Part 18 (1/2)
CHAPTER XIV
CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR--THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN THE EAST
1818-1830
A college the fourth and perfecting corner-stone of the mission--Carey on the importance of English in 1800--Antic.i.p.ates Duff's policy of undermining Brahmanism--New educational era begun by the charter of 1813 and Lord Hastings--Plan of the Serampore College in 1818--Antic.i.p.ates the Anglo-Orientalism of the Punjab University--The building described by John Marshman--Bishop Middleton follows--The Scottish and other colleges--Action of the Danish Government--The royal charter--Visit of Maharaja Serfojee--Death of Ward, Charles Grant and Bentley--Bishop Heber and his catholic letter--Dr. Carey's reply--Progress of the college--Cause of its foundation--The college directly and essentially a missionary undertaking--Action of the Brotherhood from the first vindicated--Carey appeals to posterity--The college and the systematic study of English--Carey author of the Grant in Aid system--Economy in administering missions--The Serampore Mission has eighteen stations and fifty missionaries of all kinds--Subsequent history of the Serampore College to 1883.
The first act of Carey and Marshman when their Committee took up a position of hostility to their self-denying independence, was to complete and perpetuate the mission by a college. As planned by Carey in 1793, the const.i.tution had founded the enterprise on these three corner-stones--preaching the Gospel in the mother tongue of the people; translating the Bible into all the languages of Southern and Eastern Asia; teaching the young, both heathen and Christian, both boys and girls, in vernacular schools. But Carey had not been a year in Serampore when, having built well on all three, he began to see that a fourth must be laid some day in the shape of a college. He and his colleagues had founded and supervised, by the year 1818, no fewer than 126 native schools, containing some 10,000 boys, of whom more than 7000 were in and around Serampore. His work among the pundit cla.s.s, both in Serampore and in the college of Fort William, and the facilities in the mission-house for training natives, Eurasians, and the missionaries'
sons to be preachers, translators, and teachers, seemed to meet the immediate want. But as every year the mission in all its forms grew and the experience of its leaders developed, the necessity of creating a college staff in a building adapted to the purpose became more urgent. Only thus could the otherwise educated natives be reached, and the Brahmanical cla.s.s especially be permanently influenced. Only thus could a theological inst.i.tute be satisfactorily conducted to feed the native Church.
On 10th October 1800 the missionaries had thus written home:--”There appears to be a favourable change in the general temper of the people.
Commerce has roused new thoughts and awakened new energies; so that hundreds, if we could skilfully teach them gratis, would crowd to learn the English language. We hope this may be in our power some time, and may be a happy means of diffusing the gospel. At present our hands are quite full.” A month after that Carey wrote to Fuller:--”I have long thought whether it would not be desirable for us to set up a school to teach the natives English. I doubt not but a thousand scholars would come. I do not say this because I think it an object to teach them the English tongue; but, query, is not the universal inclination of the Bengalees to learn English a favourable circ.u.mstance which may be improved to valuable ends? I only hesitate at the expense.” Thirty years after Duff reasoned in the same way, after consulting Carey, and acted at once in Calcutta.
By 1816, when, on 25th June, Carey wrote a letter, for his colleagues and himself, to the Board of the American Baptist General Convention, the great idea, destined slowly to revolutionise not only India, but China, j.a.pan, and the farther East, had taken this form:--
”We know not what your immediate expectations are relative to the Burman empire, but we hope your views are not confined to the immediate conversion of the natives by the preaching of the Word. Could a church of converted natives be obtained at Rangoon, it might exist for a while, and be scattered, or perish for want of additions. From all we have seen hitherto we are ready to think that the dispensations of Providence point to labours that may operate, indeed, more slowly on the population, but more effectually in the end: as knowledge, once put into fermentation, will not only influence the part where it is first deposited, but leaven the whole lump. The slow progress of conversion in such a mode of teaching the natives may not be so encouraging, and may require, in all, more faith and patience; but it appears to have been the process of things, in the progress of the Reformation, during the reigns of Henry, Edward, Elizabeth, James, and Charles. And should the work of evangelising India be thus slow and silently progressive, which, however, considering the age of the world, is not perhaps very likely, still the grand result will amply recompense us, and you, for all our toils. We are sure to take the fortress, if we can but persuade ourselves to sit down long enough before it. 'We shall reap if we faint not.'
”And then, very dear brethren, when it shall be said of the seat of our labours, the infamous swinging-post is no longer erected; the widow burns no more on the funeral pile; the obscene dances and songs are seen and heard no more; the G.o.ds are thrown to the moles and to the bats, and Jesus is known as the G.o.d of the whole land; the poor Hindoo goes no more to the Ganges to be washed from his filthiness, but to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness; the temples are forsaken; the crowds say, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord, and He shall teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His statutes;' the anxious Hindoos no more consume their property, their strength, and their lives, in vain pilgrimages, but they come at once to Him who can save to 'the uttermost'; the sick and the dying are no more dragged to the Ganges, but look to the Lamb of G.o.d, and commit their souls into His faithful hands; the children, no more sacrificed to idols, are become 'the seed of the Lord, that He may be glorified'; the public morals are improved; the language of Canaan is learnt; benevolent societies are formed; civilisation and salvation walk arm in arm together; the desert blossoms; the earth yields her increase; angels and glorified spirits hover with joy over India, and carry ten thousand messages of love from the Lamb in the midst of the throne; and redeemed souls from the different villages, towns, and cities of this immense country, constantly add to the number, and swell the chorus of the redeemed, 'Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, unto HIM be the glory;'--when this grand result of the labours of G.o.d's servants in India shall be realised, shall we then think that we have laboured in vain, and spent our strength for nought? Surely not. Well, the decree is gone forth! 'My word shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it.'”
India was being prepared for the new missionary policy. On what we may call its literary side Carey had been long busy. On its more strictly educational side, the charter of 1813 had conceded what had been demanded in vain by a too feeble public opinion in the charter of 1793.
A clause was inserted at the last moment declaring that a sum of not less than a lakh of rupees (or ten thousand pounds) a year was to be set apart from the surplus revenues, and applied to the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories there. The clause was prompted by an Anglo-Indian of oriental tastes, who hoped that the Brahman and his Veda might thus be made too strong for the Christian missionary and the Bible as at last tolerated under the 13th resolution. For this reason, and because the money was to be paid only out of any surplus, the directors and their friends offered no opposition. For the quarter of a century the grant was given, and was applied in the spirit of its proposer. But the scandals of its application became such that it was made legally by Bentinck and Macaulay, and practically by Duff, the fountain of a river of knowledge and life which is flooding the East.
The first result of the liberalism of the charter of 1813 and the generous views of Lord Hastings was the establishment in Calcutta by the Hindoos themselves, under the influence of English secularists, of the Hindoo, now the Presidency College. Carey and Marshman were not in Calcutta, otherwise they must have realised even then what they left to Duff to act on fourteen years after, the importance of English not only as an educating but as a Christianising instrument. But though not so well adapted to the immediate need of the reformation which they had begun, and though not applied to the very heart of Bengal in Calcutta, the prospectus of their ”College for the Instruction of Asiatic, Christian, and Other Youth in Eastern Literature and European Science,”
which they published on the 15th July 1818, sketched a more perfect and complete system than any since attempted, if we except John Wilson's almost unsupported effort in Bombay. It embraced the cla.s.sical or learned languages of the Hindoos and Mohammedans, Sanskrit and Arabic; the English language and literature, to enable the senior students ”to dive into the deepest recesses of European science, and enrich their own language with its choicest treasures”; the preparation of manuals of science, philosophy, and history in the learned and vernacular languages of the East; a normal department to train native teachers and professors; as the crown of all, a theological inst.i.tute to equip the Eurasian and native Christian students, by a quite unsectarian course of study, in apologetics, exegetics, and the Bible languages, to be missionaries to the Brahmanical cla.s.ses. While the Government and the Scottish missionaries have in the university and grant in aid systems since followed too exclusively the English line, happily supplanting the extreme Orientalists, it is the glory of the Serampore Brotherhood that they sought to apply both the Oriental and the European, the one as the form, the other as the substance, so as to evangelise and civilise the people through their mother tongue. They were the Vernacularists in the famous controversy between the Orientalists and the Anglicists raised by Duff. In 1867 the present writer in vain attempted to induce the University of Calcutta to follow them in this.
It was left to Sir Charles Aitchison, when he wielded the power and the influence of the Lieutenant-Governor, to do in 1882 what the Serampore College would have accomplished had its founders been young instead of old men, by establis.h.i.+ng the Punjab University.
Lord Hastings and even Sir John Malcolm took a personal interest in the Serampore College. The latter, who had visited the missionaries since his timid evidence before the House of Lords in 1813, wrote to them:--”I wish I could be certain that your successors in the serious task you propose would have as much experience as you and your fellow-labourers at Serampore--that they would walk, not run, in the same path--I would not then have to state one reserve.” Lord Hastings in Council pa.s.sed an order encouraging the establishment of a European Medical Professors.h.i.+p in Serampore College, and engaged to a.s.sist in meeting the permanent expense of the chair when established. His Excellency ”interrupted pressing avocations” to criticise both the architectural plan of the building and the phraseology of the draft of the first report, and his suggestions were followed. Adopting one of the Grecian orders as most suitable to a tropical climate, the Danish Governor's colleague, Major Wickedie, planned the n.o.ble Ionic building which was then, and is still, the finest edifice of the kind in British India.
”The centre building, intended for the public rooms, was a hundred and thirty feet in length, and a hundred and twenty in depth. The hall on the ground floor, supported on arches, and terminated at the south by a bow, was ninety-five feet in length, sixty-six in breadth, and twenty in height. It was originally intended for the library, but is now occupied by the cla.s.ses. The hall above, of the same dimensions and twenty-six feet in height, was supported by two rows of Ionic columns; it was intended for the annual examinations. Of the twelve side-rooms above and below, eight were of s.p.a.cious dimensions, twenty-seven feet by thirty-five. The portico which fronted the river was composed of six columns, more than four feet in diameter at the base. The staircase-room was ninety feet in length, twenty-seven in width, and forty-seven in height, with two staircases of cast-iron, of large size and elegant form, prepared at Birmingham. The s.p.a.cious grounds were surrounded with iron railing, and the front entrance was adorned with a n.o.ble gate, likewise cast at Birmingham...
”The scale on which it was proposed to establish the college, and to which the size of the building was necessarily accommodated, corresponded with the breadth of all the other enterprises of the Serampore missionaries,--the mission, the translations, and the schools. While Mr. Ward was engaged in making collections for the support of the inst.i.tution in England, he wrote to his brethren, 'the buildings you must raise in India;' and they determined to respond to the call, and, if possible, to augment their donation from 2500 to 8000, and to make a vigorous effort to erect the buildings from their own funds. Neither the ungenerous suspicion, nor the charge of unfaithfulness, with which their character was a.s.sailed in England, was allowed to slacken the prosecution of this plan. It was while their reputation was under an eclipse in England, and the benevolent hesitated to subscribe to the society till they were a.s.sured that their donations would not be mixed up with the funds of the men at Serampore, that those men were engaged in erecting a n.o.ble edifice for the promotion of religion and knowledge, at their own cost, the expense of which eventually grew under their hands to the sum of 15,000. To the charge of endeavouring to alienate from the society premises of the value of 3000, their own gift, they replied by erecting a building at five times the cost, and vesting it in eleven trustees,--seven besides themselves. It was thus they vindicated the purity of their motives in their differences with the society, and endeavoured to silence the voice of calumny. They were the first who maintained that a college was an indispensable appendage to an Indian mission.”
The next to follow Carey in this was Bishop Middleton, who raised funds to erect a chaste Gothic pile beside the Botanic Garden, since to him the time appeared ”to have arrived when it is desirable that some missionary endeavours, at least, should have some connection with the Church establishment.” That college no longer exists, in spite of the saintly scholars.h.i.+p of such Princ.i.p.als as Mill and Kay; the building is now utilised as a Government engineering college. But in Calcutta the Duff College, with the General a.s.sembly's Inst.i.tution (now united as the Scottish Churches College), the Cathedral Mission Divinity School, and the Bhowanipore Inst.i.tution; in Bombay the Wilson College, in Madras the Christian College, in Nagpoor the Hislop College, in Agra St. John's College, in Lah.o.r.e the Church Mission Divinity School, in Lucknow the Reid College, and others, bear witness to the fruitfulness of the Alma Mater of Serampore.
The Serampore College began with thirty-seven students, of whom nineteen were native Christians and the rest Hindoos. When the building was occupied in 1821 Carey wrote to his son:--”I pray that the blessing of G.o.d may attend it, and that it may be the means of preparing many for an important situation in the Church of G.o.d...The King of Denmark has written letters signed with his own hand to Brothers Ward, Marshman, and myself, and has sent each of us a gold medal as a token of his approbation. He has also made over the house in which Major Wickedie resides, between Sarkies's house and ours, to us three in perpetuity for the college. Thus Divine generosity appears for us and supplies our expectations.” The missionaries had declined the Order of the Dannebrog. When, in 1826, Dr. Marshman visited Europe, one of his first duties was to acknowledge this gift to Count Moltke, Danish Minister in London and ancestor of the great strategist, and to ask for a royal charter. The Minister and Count Schulin, whose wife had been a warm friend of Mrs. Carey, happened to be on board the steamer in which Dr. Marshman, accompanied by Christopher Anderson, sailed to Copenhagen. Raske, the Orientalist, who had visited Serampore, was a Professor in the University there. The vellum charter was prepared among them, empowering the College Council, consisting of the Governor of Serampore and the Brotherhood, to confer degrees like those of the Universities of Copenhagen and Kiel, but not carrying the rank in the State implied in Danish degrees unless with the sanction of the Crown. The King, in the audience which he gave, informed Dr.
Marshman that, having in 1801 promised the mission protection, he had hitherto refused to transfer Serampore to the East India Company, since that would prevent him from keeping his word. When, in 1845, the Company purchased both Tranquebar and Serampore, it could be no longer dangerous to the Christian Mission, but the Treaty expressly provided that the College should retain all its powers, and its Christian character, under the Danish charter, which it does. It was thus the earliest degree-conferring college in Asia, but it has never exercised the power. Christian VIII., then the heir to the throne, showed particular interest in the Bible translation work of Carey. When, in 1884, the Evangelical Alliance held its session in Copenhagen, and was received by Christian IX.,[28] it did well, by special resolution, to express the grat.i.tude of Protestant Christendom to Denmark for such courageous and continued services to the first Christian mission from England to India.
How Dr. Carey valued the gift of the King is seen in this writing, on the lining of the case of the gold medal, dated 6th November 1823:--
”It is my desire that this medal, and the letter of the King of Denmark, which accompanied it, be given at my death to my dear son Jonathan, that he may keep it for my sake.”
The letter of King Frederic VI. is as follows:--
”MONSIEUR LE DOCTEUR ET PROFESSEUR WILLIAM CAREY--
C'est avec beaucoup d'interet que nous avons appris le merite qu'en qualite de membre dirigeant de la Societe de la Mission, vous avez acquis, ainsi que vos co-directeurs, et les effets salutaires que vos louables travaux ont produits et partout ou votre influence a pu atteindre. Particulierement informes qu'en votre dite qualite vous avez contribue a effectuer bien des choses utiles, dont l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt a Fredericsnagore a a se louer, et voulant vous certifier que nous vous en avons gre, nous avons charge le chef du dit etabliss.e.m.e.nt,--notre Lieutenant-Colonel Kraefting, de vous remettre cette lettre; et en meme temps une medaille d'or, comme une marque de notre bienveillance et de notre protection, que vous a.s.surera toujours une conduite meritoire.
”Sur ce nous prions Dieu de vous avoir dans Sa sainte et digne garde.--Votre affectionne FREDERIC.