The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker and Missionary Part 17

"Through divine mercy we are all well, and live in peace and love. A small cloud which threatened at the time Brother Johns left us has mercifully blown over, and we are now in the utmost harmony. I will, if possible, write to my nephew Eustace by these s.h.i.+ps, but I am so pressed for time that I can never promise to write a letter. The Lord has so blessed us that we are now printing in more languages than we could do before the fire took place.

"Give my love to Eustace, also to all who recollect or think of me. I am now near fifty-two years of age; yet through mercy I am well and am enabled to keep close to work twelve or fourteen hours a day. I hope to see the Bible printed in most of the languages in which it is begun.--I am, very affectionately yours, WM. CAREY."

Carey had previously written thus to Fuller:--"The fault lies in the clause which gives the Company power thus to send home interlopers, and is just as reasonable as one which should forbid all the people in England--a select few excepted--to look at the moon. I hope this clause will be modified or expunged in the new charter. The prohibition is wrong, and nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right."

It was left to the charter of 1853 fully to liberalise the Company, but each step was taken too late to save it from the nemesis of 1857 and extinction in 1858. "Let no man think," Wilberforce had said to the House of Commons in 1813, "that the pet.i.tions which have loaded our table have been produced by a burst of momentary enthusiasm. While the sun and moon continue to s.h.i.+ne in the firmament so long will this object be pursued with unabated ardour until the great work be accomplished."

The opposition of Anglo-Indian officials and lawyers, which vainly used no better weapons than such as Mr. Prendergast and his "tub"

fabrication, had been antic.i.p.ated and encouraged by the Edinburgh Review. That periodical was at the height of its influence in 1808, the year before John Murray's Quarterly was first published. The Rev.

Sydney Smith, as the literary and professional representative of what he delighted to call "the cause of rational religion," was the foe of every form of earnest Christianity, which he joined the mob in stigmatising as "Methodism." He was not unacquainted with Indian politics, for his equally clever brother, known as Bobus Smith, was long Advocate-General in Calcutta, and left a very considerable fortune made there to enrich the last six years of the Canon's life. Casting about for a subject on which to exercise at once his animosity and his fun, he found it in the Periodical Accounts, wherein Fuller had undoubtedly too often published letters and pa.s.sages of journals written only for the eye of the private friend. Carey frequently remonstrated against the publicity given to some of his communications, and the fear of this checked his correspondence. In truth, the new-born enthusiasm was such that, at first, the Committee kept nothing back. It was easy for a litterateur like Sydney Smith in those days to extract pa.s.sages and to give them such headings as "Brother Carey's Piety at Sea," "Hatred of the Natives to the Gospel." Smith produced an article which, as republished in his collected essays, has a historical value as a test of the bitterness of the hate which the missionary enterprise had to meet in secular literature till the death of Livingstone, Wilson, and Duff opened the eyes of journalism to the facts. In itself it must be read in the light of its author's own criticism of his articles, thus expressed in a letter to Francis Jeffrey, and of the regret that he had written it which, Jeffrey told Dr. Marshman, he lived to utter:--"Never mind; let them" (his articles) "go away with their absurdity unadulterated and pure. If I please, the object for which I write is attained; if I do not, the laughter which follows my error is the only thing which can make me cautious and tremble." But for that picture by himself we should have p.r.o.nounced Carlyle's drawing of him to be almost as malicious as his own of the Serampore missionaries--"A ma.s.s of fat and muscularity, with ma.s.sive Roman nose, piercing hazel eyes, shrewdness and fun--not humour or even wit--seemingly without soul altogether."

The attack called forth a reply by Mr. Styles so severe that Sydney Smith wrote a rejoinder which began by claiming credit for "rooting out a nest of consecrated cobblers." Sir James Mackintosh, then in Bombay, wrote of a similar a.s.sault by Mr. Thomas Twining on the Bible Societies, that it "must excite general indignation. The only measure which he could consistently propose would be the infliction of capital punishment on the crime of preaching or embracing Christianity in India, for almost every inferior degree of persecution is already practised by European or native anti-christians. But it fell to Southey, in the very first number of the Quarterly Review, in April 1809, to deal with the Rev. Sydney Smith, and to defend Carey and the Brotherhood as both deserved. The layman's defence was the more effective for its immediate purpose that he started from the same prejudice as that of the reverend Whig rationalist--"the Wesleyans, the Orthodox dissenters of every description, and the Evangelical churchmen may all be comprehended under the generic name of Methodists. The religion which they preach is not the religion of our fathers, and what they have altered they have made worse." But Southey had himself faith as well as a literary canon higher than that of his opponent who wrote only to "please" his patrons. He saw in these Methodists alone that which he appreciated as the essence of true faith--"that spirit of enthusiasm by which Europe was converted to Christianity they have in some measure revived, and they have removed from Protestantism a part of its reproach." He proceeded to tell how "this Mission, which is represented by its enemies as so dangerous to the British Empire in India, and thereby, according to a logic learnt from Buonaparte, to England also, originated in a man by name William Carey, who till the twenty-fourth year of his age was a working shoemaker. Sectarianism has this main advantage over the Established Church, that its men of ability certainly find their station, and none of its talents are neglected or lost. Carey was a studious and pious man, his faith wrong, his feelings right. He made himself competently versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He is now probably a far more learned orientalist than any European has ever been before him, and has been appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali at the College of Fort William." Then follow a history of the Mission written in a style worthy of the author of the Life of Nelson, and these statements of the political and the purely missionary questions, which read now almost as predictions:--

"The first step towards winning the natives to our religion is to show them that we have one. This will hardly be done without a visible church. There would be no difficulty in filling up the establishment, however ample; but would the archbishop, bishops, deans, and chapters of Mr. Buchanan's plan do the work of missionaries? Could the Church of England supply missionaries?--where are they to be found among them?

In what school for the promulgation of sound and orthodox learning are they trained up? There is ability and there is learning in the Church of England, but its age of fermentation has long been over; and that zeal which for this work is the most needful is, we fear, possessed only by the Methodists...

"Carey and his son have been in Bengal fourteen years, the other brethren only nine; they had all a difficult language to acquire before they could speak to a native, and to preach and argue in it required a thorough and familiar knowledge. Under these circ.u.mstances the wonder is, not that they have done so little, but that they have done so much; for it will be found that, even without this difficulty to r.e.t.a.r.d them, no religious opinions have spread more rapidly in the same time, unless there was some remarkable folly or extravagance to recommend them, or some powerful worldly inducement. Their progress will be continually accelerating; the difficulty is at first, as in introducing vaccination into a distant land; when the matter has once taken one subject supplies infection for all around him, and the disease takes root in the country. The husband converts the wife, the son converts the parent, the friend his friend, and every fresh proselyte becomes a missionary in his own neighbourhood. Thus their sphere of influence and of action widens, and the eventual issue of a struggle between truth and falsehood is not to be doubted by those who believe in the former. Other missionaries from other societies have now entered India, and will soon become efficient labourers in their station. From Government all that is asked is toleration for themselves and protection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for their own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and there is as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would be of their shrinking from it, if the cause of G.o.d and man require the sacrifice.

But the converts ought to be protected from violence, and all cramming with cow-dung prohibited on pain of retaliation with beef-tea.

"Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which the scoffers and alarmists have represented the missionaries. We, who have thus vindicated them, are neither blind to what is erroneous in their doctrine or ludicrous in their phraseology; but the anti-missionaries cull out from their journals and letters all that is ridiculous sectarian, and trifling; call them fools, madmen, tinkers, Calvinists, and schismatics; and keep out of sight their love of man, and their zeal for G.o.d, their self-devotement, their indefatigable industry, and their unequalled learning. These low-born and low-bred mechanics have translated the whole Bible into Bengali, and have by this time printed it. They are printing the New Testament in the Sanskrit, the Orissa, Mahratta, Hindostan, and Guzarat, and translating it into Persic, Telinga, Karnata, Chinese, the language of the Sieks and of the Burmans, and in four of these languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary as this is, it will appear more so when it is remembered that of these men one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at Hull, and a third the master of a charity-school at Bristol.

Only fourteen years have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in India, and in that time have these missionaries acquired this gift of tongues, in fourteen years these low-born, low-bred mechanics have done more towards spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted, by all the princes and potentates of the world--and all the universities and establishments into the bargain.

"Do not think to supersede the Baptist missionaries till you can provide from your own church such men as these, and, it may be added, such women also as their wives."

Soon after the Charter victory had been gained "that fierce and fiery Calvinist," whose dictum Southey adopted, that the question in dispute is not whether the natives shall enjoy toleration, but whether that toleration shall be extended to the teachers of Christianity, Andrew Fuller, entered into rest on the 7th May 1815, at the age of sixty-two.

Sutcliff of Olney had been the first of the three to be taken away[25]

a year before, at the same age. The scholarly Dr. Ryland of Bristol was left alone, and the home management of the Mission pa.s.sed into the hands of another generation. Up to Fuller's death that management had been almost ideally perfect. In 1812 the Committee had been increased by the addition of nineteen members, to represent the growing interest of the churches in Serampore, and to meet the demand of the "respectable" cla.s.s who had held aloof at the first, who were eager that the headquarters of so renowned an enterprise should be removed to London. But Fuller prevailed to keep the Society a little longer at Kettering, although he failed to secure as his a.s.sistant and successor the one man whose ability, experience, and prudence would have been equal to his own, and have prevented the troubles that followed--Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated a letter to Ryland wherein he thus referred to the evangelical doctrine of grace which he had been the one English theologian of his day to defend from the hyper-calvinists, and to use as the foundation of the modern missionary enterprise:--"I have preached and written much against the abuse of the doctrine of grace, but that doctrine is all my salvation and all my desire. I have no other hope than from salvation by mere sovereign, efficacious grace through the atonement of my Lord and Saviour: with this hope I can go into eternity with composure. We have some who have been giving it out of late that if Sutcliff and some others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards they would have been more useful. If those who talk thus had preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is. It is very singular that the Mission to the East originated with one of these principles, and without pretending to be a prophet, I may say if it ever falls into the hands of men who talk in this strain (of hyper-calvinism) it will soon come to nothing."

Andrew Fuller was not only the first of Foreign Mission Secretaries; he was a model for all. To him his work was spiritual life, and hence, though the most active preacher and writer of his day, he was like Carey in this, that his working day was twice as long as that of most men, and he could spend half of his time in the frequent journeys all over the kingdom to raise funds, in repeated campaigns in London to secure toleration, and in abundant letters to the missionaries. His relation to the Committee, up to the last, was equally exemplary. In the very earliest missionary organisation in England it is due to him that the line was clearly drawn between the deliberative and judicial function which is that of the members, and the executive which is that of the secretary. Wisdom and efficiency, clearness of perception and prompt.i.tude of action, were thus combined. Fuller's, too, was the special merit of realising that, while a missionary committee or church are fellow-workers only with the men and women abroad, the Serampore Brotherhood was a self-supporting, and to that extent a self-governing body in a sense true of no foreign mission ever since. The two triumvirates, moreover, consisted of giants--Carey, Marshman, and Ward abroad; Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland at home. To Carey personally the death of Fuller was more than to any other. For almost the quarter of a century he had kept his vow that he would hold the rope. When Pearce died all too soon there was none whom Carey loved like Fuller, while Fuller's devotion to Carey was all the greater that it was tempered by a wise jealousy for his perfectness. So early as 1797, Fuller wrote thus to the troublesome Fountain:--"It affords us good hope of your being a useful missionary that you seem to love and revere the counsels of Brother Carey. A humble, peaceful, circ.u.mspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous conduct like his will render you a blessing to society. Brother Carey is greatly respected and beloved by all denominations here. I will tell you what I have foreborne to tell him lest it should hurt his modesty. Good old Mr. Newton says: 'Mr.

Carey has favoured me with a letter, which, indeed, I accept as a favour, and I mean to thank him for it. I trust my heart as cordially unites with him as though I were a brother Baptist myself. I look to such a man with reverence. He is more to me than bishop or archbishop; he is an apostle. May the Lord make all who undertake missions like-minded with Brother Carey!'" As the home administrator, no less than as the theological controversialist, Andrew Fuller stands only second to William Carey, the founder of Modern English Missions.

Fuller's last letter to Carey forms the best introduction to the little which it is here necessary to record of the action of the Baptist Missionary Society when under the secretarys.h.i.+p of the Rev. John Dyer.

Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., has written the detailed history of that controversy not only with filial duty, but with a forgiving charity which excites our admiration for one who suffered more from it than all his predecessors in the Brotherhood, of which he was the last representative. The Society has long since ceased to approve of that period. Its opinion has become that of Mr. Marshman, to which a careful perusal of all the doc.u.ments both in Serampore and England has led us--"Had it been possible to create a dozen establishments like that of Serampore, each raising and managing its own funds, and connected with the Society as the centre of unity in a common cause, it ought to have been a subject of congratulation and not of regret." The whole policy of every missionary church and society is now and has long been directed to creating self-supporting and self-propagating missions, like Serampore, that the regions beyond may be evangelised--whether these be colleges of catechumens and inquirers, like those of Duff and Wilson, Hislop and Dr. Miller in India, and of Govan and Dr. Stewart in Lovedale, Kafraria; or the indigenous churches of the West Indies, West Africa, the Pacific Ocean, and Burma. To us the long and bitter dispute is now of value only in so far as it brings out in Christ-like relief the personality of William Carey.

At the close of 1814 Dr. Carey had asked Fuller to pay 50 a year to his father, then in his eightieth year, and 20 to his (step) mother if she survived the old man. Protesting that an engraving of his portrait had been published in violation of the agreement which he had made with the artist, he agreed to the wish of each of his relatives for a copy.

To these requests Fuller had replied:--"You should not insist on these things being charged to you, nor yet your father's 50, nor the books, nor anything necessary to make you comfortable, unless it be to be paid out of what you would otherwise give to the mission. To insist on their being paid out of your private property seems to be dictated by resentment. It is thus we express our indignation when we have an avaricious man to deal with."

The first act of the Committee, after Fuller's funeral, led Dr. Ryland to express to Carey his unbounded fears for the future. There were two difficulties. The new men raised the first question, in what sense the Serampore property belonged to the Society? They then proceeded to show how they would answer it, by appointing the son of Samuel Pearce to Serampore as Mr. Ward's a.s.sistant. On both sides of their independence, as trustees of the property which they had created and gifted to the Society on this condition, and as a self-supporting, self-elective brotherhood, it became necessary, for the unbroken peace of the mission and the success of their work, that they should vindicate their moral and legal position. The correspondence fell chiefly to Dr. Marshman. Ward and he successively visited England, to which the controversy was transferred, with occasional references to Dr. Carey in Serampore. All Scotland, led by Christopher Anderson, Chalmers, and the Haldanes--all England, except the Dyer faction and Robert Hall for a time, among the Baptists, and nearly all America, held with the Serampore men; but their ever-extending operations were checked by the uncertainty, and their hearts were nearly broken. The junior missionaries in India formed a separate union and congregation by themselves in Calcutta, paid by the Society, though professing to carry out the organisation of the Serampore Brotherhood in other respects. The Committee's controversy lasted sixteen years, and was closed in 1830, after Ward's death, by Carey and Marshman drawing up a new trust-deed, in which, having vindicated their position, the old men made over properties which had cost them 7800 to eleven trustees in England, stipulating only that they should occupy them rent free till death, and that their colleagues--who were John Marshman and John Mack, of Edinburgh University--might continue in them for three years thereafter, paying rent to the Society. Such self-sacrifice would be p.r.o.nounced heroic, but it was only the outcome of a life of self-devotion, marked by the spirit of Him who spake the Sermon on the Mount, and said to the first missionaries He sent forth:--"Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves." The story is completed by the fact that John Marshman, on his father's death, again paid the price of as much of the property as the Hoogli had not swallowed up when the Committee were about to put it in the market.

Such was Dr. Carey's position in the Christian world that the Dyer party considered it important for their interest to separate him from his colleagues, and if not to claim his influence for their side, at least to neutralise it. By trying to hold up Dr. Marshman to odium, they roused the righteous indignation of Carey, while outraging his sense of justice by their blows at the independence of the Brotherhood.

Dr. Marshman, when in England, met this course by frankly printing the whole private correspondence of Carey on the subject of the property, or thirty-two letters ranging from the year 1815 to 1828. One of the earliest of these is to Mr. Dyer, who had so far forgotten himself as to ask Dr. Carey to write home, alone, his opinion of his "elder brethren," and particularly of Dr. Marshman. The answer, covering eleven octavo pages of small type, is a model for all controversialists, and especially for any whom duty compels to rebuke the minister who has failed to learn the charity which envieth not. We reproduce the princ.i.p.al pa.s.sages, and the later letters to Christopher Anderson and his son Jabez, revealing the n.o.bleness of Carey and the inner life of the Brotherhood:--

"SERAMPORE, 15th July 1819.

"MY DEAR BROTHER--I am sorry you addressed your letter of January the 9th to me alone, because it places me in a most awkward situation, as it respects my elder brethren, with whom I have acted in concert for the last nineteen years, with as great a share of satisfaction and pleasure as could reasonably be expected from a connection with imperfect creatures, and whom I am thereby called to condemn contrary to my convictions, or to justify at the expense of their accusers. It also places me in a disagreeable situation as it respects my younger brethren, whom I highly respect as Christians; but whose whole conduct, as it respects the late unhappy differences, has been such as makes it impossible for me to do otherwise than condemn it...

"You ask, 'Is there no ground for the charges of profusion, etc., preferred against Brother Marshman?' Brother Marshman has always been ardently engaged in promoting the cause of G.o.d in India, and, being of a very active mind, has generally been chosen by us to draw up our Reports, to write many of our public letters, to draw up plans for promoting the objects of the mission, founding and managing schools, raising subscriptions, and other things of a like nature; so that he has taken a more active part than Brother Ward or myself in these public acts of the mission. These things placed him in the foreground, and it has been no uncommon thing for him to bear the blame of those acts which equally belong to Brother Ward and myself, merely because he was the instrument employed in performing them.

"The charge of profusion brought against Dr. Marshman is more extensive than you have stated in your letter. He is charged with having his house superbly furnished, with keeping several vehicles for the use of his family, and with labouring to aggrandise and bring them into public notice to a culpable extent. The whole business of furniture, internal economy, etc., of the Serampore station, must exclusively belong to ourselves, and I confess I think the question about it an unlovely one.

Some person, we know not whom, told some one, we know not whom, 'that he had been often at Lord Hastings's table, but that Brother Marshman's table far exceeded his.' I have also often been at Lord Hastings's table (I mean his private table), and I do therefore most positively deny the truth of the a.s.sertion; though I confess there is much domestic plainness at the table of the Governor-General of India (though nothing of meanness; on the contrary, everything is marked with a dignified simplicity). I suspect the informant never was at Lord Hastings's table, or he could have not been guilty of such misrepresentation. Lord Hastings's table costs more in one day than Brother Marshman's in ten.

"The following statement may explain the whole business of Brother Marshman's furniture, etc., which you have all been so puzzled to account for, and have certainly accounted for in a way that is not the true one. We have, you know, a very large school, perhaps the largest in India. In this school are children of persons of the first rank in the country. The parents or guardians of these children frequently call at the Mission-house, and common propriety requires that they should be respectfully received, and invited to take a breakfast or dinner, and sometimes to continue there a day or two. It is natural that persons who visit the Mission-house upon business superintended by Brother Marshman should be entertained at his house rather than elsewhere. Till within the last four or five years we had no particular arrangement for the accommodation of visitors who came to see us; but as those who visited us on business were entertained at Brother Marshman's, it appeared to be the most eligible method to provide for the entertainment of other visitors there also; but at that time Brother Marshman had not a decent table for persons of the above description to sit down to. We, therefore, voted him a sum to enable him to provide such articles as were necessary to entertain them with decency; and I am not aware that he has been profuse, or that he has provided anything not called for by the rules of propriety. I have no doubt but Brother Ward can enumerate and describe all these articles of furniture. It is, however, evident that you must be very imperfect judges of their necessity, unless you could at the same time form a just estimate of the circ.u.mstances in which we stand. It ought also to be considered that all these articles are public property, and always convertible into their full value in cash. I hope, however, that things are not yet come to that pa.s.s, that a man who, with his wife, has for nineteen or twenty years laboured night and day for the mission, who by their labour disinterestedly contribute between 2000 and 3000 rupees monthly to it, and who have made sacrifices which, if others have not seen, Brother Ward and I have,--sacrifices which ought to put to the blush all his accusers, who, notwithstanding their cries against him, have not only supported themselves, but also have set themselves up in a lucrative business at the Society's expense; and who, even to this day, though they have two prosperous schools, and a profitable printing-office, continue to receive their monthly allowance, amounting (including Miss Chaffin's) to 700 rupees a month from the Society; I feel indignant at their outcry on the subject of expense, and I say, merely as a contrast to their conduct, So did not Brother Marshman. Surely things are not come to that pa.s.s, that he or any other brother must give an account to the Society of every plate he uses, and every loaf he cuts.

"Till a very few years ago we had no vehicle except a single horse chaise for me to go backwards and forwards to Calcutta. That was necessarily kept on the opposite side of the river; and if the strength of the horse would have borne it, could not have been used for the purposes of health. Sister Marshman was seized with a disease of the liver, a disease which proves fatal in three cases out of four. Sister Ward was ill of the same disorder, and both of them underwent a long course of mercurial treatment, as is usual in that disease. Exercise was considered by the physicians as of the first importance, and we certainly thought no expense too great to save the valuable lives of our sisters. A single horse chaise, and an open palanquin, called a Tonjon, were procured. I never ride out for health; but usually spend an hour or two, morning and evening, in the garden. Sister Ward was necessitated to visit England for hers. Brother Ward had a saddle horse presented to him by a friend. My wife has a small carriage drawn by a man. These vehicles were therefore almost exclusively used by Brother Marshman's family. When our brethren arrived from England they did not fail to put this equipage into the account against Brother Marshman. They now keep three single horse chaises, besides palanquins; but we do not think they keep more than are necessary.

"Brother Marshman retains for the school a French master, a music master, and a drawing master. The expenses of these are amply repaid by the school, but Brother Marshman's children, and all those belonging to the family, have the advantage of their instructions. Brother Marshman's children are, however, the most numerous, and envy has not failed to charge him with having retained them all for the sake of his own children. Surely a man's caring for his family's health and his children's education is, if a crime, a venial one, and ought not to be held up to blacken his reputation. Brother Marshman is no more perfect than other men, partakers like him of the grace of G.o.d. His natural bias and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of G.o.d.

These excellencies, in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am constrained to consider him a Christian far above the common run. I must now close this defence of Brother Marshman by repeating that all matters of furniture, convenience, etc., are things belonging to the economy of the station at Serampore, and that no one beside ourselves has the smallest right to interfere therewith. The Calcutta brethren are now acting on the same principle, and would certainly repel with indignation any attempt made by us to regulate their affairs.

"I have said that 'I never ride out for the sake of health'; and it may therefore be inquired, 'Why are vehicles, etc., for the purpose of health more necessary for the other members of the family than for you?' I reply that my health is in general good, and probably much benefited by a journey to and from Calcutta two or three times a week.

I have also a great fondness for natural science, particularly botany and horticulture. These, therefore, furnish not only exercise, but amus.e.m.e.nt for me. These amus.e.m.e.nts of mine are not, however, enjoyed without expense, any more than those of my brethren, and were it not convenient for Brother Marshman's accusers to make a stepping-stone of me, I have no doubt but my collection of plants, aviary, and museum, would be equally impeached as articles of luxury and lawless expenses; though, except the garden, the whole of these expenses are borne by myself.

"John Marshman is admitted a member of the union, but he had for some time previously thereto been a member of the church. I perceive plainly that all your objections to him have been excited by the statements of the Calcutta brethren, which you certainly ought to receive with much caution in all things which regard Bother Marshman and his family. You observe that the younger brethren especially look up to me with respect and affection. It may be so; but I confess I have frequently thought that, had it been so, they would have consulted me, or at least have mentioned to me the grounds of their dissatisfaction before they proceeded to the extremity of dividing the mission. When I engaged in the mission, it was a determination that, whatever I suffered, a breach therein should never originate with me.

To this resolution I have hitherto obstinately adhered. I think everything should be borne, every sacrifice made, and every method of accommodation or reconciliation tried, before a schism is suffered to take place...

"I disapprove as much of the conduct of our Calcutta brethren as it is possible for me to disapprove of any human actions. The evil they have done is, I fear, irreparable; and certainly the whole might have been prevented by a little frank conversation with either of us; and a hundredth part of that self-denial which I found it necessary to exercise for the first few years of the mission, would have prevented this awful rupture. I trust you will excuse my warmth of feeling upon this subject, when you consider that by this rupture that cause is weakened and disgraced, in the establishment and promotion of which I have spent the best part of my life. A church is attempted to be torn in pieces, for which neither I nor my brethren ever thought we could do enough. We laboured to raise it: we expended much money to accomplish that object; and in a good measure saw the object of our desire accomplished. But now we are traduced, and the church rent by the very men who came to be our helpers. As to Brother Marshman, seriously, what do they want? Would they attempt to deny his possessing the grace of G.o.d? He was known to and esteemed by Brother Ryland as a Christian before he left England. I have lived with him ever since his arrival in India, and can witness to his piety and holy conduct. Would they exclude him from the mission? Judge yourself whether it is comely that a man, who has laboriously and disinterestedly served the mission so many years--who has by his diligence and hard labour raised the most respectable school in India, as well as given a tone to all the others--who has unvaryingly consecrated the whole of that income, as well as his other labours, to the cause of G.o.d in India,--should be arraigned and condemned without a hearing by a few young men just arrived, and one of whom had not been a month in the country before he joined the senseless outcry? Or would they have his blood? Judge, my dear brother, yourself, for I am ashamed to say more on this subject.

"I need not say that circ.u.mstances must in a great measure determine where missionaries should settle. The chief town of each of these countries would be preferable, if other circ.u.mstances permit; but sometimes Government would not allow this, and sometimes other things may close the door. Missionaries however must knock loud and push hard at the door, and if there be the smallest opening, must force themselves in; and, once entered, put their lives in their hands and exert themselves to the utmost in dependence upon divine support, if they ever hope to do much towards evangelising the heathen world. My situation in the college, and Brother Marshman's as superintending the first academy in India, which, I likewise observe, has been established and brought to its present flouris.h.i.+ng state wholly by his care and application, have made our present situation widely different from what it was when first engaged in the mission. As a missionary I could go in a straw hat and dine with the judge of the district, and often did so; but as a Professor in the College I cannot do so. Brother Marshman is placed in the same predicament. These circ.u.mstances impose upon us a necessity of making a different appearance to what we formerly did as simple missionaries; but they furnish us with opportunities of speaking to gentlemen of the first power and influence in government, upon matters of the highest importance to the great work in which we are engaged; and, as a proof that our opportunities of this nature have not been in vain, I need only say that, in a conversation which I had some time ago with one of the secretaries to Government, upon the present favourable bias of government and the public in general to favour all plans for doing good, he told me that he believed the whole was owing to the prudent and temperate manner in which we had acted; and that if we had acted with precipitancy and indiscretion, he had every reason to believe the general feeling would have been as hostile to attempts to do good as it is now favourable to them.

"I would not wish you to entertain the idea that we and our brethren in Calcutta are resolved upon interminable hatred. On the contrary, I think that things are gone as far as we may expect them to go; and I now expect that the fire of contention will gradually go out. All the distressing and disagreeable circ.u.mstances are, I trust, past; and I expect we shall be in a little time on a more friendly footing. Much of what has taken place originated in England. Mistakes and false conclusions were followed by all the circ.u.mstances I have detailed. I think the whole virulence of opposition has now spent itself. Our brethren have no control over us, nor we over them. And, if I am not mistaken, each side will soon acknowledge that it has gone too far in some instances; and ultimate good will arise from the evil I so much deplore.

"Having now written to you my whole sentiments upon the business, and formerly to my very dear Brother Ryland, allow me to declare my resolution not to write anything further upon the subject, however much I may be pressed thereto. The future prosperity of the mission does not depend upon the clearing up of every little circ.u.mstance to the satisfaction of every captious inquirer, but upon the restoration of mutual concord among us, which must be preceded by admitting that we are all subject to mistake, and to be misled by pa.s.sion, prejudice, and false judgment. Let us therefore strive and pray that the things which make for peace and those by which we may edify one another may abound among us more and more. I am, my dear brother, very affectionately, yours in our Lord Jesus Christ, W. CAREY."

"14th May 1828.

"MY DEAR BROTHER ANDERSON--Yours by the Louisa, of October last, came to hand a few days ago with the copies of Brother Marshman's brief Memoir of the Serampore Mission. I am glad it is written in so temperate and Christian a spirit, and I doubt not but it will be ultimately productive of good effects. There certainly is a great contrast between the spirit in which that piece is written and that in which observations upon it, both in the Baptist and Particular Baptist Magazines, are written. The unworthy attempts in those and other such like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly contemptible.

In plain English, they amount to thus much--'The Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, have acted a dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not include Dr. Carey in the charge of dishonesty; he is an easy sort of a man, who will agree to anything for the sake of peace, or in other words, he is a fool. Mr. Ward, it is well known,' say they, 'was the tool of Dr. Marshman, but he is gone from the present scene, and it is unlovely to say any evil of the dead.' Now I certainly hold those persons' exemption of me from the blame they attach to Brother Marshman in the greatest possible contempt. I may have subscribed my name thoughtlessly to papers, and it would be wonderful if there had been no instance of this in so long a course of years. The great esteem I had for the Society for many years, undoubtedly on more occasions than one put me off my guard, and I believe my brethren too; so that we have signed writings which, if we could have foreseen the events of a few years, we should not have done.

These, however, were all against our own private interest, and I believe I have never been called an easy fool for signing of them. It has only been since we found it necessary to resist the claims of the Committee that I have risen to this honour.

"It has also been hinted that I intend to separate from Brother Marshman. I cannot tell upon what such hints or reports are founded, but I a.s.sure you, in the most explicit manner, that I intend to continue connected with him and Serampore as long as I live; unless I should be separated from him by some unforeseen stroke of Providence.

There may be modifications of our union, arising from circ.u.mstances; but it is my wish that it should remain in all things essential to the mission as long as I live.

"I rejoice to say that there is very little of that spirit of hostility which prevails in England in India, and I trust what still remains will gradually decrease till scarcely the remembrance of it will continue.

Our stations, I mean those connected with Serampore, are of great importance, and some of them in a flouris.h.i.+ng state. We will do all we can to maintain them, and I hope the friends to the cause of G.o.d in Britain will not suffer them to sink for want of that pecuniary help which is necessary. Indeed I hope we shall be a.s.sisted in attempting other stations beside those already occupied; and many such stations present themselves to my mind which nothing prevents being immediately occupied but want of men and money. The college will also require a.s.sistance, and I hope will not be without it; I antic.i.p.ate the time when its salutary operation in the cause of G.o.d in India will be felt and acknowledged by all.

"These observations respecting my own conduct you are at liberty to use as you please. I hope now to take my final leave of this unpleasant subject, and have just room to say that I am very affectionately yours, W. CAREY."

Throughout the controversy thus forced upon him, we find Dr. Carey's references, in his unpublished letters to the brethren in Calcutta, all in the strain of the following to his son Jabez:--

"15th August 1820.--This week we received letters from Mr. Marshman, who had safely arrived at St. Helena. I am sure it will give you pleasure to learn that our long-continued dispute with the younger brethren in Calcutta is now settled. We met together for that purpose about three weeks ago, and after each side giving up some trifling ideas and expressions, came to a reconciliation, which, I pray G.o.d, may be lasting. Nothing I ever met with in my life--and I have met with many distressing things--ever preyed so much upon my spirits as this difference has. I am sure that in all disputes very many wrong things must take place on both sides for which both parties ought to be humbled before G.o.d and one another.

"I wish you could succeed in setting up a few more schools...Consider that and the spread of the gospel as the great objects of your life, and try to promote them by all the wise and prudent methods in your power. Indeed we must always venture something for the sake of doing good. The cause of our Lord Jesus Christ continues to prosper with us.

I have several persons now coming in who are inquirers; two or three of them, I hope, will be this evening received into the Church. Excuse my saying more as my room is full of people."

Eight years after, on the 17th April 1828, he thus censured Jabez in the matter of the Society's action at home:--"From a letter of yours to Jonathan, in which you express a very indecent pleasure at the opposition which Brother Marshman has received, not by the Society but by some anonymous writer in a magazine, I perceive you are informed of the separation which has taken place between them and us. What in that anonymous piece you call a 'set-down' I call a 'falsehood.' You ought to know that I was a party in all public acts and writings, and that I never intend to withdraw from all the responsibility connected therewith. I utterly despise all the creeping, mean a.s.sertions of that party when they say they do not include me in their censures, nor do I work for their praise. According to their and according to your rejoicing...I am either a knave or a fool--a knave if I joined with Brother Marshman; but if, as those gentlemen say, and as you seem to agree with them, I was only led as he pleased, and was a mere cat's-paw, then of course I am a fool. In either way your thoughts are not very high as it respects me. I do not wonder that Jonathan should express himself unguardedly; his family connection with Mr. Pearce sufficiently accounts for that. We have long been attacked in this country--first by Mr. Adam,[26] and afterwards by Dr. Bryce.[27] Bryce is now silenced by two or three pieces by John Marshman in his own newspaper, the John Bull; and as to some of the tissues of falsehood published in England, I shall certainly never reply to them, and I hope no one else will. That cause must be bad which needs such means to support it. I believe G.o.d will bring forth our righteousness as the noonday."

On the 12th July 1828 the father again writes to his son Jabez thus:--"Your apologies about Brother Marshman are undoubtedly the best you can offer. I should be sorry to harbour hostile sentiments against any man on the earth upon grounds so slight. Indeed, were all you say matter of fact you ought to forgive it as G.o.d for Christ's sake forgives us. We are required to lay aside all envy and strife and animosities, to forgive each other mutually and to love one another with a pure heart fervently. 'Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not.'"