Part 8 (1/2)
”Calcutta is three miles long and one broad, very populous; the environs are crowded with people settled in large villages, resembling (for population, not elegance) the environs of Birmingham. The first is about a mile south of the city; at nearly the same distance are the public jail and the general hospital. Brother Gordon, one of our deacons, being the jailer we preach there in English every Lord's day.
We did preach in the Fort; but of late a military order has stopped us.
Krishna and Sebuk Ram, however, preach once or twice a week in the Fort notwithstanding; also at the jail; in the house of correction; at the village of Alipore, south of the jail; at a large factory north of the city, where several hundreds are employed; and at ten or twelve houses in different parts of the city itself. In several instances Roman Catholics, having heard the word, have invited them to their houses, and having collected their neighbours, the one or the other have received the word with gladness.
”The number of inquirers constantly coming forward, awakened by the instrumentality of these brethren, fills me with joy. I do not know that I am of much use myself, but I see a work which fills my soul with thankfulness. Not having time to visit the people, I appropriate every Thursday evening to receiving the visits of inquirers. Seldom fewer than twenty come; and the simple confessions of their sinful state, the unvarnished declaration of their former ignorance, the expressions of trust in Christ and grat.i.tude to him, with the accounts of their spiritual conflicts often attended with tears which almost choke their utterance, presents a scene of which you can scarcely entertain an adequate idea. At the same time, meetings for prayer and mutual edification are held every night in the week; and some nights, for convenience, at several places at the same time: so that the sacred leaven spreads its influence through the ma.s.s.”
On his voyage to India Carey had deliberately contemplated the time when the Society he had founded would influence not only Asia, but Africa, and he would supply the peoples of Asia with the Scriptures in their own tongues. The time had come by 1804 for organising the onward movement, and he thus describes it to Ryland:--
”14th December 1803.--Another plan has lately occupied our attention.
It appears that our business is to provide materials for spreading the Gospel, and to apply those materials. Translations, pamphlets, etc., are the materials. To apply them we have thought of setting up a number of subordinate stations, in each of which a brother shall be fixed. It will be necessary and useful to carry on some worldly business. Let him be furnished from us with a sum of money to begin and purchase cloth or whatever other article the part produces in greatest perfection: the whole to belong to the mission, and no part even to be private trade or private property. The gains may probably support the station. Every brother in such a station to have one or two native brethren with him, and to do all he can to preach, and spread Bibles, pamphlets, etc., and to set up and encourage schools where the reading of the Scriptures shall be introduced. At least four brethren shall always reside at Serampore, which must be like the heart while the other stations are the members. Each one must constantly send a monthly account of both spirituals and temporals to Serampore, and the brethren at Serampore (who must have a power of control over the stations) must send a monthly account likewise to each station, with advice, etc., as shall be necessary. A plan of this sort appears to be more formidable than it is in reality. To find proper persons will be the greatest difficulty; but as it will prevent much of that abrasion which may arise from a great number of persons living in one house, so it will give several brethren an opportunity of being useful, whose temper may not be formed to live in a common family, and at the same time connect them as much to the body as if they all lived together. We have judged that about 2000 rupees will do to begin at each place, and it is probable that G.o.d will enable us to find money (especially if a.s.sisted in the translations and printing by our brethren in England) as fast as you will be able to find men.
”This plan may be extended through a circular surface of a thousand miles' radius, and a constant communication kept up between the whole, and in some particular cases it may extend ever farther. We are also to hope that G.o.d may raise up some missionaries in this country who may be more fitted for the work than any from England can be. At present we have not concluded on anything, but when Brother Ward comes down we hope to do so, and I think one station may be fixed on immediately which Brother Chamberlain may occupy. A late favourable providence will, I hope, enable us to begin, viz., the College have subscribed for 100 copies of my Sanskrit Grammar, which will be 6400 rupees or 800 pounds sterling. The motion was very generously made by H. Colebrooke, Esq., who is engaged in a similar work, and seconded by Messrs. Brown and Buchanan; indeed it met with no opposition. It will scarcely be printed off under twelve months more, but it is probable that the greatest part of the money will be advanced. The Maratha war and the subjugation of the country of Cuttak to the English may be esteemed a favourable event for the spreading of the Gospel, and will certainly contribute much to the comfort of the inhabitants.”
Two years later he thus antic.i.p.ates the consent of the local Government, in spite of the Company's determined hostility in England, but the Vellore mutiny panic led to further delay:--
”25th December 1805.--It has long been a favourite object with me to fix European brethren in different parts of the country at about two hundred miles apart, so that each shall be able to visit a circle of a hundred miles' radius, and within each of the circuits to place native brethren at proper distances, who will, till they are more established, be under the superintendence of the European brethren situated in the centre. Our brethren concur with me in this plan. In consequence of this, I thought it would be desirable to have leave of Government for them to settle, and preach, without control, in any part of the country. The Government look on us with a favourable eye; and owing to Sir G. Barlow, the Governor-General, being up the country, Mr. Udny is Vice-President and Deputy-Governor. I therefore went one morning, took a breakfast with him, and told him what we were doing and what we wished to do. He, in a very friendly manner, desired me to state to him in a private letter all that we wished, and offered to communicate privately with Sir G. Barlow upon the subject, and inform me of the result. I called on him again last week, when he informed me that he had written upon the subject and was promised a speedy reply. G.o.d grant that it may be favourable. I know that Government will allow it if their powers are large enough.”
Not till 1810 could Carey report that ”permission was obtained of Government for the forming of a new station at Agra, a large city in upper Hindostan, not far from Delhi and the country of the Sikhs,” to which Chamberlain and an a.s.sistant were sent. From that year the Bengal became only the first of ”The United Missions in India.” These were five in number, each under its own separate brotherhood, on the same principles of self-denial as the original, each a Lindisfarne sprung from the parent Iona. These five were the Bengal, the Burman, the Orissa, the Bhootan, and the Hindostan Missions. The Bengal mission was fourfold--Serampore and Calcutta reckoned as one station; the old Dinapoor and Sadamahal which had taken the place of Mudnabati; Goamalty, near Malda; Cutwa, an old town on the upper waters of the Hoogli; Jessor, the agricultural capital of its lower delta; and afterwards Monghyr, Berhampore, Moorshedabad, Dacca, Chittagong, and a.s.sam. The Bhootan missionaries were plundered and driven out. The Hindostan mission soon included Gaya, Patna, Deegah, Ghazeepore, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Ajmer, and Delhi itself. From Nagpoor, in the very centre of India, and Surat to the north of Bombay, Carey sought to bring Marathas and Goojaratees under the yoke of Christ.
China, where the East India Company was still master, was cared for by the press, as we shall see. Not content with the continent of Asia, Carey's mission, at once forced by the intolerance which refused to allow new missionaries to land in India proper, and led by the invitations of Sir Stamford Raffles, extended to Java and Amboyna, Penang, Ceylon, and even Mauritius. The elaborate review of their position, signed by the three faithful men of Serampore, at the close of 1817, amazes the reader at once by the magnitude and variety of the operations, the childlike modesty of the record, and the heroism of the toil which supplied the means.
At the time of the organisation into the Five United Missions the staff of workers had grown to be thirty strong. From England there were nine surviving:--Carey, Marshman, Ward, Chamberlain, Mardon, Moore, Chater, Rowe, and Robinson. Raised up in India itself there were seven--the two sons of Carey, Felix and William; Fernandez, his first convert at Dinapoor; Peac.o.c.k and Cornish, and two Armenians, Aratoon and Peters; two were on probation for the ministry, Leonard and Forder. Besides seven Hindoo evangelists also on probation, there were five survivors of the band of converts called from time to time to the ministry--Krishna Pal, the first, who is entered on the list as ”the beloved”; Krishna Da.s.s, Ram Mohun, Seeta Ram, and Seeta Da.s.s. Carey's third son Jabez was soon to become the most advanced of the three brothers away in far Amboyna. His father had long prayed, and besought others to pray, that he too might be a missionary. For the last fifteen years of his life Jabez was his closest and most valued correspondent.
But only less dear than his own sons to the heart of the father, already in 1817 described in an official letter as ”our aged brother Carey,” were the native missionaries and pastors, his sons in the faith. He sent forth the educated Petumber Singh, first in November 1802, to his countrymen at Sooksagar, and ”gave him a suitable and solemn charge: the opportunity was very pleasant.” In May 1803 Krishna Pal was similarly set apart. At the same time the young Brahman, Krishna Prosad, ”delivered his first sermon in Bengali, much to the satisfaction of our brethren.” Six months after, Ward reports of him in Dinapoor:--”The eyes of the people were fixed listening to Prosad; he is becoming eloquent.” In 1804 their successful probation resulted in their formal ordination by prayer and the laying on of the hands of the brethren, when Carey addressed them from the divine words, ”As my Father hath sent me so send I you,” and all commemorated the Lord's death till He come. Krishna Da.s.s was imprisoned unjustly, for a debt which he had paid, but ”he did not cease to declare to the native men in power that he was a Christian, when they gnashed upon him with their teeth. He preached almost all night to the prisoners, who heard the word with eagerness.” Two years after he was ordained, Carey charged him as Paul had written to Timothy, ”in the sight of G.o.d and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the quick and the dead,” to be instant in season and out of season, to reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching. Ram Mohun was a Brahman, the fruit of old Petumber's ministry, and had his ability as a student and preacher of the Scriptures consecrated to Christ on the death of Krishna Prosad, while the missionaries thus saw again answered the invocation they had sung, in rude strains, in the s.h.i.+p which brought them to India:--
”Bid Brahmans preach the heavenly word Beneath the banian's shade; Oh let the Hindoo feel its power And grace his soul pervade.”
So early as 1806 the missionaries thus acknowledged the value of the work of their native brethren, and made of all the native converts a Missionary Church. In the delay and even failure to do this of their successors of all Churches we see the one radical point in which the Church in India has as yet come short of its duty and its privilege:--
”We have availed ourselves of the help of native brethren ever since we had one who dared to speak in the name of Christ, and their exertions have chiefly been the immediate means by which our church has been increased. But we have lately been revolving a plan for rendering their labours more extensively useful; namely, that of sending them out, two and two, without any European brother. It appeared also a most desirable object to interest in this work, as much as possible, the whole of the native church among us: indeed, we have had much in them of this nature to commend. In order, then, more effectually to answer this purpose, we called an extraordinary meeting of all the brethren on Friday evening, Aug. 8, 1806, and laid before them the following ideas:--
”1. That the intention of the Saviour, in calling them out of darkness into marvellous light, was that they should labour to the uttermost in advancing his cause among their countrymen.
”2. That it was therefore their indispensable duty, both collectively and individually, to strive by every means to bring their countrymen to the knowledge of the Saviour; that if we, who were strangers, thought it our duty to come from a country so distant, for this purpose, much more was it inc.u.mbent on them to labour for the same end. This was therefore the grand business of our lives.
”3. That if a brother in discharge of this duty went out forty or fifty miles, he could not labour for his family; it therefore became the church to support such, seeing they were hindered from supporting themselves, by giving themselves wholly to that work in which it was equally the duty of all to take a share.
”4. We therefore proposed to unite the support of itinerant brethren with the care of the poor, and to throw them both upon the church fund, as being both, at least in a heathen land, equally the duty of a church.
”Every one of these ideas our native brethren entered into with the greatest readiness and the most cordial approbation.”
Carey's scheme so early as 1810 included not only the capital of the Great Mogul, Surat far to the west, and Maratha Nagpoor to the south, but Lah.o.r.e, where Ranjeet Singh had consolidated the Sikh power, Kashmeer, and even Afghanistan to which he had sent the Pushtoo Bible.
To set Chamberlain free for this enterprise he sent his second son William to relieve him as missionary in charge of Cutwa. ”This would secure the gradual perfection of the version of the Scriptures in the Sikh language, would introduce the Gospel among the people, and would open a way for introducing it into Kashmeer, and eventually to the Afghans under whose dominion Kashmeer at present is.” Carey and his two colleagues took possession for Christ of the princ.i.p.al centres of Hindoo and Mohammedan influence in India only because they were unoccupied, and provided translations of the Bible into the princ.i.p.al tongues, avowedly as a preparation for other missionary agencies. All over India and the far East he thus pioneered the way of the Lord, as he had written to Ryland when first he settled in Serampore:--”It is very probable we may be only as pioneers to prepare the way for most successful missionaries, who perhaps may not be at liberty to attend to those preparatory labours in which we have been occupied--the translation and printing of the Scriptures,” etc. His heart was enlarged like his Master's on earth, and hence his humbleness of mind.
When the Church Missionary Society, for instance, occupied Agra as their first station in India, he sent the Baptist missionary thence to Allahabad. To Benares ”Brother William Smith, called in Orissa under Brother John Peters,” the Armenian, was sent owing to his acquaintance with the Hindi language; he was the means of bringing to the door of the Kingdom that rich Brahman Raja Jay Narain Ghosal, whom he encouraged to found in 1817 the Church Mission College there which bears the name of this ”almost Christian” Hindoo, who was ”exceedingly desirous of diffusing light among his own countrymen.”
The most striking ill.u.s.trations of this form of Carey's self-sacrifice are, however, to be found outside of India as it then was, in the career of his other two sons in Burma and the Spice Islands. The East India Company's panic on the Vellore mutiny led Carey to plan a mission to Burma, just as he had been guided to settle in Danish Serampore ten years before. The Government of India had doubled his salary as Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit Professor, and thus had unconsciously supplied the means. Since 1795 the port of Rangoon had been opened to the British, although Colonel Symes had been insulted eight years after, during his second emba.s.sy to Ava. Rangoon, wrote the accurate Carey to Fuller in November 1806, is about ten days' sail from Calcutta. ”The Burman empire is about eight hundred miles long, lying contiguous to Bengal on the east; but is inaccessible by land, on account of the mountains covered with thick forests which run between the two countries. The east side of this empire borders upon China, Cochin China, and Tongking, and may afford us the opportunity ultimately of introducing the Gospel into those countries. They are quite within our reach, and the Bible in Chinese will be understood by them equally as well as by the Chinese themselves. About twenty chapters of Matthew are translated into that language, and three of our family have made considerable progress in it.”
This was the beginning of Reformed missions to Eastern Asia. A year was to pa.s.s before Dr. Robert Morrison landed at Macao. From those politically aggressive and therefore opposed Jesuit missions, which alone had worked in Anam up to this time, a persecuted bishop was about to find an asylum at Serampore, and to use its press and its purse for the publication of his Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum. The French have long sought to seize an empire there. That, at its best, must prove far inferior to the marvellous province and Christian Church of Burma, of which Carey laid the foundation. Judson, and the Governors Durand, Phayre, Aitchison, and Bernard, Henry Lawrence's nephew, built well upon it.
On 24th January 1807 Mardon and Chater went forth, after Carey had charged them from the words, ”And thence sailed to Antioch from whence they had been recommended to the grace of G.o.d, which they fulfilled.”
Carey's eldest son Felix soon took the place of Mardon. The instructions, which bear the impress of the sacred scholar's pen, form a model still for all missionaries. These two extracts give counsels never more needed than now:--
”4. With respect to the Burman language, let this occupy your most precious time and your most anxious solicitude. Do not be content with acquiring this language superficially, but make it your own, root and branch. To become fluent in it, you must attentivly listen, with prying curiosity, into the forms of speech, the construction and accent of the natives. Here all the imitative powers are wanted; yet these powers and this attention, without continued effort to use all you acquire, and as fast as you acquire it, will be comparatively of little use.