Pioneers and Founders

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  However, by vigorous exertion, Thomas found that a Danish ship would be lying in the Downs, on her way to the East Indies, and that a passage in her would cost 100_l. for a full-grown person and 50_l. for a child. Posting down to Northamptonshire, Carey made a desperate effort to persuade his wife to come with him, and succeeded at last, on condition that her sister, Miss Old, should come too. There were now five children, and the passage-money for the whole party amounted to 600_l., of which their utmost efforts, including the sale of all the little property the Careys possessed, could only raise half.

  Thomas, who really had a generous spirit, then arranged that the whole party should be squeezed into two cabins, and that Mr. and Mrs. Carey alone should be treated as first-class passengers. They were taken on these terms; but the captain, an Englishman, naturalized in Denmark, gave Mr. Thomas and Miss Old each a cabin, made them dine at his own table, and treated them all most kindly.

  Thus they safely arrived at Calcutta; but this was only the beginning of troubles. The goods, the sale of which was intended to maintain the mission, were entrusted to Thomas, and realized next to nothing; and Carey was indebted to the goodwill of a rich Hindoo for a miserable house in an unhealthy suburb of Calcutta, where he lodged his unfortunate family. They had a great deal of illness, and he was able to do little but study the language and endeavour to translate the Bible into Bengalee. Several moves made their state rather worse than better, until, in 1795, a gentleman in the Civil Service, Mr. George Udney, offered Carey the superintendence of an indigo factory of his own at Mudnabutty, where he hoped both to obtain a maintenance, and to have great opportunities of teaching the natives in his employment.

  Disaster as usual followed him: the spot was unhealthy, the family had fevers, one of the children died, and the mother lost her reason from grief, so that she had to be kept under restraint for the rest of her life. Nor was Carey a better indigo-planter than a shoe-maker; the profits of the factory dwindled, and the buildings fell into ruin; the seasons were bad, and in three years Mr. Udney found himself obliged to give up the speculation; but in the meantime, though Carey had not been able to produce much effect on the natives, he had completed the preparation of the implement to which he most trusted for his work, a translation of the New Testament; and, moreover, had been presented by good Mr. Udney with a wooden printing-press with Bengalee type. The wonderful-looking thing was set up in one of the side rooms at the factory, and was supposed by the natives to be the idol of the Europeans!

  In the meantime he opened a school, and preached to the natives in all the villages round, but without making much, if any, impression; indeed he was so disheartened, that he did not even teach his own children. The chief benefit of his residence in India was at present the example he set, and the letters he sent home, which bore in on the minds of others the necessities of their brethren in the East, and brought aid in subscriptions and, what was still more needed, men.

  In 1799, four members of the Baptist communion offered themselves to go out as missionaries to India, and two of these were men who left most important traces behind them: William Ward, who had been a printer and editor of a newspaper at Derby, and had seen Mr. Carey before his going out to India, and Joshua Marshman. This latter was the person who, above all others, gave the struggling mission the strength, consistency, and prudence which it wanted. The descendant of an old Puritan officer on the one side, and of Huguenot refugees on the other, he was brought up in strict Baptist principles by his father, who was one of the cloth weavers then inhabiting Wiltshire in great numbers. As a child, he was passionately fond of reading, and his huge appetite for books and great memory made him a wonder in his village. A London bookseller, who was visiting the place, heard of this clever lad, and took him into his shop as an errand boy; but Joshua found that his concern was more with the outside of books than the inside, and came home, at the end of five months, to his father's loom.

  He was a steady lad, with no passions save for reading and quiet heartfelt religion; but though he had never been guilty of any serious fault, the Baptist body to which his family belonged considered he had too much "head-knowledge" of Christianity to have much "heart-knowledge" of its truths; and for that reason only, and their distrust and contempt of human learning, refused to admit him to baptism.

  However, this was no obstacle either to his marrying the daughter of a minister of his own persuasion, or taking the mastership of a school at Bristol, where he found less narrow-minded co-religionists, and was baptized by them in 1734, when twenty-six years of age. He was a successful schoolmaster, and was likewise able to join the classes at Bristol Academy, where he studied thoroughly Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. His circumstances were prosperous and rapidly improving when, after five years of great comfort at Bristol, his mind became so imbued with the sense of the need that some one should assist Carey, that he offered himself, together with Ward and two other young men, one of whom he had recently brought back to Christianity from Tom Paine's infidel doctrines. Again his "human learning" stood in his way. The honest, ignorant men who were working so earnestly, fancied it connected with Pharisaism, and had little idea that the Brahmin philosophy was as hard to deal with as the Greek. They accepted him, but with hesitation, and a passage for the whole party, including wives and children, was taken in an American vessel.

  Mr. Charles Grant advised them not to attempt to land at Calcutta, where they would probably be at once arrested and sent home again, but to land at the Danish colony of Serampore, and there wait for an opportunity of joining Carey at Mudnabutty.

  Serampore is on the Hooghly, sixteen miles above Calcutta, and here they found themselves on the 13th of October, 1799, in a town pleasantly situated, beautiful to look at, and full of a mixed population of Danes, Dutch, English, and natives of all hues. They were preparing to set forth for Mudnabutty when, on the fifth day after their arrival, they were informed that the British Government demanded that they should be immediately re-embarked and sent home again, whilst a local English paper, having never heard of Baptists, concluded that the word was a mistake for Papists, and announced the arrival of four Popish priests, emissaries of Buonaparte. The Danish governor, Colonel Bie, was resolved to stand his ground and not deliver them up; but they were prevented from setting foot upon the Company's territory, and the unwholesome, damp, little house that they were obliged to take while waiting at Serampore proved fatal to one of their number, the young man whom Marshman had rescued from infidelity, who died of chill and fever before his inexperienced associates were aware of his danger.

  Another difficulty in the way of joining Carey and assisting in the printing of his translations, was that papers which were thought dangerous to the British power had lately been issued, and the Marquis Wellesley, who was then in the midst of his great war with Tippoo Sahib, was resolved not to allow any printing to be carried on except in Calcutta, where it could be under the eye of his officials. However, he had no objection to the establishment of mission, school, or press on the Danish ground, and Colonel Bie was only desirous to keep them there; so it was decided to send Ward alone, with a Danish passport, to visit Carey at Mudnabutty, and confer with him upon his removal to Serampore, and the establishment of a mission settlement there.

  All doubt was removed, while this consultation was in progress, by finding that the jealous Anglo-Indians were prepared to arrest any missionary whom they caught upon their ground; and Carey's five years' covenant as an indigo planter being now run out, his supposed idol was taken down and packed up, and his four boys and poor insane wife removed to Serampore, where all their present capital was laid out in the purchase of a piece of ground and the construction of the habitations of the little colony. The expenses were to be defrayed from a common stock, each missionary in turn superintending the domestic arrangements for a month, all the household dining together at one table, and only a small allowance being made to each head of a family for pocket money.

  Six families were here uni
ted, and only 200_l. was left to support them for the six months until remittances could be obtained from England; but all were used to cottage fare, and were not so dependent on servants as most Europeans in India. A piece of land attached to the house became, under Mr. Carey's care, a beautiful botanic garden. The press was set up under the care of Ward, and on the 18th of March, 1800, the first sheets of the Gospels in Bengalee were struck off. Mr. and Mrs. Marshman opened two boarding schools for European children for the maintenance of the mission, and their great ability in tuition rendered these so profitable as to become its main support. This was soon followed by another school for the natives, to which they eagerly thronged.

  Meanwhile the missionaries went out, singly or in pairs, into the streets or the neighbourhood of the heathen temples, and attracted a crowd by singing hymns in Bengalee, and then preached to them, offering to receive any inquiries at the mission-house. Carey's time was almost entirely taken up in hearing and answering these questions; but, as usual, the ties of family, society, and custom almost always proved too strong to be broken through even by the conviction of the truth of Christianity. Ram- bosoo, Mr. Carey's first Hindoo friend, was like Serfojee, ready to do anything on behalf of Christianity except to embrace it openly himself.

  Mr. Thomas had meantime engaged himself as superintendent of a sugar factory at Beerbhoom, whence he came to visit his brethren at Serampore, bringing with him one of his workmen named Fukier, whom he believed that he had converted. The man gave so good an account of his faith that the missionaries deemed him fit for baptism, and rejoiced in him as the first- fruits of seven years' labour; but he went home to take leave of his friends, and either they prevailed on him to give up his intention, or privately murdered him, for he never was heard of again.

  However, a carpenter of Serampore named Krishnu, who had been brought into the mission-house with a dislocated arm for Mr. Thomas to set, was so struck by what he heard there that he, with his wife and daughter and his brother Goluk, were all willing to give up their caste and be baptized.

  There was much, however, to render the joy of this day far from being unmixed. Poor John Thomas, after his seventeen years of effort, fitful, indeed, but sincere, was so overjoyed at this confession of faith that he became frantic, and in three days was raving violently. Meanwhile, the native mob, infuriated by hearing that Krishnu and Goluk had renounced their caste, rose to the number of two thousand, and dragged them to the magistrate, but found nothing to accuse them of. The magistrate released them, but they were brought back immediately after, on the plea that the person to whom Krishnu's daughter had been betrothed had a claim upon her. This, however, the authorities disallowed, and they even gave the missionaries a guard to secure them from any interruption during the rite of Baptism, which, by the customs of their sect, was necessarily in public, and by immersion; but there was serious consultation whether it were fit to use the Ganges, so superstitiously adored by the natives, for the purpose. Some argued that the Hindoos might think that the sacredness of Gunga was thus recognized, others that they would consider that the Christians had defiled it, and it was finally resolved to use it like any other stream. In the meantime, Goluk and the two women had been so much terrified that they would not come forward; and on the day of the baptism, Sunday, the 26th of December, 1800, the only two candidates were Krishnu and Felix Carey, the missionary's own eldest son. William Carey walked from the chapel to the ghat, or steps leading to the river, with his son on one side and the Hindoo on the other; but the court they had to pass resounded with the frightful imprecations of poor Mr. Thomas in one room, echoed by screams from Mrs. Carey in the other.

  At the ghat the Danish governor himself, together with several of his countrymen, some Englishmen, a large body of Portuguese, and a throng of natives, Hindoo and Mahometan, were waiting, and before all these the baptism was performed by Mr. Carey. All were silent as if overawed, and Colonel Bie even shed tears.

  The next day there was not a scholar in the native school, but the love of learning soon filled it again. Even down till quite recently, when the bands of attachment to the old heathenism have become much loosened, every open conversion continued to empty the schools, though never for long at a time.

  The women soon recovered from their alarm and were baptized, and the mission also gained over an influential Portuguese gentleman named Fernandez, whom their tenets led them to view as in as much need of conversion as the heathen. He proved an active assistant, and for full thirty years laboured in their cause.

  In the meantime Lord Wellesley had been engaged in founding the college at Fort William, Calcutta, for the training of young Europeans for the civil service in the knowledge of the numerous native tongues, laws, and customs with which they had to deal-and which are as various as they are important-not only practically, but philosophically. The only person at that time in Bengal qualified to teach the Bengalese language was the Northamptonshire cobbler, who had acquired it for the love of God and the spread of Gospel light!

  His dissent was a disqualification for any of the higher offices of the college, but the teachership was offered to him, with a salary of 500 rupees a month-absolute affluence compared with his original condition. Yet he would not accept the post unless he were allowed still to be regarded as a missionary. No objection was made, and thus by his talent and usefulness had Carey forced from the Government which had forbidden him to set foot on their territories his recognition in the character he had always claimed. Even his private secular earnings he never regarded as his own: this income, and that arising from Marshman's school, these good men viewed as rendering their mission from henceforth independent, and setting free the Society at home to support fresh ones. Already the accounts they sent home were stirring up many more subscribers, and the commendations bestowed on them in the periodical accounts pained their humility. Ward wrote that it was like a public show: "Very fine missionaries to be seen here! Walk in, brethren and sisters, walk in!"

  It was happy for the missionaries that their ground had thus been won, for the war with Denmark occasioned Serampore to be occupied by British troops early in 1801, and this would, earlier in their career, infallibly have led to their expulsion: but, as it was, they were allowed to proceed exactly as they had done before.

  Their most serious difficulties were at an end before poor Thomas, though he had recovered from his brain fever, died of an attack of fever and ague, after having done almost an equal amount of good and harm to his cause by his excitable nature and entire want of balance. Converts continued from time to time to be gathered in: Goluk took courage after waiting about two years, and a Brahmin named Krishnu-prisad trampled on his brahminical cord or poita, and was baptized. He was allowed to wear it as a mark of distinction, but he gave it up voluntarily after three years. Moreover he broke through Indian prejudice by marrying the daughter of Krishnu, the first convert, though of a caste far inferior to his own. This was the occasion of a happy little wedding feast, given under a tree in front of the house of the bride's father, when a hymn composed by Krishnu was sung, and native dishes served up in Eastern style, after which the entertainment concluded with prayer. Only the next week, in contrast to the devotion that blessed these family ties, three Hindoo widows were burnt on a pile not far from the mission-house!

  In still greater contrast was the first funeral among the converts of the mission-house-that of a man named Gokool. The native custom is that the dead are always carried to burial by persons of their own caste, and it is intense defilement for one of another caste to touch the body. Christians were always carried by the lowest class of the Portuguese, who had fallen into so degraded a state that they were usually known by their own word for poor, "pobre," and were despised by the whole population. They were generally drunk and disorderly, and their rudeness, irreverence, and quarrels were a scandal to the solemn occasion. Mr. Marshman, who was in charge of the mission at the time in Mr. Carey's absence, had some difficulty in persuading the Hindoo converts th
at it was no shame, but a charitable work, to bear a brother's body to its last resting-place, even though they were seen doing the work of the despised pobres. Accordingly he resolved to set the example, and the corpse of the convert, within a coffin covered with white muslin, was carried to the burial-ground by Marshman, Felix Carey, a baptized Brahmin, and a baptized Hindoo, all the procession singing a Bengalee Christian hymn.

  The most remarkable events that befell the Serampore Mission from this time were either domestic, or related to their connection with the College at Fort William, and the sanction they received from Government. Lord Wellesley went home in 1805, Colonel Bie died the same year, and these were most serious losses to the cause of the Serampore mission. Lord Wellesley had followed his own judgment, and carried things with a high hand, often against the will of the East India Company, and there was a strong desire to reverse his policy. His successor, Lord Cornwallis, died two months after landing, and Sir George Barlow, who carried on the government in the interregnum, though a good man, had not force enough to withstand the dislike of the Anglo-Indians to the mission. Mr. Ward made an attempt at Calcutta to preach in Hindoo in a chapel, the ground of which had been purchased by the missionaries, but as he walked through the streets the people shouted, "That's the Hindoo padre; why dost thou destroy the caste of the people?" And when, two Sundays later, a preacher of Brahmin birth appeared, there were loud cries of indignation. "O vagabond," cried one man, "why didst thou not come to my house? I would have given thee a handful of rice rather than that thou shouldst have become a Feringhee!" In spite of these cries, however, the chapel was thronged, until, after the third Sunday, when an order came forth from the magistrates, forbidding the missionaries either to preach, allow their converts to preach, distribute tracts, or even argue with the natives-or in anyway "interfere with their prejudices"-in Calcutta; and two new missionaries, named Chater and Robinson, who had come out without a licence, were prohibited from proceeding to Serampore.