries against him, have not only supported them- 
 selves, but also have set themselves up in a lucrative business 
 at the Society's expense ; and who, even to this day, though they 
 have two prosperous schools, and a profitable printing-office,, 
 continue to receive their monthly allowance, amounting (includ- 
 ing 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 mer- 
 curial 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 Marsh- 
 man. They now keep three single horse chaises, besides palan- 
 quins ; but we do not think they keep more than are necessary. 
 
 " Brother Marshman retains for the school a French master, 
 a music master, and a drawing master. The expenses of these 
 are amply repaid by the school, but Brother Marshman's children,
 
 266 Life of William Carey 
 
 and all those belonging to the family, have the advantage of their 
 instructions. Brother Marshman's children are, however, the 
 most numerous, and envy has not failed to charge him with 
 having retained them all for the sake of his own children. Surely 
 a. man's caring for his family's health and his children's education 
 is, if a crime, a venial one, and ought not to be held up to blacken 
 his reputation. Brother Marshman is no more perfect than other 
 men, partakers like him of the grace of God. His natural bias 
 and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other 
 men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he 
 has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, 
 however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to 
 pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal 
 for the cause of God. These excellencies, in my opinion, so far 
 overbalance all his defects that I am constrained to consider 
 him a Christian far above the common run. I must now close 
 this defence of Brother Marshman by repeating that all matters 
 of furniture, convenience, etc., are things belonging to the 
 economy of the station at Serampore, and that no one beside 
 ourselves has the smallest right to interfere therewith. The 
 Calcutta brethren are now acting on the same principle, and 
 would certainly repel with indignation any attempt made by 
 us to regulate their affairs. 
 
 " I have said that ' I never ride out for the sake of health ' ; 
 and it may therefore be inquired, ' Why are vehicles, etc., for 
 the purpose of health more necessary for the other members 
 of the family than for you ? ' I reply that my health is in general 
 good, and probably much benefited by a journey to and from 
 Calcutta two or three times a week. I have also a great fondness 
 for natural science, particularly botany and horticulture. These, 
 therefore, furnish not only exercise, but amusement for me. 
 These amusements of mine are not, however, enjoyed without 
 expense, any more than those of my brethren, and were it not 
 convenient for Brother Marshman's accusers to make a stepping- 
 stone of me, I have no doubt but my collection of plants, aviary, 
 and museum, would be equally impeached as articles of luxury 
 and lawless expenses; though, except the garden, the whole 
 of these expenses are borne by myself. 
 
 " John Marshman is admitted a member of the union, but 
 he had for some time previously thereto been a member of the 
 church. I perceive plainly that all your objections to him have 
 T>een excited by the statements of the Calcutta brethren, which 
 you certainly ought to receive with much caution in all things
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 267 
 
 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 dissatis- 
 faction before they proceeded to the extremity of dividing the 
 mission. When I engaged in the mission, it was a determination 
 that, whatever I suffered, a breach therein should never originate 
 with me. To this resolution I have hitherto obstinately adhered. 
 I think everything should be borne, every sacrifice made, and 
 every method of accommodation or reconciliation tried, before 
 a schism is suffered to take place. . . . 
 
 " I disapprove as much of the conduct of our Calcutta brethren 
 as it is possible for me to disapprove of any human actions. The 
 evil they have done is, I fear, irreparable; and certainly the 
 whole might have been prevented by a little frank conversation 
 with either of us ; and a hundredth part of that self-denial which 
 I found it necessary to exercise for the first few years of the 
 mission, would have prevented this awful rupture. I trust you 
 will excuse my warmth of feeling upon this subject, when you 
 consider that by this rupture that cause is weakened and dis- 
 graced, in the establishment and promotion of which I have 
 spent the best part of my life. A church is attempted to be torn 
 in pieces, for which neither I nor my brethren ever thought 
 we could do enough. We laboured to raise it: we expended 
 much money to accomplish that object; and in a good measure 
 saw the object of our desire accomplished. But now we are 
 traduced, and the church rent by the very men who came to be 
 our helpers. As to Brother Marshman, seriously, what do they 
 want? Would they attempt to deny his possessing the grace 
 of God ? He was known to and esteemed by Brother Ryland as 
 a Christian before he left England. I have lived with him ever 
 since his arrival in India, and can witness to his piety and holy 
 conduct. Would they exclude him from the mission? Judge 
 yourself whether it is comely that a man, who has laboriously 
 and disinterestedly served the mission so many years who has 
 by his diligence and hard labour raised the most respectable 
 school in India, as well as given a tone to all the others who 
 has unvaryingly consecrated the whole of that income, as well 
 as his other labours, to the cause of God in India, should be 
 arraigned and condemned without a hearing by a few young men 
 just arrived, and one of whom had not been a month in the 
 country before he joined the senseless outcry? Or would they
 
 268 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances 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 super- 
 intending 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 situa- 
 tion 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 Pro- 
 fessor in the College I cannot do so. Brother Marshman is 
 placed in the same predicament. These circumstances impose 
 upon us a necessity of making a different appearance to what 
 we formerly did as simple missionaries; but they furnish us 
 with opportunities of speaking to gentlemen of the first power 
 and influence in government, upon matters of the highest 
 importance to the great work in which we are engaged; and, 
 as a proof that our opportunities of this nature have not been 
 in vain, I need only say that, in a conversation which I had 
 some time ago with one of the secretaries to Government, upon 
 the present favourable bias of government and the public in 
 general to favour all plans for doing good, he told me that he 
 believed the whole was owing to the prudent and temperate 
 manner in which we had acted; and that if we had acted with 
 precipitancy and indiscretion, he had every reason to believe 
 the general feeling would have been as hostile to attempts to do 
 good as it is now favourable to them. 
 
 " I would not wish you to entertain the idea that we and 
 our brethren in Calcutta are resolved upon interminable hatred. 
 On the contrary, I think that things are gone as far as we may 
 expect them to go ; and I now expect that the fire of contention 
 will gradually go out. All the distressing and disagreeable 
 circumstances are, I trust, past; and I expect we shall be in a 
 little time on a more friendly footing. Much of what has taken
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 269 
 
 place originated in England. Mistakes and false conclusions 
 were followed by all the circumstances I have detailed. I think 
 the whole virulence of opposition has now spent itself. Our 
 brethren have no control over us, nor we over them. And, if I 
 am not mistaken, each side will soon acknowledge that it has 
 gone too far in some instances; and ultimate good will arise 
 from the evil I so much deplore. 
 
 " Having now written to you my whole sentiments upon 
 the business, and formerly to my very dear Brother Ryland, 
 allow me to declare my resolution not to write anything further 
 upon the subject, however much I may be pressed thereto. The 
 future prosperity of the mission does not depend upon the clear- 
 ing up of every little circumstance to the satisfaction of every 
 captious inquirer, but upon the restoration of mutual concord 
 among us, which must be preceded by admitting that we are 
 all subject to mistake, and to be misled by passion, prejudice, 
 and false judgment. Let us therefore strive and pray that the 
 things which make for peace and those by which we may edify 
 one another may abound among us more and more. I am, my 
 dear brother, very affectionately, yours in our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, W. CAREY." 
 
 " i4th May 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR BROTHER ANDERSON Yours by the Louisa, of 
 October last, came to hand a few days ago with the copies of 
 Brother Marshman's brief Memoir of the Serampore Mission. 
 I am glad it is written in so temperate and Christian a spirit, 
 and I doubt not but .it will be ultimately productive of good 
 effects. There certainly is a great contrast between the spirit 
 in which that piece is written and that in which observations 
 upon it, both in the Baptist and Particular Baptist Magazines, 
 are written. The unworthy attempts in those and other such 
 like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly 
 contemptible. In plain English, they amount to thus much 
 ' The Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, 
 have acted a dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not 
 include Dr. Carey in the charge of dishonesty; he is an easy sort 
 of a man, who will agree to anything for the sake of peace, or 
 in other words, he is a fool. Mr. Ward, it is well known,' say 
 they, ' was the tool of Dr. Marshman, but he is gone from the 
 present scene, and it is unlovely to say any evil of the dead.' 
 Now I certainly hold those persons' exemption of me from the 
 blame they attach to Brother Marshman in the greatest possible
 
 270 Life of William Carey 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, were all against our own private interest, and I believe 
 I have never been called an easy fool for signing of them. It 
 has only been since we found it necessary to resist the claims of 
 the Committee that I have risen to this honour. 
 
 " It has also been hinted that I intend to separate from 
 Brother Marshman. I cannot tell upon what such hints or 
 reports are founded, but I assure you, in the most explicit 
 manner, that I intend to continue connected with him and 
 Serampore as long as I live; unless I should be separated 
 from him by some unforeseen stroke of Providence. There 
 may be modifications of our union, arising from circumstances; 
 but it is my wish that it should remain in all things essential 
 to the mission as long as I live. 
 
 " I rejoice to say that there is very little of that spirit of 
 hostility which prevails in England in India, and I trust what 
 still remains will gradually decrease till scarcely the remembrance 
 of it will continue. Our stations, I mean those connected with 
 Serampore, are of great importance, and some of them in a 
 flourishing state. We will do all we can to maintain them, and 
 I hope the friends to the cause of God in Britain will not suffer 
 them to sink for want of that pecuniary help which is necessary. 
 Indeed I hope we shall be assisted in attempting other stations 
 beside those already occupied; and many such stations present 
 themselves to my mind which nothing prevents being immedi- 
 ately 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 :
 
 His Influence in Britain and America 271 
 
 " i$tk August 1820. This week we received letters from 
 Mr. Marshman, who had safely arrived at St. Helena. I am 
 sure it will give you pleasure to learn that our long-continued 
 dispute with the younger brethren in Calcutta is now settled. 
 We met together for that purpose about three weeks ago, and 
 after each side giving up some trifling ideas and expressions, 
 came to a reconciliation, which, I pray God, may be lasting. 
 Nothing I ever met with in my life and I have met with many 
 distressing things ever preyed so much upon my spirits as this 
 difference has. I am sure that in all disputes very many wrong 
 things must take place on both sides for which both parties 
 ought to be humbled before God and one another. 
 
 " I wish you could succeed in setting up a few more schools. . . . 
 Consider that and the spread of the gospel as the great objects 
 of your life, and try to promote them by all the wise and prudent 
 methods in your power. Indeed we must always venture 
 something for the sake of doing good. The cause of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ continues to prosper with us. I have several 
 persons now coming in who are inquirers; two or three of them,. 
 I hope, will be this evening received into the Church. Excuse 
 my saying more as my room is full of people." 
 
 Eight years after, on the i;th April 1828, he thus censured 
 Jabez in the matter of the Society's action at home: " From 
 a letter of yours to Jonathan, in which you express a very 
 indecent pleasure at the opposition which Brother Marshman 
 has received, not by the Society but by some anonymous writer 
 in a magazine, I perceive you are informed of the separation 
 which has taken place between them and us. What in that 
 anonymous piece you call a ' set-down ' I call a ' falsehood/ 
 You ought to know that I was a party in all public acts and 
 writings, and that I never intend to withdraw from all the 
 responsibility connected therewith. I utterly despise all the 
 creeping, mean assertions of that party when they say they do 
 not include me in their censures, nor do I work for their praise. 
 According to their and according to your rejoicing. ... I am 
 either a knave or a fool a knave if I joined with Brother Marsh- 
 man; but if, as those gentlemen say, and as you seem to agree 
 with them, I was only led as he pleased, and was a mere cat's- 
 paw, then of course I am a fool. In either way your thoughts are 
 not very high as it respects me. I do not wonder that Jonathan 
 should express himself unguardedly; his family connection with 
 Mr. Pearce sufficiently accounts for that. We have long been
 
 272 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 righteousness as the noonday." 
 On the i2th 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 
 primary education in Bengal. 
 
 * The first India chaplain of the Church of Scotland, superintendent of 
 stationery and editor of the John Bull. See Life of Alexander Duff, D.D.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 
 IN THE EAST 
 
 1818-1830 
 
 A college the fourth and perfecting corner-stone of the mission Carey 
 on the importance of English in 1800 Anticipates Duff's policy 
 of undermining Brahmanism New educational era begun by the 
 charter of 1813 and Lord Hastings Plan of the Serampore College 
 in 1818 Anticipates the Anglo-Orientalism of the Punjab University 
 The building described by John Marshman Bishop Middleton 
 follows The Scottish and other colleges Action of the Danish 
 Government The royal charter Visit of Maharaja Serfojee Death 
 of Ward, Charles Grant, and Bentley Bishop Heber and his catholic 
 letter Dr. Carey's reply Progress of the college Cause of its 
 foundation The college directly and essentially a missionary under- 
 taking 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 administer- 
 ing missions The Serampore Mission has eighteen stations and fifty 
 missionaries of all kinds Subsequent history of the Serampore 
 College to 1883. 
 
 THE first act of Carey and Marshman when their Committee 
 took up a position of hostility to their self-denying indepen- 
 dence, was to complete and perpetuate the mission by a college. 
 As planned by Carey in 1793, the constitution had founded the 
 enterprise on these three corner-stones preaching the Gospel 
 in the mother tongue of the people; translating the Bible into 
 all the languages of Southern and Eastern Asia; teaching the 
 young, both heathen and Christian, both boys and girls, in 
 vernacular schools. But Carey had not been a year in Seram- 
 pore when, having built well on all three, he began to see that 
 a fourth must be laid some day in the shape of a college. He 
 and his colleagues had founded and supervised, by the year 
 1818, no fewer than 126 native schools, containing some 10,000 
 boys, of whom more than 7000 were in and around Serampore. 
 His work among the pundit class, both in Serampore and in the 
 college of Fort William, and the facilities in the mission-house 
 for training natives, Eurasians, and the missionaries' sons to be 
 preachers, translators, and teachers, seemed to meet the imme- 
 diate want. But as every year the mission in all its forms grew 
 
 273
 
 274 Life of William Carey 
 
 and the experience of its leaders developed, the necessity of 
 creating a college staff in a building adapted to the purpose 
 became more urgent. Only thus could the otherwise educated 
 natives be reached, and the Brahmanical class especially be 
 permanently influenced. Only thus could a theological institute 
 be satisfactorily conducted to feed the native Church. 
 
 On loth 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 1 8 1 6, when, on 25th June, Carey wrote a letter, for his 
 colleagues and himself, to the Board of the American Baptist 
 General Convention, the great idea, destined slowly to revolu- 
 tionise 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 popula- 
 tion, but more effectually in the end: as knowledge, once put 
 into fermentation, will not only influence the part where it is 
 first deposited, but leaven the whole lump. The slow progress 
 of conversion in such a mode of teaching the natives may not 
 be so encouraging, and may require, in all, more faith and 
 patience; but it appears to have been the process of things, in 
 the progress of the Reformation, during the reigns of Henry,
 
 Carey as an Educator 275 
 
 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 for- 
 saken ; the crowds say, ' Let us go up to the house of the Lord, 
 and He shall teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His 
 statutes ; ' the anxious Hindoos no more consume their pro- 
 perty, their strength, and their lives, in vain pilgrimages, but 
 they come at once to Him who can save to ' the uttermost ' ; 
 the sick and the dying are no more dragged to the Ganges, but 
 look to the Lamb of God, and commit their souls into His 
 faithful hands; the children, no more sacrificed to idols, are 
 become ' the seed of the Lord, that He may be glorified ' ; the 
 public morals are improved; the language of Canaan is learnt; 
 benevolent societies are formed ; civilisation and salvation walk 
 arm in arm together ; the desert blossoms ; the earth yields her 
 increase; angels and glorified spirits hover with joy over India, 
 and carry ten thousand" messages of love from the Lamb in the 
 midst of the throne; and redeemed souls from the different 
 villages, towns, and cities of this immense country, constantly 
 add to the number, and swell the chorus of the redeemed, 
 * Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His 
 own blood, unto HIM be the glory; ' when this grand result of 
 the labours of God's servants in India shall be realised, shall we 
 then think that we have laboured in vain, and spent our strength 
 for nought? Surely not. Well, the decree is gone forth! 
 4 My word shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it.' ''' 
 
 India was being prepared for the new missionary policy. On 
 what we may call its literary side Carey had been long busy. 
 On its more strictly educational side, the charter of 1813 had 
 conceded what had been demanded in vain by a too feeble 
 public opinion in the charter of 1793. A clause was inserted at
 
 276 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 im- 
 provement of literature and the encouragement of the learned 
 natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a 
 knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British 
 territories there. The clause was prompted by an Anglo-Indian 
 of oriental tastes, who hoped that the Brahman and his Veda 
 might thus be made too strong for the Christian missionary and 
 the Bible as at last tolerated under the i3th resolution. For 
 this reason, and because the money was to be paid only out of 
 any surplus, the directors and their friends offered no opposition. 
 For the quarter of a century the grant was given, and was 
 applied in the spirit of its proposer. But the scandals of its 
 application became such that it was made legally by Bentinck 
 and Macaulay, and practically by Duff, the fountain of a river 
 of knowledge and life which is flooding the East. 
 
 The first result of the liberalism of the charter of 1813 and 
 the generous views of Lord Hastings was the establishment in 
 Calcutta by the Hindoos themselves, under the influence of 
 English secularists, of the Hindoo, now the Presidency College. 
 Carey and Marshman were not in Calcutta, otherwise they must 
 have realised even then what they left to Duff to act on fourteen 
 years after, the importance of English not only as an educating 
 but as a Christianising instrument. But though not so well 
 adapted to the immediate need of the reformation which they 
 had begun, and though not applied to the very heart of Bengal 
 in Calcutta, the prospectus of their " College for the Instruction 
 of Asiatic, Christian, and Other Youth in Eastern Literature 
 and European Science," which they published on the i5th July 
 1818, sketched a more perfect and complete system than any 
 since attempted, if we except John Wilson's almost unsup- 
 ported 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 Euro- 
 pean science, and enrich their own language with its choicest 
 treasures " ; the preparation of manuals of science, philosophy, 
 and history in the learned and vernacular languages of the 
 East; a normal department to train native teachers and pro- 
 fessors; 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 Ian-
 
 Carey as an Educator 277 
 
 guages, to be missionaries to the Brahmanical classes. While 
 the Government and the Scottish missionaries have in the uni- 
 versity and grant in aid systems since followed too exclusively 
 the English line, happily supplanting the extreme Orientalists, 
 it is the glory of the Serampore Brotherhood that they sought to 
 apply both the Oriental and the European, the one as the form, 
 the other as the substance, so as to evangelise and civilise the 
 people through their mother tongue. They were the Vernacu- 
 larists in the famous controversy between the Orientalists and 
 the Anglicists raised by Duff. In 1867 the present writer in 
 vain attempted to induce the University of Calcutta to follow 
 them in this. It was left to Sir Charles Aitchison, when he 
 wielded the power and the influence of the Lieutenant-Governor,, 
 to do in 1882 what the Serampore College would have accom- 
 plished had its founders been young instead of old men, by 
 establishing the Punjab University. 
 
 Lord Hastings and even Sir John Malcolm took a personal 
 interest in the Serampore College. The latter, who had visited 
 the missionaries since his timid evidence before the House of 
 Lords in 1813, wrote to them: " I wish I could be certain that 
 your successors in the serious task you propose would have as 
 much experience as you and your fellow-labourers at Serampore 
 that they would walk, not run, in the same path I would 
 not then have to state one reserve." Lord Hastings in Council 
 passed an order encouraging the establishment of a European 
 Medical Professorship in Serampore College, and engaged to 
 assist in meeting the permanent expense of the chair when 
 established. His Excellency " interrupted pressing avoca- 
 tions " to criticise both the architectural plan of the building 
 and the phraseology of the draft of the first report, and his 
 suggestions were followed. Adopting one of the Grecian orders 
 as most suitable to a tropical climate, the Danish Governor's 
 colleague, Major Wickedie, planned the noble Ionic building 
 which was then, and is still, the finest edifice of the kind in 
 British India. 
 
 " The centre building, intended for the public rooms, was a 
 hundred and thirty feet in length, and a hundred and twenty in 
 depth. The hall on the ground floor, supported on arches, and 
 terminated at the south by a bow, was ninety-five feet in length, 
 sixty-six in breadth, and twenty in height. It was originally 
 intended for the library, but is now occupied by the classes. The 
 hall above, of the same dimensions and twenty-six feet in height, 
 was supported by two rows of Ionic columns; it was intended for 
 the annual examinations. Of the twelve side-rooms above and
 
 278 Life of William Carey 
 
 below, eight were of spacious dimensions, twenty-seven feet by 
 thirty-five. The portico which fronted the river was composed of 
 six columns, more than four feet in diameter at the base. The 
 staircase-room was ninety feet in length, twenty-seven in width, 
 and forty-seven in height, with two staircases of cast-iron, of large 
 size and elegant form, prepared at Birmingham. The spacious 
 grounds were surrounded with iron railing, and the front entrance 
 was adorned with a noble gate, likewise cast at Birmingham. . . . 
 " The scale on which it was proposed to establish the college, and 
 to which the size of the building was necessarily accommodated, 
 corresponded with the breadth of all the other enterprises of the 
 Serampore missionaries, the mission, the translations, and the 
 schools. While Mr. Ward was engaged in making collections for 
 the support of the institution in England, he wrote to his brethren, 
 ' the buildings you must raise in India; ' and they determined to 
 respond to the call, and, if possible, to augment their donation from 
 2500 to ^8000, and to make a vigorous effort to erect the buildings 
 irom their own funds. Neither the ungenerous suspicion, nor the 
 charge of unfaithfulness, with which their character was assailed in 
 England, was allowed to slacken the prosecution of this plan. It 
 was while their reputation was under an eclipse in England, and 
 the benevolent hesitated to subscribe to the society till they were 
 assured that their donations would not be mixed up with the funds 
 of the men at Serampore, that those men were engaged in erecting 
 A noble edifice for the promotion of religion and knowledge, at their 
 own cost, the expense of which eventually grew under their hands 
 to the sum of 15,000. To the charge of endeavouring to alienate 
 from the society premises of the value of ^3000, their own gift, 
 they replied by erecting a building at five times the cost, and 
 vesting it in eleven trustees, seven besides themselves. It was 
 thus they vindicated the purity of their motives in their differences 
 with the society, and endeavoured to silence the voice of calumny. 
 They were the first who maintained that a college was an indis- 
 pensable appendage to an Indian mission." 
 
 The next to follow Carey in this was Bishop Middleton, who 
 raised funds to erect a chaste Gothic pile beside the Botanic 
 Garden, since to him the time appeared " to have arrived when 
 it is desirable that some missionary endeavours, at least, should 
 have some connection with the Church establishment." That 
 college no longer exists, in spite of the saintly scholarship of 
 such Principals as Mill and Kay ; the building is now utilised as 
 a Government engineering college. But in Calcutta the Duff 
 College, with the General Assembly's Institution (now united as 
 the Scottish Churches College), the Cathedral Mission Divinity 
 School, and the Bhowanipore Institution; in Bombay the 
 Wilson College, in Madras the Christian College, in Nagpoor the 
 Hislop College, in Agra St. John's College, in Lahore the Church 
 Mission Divinity School, in Lucknow the Reid College, and others, 
 t>ear witness to the fruitfulness of the Alma Mater of Serampore.
 
 Carey as an Educator 279 
 
 The Serampore College began with thirty-seven students, of 
 whom nineteen were native Christians and the rest Hindoos. 
 When the building was occupied in 1821 Carey wrote to his 
 son: " I pray that the blessing of God may attend it, and 
 that it may be the means of preparing many for an important 
 situation in the Church of God. . . . The King of Denmark 
 has written letters signed with his own hand to Brothers Ward, 
 Marshman, and myself, and has sent each of us a gold medal as 
 a token of his approbation. He has also made over the house 
 in which Major Wickedie resides, between Sarkies's house and 
 ours, to us three in perpetuity for the college. Thus Divine 
 generosity appears for us and supplies our expectations." The 
 missionaries had declined the Order of the Dannebrog. When, 
 in 1826, Dr. Marshman visited Europe, one of his first duties 
 was to acknowledge this gift to Count Moltke, Danish Minister 
 in London and ancestor of the great strategist, and to ask for a 
 royal charter. The Minister and Count Schulin, whose wife 
 had been a warm friend of Mrs. Carey, happened to be on board 
 the steamer in which Dr. Marshman, accompanied by Christopher 
 Anderson, sailed to Copenhagen. Raske, the Orientalist, who 
 had visited Serampore, was a Professor in the University there. 
 The vellum charter was prepared among them, empowering the 
 College Council, consisting of the Governor of Serampore and 
 the Brotherhood, to confer degrees like those of the Universities 
 of Copenhagen and Kiel, but not carrying the rank in the State 
 implied in Danish degrees unless with the sanction of the Crown. 
 The King, in the audience which he gave, informed Dr. Marsh- 
 man that, having in 1801 promised the mission protection, he 
 had hitherto refused to transfer Serampore to the East India 
 Company, since that would prevent him from keeping his word. 
 When, in 1845, the Company purchased both Tranquebar and 
 Serampore, it could be no longer dangerous to the Christian 
 Mission, but the Treaty expressly provided that the College 
 should retain all its powers, and its Christian character, under 
 the Danish charter, which it does. It was thus the earliest 
 degree-conferring college in Asia, but it has never exercised the 
 power. Christian VIII., then the heir to the throne, showed 
 particular interest in the Bible translation work of Carey. 
 When, in 1884, the Evangelical Alliance held its session in 
 Copenhagen, and was received by Christian IX., 1 it did well, 
 
 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 pre- 
 
 T
 
 280 Life of William Carey 
 
 by special resolution, to express the gratitude of Protestant 
 Christendom to Denmark for such courageous and continued 
 services to the first Christian mission from England to India. 
 
 How Dr. Carey valued the gift of the King is seen in this 
 writing, on the lining of the case of the gold medal, dated 6th 
 November 1823: 
 
 " It is my desire that this medal, and the letter of the King of 
 Denmark, which accompanied it, be given at my death to my dear 
 son Jonathan, that he may keep it for my sake." 
 
 The letter of King Frederic VI. is as follows: 
 
 " MONSIEUR LE DOCTEUR ET PROFESSEUR WILLIAM CAREY 
 C'est avec beaucoup d'interet que nous avons appris le merite qu'en 
 qualite de membre dirigeant de la Societe de la Mission, vous avez 
 acquis, ainsi que vos co-directeurs, et les effets salutaires que vos 
 louables travaux ont produits et partout ou votre influence a pu 
 atteindre. Particulierement informes qu'en votre dite qualite vous 
 avez contribue a effectuer bien des choses utiles, dont 1'etablisse- 
 ment a Fredericsnagore a a se louer, et voulant vous certifier que 
 nous vous en avons gre, nous avons charge le chef du dit etablisse- 
 ment, notre Lieutenant-Colonel Kraefting, de vous remettre cette 
 lettre; et en meme temps une medaille d'or, comme une marque 
 de notre bienveillance et de notre protection, que vous assurera 
 tou jours une conduite meritoire. 
 
 " Sur ce nous prions Dieu de vous avoir dans Sa sainte et digne 
 garde. Votre affectionne FREDERIC. 
 
 " Copenhague, ce 7 Juin 1820. 
 
 " Au Docteur et Professeur WILLIAM CAREY, 
 Membre dirigeant de la Societe de la Mission a Fredericsnagore." 
 
 The new College formed an additional attraction to visitors 
 to the mission. One of these, in 1821, was the Maharaja 
 Serfojee, the prince of Tanjore, whom Schwartz had tended, 
 but who was on pilgrimage to Benares. Hand in hand with 
 Dr. Carey he walked through the missionary workshop, noticed 
 specially the pundits who were busy with translation to which 
 Lord Hastings had directed his attention, and dilated with 
 affectionate enthusiasm on the deeds and the character of the 
 apostle of South India. In 1823 cholera suddenly cut off Mr. 
 Ward in the midst of his labours. The year after that Charles 
 Grant died, leaving a legacy to the mission. Almost his last 
 act had been to write to Carey urging him to publish a reply 
 
 possessors of the throne and the government of Denmark tried to do for 
 their Indian subjects," when the first edition of this Life of William 
 darey, D.D., was presented to His Majesty. See Taylor and Son's Bio- 
 graphical and Literary Notices of William Carey , D_D., Northampton, 1886.
 
 Carey as an Educator 281 
 
 to the attack of the Abbe Dubois on all Christian missions. 
 Another friend was removed in Bentley, the scholar who put 
 Hindoo astronomy in its right place. Bishop Heber began his 
 too brief episcopate in 1824, when the college, strengthened by 
 the abilities of the Edinburgh professor, John Mack, was accom- 
 plishing all that its founders had projected. The Bishop of al! 
 good Christian men never penned a finer production not even 
 his hymns than this letter, called forth by a copy of the 
 Report on the College sent to him by Dr. Marshman : 
 
 " I have seldom felt more painfully than while reading your 
 appeal on the subject of Serampore College, the unhappy divisions, 
 of those who are the servants of the same Great Master ! Would to- 
 God, my honoured brethren, the time were arrived when not only 
 in heart and hope, but visibly, we shall be one fold, as well as under 
 one shepherd ! In the meantime I have arrived, after some serious 
 considerations, at the conclusion that I shall serve our great cause 
 most effectually by doing all which I can for the rising institutions- 
 of those with whom my sentiments agree in all things, rather than 
 by forwarding the labours of those from whom, in some important 
 points, I am conscientiously constrained to differ. After all, why 
 do we differ ? Surely the leading points which keep us asunder are- 
 capable of explanation or of softening, and I am expressing myself 
 in much sincerity of heart (though, perhaps, according to the 
 customs of the world, I am taking too great a freedom with men 
 my superiors both in age and in talent), that I should think myself 
 happy to be permitted to explain, to the best of my power, those 
 objections which keep you and your brethren divided from that 
 form of church government which I believe to have been instituted" 
 by the apostles, and that admission of infants to the Gospel 
 Covenants which seem to me to be founded on the expressions and 1 
 practice of Christ himseH. If I were writing thus to worldly men 
 I know I should expose myself to the imputation of excessive 
 vanity or impertinent intrusion. But of you and Dr. Carey I am 
 far from judging as of worldly men, and I therefore say that, if we 
 are spared to have any future intercourse, it is my desire, if you 
 permit, to discuss with both of you, in the spirit of meekness and 1 
 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 i* 
 intended, and believe me, with much sincerity, your friend and 
 servant in Christ, REGINALD CALCUTTA. 
 
 " yd June 1824." 
 
 This is how Carey reciprocated these sentiments, whea 
 writing to Dr. Ryland:
 
 282 Life of William Carey 
 
 " SERAMPORE, 6th July 1824. 
 
 " I rejoice to say that there is the utmost harmony between 
 all the ministers of all denominations. Bishop Heber is a man 
 of liberal principles and catholic spirit. Soon after his arrival 
 in the country he wrote me a very friendly letter, expressing his 
 wish to maintain all the friendship with us which our respective 
 circumstances would allow. I was then confined, but Brother 
 Marshman called on him. As soon as I could walk without 
 crutches I did the same, and had much free conversation with 
 him. Some time after this he wrote us a very friendly letter, 
 saying that it would highly gratify him to meet Brother Marsh- 
 man and myself, and discuss in a friendly manner all the points 
 of difference between himself and us, adding that there was 
 every reason to expect much good from a calm and temperate 
 discussion of these things, and that, if we could at any rate 
 come so near to each other as to act together, he thought it 
 would have a greater effect upon the spread of the gospel among 
 the heathen than we could calculate upon. He was then just 
 setting out on a visitation which will in all probability take a 
 year. We, however, wrote him a reply accepting his proposal, 
 and Brother Marshman expressed a wish that the discussion 
 might be carried on by letter, to which in his reply he partly 
 consented. I have such a disinclination to writing, and so 
 little leisure for it, that I wished the discussion to be viva voce ; 
 it will, however, make little difference, and all I should have to 
 say would be introduced into the letter." 
 
 On the death of Mr. Ward and departure of Dr. Marshman 
 for Great Britain on furlough, after twenty-six years' active 
 labours, his son, Mr. John Marshman, was formally taken into 
 the Brotherhood. He united with Dr. Carey in writing to the 
 Committee two letters, dated 2ist January 1826 and i5th 
 November 1827, which show the progress of the college and 
 the mission from the first as one independent agency, and closed 
 with Carey's appeal to the judgment of posterity. 
 
 " About seven years ago we felt convinced of the necessity of 
 erecting a College for native Christian youth, in order to consolidate 
 our plans for the spread of gospel truth in India; and, as we 
 despaired of being able to raise from public subscriptions a sum 
 equal to the expense of the buildings, we determined to erect them 
 from our own private funds. Up to the present date they have 
 cost us nearly ^14,000, and the completion of them will require a 
 further sum of about 5000, which, if we are not enabled to advance 
 from our own purse, the undertaking must remain incomplete. 
 With this burden upon our private funds we find it impossible any
 
 Carey as an Educator 283 
 
 longer to meet, to the same extent as formerly, the demands of our 
 out-stations. The time is now arrived when they must cease to be 
 wholly dependent on the private donations of three individuals, 
 and must be placed on the strength of public contributions. As 
 two out of three of the members of our body are now beyond th6 
 age of fifty-seven, it becomes our duty to place them on a more 
 permanent footing, as it regards their management, their support, 
 and their increase. We have therefore associated with ourselves, 
 in the superintendence of them, the Rev. Messrs. Mack and Swan, 
 the two present professors of the college, with the view of eventually 
 leaving them entirely in the hands of the body of professors, of 
 whom the constitution of the college provides that there shall be an 
 unbroken succession. 
 
 " To secure an increase of missionaries in European habits we 
 have formed a class of theological students in the college, under the 
 Divinity Professor. It contains at present six promising youths, 
 of whose piety we have in some cases undoubted evidence, in others 
 considerable ground for hope. The class will shortly be increased 
 to twelve, but none will be continued in it who do not manifest 
 undeniable piety and devotedness to the cause of missions. As we 
 propose to allow each student to remain on an average four years, 
 we may calculate upon the acquisition of two, and perhaps three, 
 additional labourers annually, who will be eminently fitted for 
 active service in the cause of missions by their natural familiarity 
 with the language and their acquisitions at college. This arrange- 
 ment will, we trust, secure the speedy accomplishment of the plan 
 we have long cherished, that of placing one missionary in each pro- 
 vince in Bengal, and eventually, if means be afforded, in Hindostan. 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " Of the three objects connected with the College, the education 
 of non-resident heathen students, the education of resident Christian 
 students, and the preparation of missionaries from those born in the 
 country, the first is not strictly a missionary object, the two latter 
 are intimately connected with the progress of the good cause. The 
 preparation of missionaries in the country was not so much recom- 
 mended as enforced by the great expense which attends the despatch 
 of missionaries from Europe. That the number of labourers in this 
 country must be greatly augmented, before the work of evangelising 
 the heathen can be said to have effectively commenced, can admit 
 of no doubt. 
 
 " The education of the increasing body of Native Christians 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.
 
 284 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 gradu- 
 ally take the spiritual conduct of that body, demanded pre-eminent 
 attention. They require a knowledge of the ingenious system they 
 will have to combat, of the scheme of Christian theology they are 
 to teach, and a familiarity with the lights of modern science. We 
 cannot discharge the duty we owe as Christians to India, without 
 some plan for combining in the converts of the new religion, and 
 more especially in its ministers, the highest moral refinement of the 
 Christian character, and the highest attainable progress in the 
 pursuits of the mind. 
 
 " During the last ten years of entire independence the missionary 
 cause has received from the product of our labour, in the erection 
 of the college buildings, in the support of stations and schools, and 
 in the printing of tracts, much more than ^23,000. The unceasing 
 calumny with which we have been assailed, for what has been called 
 ' our declaration of independence ' (which, by the bye, Mr. Fuller 
 approved of our issuing almost with his dying breath), it is beneath 
 us to notice, but it has fully convinced us of the propriety of the 
 step. This calumny is so unreasonable that we confidently appeal 
 from the decision of the present age to the judgment of posterity." 
 
 Under Carey, as Professor of Divinity and Lecturer on 
 Botany and Zoology, Mack and John Marshman, with pundits 
 and moulavies, the college grew in public favour, even during 
 Dr. Marshman's absence, while Mrs. Marshman continued to 
 conduct the girls' school and superintend native female education 
 with a vigorous enthusiasm which advancing years did not 
 abate and misrepresentation in England only fed. The diffi- 
 culties in which Carey found himself had the happy result of 
 forcing him into the position of being the first to establish 
 practically the principle of the Grant in Aid system. Had his 
 Nonconformist successors followed him in this, with the same 
 breadth of view and clear distinction between the duty of 
 aiding the secular education, while giving absolute liberty to 
 the spiritual, the splendid legacy which he left to India would 
 have been both perpetuated and extended. As it is, it was 
 left to his young colleague, John Marshman, and to Dr. Duff, 
 to induce Parliament, by the charter of 1853, and the first Lord 
 Halifax in the Educational Despatch of 1854, to sanction the 
 system of national education for the multifarious classes and 
 races of our Indian subjects, under which secular instruction is 
 aided by the state on impartial terms according to its efficiency, 
 and Christianity delights to take its place, unfettered and 
 certain of victory, with the Brahmanical and aboriginal cults 
 of every kind.
 
 Carey as an Educator 285 
 
 In 1826 Carey, finding that his favourite Benevolent Institu- 
 tion in Calcutta was getting into debt, and required repair, 
 applied to Government for aid. He had previously joined the 
 Marchioness of Hastings in founding the Calcutta School Book 
 and School Society, and had thus been relieved of some of the 
 schools. Government at once paid the debt, repaired the 
 building, and continued to give an annual grant of 240 for 
 many years. John Marshman did not think it necessary, " to 
 defend Dr. Carey from the charge of treason to the principles 
 of dissent in having thus solicited and accepted aid from the 
 state for an educational establishment; the repudiation of that 
 aid is a modern addition to those principles." He tells us that 
 " when conversation happened to turn upon this subject at 
 Serampore, his father was wont to excuse any warmth which 
 his colleague might exhibit by the humorous remark that 
 renegades always fought hardest. There was one question on 
 which the three were equally strenuous that it was as much 
 the duty of Government to support education as to abstain 
 from patronising missions." 
 
 A letter written in 1818 to his son William, then one of the 
 missionaries, shows with what jealous economy the founder of 
 the great modern enterprise managed the early undertakings. 
 
 " MY DEAR WILLIAM Yours of the 3rd instant I have 
 received, and must say that it has filled me with distress. I 
 do not know what the allowance of 200 rupees includes, nor 
 how much is allotted for particular things; but it appears that 
 Rs. 142 : 2 is expended upon your private expenses, viz., 78 : 2 
 on table expenses, and 64 on servants. Now neither Lawson 
 nor Eustace have more than 140 rupees for their allowance, 
 separate from house rent, for which 80 rupees each is allowed, 
 and I believe all the brethren are on that, or a lower allowance, 
 Brother Yates excepted, who chooses for himself. I cannot 
 therefore make an application for more with any face. Indeed 
 we have no power to add or diminish salaries, though the 
 Society would agree to our doing so if we showed good reasons 
 for it. I believe the allowances of the missionaries from the 
 London Society are about the same, or rather less viz. 200 
 sterling, or 132 rupees a month, besides extra expenses; so 
 that your income, taking it at 140 rupees a month, is quite 
 equal to that of any other missionary. I may also mention 
 that neither Eustace nor Lawson can do without a buggy, 
 which is not a small expense.
 
 286 Life of William Carey 
 
 " I suppose the two articles you have mentioned of table 
 expenses and servants include a number of other things; other- 
 wise I cannot imagine how you can go to that expense. When 
 I was at Mudnabati my income was 200 per month, and during 
 the time I stayed there I had saved near 2000 rupees. My 
 table expenses scarcely ever amounted to 50 rupees, and though 
 I kept a moonshi at 20 rupees and four gardeners, yet my 
 servants' wages did not exceed 60 rupees monthly. I kept a 
 horse and a farmyard, and yet my expenses bore no proportion 
 to yours. I merely mention this without any reflection on you, 
 or even a wish to do it; but I sincerely think your expenses 
 upon these two articles are very great. I am your affectionate 
 father, W. CAREY." 
 
 In 1825 Carey completed his great Dictionary of Bengali and 
 English in three quarto volumes, abridged two years afterwards. 
 No language, not even in Europe, could show a work of such 
 industry, erudition, and philological completeness at that time. 
 Professor H. H. Wilson declared that it must ever be regarded 
 as a standard authority, especially because of its etymological 
 references to the Sanskrit, which supplies more than three- 
 fourths of the words; its full and correct vocabulary of local 
 terms, with which the author's " long domestication amongst 
 the natives " made him familiar, and his unique knowledge of 
 all natural history terms. The first copy which issued from 
 the press he sent to Dr. Ryland, who had passed away at 
 seventy- two, a month before the following letter was written : 
 
 "June iih, 1825. On the zyth of August next I shall be 
 sixty-four years of age; and though I feel the enervating 
 influence of the climate, and have lost something of my bodily 
 activity, I labour as closely, and perhaps more so than I have 
 ever done before. My Bengali Dictionary is finished at press* 
 I intend to send you a copy of it by first opportunity, which I 
 request you to accept as a token of my unshaken friendship to 
 you. I am now obliged, in my own defence, to abridge it, and 
 to do it as quickly as possible, to prevent another person from 
 forestalling me and running away with the profits. 
 
 " On Lord's day I preached a funeral sermon at Calcutta for 
 one of our deacons, who died very happily; administered the 
 Lords' Supper, and preached again in the evening. It was a 
 dreadfully hot day, and I was much exhausted. Yesterday the 
 rain set in, and the air is somewhat cooled. It is still uncertain
 
 Carey as an Educator 287 
 
 whether Brothers Judson and Price are living. There was a 
 report in the newspaper that they were on their way to meet 
 Sir Archibald Campbell with proposals of peace from the 
 Burman king; but no foundation for the report can be traced 
 out. Living or dead they are secure." 
 
 On hearing of the death of Dr. Ryland, he wrote: " There 
 are now in England very few ministers with whom I was 
 acquainted. Fuller, Sutcliff, Pearce, Fawcett, and Ryland, 
 besides many others whom I knew, are gone to glory. My 
 family connections also, those excepted who were children when 
 I left England, or have since that time been born, are all gone, 
 two sisters only excepted. Wherever I look in England I see 
 a vast blank; and were I ever to revisit that dear country I 
 should have an entirely new set of friendships to form. I, 
 however, never intended to return to England when I left it, 
 and unless something very unexpected were to take place I 
 certainly shall not do it. I am fully convinced I should meet 
 with many who would show me the utmost kindness in their 
 power, but my heart is wedded to India, and though I am of 
 little use I feel a pleasure in doing the little I can, and a very 
 high interest in the spiritual good of this vast country, by 
 whose instrumentality soever it is promoted." 
 
 By 1829 the divinity faculty of the College had become so 
 valuable a nursery of Eurasian and Native missionaries, and 
 the importance of attracting more of the new generation of 
 educated Hindoos within its influence had become so apparent 
 that Oriental gave place to English literature in the curriculum. 
 Mr. Rowe, as English tutor, took his place in the staff beside 
 Dr. Carey, Dr. Marshman, Mr. Mack, and Mr. John Marshman. 
 Hundreds of native youths flocked to the classes. Such was 
 the faith, such the zeal of Carey, that he continued to add new 
 missions to the ten of which the College was the life-giving 
 centre ; so that when he was taken away he left eighteen, under 
 eleven European, thirteen Eurasian, seventeen Bengali, two 
 Hindostani, one Telugoo, and six Arakanese missionaries. 
 When Mr. David Scott, formerly a student of his own in Fort 
 William College, and in 1828 Commissioner of Assam (then 
 recently annexed to the empire), asked for a missionary, Carey's 
 importunity prevailed with his colleagues only when he bound 
 himself to pay half the cost by stinting his personal expenditure. 
 Similarly it was the generous action of Mr. Garrett, when judge 
 of Barisal, that led him to send the best of his Serampore 
 students to found that afterwards famous mission.
 
 288 Life of William Carey 
 
 Having translated the Gospels into the language of the 
 Khasias in the Assam hills, he determined in 1832 to open a 
 new mission at the village of Cherra, which the Serampore 
 Brotherhood were the first to use as a sanitarium in the hot 
 season. For this he gave up 60 of his Government pension 
 and Mr. Garrett gave a similar sum. He sent another of his 
 students, Mr. Lisk, to found the mission, which prospered until 
 it was transferred to the Welsh Calvinists, who have made it 
 the centre of extensive and successful operations. Thus the 
 influence of his middle age and old age in the Colleges of Fort 
 William and of Serampore combined to make the missionary 
 patriarch the father of two bands that of the Society and that 
 of the Brotherhood. 
 
 Dr. Carey's last report, at the close of 1832, was a defence 
 of what has since been called, and outside of India and of 
 Scotland has too often been misunderstood as, educational 
 missions or Christian Colleges. To a purely divinity college 
 for Asiatic Christians he preferred a divinity faculty as part 
 of an Arts and Science College, 1 in which the converts study 
 side by side with their inquiring countrymen, the inquirers are 
 influenced by them as well as by the Christian teaching and 
 secular teaching in a Christian spirit, and the Bible consecrates 
 the whole. The United Free Church of Scotland has, alike in 
 India, China and Africa, proved the wisdom, the breadth, and 
 the spiritual advantage of Carey's policy. When the Society 
 opposed him, scholars like Mack from Edinburgh and Leechman 
 from Glasgow rejoiced to work out his Paul-like conception. 
 When not only he, but Dr. Marshman, had passed away Mack 
 bravely held aloft the banner they bequeathed, till his death in 
 1846. Then John Marshman, who in 1835 had begun the 
 Friend of India as a weekly paper to aid the College, trans- 
 ferred the mission to the Society under the learned W. H. 
 Denham. When in 1854 a new generation of the English 
 Baptists accepted the College also as their own, it received a 
 Principal worthy to succeed the giants of those days, the 
 
 1 In 1834, the year Carey died, there were in the college ten European 
 and Eurasian students learning Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Bengali, mathe- 
 matics, chemistry, mental philosophy, and history (ancient and eccle- 
 siastical). There were forty-eight resident native Christians and thirty- 
 four Hindoos, sons of Brahmans chiefly, learning Sanskrit, Bengali, and 
 English. " The Bengal language is sedulously cultivated. . . . The 
 .Christian natives of India will most effectually combat error and diffuse 
 sounder information with a knowledge of Sanskrit. The communication, 
 therefore, of a thoroughly classic Indian education to Christian youth is 
 deemed an important but not always an indispensable object."
 
 Carey as an Educator 289 
 
 Rev. John Trafford, M.A., a student of Foster's and of Glasgow 
 University. For twenty-six years he carried out the principles 
 of Carey. On his retirement the College as such was suspended 
 in the year 1883, and in the same building a purely native 
 Christian Training Institution took its place. There, however, 
 the many visitors from Christendom still found the library and 
 museum; the Bibles, grammars, and dictionaries; the natural 
 history collections, and the Oriental MSS. ; the Danish Charter, 
 the historic portraits, and the British Treaty; as well as the 
 native Christian classes all of which re-echo William Carey's 
 appeal to posterity.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 
 
 The Danish charter The British treaty Growth of native Christian 
 community Lord Minto's concession of self-governing privileges 
 Madras Decennial Conference and Serampore degrees Proposed re- 
 organisation of College so as to teach and examine for B.D. and other 
 degrees Appeal for endowments of Carey's Christian University 
 
 ATTENTION has already been directed to the far-seeing plans 
 which Carey laid down for Serampore College. It is a pleasure 
 to record that while this volume is in the press (1909), a scheme 
 is being promoted by the College Council for the reorganisation 
 of the College on the lines of Carey's ideal, with a view to making 
 it a centre of higher ministerial training for all branches of the 
 Indian Church. 
 
 It will be remembered that in 1827 the College received from 
 Friedrich VI. a Royal Charter, empowering it to confer degrees, 
 and giving to it all the rights which are possessed by Western 
 Universities. Under Treaty dated the 6th October, 1845, the 
 King of Denmark agreed to transfer to the Governor-General 
 of India, Lord Hardinge, G.C.B., for the sum of 125,000, the 
 towns of Tranquebar, Frederiksnagore or Serampore, 1 and the 
 old factory site at Balasore. Article 6 of this treaty provides 
 that " the rights and immunities granted to the Serampore 
 College by Royal Charter, of date 23rd of February, 1827, shall 
 not be interfered with, but continue in force in the same manner 
 as if they had been obtained by a Charter from the British 
 Government, subject to the General Law of British India." z 
 
 For lack of an endowment sufficient to maintain the teaching 
 staff required, and to establish the necessary scholarships, the 
 College has never been fully developed on University lines. 
 Since 1883 it has been used as a training Institution for preachers 
 and teachers for the Bengal field of the Baptist Missionary 
 Society. Meanwhile in the century since Carey's statesman- 
 like ideal was sketched, under the providence of God there have 
 
 1 Serampore Srirampur or place of the worshipful Ram. 
 * Aitchison's Collection, vol. i., edition 1892, pp. 81-86. 
 290
 
 Carey's Christian University 291 
 
 been two notable developments in the conditions of Indian 
 life (i) the educated Christian natives of India, from Cape 
 Comorin to Peshawar, have grown, and continue to grow, in 
 numbers, in character, and in influence, with a rapidity pro- 
 nounced marvellous by the official report of the Census of 
 1901 ; (2) the three hundred millions of the peoples of India 
 have, by the frank concession of the Earl of Minto and his 
 advisers, and the sanction of Viscount Morley and Parliament, 
 received a virtual constitution, which recognises their fitness 
 for self-governing rights under the benevolent rule of King 
 Edward VII. and his Viceroy in Council. Christianity, and the 
 leaven of the more really educated Christian natives, will alone 
 moralise and loyalise the peoples of India, and prepare future 
 generations for a healthy independence, material and political. 
 
 As they have watched the lines along which these develop- 
 ments have proceeded, the leaders of the missionary enterprise 
 have become more and more convinced that the realisation of 
 Carey's ideal has been too long delayed, and that the influence 
 of the Christian community on the great movements of Indian 
 thought has suffered in consequence. In particular, while the 
 need for highly-equipped Indian preachers, evangelists and 
 leaders, is far more urgent now even than it was in Carey's day, 
 the most experienced missionaries of all societies are far from 
 satisfied with the present level of theological education in the 
 Indian Church. They are convinced that the time has come 
 to reorganise the whole system of ministerial training, and to 
 secure for the study of Christian Theology in India that academic 
 recognition which it has enjoyed for centuries in Western lands. 
 Since the British Government is pledged to neutrality in 
 religious matters, it is unable to sanction the establishment of 
 Divinity faculties, in any of the State Universities. Hence the 
 Decennial Missionary Conference, representing all the Protestant 
 Missionary Societies working in India, meeting in Madras in 
 December 1902, appointed a Committee " to confer with the 
 Council of the Serampore College, through the Committee of 
 the London Baptist Missionary Society, to ascertain whether 
 they are prepared to delegate the degree-conferring powers of 
 the Charter of that College to a Senate or Faculty, representative 
 of the various Protestant Christian Churches and Societies 
 working in India." 
 
 The College Council (of which Meredith Townsend, Esq., is 
 Master, and Alfred Henry Baynes, Esq., F.R.G.S., is Secretary), 
 has taken this request into careful consideration, and after
 
 292 Life of William Carey 
 
 being assured by the highest legal opinion that the Charter is 
 still valid, has resolved to do everything in its power to carry 
 out the suggestions of the Decennial Conference. They realise, 
 however, that if the degree-conferring powers of the Charter are 
 to be used, the College itself must be raised to the highest 
 standard of efficiency as a Teaching Institution, and its per- 
 manence must be guaranteed by an adequate endowment. 
 
 The Council has felt that the attainment of these two objects 
 Is possible only through a union of the forces of the various 
 Protestant Christian Churches working in India. The result 
 has been the adoption of a wise and catholic project of re- 
 organisation, under which it is hoped that Serampore will become 
 a great interdenominational College of University rank, giving 
 a theological training up to the standard of the London B.D., 
 conferring its own divinity degrees, and maintaining an Arts 
 and Science department, for the present at least affiliated to the 
 Calcutta University. It is justly claimed that such a Christian 
 University at Serampore will both unify and raise the standard 
 of theological education in the Indian Church, helping to build 
 the Eastern structure of Christian thought and life on the one 
 Foundation of Jesus Christ, the Word of God. 
 
 The scheme which the Council has sanctioned contemplates 
 the permanent endowment of the requisite professorships and 
 scholarships. The College building will provide sufficient 
 class-room accommodation, but it will be necessary to secure 
 additional land, and to erect houses for the staff and hostels for 
 the students. An immediate endowment of 250,000 is aimed 
 at with a view of establishing a well-equipped theological 
 faculty, with a preliminary department in Arts and Sciences. 
 The Council, however, is not without hope that in due time 
 Carey's noble vision of a great Christian University at Seram- 
 pore conferring its own degrees, not only in theology but in all 
 branches of useful learning, may powerfully appeal to some of 
 the merchant princes of the West. It is estimated that the 
 sum of 2,000,000 would be required for this equipment and 
 endowment of the University on this larger scale. The great 
 missionary Churches and Societies look favourably on the 
 proposal, initiated by their own missionaries, to co-operate 
 with Carey's more immediate representatives in realising and 
 applying his ideal which is bound to expand and grow as India 
 becomes Christianised. 
 
 The members of the College Council maintain that, in view 
 of the world-wide influence of the modern missionary move-
 
 Carey's Christian University 29 3 
 
 meat, inaugurated by William Carey, a movement that has- 
 been so beneficial both to the Church at home and to non- 
 Christian nations, there is no institution that has greater 
 historical and spiritual claims upon modern philanthropy than 
 Serampore, and they believe that there are large numbers of 
 men and women in Great Britain, America, India and other 
 lands who will consider it a sacred privilege to have their names 
 inscribed with those of Carey, Marshman and Ward on the 
 walls of Serampore College as its second founders. 
 
 The Council is doing all within its power to reorganise the 
 College on the broadest possible basis, believing that an institu- 
 tion with such inspiring traditions and associations should be 
 utilised in the interests, not merely of one denomination, but of 
 the whole Church in India and the nation. Up to the present, the 
 Council, though legally an entirely independent body, has worked 
 in the closest association with the Baptist Missionary Society's- 
 Committee. But now with the fullest sympathy both of the 
 Baptist Missionaries on the field and the Committee in England, 
 it is also inviting the co-operation of all evangelical Christian 
 bodies in the work of Serampore College. It is prepared to 
 welcome as full professors of the College, in Arts and Theology,, 
 representatives of other evangelical missions, who shall have 
 special superintendence of the students belonging to their 
 respective denominations, and be free to give them such supple- 
 mentary instruction as may be thought necessary. All pro- 
 fessors without distinction of denomination will share equally 
 in the local management of the affairs of the College. The final 
 authority must, in accordance with the Charter, remain in the 
 hands of the College Council, but in order to admit of the due 
 representation upon the Council of the various evangelical bodies 
 which may co-operate, the present members of Council have, 
 with the hearty concurrence of the Baptist Missionary Society's 
 Committee, approved the suggestion that application should 
 be made to the Indian Legislature for powers to enlarge its 
 membership. 
 
 The Honorary Secretary of the College Council, A. H. Baynes, 
 Esq., 19 Furnival Street, London, E.G., will be glad to supply 
 further information, or to receive contributions towards the 
 Fund for the endowment and equipment of the College. 
 
 In view of the conditions at present existing in India, this 
 appeal should be of interest not only to friends of Christian 
 missions, but to philanthropists generally, for a Christian 
 University, conducted on the broad and catholk principles laid
 
 294 Life of William Carey 
 
 down by Carey, supplementary but in no way antagonistic to 
 the existing Universities, will be a most effective instrument 
 for permeating the political and social ideals of the youth of 
 India with the spirit of Christ. This is a matter that deeply 
 concerns, not only the Missionary, but also the statesman, the 
 merchant, and all true friends of India of whatever race or creed. 
 In all the romance of Christian Missions, from lona to Canter- 
 bury, there is no more evident example of the working of the 
 Spirit of God with the Church, than the call of Carey and the 
 foundation of Serampore College under Danish Charter and 
 British treaty, making it the only University with full powers to 
 enable the whole Reformed Church in India to work out its own 
 theological system and Christian life.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CAREY'S LAST DAYS 
 1830-1834 
 
 The college and mission stripped of all their funds Failure of the six 
 firms for sixteen millions -Carey's official income reduced from 1560 
 to 600 His Thoughts and Appeal published in England His vigour 
 at seventy Last revision of the Bengali Bible Final edition of the 
 Bengali New Testament Carey rejoices in the reforms of Lord William 
 Bentinck's Government In the emancipation of the slaves Carey 
 sketched by his younger contemporaries His latest letters and last 
 message to Christendom Visits of Lady William Bentinck and 
 Bishop Daniel Wilson Marshman's affection and promise as to the 
 garden The English mail brings glad news a fortnight before his 
 death His last Sabbath He dies Is buried His tomb among his 
 converts His will The Indian press on his poverty and 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 Hackle ton and Moulton, 
 not in the hardships of Calcutta and the Soondarbans, not in 
 the fevers of the swamps of Dinapoor, not in the apprehensions 
 twice excited by official intolerance, not in the most bitter 
 sorrow of all the sixteen years' persecution by English brethren 
 after Fuller's death, had the father of modern missions been so 
 tried as in the years 1830-1833. Blow succeeded blow, but only 
 that the fine gold of his trust, his humility, and his love might be 
 seen to be the purer. 
 
 The Serampore College and Mission lost all the funds it had 
 in India. By 1830 the financial revolution which had laid many 
 houses low in Europe five years before, began to tell upon the 
 merchant princes of Calcutta. The six firms, which had de- 
 veloped the trade of Northern India so far as the Company's 
 monopolies allowed, had been the bankers of the Government 
 itself, of states like Haidarabad, and of all the civil and military 
 officials, and had enriched a succession of partners for half a 
 
 295 u
 
 296 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 misrepresenta- 
 tion had done its worst. The children in the Eurasian schools, 
 which Dr. and Mrs. Marshman conducted with such profit to 
 the mission, depended chiefly on funds deposited with this firm. 
 It suddenly failed for more than two millions sterling. Although 
 the catastrophe exposed the rottenness of the system of credit 
 on which commerce and banking were at that time conducted, 
 in the absence of a free press and an intelligent public opinion, 
 the alarm soon subsided, and only the more business fell to the 
 other firms. But the year 1833 had hardly opened when first 
 the house of Alexander and Co., then that of Mackintosh and 
 Co., and then the three others, collapsed without warning. The 
 English in India, officials and merchants, were reduced to 
 universal poverty. Capital disappeared and credit ceased at 
 the very time that Parliament was about to complete the partial 
 concession of freedom of trade made by the charter of 1813, 
 by granting all Carey had argued for, and allowing Europeans 
 to hold land. 
 
 The funds invested for Jessor and Delhi; the legacy of 
 Fernandez, Carey's first convert and missionary ; his own tenths 
 with which he supported three aged relatives in England; 
 the property of the partner of his third marriage, on whom the 
 money was settled, and who survived him by a year; the little 
 possessed by Dr. Marshman, who had paid all his expenses in 
 England even while working for the Society all was swept 
 away. Not only was the small balance in hand towards meeting 
 the college and mission expenditure gone, but it was impossible 
 to borrow even for a short time. Again one of Dr. Carey's 
 old civilian students came to the rescue. Mr. Garrett, grandson 
 of Robert Raikes who first began Sunday schools, pledged his 
 own credit with the Bank of Bengal, until Samuel Hope of 
 Liverpool, treasurer of the Serampore Mission there, could be 
 communicated with. Meanwhile the question of giving up any 
 of the stations or shutting the college was not once favoured. 
 " I have seen the tears run down the face of the venerable 
 Dr. Carey at the thought of such a calamity," wrote Leechman; 
 " were it to arrive we should soon have to lay him in his grave." 
 When the interest of the funds raised by Ward in America
 
 Carey's Last Days 297 
 
 ceased for a time because of the malicious report from England 
 that it might be applied by Dr. Marshman to the purposes of 
 family aggrandisement, Carey replied in a spirit like that of 
 Paul under a similar charge: " Dr. Marshman is as poor as I 
 am, and I can scarcely lay by a sum monthly to relieve three 
 or four indigent relatives in Europe. I might have had large 
 possessions, but I have given my all, except what I ate, drank, 
 and wore, to the cause of missions, and Dr. Marshman has done 
 the same, and so did Mr. Ward." 
 
 Carey's trust in God, for the mission and for himself, was to 
 be still further tried. On i2th July 1828 we find him thus 
 writing from Calcutta to Jabez: " I came down this morning 
 to attend Lord W. Bentinck's first levee. It was numerously 
 attended, and I had the pleasure of seeing there a great number 
 of gentlemen who had formerly studied under me, and for whom 
 I felt a very sincere regard. I hear Lady Bentinck is a pious 
 woman, but have not yet seen her. I have a card to attend at 
 her drawing-room this evening, but I shall not go, as I must be 
 at home for the Sabbath, which is to-morrow." It soon fell 
 to Lord William Bentinck to meet the financial consequences 
 of his weak predecessor's administration. The College of Fort 
 William had to be sacrificed. Metcalfe and Bay ley, Carey's 
 old students whom he had permanently influenced in the higher 
 life, were the members of council, and he appealed to them. 
 They sent him to the good Governor-General, to whose sympathy 
 he laid bare all the past and present of the mission's finance. 
 He was told to have no fear, and indeed the Council held a long 
 sitting on this one matter.. But from June 1830 the college ceased 
 to be a teaching, and became an examining body. When the 
 salary was reduced one-half, from Rs. 1000 a month, the Brother- 
 hood met to pray for light and strength. Mr. Robinson, the 
 Java missionary who had attached himself to Serampore, and 
 whose son long did good service as a Bengali scholar and preacher, 
 gives us this glimpse of its inner life at this time: 
 
 " The two old men were dissolved in tears while they were 
 engaged in prayer, and Dr. Marshman in particular could not 
 give expressions to his feelings. It was indeed affecting to see 
 these good old men, the fathers of the mission, entreating with 
 tears that God would not forsake them now grey hairs were come 
 upon them, but that He would silence the tongue of calumny, 
 and furnish them with the means of carrying on His own cause." 
 
 They sent home an appeal to England, and Carey himself 
 published what is perhaps the most chivalrous, just, and weighty
 
 298 Life of William Carey 
 
 of all his utterances on the disagreeable subject Thoughts upon 
 the Discussions which have arisen from the Separation between the 
 Baptist Missionary Society and the Serampore Missions. " From 
 our age and other circumstances our contributions may soon 
 cease. We have seen a great work wrought in India, and much 
 of it, either directly or indirectly, has been done by ourselves. 
 I cannot, I ought not to be indifferent about the permanency of 
 this work, and cannot therefore view the exultation expressed 
 at the prospect of our resources being crippled otherwise than 
 being of a character too satanic to be long persisted in by any 
 man who has the love of God in his heart." 
 
 The appeal to all Christians for "a few hundred pounds per 
 annum " for the mission station closed thus: " But a few years 
 have passed away since the Protestant world was awakened 
 to missionary effort. Since that time the annual revenues 
 collected for this object have grown to the then unthought-of 
 sum of 400,000. And is it unreasonable to expect that some 
 unnoticeable portion of this should be intrusted to him who 
 was amongst the first to move in this enterprise and to his 
 colleagues?" The Brotherhood had hardly despatched this 
 appeal to England with the sentence, " Our present incomes even 
 are uncertain," when the shears of financial reduction cut off 
 Dr. Carey's office of Bengali translator to Government, which 
 for eight years had yielded him Rs. 300 a month. But such was 
 his faith this final stroke called forth only an expression of regret 
 that he must reduce his contributions to the missionary cause by 
 so much. He was a wonder to his colleagues, who wrote of 
 him: " Though thus reduced in his circumstances the good man, 
 about to enter on his seventieth year, is as cheerful and as happy 
 as the day is long. He rides out four or five miles every morning, 
 returning home by sunrise ; goes on with the work of translation 
 day by day; gives two lectures on divinity and one on natural 
 history every week in the college, and takes his turn of preaching 
 both in Bengali and in English." 
 
 When the Christian public responded heartily to his appeal 
 Carey was loud and frequent in his expressions of gratitude 
 to God, who, " in the time of our great extremity, appeared and 
 stirred up His people thus willingly to offer their substance for 
 His cause." With respect to myself, I consider my race as 
 nearly run. The days of our years are three score years and ten, 
 and I am now only three months short of that age, and repeated 
 bilious attacks have weakened my constitution. But I do not 
 look forward to death with any painful anticipations. I cast
 
 Carey's Last Days 299 
 
 myself on and plead the efficacy of that atonement which will 
 not fail me when I need it." 
 
 Dr. Marshman gives us a brighter picture of him. " I met 
 with very few friends in England in their seventieth year so 
 lively, as free from the infirmities of age, so interesting in the 
 pulpit, so completely conversible as he is now." The reason is 
 found in the fact that he was still useful, still busy at the work 
 he loved most of all. He completed his last revision of the entire 
 Bible in Bengali the fifth edition of the Old Testament and the 
 eighth edition of the New in June 1832. Immediately there- 
 after, when presiding at the ordination of Mr. Mack as co-pastor 
 with Dr. Marshman and himself over the church at Serampore, 
 he took with him into the pulpit the first copy of the sacred 
 volume which came from the binder's hands, and addressed the 
 converts and their children from the words of Simeon " Lord 
 now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
 have seen Thy salvation." As the months went on he carried 
 through the press still another and improved edition of the New 
 Testament, and only then he felt and often said that the work 
 of his heart was done. 
 
 He had other sources of saintly pleasure as he lay meditating 
 on the Word, and praising God for His goodness to the college 
 and the mission stations increased to nineteen by young Sir 
 Henry Havelock, who founded the church at Agra. Lord William 
 Bentinck, having begun his reign with the abolition of the crime 
 of suttee, was, with the help of Carey's old students, steadily 
 carrying out the other reforms for which in all his Indian career 
 the missionary had prayed and preached and published. The 
 judicial service was reorganised so as to include native judges. 
 The uncovenanted civil service was opened to all British subjects 
 of every creed. The first act of justice to native Christians 
 was thus done, so that he wrote of the college: " The students 
 are now eligible to every legal appointment in India which a 
 native can hold ; those who may possess no love for the Christian 
 ministry have the prospect of a profitable profession as advocates 
 in the judicial courts, and the hope of rising to posts of honour- 
 able distinction in their native land." The Hindoo law of 
 inheritance which the Regulating Act of Parliament had so 
 covered that it was used to deprive converts to Christianity of 
 all civil rights, was dealt with so far as a local regulation could 
 do so, and Carey, advised by such an authority as Harington, 
 laid it on his successor in the apostolate, the young Alexander 
 Duff, to carry the act of justice out fully, which was done under
 
 300 Life of William Carey 
 
 the Marquis of Dalhousie. The orders drawn up by Charles 
 Grant's sons at last, in February 1833, freed Great Britain from 
 responsibility for the connection of the East India Company 
 with Temple and mosque endowments and the pilgrim tax. 
 His son Jonathan wrote this of him two years after his death: 
 
 " In principle my father was resolute and firm, never shrinking 
 from avowing and maintaining his sentiments. He had conscien- 
 tious scruples against taking an oath; and condemned severely the 
 manner in which oaths were administered, and urged vehemently 
 the propriety of altogether dispensing with them. I remember 
 three instances in which he took a conspicuous part in regard to 
 oaths, such as was characteristic of the man. On one occasion, 
 when a respectable Hindoo servant of the college of Fort William, 
 attached to Dr. Carey's department, was early one morning pro- 
 ceeding to the Ganges to bathe, he perceived a dead body lying 
 near the road ; but it being dark, and no person being present, he 
 passed on, taking no further notice of the circumstance. As he 
 returned from the Ganges after sunrise, he saw a crowd near the 
 body, and then happened to say to one of the watchmen present 
 that in the morning he saw the body on the other side of the road. 
 The watchman took him in custody, as a witness before the coroner ; 
 but, when brought before the coroner, he refused to take an oath, 
 and was, consequently, committed to prison for contempt. The 
 Hindoo being a respectable person, and never having taken an 
 oath, refused to take any nourishment in the prison. In this state 
 he continued a day and a half, my father being then at Serampore ; 
 but upon his coming to Calcutta, the circumstances were mentioned 
 to him. The fact of the man having refused to take an oath was 
 enough to make him interest himself in his behalf. He was delighted 
 with the resolution the man took rather to go to prison than take 
 an oath; and was determined to do all he could to procure his 
 liberation. He first applied to the coroner, but was directed by him 
 to the sheriff. To that functionary he proceeded, but was informed 
 by him that he could make no order on the subject. He then had 
 an interview with the then chief judge, by whose interference the 
 man was set at liberty. 
 
 " Another instance relates to him personally. On the occasion of 
 his last marriage, the day was fixed on which the ceremony was to 
 take place friends were invited and all necessary arrangements 
 made; but, three or four days prior to the day fixed, he was in- 
 formed 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
 
 Carey's Last Days 301 
 
 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 con- 
 sented to make the application, if taking an oath would be dispensed 
 with. He did attend, and stated his objections to the then chief 
 judge, which being allowed, his affirmation was received and 
 recorded by the court. 
 
 " The duties connected with the College of Fort William afforded 
 him a change of scene, which relieved his mind, and gave him 
 opportunities of taking exercise, and conduced much to his health. 
 During the several years he held the situation of professor to the 
 college, no consideration would allow him to neglect his attendance ; 
 and though he had to encounter boisterous weather in crossing the 
 river at unseasonable hours, he was punctual in his attendance, and 
 never applied for leave of absence. And when he was qualified by 
 the rules of the service to retire on a handsome pension, he preferred 
 being actively employed in promoting the interests of the college, 
 and remained, assiduously discharging his duties, till his depart- 
 ment 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 retire- 
 ment he was subjected to when his office ceased. After this cir- 
 cumstance his health rapidly declined ; and though he occasionally 
 visited Calcutta, he complained of extreme debility. This increased 
 daily, and made him a constant sufferer; until at length he was 
 not able to leave his house." 
 
 Nor was it in India alone that the venerable saint found such 
 causes of satisfaction. He lived long enough to thank God 
 for the emancipation of the slaves by the English people, for 
 which he had prayed daily for fifty years. 
 
 We have many sketches of the Father of English Missions 
 in his later years by young contemporaries who, on their first 
 arrival in Bengal, sought him out. In 1824 Mr. Leslie, an 
 Edinburgh student, who became in India the first of Baptist 
 preachers, and was the means of the conversion of Henry 
 Havelock who married Dr. Marshman's youngest daughter, 
 wrote thus of Carey after the third great illness of his Indian 
 life: 
 
 " Dr. Carey, who has been very ill, is quite recovered, and bids 
 fair to live many years; and as for Dr. Marshman, he has never 
 known 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
 
 302 Life of William Carey 
 
 with his pundit, though not so robust as he appears to be there. 
 Next to his translations Botany is his grand study. He has col- 
 lected 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 excel- 
 lent sermon. In manner he is very animated, and in style very 
 methodical. Indeed he carries method into everything he does; 
 classification is his grand hobby, and wherever anything can be 
 classified, there you find Dr. Carey; not only does he classify and 
 arrange the roots of plants and words, but visit his dwelling and 
 you find he has fitted up and classified shelves full of minerals, 
 stones, shells, etc., and cages full of birds. He is of very easy 
 access, and great familiarity. His attachments are strong, and 
 extend not merely to persons but places. About a year ago, so 
 much of the house in which he had lived ever since he had been at 
 Serampore, fell down so that he had to leave it, at which he wept 
 bitterly. One morning at breakfast, he was relating to us an 
 anecdote of the generosity of the late excellent John Thornton, at 
 the remembrance of whom the big tear filled his eye. Though it 
 is an affecting sight to see the venerable man weep; yet it is a 
 sight which greatly interests you, as there is a manliness in his 
 tears something far removed from the crying of a child." 
 
 The house in which for the last ten years he lived, and where 
 he died, was the only one of two or three, planned for the 
 new professors of the college, that was completed. Compared 
 with the adjoining college it was erected with such severe 
 simplicity that it was said to have been designed for angels 
 rather than for men. Carey's room and library looked towards 
 the river with the breadth of the college garden between. On 
 the other side, in the upper verandah, in the morning he 
 worked at his desk almost to the last, and in the evening towards 
 sunset he talked with his visitors. In 1826 the London Mis- 
 sionary Society sent out to Calcutta the first of its deputations. 
 Dr. Carey sent his boat for them, and in the absence of her 
 husband in England, Mrs. Marshman entertained the guests. 
 They wrote: 
 
 " We found Dr. Carey in his study, and we were both pleased and 
 struck with his primitive, and we may say, apostolical appearance. 
 He is short of stature, his hair white, his countenance equally bland 
 and benevolent in feature and expression. Two Hindoo men were 
 sitting by, engaged in painting some small subjects in natural 
 history, of which the doctor, a man of pure taste and highly intel- 
 lectual cast of feeling, irrespective of his more learned pursuits, has 
 a choice collection, both in specimens and pictorial representations.
 
 Carey's Last Days 303 
 
 Botany is a favourite study with him, and his garden is curiously 
 enriched with rarities." 
 
 Of all the visits paid to Carey none are now so interesting 
 to the historian of the Church of India, as those of the youth 
 who succeeded him as he had succeeded Schwartz. Alexander 
 Duff was twenty-four years of age when, in 1830, full of hesita- 
 tion as to carrying out his own plans in opposition to the ex- 
 perience of all the missionaries he had consulted, he received 
 from Carey alone the most earnest encouragement to pursue 
 in Calcutta the Christian college policy so well begun in the 
 less central settlement of Serampore. We have elsewhere J told 
 the story: 
 
 " Landing at the college ghaut one sweltering July day, the still 
 ruddy highlander strode up to the flight of steps that leads to the 
 finest modern building in Asia. Turning to the left, he sought the 
 study of Carey in the house ' built for angels,' said one, so simple 
 is it where the greatest of missionary scholars was still working 
 for India. There he beheld what seemed to be a little yellow old 
 man in a white jacket, who tottered up to the visitor of whom he 
 had already often heard, and with outstretched hands solemnly 
 blessed him. A contemporary soon after wrote thus of the childlike 
 saint 
 
 " ' Thou'rt in our heart with tresses thin and grey, 
 
 And eye that knew the Book of Life so well, 
 And brow serene, as thou wert wont to stray 
 Amidst thy flowers like Adam ere he fell.' 
 
 " The result of the conference was a double blessing; for Carey 
 could speak with the influence at once of a scholar who had created 
 the best college at that time in the country, and of a vernacularist 
 who had preached to the people for half a century. The young 
 Scotsman left his presence with the approval of the one authority 
 whose opinion was best worth having. . . . 
 
 " Among those who visited him in his last illness was Alexander 
 Duff, the Scots missionary. On one of the last occasions on which 
 he saw him if not the very last he spent some time talking chiefly 
 about Carey's missionary life, till at length the dying man whispered, 
 Pray. Duff knelt down and prayed, and then said Good-bye. As 
 he passed from the room, he thought he heard a feeble voice pro- 
 nouncing his name, and, turning, he found that he was recalled. 
 He stepped back accordingly, and this is what he heard, spoken 
 with a gracious solemnity: ' Mr. Duff, you have been speaking 
 about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey; When I am gone, say nothing about 
 Dr. Carey speak about Dr. Carey's Saviour.' Duff went away 
 rebuked and awed, with a lesson in his heart that he never forgot." * 
 
 1 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., 1879. 
 1 William Carey, by James Culross, D.D., 1881.
 
 304 Life of William Carey 
 
 When with his old friends he dwelt much on the past. Writing 
 of May 1832, Dr. Marshman mentioned: " I spent an hour at 
 tea with dear Brother Carey last night, now seventy and nine 
 months. He was in the most comfortable state of health, 
 talking over his first feelings respecting India and the heathen, 
 and the manner in which God kept them alive, when even Fuller 
 could not yet enter into them, and good old John Ryland (the 
 doctor's father) denounced them as unscriptural. Had these 
 feelings died away, in what a different state might India now 
 have been! " In September of that year, when burying Mrs. 
 Ward, he seemed, in his address at the grave, to long for renewed 
 intercourse with the friends who had preceded him in entering 
 into the joy of the Lord. 
 
 On Mr. Leechman's arrival from Scotland to be his colleague, 
 he found the old man thus vigorous even in April 1833, or if 
 " faint, yet pursuing ": 
 
 " Our venerable Dr. Carey is in excellent health, and takes his 
 turn in all our public exercises. Just forty years ago, the first of 
 this month, he administered the Lord's Supper to the church at 
 Leicester, and started on the morrow to embark for India. Through 
 this long period of honourable toil the Lord has mercifully preserved 
 him; and at our missionary prayer meeting, held on the first of 
 this month, he delivered an interesting address to encourage us to 
 persevere in the work of the Lord. We have also a private monthly 
 prayer meeting held in Dr. Carey's study, which is to me a meeting 
 of uncommon interest. On these occasions we particularly spread 
 before the Lord our public and private trials, both those which 
 come upon us from the cause of Christ, with which it is our honour 
 and privilege to be connected, and those also which we as indi- 
 viduals are called to bear. At our last meeting Dr. Carey read part 
 of the history of Gideon, and commented with deep feeling on the 
 encouragement which that history affords, that the cause of God 
 can be carried on to victory and triumph, by feeble and apparently 
 inefficient means." 
 
 Carey's successor, Mack, wrote thus to Christopher Anderson 
 ten months later: 
 
 " SERAMPORE, 315^ 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 respect- 
 ing 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
 
 Carey's Last Days 305 
 
 anything, he knows that he believes it. When his attention is 
 turned to his dismissal from earth, or his hope of glory, his emotions 
 are tender and sweet. They are also very simple, and express 
 themselves in a few brief and pithy sentences. His interest in all 
 the affairs of the mission is unabated, and although he can no 
 longer join us either in deliberation or associated prayer, he must 
 be informed of all that occurs, and his heart is wholly with us in 
 whatever we do. I do not conceive it possible that he can survive 
 the ensuing hot season, but he may, and the Lord will do in this 
 as in all other things what is best. 
 
 " When our necessities were coming to their climax I concluded 
 that I must leave Serampore in order to find food to eat, and I 
 fixed upon Cherra-poonjee as my future residence. I proposed 
 establishing a first-class school there, and then with some warmth 
 of imagination I began anticipating a sort of second edition of 
 Serampore up in the Khasia hills, to be a centre of diffusing light 
 in the western provinces. I became really somewhat enamoured of 
 the phantom of my imagination, but it was not to be. The brethren 
 here would not see it as I did." 
 
 This last sketch, by Mr. Gogerly, whom the London Missionary 
 Society had sent out in 1819, brings us still nearer the end: 
 
 " At this time I paid him my last visit. He was seated near his 
 desk, in the study, dressed in his usual neat attire; his eyes were 
 closed, and his hands clasped together. On his desk was the proof- 
 sheet of the last chapter of the New Testament, which he had 
 revised a few days before. His appearance, as he sat there, with 
 the few white locks which adorned his venerable brow, and his 
 placid colourless face, filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared 
 as then listening to the Master's summons, and as waiting to depart. 
 I sat, in his presence, for about half an hour, and not one word was 
 uttered ; for I feared to break that solemn silence, and call back to 
 earth the soul that seemed almost in heaven. At last, however, I 
 spoke; and well do I remember the identical words that passed 
 between us, though more than thirty-six years have elapsed since 
 then. I said, ' My dear friend, you evidently are standing on the 
 borders of the eternal world; do not think it wrong, then, if I ask, 
 What are your feelings in the immediate prospect of death ? ' The 
 question roused him from his apparent stupor, and opening his 
 languid eyes, he earnestly replied, ' As far as my personal salvation 
 is concerned, I have not the shadow of a doubt; I know in Whom 
 I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that 
 which I have committed unto Him against that day; but when I 
 think that I am about to appear in the presence of a holy God, and 
 remember all my sins and manifold imperfections I tremble.' He 
 could say no more. The tears trickled down his cheeks, and after 
 a while he relapsed into the same state of silence from which I had 
 aroused him. 
 
 " Deeply solemn was that interview, and important the lesson I 
 then received. Here was one of the most holy and harmless men 
 whom I ever knew who had lived above the breath of calumny for
 
 306 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 xyth March 1802, Carey had thus 
 -described himself to Dr. Ryland: " A year or more ago you, 
 or some other of my dear friends, mentioned an intention of 
 publishing a volume of sermons as a testimony of mutual 
 Christian love, and wished me to send a sermon or two for that 
 purpose. I have seriously intended it, and more than once sat 
 down to accomplish it, but have as constantly been broken 
 off from it. Indolence is my prevailing sin, and to that are now 
 added a number of avocations which I never thought of; I 
 have also so continual a fear that I may at last fall some way 
 or other so as to dishonour the Gospel that I have often desired 
 that my name may be buried in oblivion; and indeed I have 
 reason for those fears, for I am so prone to sin that I wonder 
 every night that I have been preserved from foul crimes through 
 the day, and when I escape a temptation I esteem it to be a 
 miracle of grace which has preserved me. I never was so fully 
 persuaded as I am now that no habit of religion is a security 
 from falling into the foulest crimes, and I need the immediate 
 help of God every moment. The sense of my continual danger 
 has, I confess, operated strongly upon me to induce me to desire 
 that no publication of a religious nature should be published 
 as mine whilst I am alive. Another reason is my sense of in- 
 capacity to do justice to any subject, or even to write good sense. 
 I have, it is true, been obliged to publish several things, and I 
 -can say that nothing but necessity could have induced me to do 
 it. They are, however, only grammatical works, and certainly 
 the very last things which I should have written if I could have 
 chosen for myself." 
 
 On 1 5th June 1833 the old man was still able to rejoice with 
 others. He addressed to his son Jonathan the only brief letter 
 which the present writer possesses from his pen, in a hand as 
 clear as that of a quarter of a century before: 
 
 " MY DEAR JONATHAN I congratulate you upon the good 
 news you have received. But am sorry Lucy continues so ill. 
 J am too weak to write more than to say your mother is as
 
 Carey's Last Days 307 
 
 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 con- 
 tinue. The will of the Lord be done. Adieu, till I meet you 
 in a better world. Your affectionate brother, 
 
 "W. CAREY." 
 
 Two months later he was at his old work, able " now and 
 then to read a proof sheet of the Scriptures." 
 
 " SERAUPORE, atfh 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 r 
 and can only say, ' All the days of my appointed time will I 
 wait till my change come.' I was, two months or more ago, 
 reduced to such a state of weakness that it appeared as if my 
 mind was extinguished; and my weakness of body, and sense 
 of extreme fatigue and exhaustion, were such that I could 
 scarcely speak, and it appeared that death would be no more 
 felt than the removing from one chair to another. I am now 
 able to sit and to lie on my couch, and now and then to read a 
 proof sheet of the Scriptures. I am too weak to walk more 
 than just across the house, nor can I stand even a few minutes 
 without support. I have every comfort that kind friends can 
 yield, and feel, generally, a tranquil mind. I trust the great 
 point is settled, and I am ready to depart; but the time when, 
 I leave with God. 
 
 " yd 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 3oth
 
 308 Life of William Carey 
 
 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 accom- 
 plishment of them all, which, however difficult and improbable 
 it may appear, is certain, as all the promises of God are in Him, 
 yea, and in Him, Amen." Had he not, all his career, therefore 
 expected and attempted great things? 
 
 He had had a chair fixed on a small platform, constructed 
 after his own direction, that he might be wheeled through his 
 garden. At other times the chief gardener, Hullodhur, reported 
 to him the state of the collection of plants, then numbering 
 about 2000. Dr. Marshman saw his friend daily, sometimes 
 twice a day, and found him always what Lord Hastings had 
 described him to be " the cheerful old man." On the only 
 occasion on which he seemed sad, Dr. Marshman as he was 
 leaving the room turned and asked why. With deep feeling 
 the dying scholar looked to the others and said, " After I am 
 gone Brother Marshman will turn the cows into my garden." 
 The reply was prompt, " Far be it from me; though I have not 
 your botanical tastes, the care of the garden in which you have 
 taken so much delight, shall be to me a sacred duty." l 
 
 Of strangers his most frequent visitor was the Governor- 
 General's wife, Lady William Bentinck. Her husband was in 
 South India, and she spent most of her time in Barrackpore 
 Park retreat opposite to Carey's house. From her frequent 
 converse with him, in his life as well as now, she studied the 
 art of dying. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, learned to 
 delight in Serampore almost from the beginning of his long 
 episcopate, and in later years he lived there more than in 
 Calcutta. On the i4th February 1833 he first visited Carey, 
 " his interview with whom, confined as he was to his room, and 
 apparently on the verge of the celestial world, was peculiarly 
 affecting." In the last of subsequent visits the young Bishop 
 asked the dying missionary's benediction. With all the talk 
 was the same, a humble resignation to the will of God, firm 
 trust in the Redeemer of sinners, a joyful gratitude for the 
 wonderful progress of His Kingdom. What a picture is this 
 that his brethren sent home six weeks before he passed away. 
 " Our aged and venerable brother feels himself growing gradually 
 
 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.
 
 Carey's Last Days 309 
 
 weaker. He can scarcely rise from his couch, and it is with 
 great difficulty that he is carried out daily to take the air. Yet 
 he is free from all pain as to disease, and his mind is in a most 
 serene and happy state. He is in full possession of his faculties, 
 and, although with difficulty, on account of his weakness, he 
 still converses with his friends from day to day." 
 
 The hottest season of the year crept wearily on during the 
 month of May and the first week of June. Each night he slept 
 well, and each day he was moved to his couch in the dining- 
 room for air. There he lay, unable to articulate more than a 
 word or two, but expressing by his joyful features union in 
 prayer and interest in conversation. On the 22nd May the Eng- 
 lish 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 re- 
 membered. As he was told that a lady, anonymously, had 
 offered 500 for that mission, 500 for the college, 500 for the 
 translations, and 100 for the mission generally, he raised his 
 emaciated hands to heaven and murmured praise to God. 
 When the delirium of departure came he strove to reach his 
 desk that he might write a letter of thanks, particularly for 
 Cherra. Then he would recall the fact that the little church he 
 at first formed had branched out into six and twenty churches, 
 in which the ordinances of the Gospel were regularly adminis- 
 tered, and he would whisper, " What has God wrought! " 
 
 The last Sabbath had come and the last full day. The 
 constant Marshman was with him. " He was scarcely able to 
 articulate, and after a little conversation I knelt down by the 
 side of his couch and prayed with him. Finding my mind 
 unexpectedly drawn out to bless God for His goodness, in 
 having preserved him and blessed him in India for above forty 
 years, and made him such an instrument of good to His church ; 
 and to entreat that on his being taken home, a double portion 
 of his spirit might rest on those who remained behind ; though 
 unable to speak, he testified sufficiently by his countenance how 
 cordially he joined in this prayer. I then asked Mrs. Carey 
 whether she thought he could now see me. She said yes, and 
 to convince me, said, ' Mr. Marshman wishes to know whether 
 you now see him? ' He answered so loudly that I could hear 
 him, ' Yes, I do,' and shook me most cordially by the hand. I 
 then left him, and my other duties did not permit me to reach 
 him again that day. The next morning, as I was returning 
 home before sunrise, I met our Brethren Mack and Leechman
 
 3 1 o Life of William Carey 
 
 out on their morning ride, when Mack told me that our beloved 
 brother had been rather worse all the night, and that he had 
 just left him very ill. I immediately hastened home, through 
 the college in which he has lived these ten years, and when I 
 reached his room, found that he had just entered into the joy 
 of his Lord Mrs. Carey, his son Jabez, my son John, and Mrs. 
 Mack being present." 
 
 It was Monday the gth June 1834, at half -past five, as the 
 morning sun was ascending the heavens towards the perfect 
 day. The rain-clouds burst and covered the land with gloom 
 next morning when they carried William Carey to the converts' 
 burial-ground and made great lamentation. The notice was 
 too short for many to come up from Calcutta in those days. 
 " Mr. Duff, of the Scottish Church, returned a most kind letter." 
 Sir Charles Metcalfe and the Bishop wrote very feelingly in 
 reply. Lady Bentinck sent the Rev. Mr. Fisher to represent 
 the Governor-General and herself, and " a most kind and feeling 
 answer, for she truly loved the venerable man," while she sadly 
 gazed at the mourners as they followed the simple funeral up 
 the right bank of the Hoogli, past the College and the Mission 
 chapel. Mr. Yates, who had taken a loving farewell of the 
 scholar he had been reluctant to succeed, represented the 
 younger brethren; Lacroix, Micaiah Hill, and Gogerly, the 
 London Missionary Society. Corrie and Dealtry do not seem 
 to have reached the spot in time. The Danish Governor, his 
 wife, and the members of council were there, and the flag 
 drooped half-mast high as on the occasion of a Governor's 
 death. The road was lined by the poor, Hindoo and Moham- 
 medan, for whom he had done so much. When all, walking in 
 the rain, had reached the open grave, the sun shone out, and 
 Leechman led them in the joyous resurrection hymn, " Why 
 do we mourn departing friends?" "I then addressed the 
 audience," wrote Marshman, " and, contrary to Brother Mack's 
 foretelling that I should never get through it for tears, I did 
 not shed one. Brother Mack was then asked to address the 
 native members, but he, seeing the time so far gone, publicly 
 said he would do so at the village. Brother Robinson then 
 prayed, and weeping then neither myself nor few besides 
 could refrain." In Jannuggur village chapel in the evening 
 the Bengali burial hymn was sung, Pceritran Christer Morone. 
 " Salvation by the death of Christ," and Pran Krishna, the 
 oldest disciple, led his countrymen in prayer. Then Mack 
 spoke to the weeping converts with all the pathos of their own
 
 Carey's Last Days 3 1 1 
 
 sweet vernacular from the words, " For David, after he had 
 served his own generation, by the will of God fell on sleep." 
 Had not Carey's been a royal career, even that of a king and 
 a priest unto God ? 
 
 " We, as a mission," wrote Dr. Marshman to Christopher 
 Anderson, " took the expense on ourselves, not suffering his 
 family to do so, as we shall that of erecting a monument for 
 him .^ Long before his death we had, by a letter signed by us 
 all, assured him that the dear relatives, in England and France, 
 should have their pensions continued as though he were living, 
 and that Mrs. Carey, as a widow, should have Rs. 100 monthly, 
 whatever Mackintosh's house might yield her." 
 
 Twenty-two years before, when Chamberlain was complaining 
 because of the absence of stone, or brick, or inscription in the 
 mission burial-ground, Carey had said, " Why should we be 
 remembered? I think when I am dead the sooner I am for- 
 gotten the better." Dr. Johns observed that it is not the desire 
 of the persons themselves but of their friends for them, to which 
 Carey replied, " I think of others in that respect as I do of 
 myself." When his second wife was taken from him, his 
 affection so far prevailed that he raised a memorial stone, and 
 in his will left this " order " to Mack and William Robinson, 
 his executors: " I direct that my funeral be as plain as possible; 
 that I be buried by the side of my second wife, Charlotte Emilia 
 Carey; and that the following inscription and nothing more 
 may be cut on the stone which commemorates her, either above 
 or below, as there may be room, viz.: 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY, BORN AUGUST 17, 1761; DIED 
 
 A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, 
 On Thy kind arms I fall." 
 
 The surviving brethren seem to have taken the small oblong 
 stone, with the inscription added as directed, and to have 
 placed it on the south side of the domed square block of brick 
 and white plaster since renewed from time to time which 
 stands in the left corner of the God's-acre, now consecrated by 
 the mingled dust of four generations of missionaries, converts, 
 and Christian people. Ward's monument stands in the centre, 
 and that of the Marshman family at the right hand. Three 
 and a half years afterwards Joshua Marshman followed Carey; 
 not till 1847 was Hannah Marshman laid beside him, after a 
 noble life of eighty years. Mack had gone the year before, cut 
 
 x
 
 3 1 2 Life of William Carey 
 
 off by cholera like Ward. But the brotherhood cannot be said 
 to have ended till John Marshman, C.S.I., died in London in 
 1877. From first to last the three families contributed to the 
 cause of God from their own earnings, ninety thousand pounds, 
 and the world would never have known it but for the lack of 
 the charity that envieth not on the part of Andrew Fuller's 
 successors. 
 
 Carey's last will and testament begins: " I utterly disclaim 
 all or any right or title to the premises at Serampore, called the 
 mission premises, and every part and parcel thereof; and do 
 hereby declare that I never had, or supposed myself to have, 
 any such right or title. I give and bequeath to the College of 
 Serampore the whole of my museum, consisting of minerals, 
 shells, corals, insects, and other natural curiosities, and a Hortus 
 Siccus; also the folio edition of Hortus Woburnensis, which was 
 presented to me by Lord Hastings ; Taylor's Hebrew Concordance, 
 my collection of Bibles in foreign languages, and all my books 
 in the Italian and German languages." His widow, Grace, who 
 survived him a short time, had the little capital that was hers 
 before her marriage to him, and he desired that she would choose 
 from his library whatever English books she valued. His 
 youngest son, Jonathan, was not in want of money. He had 
 paid Felix and William Rs. 1500 each in his lifetime. In order 
 to leave a like sum to Jabez, he thus provided : " From the 
 failure of funds to carry my former intentions into effect, I 
 direct that my library be sold." In dying as in living he 
 is the same just to others because self-devoted to Him to 
 whom he thus formally willed himself, " On Thy kind arms I 
 fall." 
 
 The Indian journals rang with the praises of the missionary 
 whose childlike humility and sincerity, patriotism and learning, 
 had long made India proud of him. After giving himself, 
 William Carey had died so poor that his books had to be sold 
 to provide 187 IDS. for one of his sons. One writer asserted 
 that this man had contributed " sixteen lakhs of rupees " to 
 the cause of Christ while connected with the Serampore Mission, 
 and the statement was everywhere repeated. Dr. Marshman 
 thereupon published the actual facts, " as no one would have 
 felt greater abhorrence of such an attempt to impose on the 
 Christian public than Dr. Carey himself, had he been living." 
 At a time when the old Sicca Rupee was worth half a crown, 
 Carey received, in the thirty-four and a half years of his residence 
 at Serampore, from the date of his appointment to the College
 
 Carey's Last Days 313 
 
 of Fort William, 45,000.! Of this he spent 7500 on his 
 Botanic Garden in that period. If accuracy is of any value in 
 such a question, which has little more than a curious biographical 
 interest, then we must add the seven years previous to 1801, 
 and we shall find that the shoemaker of Hackleton received in 
 all for himself and his family 600 from the Society which he 
 called into existence, and which sent him forth, while he spent 
 on the Christianisation and civilisation of India 1625 received 
 as a manufacturer of indigo; and 45,000 as Professor of 
 Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, and Bengali Translator to 
 Government, or 46,625 in all. 
 
 " It is possible," wrote Dr. Marshman, " that if, instead of 
 thus living to God and his cause with his brethren at Serampore, 
 Dr. Carey had, like the other professors in the college, lived in 
 Calcutta wholly for himself and his family, he might have laid 
 by for them a lakh of rupees in the thirty years he was employed 
 by Government, and had he been very parsimonious, possibly 
 a lakh and a half. But who that contrasts the pleasures of such 
 a life with those Dr. Carey enjoyed in promoting with his own 
 funds every plan likely to plant Christianity among the natives 
 around him, without having to consult any one in thus doing, 
 but his two brethren of one heart with him, who contributed as 
 much as himself to the Redeemer's cause, and the fruit of which 
 he saw before his death in Twenty-six Gospel Churches planted 
 in India within a surface of about eight hundred miles, and 
 above Forty labouring brethren raised up on the spot amidst 
 them would not prefer the latter? What must have been 
 the feelings on a deathbed of a man who had lived wholly to 
 himself, compared with the joyous tranquillity which filled 
 Carey's soul in the prospect of entering into the joy of his Lord, 
 and above all with what he felt when, a few days before his 
 decease, he said to his companion in labour for thirty-four years : 
 ' I have no fears ; I have no doubts ; I have not a wish left 
 unsatisfied.' " 
 
 Sa. Rs. 
 1 " From May 1801 to June 1807, inclusive, as Teacher of 
 
 Bengali and Sanskrit, 74 months at 500 rupees 
 
 monthly ........ 37,000 
 
 From ist July 1807 to 3ist May 1830, as Professor of ditto, 
 
 at looo rupees monthly ...... 2,75,000 
 
 From 23rd Oct. to July 1830, inclusive, 300 rupees monthly, 
 
 as Translator of Government Regulations . . . 24,600 
 From ist July 1830 to 3ist May 1834, a pension of 500 
 
 rupees monthly ....... 23,500 
 
 " Sicca Rupees . 3,60,100"
 
 3 14 Life of William Carey 
 
 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, Edin- 
 burgh, on the 3oth of November, by Christopher Anderson, 
 were the only materials from which a just estimate of Carey and 
 his work could be formed for the next quarter of a century. 
 All, and especially the last, were as worthy of their theme as 
 eloges pronounced in such circumstances could be. Marshman 
 spoke from the text chosen by Carey himself a few weeks before 
 his death as containing the foundation of his hope and the source 
 of his calm and tranquil assurance " For by grace are ye 
 saved." Mack found his inspiration again, as he had done in 
 the Bengali village, in Paul's words " David, after he had 
 served his own generation, by the will of God fell on sleep." 
 The Edinburgh preacher turned to the message of Isaiah where- 
 with 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 con- 
 temporary missionary who most nearly resembled Carey in 
 personal saintliness, scholarship, and self-devotion, John Wilson, 
 thus wrote: 
 
 " Dr. Carey, the first of living missionaries, the most honoured 
 and the most successful since the time of the Apostles, has 
 closed his long and influential career. Indeed his spirit, his 
 life, and his labours, were truly apostolic. . . . The Spirit of 
 God which was in him led him forward from strength to strength, 
 supported him under privation, enabled him to overcome in a 
 fight that seemed without hope. Like the beloved disciple, 
 whom he resembled in simplicity of mind, and in seeking to 
 draw sinners to Christ altogether by the cords of love, he 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 uneducated, embark on such an enter- 
 prise, could ever dream that, in little more than forty years, 
 Christendom should be animated with the same spirit, thou- 
 sands 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? "
 
 Carey's Last Days 3 1 5 
 
 As the Founder and Father of Modern Missions, the character 
 and career of William Carey are being revealed every year in 
 the progress, and as yet, the purity of the expansion of the 
 Church and of the English-speaking races in the two-thirds of 
 the world which are still outside of Christendom. The 13: 2: 6 
 of Kettering became 400,000 before he died, and is now 
 5,000,000 a year. The one ordained English missionary is 
 now a band of 20,000 men and women sent out by 558 agencies 
 of the Reformed Churches. The solitary converts, each with 
 no influence on his people, or country, or generation, are 
 now a community of 3,000,000 in India alone, and in all 
 the lands outside of Christendom 5,000,000, of whom 80,000 
 are missionaries to their own countrymen, and many are 
 leaders of the native communities. Since the first edition of 
 the Bengali New Testament appeared at the beginning of the 
 century 250,000,000 of copies of the Holy Scriptures have been 
 printed, of which one half are in 370 of the non-English tongues of 
 the world. The Bengali School of Mudnabati, the Christian 
 College of Serampore, have set in motion educational forces that 
 are bringing nations to the birth, are passing under Bible in- 
 struction every day more than a million boys and girls, young 
 men and maidens of the dark races of mankind. 
 
 The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the greatest and most 
 practical Evangelical of the nineteenth century after William 
 Wilberforce, wrote thus in his Journal of the class whom Carey 
 headed in the eighteenth, and whom Wordsworth commemo- 
 rated as 
 
 " Not sedentary all; there are who roam 
 To scatter seeds of Life on barbarous shores." 
 
 1847. "Aug. soth RYDE. Reading Missionary Enterprises 
 by Williams. . . . Zeal, devotion, joy, simplicity of heart, faith, 
 love; and we here have barely affection enough to thank God 
 that such deeds have been done. Talk of ' doing good ' and 
 being ' useful in one's generation/ why, these admirable men 
 performed more in one month than I or many others shall 
 perform in a whole life ! " 
 
 The eloquent Dr. Richard Winter Hamilton, reflecting that 
 sacrifice to heroes is reserved until after sunset, recalled William 
 Carey, eight years after his death, as " wielding a power to which 
 all difficulties yielded, but that power noiseless as a law of 
 nature; great in conception as well as in performance; pro- 
 found as those deep combinations of language in which the
 
 3 1 6 Life of William Carey 
 
 Indian philosophy and polytheism hide themselves, but gentle 
 as the flower which in his brief recreation he loved to train; 
 awful as the sage, simple as the child; speaking through the 
 Eastern world in as many languages, perhaps, as ' the cloven 
 tongues of fire ' represented; to be remembered and blessed as 
 long as Ganges rolls ! " 
 
 The historian of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Robert 
 Hall, whom Sir James Mackintosh pronounced the greatest 
 English orator, have both attempted an estimate of Carey's 
 genius and influence. Dr. F. A. Cox remarks: " Had he been 
 born in the sixteenth century he might have been a Luther, to 
 give Protestantism to Europe; had he turned his thought and 
 observations merely to natural philosophy he might have been 
 a Newton; but his faculties, consecrated by religion to a still 
 higher end, have gained for him the sublime distinction of having 
 been the Translator of the Scriptures and the Benefactor of Asia." 
 Robert Hall spoke thus of Carey in his lifetime: " That extra- 
 ordinary man who, from the lowest obscurity and poverty, 
 without assistance, rose by dint of unrelenting industry to the 
 highest honours of literature, became one of the first of 
 Orientalists, the first of Missionaries, and the instrument of 
 diffusing more religious knowledge among his contemporaries 
 than has fallen to the lot of any individual since the Reformation ; 
 a man who unites with the most profound and varied attain- 
 ments the fervour of an evangelist, the piety of a saint, and the 
 simplicity of a child." 
 
 Except the portrait in London and the bust in Calcutta, no 
 memorial, national, catholic, or sectarian, marks the work of 
 Carey. That work is meanwhile most appropriately embodied 
 in the College for natives at Serampore, in the Lall Bazaar chapel 
 and Benevolent Institution for the poor of Calcutta. The 
 Church of England, which he left, like John Wesley, has allowed 
 E. S. Robinson, Esq., of Bristol, to place an inscription, on brass, 
 in the porch of the church of his native village, beside the stone 
 which he erected over the remains of his father, Edmund, the 
 parish clerk: " To the Glory of God and in memory of Dr. Wm. 
 Carey, Missionary and Orientalist." 
 
 Neither Baptist nor Anglican, the present biographer would, 
 in the name of the country which stood firm in its support of 
 Carey and Serampore all through the forty-one years of his 
 apostolate, add this final eulogy, pronounced in St. George's 
 Free Church, Edinburgh, on the man who, more than any other 
 and before all others, made the civilisation of the modern world
 
 Carey's Last Days 317 
 
 by the English-speaking races a Christian force. 1 Carey, child- 
 like in his humility, is the most striking illustration in all 
 Hagiology, Protestant or Romanist, of the Lord's declaration to 
 the Twelve when He had set a little child in the midst of them, 
 " Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is 
 greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Yet we, nigh a century 
 after he went forth with the Gospel to Hindostan, may venture 
 to place him where the Church History of the future is likely to 
 keep him amid the uncrowned kings of men who have made 
 Christian England what it is, under God, to its own people and 
 to half the human race. These are Chaucer, the Father of 
 English Verse; Wyclif the Father of the Evangelical Reforma- 
 tion 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, Macoiven 
 and Wallace, 1884.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I. CHARTER OF INCORPORATION OF SERAMPORE 
 COLLEGE 
 
 WE, Frederick the Sixth, by the Grace of God King of Denmark, 
 the Venders and Gothers, Duke of Slesvig Holsten, Stormarn, 
 Ditmarsken, Limessborg and Oldenborg, by writings these make 
 known and publicly declare, that whereas William Carey and 
 Joshua Marshman, Doctors of Divinity, and John Clark Marshman, 
 Esq., inhabitants of our town of Fredericksnagore (or Serampore) 
 in Bengal, being desirous of founding a College to promote piety 
 and learning particularly among the native Christian population of 
 India, have to secure this object erected suitable buildings and pur- 
 chased and collected suitable books, maps, etc., and have humbly 
 besought us to grant unto them and such persons as shall be elected 
 by them and their successors to form the Council of the College in 
 the manner to be hereafter named, our Royal Charter of Incorpora- 
 tion that they may the more effectually carry into execution the 
 purposes above-mentioned: We, being desirous to encourage so 
 laudable an undertaking, have of our special grace and free motion 
 ordained, constituted, granted and declared, and by the presents 
 We do for ourselves, our heirs and successors ordain, constitute, 
 grant and declare: 
 
 1. That the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John 
 Clark Marshman, and such other person or persons as shall suc- 
 cessively be elected and appointed the Council of the said College, 
 in the manner hereafter mentioned, shall by virtue of the presents 
 be for ever hereafter one body politic and incorporate by the name 
 of the Serampore College for the purposes aforesaid to have per- 
 petual succession and to have a common seal, and by the said 
 name to sue and be sued, to implead and be impleaded, and to 
 answer and be answered unto in every court and place belonging 
 to us, our heirs and successors. 
 
 2. And We do hereby ordain, constitute and declare that the 
 persons hereby incorporated and their successors shall for ever be 
 competent in law to purchase, hold and enjoy for them and their 
 successors any goods and chattels whatsoever and to receive, 
 purchase, hold and enjoy, they and their successors, any lands, 
 tenements or hereditaments whatever, and that they shall have full 
 power and authority to sell, exchange or otherwise dispose of any 
 real or personal property to be by them acquired as aforesaid, 
 unless the sale or alienation of such property be specially pro- 
 hibited by the donor or donors thereof, and to do all things relating 
 to the said College or Corporation in as ample a manner or form as
 
 Appendix 319 
 
 any of our liege subjects, or any other body politic or corporate in 
 our said kingdom or its dependencies may or can do. 
 
 3. And We do hereby ordain, grant and declare that the number 
 of Professors, Fellows or Student Tutors and Students, shall be 
 indefinite and that the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and 
 John Clark Marshman, shall be the first Council of the said College, 
 and that in the event of its appearing to them necessary during 
 their life-time, or in the case of the death of any one of the three 
 members of the said first Council, the survivors or survivor shall 
 and may under their respective hands and seals appoint such other 
 person or persons to be members of the Council of the College, and 
 to succeed each other so as to become Members of the said Council 
 in the order in which they shall be appointed, to the intent that 
 the Council of the said College shall for ever consist of at least 
 three persons. 
 
 4. And We do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that for 
 the better government of the said College, and the better manage- 
 ment of its concerns, the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and 
 John Clark Marshman, the members of the first Council, shall have 
 full power and authority for the space of ten years from the date 
 of these presents, to make and establish such statutes as shall 
 appear to them useful and necessary for the government of the said 
 College, in which statutes they shall define the powers to be en- 
 trusted to their successors, to the Professors, the Fellows or Student 
 Tutors and the other Officers thereof, and the duties to be per- 
 formed by these respectively for the management of the estates, 
 lands, revenues and goods and of the business of the said College, 
 and the manner of proposing, electing, admitting and removing all 
 and every one of the Council, the Professors, the Fellows or Tutors, 
 the officers, the students and the servants thereof, and shall make 
 and establish generally all such other statutes as may appear to 
 them necessary for the future good government and prosperity of 
 the said College, provided that these statutes be not contrary to 
 the laws and statutes of our realm. 
 
 5. And we do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that the 
 statutes thus made and established by the said three members of 
 the first Council, and given or left in writing under their respective 
 hands, shall be valid and in full force at the expiration of ten years 
 from the date of these presents, so that no future Council of the 
 College shall have power to alter, change or vary them in any 
 manner whatever and that the statutes shall for ever be considered 
 the constitution of the said College. And we do hereby appoint 
 and declare that these statutes shall be made and established by 
 the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marsh- 
 man alone, so that in case either of them should die before the 
 expiration of ten years, the power of completing or perfecting these 
 statutes shall devolve wholly on the survivors or survivor; and 
 that in case all three of them should die before the expiration of 
 ten years, the statutes which they have left in writing under their 
 hands, or under the hand of the last survivor among them shall be 
 considered " The Fundamental Statutes and Constitution of 
 Serampore College," incapable of receiving either addition or
 
 320 Life of William Carey 
 
 alteration, and shall and may be registered in our Royal Court of 
 Chancery as " The Statutes and Constitution of Serampore College." 
 
 6. And We do hereby further appoint, grant and declare that 
 from and after the completion of the statutes of the said College in 
 the above said time of ten years, the said Council of the College 
 shall be deemed to consist of a Master or President and two or four 
 members who may be Professors or otherwise as the Statutes may 
 direct so that the said Council shall not contain less than three, nor 
 more than five persons, as shall be defined in the Statutes. The 
 Council shall ever be elected as the Statutes of the College may 
 direct, yet the said Master or President shall always previously 
 have been a Member of the said College; and upon the decease of 
 the said Master or President, the Council of the said College shall 
 be unable to do any act or deed until the appointment of a new 
 Master or President, save and except the appointment of such 
 a Master. 
 
 7. And We further appoint, grant and declare, that the said 
 William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marshman, the 
 members of the first Council, and their successors for ever, shall 
 have the power of conferring upon the students of the said College, 
 Native Christians as well as others, degrees of rank and honour 
 according to their proficiency in as ample a manner as any other 
 such College, yet the said Serampore College shall only have the 
 power of conferring such degrees on the students that testify their 
 proficiency in Science and no rank or other special right shall be 
 connected therewith in our dominions. And We do hereby further 
 appoint, grant and declare, that after the expiration of the said ten 
 years, the said Council of the College and their successors for ever 
 shall have power to make and establish such orders and bye-laws 
 as shall appear to them useful and necessary for the government of 
 the said College, and to alter, suspend or repeal those already made, 
 and from time to time make such new ones in their room as shall 
 appear to them most proper and expedient provided the same be 
 not repugnant to the Statutes of the College, or to the laws of our 
 realm, and that after the expiration of these ten years any member 
 of the Council shall have power to move the enactment of any new 
 bye-law, or the alteration, suspension or repeal of any existing one 
 provided notice of such motion shall have been delivered in writing 
 to the Master and read from the Chair at one previous meeting of 
 the Council of the said College, but that no such motion shall be 
 deemed to have passed in the affirmative, until the same shall have 
 been discussed and decided by ballot at another meeting summoned 
 especially for that purpose, a majority of the members then present 
 having voted in the affirmative; and in this, as in all other cases, 
 if the votes be equal, the Master or President shall have the casting 
 vote. 
 
 Given at our Royal Palace in Copenhagen on the twenty- third 
 day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight 
 hundred and twenty-seven, in the nineteenth year of our reign. 
 
 Under our Royal Hand and Seal. 
 
 FREDERICK R.
 
 Appendix 321 
 
 II. STATUTES AND REGULATIONS OF SERAMPORE 
 COLLEGE 
 
 June iztk, 1833. 
 
 1 . Article the Third of the Charter granted by his Danish Majesty, 
 having authorised the first Council of Serampore College in their 
 lifetime to nominate under their hand and seal such other person 
 or persons for colleagues or successors as may to them appear most 
 proper, so that the Council shall always consist of at least three 
 persons, their successors in the Council shall be competent in like 
 manner to nominate in their lifetime, under their separate hand 
 and seal, such person or persons as they may deem most proper to 
 fill vacancies then existing or which may occur on their demise; 
 members thus nominated and chosen shall succeed to the Council 
 in order of their nomination. 
 
 2. It being fixed in the Charter that the Council must consist of 
 the Master or President and at least two, but no more than four 
 Members, and that on the demise of the Master no act shall be 
 done until another be elected, the Master and Council for the time 
 being shall appoint the next Master under their separate hand and 
 seal. If on the demise of a Master no one be found thus appointed 
 under the hand and seal of a majority of the Council, the Senior 
 Member of the Council shall succeed as Master. 
 
 3. The Charter having given the casting vote to the Master, in 
 all cases when the votes are equal the casting vote shall lie with 
 the Master, and if there be no Master, it shall lie with the Senior 
 Member of the Council. 
 
 4. Learning and piety being peculiar to no denomination of 
 Christians, one member of the Council may at all times be of any 
 other denomination besides the Baptist, to preserve the original 
 design of the Institution; however, if on the election of a Master 
 a number of the Council be equally divided, that part which is 
 entirely of the Baptist denomination shall have the casting vote, 
 whether it includes the Master or not. 
 
 5. The management of the College, including its revenues and 
 property, the choice of Professor and Tutors, the admission of 
 Students, the appointment of all functionaries and servants, and 
 the general order and government of the College, shall ever be 
 vested in the Master and the Council. The Master shall see that 
 the Statutes and Regulations of the Council be duly carried into 
 effect, and take order for the good government of the College in 
 all things. His signature is necessary to the validity of all deeds, 
 instruments, documents and proceedings. 
 
 6. " The first Council and their successor for ever " being 
 authorised by the Charter " to confer such degrees of rank and 
 honour as shall encourage learning " in the same manner as other 
 Colleges and Universities, they shall from time to time confer de- 
 grees in such branches of Knowledge and Science as may be studied 
 there, in the same manner as the Universities in Denmark, Germany
 
 322 Life of William Carey 
 
 and Great Britain. In doing this the Master and Council shall ad 
 libitum call in the aid of any or all the Professors of Serampore 
 College. All such degrees shall be perfectly free of expense to the 
 person on whom they may be conferred, whether he be in India, 
 Europe or America. 
 
 7. No oaths shall be administered in Serampore College, either to 
 the Members of Council, the Professors and Tutors, or the Students. 
 In all cases a solemn promise, duly recorded and signed by the 
 party, shall be accepted instead of an oath. 
 
 8. Marriage shall be no bar to any office or situation in Serampore 
 College, from that of the Master to that of the lowest student. 
 
 9. The salaries of the Professors and Tutors in Serampore College 
 shall be appointed, and the means of support for all functionaries, 
 students and servants be regulated by the Council in such manner 
 as shall best promote the objects of the Institution. 
 
 10. It is intended that neither the Master nor any Member of the 
 Council in general shall receive any salary. But any Master who 
 may not previously reside in the College shall have a residence there 
 free of rent for himself and his family. And if the Council shall 
 elect any one in Europe or in America, whom they deem eminent 
 for learning and piety, a Member of the Council, with a view to 
 choosing him Master, should they on trial deem him worthy, the 
 Council shall be competent to appoint him such salary as they may 
 deem necessary, not exceeding, however, the highest given to a 
 Professor. 
 
 1 1 . As the founders of the College deem the belief of Christ's 
 Divinity and Atonement essential to vital Christianity, the promo- 
 tion of which is the grand object of this Institution, no one shall be 
 eligible to the College Council or to any Professorship who is known 
 to oppose these doctrines, and should any one of the Professors or 
 any member of the Council unhappily so change his views after his 
 election as to oppose these fundamental doctrines of Christianity, 
 on this being clearly and decidedly proved from his teaching or his 
 writings, he shall vacate the office he previously held. But every 
 proceeding of this nature on the part of the College Council shall be 
 published to the Christian world, with the proofs on which it may 
 rest, as an Appendix to the succeeding Report. 
 
 12. Members of the Council are eligible from among the Professors 
 of the College, or from among any in India, Europe, or America 
 whom the College Council may deem suitable in point of learning, 
 piety, and talent. 
 
 13. Students are admissible at the discretion of the Council from 
 any body of Christians, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, the 
 Greek, or the Armenian Church; and for the purpose of study, 
 from the Mussulman and Hindu youth, whose habits forbid their 
 living in the College. No caste, colour, or country shall bar any 
 man from admission into Serampore College. 
 
 14. Expulsion shall be awarded in cases of open immorality, 
 incorrigible idleness, neglect of the College Statutes and regulations, 
 or repeated disobedience to the officers of the College. 
 
 15. Any person in India, Europe, or America shall be at liberty 
 to found any Professorship, or to attach to Serampore College any
 
 Appendix 323 
 
 annual exhibition or prize for the encouragement of learning in the 
 same manner as in the Universities of Great Britain, regulating 
 such endowment according to their own will; and it shall be duty 
 of the College Council to carry such benefactions into effect in strict 
 consonance with the will of the donors as far as shall be consistent 
 with the Statutes of the College. 
 
 16. It shall be lawful for the first Council of the College or their 
 successors to make and rescind any bye-laws whatever, provided 
 they be not contrary to these Statutes. 
 
 17. The Charter having declared that the number of the Pro- 
 fessors and students in Serampore College remains unlimited, they 
 shall be left thus unlimited, the number to be regulated only by 
 the gracious providence of God and the generosity of the public in 
 India, Europe and America. 
 
 III. ARTICLE VI., CLAUSE 2, OF THE TREATY OF PUR- 
 CHASE, TRANSFERRING SERAMPORE TO THE 
 BRITISH GOVERNMENT 
 
 " The rights and immunities granted to the Serampore College 
 by Royal Charter of date, 2jrd February, 1827, shall not be inter- 
 fered with, but continue in force in the same manner as if they had 
 been obtained by a Charter from the British Government, subject 
 to the general law of British India."
 
 INDEX 
 
 AFGHANISTAN, 123, 149 
 
 Agra, 120 
 
 Agricultural Society of India, 239 
 
 Aldeen pagoda, 141 
 
 Amboyna, 129 
 
 America and missions, 47, 126, 243 
 
 Anderson, Chr., 192, 314 
 
 Armenians, in, 117 
 
 Asiatic Society of Bengal, 171, 239 
 
 Assam, 191, 288 
 
 Balasore, 47 
 
 Bandel, 59 
 
 Baptist Missionary Society founded, 
 
 37, 273 
 
 , Baptists and missions, 33 
 Barrackpore, 91 
 Baynes, A. H., 291, 293 
 Bengal, 49, 186 
 
 Bengal Asiatic Society, 171, 239 
 Bengal literature, 202 
 Bentinck, Lord W., 297, 299, 308 
 Bhutan, 77 
 
 Bible translation, 138, 175, 190. 299 
 Bihar, 49, 67 
 Black Hole, 55, 61 
 Bombay, 191 
 
 Botanic Garden, Calcutta, 60, 87 
 Brahman preachers, 122 
 British and Foreign Bible Society, 
 
 195 
 
 Brown, David, 56, 61, 141 
 Browning, Mrs., 19 
 Brunsdon, 86, 90 
 Buchanan, Claudius, 56, 145 
 Buonaparte, 148 
 Burma, 124, 150, 195 
 
 Calcutta, 55, 61, 116 
 
 Canning, Lord, 48 
 
 Carey, Eustace, 254 
 
 Carey, Felix, 46, 125, 150 
 
 Carey, Jabez, 129, 154, 270 
 
 Carey, Jonathan, 123, 300, 306 
 
 Carey, the peers, 2 
 
 Carey, the poet, 2 
 
 Carey, William, 147, 285 
 
 Carey, William, birth, i; his 
 name, 2; childhood, 4; reading, 
 5; apprenticed, 7; conversion, 
 10; baptism, 12; his " college," 
 
 15; marriage, 16; missionary 
 call, 18; at Mpulton, 20; praying 
 habit, 23; his Enquiry, 24; at 
 Leicester, 35 ; his great Notting- 
 ham sermon, 36; appointed 
 missionary to the East Indies, 
 41; the voyage, 46; in Bengal, 
 47 ; his missionary principles, 58 ; 
 indigo- planter, 66; Bible trans- 
 lation, 72; leaves Dinapoor for 
 Serampore, 88; first convert, 96; 
 first baptisms, 98; founding the 
 native church, 104; schools, 1 08; 
 Benevolent Institution, in; in 
 Calcutta, 116; the five missions, 
 120; on a Christian gentleman, 
 134; second wife, 136; his por- 
 trait, 147; Professor of Sanskrit, 
 156; address to Lord Wellesley, 
 167; Wyclif of the East, 175; 
 the fire, 196; the Bengali lan- 
 guage, 202; scientific pursuits, 
 216; agricultural improvements, 
 227; influence, 241; appeal to 
 posterity; the University, 272; 
 last days, 295; place in history, 
 317 
 
 Carlyle, 8, 256 
 
 Carpenter convert, 96 
 
 Caste, 97, 108 
 
 Castell, W., 30 
 
 Chaitanya, 59, 202 
 
 Chalmers, Dr. T., 82, 249 
 
 Chamberlain, 114 
 
 Cherra-poonjee, 288, 309 
 
 China, 121, 195, 234 
 
 Church Missionary Society, 84, 124 
 
 Civil Service of India, 160 
 
 Clarkson, T. I., 215 
 
 Clive, 55, 67 
 
 Cochin China, 124 
 
 Coffee culture, 23 
 
 Colebrooke, 119, 158, 202 
 
 Cook, Captain, 22, 40 
 
 Copenhagen, 279, 321 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, 47 
 
 Corrie, Bishop, 142 
 
 Cowper, the poet, i, 19, 46; 215, 224 
 
 Crispin, 8 
 
 Cromwell, 30 
 
 Cuddalore, 55 
 
 324
 
 Index 
 
 3 2 5 
 
 Curzon, Lord, 235 
 Cutwa, 120-123 
 
 Dacca, 188 
 
 Dalhousie, Marquis of, 300 
 
 Darjeeling, 78 
 
 Delhi, 121, 194 
 
 Denham, W. H., 288 
 
 Denmark and missions, 45, 279, 318 
 
 Dinapoor, 69, 227 
 
 Doddridge, Dr., 105, 186 
 
 Douglas of Cavers, 247 
 
 Duff, Dr. A., 48, 189, 248, 284, 303 
 
 East India Company, 45, 49, 52, 
 
 115, 233, 252 
 
 Ecclesiastical establishment, 145 
 Edinburgh Review, 255 
 Educational despatch, 284 
 Edwardes, Sir H., 193 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 32, 259 
 Eliot, John, 25 
 Ellerton, Mrs., 145 
 English education, 112, 272, 288 
 Erasmus, 30 
 Erskine, Dr., 18 
 Eurasians, no 
 Europeans and land, 233 
 
 Fernandez. I., 72 
 
 Fire at Serampore, 197 
 
 Fort William College, 160, 301 
 
 Foster, John, 249 
 
 Fountain, John, 80, 90 
 
 Fox, George, 8 
 
 Francis, P., 56 
 
 Francke, 82 
 
 Friend of India, 91, 205 
 
 Fuller, Andrew, 22, 33, 82, 258 
 
 Garrett of Barisal, 287, 296 
 George III., 188 
 Ghat murders, 213 
 Glenelg, Lord, 212 
 Grant, Charles, 16, 39, 56, 280 
 Grant-in-Aid system, 284 
 Grant, missionary, 85, 87 
 Grierson, Dr., 178 
 Guericke, 55 
 
 Hackleton, 7 
 Haileybury College, 169 
 Haldanes, 84, 245, 362 
 Halhed, 159, 181 
 Hall, Robert, 12 
 Hall, his son, 58, 185, 249 
 Hastings, Lord, 129, 308 
 Hastings, Warren, 48, 158 
 Havelock, Sir H., 299, 301 
 Heber, Bishop, 249, 281 
 
 Hinduism, 52 
 
 Hislop College, 278 
 
 Hodgson, Brian, 174 
 
 Hoogli, 89 
 
 Hooker, i, 317 
 
 Home, Melville, 247 
 
 Hymns, 81, 83, 87, 98, 122, 141 
 
 Idolatry, 65 
 Indigo culture, 63, 66 
 Innocents, murder of, 206 
 Inundation of Serampore, 237 . 
 Iphicrates, 8 
 
 Jagganath, 102, 190 
 Jessor, 1 20 
 Johnson, Samuel, 31 
 Jones, Sir W., 159 189 
 Judson, A., 84, 126 
 
 Kashmeer, 123 
 
 Keith- Falconer, Ion, 172 . 
 
 Keshab Chunder Sen, 203 
 
 Kettering, 7, 37 
 
 Kiernander, 55 
 
 King Edward VII., 291 
 
 Krishna Pal, 96 
 
 Lahore, 123 
 
 Lake, Lord, 208 
 
 Lawrence, John, 142, 214 
 
 Law, William, n 
 
 Leechman, 296, 304 
 
 Leicester, 35 
 
 Lepers, 214 
 
 Leyden, John, 194 
 
 Livingstone, David, 246 
 
 London Missionary Society, 83, 302 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 48, 99 
 Macaulay, Zachary, 247 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 166, 169, 
 
 256 
 
 Mack, John, 262, 281, 299 
 Madras Decennial Conference, 291 
 Malcolm, Sk John, 277 
 Malda, 63 
 
 Marshman, Dr., 85, 311 
 Marshman, Hannah, 92, 284, 311 
 Marshman, John, 91, 194, 282, 312 
 Martyn, Henry, 12, 14, 211, 247 
 Medical missions, 97 
 Metcalfe, Lord, 174 
 Mint (i, first Earl, 89, 129 
 Minto, second Viceroy, 235, 291 
 Missions, 25, 27, 58, 71, 94, 122, 125, 
 
 285 
 
 Montgomery, James, 224 
 Moravian mission, 24, 85 
 Morley, Lord, 291
 
 326 
 
 Life of William Carey 
 
 Moulton, 7, 21 
 
 Mritunjaya, pundit, 190, 210 
 
 Native Christians, 235 
 
 Naypoor, 121 
 
 Newspaper, first Bengali, 204 
 
 Newton, John, 45, 82 
 
 Northampton, 4-13 
 
 Nottingham, 36 
 
 Nuddea, 59 
 
 Oaths, 300 
 Olney, 14, 19 
 Orissa, 190 
 
 Pali, 191 
 
 Paper manufacture, 182, 231 
 
 Paulerspury, 2 
 
 Pearce, S., 38 
 
 Phayre, Sir A., 125 
 
 Philippines, 140 
 
 Piddington, 12 
 
 Pietists, 30, 82 
 
 Pitt, William, 50 
 
 Prayer Concert, 28, 31, 258 
 
 Propagation of Gospel Society, 243 
 
 Puritans, 30 
 
 Pushtoo, 194 
 
 Quarterly Review, 180, 256 
 Queen Empress of India, 235 
 
 Raffles, 147 
 
 Rajmahal, 88 
 
 Rangoon, 124, 127 
 
 Raske, 279 
 
 Robinson of Java, 297, 311 
 
 Rouse, Dr., 188 
 
 Roxburgh, Dr., 219, 226 
 
 Rumohr, Lady, 91, 135, 154 
 
 Ruskin, John, 193 
 
 Ryland, Dr., 23, 32, 179, 259 
 
 Ryots, 49 
 
 Sanskrit, 156, 190, 313 
 Schwartz, 55, 254, 251 
 Science and missions, 216 
 Scotland and missions, 31, 84, 243 
 Scott, Thomas, 15, 84 
 Scottish Churches' College, 278 
 Secretaries, Foreign mission, 259 
 Serampore, 86, 91, 211 
 Serampore Brotherhood, 135 
 Serampore University, 279, 318, 
 
 321 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 215 
 
 Shoemaker missionaries, 8 
 Si, mi, 140 
 Sikhs, 123 
 
 Simeon, C., 141, 248 
 Slave trade, 214 
 Smith, Adam, 31 
 Smith, Sydney, 255, n. 4 
 Sou they, 172, 256 
 Spencer, Earl, 188 
 Steam engine, 183, 231 
 Stein, Von, 50 
 Sunday Schools, 109 
 Sutcliff, 22, 258 
 
 Tea culture, 231 
 
 Teignmouth, Lord, 48, 195 
 
 Theological degrees for India, 292 
 
 Thomas, John, 41, 90, 97 
 
 Thomason, 198 
 
 Tibet, 155 
 
 Townsend, Meredith, 291 
 
 Trafford, Rev. John, 289 
 
 Tranquebar, 279 
 
 Turkestan, 155 
 
 Type foundry, 181 
 
 Udny family, 63, 120 
 University of Serampore projected, 
 290 
 
 Usury, 235 
 
 Vanderkemp, 84 
 Veda, 157 
 Vellore mutiny, 117 
 Vidyalankar, M., 190, 210 
 
 Wallich, Dr., 226 
 Wallis, Widow, 38 
 Ward, 42, 52, 87, 211, 280 
 Wellesley, Lord, 87, 159, 252 
 Wellington, Duke of, 166 
 Wesley, John, 6, 24 
 Whitefield, 19 
 Whittier, 9 
 
 Widow- burning, 54, 78, 145, 184 
 Wilberforce, 250 
 Wilkins, Sir C., 159, 181 
 Wilson, H. H., 158, 172 
 Women in the East, 53 
 Wyclif, i, 176 
 
 Yates, U., 185, 310 
 
 Zameendars, 49 
 Ziegenbalg, 54, 55 
 Zinzendorf, 89 
 
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