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 disinterestedness--Dr. Marshman and
Mack, Christopher Anderson and John Wilson of Bombay on his
character--His influence still as the founder of missions--Dr. Cox and
Robert Hall on Carey as a man--Scotland's estimate of the father of the
Evangelical Revival and its foreign missions.
The last days of William Carey were the best. His sun went down in all
the splendour of a glowing faith and a burning self-sacrifice. Not in
the penury of Hackleton and Moulton, not in the hardships of Calcutta
and the Soondarbans, not in the fevers of the swamps of Dinapoor, not
in the apprehensions twice excited by official intolerance, not in the
most bitter sorrow of all--the sixteen years' persecution by English
brethren after Fuller's death, had the father of modern missions been
so tried as in the years 1830-1833. Blow succeeded blow, but only that
the fine gold of his trust, his humility, and his love might be seen to
be the purer.
The Serampore College and Mission lost all the funds it had in India.
By 1830 the financial revolution which had laid many houses low in
Europe five years before, began to tell upon the merchant princes of
Calcutta. The six firms, which had developed the trade of Northern
India so far as the Company's monopolies allowed, had been the bankers
of the Government itself, of states like Haidarabad, and of all the
civil and military officials, and had enriched a succession of partners
for half a century, fell one by one--fell for sixteen millions sterling
among them. Palmer and Co. was the greatest; the house at one time
played a large part in the history of India, and in the debates and
papers of Parliament. Mr. John Palmer, a personal friend of the
Serampore men, had advanced them money at ten per cent. four years
previously, when the Society's misrepresentation had done its worst.
The children in the Eurasian schools, which Dr. and Mrs. Marshman
conducted with such profit to the mission, depended chiefly on funds
deposited with this firm. It suddenly failed for more than two
millions sterling. Although the catastrophe exposed the rottenness of
the system of credit on which commerce and banking were at that time
conducted, in the absence of a free press and an intelligent public
opinion, the alarm soon subsided, and only the more business fell to
the other firms. But the year 1833 had hardly opened when first the
house of Alexander and Co., then that of Mackintosh and Co., and then
the three others, collapsed without warning. The English in India,
officials and merchants, were reduced to universal poverty. Capital
disappeared and credit ceased at the very time that Parliament was
about to complete the partial concession of freedom of trade made by
the charter of 1813, by granting all Carey had argued for, and allowing
Europeans to hold land.
The funds invested for Jessor and Delhi; the legacy of Fernandez,
Carey's first convert and missionary; his own tenths with which he
supported three aged relatives in England; the property of the partner
of his third marriage, on whom the money was settled, and who survived
him by a year; the little possessed by Dr. Marshman, who had paid all
his expenses in England even while working for the Society--all was
swept away. Not only was the small balance in hand towards meeting the
college and mission expenditure gone, but it was impossible to borrow
even for a short time. Again one of Dr. Carey's old civilian students
came to the rescue. Mr. Garrett, grandson of Robert Raikes who first
began Sunday schools, pledged his own credit with the Bank of Bengal,
until Samuel Hope of Liverpool, treasurer of the Serampore Mission
there, could be communicated with. Meanwhile the question of giving up
any of the stations or shutting the college was not once favoured. "I
have seen the tears run down the face of the venerable Dr. Carey at the
thought of such a calamity," wrote Leechman; "were it to arrive we
should soon have to lay him in his grave." When the interest of the
funds raised by Ward in America ceased for a time because of the
malicious report from England that it might be applied by Dr. Marshman
to the purposes of family aggrandisement, Carey replied in a spirit
like that of Paul under a similar charge: "Dr. Marshman is as poor as I
am, and I can scarcely lay by a sum monthly to relieve three or four
indigent relatives in Europe. I might have had large possessions, but
I have given my all, except what I ate, drank, and wore, to the cause
of missions, and Dr. Marshman has done the same, and so did Mr. Ward."
Carey's trust in God, for the mission and for himself, was to be still
further tried. On 12th July 1828 we find him thus writing from
Calcutta to Jabez:--"I came down this morning to attend Lord W.
Bentinck's first levée. It was numerously attended, and I had the
pleasure of seeing there a great number of gentlemen who had formerly
studied under me, and for whom I felt a very sincere regard. I hear
Lady Bentinck is a pious woman, but have not yet seen her. I have a
card to attend at her drawing-room this evening, but I shall not go, as
I must be at home for the Sabbath, which is to-morrow." It soon fell
to Lord William Bentinck to meet the financial consequences of his weak
predecessor's administration. The College of Fort William had to be
sacrificed. Metcalfe and Bayley, Carey's old students whom he had
permanently influenced in the higher life, were the members of council,
and he appealed to them. They sent him to the good Governor-General,
to whose sympathy he laid bare all the past and present of the
mission's finance. He was told to have no fear, and indeed the Council
held a long sitting on this one matter. But from June 1830 the college
ceased to be a teaching, and became an examining body. When the salary
was reduced one-half, from Rs. 1000 a month, the Brotherhood met to
pray for light and strength. Mr. Robinson, the Java missionary who had
attached himself to Serampore, and whose son long did good service as a
Bengali scholar and preacher, gives us this glimpse of its inner life
at this time:--
"The two old men were dissolved in tears while they were engaged in
prayer, and Dr. Marshman in particular could not give expressions to
his feelings. It was indeed affecting to see these good old men, the
fathers of the mission, entreating with tears that God would not
forsake them now grey hairs were come upon them, but that He would
silence the tongue of calumny, and furnish them with the means of
carrying on His own cause."
They sent home an appeal to England, and Carey himself published what
is perhaps the most chivalrous, just, and weighty of all his utterances
on the disagreeable subject--Thoughts upon the Discussions which have
arisen from the Separation between the Baptist Missionary Society and
the Serampore Missions. "From our age and other circumstances our
contributions may soon cease. We have seen a great work wrought in
India, and much of it, either directly or indirectly, has been done by
ourselves. I cannot, I ought not to be indifferent about the
permanency of this work, and cannot therefore view the exultation
expressed at the prospect of our resources being crippled otherwise
than being of a character too satanic to be long persisted in by any
man who has the love of God in his heart."
The appeal to all Christians for "a few hundred pounds per annum" for
the mission station closed thus: "But a few years have passed away
since the Protestant world was awakened to missionary effort. Since
that time the annual revenues collected for this object have grown to
the then unthought-of sum of £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
myself on and plead the efficacy of that atonement which will not fail
me when I need it."
Dr. Marshman gives us a brighter picture of him. "I met with very few
friends in England in their seventieth year so lively, as free from the
infirmities of age, so interesting in the pulpit, so completely
conversible as he is now." The reason is found in the fact that he was
still useful, still busy at the work he loved most of all. He
completed his last revision of the entire Bible in Bengali--the fifth
edition of the Old Testament and the eighth edition of the New--in June
1832. Immediately thereafter, when presiding at the ordination of Mr.
Mack as co-pastor with Dr. Marshman and himself over the church at
Serampore, he took with him into the pulpit the first copy of the
sacred volume which came from the binder's hands, and addressed the
converts and their children from the words of Simeon--"Lord now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation." As the months went on he carried through the press still
another and improved edition of the New Testament, and only then he
felt and often said that the work of his heart was done.
He had other sources of saintly pleasure as he lay meditating on the
Word, and praising God for His goodness to the college and the mission
stations increased to nineteen by young Sir Henry Havelock, who founded
the church at Agra. Lord William Bentinck, having begun his reign with
the abolition of the crime of suttee, was, with the help of Carey's old
students, steadily carrying out the other reforms for which in all his
Indian career the missionary had prayed and preached and published.
The judicial service was reorganised so as to include native judges.
The uncovenanted civil service was opened to all British subjects of
every creed. The first act of justice to native Christians was thus
done, so that he wrote of the college:--"The students are now eligible
to every legal appointment in India which a native can hold; those who
may possess no love for the Christian ministry have the prospect of a
profitable profession as advocates in the judicial courts, and the hope
of rising to posts of honourable distinction in their native land."
The Hindoo law of inheritance which the Regulating Act of Parliament
had so covered that it was used to deprive converts to Christianity of
all civil rights, was dealt with so far as a local regulation could do
so, and Carey, advised by such an authority as Harington, laid it on
his successor in the apostolate, the young Alexander Duff, to carry the
act of justice out fully, which was done under the Marquis of
Dalhousie. The orders drawn up by Charles Grant's sons at last, in
February 1833, freed Great Britain from responsibility for the
connection of the East India Company with Temple and mosque endowments
and the pilgrim tax.
His son Jonathan wrote this of him two years after his death:--
"In principle my father was resolute and firm, never shrinking from
avowing and maintaining his sentiments. He had conscientious scruples
against taking an oath; and condemned severely the manner in which
oaths were administered, and urged vehemently the propriety of
altogether dispensing with them. I remember three instances in which
he took a conspicuous part in regard to oaths, such as was
characteristic of the man. On one occasion, when a respectable Hindoo
servant of the college of Fort William, attached to Dr. Carey's
department, was early one morning proceeding to the Ganges to bathe, he
perceived a dead body lying near the road; but it being dark, and no
person being present, he passed on, taking no further notice of the
circumstance. As he returned from the Ganges after sunrise, he saw a
crowd near the body, and then happened to say to one of the watchmen
present that in the morning he saw the body on the other side of the
road. The watchman took him in custody, as a witness before the
coroner; but, when brought before the coroner, he refused to take an
oath, and was, consequently, committed to prison for contempt. The
Hindoo being a respectable person, and never having taken an oath,
refused to take any nourishment in the prison. In this state he
continued a day and a half, my father being then at Serampore; but upon
his coming to Calcutta, the circumstances were mentioned to him. The
fact of the man having refused to take an oath was enough to make him
interest himself in his behalf. He was delighted with the resolution
the man took--rather to go to prison than take an oath; and was
determined to do all he could to procure his liberation. He first
applied to the coroner, but was directed by him to the sheriff. To
that functionary he proceeded, but was informed by him that he could
make no order on the subject. He then had an interview with the then
chief judge, by whose interference the man was set at liberty.
"Another instance relates to him personally. On the occasion of his
last marriage, the day was fixed on which the ceremony was to take
place--friends were invited--and all necessary arrangements made; but,
three or four days prior to the day fixed, he was informed that it
would be necessary for him to obtain a licence, in doing which, he must
either take an oath or have banns published. To taking an oath he at
once objected, and applied to the then senior judge, who informed him
that, as he was not a quaker, his oath was indispensable; but, rather
than take an oath, he applied to have the banns published, and
postponed the arrangements for his marriage for another three weeks.
"The third instance was as follows:--It was necessary, in a certain
case, to prove a will in court, in which the name of Dr. Carey was
mentioned, in connection with the Serampore missionaries as executors.
An application was made by one of his colleagues, which was refused by
the court, on account of the vagueness of the terms, 'Serampore
missionaries;' but as Dr. Carey's name was specifically mentioned, the
court intimated that they would grant the application if made by him.
The communication was made: but when he was informed that an oath was
necessary, he shrunk with abhorrence from the idea; but after much
persuasion, he consented to make the application, if taking an oath
would be dispensed with. He did attend, and stated his objections to
the then chief judge, which being allowed, his affirmation was received
and recorded by the court.
"The duties connected with the College of Fort William afforded him a
change of scene, which relieved his mind, and gave him opportunities of
taking exercise, and conduced much to his health. During the several
years he held the situation of professor to the college, no
consideration would allow him to neglect his attendance; and though he
had to encounter boisterous weather in crossing the river at
unseasonable hours, he was punctual in his attendance, and never
applied for leave of absence. And when he was qualified by the rules
of the service to retire on a handsome pension, he preferred being
actively employed in promoting the interests of the college, and
remained, assiduously discharging his duties, till his department was
abolished by Government. The business of the college requiring his
attendance in Calcutta, he became so habituated to his journeys to and
fro, that at his age he painfully felt the retirement he was subjected
to when his office ceased. After this circumstance his health rapidly
declined; and though he occasionally visited Calcutta, he complained of
extreme debility. This increased daily, and made him a constant
sufferer; until at length he was not able to leave his house."
Nor was it in India alone that the venerable saint found such causes of
satisfaction. He lived long enough to thank God for the emancipation
of the slaves by the English people, for which he had prayed daily for
fifty years.
We have many sketches of the Father of English Missions in his later
years by young contemporaries who, on their first arrival in Bengal,
sought him out. In 1824 Mr. Leslie, an Edinburgh student, who became
in India the first of Baptist preachers, and was the means of the
conversion of Henry Havelock who married Dr. Marshman's youngest
daughter, wrote thus of Carey after the third great illness of his
Indian life:--
"Dr. Carey, who has been very ill, is quite recovered, and bids fair to
live many years; and as for Dr. Marshman, he has never known ill-health
is, during the whole period of his residence in India. They are both
active to a degree which you would think impossible in such a country.
Dr. Carey is a very equable and cheerful old man, in countenance very
like the engraving of him with his pundit, though not so robust as he
appears to be there. Next to his translations Botany is his grand
study. He has collected every plant and tree in his garden that will
possibly grow in India, and is so scientific withal that he calls
everything by its classical name. If, therefore, I should at any time
blunder out the word Geranium, he would say Pelargonium, and perhaps
accuse me of ignorance, or blame me for vulgarity. We had the pleasure
of hearing him preach from Rom. vii. 13, when he gave us an excellent
sermon. In manner he is very animated, and in style very methodical.
Indeed he carries method into everything he does; classification is his
grand hobby, and wherever anything can be classified, there you find
Dr. Carey; not only does he classify and arrange the roots of plants
and words, but visit his dwelling and you find he has fitted up and
classified shelves full of minerals, stones, shells, etc., and cages
full of birds. He is of very easy access, and great familiarity. His
attachments are strong, and extend not merely to persons but places.
About a year ago, so much of the house in which he had lived ever since
he had been at Serampore, fell down so that he had to leave it, at
which he wept bitterly. One morning at breakfast, he was relating to
us an anecdote of the generosity of the late excellent John Thornton,
at the remembrance of whom the big tear filled his eye. Though it is
an affecting sight to see the venerable man weep; yet it is a sight
which greatly interests you, as there is a manliness in his
tears--something far removed from the crying of a child."
The house in which for the last ten years he lived, and where he died,
was the only one of two or three, planned for the new professors of the
college, that was completed. Compared with the adjoining college it
was erected with such severe simplicity that it was said to have been
designed for angels rather than for men. Carey's room and library
looked towards the river with the breadth of the college garden
between. On the other side, in the upper verandah, in the morning he
worked at his desk almost to the last, and in the evening towards
sunset he talked with his visitors. In 1826 the London Missionary
Society sent out to Calcutta the first of its deputations. Dr. Carey
sent his boat for them, and in the absence of her husband in England,
Mrs. Marshman entertained the guests. They wrote:--
"We found Dr. Carey in his study, and we were both pleased and struck
with his primitive, and we may say, apostolical appearance. He is short
of stature, his hair white, his countenance equally bland and
benevolent in feature and expression. Two Hindoo men were sitting by,
engaged in painting some small subjects in natural history, of which
the doctor, a man of pure taste and highly intellectual cast of
feeling, irrespective of his more learned pursuits, has a choice
collection, both in specimens and pictorial representations. Botany is
a favourite study with him, and his garden is curiously enriched with
rarities."
Of all the visits paid to Carey none are now so interesting to the
historian of the Church of India, as those of the youth who succeeded
him as he had succeeded Schwartz. Alexander Duff was twenty-four years
of age when, in 1830, full of hesitation as to carrying out his own
plans in opposition to the experience of all the missionaries he had
consulted, he received from Carey alone the most earnest encouragement
to pursue in Calcutta the Christian college policy so well begun in the
less central settlement of Serampore. We have elsewhere[32] told the
story:--
"Landing at the college ghaut one sweltering July day, the still ruddy
highlander strode up to the flight of steps that leads to the finest
modern building in Asia. Turning to the left, he sought the study of
Carey in the house--'built for angels,' said one, so simple is
it--where the greatest of missionary scholars was still working for
India. There he beheld what seemed to be a little yellow old man in a
white jacket, who tottered up to the visitor of whom he had already
often heard, and with outstretched hands solemnly blessed him. A
contemporary soon after wrote thus of the childlike saint--
"'Thou'rt in our heart--with tresses thin and grey,
And eye that knew the Book of Life so well,
And brow serene, as thou wert wont to stray
Amidst thy flowers--like Adam ere he fell.'
"The result of the conference was a double blessing; for Carey could
speak with the influence at once of a scholar who had created the best
college at that time in the country, and of a vernacularist who had
preached to the people for half a century. The young Scotsman left his
presence with the approval of the one authority whose opinion was best
worth having...
"Among those who visited him in his last illness was Alexander Duff,
the Scots missionary. On one of the last occasions on which he saw
him--if not the very last--he spent some time talking chiefly about
Carey's missionary life, till at length the dying man whispered, Pray.
Duff knelt down and prayed, and then said Good-bye. As he passed from
the room, he thought he heard a feeble voice pronouncing his name, and,
turning, he found that he was recalled. He stepped back accordingly,
and this is what he heard, spoken with a gracious solemnity: 'Mr. Duff,
you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey; When I am gone, say
nothing about Dr. Carey--speak about Dr. Carey's Saviour.' Duff went
away rebuked and awed, with a lesson in his heart that he never
forgot."[33]
When with his old friends he dwelt much on the past. Writing of May
1832, Dr. Marshman mentioned: "I spent an hour at tea with dear Brother
Carey last night, now seventy and nine months. He was in the most
comfortable state of health, talking over his first feelings respecting
India and the heathen, and the manner in which God kept them alive,
when even Fuller could not yet enter into them, and good old John
Ryland (the doctor's father) denounced them as unscriptural. Had these
feelings died away, in what a different state might India now have
been!" In September of that year, when burying Mrs. Ward, he seemed,
in his address at the grave, to long for renewed intercourse with the
friends who had preceded him in entering into the joy of the Lord.
On Mr. Leechman's arrival from Scotland to be his colleague, he found
the old man thus vigorous even in April 1833, or if "faint, yet
pursuing":--
"Our venerable Dr. Carey is in excellent health, and takes his turn in
all our public exercises. Just forty years ago, the first of this
month, he administered the Lord's Supper to the church at Leicester,
and started on the morrow to embark for India. Through this long
period of honourable toil the Lord has mercifully preserved him; and at
our missionary prayer meeting, held on the first of this month, he
delivered an interesting address to encourage us to persevere in the
work of the Lord. We have also a private monthly prayer meeting held in
Dr. Carey's study, which is to me a meeting of uncommon interest. On
these occasions we particularly spread before the Lord our public and
private trials, both those which come upon us from the cause of Christ,
with which it is our honour and privilege to be connected, and those
also which we as individuals are called to bear. At our last meeting
Dr. Carey read part of the history of Gideon, and commented with deep
feeling on the encouragement which that history affords, that the cause
of God can be carried on to victory and triumph, by feeble and
apparently inefficient means."
Carey's successor, Mack, wrote thus to Christopher Anderson ten months
later:--
"SERAMPORE, 31st January 1834.--Our venerable father, Dr. Carey, is yet
continued to us, but in the same state in which he has been for the
last three months or so. He is quite incapable of work, and very weak.
He can walk but a few yards at a time, and spends the day in reading
for profit and entertainment, and in occasionally nodding and sleeping.
He is perfectly tranquil in mind. His imagination does not soar much
in vivid anticipations of glory; and it never disquiets him with
restless misgivings respecting his inheritance in God. To him it is
everything that the gospel is true, and he believes it; and, as he
says, if he can say he knows anything, he knows that he believes it.
When his attention is turned to his dismissal from earth, or his hope
of glory, his emotions are tender and sweet. They are also very
simple, and express themselves in a few brief and pithy sentences. His
interest in all the affairs of the mission is unabated, and although he
can no longer join us either in deliberation or associated prayer, he
must be informed of all that occurs, and his heart is wholly with us in
whatever we do. I do not conceive it possible that he can survive the
ensuing hot season, but he may, and the Lord will do in this as in all
other things what is best.
"When our necessities were coming to their climax I concluded that I
must leave Serampore in order to find food to eat, and I fixed upon
Cherra-poonjee as my future residence. I proposed establishing a
first-class school there, and then with some warmth of imagination I
began anticipating a sort of second edition of Serampore up in the
Khasia hills, to be a centre of diffusing light in the western
provinces. I became really somewhat enamoured of the phantom of my
imagination, but it was not to be. The brethren here would not see it
as I did."
This last sketch, by Mr. Gogerly, whom the London Missionary Society
had sent out in 1819, brings us still nearer the end:--
"At this time I paid him my last visit. He was seated near his desk,
in the study, dressed in his usual neat attire; his eyes were closed,
and his hands clasped together. On his desk was the proof-sheet of the
last chapter of the New Testament, which he had revised a few days
before. His appearance, as he sat there, with the few white locks
which adorned his venerable brow, and his placid colourless face,
filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared as then listening to the
Master's summons, and as waiting to depart. I sat, in his presence,
for about half an hour, and not one word was uttered; for I feared to
break that solemn silence, and call back to earth the soul that seemed
almost in heaven. At last, however, I spoke; and well do I remember
the identical words that passed between us, though more than thirty-six
years have elapsed since then. I said, 'My dear friend, you evidently
are standing on the borders of the eternal world; do not think it
wrong, then, if I ask, What are your feelings in the immediate prospect
of death?' The question roused him from his apparent stupor, and
opening his languid eyes, he earnestly replied, 'As far as my personal
salvation is concerned, I have not the shadow of a doubt; I know in
Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that
which I have committed unto Him against that day; but when I think that
I am about to appear in the presence of a holy God, and remember all my
sins and manifold imperfections--I tremble.' He could say no more. The
tears trickled down his cheeks, and after a while he relapsed into the
same state of silence from which I had aroused him.
"Deeply solemn was that interview, and important the lesson I then
received. Here was one of the most holy and harmless men whom I ever
knew--who had lived above the breath of calumny for upwards of forty
years, surrounded by and in close intimacy with many, both Europeans
and natives, who would have rejoiced to have witnessed any
inconsistency in his conduct, but who were constrained to admire his
integrity and Christian character--whilst thus convinced of the
certainty of his salvation, through the merits of that Saviour whom he
had preached, yet so impressed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
that he trembled at the thought of appearing before a holy God! A few
days after this event, Dr. Carey retired to his bed, from which he
never rose."
So long before this as 17th March 1802, Carey had thus described
himself to Dr. Ryland:--"A year or more ago you, or some other of my
dear friends, mentioned an intention of publishing a volume of sermons
as a testimony of mutual Christian love, and wished me to send a sermon
or two for that purpose. I have seriously intended it, and more than
once sat down to accomplish it, but have as constantly been broken off
from it. Indolence is my prevailing sin, and to that are now added a
number of avocations which I never thought of; I have also so continual
a fear that I may at last fall some way or other so as to dishonour the
Gospel that I have often desired that my name may be buried in
oblivion; and indeed I have reason for those fears, for I am so prone
to sin that I wonder every night that I have been preserved from foul
crimes through the day, and when I escape a temptation I esteem it to
be a miracle of grace which has preserved me. I never was so fully
persuaded as I am now that no habit of religion is a security from
falling into the foulest crimes, and I need the immediate help of God
every moment. The sense of my continual danger has, I confess, operated
strongly upon me to induce me to desire that no publication of a
religious nature should be published as mine whilst I am alive.
Another reason is my sense of incapacity to do justice to any subject,
or even to write good sense. I have, it is true, been obliged to
publish several things, and I can say that nothing but necessity could
have induced me to do it. They are, however, only grammatical works,
and certainly the very last things which I should have written if I
could have chosen for myself."
On 15th June 1833 the old man was still able to rejoice with others. He
addressed to his son Jonathan the only brief letter which the present
writer possesses from his pen, in a hand as clear as that of a quarter
of a century before:--
"MY DEAR JONATHAN--I congratulate you upon the good news you have
received. But am sorry Lucy continues so ill. I am too weak to write
more than to say your mother is as well as the weather will permit us
to expect. I could scarcely have been worse to live than I have been
the last fortnight.--Your affectionate father, W. CAREY."
The hot season had then reached its worst.
His last letters were brief messages of love and hope to his two
sisters in England. On 27th July 1833 he wrote to them:--
"About a week ago so great a change took place in me that I concluded
it was the immediate stroke of death, and all my children were informed
of it and have been here to see me. I have since that revived in an
almost miraculous manner, or I could not have written this. But I
cannot expect it to continue. The will of the Lord be done. Adieu,
till I meet you in a better world.--Your affectionate brother, "W.
CAREY."
Two months later he was at his old work, able "now and then to read a
proof sheet of the Scriptures."
"SERAMPORE, 25th Sept. 1833.
"MY DEAR SISTERS--My being able to write to you now is quite unexpected
by me, and, I believe, by every one else; but it appears to be the will
of God that I should continue a little time longer. How long that may
be I leave entirely with Him, and can only say, 'All the days of my
appointed time will I wait till my change come.' I was, two months or
more ago, reduced to such a state of weakness that it appeared as if my
mind was extinguished; and my weakness of body, and sense of extreme
fatigue and exhaustion, were such that I could scarcely speak, and it
appeared that death would be no more felt than the removing from one
chair to another. I am now able to sit and to lie on my couch, and now
and then to read a proof sheet of the Scriptures. I am too weak to
walk more than just across the house, nor can I stand even a few
minutes without support. I have every comfort that kind friends can
yield, and feel, generally, a tranquil mind. I trust the great point
is settled, and I am ready to depart; but the time when, I leave with
God.
"3rd Oct.--I am not worse than when I began this letter.--I am, your
very affectionate brother, WM. CAREY."
His latest message to Christendom was sent on the 30th September, most
appropriately to Christopher Anderson:--"As everything connected with
the full accomplishment of the divine promises depends on the almighty
power of God, pray that I and all the ministers of the Word may take
hold of His strength, and go about our work as fully expecting the
accomplishment of them all, which, however difficult and improbable it
may appear, is certain, as all the promises of God are in Him, yea, and
in Him, Amen." Had he not, all his career, therefore expected and
attempted great things?
He had had a chair fixed on a small platform, constructed after his own
direction, that he might be wheeled through his garden. At other times
the chief gardener Hullodhur, reported to him the state of the
collection of plants, then numbering about 2000. Dr. Marshman saw his
friend daily, sometimes twice a day, and found him always what Lord
Hastings had described him to be--"the cheerful old man." On the only
occasion on which he seemed sad, Dr. Marshman as he was leaving the
room turned and asked why. With deep feeling the dying scholar looked
to the others and said, "After I am gone Brother Marshman will turn the
cows into my garden." The reply was prompt, "Far be it from me; though
I have not your botanical tastes, the care of the garden in which you
have taken so much delight, shall be to me a sacred duty."[34]
Of strangers his most frequent visitor was the Governor-General's wife,
Lady William Bentinck. Her husband was in South India, and she spent
most of her time in Barrackpore Park retreat opposite to Carey's house.
From her frequent converse with him, in his life as well as now, she
studied the art of dying. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, learned
to delight in Serampore almost from the beginning of his long
episcopate, and in later years he lived there more than in Calcutta.
On the 14th February 1833 he first visited Carey, "his interview with
whom, confined as he was to his room, and apparently on the verge of
the celestial world, was peculiarly affecting." In the last of
subsequent visits the young Bishop asked the dying missionary's
benediction. With all the talk was the same, a humble resignation to
the will of God, firm trust in the Redeemer of sinners, a joyful
gratitude for the wonderful progress of His Kingdom. What a picture is
this that his brethren sent home six weeks before he passed away. "Our
aged and venerable brother feels himself growing gradually weaker. He
can scarcely rise from his couch, and it is with great difficulty that
he is carried out daily to take the air. Yet he is free from all pain
as to disease, and his mind is in a most serene and happy state. He is
in full possession of his faculties, and, although with difficulty, on
account of his weakness, he still converses with his friends from day
to day."
The hottest season of the year crept wearily on during the month of May
and the first week of June. Each night he slept well, and each day he
was moved to his couch in the dining-room for air. There he lay,
unable to articulate more than a word or two, but expressing by his
joyful features union in prayer and interest in conversation. On the
22nd May the English mail arrived with gladdening intelligence from Mr.
Hope--God's people were praying and giving anew for the mission.
Especially was his own latest station of Cherra-poonjee remembered. As
he was told that a lady, anonymously, had offered £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 administered, and he would
whisper, "What has God wrought!"
The last Sabbath had come--and the last full day. The constant
Marshman was with him. "He was scarcely able to articulate, and after a
little conversation I knelt down by the side of his couch and prayed
with him. Finding my mind unexpectedly drawn out to bless God for His
goodness, in having preserved him and blessed him in India for above
forty years, and made him such an instrument of good to His church; and
to entreat that on his being taken home, a double portion of his spirit
might rest on those who remained behind; though unable to speak, he
testified sufficiently by his countenance how cordially he joined in
this prayer. I then asked Mrs. Carey whether she thought he could now
see me. She said yes, and to convince me, said, 'Mr. Marshman wishes
to know whether you now see him?' He answered so loudly that I could
hear him, 'Yes, I do,' and shook me most cordially by the hand. I then
left him, and my other duties did not permit me to reach him again that
day. The next morning, as I was returning home before sunrise, I met
our Brethren Mack and Leechman out on their morning ride, when Mack
told me that our beloved brother had been rather worse all the night,
and that he had just left him very ill. I immediately hastened home,
through the college in which he has lived these ten years, and when I
reached his room, found that he had just entered into the joy of his
Lord--Mrs. Carey, his son Jabez, my son John, and Mrs. Mack being
present."
It was Monday the 9th June 1834, at half-past five, as the morning sun
was ascending the heavens towards the perfect day. The rain-clouds
burst and covered the land with gloom next morning when they carried
William Carey to the converts' burial-ground and made great
lamentation. The notice was too short for many to come up from
Calcutta in those days. "Mr. Duff, of the Scottish Church, returned a
most kind letter." Sir Charles Metcalfe and the Bishop wrote very
feelingly in reply. Lady Bentinck sent the Rev. Mr. Fisher to
represent the Governor-General and herself, and "a most kind and
feeling answer, for she truly loved the venerable man," while she sadly
gazed at the mourners as they followed the simple funeral up the right
bank of the Hoogli, past the College and the Mission chapel. Mr.
Yates, who had taken a loving farewell of the scholar he had been
reluctant to succeed, represented the younger brethren; Lacroix,
Micaiah Hill, and Gogerly, the London Missionary Society. Corrie and
Dealtry do not seem to have reached the spot in time. The Danish
Governor, his wife, and the members of council were there, and the flag
drooped half-mast high as on the occasion of a Governor's death. The
road was lined by the poor, Hindoo and Mohammedan, for whom he had done
so much. When all, walking in the rain, had reached the open grave,
the sun shone out, and Leechman led them in the joyous resurrection
hymn, "Why do we mourn departing friends?" "I then addressed the
audience," wrote Marshman, "and, contrary to Brother Mack's foretelling
that I should never get through it for tears, I did not shed one.
Brother Mack was then asked to address the native members, but he,
seeing the time so far gone, publicly said he would do so at the
village. Brother Robinson then prayed, and weeping--then neither
myself nor few besides could refrain." In Jannuggur village chapel in
the evening the Bengali burial hymn was sung, P[oe]ritran Christer Morone,
"Salvation by the death of Christ," and Pran Krishna, the oldest
disciple, led his countrymen in prayer. Then Mack spoke to the weeping
converts with all the pathos of their own sweet vernacular from the
words, "For David, after he had served his own generation, by the will
of God fell on sleep." Had not Carey's been a royal career, even that
of a king and a priest unto God?
"We, as a mission," wrote Dr. Marshman to Christopher Anderson, "took
the expense on ourselves, not suffering his family to do so, as we
shall that of erecting a monument for him. Long before his death we
had, by a letter signed by us all, assured him that the dear relatives,
in England and France, should have their pensions continued as though
he were living, and that Mrs. Carey, as a widow, should have Rs. 100
monthly, whatever Mackintosh's house might yield her."
Twenty-two years before, when Chamberlain was complaining because of
the absence of stone, or brick, or inscription in the mission
burial-ground, Carey had said, "Why should we be remembered? I think
when I am dead the sooner I am forgotten the better." Dr. Johns
observed that it is not the desire of the persons themselves but of
their friends for them, to which Carey replied, "I think of others in
that respect as I do of myself." When his second wife was taken from
him, his affection so far prevailed that he raised a memorial stone,
and in his will left this "order" to Mack and William Robinson, his
executors: "I direct that my funeral be as plain as possible; that I be
buried by the side of my second wife, Charlotte Emilia Carey; and that
the following inscription and nothing more may be cut on the stone
which commemorates her, either above or below, as there may be room,
viz.:--
WILLIAM CAREY, BORN AUGUST 17, 1761; DIED
A wretched, poor, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall."
The surviving brethren seem to have taken the small oblong stone, with
the inscription added as directed, and to have placed it on the south
side of the domed square block of brick and white plaster--since
renewed from time to time--which stands in the left corner of the
God's-acre, now consecrated by the mingled dust of four generations of
missionaries, converts, and Christian people. Ward's monument stands in
the centre, and that of the Marshman family at the right hand. Three
and a half years afterwards Joshua Marshman followed Carey; not till
1847 was Hannah Marshman laid beside him, after a noble life of eighty
years. Mack had gone the year before, cut off by cholera like Ward.
But the brotherhood cannot be said to have ended till John Marshman,
C.S.I., died in London in 1877. From first to last the three families
contributed to the cause of God from their own earnings, ninety
thousand pounds, and the world would never have known it but for the
lack of the charity that envieth not on the part of Andrew Fuller's
successors.
Carey's last will and testament begins: "I utterly disclaim all or any
right or title to the premises at Serampore, called the mission
premises, and every part and parcel thereof; and do hereby declare that
I never had, or supposed myself to have, any such right or title. I
give and bequeath to the College of Serampore the whole of my museum,
consisting of minerals, shells, corals, insects, and other natural
curiosities, and a Hortus Siccus; also the folio edition of Hortus
Woburnensis, which was presented to me by Lord Hastings; Taylor's
Hebrew Concordance, my collection of Bibles in foreign languages, and
all my books in the Italian and German languages." His widow, Grace,
who survived him a short time, had the little capital that was hers
before her marriage to him, and he desired that she would choose from
his library whatever English books she valued. His youngest son,
Jonathan, was not in want of money. He had paid Felix and William Rs.
1500 each in his lifetime. In order to leave a like sum to Jabez, he
thus provided: "From the failure of funds to carry my former intentions
into effect, I direct that my library be sold." In dying as in living
he is the same--just to others because self-devoted to Him to whom he
thus formally willed himself, "On Thy kind arms I fall."
The Indian journals rang with the praises of the missionary whose
childlike humility and sincerity, patriotism and learning, had long
made India proud of him. After giving himself, William Carey had died
so poor that his books had to be sold to provide £187 10s. for one of
his sons. One writer asserted that this man had contributed "sixteen
lakhs of rupees" to the cause of Christ while connected with the
Serampore Mission, and the statement was everywhere repeated. Dr.
Marshman thereupon published the actual facts, "as no one would have
felt greater abhorrence of such an attempt to impose on the Christian
public than Dr. Carey himself, had he been living." At a time when the
old Sicca Rupee was worth half a crown, Carey received, in the
thirty-four and a half years of his residence at Serampore, from the
date of his appointment to the College of Fort William, £45,000.[35] 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.'"
In the Danish Church of Serampore, and in the Mission Chapel, and
afterwards in the Union Chapel of Calcutta, Dr. Marshman and Mr. Mack
preached sermons on William Carey. These and the discourse delivered
in Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh, on the 30th of November, by Christopher
Anderson, were the only materials from which a just estimate of Carey
and his work could be formed for the next quarter of a century. All,
and especially the last, were as worthy of their theme as éloges
pronounced in such circumstances could be. Marshman spoke from the
text chosen by Carey himself a few weeks before his death as containing
the foundation of his hope and the source of his calm and tranquil
assurance--"For by grace are ye saved." Mack found his inspiration
again, as he had done in the Bengali village, in Paul's words--"David,
after he had served his own generation, by the will of God fell on
sleep." The Edinburgh preacher turned to the message of Isaiah
wherewith Carey used to comfort himself in his early loneliness, and
which the Revised Version renders--"Look unto Abraham your father; for
when he was but one I called him and I blessed him and made him many."
And in Bombay the young contemporary missionary who most nearly
resembled Carey in personal saintliness, scholarship, and
self-devotion, John Wilson, thus wrote:--
"Dr. Carey, the first of living missionaries, the most honoured and the
most successful since the time of the Apostles, has closed his long and
influential career. Indeed his spirit, his life, and his labours, were
truly apostolic...The Spirit of God which was in him led him forward
from strength to strength, supported him under privation, enabled him
to overcome in a fight that seemed without hope. Like the beloved
disciple, whom he resembled in simplicity of mind, and in seeking to
draw sinners to Christ altogether by the cords of love, he outlived his
trials to enjoy a peaceful and honoured old age, to know that his
Master's cause was prospering, and that his own name was named with
reverence and blessing in every country where a Christian dwelt.
Perhaps no man ever exerted a greater influence for good on a great
cause. Who that saw him, poor and in seats of learning uneducated,
embark on such an enterprise, could ever dream that, in little more
than forty years, Christendom should be animated with the same spirit,
thousands forsake all to follow his example, and that the Word of Life
should be translated into almost every language and preached in almost
every corner of the earth?"
As the Founder and Father of Modern Missions, the character and career
of William Carey are being revealed every year in the progress, and as
yet, the purity of the expansion of the Church and of the
English-speaking races in the two-thirds of the world which are still
outside of Christendom. The £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 instruction every day
more than a million boys and girls, young men and maidens of the dark
races of mankind.
The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the greatest and most practical
Evangelical of the nineteenth century after William Wilberforce, wrote
thus in his Journal of the class whom Carey headed in the eighteenth,
and whom Wordsworth commemorated as
"Not sedentary all, there are who roam
To scatter seeds of Life on barbarous shores."
1847. "Aug. 30th--RYDE.--Reading Missionary Enterprises by
Williams...Zeal, devotion, joy, simplicity of heart, faith, love; and
we here have barely affection enough to thank God that such deeds have
been done. Talk of 'doing good' and being 'useful in one's
generation,' why, these admirable men performed more in one month than
I or many others shall perform in a whole life!"
The eloquent Dr. Richard Winter Hamilton, reflecting that sacrifice to
heroes is reserved until after sunset, recalled William Carey, eight
years after his death, as "wielding a power to which all difficulties
yielded, but that power noiseless as a law of nature; great in
conception as well as in performance; profound as those deep
combinations of language in which the Indian philosophy and polytheism
hide themselves, but gentle as the flower which in his brief recreation
he loved to train; awful as the sage, simple as the child; speaking
through the Eastern world in as many languages, perhaps, as 'the cloven
tongues of fire' represented; to be remembered and blessed as long as
Ganges rolls!"
The historian of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Robert Hall, whom
Sir James Mackintosh pronounced the greatest English orator, have both
attempted an estimate of Carey's genius and influence. Dr. F. A. Cox
remarks:--"Had he been born in the sixteenth century he might have been
a Luther, to give Protestantism to Europe; had he turned his thought
and observations merely to natural philosophy he might have been a
Newton; but his faculties, consecrated by religion to a still higher
end, have gained for him the sublime distinction of having been the
Translator of the Scriptures and the Benefactor of Asia." Robert Hall
spoke thus of Carey in his lifetime:--"That extraordinary man who, from
the lowest obscurity and poverty, without assistance, rose by dint of
unrelenting industry to the highest honours of literature, became one
of the first of Orientalists, the first of Missionaries, and the
instrument of diffusing more religious knowledge among his
contemporaries than has fallen to the lot of any individual since the
Reformation; a man who unites with the most profound and varied
attainments the fervour of an evangelist, the piety of a saint, and the
simplicity of a child."
Except the portrait in London and the bust in Calcutta, no memorial,
national, catholic, or sectarian, marks the work of Carey. That work
is meanwhile most appropriately embodied in the College for natives at
Serampore, in the Lall Bazaar chapel and Benevolent Institution for the
poor of Calcutta. The Church of England, which he left, like John
Wesley, has allowed E. S. Robinson, Esq., of Bristol, to place an
inscription, on brass, in the porch of the church of his native
village, beside the stone which he erected over the remains of his
father, Edmund, the parish clerk:--"To the Glory of God and in memory
of Dr. Wm. Carey, Missionary and Orientalist."
Neither Baptist nor Anglican, the present biographer would, in the name
of the country which stood firm in its support of Carey and Serampore
all through the forty-one years of his apostolate, add this final
eulogy, pronounced in St. George's Free Church, Edinburgh, on the man
who, more than any other and before all others, made the civilisation
of the modern world by the English-speaking races a Christian
force.[36] Carey, childlike in his humility, is the most striking
illustration in all Hagiology, Protestant or Romanist, of the Lord's
declaration to the Twelve when He had set a little child in the midst
of them, "Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Yet we, nigh a century after he
went forth with the Gospel to Hindostan, may venture to place him where
the Church History of the future is likely to keep him--amid the
uncrowned kings of men who have made Christian England what it is,
under God, to its own people and to half the human race. These are
Chaucer, the Father of English Verse; Wyclif the Father of the
Evangelical Reformation in all lands; Hooker, the Father of English
Prose; Shakspere, the Father of English Literature; Milton, the Father
of the English Epic; Bunyan, the Father of English Allegory; Newton,
the father of English Science; Carey, the Father of the Second
Reformation through Foreign Missions.
APPENDIX
I.--CHARTER OF INCORPORATION OF SERAMPORE COLLEGE
WE, Frederick the Sixth, by the Grace of God King of Denmark, the
Venders and Gothers, Duke of Slesvig Holsten, Stormarn, Ditmarsken,
Limessborg and Oldenborg, by writings these make known and publicly
declare, that whereas William Carey and Joshua Marshman, Doctors of
Divinity, and John Clark Marshman, Esq., inhabitants of our town of
Fredericksnagore (or Serampore) in Bengal, being desirous of founding a
College to promote piety and learning particularly among the native
Christian population of India, have to secure this object erected
suitable buildings and purchased and collected suitable books, maps,
etc., and have humbly besought us to grant unto them and such persons
as shall be elected by them and their successors to form the Council of
the College in the manner to be hereafter named, our Royal Charter of
Incorporation that they may the more effectually carry into execution
the purposes above-mentioned:--We, being desirous to encourage so
laudable an undertaking, have of our special grace and free motion
ordained, constituted, granted and declared, and by the presents We do
for ourselves, our heirs and successors ordain, constitute, grant and
declare:
1. That the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark
Marshman, and such other person or persons as shall successively be
elected and appointed the Council of the said College, in the manner
hereafter mentioned, shall by virtue of the presents be for ever
hereafter one body politic and incorporate by the name of the Serampore
College for the purposes aforesaid to have perpetual succession and to
have a common seal, and by the said name to sue and be sued, to implead
and be impleaded, and to answer and be answered unto in every court and
place belonging to us, our heirs and successors.
2. And We do hereby ordain, constitute and declare that the persons
hereby incorporated and their successors shall for ever be competent in
law to purchase, hold and enjoy for them and their successors any goods
and chattels whatsoever and to receive, purchase, hold and enjoy, they
and their successors, any lands, tenements or hereditaments whatever,
and that they shall have full power and authority to sell, exchange or
otherwise dispose of any real or personal property to be by them
acquired as aforesaid, unless the sale or alienation of such property
be specially prohibited by the donor or donors thereof, and to do all
things relating to the said College or Corporation in as ample a manner
or form as any of our liege subjects, or any other body politic or
corporate in our said kingdom or its dependencies may or can do.
3. And We do hereby ordain, grant and declare that the number of
Professors, Fellows or Student Tutors and Students, shall be indefinite
and that the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark
Marshman, shall be the first Council of the said College, and that in
the event of its appearing to them necessary during their life-time, or
in the case of the death of any one of the three members of the said
first Council, the survivors or survivor shall and may under their
respective hands and seals appoint such other person or persons to be
members of the Council of the College, and to succeed each other so as
to become Members of the said Council in the order in which they shall
be appointed, to the intent that the Council of the said College shall
for ever consist of at least three persons.
4. And We do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that for the
better government of the said College, and the better management of its
concerns, the said William Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark
Marshman, the members of the first Council, shall have full power and
authority for the space of ten years from the date of these presents,
to make and establish such statutes as shall appear to them useful and
necessary for the government of the said College, in which statutes
they shall define the powers to be entrusted to their successors, to
the Professors, the Fellows or Student Tutors and the other Officers
thereof, and the duties to be performed by these respectively for the
management of the estates, lands, revenues and goods--and of the
business of the said College, and the manner of proposing, electing,
admitting and removing all and every one of the Council, the
Professors, the Fellows or Tutors, the officers, the students and the
servants thereof, and shall make and establish generally all such other
statutes as may appear to them necessary for the future good government
and prosperity of the said College, provided that these statutes be not
contrary to the laws and statutes of our realm.
5. And we do hereby further ordain, grant and declare, that the
statutes thus made and established by the said three members of the
first Council, and given or left in writing under their respective
hands, shall be valid and in full force at the expiration of ten years
from the date of these presents, so that no future Council of the
College shall have power to alter, change or vary them in any manner
whatever and that the statutes shall for ever be considered the
constitution of the said College. And we do hereby appoint and declare
that these statutes shall be made and established by the said William
Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marshman alone, so that in case
either of them should die before the expiration of ten years, the power
of completing or perfecting these statutes shall devolve wholly on the
survivors or survivor; and that in case all three of them should die
before the expiration of ten years, the statutes which they have left
in writing under their hands, or under the hand of the last survivor
among them shall be considered "The Fundamental Statutes and
Constitution of Serampore College," incapable of receiving either
addition or alteration, and shall and may be registered in our Royal
Court of Chancery as "The Statutes and Constitution of Serampore
College."
6. And We do hereby further appoint, grant and declare that from and
after the completion of the statutes of the said College in the above
said time of ten years, the said Council of the College shall be deemed
to consist of a Master or President and two or four members who may be
Professors or otherwise as the Statutes may direct so that the said
Council shall not contain less than three, nor more than five persons,
as shall be defined in the Statutes. The Council shall ever be elected
as the Statutes of the College may direct, yet the said Master or
President shall always previously have been a Member of the said
College; and upon the decease of the said Master or President, the
Council of the said College shall be unable to do any act or deed until
the appointment of a new Master or President, save and except the
appointment of such a Master.
7. And We further appoint, grant and declare, that the said William
Carey, Joshua Marshman and John Clark Marshman, the members of the
first Council, and their successors for ever, shall have the power of
conferring upon the students of the said College, Native Christians as
well as others, degrees of rank and honour according to their
proficiency in as ample a manner as any other such College, yet the
said Serampore College shall only have the power of conferring such
degrees on the students that testify their proficiency in Science and
no rank or other special right shall be connected therewith in our
dominions. And We do hereby further appoint, grant and declare, that
after the expiration of the said ten years, the said Council of the
College and their successors for ever shall have power to make and
establish such orders and bye-laws as shall appear to them useful and
necessary for the government of the said College, and to alter, suspend
or repeal those already made, and from time to time make such new ones
in their room as shall appear to them most proper and expedient
provided the same be not repugnant to the Statutes of the College, or
to the laws of our realm, and that after the expiration of these ten
years any member of the Council shall have power to move the enactment
of any new bye-law, or the alteration, suspension or repeal of any
existing one provided notice of such motion shall have been delivered
in writing to the Master and read from the Chair at one previous
meeting of the Council of the said College, but that no such motion
shall be deemed to have passed in the affirmative, until the same shall
have been discussed and decided by ballot at another meeting summoned
especially for that purpose, a majority of the members then present
having voted in the affirmative; and in this, as in all other cases, if
the votes be equal, the Master or President shall have the casting vote.
Given at our Royal Palace in Copenhagen on the twenty-third day of
February, in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and
twenty-seven, in the nineteenth year of our reign.
Under our Royal Hand and Seal.
FREDERICK R.
II.--STATUTES AND REGULATIONS OF SERAMPORE COLLEGE
June 12th, 1833.
1. Article the Third of the Charter granted by his Danish Majesty,
having authorised the first Council of Serampore College in their
lifetime to nominate under their hand and seal such other person or
persons for colleagues or successors as may to them appear most proper,
so that the Council shall always consist of at least three persons,
their successors in the Council shall be competent in like manner to
nominate in their lifetime, under their separate hand and seal, such
person or persons as they may deem most proper to fill vacancies then
existing or which may occur on their demise; members thus nominated and
chosen shall succeed to the Council in order of their nomination.
2. It being fixed in the Charter that the Council must consist of the
Master or President and at least two, but no more than four Members,
and that on the demise of the Master no act shall be done until another
be elected, the Master and Council for the time being shall appoint the
next Master under their separate hand and seal. If on the demise of a
Master no one be found thus appointed under the hand and seal of a
majority of the Council, the Senior Member of the Council shall succeed
as Master.
3. The Charter having given the casting vote to the Master, in all
cases when the votes are equal the casting vote shall lie with the
Master, and if there be no Master, it shall lie with the Senior Member
of the Council.
4. Learning and piety being peculiar to no denomination of Christians,
one member of the Council may at all times be of any other denomination
besides the Baptist, to preserve the original design of the
Institution; however, if on the election of a Master a number of the
Council be equally divided, that part which is entirely of the Baptist
denomination shall have the casting vote, whether it includes the
Master or not.
5. The management of the College, including its revenues and property,
the choice of Professor and Tutors, the admission of Students, the
appointment of all functionaries and servants, and the general order
and government of the College, shall ever be vested in the Master and
the Council. The Master shall see that the Statutes and Regulations of
the Council be duly carried into effect, and take order for the good
government of the College in all things. His signature is necessary to
the validity of all deeds, instruments, documents and proceedings.
6. "The first Council and their successor for ever" being authorised by
the Charter "to confer such degrees of rank and honour as shall
encourage learning" in the same manner as other Colleges and
Universities, they shall from time to time confer degrees in such
branches of Knowledge and Science as may be studied there, in the same
manner as the Universities in Denmark, Germany and Great Britain. In
doing this the Master and Council shall ad libitum call in the aid of
any or all the Professors of Serampore College. All such degrees shall
be perfectly free of expense to the person on whom they may be
conferred, whether he be in India, Europe or America.
7. No oaths shall be administered in Serampore College, either to the
Members of Council, the Professors and Tutors, or the Students. In all
cases a solemn promise, duly recorded and signed by the party, shall be
accepted instead of an oath.
8. Marriage shall be no bar to any office or situation in Serampore
College, from that of the Master to that of the lowest student.
9. The salaries of the Professors and Tutors in Serampore College shall
be appointed, and the means of support for all functionaries, students
and servants be regulated by the Council in such manner as shall best
promote the objects of the Institution.
10. It is intended that neither the Master nor any Member of the
Council in general shall receive any salary. But any Master who may
not previously reside in the College shall have a residence there free
of rent for himself and his family. And if the Council shall elect any
one in Europe or in America, whom they deem eminent for learning and
piety, a Member of the Council, with a view to choosing him Master,
should they on trial deem him worthy, the Council shall be competent to
appoint him such salary as they may deem necessary, not exceeding,
however, the highest given to a Professor.
11. As the founders of the College deem the belief of Christ's Divinity
and Atonement essential to vital Christianity, the promotion of which
is the grand object of this Institution, no one shall be eligible to
the College Council or to any Professorship who is known to oppose
these doctrines, and should any one of the Professors or any member of
the Council unhappily so change his views after his election as to
oppose these fundamental doctrines of Christianity, on this being
clearly and decidedly proved from his teaching or his writings, he
shall vacate the office he previously held. But every proceeding of
this nature on the part of the College Council shall be published to
the Christian world, with the proofs on which it may rest, as an
Appendix to the succeeding Report.
12. Members of the Council are eligible from among the Professors of
the College, or from among any in India, Europe, or America whom the
College Council may deem suitable in point of learning, piety, and
talent.
13. Students are admissible at the discretion of the Council from any
body of Christians, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, the Greek, or
the Armenian Church; and for the purpose of study, from the Mussulman
and Hindu youth, whose habits forbid their living in the College. No
caste, colour, or country shall bar any man from admission into
Serampore College.
14. Expulsion shall be awarded in cases of open immorality,
incorrigible idleness, neglect of the College Statutes and regulations,
or repeated disobedience to the officers of the College.
15. Any person in India, Europe, or America shall be at liberty to
found any Professorship, or to attach to Serampore College any annual
exhibition or prize for the encouragement of learning in the same
manner as in the Universities of Great Britain, regulating such
endowment according to their own will; and it shall be duty of the
College Council to carry such benefactions into effect in strict
consonance with the will of the donors as far as shall be consistent
with the Statutes of the College.
16. It shall be lawful for the first Council of the College or their
successors to make and rescind any bye-laws whatever, provided they be
not contrary to these Statutes.
17. The Charter having declared that the number of the Professors and
students in Serampore College remains unlimited, they shall be left
thus unlimited, the number to be regulated only by the gracious
providence of God and the generosity of the public in India, Europe and
America.
III.--ARTICLE VI., CLAUSE 2, OF THE TREATY OF PURCHASE, TRANSFERRING
SERAMPORE TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
"The rights and immunities granted to the Serampore College by Royal
Charter of date, 23rd February, 1827, shall not be interfered with, but
continue in force in the same manner as if they had been obtained by a
Charter from the British Government, subject to the general law of
British India."
FOOTNOTES
[1] Iphicrates, great Athenian general, who was the son of a shoemaker,
used this saying, fit motto for Carey, _ex oiôn eis oia_.
[2] The shopmate, William Manning, preserved this signboard. In 1881
we found a Baptist shoemaker, a descendant of Carey's wife, with four
assistants, at work in the shed. Then an old man, who had occasionally
worked under Carey, had just died, and he used to tell how Carey had
once flipped him with his apron when he had allowed the wax to boil
over.
[3] In the library of the late Rev. T. Toller of Kettering was a
manuscript (now in the library of Bristol Baptist College) of nine
small octavo pages, evidently in the exquisitely small and legible
handwriting of Carey, on the Psalter. The short treatise discusses the
literary character and authorship of the Psalms in the style of
Michaelis and Bishop Lowth, whose writings are referred to. The Hebrew
words used are written even more beautifully than the English. If this
little work was written before Carey went to India--and the caligraphy
seems to point to that--the author shows a very early familiarity with
the writings of one who was his predecessor as a Christian Orientalist,
Sir William Jones. The closing paragraph has this sentence:--"A
frequent perusal of the book of Psalms is recommended to all. We
should permit few days to pass without reading in Hebrew one of those
sacred poems; the more they are read and studied, the more will they
delight, edify, and instruct."
[4] Twice reprinted, in Leicester, and in London (1892) in facsimile.
[5] Wealth of Nations, Book IV., Chap. VII.
[6] Mr. Thomas Haddon of Clipstone writes: "I recollect when I was
about ten years old, at my father's house; it was on a Saturday, Carey
was on his way to Arnsby (which is twenty miles from Moulton) to supply
there the following Sabbath; he had then walked from Moulton to
Clipstone, a distance of ten miles, and had ten miles further to walk
to Arnsby. My honoured father had been intimately acquainted with him
for some years before, and he pressed him to stay and take an early cup
of tea before he went further. I well recollect my father saying to
him, 'I suppose you still work at your trade?' (which was that of an
army and navy shoemaker). Mr. Carey replied: 'No, indeed, I do not;
for yesterday week I took in my work to Kettering, and Mr. Gotch came
into the warehouse just as I had emptied my bag. He took up one of the
shoes and said, "Let me see, Carey, how much do you earn a week?" I
said, "About 9s., sir." Mr. Gotch then said: "I have a secret to tell
you, which is this: I do not intend you should spoil any more of my
leather, but you may proceed as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, and I will allow you from my own private purse 10s. a
week!" With that sum and about 5s. a week which I get from my people
at Moulton, I can make a comfortable living' (although at that time he
had a wife and three children to provide for)."
[7] Farewell Letters on Returning to Bengal in 1821.
[8] Rev. A. T. Clarke succeeded Kiernander in 1789 in the Old or
Mission Church, according to Miss Blechynden's Calcutta Past and
Present (1905), p. 84.
[9] At this time, and up to 1801, the last survivor of the Black Hole
tragedy was living in Calcutta and bore his own name, though the
missionary knew it not. Mrs. Carey was a country-born woman, who, when
a girl, had married an officer of one of the East Indiamen, and with
him, her mother, and sister, had been shut up in the Black Hole, where,
while they perished, she is said to have retained life by swallowing
her tears. Dr. Bishop, of Merchant Taylors' School--Clive's
School--wrote Latin verses on the story, which thus conclude--
"...Nescit sitiendo perire
Cui sic dat lacrymas quas bibat ipsa fides."
--See Echoes from Old Calcutta, by Dr. Busteed, C.I.E.
[10] But not its Church. In October 1796 Mr. A. Johnstone, thirty
years elder in Lady Yester's congregation, beside the University of
Edinburgh, began a prayer meeting for Carey's work and for foreign
missions. He was summoned to the Presbytery, and there questioned as
if he had been a "Black-neb" or revolutionary. This meeting led to the
foundation of the Sabbath School and Destitute Sick Societies in
Edinburgh. See Lives of the Haldanes.
[11] Dr. Marshman's English translation is still used, beginning--
"Oh! thou my soul forget no more
The Friend who all thy misery bore."
[12] The chatookee is a bird which, they say, drinks not at the streams
below: but when it rains, opening its bill, it catches the drops as
they fall from the clouds.
[13] The sight of the red coat of the military surgeon who attended him
gave this form to his delirious talk: "I treated him very roughly and
refused to touch his medicine. In vain did he retire and put on a
black coat. I knew him and was resolved."
[14] In a criticism of the three Sanskrit grammars of Carey, Wilkins,
and Colebrooke, the first number of the Quarterly Review in 1809
pronounces the first "everywhere useful, laborious, and practical. Mr.
Wilkins has also discussed these subjects, though not always so amply
as the worthy and unwearied missionary. We have been much pleased with
Dr. Carey's very sensible preface."
[15] It was reserved for a young Orientalist, whom the career of Carey
and Wilson of Bombay attracted to the life of a Christian missionary,
to do full justice to this book and its literature. In 1885 the Hon.
Ion Keith-Falconer, M.A., published, at the Cambridge University Press,
his Kalilah and Dimnah, or The Fables of Bidpai: Being an Account of
their Literary History, with an English Translation of the later Syriac
Version of the Same, and Notes. The heroic scholar and humble follower
of Christ, having given himself and his all to found a Mission to the
Mohammedans of South Arabia, at Sheikh Othman, near Aden, died there,
on 11th May 1887, a death which will bring life to Yemen, through his
memory, and the Mission which he founded, his family support, and the
United Free Church of Scotland carry on in his name.
[16] THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS,
MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE
First
Published in
1801. BENGALI--New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9.
1811. Ooriya " " in 1819.
1824. Maghadi " only.
1815-19. Assamese " " in 1832.
1824. Khasi.
1814-24. Manipoori.
1808. SANSKRIT " " in 1811-18.
1809-11. HINDI " " in 1813-18.
1822-32. Bruj-bhasa " only.
1815-22. Kanouji " "
1820. Khosali--Gospel of Matthew only.
1822. Oodeypoori--New Testament only.
1815. Jeypoori "
1821. Bhugeli "
1821. Marwari "
1822. Haraoti "
1823. Bikaneri "
1823. Oojeini "
1824. Bhatti "
1832. Palpa "
1826. Kumaoni "
1832. Gurhwali "
1821. Nepalese "
1811. MARATHI-- " Old Testament in 1820.
1820. Goojarati " only.
1819. Konkan " Pentateuch in 1821.
1815. PANJABI " " and Historical Books
in 1822.
1819. Mooltani--New Testament.
1825. Sindhi--Gospel of Matthew only.
1820. Kashmeeri--New Testament; and Old Testament to 2nd Book
of Kings.
1820-26. Dogri--New Testament only.
1819. PUSHTOO--New Test. and Old Test. Historical Books.
1815. BALOOCHI " Three Gospels.
1818. TELUGOO " and Pentateuch in 1820.
1822. KANARESE " only.
MALDIVIAN--Four Gospels.
EDITED AND PRINTED ONLY BY CAREY
Persian. Singhalese.
Hindostani. Chinese (Dr. Marshman's).
Malayalam. Javanese.
Burmese--Matthew's Gospel. Malay.
[17] Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-77. London, 1884.
[18] Mr. John Marshman, in his Life and Times of the three, states that
Fry and Figgins, the London typefounders, would not produce under £700
half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native turned out at about
£100. In 1813 Dr. Marshman's Chinese Gospels were printed on movable
metallic types, instead of the immemorial wooden blocks, for the first
time in the twenty centuries of the history of Chinese printing. This
forms an era in the history of Chinese literature, he justly remarks.
[19] The fervent printer thus wrote to his Hull friends:--"To give to a
man a New Testament who never saw it, who has been reading lies as the
Word of God; to give him these everlasting lines which angels would be
glad to read--this, this is my blessed work."
[20] In 1795 Captain Dodds, a Madras officer front Scotland, translated
part of the Bible into Telugoo, and, lingering on in the country to
complete the work, died seven days after the date of his letter on the
subject in the Missionary Magazines of 1796.
[21] Then Editor of the Friend of India.
[22] The Chaitanya Charita Amrita, by Krishna Dass in 1557, was the
first of importance.
[23] Nor was his influence confined to the Protestant division of
Christendom. When, on the Restoration of 1815, France became once more
aggressively Romanist for a time, the Association for the Propagation
of the Faith was founded at Lyons and Paris, avowedly on the model of
the Baptist Missionary Society, and it now raises a quarter of a
million sterling a year for its missions. The expression in an early
number of its Annales is:--"C'est l'Angleterre qui a fourni l'idée
modèle," etc. "La Société des Anabaptistes a formé pour ses Missions
des Sociétés," etc.
[24] Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., chapter I.
[25] Fuller more than once referred to the dying words of Sutcliff--"I
wish I had prayed more." "I do not suppose he wished he had prayed more
frequently, but more spiritually. I wish I had prayed more for the
influences of the Holy Spirit; I might have enjoyed more of the power
of vital godliness. I wish I had prayed more for the assistance of the
Holy Spirit in studying and preaching my sermons; I might have seen
more of the blessing of God attending my ministry. I wish I had prayed
more for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to attend the labours of our
friends in India; I might have witnessed more of the effects of their
efforts in the conversion of the heathen."
[26] The Baptist missionary, who became an Arian, and was afterwards
employed by Lord William Bentinck to report on the actual state of
primary education in Bengal.
[27] The first India chaplain of the Church of Scotland, superintendent
of stationery and editor of the John Bull.--See Life of Alexander Duff,
D.D.
[28] His Majesty's Lord Chamberlain formally expressed to the British
Minister at Copenhagen, H.E. the Hon. Edmund Monson, C.B., the King's
high pleasure at "the author's noble expressions of the good his
pre-possessors of the throne and the government of Denmark tried to do
for their Indian subjects," when the first edition of this Life of
William Carey, D.D., was presented to His Majesty.--See Taylor and
Son's Biographical and Literary Notices of William Carey, D.D.,
Northampton, 1886.
[29] In 1834, the year Carey died, there were in the college ten
European and Eurasian students learning Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Bengali,
mathematics, chemistry, mental philosophy, and history (ancient and
ecclesiastical). There were forty-eight resident native Christians and
thirty-four Hindoos, sons of Brahmans chiefly, learning Sanskrit,
Bengali, and English. "The Bengal language is sedulously
cultivated...The Christian natives of India will most effectually
combat error and diffuse sounder information with a knowledge of
Sanskrit. The communication, therefore, of a thoroughly classic Indian
education to Christian youth is deemed an important but not always an
indispensable object."
[30] Serampore--Srirampur or place of the worshipful Ram.
[31] Aitchison's Collection, vol. i., edition 1892, pp. 81-86
[32] Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., 1879.
[33] William Carey, by James Culross, D.D., 1881.
[34] For years, and till the land was sold to the India Jute Company in
1875, the Garden was kept up at the expense of John Marshman, Esq.,
C.S.I.
[35] Sa. Rs.
"From May 1801 to June 1807, inclusive, as Teacher of
Bengali and Sanskrit, 74 months at 500 rupees monthly 37,000
From 1st July 1807 to 31st May 1830, as Professor of
ditto, at 1000 rupees monthly 2,75,000
From 23rd Oct. to July 1830, inclusive, 300 rupees
monthly, as Translator of Government Regulations 24,600
From 1st July 1830 to 31st May 1834, a pension of 500
rupees monthly 23,500
"Sicca Rupees 3,60,100"
[36] The Evangelical Succession. Third Series. Edinburgh, Macniven and
Wallace, 1884.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of William Carey, by George Smith