66

rid zone which skirts the region of insan- | them would carry such combustibles as ity, full of great plans and noble zeal-of Christian missionaries. A director had crotchets, tempers, and talent. Yet this said that he would rather see a band of was the instrument used by Providence devils land in India than a band of misto open the Gospel commission among the sionaries. Thomas persuaded the captain Bengalees in their own tongue, and to of his own former ship to smuggle them turn to their shores the firm and well out, by taking them secretly aboard at the considered steps of Carey. He had landed Isle of Wight. There they went before at Calcutta, and found the only sign of her arrival; and Carey patiently waited Christianity to be the hoisting of the flag for a clandestine passage, with a companion on Sunday. He advertised "for a Christ- wh was constantly dogged by bailiffs, and ian." He also published in the papers a his family left behind. At last they were plan for spreading the knowledge of on board, and hope opened for a moment. Jesus Christ and his glorious Gospel in But alas! the captain at the same time and around Bengal." This brought him had an anonymous letter, telling him the only two communications, and nothing consequences of secretly carrying objecresulted. On a second visit he found a tionable persons to India. They were put patron in one whose name is dear to every ashore, and much of their passage money friend of India. Charles Grant, in an age sacrificed-that precious money, bought of general skepticism and wild immora- with Carey's labors and Fuller's tears; ay, lity, almost alone among high officials tears; for, like Dr. Coke, he went from door avowed and adorned the Gospel of Christ. to door to beg for the heathen; and, when He forefelt the sense of responsibility as rebuffed by religious men in this cold, to India, which was afterwards to rest brick London of ours, he sometimes went upon the minds of Christians generally; into a by-street, and opened his full heart and, even with an unsteady though zeal with weeping. ous agent like Thomas, nobly gave of his fortune for missionary purposes. Under his auspices the latter spent three years laboring among the natives; but he quarreled with his best friends and came

home.

He arrived in time to lay his plans before the infant Society. It adopted him as its missionary, and appointed Carey to accompany him. This was done in a committee at which Carey was present, doubtless blessing in his heart the wonderful man who was the instrument of pointing out to him whither he was to go in his long-sought work. Mr. Thomas was unexpectedly announced. Carey sprang up, rushed into his arms, and they wept on each other's necks.

From Portsmouth Carey saw the fleet of Indiamen set sail for the land where his faith would be, and he shed bitter tears. They came to London. Men of Thomas's cast, with a cracked and porous intellect, like cork, never sink. He bustled about till a Danish Indiaman was found. He plagued Mrs. Carey till she consented to go. He took passages for himself and her sister, who accompanied her, as servants, that the cost might not exceed the funds. On the thirteenth of June, 1793, the party embarked, and on the eleventh of November the soil of Bengal was first pressed by the man whose name will shine on the first pages of its Christian history.

They had no money and no letter of credit. Their all was some goods, which worthy Mr. Thomas sold. He lived well Carey, after while the money lasted. various troubles, was indebted for shelter to a generous native, whom, twenty years after, when their lots had changed, he was enabled to place "in a situation of ease and comfort."

Carey had reached the point at which he had steadily aimed for years; but, alas! he was not past his trials yet. His wife would not hear of being dragged with her four children to India. Either loneliness, or a retreat, was forced upon him. With a sore heart he said: "I could not turn back without guilt upon my soul." His colleague was living in luxury, while The comfort he did not find in his family, Carey was struggling in a foreign land, he sought in vain from his colleague. He" with a large family, and without a friend was deeply in debt, and hunted by creditors. Then, as to a passage? the great question with every intending_voyager. No ships but those of the East-India Company sailed to India; and none of

or a farthing." He wandered about, endeavoring, with an interpreter, to explain the Gospel, and returned to his hovel to encounter a wife and sister-in-law full of bitterness and reproaches. What was he

to do? how and where can he find bread? | heart nor head, and at those studies and Along the shore of the Bay of Bengal is sacred labors for which he had such a a vast flat region of deadly jungle, inhab- heart and head as were hardly ever given ited by wild beasts, called the Sunder- to another man. He preached to his bunds. Here woodcutters resorted; and work-people constantly, and itinerated small patches were cleared for the manu- when he could. He had a taste and power facture of salt. Something possessed for one secular pursuit, and only oneCarey, in his distress, with the idea that horticulture. He loved plants and flowers; he could live by his labor here, and preach and, whether at Moulton or Serampore, at the same time. After miserable failures cultivated them ardently. He set up, in endeavoring to get money enough to while a factory manager, as an improver convey him from Calcutta, at last he reach- of agriculture; and sent for implements ed a spot where more than twenty people from England. had been carried off by tigers in a few days. He and his large family were welcomed to the house of a European whom he had found. After a while he settled on a tract cleared from the jungle, and began to build a hut. His gun was his chief means of daily bread. Providence saved him from the fever, and permitted him to show that no weight of poverty, trouble, and hindrance will break down a real instrument of God's good will toward

men.

Thomas, who had been so often his plague, was again to open his way. He had renewed an old friendship, lost by his eccentricities, and obtained a situation as manager of an indigo factory. His excellent friend and employer, Mr. Udny, had another; and for it he recommended his forlorn and long forgotten companion in the Sunderbunds. This called Carey from starvation in a wilderness to a moderate income at the head of a large establishment of natives, to whom he could preach the Gospel. He at once wrote home to the Society, saying that he no longer needed to be paid from their funds, and requesting that what they would consider as his salary should go to print the New Testament in Bengalee. "At the same time," says this true-hearted missionary, it will be my glory and joy to stand in the same relation to the Society as if I needed support from them." Of his salary he devoted a fourth, and sometimes a third, to the purposes of his mission. "His time was systematically apportioned to the management of the fac tory, the study of the language, the translation of the New Testament, and addresses to the heathen." He was prostrated by fever; one of his children was carried off by dysentery, and his wife's reason 'fled, never to return. Still the servant of God worked on, worked at that secular duty for which he had neither

But he was sowing wonderful seeds in England, while thus cultivating indigo at the unheard-of village of Mudnabatty. Dr. Ryland, in Bristol, received letters from Carey, and, knowing that Dr. Bogue and Mr. Stephen were then in the city, sent for them to hear the missionary news. When they were finished, they knelt down together, and prayed for a blessing on the distant evangelists. Strange and wondrous then was a missionary's tale, though to-day happily familiar to our ears. The two Independents retired to speak of forming a Society in their own denomination. The London Missionary Society was the result: a noble plant sown by Carey's pen in the soil of that England which he had left forever.

Carey had already had trials in most forms, and new ones arrived in the person of a colleague hot with politics, who abused every authority in India and England. He was splendidly rebuked by Andrew Fuller, with hearty English feeling and strong English language; but this could not save the missionary from the plague of a political colleague. Then his temporal prospects began to lower. The factory was not prosperous. The neighborhood was ill chosen, and the manager not well. He formed a plan for a missionary settlement of seven or eight families, living in little straw houses, and having all things in common: the details of which show that though he had been years in the country, he had no idea of how to arrange every-day affairs.

But there was a matter which he understood. God's holy word was ready for printing in Bengalee. He obtained types. A wooden press was presented to the mission by Mr. Udny; and as it began to work at Mudnabatty, the natives of India, like those of Fiji in later days, declared that it was a god. He wrote home for a press and paper, adding: “If

knowledge' of Christianity to have much 'heart knowledge' of its truths. They kept him, therefore, in a state of probation for seven years, and he eventually left Westbury Leigh without having been baptized."-Vol. i. PP.

105-6.

pp.

Happily, in Bristol, where he conducted a school, the door of the Church was not so very low, but that even men with heads on their shoulders could get in. There he was the means of converting a Mr. Grant from infidelity; and there at last he offered his services for the Indian Mission; and in three weeks from that day was sailing down the Channel.

At Serampore the missionaries found the governor and authorities among their best friends. In Calcutta they had on their side two chaplains-David Brown, a noble Yorkshireman, who long and well bore witness for his Master amid fearful ungodliness, and Claudius Buchanan, whose name is better known in England. The British Government were persuaded by them that the missionaries did not mean any harm. The state of religious information in Calcutta may be judged of from the fact that a newspaper editor, taking it for granted that the unknown word "Baptist" must be a mistake, announced that four Papist missionaries had arrived.

Yet the first-fruit gathered was to be partly of his planting. On the very day that his inquirer had rejoiced his heart by telling the "Church" at Serampore of his religious experience, he had to set a native's arm. He preached to him till he wept. Nor were his tears feigned, or from transient feeling. Mr. Thomas was in a few weeks summoned to take part in the baptism of Krishnu, with his brother, wife, and daughter. He came. He saw the wonderful sight of these Hindus sitting down to the table of the missionaries, and thereby renouncing their caste. This step raised the mob, who dragged the converts before the magistrate; but he sensibly commended Krishnu and his brother, and ordered the mob to disperse. The converts were brought before the Church to state the way in which they had been led to embrace the religion of Christ. Poor Thomas, who now saw his long labors of many years repaid, was overcome. Heavy weights of sorrow had not overturned his ill-balanced mind; but as he heard these first Hindu converts tell how the grace of God had led them, his reason gave way under excess of joy. The mob once dismissed by the magistrate returned, accusing the convert Krishnu of having refused to give his daughter to the man to whom she was betrothed. But the The missionaries, according to a plan feeble Danes showed a moral courage of Mr. Carey, agreed to live together as which, after all these years, is not always one family. They were to dine at one displayed by British magistrates, as wittable, to place all their income in a com- ness the Royapettah riot at Madras. The mon fund, by whomsoever earned, and to rioters were dismissed, the girl was asallow each family a certain sum for "per-sured of liberty of action, and a voluntary sonal expenses." This was a plan con- offer of protection was made to the misceived in a fine spirit, but not fitted for sionaries for the public administration of permanent working. No Missionary So- baptism. ciety then laboring in India had adopted the rule, which served the Methodists so much from the first, that men were not to engage in secular pursuits. The devoted at Serampore had their own efforts to look to for the chief part of their expenses. Yet, as Mr. Marshman shows, those who did little in the way of money were willing to do much in that of control, and could give strong opinions even upon the cost of Mrs. Ward's bonnet.

Poor Mr. Thomas, as fervent and wayward as ever, was away in the interior manufacturing sugar, and preaching the Gospel. He came with a hopeful inquirer to Serampore in a great excitement of joy; but when, after his return, his disciple disappeared, he became as much depressed.

The scene of the baptism was on steps leading down to the river, before the Mission premises. The Governor, the Europeans, and a vast crowd of natives assembled. Carey walked forward with two candidates-his own son and the Hindu Krishnu on either hand. The other converts had quailed at the last hour. As he advanced from the mission-house, poor Thomas was raving wild in a room on one side of the path, and his own wife hopelessly wailing on the other; as if the spirit of darkness had permission to rage at the first triumphs of Christianity among the natives of Bengal. Down to the water went the Baptist preacher and his two disciples, the one the son of his own heart, the other the first-fruits of a