Part 8 (1/2)
See below. Some idea of Thomas's pa.s.sionate zeal may be formed from certain expressions in the letters sent home after Carey and he had arrived in India. He says, ”Never did men see their native land with more joy than we left it; but this is not of nature, but from above,” etc. See p. 223 of same article.
The story of Carey's life and work in India cannot be followed in detail. We have come to the close of that portion of his history which properly belongs to these brief sketches of ill.u.s.trious shoemakers. A few sentences must suffice to give a picture of his labors as a missionary and the result of those labors. For six or seven years Carey and his friends had to endure much hards.h.i.+p, and their proceedings were hampered by difficulties of various kinds. To begin with, they had no legal standing in the country, and were forced at length to take up their quarters under the Danish flag at Serampore. ”Here they bought a house, and organized themselves into a family society, resolving that whatever was done by any member should be for the benefit of the mission. They opened a school, in which the children of those natives who chose to send them were instructed gratuitously.”[44] The funds supplied from home were but scanty, and they were compelled to resort to trade for their livelihood and the means of carrying on their work.
”Thomas, who was a surgeon, intended to support himself by his profession. Carey's plan was to take land and cultivate it for his maintenance.”[45] At one time, when funds were exhausted, Mr. Carey ”was indebted for an asylum to an opulent native;” at another time, driven to distraction by want of money, by the apparent failure of his plans, and the upbraidings of his unsympathetic partner, he removed with his family to the Soonderbunds, and took a small grant of land, which he proposed to cultivate for his own maintenance; and, later on, he thankfully accepted, as a way out of his difficulties and a means of furthering his missionary projects, the post of superintendent of an indigo factory at Mudnabatty. This post he held for five or six years.
No sooner had he got into this position of comparative independence than he wrote home and proposed that ”the sum which might be considered his salary should be devoted to the printing of the Bengali translation of the New Testament.” This generous proposal is a fair ill.u.s.tration of his self-sacrificing spirit from the beginning to the end of his missionary life. To the work of translating and circulating the Scriptures in the languages of India he devoted not only all his time and his vast mental powers, but whatever private funds might be at his command. As the work proceeded, and he became known and employed by the government in various professors.h.i.+ps, these funds were often very considerable. In 1807, when Carey held the Professors.h.i.+p of Oriental Languages at the Fort William College, at a salary of 1200 a year, Mr. Ward, one of his colleagues, wrote, in reply to some unfriendly remarks made in an English publication, that Dr. Carey and Mr. Marshman ”were contributing 2400 a year,” and receiving from the mission fund ”only their food and a trifle of pocket-money for apparel.”
[44] _Quarterly Review_, Feb. 1809, p. 197.
[45] Ibid.
In 1800 the missionary establishment, now strengthened by the two worthy colleagues just named, was removed to Serampore, a Danish settlement about fifteen miles from Calcutta. A printing press and type were purchased, and the work of printing the Scriptures commenced. Carey had been quietly but most diligently going on with the translation of the Scriptures into Bengali during the previous years of anxiety and varied missionary labor. Whatever cares weighed on brain and heart, the true work of his life, to which he had devoted himself, was never relinquished.
On the 18th of March, 1800, the first sheets of the Bengali New Testament were struck off, and on the 7th of February in the following year, ”Mr. Carey enjoyed the supreme gratification of receiving the last sheet of the Bengali New Testament from the press, the fruition of the 'sublime thought' which he had conceived fifteen years before.” It is not surprising that we should read the following record of the manner in which these humble missionaries expressed their devout grat.i.tude to G.o.d on the consummation of this part of their Christian labors: ”As soon as the first copy was bound, it was placed on the communion table in the chapel, and a meeting was held of the whole of the mission family, and of the converts recently baptized, to offer a tribute of grat.i.tude to G.o.d for this great blessing.” In 1806 the New Testament was ready for the press in _Sanskrit_, the sacred language of India, the language of its most ancient and venerated writings, and the parent of nearly all the languages of modern India. Simultaneously with this were being issued proof-sheets of the New Testament in Mahratta, Orissa, Persian, and Hindostani, besides dictionaries and grammars, and other publications for the use of students. It is well-nigh impossible to form a correct idea of the amount of religious zeal, mental energy, and physical endurance involved in labors like those of Dr. Carey, extending over forty years in the climate of Bengal. He is said to have regularly tired out three pundits, or native interpreters, who came one after the other each day to a.s.sist him in the correction and revision of his translations. A letter written in 1807, when the degree of D.D. was conferred on Mr. Carey by the Brown University, United States, gives a graphic sketch of the ordinary day's work performed by him at this period: ”He rises a little before six, reads a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and spends the time till seven in private devotion. He then has family prayer with the servants in Bengali, after which he reads Persian with a moonshee who is in attendance. As soon as breakfast is over he sits down to the translation of the Ramayun with his pundit till ten, when he proceeds to the college and attends to its duties till two.
Returning home, he examines a proof-sheet of the Bengali translation, and dines with his friend Mr. Rolt. After dinner he translates a chapter of the Bible with the aid of the chief pundit of the college. At six he sits down with the Telugu pundit to the study of that language, and then preaches a sermon in English to a congregation of about fifty. The service ended, he sits down to the translation of Ezekiel into Bengali, having thrown aside his former version. At eleven the duties of the day are closed, and after reading a chapter in the Greek Testament and commending himself to G.o.d he retires to rest.”[46]
[46] ”Carey, Marshman, and Ward,” by J. C. Marshman.
London: J. Heaton & Son. 1864.
Strangely enough, about this time a controversy was going on in certain English journals as to the value of the work that Carey and his coadjutors were doing in India. We have no wish to speak bitterly of the satire and severity of the articles written by Sydney Smith in the _Edinburgh Review_. They were not simply sallies of wit, but serious essays, written in a spirit of deliberate hostility to this missionary enterprise. What else can be thought of an article commencing with words like these: ”In rooting out a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to light such a perilous heap of trash as we are obliged to work through in our articles on Methodists and missionaries, we are generally considered to have rendered a useful service to the cause of rational religion.” Such articles condemned themselves; and it is fair to add that their author himself lived to regard them as a mistake, and to express to Lord Macaulay his regret that he had ever written them.[47]
[47] ”Carey, Marshman, and Ward,” p. 137.
But even in that day Carey and his heroic band of Christian fellow-laborers had plenty of sympathizers and supporters both in the Church of England and the Nonconformist denominations. Robert Southey the poet came forward with generous enthusiasm in their defence, and in a carefully-written article in the _Quarterly Review_[48]
vindicated their character and labors. Among other remarkable statements in their behalf, he was able to say: ”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, the Mahratta, the Hindostani, the Guzerat, and translating it into Persic, Teligna, Carnata, Chinese, the language of the Sieks and the Burmans, and in four of these languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary as this is, it will appear still more so when it is remembered that of these men one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at Hull, and the 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 these missionaries have acquired the gift of tongues. In fourteen years these 'low-born, low-bred mechanics' have done more to spread the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen than has been accomplished or even attempted by all the world beside. A plain statement of fact will be the best proof of their diligence and success. The first convert was baptized in December, 1800,[49] and in seven years after that time the number has amounted to 109, of whom nine were afterward excluded or suspended, or had been lost sight of.
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 circ.u.mstances 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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.” This liberal Tory an evangelical High Churchman goes on to say: ”Other missionaries from other societies have now entered India, and will soon become efficient laborers in their station. From Government all that is asked is toleration for themselves and protection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for their own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and there is as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would be of their shrinking from it if the cause of G.o.d and man require the sacrifice.”
[48] _Quarterly Review_, Feb. 1809, pp. 224, 225.
[49] Viz., _Krishnu_, who was baptized at the same time as Carey's son Felix. The ceremony was performed at the Ghaut, or landing-stairs of the Mahanuddy, in the presence of the Governor and a crowd of Hindoos and Mohammedans.
Having lived to see his desire accomplished in the establishment of many other missionary societies besides his own; having been the means of translating the Sacred Scriptures in the languages spoken probably by two hundred millions of people; this good man, working up to the close of his life, died at Calcutta on the 9th of June, 1834. As he lay ill, Lady Bentinck, the wife of the Governor-General, paid him frequent visits, and good ”Bishop Wilson came and besought his blessing.” He instructed his executors to place no memorial over his tomb but the following simple inscription:
WILLIAM CAREY,
BORN AUGUST 1761; DIED JUNE 1834.
”A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, On Thy kind arms I fall.”
Mr. Marshman, who had the best means of knowing Carey and his work,[50]
says: ”The basis of all his excellences was deep and unaffected piety.
So great was his love of integrity that he never gave his confidence where he was not certain of the existence of moral worth. He was conspicuous for constancy, both in the pursuits of life and the a.s.sociations of friends.h.i.+p. With great simplicity he united the strongest decision of character. He never took credit for anything but plodding, but it was the plodding of genius.” In all his work, however successful, however honored by his fellow-men, William Carey was modest and simple-hearted as a child. His unparalleled labors as a translator of the Scriptures were performed under the prompting of sublime faith in Divine truth, warm unwavering love to souls, and an a.s.sured confidence in the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of G.o.d. The shoemaker of Northamptons.h.i.+re will be remembered till the end of the world as the Christian Apostle of Northern India.
[50] John Clark Marshman was the son of Dr. Marshman, Carey's colleague at Serampore.
CHAPTER VIII.
John Pounds,