William Carey

“ William Carey, indeed, reaped the little that the few brave toilers of the wintry time had sown; with a humility that is pathetic he acknowledges their toll, while ever ignorant to the last of his own merit. But he reaped only as each generation garners such fruits of its predecessor as may have been worthy to survive. ”

“ Richard Winter Hamilton, reflecting that sacrifice to heroes is reserved until after sunset, recalled William Carey, eight years after his death, as "wielding a power to which all difficulties yielded, but that power noiseless as a law of nature; great in conception as well as in performance ”

“ Carey had to endure the disasters common to the wives of struggling great men: for William Carey’s shoes were not equal to his sermons, and his congregation were too poor even to raise means to clothe him decently. His time was spent in long tramps to sell shoes he had made and to obtain the mending of others, and, meantime, he was constantly suffering from fever and ague.
In 1786, when in his twenty-fifth year, he obtained a little Baptist chapel and the goodwill of a school at Moulton; but as a minister he only received 16l. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 God is eminently conspicuous in raising up our beloved brother Carey," wrote Marshman. ”

“ She sees the earth rising higher and higher around her, without upbraiding her murderers, or making the least effort to arise and make her escape. At length the earth reaches her lips—covers her head. The rest of the earth is then hastily thrown in, and these children and relations mount the grave, and tread down the earth upon the head of the suffocating widow—the mother!"
Before Carey, what had been done to turn the millions of North India from such darkness as that? Nothing, beyond the brief and impulsive efforts of Thomas. ”

“ When Pearce died all too soon there was none whom Carey loved like Fuller, while Fuller's devotion to Carey was all the greater that it was tempered by a wise jealousy for his perfectness. So early as 1797, Fuller wrote thus to the troublesome Fountain:—"It affords us good hope of your being a useful missionary that you seem to love and revere the counsels of Brother Carey. A humble, peaceful, circumspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous conduct like his will render you a blessing to society. Brother Carey is greatly respected and beloved by all denominations here. ”

“ Carey's likeness...When you pitched your tents at Serampore you said, 'We will not accumulate riches but devote all to God for the salvation of the heathen.' God has given you what you desired and what you desired not. Blessed men, God will bless you and make you a blessing. I and others of us may die, but God will surely visit you...Expect to be highly applauded, bitterly reproached, greatly moved, and much tried in every way. ”

“ Carey, as a widow, should have Rs. 100 monthly, whatever Mackintosh's house might yield her."
Twenty-two years before, when Chamberlain was complaining because of the absence of stone, or brick, or inscription in the mission burial-ground, Carey had said, "Why should we be remembered? I think when I am dead the sooner I am forgotten the better." Dr. Johns observed that it is not the desire of the persons themselves but of their friends for them, to which Carey replied, "I think of others in that respect as I do of myself." ”

“ Marshman, he has never known ill-health is, during the whole period of his residence in India. They are both active to a degree which you would think impossible in such a country. Dr. Carey is a very equable and cheerful old man, in countenance very like the engraving of him with his pundit, though not so robust as he appears to be there. Next to his translations Botany is his grand study. He has collected every plant and tree in his garden that will possibly grow in India, and is so scientific withal that he calls everything by its classical name. ”

“ Christopher Anderson justly remarks, in his Annals of the English Bible, published half a century ago:—"Time will show, and in a very singular manner, that every version, without exception, which came from Carey's hands, has a value affixed to it which the present generation, living as it were too near an object, is not yet able to estimate or descry. Fifty years hence the character of this extraordinary and humble man will be more correctly appreciated." ”

“ There he at once made the acquaintance, and till 1815 retained the loving friendship, of its superintendent, Dr. Roxburgh, the leader of a series of eminent men, Buchanan and Wallich, Griffith, Falconer, T. Thomson, and Thomas Anderson, the last two cut off in the ripe promise of their manhood. One of Carey's first requests was for seeds and instruments, not merely from scientific reasons, but that he might carry out his early plan of working with his hands as a farmer while he evangelised the people. ”

“ Meanwhile pundits continually applied to him from various countries in India, who tis man, though he lived only 3 or 4 years, instructed in his art a family at Serampore, and thus the knowledge of type cutting has remained at Serampore ever since. And as a new fount of types in any language could be obtained for so small a sum, Dr. Carey, before his death, had the satisfaction of seeing founts of types prepared at Serampore in the Deva Nagree, the Kytee, or Bazar Nagree, the Punjabi, the Cashmeer, and the Multanee characters on the West of India ”

“ To Roxburgh and his Danish successor Wallich, to Voigt who succeeded Wallich in Serampore, and hundreds of correspondents in India and Germany, Great Britain and America, Carey did many a service in sending plants and—what was a greater sacrifice for so busy a man—writing letters. ”

“ It was Sunday morning when he approached the Mudnabati factory, "feeling very unusual sensations," greatly excited. "At length I saw Carey! He is less altered than I expected: has rather more flesh than when in England, and, blessed be God! he is a young man still." It was a wrench to sacrifice his own pioneer mission, property worth £500, the school, the church, the inquirers, but he did not hesitate. He thus stated the case on the other side:—"At Serampore we may settle as missionaries, which is not allow here ”

“ It has been already seen in what manner he began by translating Matthew, and circulating it in manuscript as early as 1788, and in a letter, dated Calcutta, January 4th, 1794, not two months after his landing, he says, "I am pursuing my Sanscrit studies, and keep a Pundit; brother Carey pays a Moonshee twenty Rupees per month, which takes almost half his income. I should be very happy to see a Bible in any degree of forwardness before I die, and have been talking with a printer to-day, in whose hands are the Bengalee types which are used here, on the expence of such a work." ”

“ Hackleton is part of Piddington, and the squire had long appropriated the living of £300 a year, the parsonage, the glebe, and all tithes, sending his house minister "at times" to do duty. A Certificate from Northamptonshire, against the pluralities and other such scandals, published in 1641, declared that not a child or servant in Hackleton or Piddington could say the Lord's Prayer. Carey sought the preaching of Doddridge's successor at Northampton, of a Baptist minister at Road, and of Scott the commentator, then at Ravenstone. ”

“ The frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and sent £70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to him dearer than even Fuller was. ”

“ One of our resolutions is, that no one of us do engage in private trade; but that all be done for the benefit of the mission...
"August 1.—Our labours for every day are now regularly arranged. About six o'clock we rise; brother Carey to his garden; brother Marshman to his school at seven; brother Brunsdon, Felix, and I, to the printing-office. At eight the bell rings for family worship: we assemble in the hall; sing, read, and pray. Breakfast. Afterwards, brother Carey goes to the translation, or reading proofs: brother Marshman to school, and the rest to the printing-office. ”

“ Carey's successor, Mack, wrote thus to Christopher Anderson ten months later:—
"SERAMPORE, 31st January 1834.—Our venerable father, Dr. Carey, is yet continued to us, but in the same state in which he has been for the last three months or so. He is quite incapable of work, and very weak. He can walk but a few yards at a time, and spends the day in reading for profit and entertainment, and in occasionally nodding and sleeping. He is perfectly tranquil in mind. His imagination does not soar much in vivid anticipations of glory ”

“ 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; Peacock and Cornish, and two Armenians, Aratoon and Peters ”

“ Fuller says, brother Carey preached a very animating discourse from Isaiah, liv. 2, "Enlarge the place of thy Tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations, spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen they stakes;" in which he pressed two things in particular, as expository of lengthening our cords and strengthening our stakes; that we should expect great things; and that we should attempt great things. ”

“ The ashes have almost fallen into your pride. Do you think your house or any thing will remain, if either good or evil befals my child? I will do that I please. Then I will see what father you have got to preserve you. O Lord! if thou dost indeed exist, cause that her three children may be bitten by a snake, and die tonight. To-morrow morning may she sit and cry, O my child! my child! Then the ashes will fall into the pride of this proud wretch. O you widow, may your complete destruction take place. May no one remain in your family to light a lamp. ”

“ Were it possible for Mexico to drive from the soil of Texas, or massacre the race which now inhabit its bright regions, their last faint whisper, arousing their kindred of the United States of the North, would be the death knell of Mexico, and their chivalric and daring enterprise would not alone prompt them to avenge the wrongs of brothers, but would impel them to loftier achievements, and Mexico herself become an object of conquest. ”

“ The unworthy attempts in those and other such like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly contemptible. In plain English, they amount to thus much—'The Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, have acted a dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not include Dr. Carey in the charge of dishonesty; he is an easy sort of a man, who will agree to anything for the sake of peace, or in other words, he is a fool. ”

“ John Thomas, four years older than Carey, was a surgeon, who had made two voyages to Calcutta in the Oxford Indiaman, had been of spiritual service to Charles Grant, Mr. George Udny, and the Bengal civilian circle at Malda, and had been supported by Mr. Grant as a missionary for a time until his eccentricities and debts outraged his friends and drove him home at the time of the Kettering meetings. Full justice has been done to a character and a career somewhat resembling those of John Newton, by his patient and able biographer the Rev. ”

“ CAREY, JOHN, LL.D. (1756–1826) , classical scholar, brother of Mathew Carey, author of the 'Vindiciæ Hibernicæ,' [q. v.] , and of William Paulet Carey [q. v.] , was born in Ireland in 1756. At the age of twelve he was sent to finish his education in a French university. He spent some time in the United States about 1789, and afterwards passed many years in London as a teacher of the classics, French, and shorthand. He died at Prospect Place, Lambeth, 8 Dec, 1826, from calculus, the last years of his life having been embittered by distressing complaints. ”

“ Such, sir, is the man whom Texas has the honor of claiming as her own, and whose death we now lament. And though he leaves an enduring monument of his greatness and worth in the history of his country and the affections of his countrymen, yet I would it were in our power at this time to erect a material monument, towering and colossal, like the majestic form of him in whose honor it is reared, as a token of that high esteem in which he was held by the people of the State. ”