The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker and Missionary Part 19

In 1825 Carey completed his great Dictionary of Bengali and English in three quarto volumes, abridged two years afterwards. No language, not even in Europe, could show a work of such industry, erudition, and philological completeness at that time. Professor H. H. Wilson declared that it must ever be regarded as a standard authority, especially because of its etymological references to the Sanskrit, which supplies more than three-fourths of the words; its full and correct vocabulary of local terms, with which the author's "long domestication amongst the natives" made him familiar, and his unique knowledge of all natural history terms. The first copy which issued from the press he sent to Dr. Ryland, who had pa.s.sed away at seventy-two, a month before the following letter was written:--

"June 7th, 1825.--On the 17th of August next I shall be sixty-four years of age; and though I feel the enervating influence of the climate, and have lost something of my bodily activity, I labour as closely, and perhaps more so than I have ever done before. My Bengali Dictionary is finished at press. I intend to send you a copy of it by first opportunity, which I request you to accept as a token of my unshaken friends.h.i.+p to you. I am now obliged, in my own defence, to abridge it, and to do it as quickly as possible, to prevent another person from forestalling me and running away with the profits.

"On Lord's day I preached a funeral sermon at Calcutta for one of our deacons, who died very happily; administered the Lords' Supper, and preached again in the evening. It was a dreadfully hot day, and I was much exhausted. Yesterday the rain set in, and the air is somewhat cooled. It is still uncertain whether Brothers Judson and Price are living. There was a report in the newspaper that they were on their way to meet Sir Archibald Campbell with proposals of peace from the Burman king; but no foundation for the report can be traced out.

Living or dead they are secure."

On hearing of the death of Dr. Ryland, he wrote:--"There are now in England very few ministers with whom I was acquainted. Fuller, Sutcliff, Pearce, Fawcett, and Ryland, besides many others whom I knew, are gone to glory. My family connections also, those excepted who were children when I left England, or have since that time been born, are all gone, two sisters only excepted. Wherever I look in England I see a vast blank; and were I ever to revisit that dear country I should have an entirely new set of friends.h.i.+ps to form. I, however, never intended to return to England when I left it, and unless something very unexpected were to take place I certainly shall not do it. I am fully convinced I should meet with many who would show me the utmost kindness in their power, but my heart is wedded to India, and though I am of little use I feel a pleasure in doing the little I can, and a very high interest in the spiritual good of this vast country, by whose instrumentality soever it is promoted."

By 1829 the divinity faculty of the College had become so valuable a nursery of Eurasian and Native missionaries, and the importance of attracting more of the new generation of educated Hindoos within its influence had become so apparent that Oriental gave place to English literature in the curriculum. Mr. Rowe, as English tutor, took his place in the staff beside Dr. Carey, Dr. Marshman, Mr. Mack, and Mr.

John Marshman. Hundreds of native youths flocked to the cla.s.ses. Such was the faith, such the zeal of Carey, that he continued to add new missions to the ten of which the College was the life-giving centre; so that when he was taken away he left eighteen, under eleven European, thirteen Eurasian, seventeen Bengali, two Hindostani, one Telugoo, and six Arakanese missionaries. When Mr. David Scott, formerly a student of his own in Fort William College, and in 1828 Commissioner of a.s.sam (then recently annexed to the empire), asked for a missionary, Carey's importunity prevailed with his colleagues only when he bound himself to pay half the cost by stinting his personal expenditure. Similarly it was the generous action of Mr. Garrett, when judge of Barisal, that led him to send the best of his Serampore students to found that afterwards famous mission.

Having translated the Gospels into the language of the Khasias in the a.s.sam hills, he determined in 1832 to open a new mission at the village of Cherra, which the Serampore Brotherhood were the first to use as a sanitarium in the hot season. For this he gave up 60 of his Government pension and Mr. Garrett gave a similar sum. He sent another of his students, Mr. Lisk, to found the mission, which prospered until it was transferred to the Welsh Calvinists, who have made it the centre of extensive and successful operations. Thus the influence of his middle age and old age in the Colleges of Fort William and of Serampore combined to make the missionary patriarch the father of two bands--that of the Society and that of the Brotherhood.

Dr. Carey's last report, at the close of 1832, was a defence of what has since been called, and outside of India and of Scotland has too often been misunderstood as, educational missions or Christian Colleges. To a purely divinity college for Asiatic Christians he preferred a divinity faculty as part of an Arts and Science College,[29] in which the converts study side by side with their inquiring countrymen, the inquirers are influenced by them as well as by the Christian teaching and secular teaching in a Christian spirit, and the Bible consecrates the whole. The United Free Church of Scotland has, alike in India, China and Africa, proved the wisdom, the breadth, and the spiritual advantage of Carey's policy. When the Society opposed him, scholars like Mack from Edinburgh and Leechman from Glasgow rejoiced to work out his Paul-like conception. When not only he, but Dr. Marshman, had pa.s.sed away Mack bravely held aloft the banner they bequeathed, till his death in 1846. Then John Marshman, who in 1835 had begun the Friend of India as a weekly paper to aid the College, transferred the mission to the Society under the learned W. H.

Denham. When in 1854 a new generation of the English Baptists accepted the College also as their own, it received a Princ.i.p.al worthy to succeed the giants of those days, the Rev. John Trafford, M.A., a student of Foster's and of Glasgow University. For twenty-six years he carried out the principles of Carey. On his retirement the College as such was suspended in the year 1883, and in the same building a purely native Christian Training Inst.i.tution took its place. There, however, the many visitors from Christendom still found the library and museum; the Bibles, grammars, and dictionaries; the natural history collections, and the Oriental MSS.; the Danish Charter, the historic portraits, and the British Treaty; as well as the native Christian cla.s.ses--all of which re-echo William Carey's appeal to posterity.

CHAPTER XV

CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA

The Danish charter--The British treaty--Growth of native Christian community--Lord Minto's concession of self-governing privileges--Madras Decennial Conference and Serampore degrees--Proposed reorganisation of College so as to teach and examine for B.D. and other degrees--Appeal for endowments of Carey's Christian University

Attention has already been directed to the far-seeing plans which Carey laid down for Serampore College. It is a pleasure to record that while this volume is in the press (1909), a scheme is being promoted by the College Council for the reorganisation of the College on the lines of Carey's ideal, with a view to making it a centre of higher ministerial training for all branches of the Indian Church.

It will be remembered that in 1827 the College received from Friedrich VI. a Royal Charter, empowering it to confer degrees, and giving to it all the rights which are possessed by Western Universities. Under Treaty dated the 6th October, 1845, the King of Denmark agreed to transfer to the Governor-General of India, Lord Hardinge, G.C.B., for the sum of 125,000, the towns of Tranquebar, Frederiksnagore or Serampore,[30] and the old factory site at Balasore. Article 6 of this treaty provides that "the rights and immunities granted to the Serampore College by Royal Charter, of date 23rd of February, 1827, shall not be interfered with, but continue in force in the same manner as if they had been obtained by a Charter from the British Government, subject to the General Law of British India."[31]

For lack of an endowment sufficient to maintain the teaching staff required, and to establish the necessary scholars.h.i.+ps, the College has never been fully developed on University lines. Since 1883 it has been used as a training Inst.i.tution for preachers and teachers for the Bengal field of the Baptist Missionary Society. Meanwhile in the century since Carey's statesman-like ideal was sketched, under the providence of G.o.d there have been two notable developments in the conditions of Indian life--(1) the educated Christian natives of India, from Cape Comorin to Peshawar, have grown, and continue to grow, in numbers, in character, and in influence, with a rapidity p.r.o.nounced marvellous by the official report of the Census of 1901; (2) the three hundred millions of the peoples of India have, by the frank concession of the Earl of Minto and his advisers, and the sanction of Viscount Morley and Parliament, received a virtual const.i.tution, which recognises their fitness for self-governing rights under the benevolent rule of King Edward VII. and his Viceroy in Council. Christianity, and the leaven of the more really educated Christian natives, will alone moralise and loyalise the peoples of India, and prepare future generations for a healthy independence, material and political.

As they have watched the lines along which these developments have proceeded, the leaders of the missionary enterprise have become more and more convinced that the realisation of Carey's ideal has been too long delayed, and that the influence of the Christian community on the great movements of Indian thought has suffered in consequence. In particular, while the need for highly-equipped Indian preachers, evangelists and leaders, is far more urgent now even than it was in Carey's day, the most experienced missionaries of all societies are far from satisfied with the present level of theological education in the Indian Church. They are convinced that the time has come to reorganise the whole system of ministerial training, and to secure for the study of Christian Theology in India that academic recognition which it has enjoyed for centuries in Western lands. Since the British Government is pledged to neutrality in religious matters, it is unable to sanction the establishment of Divinity faculties, in any of the State Universities, Hence the Decennial Missionary Conference, representing all the Protestant Missionary Societies working in India, meeting in Madras in December 1902, appointed a Committee "to confer with the Council of the Serampore College, through the Committee of the London Baptist Missionary Society, to ascertain whether they are prepared to delegate the degree-conferring powers of the Charter of that College to a Senate or Faculty, representative of the various Protestant Christian Churches and Societies working in India."

The College Council (of which Meredith Townsend, Esq., is Master, and Alfred Henry Baynes, Esq., F.R.G.S., is Secretary), has taken this request into careful consideration, and after being a.s.sured by the highest legal opinion that the Charter is still valid, has resolved to do everything in its power to carry out the suggestions of the Decennial Conference. They realise, however, that if the degree-conferring powers of the Charter are to be used, the College itself must be raised to the highest standard of efficiency as a Teaching Inst.i.tution, and its permanence must be guaranteed by an adequate endowment.

The Council has felt that the attainment of these two objects is possible only through a union of the forces of the various Protestant Christian Churches working in India. The result has been the adoption of a wise and catholic project of reorganisation, under which it is hoped that Serampore will become a great interdenominational College of University rank, giving a theological training up to the standard of the London B.D., conferring its own divinity degrees, and maintaining an Arts and Science department, for the present at least affiliated to the Calcutta University. It is justly claimed that such a Christian University at Serampore will both unify and raise the standard of theological education in the Indian Church, helping to build the Eastern structure of Christian thought and life on the one Foundation of Jesus Christ, the Word of G.o.d.

The scheme which the Council has sanctioned contemplates the permanent endowment of the requisite professors.h.i.+ps and scholars.h.i.+ps. The College building will provide sufficient cla.s.s-room accommodation, but it will be necessary to secure additional land, and to erect houses for the staff and hostels for the students. An immediate endowment of 250,000 is aimed at with a view of establis.h.i.+ng a well-equipped theological faculty, with a preliminary department in Arts and Sciences. The Council, however, is not without hope that in due time Carey's n.o.ble vision of a great Christian University at Serampore conferring its own degrees, not only in theology but in all branches of useful learning, may powerfully appeal to some of the merchant princes of the West. It is estimated that the sum of 2,000,000 would be required for this equipment and endowment of the University on this larger scale. The great missionary Churches and Societies look favourably on the proposal, initiated by their own missionaries, to co-operate with Carey's more immediate representatives in realising and applying his ideal which is bound to expand and grow as India becomes Christianised.

The members of the College Council maintain that, in view of the world-wide influence of the modern missionary movement, inaugurated by William Carey, a movement that has been so beneficial both to the Church at home and to non-Christian nations, there is no inst.i.tution that has greater historical and spiritual claims upon modern philanthropy than Serampore, and they believe that there are large numbers of men and women in Great Britain, America, India and other lands who will consider it a sacred privilege to have their names inscribed with those of Carey, Marshman and Ward on the walls of Serampore College as its second founders.

The Council is doing all within its power to reorganise the College on the broadest possible basis, believing that an inst.i.tution with such inspiring traditions and a.s.sociations should be utilised in the interests, not merely of one denomination, but of the whole Church in India and the nation. Up to the present, the Council, though legally an entirely independent body, has worked in the closest a.s.sociation with the Baptist Missionary Society's Committee. But now with the fullest sympathy both of the Baptist Missionaries on the field and the Committee in England, it is also inviting the co-operation of all evangelical Christian bodies in the work of Serampore College. It is prepared to welcome as full professors of the College, in Arts and Theology, representatives of other evangelical missions, who shall have special superintendence of the students belonging to their respective denominations, and be free to give them such supplementary instruction as may be thought necessary. All professors without distinction of denomination will share equally in the local management of the affairs of the College. The final authority must, in accordance with the Charter, remain in the hands of the College Council, but in order to admit of the due representation upon the Council of the various evangelical bodies which may co-operate, the present members of Council have, with the hearty concurrence of the Baptist Missionary Society's Committee, approved the suggestion that application should be made to the Indian Legislature for powers to enlarge its members.h.i.+p.

The Honorary Secretary of the College Council, A. H. Baynes, Esq., 19 Furnival Street, London, E.C., will be glad to supply further information, or to receive contributions towards the Fund for the endowment and equipment of the College.

In view of the conditions at present existing in India, this appeal should be of interest not only to friends of Christian missions, but to philanthropists generally, for a Christian University, conducted on the broad and catholic principles laid down by Carey, supplementary but in no way antagonistic to the existing Universities, will be a most effective instrument for permeating the political and social ideals of the youth of India with the spirit of Christ. This is a matter that deeply concerns, not only the Missionary, but also the statesman, the merchant, and all true friends of India of whatever race or creed.

In all the romance of Christian Missions, from Iona to Canterbury, there is no more evident example of the working of the Spirit of G.o.d with the Church, than the call of Carey and the foundation of Serampore College under Danish Charter and British treaty, making it the only University with full powers to enable the whole Reformed Church in India to work out its own theological system and Christian life.

CHAPTER XVI

CAREY'S LAST DAYS

1830-1834

The college and mission stripped of all their funds--Failure of the six firms for sixteen millions--Carey's official income reduced from 1560 to 600--His Thoughts and Appeal published in England--His vigour at seventy--Last revision of the Bengali Bible--Final edition of the Bengali New Testament--Carey rejoices in the reforms of Lord William Bentinck's Government--In the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves--Carey sketched by his younger contemporaries--His latest letters and last message to Christendom--Visits of Lady William Bentinck and Bishop Daniel Wilson--Marshman's affection and promise as to the garden--The English mail brings glad news a fortnight before his death--His last Sabbath--He dies--Is buried--His tomb among his converts--His will--The Indian press on his poverty and disinterestedness--Dr. Marshman and Mack, Christopher Anderson and John Wilson of Bombay on his character--His influence still as the founder of missions--Dr. c.o.x and Robert Hall on Carey as a man--Scotland's estimate of the father of the Evangelical Revival and its foreign missions.

The last days of William Carey were the best. His sun went down in all the splendour of a glowing faith and a burning self-sacrifice. Not in the penury of Hackleton and Moulton, not in the hards.h.i.+ps of Calcutta and the Soondarbans, not in the fevers of the swamps of Dinapoor, not in the apprehensions twice excited by official intolerance, not in the most bitter sorrow of all--the sixteen years' persecution by English brethren after Fuller's death, had the father of modern missions been so tried as in the years 1830-1833. Blow succeeded blow, but only that the fine gold of his trust, his humility, and his love might be seen to be the purer.

The Serampore College and Mission lost all the funds it had in India.

By 1830 the financial revolution which had laid many houses low in Europe five years before, began to tell upon the merchant princes of Calcutta. The six firms, which had developed the trade of Northern India so far as the Company's monopolies allowed, had been the bankers of the Government itself, of states like Haidarabad, and of all the civil and military officials, and had enriched a succession of partners for half a century, fell one by one--fell for sixteen millions sterling among them. Palmer and Co. was the greatest; the house at one time played a large part in the history of India, and in the debates and papers of Parliament. Mr. John Palmer, a personal friend of the Serampore men, had advanced them money at ten per cent. four years previously, when the Society's misrepresentation had done its worst.

The children in the Eurasian schools, which Dr. and Mrs. Marshman conducted with such profit to the mission, depended chiefly on funds deposited with this firm. It suddenly failed for more than two millions sterling. Although the catastrophe exposed the rottenness of the system of credit on which commerce and banking were at that time conducted, in the absence of a free press and an intelligent public opinion, the alarm soon subsided, and only the more business fell to the other firms. But the year 1833 had hardly opened when first the house of Alexander and Co., then that of Mackintosh and Co., and then the three others, collapsed without warning. The English in India, officials and merchants, were reduced to universal poverty. Capital disappeared and credit ceased at the very time that Parliament was about to complete the partial concession of freedom of trade made by the charter of 1813, by granting all Carey had argued for, and allowing Europeans to hold land.

The funds invested for Jessor and Delhi; the legacy of Fernandez, Carey's first convert and missionary; his own tenths with which he supported three aged relatives in England; the property of the partner of his third marriage, on whom the money was settled, and who survived him by a year; the little possessed by Dr. Marshman, who had paid all his expenses in England even while working for the Society--all was swept away. Not only was the small balance in hand towards meeting the college and mission expenditure gone, but it was impossible to borrow even for a short time. Again one of Dr. Carey's old civilian students came to the rescue. Mr. Garrett, grandson of Robert Raikes who first began Sunday schools, pledged his own credit with the Bank of Bengal, until Samuel Hope of Liverpool, treasurer of the Serampore Mission there, could be communicated with. Meanwhile the question of giving up any of the stations or shutting the college was not once favoured. "I have seen the tears run down the face of the venerable Dr. Carey at the thought of such a calamity," wrote Leechman; "were it to arrive we should soon have to lay him in his grave." When the interest of the funds raised by Ward in America ceased for a time because of the malicious report from England that it might be applied by Dr. Marshman to the purposes of family aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, Carey replied in a spirit like that of Paul under a similar charge: "Dr. Marshman is as poor as I am, and I can scarcely lay by a sum monthly to relieve three or four indigent relatives in Europe. I might have had large possessions, but I have given my all, except what I ate, drank, and wore, to the cause of missions, and Dr. Marshman has done the same, and so did Mr. Ward."

Carey's trust in G.o.d, for the mission and for himself, was to be still further tried. On 12th July 1828 we find him thus writing from Calcutta to Jabez:--"I came down this morning to attend Lord W.

Bentinck's first levee. It was numerously attended, and I had the pleasure of seeing there a great number of gentlemen who had formerly studied under me, and for whom I felt a very sincere regard. I hear Lady Bentinck is a pious woman, but have not yet seen her. I have a card to attend at her drawing-room this evening, but I shall not go, as I must be at home for the Sabbath, which is to-morrow." It soon fell to Lord William Bentinck to meet the financial consequences of his weak predecessor's administration. The College of Fort William had to be sacrificed. Metcalfe and Bayley, Carey's old students whom he had permanently influenced in the higher life, were the members of council, and he appealed to them. They sent him to the good Governor-General, to whose sympathy he laid bare all the past and present of the mission's finance. He was told to have no fear, and indeed the Council held a long sitting on this one matter. But from June 1830 the college ceased to be a teaching, and became an examining body. When the salary was reduced one-half, from Rs. 1000 a month, the Brotherhood met to pray for light and strength. Mr. Robinson, the Java missionary who had attached himself to Serampore, and whose son long did good service as a Bengali scholar and preacher, gives us this glimpse of its inner life at this time:--

"The two old men were dissolved in tears while they were engaged in prayer, and Dr. Marshman in particular could not give expressions to his feelings. It was indeed affecting to see these good old men, the fathers of the mission, entreating with tears that G.o.d would not forsake them now grey hairs were come upon them, but that He would silence the tongue of calumny, and furnish them with the means of carrying on His own cause."

They sent home an appeal to England, and Carey himself published what is perhaps the most chivalrous, just, and weighty of all his utterances on the disagreeable subject--Thoughts upon the Discussions which have arisen from the Separation between the Baptist Missionary Society and the Serampore Missions. "From our age and other circ.u.mstances our contributions may soon cease. We have seen a great work wrought in India, and much of it, either directly or indirectly, has been done by ourselves. I cannot, I ought not to be indifferent about the permanency of this work, and cannot therefore view the exultation expressed at the prospect of our resources being crippled otherwise than being of a character too satanic to be long persisted in by any man who has the love of G.o.d in his heart."

The appeal to all Christians for "a few hundred pounds per annum" for the mission station closed thus: "But a few years have pa.s.sed away since the Protestant world was awakened to missionary effort. Since that time the annual revenues collected for this object have grown to the then unthought-of sum of 400,000. And is it unreasonable to expect that some unnoticeable portion of this should be intrusted to him who was amongst the first to move in this enterprise and to his colleagues?" The Brotherhood had hardly despatched this appeal to England with the sentence, "Our present incomes even are uncertain,"

when the shears of financial reduction cut off Dr. Carey's office of Bengali translator to Government, which for eight years had yielded him Rs. 300 a month. But such was his faith this final stroke called forth only an expression of regret that he must reduce his contributions to the missionary cause by so much. He was a wonder to his colleagues, who wrote of him: "Though thus reduced in his circ.u.mstances the good man, about to enter on his seventieth year, is as cheerful and as happy as the day is long. He rides out four or five miles every morning, returning home by sunrise; goes on with the work of translation day by day; gives two lectures on divinity and one on natural history every week in the college, and takes his turn of preaching both in Bengali and in English."

When the Christian public responded heartily to his appeal Carey was loud and frequent in his expressions of grat.i.tude to G.o.d, who, "in the time of our great extremity, appeared and stirred up His people thus willingly to offer their substance for His cause." With respect to myself, I consider my race as nearly run. The days of our years are three score years and ten, and I am now only three months short of that age, and repeated bilious attacks have weakened my const.i.tution. But I do not look forward to death with any painful antic.i.p.ations. I cast myself on and plead the efficacy of that atonement which will not fail me when I need it."

Dr. Marshman gives us a brighter picture of him. "I met with very few friends in England in their seventieth year so lively, as free from the infirmities of age, so interesting in the pulpit, so completely conversible as he is now." The reason is found in the fact that he was still useful, still busy at the work he loved most of all. He completed his last revision of the entire Bible in Bengali--the fifth edition of the Old Testament and the eighth edition of the New--in June 1832. Immediately thereafter, when presiding at the ordination of Mr.

Mack as co-pastor with Dr. Marshman and himself over the church at Serampore, he took with him into the pulpit the first copy of the sacred volume which came from the binder's hands, and addressed the converts and their children from the words of Simeon--"Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." As the months went on he carried through the press still another and improved edition of the New Testament, and only then he felt and often said that the work of his heart was done.

He had other sources of saintly pleasure as he lay meditating on the Word, and praising G.o.d for His goodness to the college and the mission stations increased to nineteen by young Sir Henry Havelock, who founded the church at Agra. Lord William Bentinck, having begun his reign with the abolition of the crime of suttee, was, with the help of Carey's old students, steadily carrying out the other reforms for which in all his Indian career the missionary had prayed and preached and published.

The judicial service was reorganised so as to include native judges.

The uncovenanted civil service was opened to all British subjects of every creed. The first act of justice to native Christians was thus done, so that he wrote of the college:--"The students are now eligible to every legal appointment in India which a native can hold; those who may possess no love for the Christian ministry have the prospect of a profitable profession as advocates in the judicial courts, and the hope of rising to posts of honourable distinction in their native land."

The Hindoo law of inheritance which the Regulating Act of Parliament had so covered that it was used to deprive converts to Christianity of all civil rights, was dealt with so far as a local regulation could do so, and Carey, advised by such an authority as Harington, laid it on his successor in the apostolate, the young Alexander Duff, to carry the act of justice out fully, which was done under the Marquis of Dalhousie. The orders drawn up by Charles Grant's sons at last, in February 1833, freed Great Britain from responsibility for the connection of the East India Company with Temple and mosque endowments and the pilgrim tax.

His son Jonathan wrote this of him two years after his death:--

"In principle my father was resolute and firm, never shrinking from avowing and maintaining his sentiments. He had conscientious scruples against taking an oath; and condemned severely the manner in which oaths were administered, and urged vehemently the propriety of altogether dispensing with them. I remember three instances in which he took a conspicuous part in regard to oaths, such as was characteristic of the man. On one occasion, when a respectable Hindoo servant of the college of Fort William, attached to Dr. Carey's department, was early one morning proceeding to the Ganges to bathe, he perceived a dead body lying near the road; but it being dark, and no person being present, he pa.s.sed on, taking no further notice of the circ.u.mstance. As he returned from the Ganges after sunrise, he saw a crowd near the body, and then happened to say to one of the watchmen present that in the morning he saw the body on the other side of the road. The watchman took him in custody, as a witness before the coroner; but, when brought before the coroner, he refused to take an oath, and was, consequently, committed to prison for contempt. The Hindoo being a respectable person, and never having taken an oath, refused to take any nourishment in the prison. In this state he continued a day and a half, my father being then at Serampore; but upon his coming to Calcutta, the circ.u.mstances were mentioned to him. The fact of the man having refused to take an oath was enough to make him interest himself in his behalf. He was delighted with the resolution the man took--rather to go to prison than take an oath; and was determined to do all he could to procure his liberation. He first applied to the coroner, but was directed by him to the sheriff. To that functionary he proceeded, but was informed by him that he could make no order on the subject. He then had an interview with the then chief judge, by whose interference the man was set at liberty.

"Another instance relates to him personally. On the occasion of his last marriage, the day was fixed on which the ceremony was to take place--friends were invited--and all necessary arrangements made; but, three or four days prior to the day fixed, he was informed that it would be necessary for him to obtain a licence, in doing which, he must either take an oath or have banns published. To taking an oath he at once objected, and applied to the then senior judge, who informed him that, as he was not a quaker, his oath was indispensable; but, rather than take an oath, he applied to have the banns published, and postponed the arrangements for his marriage for another three weeks.

"The third instance was as follows:--It was necessary, in a certain case, to prove a will in court, in which the name of Dr. Carey was mentioned, in connection with the Serampore missionaries as executors.

An application was made by one of his colleagues, which was refused by the court, on account of the vagueness of the terms, 'Serampore missionaries;' but as Dr. Carey's name was specifically mentioned, the court intimated that they would grant the application if made by him.

The communication was made: but when he was informed that an oath was necessary, he shrunk with abhorrence from the idea; but after much persuasion, he consented to make the application, if taking an oath would be dispensed with. He did attend, and stated his objections to the then chief judge, which being allowed, his affirmation was received and recorded by the court.