[Illustration: WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.]
William Carey.
THE SHOEMAKER WHO TRANSLATED THE BIBLE INTO BENGALI AND HINDOSTANI.
"No, sir! only a cobbler."--_Dr. William Carey._
"I am indeed poor, and shall always be so until the Bible is published
in Bengali and Hindostani, and the people want no further
instruction."--_Dr. William Carey, Letter from India, 1794._
WILLIAM CAREY.
Between the years 1786 and 1789, when William Gifford, just liberated by
the generous interference of a friend from the yoke of apprenticeship to
a cruel master, was receiving instruction from the Rev. Thomas Smerdon,
when Robert Bloomfield, a journeyman shoemaker in London, was preparing
in his mind the materials for the "Farmer's Boy," and when Samuel Drew,
the young shoemaker of St. Austell, was reading "Locke on the
Understanding," and learning to think and reason as a metaphysician,
there lived at Moulton in Northamptonshire a poor shoemaker,
school-teacher, and village pastor, who was cherishing in his great
heart the project of forming a society for the purpose of sending out
Christian missionaries to the heathen world. This poor young man, in
spite of his obscure position, his meagre social influence, his limited
resources, and his lack of early educational advantages, became the
originator of the great foreign missionary enterprises which constitute
so remarkable a feature in the religious history of this country at the
close of the last and the beginning of the present century. He was the
first missionary chosen to be sent out by the committee of the society
he had been the means of establishing. His field of labor was India,
where for more than forty years, "without a visit to England or even a
voyage to sea to recruit his strength," and without losing a vestige of
his early enthusiasm for his Christian enterprise, he toiled on at the
work of preaching the gospel and translating the Sacred Scriptures. From
1801 to 1830, he was Professor of Oriental Languages in a college
founded at Fort William by the Marquis of Wellesley, Governor-General of
India. As an Oriental linguist he had few equals in his day, and few
have ever exceeded him in the extent and exactitude of his acquaintance
with the languages of India. He compiled grammars and dictionaries in
Mahratta, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali, and Bhotana. But his chief
work was the translation of the Scriptures into Bengali and other
languages. No less than twenty-four different translations of the Bible
were made and edited by him, and passed through the press at Serampore
under his supervision. One account speaks of "two hundred thousand
Bibles, or portions thereof, in about forty Oriental languages or
dialects, besides a great number of tracts and other religious works in
various languages;" and adds that "a great proportion of the actual
literary labor involved in these undertakings was performed" by this
prodigious worker. A truly noble life-work was this for any man. It may
be questioned if more work of a solid and useful character was ever
pressed into one human life. What monarch or ruler of a vast empire,
what statesman or judge, what scientific or literary worker, what man of
genius in business or the professions, has ever thrown more energy into
his life-work or achieved more worthy results for all his toil than this
humble shoemaker and village pastor from Northamptonshire, who first
gave to the various races of Northern India the Bible in their own
language?
No one who is at all familiar with the work of the Christian Church in
the present century, will need to be told that we are speaking of the
famous pioneer missionary to Bengal, Dr. William Carey. And surely no
list of illustrious shoemakers would be complete that did not include
the name of this good man. His experience of the "gentle craft" was
somewhat extensive. He was bound apprentice to the trade, and afterward
worked as,a journeyman for more than twelve years. When he became known
to the world, he was often spoken of as "the learned shoemaker." Indeed,
he was not always honored with so respectful a title as this. More often
than not he was alluded to as "the cobbler," and his own strict honesty
and modesty of spirit led him to prefer the latter epithet. His humble
origin and occupation were sometimes the occasion of an empty sneer on
the part of men whose class feeling and religious prejudice prevented
their appreciation of his splendid mental gifts and high purpose in
life, and who consequently endeavored, but in vain, to bring his grand
and Christ-like undertaking into contempt. That famous wit, the Rev.
Sydney Smith, sometime prebendary of Bristol and canon of St. Paul's,
tried to set the world laughing at the "consecrated cobbler." It was a
sorry joke, and quite unworthy of a Christian minister, and must have
been sorely repented of in after-years. One would have thought that
Sydney Smith's undoubted piety, and natural kindliness of heart, let
along his strong bias in favor of all that was liberal in religion and
politics, would have saved him from such a cruel and flippant sneer. But
wit is a brilliant and dangerous weapon, and few men know how to use it
as much as Sydney Smith did without injury to their own reputation or
the feelings of other people.
Carey, as we have said, did not object to being called a "cobbler,"
although the term did not accurately describe his degree of proficiency
in the trade. It was reported in Northamptonshire that he was a poor
workman, the neighbors declaring that though he made boots, he "could
never make _a pair_."[35] In a letter to Dr. Ryland he contradicts this
report and says: "The childish story of my shortening a shoe to make it
longer is entitled to no credit. I was accounted a very good workman,
and recollect Mr. Old keeping a pair of shoes which I had made in his
shop as a model of good workmanship." He cautiously adds, "But the best
workmen sometimes, from various causes, put bad work out of their hands,
and I have no doubt but I did so too."[36] This is more than likely, for
he was subject to long fits of mental abstraction as he sat at the
stall:
"His eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away."
[35] "Baptist Jubilee Memorial." London: Simpkin,
Marshall, 1842, p. 83.
[36] "Memoir of Dr. Carey," by the Rev. Eustace Carey.
London: Jackson & Walford, 2d edition, 1837, p. 16.
He pined for the field of missions and chafed against the cruel "bars of
circumstance" that kept him in his native land. While engaged in
shoemaking, he was so intent on learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew that
he often forgot to fit the shoes to the last. No wonder if shoes were
not "a pair," and were sometimes returned; no wonder that while he
became one of the first linguists in the world in his day he was spoken
of by his neighbors as nothing more than "a cobbler!" With reference to
his poor abilities in the craft a good story is told of the way in which
he silenced an officious person whose "false pride in place and blood"
had betrayed him into some disparaging remarks about Carey as a
shoemaker. His biographer[37] says: "Some thirty years after this
period, dining one day with the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, at
Barrakpore, a general officer made an impertinent inquiry of one of the
aides-de-camp whether Dr. Carey had not once been a shoemaker. He
happened to overhear the conversation, and immediately stepped forward
and said, "No, sir; only a cobbler!"
[37] J. C. Marshman, in "The Story of Carey, Marshman,
and Ward;" London, J. Heaton & Sons, 1864, p. 6. See also an
account of Carey's life and work in "The Missionary Keepsake
and Annual," by Rev. John Dyer; London, Fisher & Co., 1837; and
"The Life of Dr. Carey," by the Rev. Eustace Carey; London,
1837.
In the brief story we have to tell of the life of this remarkable man,
we shall, as seems most appropriate to our purpose, confine our remarks
almost entirely to the work he accomplished before he ceased to be a
shoemaker. His father and grandfather held the position of parish clerk
and schoolmaster at Pury, or Paulersbury, in Northamptonshire, where
William Carey was born, 17th August, 1761. His only education was
received in the village school, and this was very slight and
rudimentary; yet it was sufficient to give him a start in the work of
educating himself. As a boy he was always fond of reading, and chose
such books as referred to natural history. Botany and entomology were
favorite subjects. His bedroom was turned into a sort of museum, chiefly
remarkable for butterflies and beetles. Of books of travel and accounts
of voyages he never seems to have wearied; the history and geography of
any country also afforded him special delight. He was a bright, active,
good-looking, intelligent boy, by no means a recluse and bookworm,
caring nothing for out-door exercise and sports. He was as fond of games
as any boy in the village, and as clever at them, and so became a
general favorite. His quickness of intellect and perseverance with any
hobby he took up often led the neighbors to predict success for him in
future life. The perseverance and courage, which were such marked
features of his character as a man, were shown in his boyhood by a
curious incident. Attempting to climb a tree one day, he fell and broke
his leg, and was an invalid for six weeks. As soon as he could crawl to
the bottom of the garden, he made his way to the very tree from which he
had fallen, climbed to the top of it, and brought down one of the
highest branches, which he carried into the house, exclaiming, "There, I
knew I would do it!"
At the age of twelve he showed the first signs of a taste and capacity
for the acquisition of languages. A copy of Dyche's Latin Grammar and
Vocabulary had come into his hands, and he at once set to work, of his
own free will and choice, to study the introductory portion, and to
commit all the Latin words, with their meanings, to memory. Such an
incident as this was quite enough to show that he was a boy of no common
mind, and that he would well repay any outlay that might be made in
giving him a classical training. But that was out of the question; the
village school could not afford such a training, and anything better, in
the shape of grammar-school or college, was not to be had, for his
friends were poor and had no patrons to assist them. What he might have
done in an university it is idle to suppose. Undoubtedly, he would have
distinguished himself, but it may be reasonably doubted whether he would
have been led into the path of Christian philanthropy and usefulness
which the stress of circumstances at Moulton led him to think and adopt.
It must have been painful for his parents, with their sense of the boy's
merits and ambition as a scholar, to see him languishing at home, unable
to find sufficient food for his hungry and capacious young mind, while
they also were unable to satisfy his passion for books, or send him to a
school adequate to his requirements. And doubly painful must it have
been for him as for them, when they felt that the time had come for him
to learn a trade, and the thought of further schooling must be given up.
One can imagine his feelings when told that he must be apprenticed to a
shoemaker. Not that such an occupation was necessarily a bugbear to a
boy in his position, for thousands of village lads would not have
regarded it in that light; but it was so to _him_. His heart had been
set on a very different kind of occupation. He was eager for study, and
felt within him the movement of an impulse to do something great in the
world, and this apprenticeship was a bitter disappointment, saddening
his young heart, and quenching for a time all his bright hopes. But only
for a time did he lose heart. He was one of those who are no friends to
despair, who do not understand defeat, and whose spirit and
determination rise in the face of difficulties. It was not to be
expected in his circumstances that life could offer him any position of
greater honor or advantage than a cobbler's stool. He would not,
therefore, murmur at his necessary lot. He would rather take to it with
as good a grace as possible, and make the best of it. He would use every
means and chance of self-improvement, and if he could not have his
heart's desire in the way he had intended, he would have it in some
other way; anyhow he would have it. A broken purpose should no more
stand in the way of his climbing the "tree of knowledge" than a broken
leg had prevented his climbing to the top of the tree in his father's
garden.
So he settled to his work with Charles Nickolls of Hackleton at the age
of fourteen, with no prospect but that of being bound to wield the awl
and bend over the last until he had come to be twenty-one years of age.
Soon after entering the shoemaker's room he found a copy of the New
Testament, in the notes to which occurred a number of Greek words. This
opened up another field of study, and he determined to enter upon it.
Copying out the words, he took them for explanation to a young man who
was a weaver in the village where his father lived. This weaver came
from Kidderminster, had seen better days, and had received a good
education. He assisted young Carey, then fifteen years of age, in
mastering the rudiments of Greek. With such a start he did not rest
until he had procured and could read the Greek New Testament. In the
second year of his apprenticeship his indentures were cancelled on
account of the death of his master, and Carey became a journeyman, of
course at very low wages, under Mr. Old. At this time there lived in the
neighborhood a clergyman who was one of the lights of a dark period in
the religious history of this country--the Rev. Thomas Scott, the
popular evangelical preacher, writer, and Bible commentator. His own
career was very remarkable. From the position of a laboring man he had
risen to occupy good rank as a clergyman, and with very meagre
advantages in early life he had become, or was rapidly becoming, one of
the best sacred classics in the country. The man who had laid aside the
shepherd's smock for the clergyman's surplice, and who on one occasion
doffed his clerical attire, donned the shepherd's clothes again, and
sheared eleven large sheep on an afternoon, was not likely to neglect or
overlook a youth of more than ordinary intelligence and application to
study because the youth happened to spend his days at the shoemaker's
stall. Mr. Scott on his visiting rounds now and then turned in at Mr.
Old's, and was struck with the boy's bright look and rapt attention to
any remarks that the visitor might make. Occasionally young Carey would
venture to ask a question. So appropriate and far-seeing were his
inquiries that Mr. Scott discerned his young friend's uncommon powers,
and often declared that he would prove to be "no ordinary character." In
later years, when William Carey was known throughout England as a
pioneer in mission work, as a great Oriental linguist, and the first
translator of the New Testament into Bengali, Mr. Scott, as he passed by
the old room where the thoughtful and studious young shoemaker had once
sat at work, would point to it and say, "That was Mr. Carey's college."
But with all this mental activity and zest for knowledge there was no
moral purpose in his life, and as he grew older he became more and more
loose and careless in his habits, and, as he himself would have it, even
vicious, until he came to be about eighteen years of age. But there is
no proof of any evil conduct to justify the use of such a term as
"vicious" in describing his life at this time. He spoke of himself, no
doubt, after the religious fashion of the age, and judged his early
conduct by the severe moral standard adopted by his co-religionists. His
complete mental awakening, like that of Samuel Drew, seems to have come
as a result of the moral change wrought in him at the time of his
religious conversion. A variety of causes, as is the rule, led to this
crucial event in his life, "that vital change of heart which laid the
foundation of his Christian character." First of all he was indebted to
the good example of a fellow-workman, then to the earnest preaching of
the Rev. Thomas Scott. Mr. Marshman says, "It was chiefly to the
ministrations of Mr. Scott that Carey was indebted for the progress he
made in his religious career, and he never omitted through life to
acknowledge the deep obligation under which he had been laid by his
instructions." Brought up as a strict Churchman, he was confirmed at a
suitable age, and regularly attended the services at the parish church.
But at the time we are speaking of, when personal religion became the
chief subject of his thoughts, he sought light and help by every
available means. The little Baptist community, among whom he had many
friends, showed him much sympathy: he began to attend their meetings for
prayer, and eventually cast in his lot among them. They encouraged him
to become a preacher, and his first sermon, delivered at Hackleton when
he was nineteen years of age, was delivered in one of their assemblies.
For three and a half years he was on the preachers' plan, and regularly
"supplied the pulpits" in this village and Earl's Barton as a kind of
pastor. "It was during these ministerial engagements," says his
biographer, "that his views on the subject of baptism were altered, and
he embraced the opinion that baptism by immersion, after a confession of
faith, was in accordance with the injunctions of Divine Writ and the
practice of the apostolic age. He was accordingly baptized by Dr. John
Ryland, his future associate in the cause of missions, who subsequently
stated at a public meeting that, on the 7th of October, 1783, he
baptized a poor journeyman shoemaker in the river Nene, a little beyond
Dr. Doddridge's chapel in Northampton."[38]
[38] "The Story of Carey, Marshman, and Ward," p. 4.
During these years he was diligently prosecuting his studies, and read
the Scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Like many another poor
student, he was fain to borrow what he could not buy in the way of
books, and "laid the libraries of all the friends around him under
contribution." Notwithstanding his extraordinary abilities and
diligence, he does not seem to have displayed any marked qualities as a
preacher. It was with difficulty he got through his trial sermons before
the church of which he was now a member. The very decided "personal
influence" of the pastor, the Rev. John Suttcliffe, was required to
enable the modest young shoemaker to obtain the church's sanction to his
receiving "a call to the ministry." The church to which he ministered at
Earl's Barton was poor, and scarcely able to keep its pastor in
clothing, much less provide for his entire maintenance. For this he was
dependent on his trade, and as the times were now very bad he was
obliged to travel from village to village to dispose of his work and
obtain fresh orders. Nothing but the assistance of his relatives saved
him at this time from destitution.
And here we are bound to pause and notice the greatest mistake Carey
made in all his life. We refer to his marriage at the age of twenty to
the sister of his former employer. "This imprudent union," it is said,
"proved a severe clog on his exertions for more than twenty-five years."
The match was about as unfortunate and unsuitable as a match could be.
Mrs. Carey was much older than her husband, ill-educated in mind and
temper, and quite incapable of sympathizing with her husband's studies
and projects. How he came to contract such a miserable union passes
comprehension, for he was remarkably sensible and business-like in
common affairs. But there are those who can cultivate another man's
vineyard while they neglect their own, wise for others and simple for
themselves; and in regard to this particular business, as Froude the
historian has well said, some men are apparently "destined to be
unfortunate in their relations with women." The judicious Hooker was
judicious in everything else but the choice of a wife, for he married a
jade who was wont to give him the baby to nurse and stand and scold him
into the bargain, as he sat writing the works that were destined to make
his name illustrious for all time. Molière, who exposed in the most
masterly manner in his plays the follies and foibles of the women of
Parisian society in his day, married, to his bitter regret, as weak and
vain a woman as any that figures in his own works. Milton's second wife
went home again within three months of their wedding-day; and John
Wesley's wife left him a short while after their marriage. But if these
good men made a mistake in their choice, they one and all acted with
good sense and feeling in their treatment of their ill-matched partners.
Nothing could be better than the common-sense of stern John Wesley in
his reply to a friend who asked him if he would not send for his truant
wife home again. He answered in Latin, but this is what his words mean,
"I did not send her away, and I will not fetch her back again." Carey
acted with much kindness and discretion toward his miserable partner;
but he found it harder to transform her into a sensible woman than to
transform his own Baptist Conference into a missionary society.[39]
[39] It ought to be said that in 1808, about a year
after the death of his first wife, Carey married Miss Rhumohr,
a Danish lady of good family and education, who proved a most
congenial companion and helper in his work. He was three times
married: his third wife, who survived him, was an excellent
partner for a missionary.
In 1786, he took the pastorate of a small church at Moulton; yet, even
here, he was obliged to eke out his poor living by shoemaking, and even
to add to his other labors the task of teaching a school. For this task
he was utterly unfit. However well he might teach himself, he could
never teach boys. He knew this, and was accustomed to say, "When I kept
school, it was the boys who kept me." His circumstances at this time
ought to be fully stated in order that the reader may form some idea of
the hardship Carey had to endure and the absorbing personal duties and
cares in the midst of which he began to cherish his great purpose "to
convey the gospel of Jesus Christ to some portion of the heathen world."
His ministerial stipend from all sources and the proceeds of his school
would not together put him in the position of Goldsmith's ideal village
pastor, who was "passing rich on forty pounds a year." So that he was
obliged, even at Moulton, to have recourse to shoemaking. A friend of
his at the time remarks, "Once a fortnight Carey might be seen walking
eight or ten miles to Northampton, with his wallet full of shoes on his
shoulder, and then returning home with a fresh supply of leather."
The time spent at Moulton was, in spite of its many cares and hardships,
a time of great progress in study. It was during these years he adopted
the plan of allotting his time, a plan to which he rigidly adhered all
through his life, and by means of which he was able in after-years to
accomplish tasks which seemed to onlookers sufficient for the energies
of two or three ordinary men. Now began also the acquaintance with men
whose friendship was of the greatest service to a man like Carey, and
largely influenced and helped him in his life-work--Mr. Hall (the father
of the eminent pulpit orator Robert Hall), Dr. Ryland, John Suttcliffe,
and Andrew Fuller. All these lived within a few miles of each other, and
belonged to the same association of Baptist churches, called the
Northamptonshire Association. It was at one of the meetings of this
association that Fuller first met with Carey and heard him preach. So
delighted was Fuller with the devout thoughtfulness and Christian
catholicity of Carey's discourse, that he met the preacher as he came
down from the pulpit and thanked him in the warmest manner. In this
cordial meeting commenced a friendship and fellowship in Christian work
which lasted for twenty years until Fuller's death, and which proved a
source of untold blessings to the heathen world.
Carey's first thought of missions came into his mind when reading
Captain Cook's account of his voyage round the world. He was in the
habit of blending study with his task as a shoemaker, or while sitting
among his boys at school. This book impressed his imagination, and
stirred his compassion to the utmost, as he contemplated the vast extent
of the world and the large proportion of its inhabitants who were living
in ignorance of the true God, and of the Saviour of mankind. In order to
realize the facts more vividly, he constructed a large map of the world,
and marked it in such a manner as to indicate the numerical relation of
the heathen to the Christian nations. This map was fixed on the wall in
front of his work-stool, so that he might raise his head occasionally
and look upon it as he sat at his daily toil. While he mused on the map
and the facts it represented, "the fire burned." It was the means of
inspiring in him the purpose never to tire nor rest until he and others
had gone out to convey the good news of the Gospel to his suffering
fellow-men in distant lands. It was to this circumstance that William
Wilberforce alluded, in a speech made in the House of Commons twenty
years after, when, urging Parliament to grant missionaries free access
to India, he said: "A sublimer thought cannot be conceived than when a
poor cobbler formed the resolution to give to the millions of Hindoos
the Bible in their own language."
With this purpose in mind, Carey went to the meetings of his brethren,
longing for an opportunity of expressing his thoughts and calling forth
their sympathies. But he had to endure a terrible trial at the outset--a
trial which only Christian faith and love could endure. The older men,
who ruled in an almost supreme manner in these councils, sternly rebuked
his presumption, as they deemed it, and called him an "enthusiast"--a
term employed very recently by a noble duke in the House of Lords in the
same connection. No term could have described Carey more correctly. It
was a term of honor, though meant in reproach and condemnation. The word
means one inspired by God, and surely Carey's Christlike thought and
zeal for his fellow-men was an inspiration. He was an enthusiast of the
type of Robert Raikes of Gloucester, who only six or seven years
before[40] had begun the work of Sabbath-schools in that city; or John
Howard, whose great work, published within a year or two of this
time,[41] on the condition of the prisons in Europe, and especially in
England and Ireland, created a merciful revolution in the treatment of
our criminal class; or Thomas Charles of Bala, whose pity for the Welsh
girl who had no Bible of her own, and had been unable to walk six or
seven miles to a place where she could have access to one, led him to
take steps which resulted in the formation of the British and Foreign
Bible Society. The founder of the Baptist Missionary Society was a man
of this type, and such men are the greatest benefactors of their race,
no matter whether they be clergymen like Charles, or country gentlemen
like Howard, or cobblers and Nonconformist village pastors like Carey.
[40] The first Sunday-school was opened in Gloucester
in 1780.
[41] Viz., 1789.
At the first meeting in which Carey ventured to submit the subject of
Christian missions, the senior minister present spoke in the following
oracular manner: "Brother Carey ought certainly to have known that
nothing could be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of
miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, would give effect to
the commission of Christ, as at the first; and that he (Mr. Carey) was a
miserable enthusiast for asking such a question." And then, as if to
settle the whole question once for all, and shut the mouth of Mr. Carey
forever, the stern old man turned to the humble young pastor and said,
"What, sir! can you preach in Arabic, in Persic, in Hindostani, in
Bengali, that you think it your duty to preach the gospel to the
heathen?" Little did the speaker imagine that he was addressing the very
man who would subsequently hold the office of Professor of Oriental
Languages, at Fort William for twenty years, become one of the greatest
proficients the world has known in two of the very languages he had
named, and not only _preach_ in them but translate the Scriptures into
them, as a boon and legacy of love to the people of Hindostan. When on
another occasion Carey, nothing daunted by his first repulse, and
willing to forgive and forget his rebuff for the sake of the cause he
cherished, asked his brethren once more to consider the question of
missions, the same stern voice exclaimed, "Young man, sit down; when God
pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."
But the old man was not a prophet. God did not choose to work without
the aid of William Carey, though the time was not yet. The undaunted
moral hero had other battles to fight before he stood on the field of
missions.
In 1789 Carey became the pastor of a church in Leicester. For four years
he labored zealously at his ministerial duties, studied with great
diligence, availing himself of new and valuable friendships for this
purpose, and never failing to bring up his favorite theme for discussion
at the meetings of the Baptist ministers. Before he left Moulton, as we
have seen, he began to raise the question in the public assemblies. On
one occasion the debate ran on the question he had introduced, "Whether
it were not practicable, and our bounden duty, to attempt somewhat
toward spreading the gospel in the heathen world?" Not satisfied with
the result of such discussions, the village shoemaker and pastor sat
down to write a pamphlet on this subject, entitled "Thoughts on
Christian Missions." When he showed this pamphlet to his friends Fuller,
Suttcliffe, and Ryland, they were amazed at the amount of knowledge it
displayed, and deeply moved by Carey's zeal and persistence in the good
cause; but all they could do in the matter was to put him off for a time
by counselling him to _revise_ his production. It appears that at the
time this _brochure_ was penned the poor shoemaker with his family were
"in a state bordering on starvation, and passed many weeks without
animal food, and with but a scanty supply of bread."
In the year 1791, at a meeting held at Clipstone in Northamptonshire,
Carey again read his pamphlet, and was requested to publish it. This was
a decided step in advance, and prepared the way for the events of the
following year, when the desire of his heart was accomplished in the
formation of a missionary society. In May, 1792, he preached the famous
sermon which is said to have done more than anything else to consummate
this missionary enterprise.[42] The two main propositions of this
discourse have passed into something like a proverb on the lips of
missionary advocates: "Expect great things from God; attempt great
things for God." Although the discourse made a deep impression, Carey
was distressed beyond all self-control when he found his friends were
about to separate without a distinct resolution to form a society. He
seized Andrew Fuller's hand "in an agony of distress," and tearfully
pleaded that some steps should at once be taken. Overcome at last by his
entreaties, they solemnly resolved on the holy enterprise.
[42] The text of this discourse was Isaiah 54:2, 3:
"Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the
curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords
and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the
right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the
Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited."
After this the history of the Society is a record of meetings,
committees, travels, and labors, of deputations to the churches,
difficulties and embarrassments, in the midst of which no one was more
devoted and useful in bringing the plans of the young Society into
working order than Carey's valuable friend, Andrew Fuller. The first
subscription list was made up at another meeting of the Association,
held at Kettering, in Carey's own county, in the autumn of the same
year. Its promises amounted to £13 2s. 6d. This little fund was the
precursor of the tens of thousands which have since flowed into the
treasuries of our modern Christian Missionary Societies. In twenty-nine
days after the fund was started at Kettering, Birmingham followed with
the noble gift of £70.
The Society was now fairly started, with the resolution formally
recorded on its minute-books "to convey the message of salvation to some
portion of the heathen world." On the 9th of January, 1793, Carey and a
colleague were appointed by the Committee to proceed at once to India.
Carey's colleague was a man of extraordinary missionary zeal, who had
"lately returned from Bengal, and was endeavoring to establish a fund in
London for a mission to that country."[43] He was a Baptist, and on
hearing of the schemes of his brethren in England, he readily fell in
with their proposal that he should accompany Carey to India. But the
question of finding a berth on an English vessel was not easily settled.
No English captain dare take them out without a government license, and
to obtain a license as missionaries was not to be thought of. Having at
one time gone on board a vessel with all their baggage, they were
obliged by the captain, who felt that he was risking his commission in
taking them on board, to land again and return to London. They were
compelled at length to have recourse to a Danish vessel, the _Cron
Princessa Maria_, whose captain, an Englishman by birth, though
naturalized as a Dane, looked favorably on their enterprise. On the 13th
of June, 1793, Carey and his companion set sail from the shores of
England, their expedition as ambassadors for Christ as little heeded by
the world at large as that of the Cilician tentmaker and his little band
of preachers who set sail seventeen centuries before from the port of
Alexandria Troas for the shores of Europe.
[43] _Quarterly Review_, Feb. 1809, p. 197. This
generous article on "The Periodical Accounts of the Baptist
Missionary Society" is known to have been written by Southey.
See below. Some idea of Thomas's passionate 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 illustrious 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 hardship, 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 illustration 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
professorships, these funds were often very considerable. In 1807, when
Carey held the Professorship 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 gratitude to God
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 gratitude to
God 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 assist 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 God 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 circumstances
the wonder is, not that they have done so little, but that they have
done so much; for it will be found that, even without this difficulty
to retard them, no religious opinions have spread more rapidly in the
same time, unless there was some remarkable folly or extravagance to
recommend them, or some powerful worldly inducement." 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 God 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
associations of friendship. 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 assured confidence
in the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God. The shoemaker of
Northamptonshire 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.