The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker and Missionary Part 9

"3rd. Behave affably and genteelly to all, but not cringingly towards any. Feel that you are a man, and always act with that dignified sincerity and truth which will command the esteem of all. Seek not the society of worldly men, but when called to be with them act and converse with propriety and dignity. To do this labour to gain a good acquaintance with history, geography, men, and things. A gentleman is the next best character after a Christian, and the latter includes the former. Money never makes a gentleman, neither does a fine appearance, but an enlarged understanding joined to engaging manners.

"4th. On your arrival at Amboyna your first business must be to wait on Mr. Martin. You should first send a note to inform him of your arrival, and to inquire when it will suit him to receive you. Ask his advice upon every occasion of importance, and communicate freely to him all the steps you take.

"5th. As soon as you are settled begin your work. Get a Malay who can speak a little English, and with him make a tour of the island, and visit every school. Encourage all you see worthy of encouragement, and correct with mildness, yet with firmness. Keep a journal of the transactions of the schools, and enter each one under a distinct head therein. Take account of the number of scholars, the names of the schoolmasters, compare their progress at stated periods, and, in short, consider this as the work which the Lord has given you to do.

"6th. Do not, however, consider yourself as a mere superintendent of schools; consider yourself as the spiritual instructor of the people, and devote yourself to their good. G.o.d has committed the spiritual interests of this island--20,000 men or more--to you; a vast charge, but He can enable you to be faithful to it. Revise the catechism, tracts, and school-books used among them, and labour to introduce among them sound doctrine and genuine piety. Pray with them as soon as you can, and labour after a gift to preach to them. I expect you will have much to do with them respecting baptism. They all think infant sprinkling right, and will apply to you to baptise their children; you must say little till you know something of the language, and then prove to them from Scripture what is the right mode of baptism and who are the proper persons to be baptised. Form them into Gospel churches when you meet with a few who truly fear G.o.d; and as soon as you see any fit to preach to others, call them to the ministry and settle them with the churches. You must baptise and administer the Lord's Supper according to your own discretion when there is a proper occasion for it. Avoid indolence and love of ease, and never attempt to act the part of the great and gay in this world.

"7th. Labour incessantly to become a perfect master of the Malay language. In order to this, a.s.sociate with the natives, walk out with them, ask the name of everything you see, and note it down; visit their houses, especially when any of them are sick. Every night arrange the words you get in alphabetical order. Try to talk as soon as you get a few words, and be as much as possible one of them. A course of kind and attentive conduct will gain their esteem and confidence and give you an opportunity of doing much good.

"8th. You will soon learn from Mr. Martin the situation and disposition of the Alfoors or aboriginal inhabitants, and will see what can be done for them. Do not unnecessarily expose your life, but incessantly contrive some way of giving them the word of life.

"9th. I come now to things of inferior importance, but which I hope you will not neglect. I wish you to learn correctly the number, size, and geography of the islands; the number and description of inhabitants; their customs and manners, and everything of note relative to them; and regularly communicate these things to me.

"Your great work, my dear Jabez, is that of a Christian minister. You would have been solemnly set apart thereto if you could have stayed long enough to have permitted it. The success of your labours does not depend upon an outward ceremony, nor does your right to preach the Gospel or administer the ordinances of the Gospel depend on any such thing, but only on the Divine call expressed in the Word of G.o.d. The Church has, however, in their intentions and wishes borne a testimony to the grace given to you, and will not cease to pray for you that you may be successful. May you be kept from all temptations, supported under every trial, made victorious in every conflict; and may our hearts be mutually gladdened with accounts from each other of the triumphs of Divine grace. G.o.d has conferred a great favour upon you in committing to you this ministry. Take heed to it therefore in the Lord that thou fulfil it. We shall often meet at the throne of grace.

Write me by every opportunity, and tell Eliza to write to your mother.

"Now, my dear Jabez, I commit you both to G.o.d, and to the word of His grace, which is able to make you perfect in the knowledge of His will.

Let that word be near your heart. I give you both up to G.o.d, and should I never more see you on earth I trust we shall meet with joy before His throne of glory at last."

Under both the English and the Dutch for a time, to whom the island was restored, Jabez Carey proved to be a successful missionary, while he supported the mission by his official income as superintendent of schools and second member of the College of Justice. The island contained 18,000 native Christians of the Dutch compulsory type, such as we found in Ceylon on taking it over. Thus by the labours of himself, his sons, his colleagues, and his children in the faith, William Carey saw the Gospel, the press, and the influence of a divine philanthropy extending among Mohammedans, Buddhists, and Hindoos, from the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean west to the Arabian Sea.

CHAPTER VIII

CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS

1807-1812

The type of a Christian gentleman--Carey and his first wife--His second marriage--The Lady Rumohr--His picture of their married life--His nearly fatal illness when forty-eight years old--His meditations and dreams--Aldeen House--Henry Martyn's paG.o.da--Carey, Marshman, and the Anglican chaplains in the paG.o.da--Corrie's account of the Serampore Brotherhood--Claudius Buchanan and his Anglican establishment--Improvement in Anglo-Indian Society--Carey's literary and scientific friends--Desire in the West for a likeness of Carey--Home's portrait of him--Correspondence with his son William on missionary consecration, Buonaparte, botany, the missionary a soldier, Felix and Burma, hunting, the temporal power of the Pope, the duty of reconciliation--Carey's descendants.

"A Gentleman is the next best character after a Christian, and the latter includes the former," were the father's words to the son whom he was sending forth as a Christian missionary and state superintendent of schools. Carey wrote from his own experience, and he unwittingly painted his own character. The peasant bearing of his early youth showed itself throughout his life in a certain shyness, which gave a charm to his converse with old and young. Occasionally, as in a letter which he wrote to his friend Pearce of Birmingham, at a time when he did not know whether his distant correspondent was alive or dead, he burst forth into an unrestrained enthusiasm of affection and service.

But his was rather the even tenor of domestic devotion and friendly duty, unbroken by pa.s.sion or coldness, and ever lighted up by a steady geniality. The colleagues who were a.s.sociated with him for the third of a century wors.h.i.+pped him in the old English sense of the word. The younger committee-men and missionaries who came to the front on the death of Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland, in all their mistaken conflicts with these colleagues, always tried to separate Carey from those they denounced, till even his saintly spirit burst forth into wrath at the double wrong thus done to his coadjutors. His intercourse with the chaplains and bishops of the Church of England, and with the missionaries of other Churches and societies, was as loving in its degree as his relations to his own people. With men of the world, from the successive Governor-Generals, from Wellesley, Hastings, and Bentinck, down to the scholars, merchants, and planters with whom he became a.s.sociated for the public good, William Carey was ever the saint and the gentleman whom it was a privilege to know.

In nothing perhaps was Carey's true Christian gentlemanliness so seen as in his relations with his first wife, above whom grace and culture had immeasurably raised him, while she never learned to share his aspirations or to understand his ideals. Not only did she remain to the last a peasant woman, with a reproachful tongue, but the early hards.h.i.+ps of Calcutta and the fever and dysentery of Mudnabati clouded the last twelve years of her life with madness. Never did reproach or complaint escape his lips regarding either her or Thomas, whose eccentric impulses and oft-darkened spirit were due to mania also. Of both he was the tender nurse and guardian when, many a time, the ever-busy scholar would fain have lingered at his desk or sought the scanty sleep which his jealous devotion to his Master's business allowed him. The brotherhood arrangement, the common family, Ward's influence over the boys, and Hannah Marshman's housekeeping relieved him of much that his wife's illness had thrown upon him at Mudnabati, so that a colleague describes him, when he was forty-three years of age, as still looking young in spite of the few hairs on his head, after eleven years in Lower Bengal of work such as never Englishman had before him. But almost from the first day of his early married life he had never known the delight of daily converse with a wife able to enter into his scholarly pursuits, and ever to stimulate him in his heavenly quest. When the eldest boy, Felix, had left for Burma in 1807 the faithful sorrowing husband wrote to him:--"Your poor mother grew worse and worse from the time you left us, and died on the 7th December about seven o'clock in the evening. During her illness she was almost always asleep, and I suppose during the fourteen days that she lay in a severe fever she was not more than twenty-four hours awake. She was buried the next day in the missionary burying-ground."

About the same time that Carey himself settled in Serampore there arrived the Lady Rumohr. She built a house on the Hoogli bank immediately below that of the missionaries, whose society she sought, and by whom she was baptised. On the 9th May 1808 she became Carey's wife; and in May 1821 she too was removed by death in her sixty-first year, after thirteen years of unbroken happiness.

Charlotte Emilia, born in the same year as Carey in the then Danish duchy of Schleswick, was the only child of the Chevalier de Rumohr, who married the Countess of Alfeldt, only representative of a historic family. Her wakefulness when a sickly girl of fifteen saved the whole household from destruction by fire, but she herself became so disabled that she could never walk up or down stairs. She failed to find complete recovery in the south of Europe, and her father's friend, Mr.

Anker, a director of the Danish East India Company, gave her letters to his brother, then Governor of Tranquebar, in the hope that the climate of India might cause her relief. The Danish s.h.i.+p brought her first to Serampore, where Colonel Bie introduced her to the brotherhood, and there she resolved to remain. She knew the princ.i.p.al languages of Europe; a copy of the Pensees of Pascal, given to her by Mr. Anker before she sailed, for the first time quickened her conscience. She speedily learned English, that she might join the missionaries in public wors.h.i.+p. The barren orthodoxy of the Lutheranism in which she had been brought up had made her a sceptic. This soon gave way to the evangelical teaching of the same apostle who had brought Luther himself to Christ. She became a keen student of the Scriptures, then an ardent follower of Jesus Christ.

On her marriage to Dr. Carey, in May 1808, she made over her house to the mission, and when, long after, it became famous as the office of the weekly Friend of India, the rent was sacredly devoted to the a.s.sistance of native preachers. She learned Bengali that she might be as a mother to the native Christian families. She was her husband's counsellor in all that related to the extension of the varied enterprise of the brethren. Especially did she make the education of Hindoo girls her own charge, both at Serampore and Cutwa. Her leisure she gave to the reading of French Protestant writers, such as Saurin and Du Moulin. She admired, wrote Carey, "Ma.s.sillon's language, his deep knowledge of the human heart, and his intrepidity in reproving sin; but felt the greatest dissatisfaction with his total neglect of his Saviour, except when He is introduced to give efficacy to works of human merit. These authors she read in their native language, that being more familiar to her than English. She in general enjoyed much of the consolations of religion. Though so much afflicted, a pleasing cheerfulness generally pervaded her conversation. She indeed possessed great activity of mind. She was constantly out with the dawn of the morning when the weather permitted, in her little carriage drawn by one bearer; and again in the evening, as soon as the sun was sufficiently low. She thus spent daily nearly three hours in the open air. It was probably this vigorous and regular course which, as the means, carried her beyond the age of threescore years (twenty-one of them spent in India), notwithstanding the weakness of her const.i.tution."

It is a pretty picture, the delicate invalid lady, drawn along the mall morning and evening, to enjoy the river breeze, on her way to and from the schools and homes of the natives. But her highest service was, after all, to her husband, who was doing a work for India and for humanity, equalled by few, if any. When, on one occasion, they were separated for a time while she sought for health at Monghyr, she wrote to him the tenderest yet most courtly love-letters.

"MY DEAREST LOVE,--I felt very much in parting with thee, and feel much in being so far from thee...I am sure thou wilt be happy and thankful on account of my voice, which is daily getting better, and thy pleasure greatly adds to mine own.

"I hope you will not think I am writing too often; I rather trust you will be glad to hear of me...Though my journey is very pleasant, and the good state of my health, the freshness of the air, and the variety of objects enliven my spirits, yet I cannot help longing for you.

Pray, my love, take care of your health that I may have the joy to find you well.

"I thank thee most affectionately, my dearest love, for thy kind letter. Though the journey is very useful to me, I cannot help feeling much to be so distant from you, but I am much with you in my thoughts...The Lord be blessed for the kind protection He has given to His cause in a time of need. May He still protect and guide and bless His dear cause, and give us all hearts growing in love and zeal...I felt very much affected in parting with thee. I see plainly it would not do to go far from you; my heart cleaves to you. I need not say (for I hope you know my heart is not insensible) how much I feel your kindness in not minding any expense for the recovery of my health. You will rejoice to hear me talk in my old way, and not in that whispering manner.

"I find so much pleasure in writing to you, my love, that I cannot help doing it. I was nearly disconcerted by Mrs.--laughing at my writing so often; but then, I thought, I feel so much pleasure in receiving your letters that I may hope you do the same. I thank thee, my love, for thy kind letter. I need not say that the serious part of it was welcome to me, and the more as I am deprived of all religious intercourse...I shall greatly rejoice, my love, in seeing thee again; but take care of your health that I may find you well. I need not say how much you are in my thoughts day and night."

His narrative of their intercourse, written after her death, lets in a flood of light on his home life:--

"During the thirteen years of her union with Dr. Carey, they had enjoyed the most entire oneness of mind, never having a single circ.u.mstance which either of them wished to conceal from the other. Her solicitude for her husband's health and comfort was unceasing. They prayed and conversed together on those things which form the life of personal religion, without the least reserve; and enjoyed a degree of conjugal happiness while thus continued to each other, which can only arise from a union of mind grounded on real religion. On the whole, her lot in India was altogether a scene of mercy. Here she was found of the Saviour, gradually ripened for glory, and after having her life prolonged beyond the expectation of herself and all who knew her, she was released from this mortal state almost without the consciousness of pain, and, as we most a.s.suredly believe, had 'an abundant entrance ministered unto her into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.'"

When, on 24th June 1809, Carey announced at the dinner table that he had that morning finished the Bengali translation of the whole Bible, and he was asked how much more he thought of doing, he answered: "The work I have allotted to myself, in translating, will take me about twenty years." But he had kept the bow too long and too tightly bent, and it threatened to snap. That evening he was seized with bilious fever, and on the eighteenth day thereafter his life was despaired of.

"The goodness of G.o.d is eminently conspicuous in raising up our beloved brother Carey," wrote Marshman. "G.o.d has raised him up again and restored him to his labours; may he live to accomplish all that is in his heart," wrote Rowe. He was at once at his desk again, in college and in his study. "I am this day forty-eight years old," he wrote to Ryland on the 17th August, and sent him the following letters, every line of which reveals the inner soul of the writer:--

"CALCUTTA, 16th August 1809.--I did not expect, about a month ago, ever to write to you again. I was then ill of a severe fever, and for a week together scarcely any hopes were entertained of my life. One or two days I was supposed to be dying, but the Lord has graciously restored me; may it be that I may live more than ever to His glory.

Whilst I was ill I had scarcely any such thing as thought belonging to me, but, excepting seasons of delirium, seemed to be nearly stupid; perhaps some of this arose from the weak state to which I was reduced, which was so great that Dr. Hare, one of the most eminent physicians in Calcutta, who was consulted about it, apprehended more danger from that than from the fever. I, however, had scarcely a thought of death or eternity, or of life, or anything belonging thereto. In my delirium, greatest part of which I perfectly remember, I was busily employed in carrying a commission from G.o.d to all the princes and governments in the world, requiring them instantly to abolish every political establishment of religion, and to sell the parish and other churches to the first body of Christians that would purchase them. Also to declare war infamous, to esteem all military officers as men who had sold themselves to destroy the human race, to extend this to all those dead men called heroes, defenders of their country, meritorious officers, etc.[13] I was attended by angels in all my excursions, and was universally successful. A few princes in Germany were refractory, but my attendants struck them dead instantly. I p.r.o.nounced the doom of Rome to the Pope, and soon afterwards all the territory about Rome, the March of Ancona, the great city and all its riches sank into that vast bed of burning lava which heats Nero's bath. These two considerations were the delirious wanderings of the mind, but I hope to feel their force, to pray and strive for their accomplishment to the end of my life. But it is now time to attend to something not merely ideal.

"The state of the world occupied my thoughts more and more; I mean as it relates to the spread of the Gospel. The harvest truly is great, and labourers bear scarcely any proportion thereto. I was forcibly struck this morning with reading our Lord's reply to His disciples, John iv. When He had told them that He had meat to eat the world knew not of, and that His meat was to do the will of His Father and to finish His work, He said, 'Say not ye there are three months and then cometh harvest?' He by this plainly intended to call their attention to the conduct of men when harvest was approaching, for that being the season upon which all the hopes of men hang for temporal supplies, they provide men and measures in time for securing it. Afterwards directing their attention to that which so occupied His own as to be His meat and drink, He said, 'Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields (of souls to be gathered in), for they are white already to harvest.' After so many centuries have elapsed and so many fields full of this harvest have been lost for want of labourers to gather it in, shall we not at last reflect seriously on our duty? Hindostan requires ten thousand ministers of the Gospel, at the lowest calculation, China as many, and you may easily calculate for the rest of the world. I trust that many will eventually be raised up here, but be that as it may the demands for missionaries are pressing to a degree seldom realised. England has done much, but not the hundredth part of what she is bound to do. In so great a want of ministers ought not every church to turn its attention chiefly to the raising up and maturing of spiritual gifts with the express design of sending them abroad? Should not this be a specific matter of prayer, and is there not reason to labour hard to infuse this spirit into the churches?

"A mission into Siam would be comparatively easy of introduction and support on account of its vicinity to Prince of Wales Island, from which vessels can often go in a few hours. A mission to Pegu and another to Arakan would not be difficult of introduction, they being both within the Burman dominions, Missions to a.s.sam and Nepal should be speedily tried. Brother Robinson is going to Bhootan. I do not know anything about the facility with which missions could be introduced into Cochin China, Cambodia, and Laos, but were the trial made I believe difficulties would remove. It is also very desirable that the Burman mission should be strengthened. There is no full liberty of conscience, and several stations might be occupied; even the borders of China might be visited from that country if an easier entrance into the heart of the country could not be found. I have not mentioned Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, the Philippines, or j.a.pan, but all these countries must be supplied with missionaries. This is a very imperfect sketch of the wants of Asia only, without including the Mahometan countries; but Africa and South America call as loudly for help, and the greatest part of Europe must also be holpen by the Protestant churches, being nearly as dest.i.tute of real G.o.dliness as any heathen country on the earth.

What a pressing call, then, is here for labourers in the spiritual harvest, and what need that the attention of all the churches in England and America should be drawn to this very object!"

Two years after the establishment of the mission at Serampore, David Brown, the senior chaplain and provost of Fort William College, took possession of Aldeen House, which he occupied till the year of his death in 1812. The house is the first in the settlement reached by boat from Calcutta. Aldeen is five minutes' walk south of the Serampore Mission House, and a century ago there was only a park between them. The garden slopes down to the n.o.ble river, and commands the beautiful country seat of Barrackpore, which Lord Wellesley had just built. The house itself is embosomed in trees, the mango, the teak, and the graceful bamboo. Just below it, but outside of Serampore, are the deserted temple of Bullubpoor and the Ghat of the same name, a fine flight of steps up which thousands of pilgrims flock every June to the adjoining shrine and monstrous car of Jagganath.

David Brown had not been long in Aldeen when he secured the deserted temple and converted it into a Christian oratory, ever since known as Henry Martyn's PaG.o.da. For ten years Aldeen and the paG.o.da became the meeting-place of Carey and his Nonconformist friends, with Claudius Buchanan, Martyn, Bishop Corrie, Thomason, and the little band of evangelical Anglicans who, under the protection of Lords Wellesley and Hastings, sweetened Anglo-Indian society, and made the names of "missionary" and of "chaplain" synonymous. Here too there gathered, as also to the Mission House higher up, many a civilian and officer who sought the charms of that Christian family life which they had left behind. A young lieutenant commemorated these years when Brown was removed, in a pleasing elegy, which Charles Simeon published in the Memorials of his friend. Many a traveller from the far West still visits the spot, and recalls the memories of William Carey and Henry Martyn, of Marshman and Buchanan, of Ward and Corrie, which linger around the fair scene. When first we saw it the now mutilated ruin was perfect, and under the wide-spreading banian tree behind a Brahman was reciting, for a day and a night, the verses of the Mahabharata epic to thousands of listening Hindoos.

"Long, Hoogli, has thy sullen stream Been doomed the cheerless sh.o.r.es to lave; Long has the Suttee's baneful gleam Pale glimmered o'er thy midnight wave.

"Yet gladdened seemed to flow thy tide Where opens on the view--Aldeen; For there to grace thy palmy side Loved England's purest joys were seen.

"Yon dome, 'neath which in former days Grim idols marked the pagan shrine, Has swelled the notes of pious praise, Attuned to themes of love divine."

We find this allusion to the place in Carey's correspondence with Dr.

Ryland:--"20th January 1807.--It would have done your heart good to have joined us at our meetings at the paG.o.da. From that place we have successively recommended Dr. Taylor to the work of the Lord at Bombay, Mr. Martyn to his at Dinapoor, Mr. Corrie to his at Chunar, Mr. Parsons to his at Burhampore, Mr. Des Granges to his at Vizagapatam, and our two brethren to theirs at Rangoon, and from thence we soon expect to commend Mr. Thomason to his at Madras. In these meetings the utmost harmony prevails and a union of hearts unknown between persons of different denominations in England." Dr. Taylor and Mr. Des Granges were early missionaries of the London Society; the Rangoon brethren were Baptists; the others were Church of England chaplains.

Sacramentarianism and sacerdotalism had not then begun to afflict the Church of India. There were giants in those days, in Bengal, worthy of Carey and of the one work in which all were the servants of one Master.

Let us look a little more closely at Henry Martyn's PaG.o.da. It is now a picturesque ruin, which the peepul tree that is entwined among its fine brick masonry, and the crumbling river-bank, may soon cause to disappear for ever. The exquisite tracery of the moulded bricks may be seen, but not the few figures that are left of the popular Hindoo idols just where the two still perfect arches begin to spring. The side to the river has already fallen down, and with it the open platform overhanging the bank on which the missionary sat in the cool of the morning and evening, and where he knelt to pray for the people. We have accompanied many a visitor there, from Dr. Duff to Bishop Cotton, and John Lawrence, and have rarely seen one unmoved. This paG.o.da had been abandoned long before by the priests of Radhabullub, because the river had encroached to a point within 300 feet of it, the limit within which no Brahman is allowed to receive a gift or take his food. The little black doll of an idol, which is famous among Hindoos alike for its sanct.i.ty and as a work of art--for had it not been miraculously wafted to this spot like the Santa Casa to Loretto?--was removed with great pomp to a new temple after it had paid a visit to Clive's moons.h.i.+, the wealthy Raja n.o.bokissen in Calcutta, who sought to purchase it outright.

In this cool old paG.o.da Henry Martyn, on one of his earliest visits to Aldeen after his arrival as a chaplain in 1806, found an appropriate residence. Under the vaulted roof of the shrine a place of prayer and praise was fitted up with an organ, so that, as he wrote, "the place where once devils were wors.h.i.+pped has now become a Christian oratory."

Here, too, he laid his plans for the evangelisation of the people.

When suffering from one of his moods of depression as to his own state, he thus writes of this place:--"I began to pray as on the verge of eternity; and the Lord was pleased to break my hard heart. I lay in tears, interceding for the unfortunate natives of this country; thinking within myself that the most despicable soodra of India was of as much value in the sight of G.o.d as the King of Great Britain." It was from such supplication that he was once roused by the blaze of a Suttee's funeral pyre, on which he found that the living widow had been consumed with the dead before he could interfere. He could hear the hideous drums and gongs and conch-sh.e.l.ls of the temple to which Radhabullub had been removed. There he often tried to turn his fellow-creatures to the wors.h.i.+p of the one G.o.d, from their prostrations "before a black image placed in a paG.o.da, with lights burning around it," whilst, he says, he "s.h.i.+vered as if standing, as it were, in the neighbourhood of h.e.l.l." It was in the deserted paG.o.da that Brown, Corrie, and Parsons met with him to commend him to G.o.d before he set out for his new duties at Dinapoor. "My soul," he writes of this occasion, "never yet had such divine enjoyment. I felt a desire to break from the body, and join the high praises of the saints above.

May I go 'in the strength of this many days.' Amen." "I found my heaven begun on earth. No work so sweet as that of praying and living wholly to the service of G.o.d." And as he pa.s.sed by the Mission House on his upward voyage, with true catholicity "Dr. Marshman could not resist joining the party: and after going a little way, left them with prayer." Do we wonder that these men have left their mark on India?

As years went by, the temple, thus consecrated as a Christian oratory, became degraded in other hands. The brand "paG.o.da distillery" for a time came to be known as marking the rum manufactured there. The visits of so many Christian pilgrims to the spot, and above all, the desire expressed by Lord Lawrence when Governor-General to see it, led the Hindoo family who own the paG.o.da to leave it at least as a simple ruin.

Corrie, afterwards the first bishop of Madras, describes the marriage of Des Granges in the oratory, and gives us a glimpse of life in the Serampore Mission House:--

"1806.--Calcutta strikes me as the most magnificent city in the world; and I am made most happy by the hope of being instrumental to the eternal good of many. A great opposition, I find, is raised against Martyn and the principles he preaches...Went up to Serampore yesterday, and in the evening was present at the marriage of Mr. Des Granges. Mr.

Brown entered into the concern with much interest. The paG.o.da was fixed on, and lighted up for the celebration of the wedding; at eight o'clock the parties came from the Mission House [at Serampore], attended by most of the family. Mr. Brown commenced with the hymn, 'Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly dove!' A divine influence seemed to attend us, and most delightful were my sensations. The circ.u.mstance of so many being engaged in spreading the glad tidings of salvation,--the temple of an idol converted to the purpose of Christian wors.h.i.+p, and the Divine presence felt among us,--filled me with joy unspeakable. After the marriage service of the Church of England, Mr. Brown gave out 'the Wedding Hymn'; and after signing certificates of the marriage we adjourned to the house, where Mr. Brown had provided supper. Two hymns given out by Mr. Marshman were felt very powerfully. He is a most lively, sanguine missionary; his conversation made my heart burn within me, and I find desires of spreading the Gospel growing stronger daily, and my zeal in the cause more ardent...I went to the Mission House, and supped at the same table with about fifty native converts. The triumph of the Cross was most evident in breaking down their prejudices, and uniting them with those who formerly were an abomination in their eyes.

After supper they sang a Bengali hymn, many of them with tears of joy; and they concluded with prayer in Bengali, with evident earnestness and emotion. My own feelings were too big for utterance. O may the time be hastened when every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ, to the glory of G.o.d the Father!