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 IN India 
 
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tihvaxy of Che trheolo^ical ^eminarjp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Delavan L. Pierson 
 
 3V 32 6 9 7a1 R87 1896 
 Rutherfurd, John. 
 Missionary pioneers m Indic 
 
MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA 
 
MISSIONARY PIONEERS 
 
 IN INDIA 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUTHERFURD, B.D. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 ANDREW ELLIOT, 17 PRINCES STREET 
 
 1896 
 
In these pages the beginnings are faintly traced 
 of the work of the gospel in India in modern 
 times, as this is shown in the lives of men who 
 did pioneering work when that work was needed. 
 These men bravely held the field in days when 
 sympathy was not given to Foreign Missions as 
 it is now freely rendered on all hands. Their life 
 and work may be like a mountain rill over which 
 a child may step, but it has broadened into a 
 river whose waters are now fertilizing the earth. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 -aAA'V— 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BartholOxMew Ziegenbalg 
 
 I 
 
 Christian Frederick Schwartz 
 
 34 
 
 Henry Martyn .... 
 
 57 
 
 William Carey .... 
 
 95 
 
 Reginald Heber .... 
 
 141 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 
 
 " If there is one man who is to the modem missionary movement 
 in India what WycHf was to the English Reformation, its herald 
 and morning star, that man is Bartholomew Ziegenbalg." 
 
 Much has been said regarding a century of 
 modern missions, dating from 1793, the year 
 when William Carey landed in India. But be- 
 fore that time there were brave men who had 
 done what they could to carry the gospel to the 
 Hindoos, men like Christian Frederick Schwartz, 
 who arrived in Tranquebar in 1750. His life in 
 India extended over no fewer than forty-eight 
 years, and he was the means of greatly spreading 
 the knowledge of Christ both among Europeans 
 and natives. But Schwartz, hero though he was, 
 was not the first to preach the gospel in India. 
 Not to speak of missions in other countries, such 
 as those of the Moravians begun by Count Zin- 
 zendorf, who sent missionaries to St Thomas in 
 the West Indies in 1732, and to Greenland in 
 the following year, but restricting our enquiry 
 to India, we find that the beginner of modern 
 mission work there was Bartholomew Ziegenbalg. 
 
2 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 He was born in the little Saxon town of 
 Pulsnitz in 1683, exactly two hundred years 
 after the birth of a still more famous Saxon — 
 Martin Luther. It was a time when the German 
 Church was awakening from the formal ortho- 
 doxy which had controlled the pulpit and dried 
 up the currents of spiritual life. The Thirty 
 Years' War had brought troubles enough with it, 
 and men sought for something truer and deeper 
 than was then usual in German theology. The 
 spiritual revival which supplied this lack was 
 miscalled Pietism : but its teachers and its results 
 prove that however it was nicknamed it was a true 
 work and that its origin was from above. One of 
 the headquarters of this revival was the University 
 of Halle, where Francke, best known to us by 
 his Orphan House, was Professor of Oriental 
 Languages. In Berlin, Lange the rector of the 
 High School, and Spener the king's chaplain were 
 the heads of the movement. It was from this 
 new life of German Pietism that Ziegenbalg and 
 Plutscho went forth to India. 
 
 One evening in March 1705 King Frederick IV. 
 of Denmark sat in his palace reading some letters 
 and dispatches. As he glanced over them his eye 
 rested on the petition of a poor widow whose 
 husband and son had been killed in a native out- 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 3 
 
 break at Tranquebar. The king was uneasy, for he 
 was then engaged in war with Sweden ; and as he 
 read the widow's petition asking for redress, his 
 thoughts troubled him. Tranquebar — a husband 
 and a son killed there. Yes ; but what of the 
 Hindoos there ? What had been done either by 
 the Christian Church in Denmark or by the king 
 to send the gospel to India ? Nothing at all. For 
 eighty years Danish ships had sailed to India ; 
 Danish merchants had grown rich through that 
 trade ; and Danish soldiers had come and gone 
 from their native land to India : but no Christian 
 missionary had gone to carry the gospel there. 
 The king was vexed and sad and repentant. 
 Hastily he summoned Lutkens his chaplain, and 
 asked him to procure men for the work. Lutkens 
 was both surprised and delighted at the task 
 committed to him, but he knew that Christians in 
 Denmark were no more alive to foreign missions 
 than in any other country in Europe. Knowing 
 how almost impossible it was to get such men, he 
 said to the king, " Send me " ; but though the king 
 recognized this self-sacrifice, he could not part with 
 Lutkens, whom he now sent on an errand of enquiry 
 to get the men who were needed. 
 
 Such is the popular version of the story of how 
 the Danish mission to India took its rise. Perhaps 
 
4 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 all the details cannot be verified, but in outline at 
 all events it is true. 
 
 Lutkens turned to Lange, who after consultation 
 wrote to Ziegenbalg, then acting as assistant pastor 
 in a parish near Berlin, and proposed to him that 
 he should go to Africa or the West Indies as a 
 missionary, telling him of the king's desire and that 
 Henry Plutscho, one of his old fellow-students, had 
 also been requested to accompany him in the work. 
 Ziegenbalg thought of declining the task as too 
 great for him ; but the feeling came over him that 
 not to go would be to resist God's will, so he 
 yielded. He and Plutscho reached Copenhagen on 
 1 6th October, and then found for the first time 
 that their destination was Tranquebar. 
 
 There is an old book, few copies of which are 
 extant, which will enable us to follow in some 
 degree the fortunes of these two missionaries. The 
 title is as follows : " Propagation of the Gospel in 
 the East. Being an Account of the Success of two 
 Danish Missionaries lately sent to the East Indies 
 for the Conversion of the Heathens in Malabar, 
 in several Letters to their Correspondents in Europe, 
 Containing a Narrative of their Voyage to the coast 
 of Coromandel, their Settlement at Tranquebar, the 
 Divinity and Philosophy of the Malabarians, their 
 Language and Manners, the Impediments obstruct- 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 5 
 
 ing their Conversion, the several Methods taken by 
 the Missionaries, the wonderful Providences attend- 
 ing them, and the Progress they have already made. 
 Rendered into English from the High Dutch ; and 
 Dedicated to the Most Honourable Corporation for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel in P^oreign Parts. 
 London, 171 8." 
 
 Omitting their voyage with its incidents and its 
 protracted length, so very unlike modern travel, 
 we see them land at Tranquebar on 9th July 1706. 
 It is a day never to be forgotten, for then the first 
 Protestant missionaries set foot on India. " It was 
 early in the morning," writes Dr Fleming Stevenson, 
 " and they were ordered to remain in a house before 
 the gate till the Governor had leisure to come in 
 the afternoon. On his arrival, assuming the utmost 
 roughness, he asked what brought them there ? 
 They were a mere nuisance. What could he do ^ 
 That was no place for missionaries. They were 
 not wanted. What could the king know about 
 such things .'' And so turned upon his heel and 
 withdrew with his suite to the fort. 
 
 " Petrified by this contempt for the king's mandate 
 as much as cast down by so unexpected a recep- 
 tion, the two young men slowly followed, expecting 
 that some one would inform them of the arrange- 
 ments made for their stay. But at the market 
 
6 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 square the i^roup suddenly separated, and in a 
 moment Governor, council and chaplain had disap- 
 peared, and the square was empty. The sun had 
 set, and as the houses were already shrouded in 
 gloom, the strangers could not tell what turn to 
 take, but watched and waited under the silent stars, 
 the first Protestant missionaries that ever stood on 
 Indian soil, wondering much what would happen 
 next, and bethinking themselves that even the Son 
 of Man had not where to lay His head." 
 
 Such was the reception that was first given to 
 the gospel in India. The hostility of the Danish 
 officials had not been reckoned on by Ziegenbalg 
 and Plutscho. For the first few days they were 
 sheltered by one of the Governor's suite, and they 
 were afterwards allowed to occupy a house where 
 they settled down to their work. 
 
 They immediately set themselves to learn 
 Portuguese and Tamil, or, as Ziegenbalg calls it, 
 Malabarick, the two languages used there. They 
 resolved that one of them should " get the language 
 of the country," i.e. Portuguese, making that his 
 chief method of communication with the natives, 
 while the other should devote himself principally 
 to Malabarick. " In order hereto we cast lots, and 
 the lot falling on Mr Plutscho, he readily embraced 
 it, and now applieth himself entirely to the learning 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 7 
 
 of that language. As for me, though I don't design 
 to be quite without the knowledge thereof — spend- 
 ing an hour or two every day to that purpose — 
 yet the chief bent of my endeavour will be to set 
 down the more substantial points of the Christian 
 doctrine in Portuguese and get 'em translated by 
 some able interpreter into Malabarick, whereby one 
 thing or other will stick to my memory from time 
 to time. To facilitate the whole design we main- 
 tain a particular schoolmaster in the house in hopes 
 that God will second it with His blessing." 
 
 On I St October of that year, the anniversary 
 of the date when the " dear fathers and brethren 
 offered me that pastoral function which I am now 
 actually entered upon for the service of the Mala- 
 bar heathen," Ziegenbalg writes, freely confessing 
 that it is very hard to make any impression upon 
 their minds, and gives these reasons : the scan- 
 dalous and corrupted lives of the Christians who 
 reside tjiere ; secondly, that the idolatrous worship 
 seems to the heathen to have more pleasantness in 
 it than the doctrine of Christ, fancying as they do 
 that theirs is " of an earlier date and contains more 
 curious and delightful pastimes " than the Bible ; 
 thirdly, that their conversion is much obstructed by 
 the conduct of the Roman Catholics, who used to 
 decoy them into Christianity by all manner of 
 
8 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 sinister practices and underhand dealings — hence 
 the fear which the heathen entertained of the new 
 missionaries ; fourthly, the fact that some hundreds 
 of Roman Catholic converts were then wandering 
 about begging bread from door to door, neither food 
 nor employment having been provided for them ; 
 and last, the fact that all who became Christians — 
 except heads of families — are presently banished 
 from their whole estate and kindred, and dare not 
 come near them again. 
 
 They had also set up a small charity school for 
 Malabarian boys, providing them with food and 
 " instructing 'em also in their and our language, 
 and chiefly in the fundamental principles of Chris- 
 tian knowledge." A remarkable statement : our 
 language, that is German. In some respects this 
 was an anticipation of Dr Alexander Duff's method 
 of teaching Hindoo students by means of the 
 English language. Ziegenbalg adds these rather 
 astonishing words : " Truly the training up of child- 
 ren will be of the greatest consequence in this 
 affair. If we were but able to purchase and to 
 maintain a pretty many of 'em, the w^ork might 
 undoubtedly spread abroad in a little while, and 
 under the blessing of God produce the desired 
 effect." 
 
 As one means of raising funds to support this 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 9 
 
 school, he says, " We have indeed fastened an 
 alms-box in our house, but we find notJiing in 
 it bnt zvJiat we put in ourselves. For this reason 
 we have most humbly petitioned his majesty the 
 king of Denmark to assist us with some generous 
 relief. But since this new work both in its first 
 foundation and the succeeding progress will 
 prove very expensive, we at the same time 
 entreat also all the well-wishers to the cause of 
 God to commiserate the deplorable state of 
 these poor heathens, and by some charitable 
 and bountiful effusions, tending to the main- 
 tenance of the body, to advance the conversion 
 of these deluded souls." As this appeal to the 
 king of Denmark and to the generosity of those 
 who might be reached by Ziegenbalg's letter 
 could not produce any result "till two years 
 hence," owing to the tediousness of the voyage 
 between India and Europe, they proposed to 
 use part of their salary, and perhaps to borrow 
 money on interest from the natives for the 
 purpose of proceeding at once in these en- 
 deavours. This letter ends : " My dear fellow- 
 labourer, Mr Plutscho, and my servant Modaliapa, 
 the first-fruits of the heathens, send their kind 
 greeting to you in the Lord." 
 
 With great artlessness Ziegenbalg writes in 
 
lO MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 another of his letters : " We find by experience 
 that for propagating the gospel among the 
 heathens, next to the grace of God nothing 
 is more expedient — as for any outward help — 
 than a blameless life, and a seasonable supply 
 of money for estabhshing all manner of good 
 foundations." 
 
 For the existence and extension of the charity 
 school, funds were needed, as he writes repeatedly. 
 " For the right settling and increasing whereof we 
 must buy such children — and this now and then at a 
 high rate too — as their pai^ents are willing to part 
 with ; which one time necessity obliges them to ; 
 another time perhaps some other reasons, which 
 God knows." 
 
 In September 1707, the year following their 
 arrival, Ziegenbalg writes expressing his grief at 
 not having received any European letters that 
 year, notwithstanding their having written so 
 frequently to their friends in Europe. But he 
 charges them with no fault; the means of com- 
 munication two hundred years ago were not to 
 be compared with what we enjoy. " Last year," 
 he says, " when the ships returned to Europe, 
 I fell dangerously ill, and the distemper holding 
 me above a month, made me pine away to that 
 degree that both myself and others with me 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. Tl 
 
 began to despair of my recovery. However, the 
 Lord having been graciously pleased once more to 
 restore me, it has now so much the more excited 
 me entirely to spend the rest of my days in the 
 service of God by how much the less my health 
 was expected. My dear colleague having re- 
 newed with me this resolution, we began afresh 
 to apply ourselves to the work we were sent about, 
 notwithstanding the many oppositions we are like 
 to encounter, most certainly believing that God 
 would never forsake us in a work sincerely begun 
 for His glory." 
 
 Soon after their arrival they began to hold 
 public worship in their own house for the benefit 
 of Europeans residing in Tranquebar ; and the 
 governor had now become so friendly that he 
 even procured them the use of the Danish 
 church, to which this service was then trans- 
 ferred. This happened in December 1706, and 
 was a great comfort and joy to them. " By this 
 means we had now a fair opportunity to lay the 
 word of God before heathens, Mohammedans and 
 Christians. Truly we often did not know from 
 whence to fetch the necessary supplies to support 
 both spirit and body, having been all along engaged 
 from morning till night to converse with all sorts 
 of people. . . . The first of our baptismal acts was 
 
12 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 solemnly performed in the Danish church with 
 five heathens which were christened after they had 
 given an account of all the articles of the Christian 
 faith. This they did with such readiness of mind 
 that many old people were ashamed thereat, and 
 we ourselves convinced they had a sound sense of 
 what they outwardly performed." 
 
 How great their encouragement was may be 
 seen from what he says about the building of a 
 church, in the erection of which they had hitherto 
 been disappointed. " In the name of God, and in 
 hopes of being supported by our king, we laid the 
 foundation of a church, bestowing thereon all 
 v/hatever we could possibly spare from our yearly 
 pension. Every one that saw it laughed at it as 
 a silly and rash design, and cried us down for sots, 
 venturing too boldly upon a thing which they 
 thought would certainly come to nothing. How- 
 ever, we prosecuted our design in the name of 
 God, a friend sending fifty rixdollars towards it. 
 By this forwardness of our work the enemies were 
 confounded, and some of 'em did then contribute 
 something themselves towards accomplishing the 
 whole affair ; which proved no small comfort to 
 us. Thus is the building finished at last, and 
 fitted up for a church congregation. It lies 
 without the town in the midst of a multitude 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 13 
 
 of Malabarians near the high road, built all 
 of stone. It was consecrated the fourteenth 
 of August, which was the eighth Sunday after 
 Trinity, in the presence of a great conflux of 
 heathens, Mahommedans and Christians, who had 
 a sermon preached to them, both in Portuguese 
 and Malabarick. . . . Multitudes of people flock 
 together to hear us, Malabarians, Blacks and 
 Christians, every one being allowed to come in, 
 let him be heathen, Mohammedan, Papist or 
 Protestant. ... At this rate the work of God 
 runs on amain. Our congregation consists of 
 sixty-three persons ; and another is to be baptised 
 to-morrow." He also asks that "two persons 
 more might be sent over to assist us in the work 
 so happily begun." 
 
 In October 1707 he sends to Germany a copy 
 of " the four gospels done into Malabarick after 
 having them carefully perused according to the 
 Original," as well as several other minor transla- 
 tions. An Indian idol made of gold had been 
 presented to him by some of the converts, and 
 this he sent as a gift to the king of Denmark. 
 " For the present," he writes, " we are destitute 
 of all necessary supplies for carrying on the work, 
 being in daily expectation of the happy arrival of 
 the ships coming from Europe. . . . Great is the 
 
14 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 harvest, but the number of true and faithful 
 labourers very small ; and therefore we most 
 heartily desire the concurrence of your prayers 
 and supplications." 
 
 When Ziegenbalg and Plutscho had acquired 
 the Portuguese and Malabarick languages, and 
 were busily engaged preaching the gospel, they 
 found that their greatest want was a translation 
 of the Scriptures. A translation in Portuguese 
 did exist, but was extremely rare and not to 
 be purchased even for ready money. They 
 secured one copy, printed at Batavia ; and two 
 other missionaries — one of whom was Grundler — 
 who were sent out to assist them, bought a second 
 copy at the Cape of Good Hope. The New 
 Testament in Malabarick did not exist. Ziegen- 
 balg therefore set himself to do the necessary 
 translation ; but first, as a trial of his skill, he 
 translated some smaller books. He began the 
 New Testament on 17th October 1708, and 
 finished it 21st March 1711. The New Testa- 
 ment in Malabarick was now an accomplished 
 fact ; but how were copies of it to be procured ? 
 for they had no printing press. 
 
 When the volume of Ziegenbalg's and Plutscho's 
 letters was published in Europe it produced an 
 immediate effect both in Germany and Denmark 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 15 
 
 and England ; and liberal contributions were given 
 to help the work. From Denmark "several 
 charitable contributions have been remitted to 
 Tranqucbar, gathered by the Rev. Dr Lutkens, 
 one of his majesty's chaplains, and the very first 
 person that put the king upon this Christian 
 attempt. But he being lately dead, the mission- 
 aries have lost an eminent benefactor by the death 
 of that gentleman." 
 
 The letters were published in England in 1709, 
 and a second volume in 17 10, and at once sympathy 
 was evoked and help willingly rendered. The 
 Society for the Propagation of Christian Know- 
 ledge resolved to give assistance by sending them 
 an impression of the New Testament in Portuguese 
 along with a sum of money for the support of their 
 charity school. The Society elected Ziegenbalg 
 and Plutscho corresponding members, and funds 
 having been freely contributed, the Society also 
 resolved to supply the missionaries with a printing 
 press, six hundredweight of roman and italic type, 
 and one hundred reams of paper. A printer 
 was also engaged to go with these goods to 
 Tranquebar, and to labour there as a schoolmaster 
 and printer : his name was Jonas Finck, a native 
 of Silesia. The fleet which sailed from England 
 for India in the beginning of 171 1 carried Mr 
 
1 6 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Finck as well as two hundred and fifty copies of 
 the gospel of Matthew in Portuguese and " a present 
 of money in foreign silver, together with some sums 
 in bills of exchange to enable the missionaries to 
 carry on more effectually their design. All these 
 goods, together with the person attending them, 
 were embarked freight free on board one of the 
 ships of the Honourable East India Company, who 
 have all along not only granted a free passage to 
 such persons and goods as were designed for a 
 support of this work, but have also most readily 
 laid their commands on their Governors in India 
 to protect and countenance the Protestant mission 
 in those parts." 
 
 The Portuguese New Testament was not ready 
 when this fleet sailed, but was printed off about the 
 end of the same year; and in the beginning of 17 12, 
 two hundred and fourteen copies, together with a 
 set of mathematical instruments, were shipped for 
 India. In this year, however, news arrived in 
 England that the vessel carrying the printer and 
 the gospels had been captured at Rio Janeiro by a 
 French squadron, the printer made prisoner, and 
 the goods confiscated. However, a negotiation 
 was carried out by which the vessel was ransomed 
 and the printer set free along with the press and 
 the paper. The ship then resumed her voyage. 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. I 7 
 
 but Jonas Finck died before reaching the Cape of 
 Good Hope. The printing press, paper and types 
 were carried to India and dehvered at last to the 
 missionaries at Tranquebar. " There happened 
 one thing at Brazil, when the French took posses- 
 sion of the ship, too material to be passed over in 
 silence. It relateth to the aforesaid two hundred 
 and fifty copies of the gospel of St Matthew 
 designed for the Portuguese church and school 
 at Tranquebar. But undergoing now the same 
 fate as the rest of the goods did, they were seized 
 on by the French, and upon sight of their being 
 Portuguese books, dispersed among the inhabitants 
 of that country : where perhaps under the gracious 
 influence of heaven they may prove helpful 
 towards the conviction of some of those in whose 
 hands they were left." 
 X, About November 171 2 Mr Henry Plutscho 
 arrived in London from India : his return was 
 caused by ill health ; and he brought with him a 
 Malabarian youth designed to be educated at 
 Halle for the service of the mission. Plutscho laid 
 before the Society much information regarding the 
 mission, the impediments in its way, as well as 
 some means by which it might be advanced. 
 During his stay in England he drew up a Brief 
 Instniction in Portuguese containing the first 
 
15 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 principles of Christianity, to be used as a primer 
 in the schools at Tranquebar ; and the Society 
 immediately ordered a thousand copies to be 
 printed, and half of them to be sent by the first 
 fleet going to India. In the end of the same year 
 three young men arrived in London from Halle 
 on their way to Tranquebar to assist the mis- 
 sionaries, one as a schoolmaster, the other two as 
 printers. Further gifts of paper and books were 
 given to these young men, and the East India 
 Company again carried the goods freight free, " to 
 the no small satisfaction of the well-wishers to the 
 design." 
 
 When Ziegenbalg and Plutscho received the 
 printing press they immediately set about using 
 it, and happily they found that in the Danish 
 Company's service there was a man who in his 
 younger days had learned the art of printing. 
 The press was set to work and there was printed 
 off a primer for the use of the Portuguese school, 
 and a specimen of the MetJiod of Salvation^ of 
 which some copies were sent to Europe. This 
 last treatise was described as " the first-fruits of the 
 Word of God bestowed on the heathens by the 
 benefactors in England." Other books were also 
 printed. 
 
 Letters from the missionaries, dated September 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. I 9 
 
 1712 and January 1713, tell of increasing spiritual 
 prosperity. In the Malabarick and Portuguese 
 churches there were in January 17 13, *' of persons 
 baptized 207, and catechumens to be prepared for 
 baptism 26. In the five charity schools there were 
 yS children, of which 59 are clothed and wholly 
 maintained, together with some other persons who 
 are employed in preparing food for the children 
 and other services about the churches and schools. 
 The missionaries hope that in a little time some of 
 the more advanced scholars in the Malabarick.school 
 will be fit to be employed in this work in the quality 
 of schoolmasters, catechists, and transcribers." 
 
 Ziegenbalg gives a catalogue of " all the Mala- 
 barick manuscripts which either have been com- 
 posed by the missionaries themselves or by them 
 translated from other languages chiefly for the use 
 of the Malabarick church and school." It consists 
 of no fewer than thirty-two works in addition to 
 other fourteen Portuguese books and manuscripts 
 with which they were provided. The following 
 are some of the separate items : — 
 
 The whole New Testament. 
 
 Luther's Short Catechism. 
 
 A collection of some short rules or directions for a Christian 
 
 life. 
 The History of the Life of Christ. 
 The Method of Salvation. 
 
20 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 A succinct narrative of the Christian, Jewish, Moham- 
 medan and Pagan Rehgions. 
 
 A Compendium of Divinity. 
 
 The Danish Liturgy. 
 
 A book of Hymns set to tunes. 
 
 The Articles of the Christian ReHgion. 
 
 A Malabar Dictionary compiled out of various authors 
 and provided with a German index. 
 
 A Dictionary digested after the order of the Malabarick 
 alphabet, and done in such a manner that the reader 
 at one view may find the Primitive word together 
 with all the Derivatives depending thereon. It con- 
 tains above 20,000 words all writ on leaves, and is 
 designed to be transcribed on paper and to be printed 
 in time for the benefit of the mission. 
 
 At the end of this catalogue there are the words, 
 " May the Lord have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, 
 Infidels and Heretics ! And take from them all 
 ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of His 
 word ; and so fetch them home to His flock that 
 they may be saved among the remnant of the true 
 Israelites and be made one fold under one Shep- 
 herd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth 
 with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, 
 world without end ! Amen." 
 
 "I must needs say," writes Ziegenbalg, "that 
 notwithstanding this people be led away by a 
 world of errors and delusions, they nevertheless 
 give at times so pertinent answers in matters of 
 religion as perhaps I should have never thought 
 on before. I remember that some of our learned 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 21 
 
 in Europe have writ entire books upon Ulcthods 
 and Ways of converting Jieathois, whilst they all 
 this while argue with themselves only, and fetch 
 both the objections and the answers from their 
 own stock. Should they come to a closer converse 
 with the pagans and hear their shifts and evasions 
 themselves, they would not find 'em so destitute 
 of argument as we imagine. They are able to 
 baffle now and then one proof alleged for Chris- 
 tianity with ten others brought in against it. It 
 requires an experimental wisdom to convey a 
 saving knowledge into their mind and to convince 
 'em of the folly of heathenism, and of the truth of 
 Christianity. And this wisdom is not to be had 
 in the barren schools of logic and metaphysics, but 
 must be learned at another university and derived 
 from God Himself for this purpose. The best 
 way is to keep the mind constantly in that temper 
 and serenity that the great God may influence it 
 Himself, and qualify it for so important a work ; 
 that so in some degree at least may be obtained 
 what the Lord hath promised to His disciples sent 
 out to preach the gospel. Matt. x. 19. The heathens 
 have abundance of subterfuges whereby they 
 endeavour to vindicate themselves and to frustrate 
 the design of a missionary. If Christians find one 
 error in the doctrine of the heathens, these will 
 
21 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 find ten in the life of the Christians. It would 
 be infinitely better if never any Christian had 
 been among 'em, for then their mind would be 
 less prepossessed against Christianity, the free re- 
 ception whereof is now stifled by many inveterate 
 sins and customs they have all along observed 
 among Christians." 
 
 Regarding his dictionary of the Malabar 
 language, Ziegenbalg gives this account : " It com- 
 prises above 20,000 words and phrases. In one 
 line the Malabarick is set down in its own charac- 
 ter, and in the other is placed the Latin pronun- 
 ciation, and in the third the German. This work 
 has kept me employed these two years, having 
 read over for that purpose above two hundred 
 Malabarick authors, and taken down the most 
 elegant phrases out of every book. And because 
 this language is very ample and copious I make 
 still daily additions to this dictionary." 
 
 He gives an account of the baptism of a 
 Malabar poet ; showing that the same methods 
 are used now by relatives of converts to prevent 
 their baptism as were employed two hundred 
 years ago. Here is the story as Ziegenbalg 
 tells it : " They now began to insult him every- 
 where. . . . His parents thought themselves 
 more particularly obliged to confine their son to 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 23 
 
 the old way of worship ; and this they prosecuted 
 a while with much vigour and fierceness. They 
 shut him up for three days together, and left 
 him all this while without any food. . . . After 
 this his friends and relatives rushed in upon 
 him ; and because 'twas just then that one of 
 their great heathenish festivals was to be kept, 
 they would needs have him go to this pageantry, 
 but they could not prevail. 
 
 " Being thus everywhere exposed to the insults 
 and menaces of his enraged countrymen, he 
 desired leave from us to retire to some place 
 of privacy, in a house belonging to a widow 
 which is a member of our church. . . . But he 
 soon was found out by his parents, who, with 
 great clamour and violence breaking in upon 
 him, told him plainly they would dispatch him 
 with poison if he should persist any longer in a 
 love to that new religion he was embracing ; the 
 mother having a dose of poison already prepared 
 for effecting that black and wicked design. These 
 threatenings not producing the desired effect, they, 
 both father and mother, fell down at his feet, and 
 with most endearing w^ords endeavoured now to 
 gain by offers and promises what could not be 
 obtained by spite and malice. Home he went 
 with his parents, when, after a long discourse 
 
24 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 with them, he returned to us again accompanied 
 by his father, who with many fair words entreated 
 us to discharge his son from the service of our 
 house. To this we replied we w^ere wiUing to 
 do it if he himself did require any such thing. 
 The young man all this while admonished the 
 father not to fight against God. Hereupon the 
 father quitted him with great indignation, but 
 soon after stirred up more than two hundred 
 Malabarians, who, surrounding the young man at 
 a convenient time haled him into a house, and 
 by force would make him forswear the Christian 
 faith. He said he was willing to forswear what 
 was bad but not what was good. 
 
 " Being got once more out of their clutches he 
 would venture no more among the heathens 
 hereafter, but most earnestly entreated us to 
 baptise him with all convenient speed, fearing 
 the chief of the country might combine against 
 him and hinder him, if possible, from receiving 
 this ordinance. When we saw his earnest desire 
 for holy baptism, and considering the necessity 
 of going about it without delay, we fixed a day 
 for that purpose. . . . We baptised him the 
 1 6th of October last. No sooner was this over 
 but another threatening letter was sent to the 
 Governor by some of the young man's friends. 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 25 
 
 . . . They required the Governor to deliver up 
 the poet into their hands. . . . The poet himself 
 had a letter sent him by an eminent Black, 
 wherein his friends did promise to make him a 
 Governor of a whole country, and swear obedience 
 to him in the presence of the Brahmins, provided 
 he would return to his former religion : but then 
 again they threatened to burn him if he should 
 presume to reject so splendid an offer. Our 
 Governor soon after received a third letter from 
 another of their leading men, importing he would 
 shut up all the avenues to the town unless he 
 made the poet return to his duty. However, our 
 Governor promised to return a smart answer to 
 these busy heathens, in order to allay, if possible, 
 the commotion." 
 
 One of the chief features of the Danish mission 
 was the Christian education of children ; the 
 missionaries felt that it was not possible to give 
 too much attention and care to this. " I must 
 not forget to tell you," writes Ziegenbalg, " that 
 what taketh me most in this affair is the educa- 
 tion of children in India. They are of a good and 
 promising temper ; and being not yet possessed 
 with so many headstrong prejudices against the 
 Christian faith, they are the sooner wrought upon, 
 and mollified into a sense of the fear of God. 
 
 c 
 
2b MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 To tell you the truth, we look on our youth as 
 a stock or nursery from whence in time plentiful 
 supplies may be drawn for enriching our Malabar 
 church with such members as will prove a glory 
 and ornament to the Christian profession. 'Tis 
 true there are but a few of the grown heathens 
 that are willing to be baptised into the name of 
 Christ ; and yet 'tis no less true that there is 
 always a concourse of people attending our 
 sermons and other parts of divine service ; and 
 many undoubtedly return with strong convic- 
 tions left upon their minds. All this gives me 
 a fair prospect of getting a larger door of the 
 Word set open in time." 
 
 Ziegenbalg gives an account of '* a baptismal act 
 performed by the Papists in India," which is worthy 
 of being narrated. " In the year 1709, and particu- 
 larly towards the latter end thereof, everything was 
 very dear in this country. The scarcity was so 
 great that abundance of Malabarians died for 
 want of necessaries, and others were forced to 
 sell themselves for slaves in that extremity. The 
 Portuguese Church here being very large and 
 populous, took hold of this opportunity and bought 
 up a great many of this poor people for slaves, 
 one being sold from twenty to forty fano, or from 
 eight to sixteen shillings English. After they had 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 2*] 
 
 purchased the number of fourscore heads, the 
 Pater Vicarius appointed a solemn day for ad- 
 ministering the baptismal act to all those souls 
 at once. At the set day they went in one body 
 or procession, being accompanied by some who 
 beat the Malabar drums, and others who played 
 on the flute, these being the usual instruments 
 the heathen make use of, both at their idolatrous 
 worship in the common pagods, and in their 
 public processions when they carry their idols 
 about. . . . There were likewise some standards 
 attending the procession, to give the greater lustre 
 to so solemin an act and formality. 
 
 " The whole pageantry being thus mustered up, 
 the sacrament of baptism was ministered to those 
 ignorant wretches without so much as asking them 
 one question about the substance of these transac- 
 tions. Being sprinkled one after another, they 
 were led back in the same pompous manner ; the 
 aforesaid father ordering abundance of cass — a 
 very small coin, eighty whereof make one fano — 
 to be thrown among the people as they went 
 home. And these sorry performances, whereby 
 they make daily additions to the Church of Rome, 
 are extolled by them as extraordinary acts of 
 devotion, and their church set out as the most 
 flourishing of all others." 
 
28 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 The daily time table of the schools was as 
 follows : — 
 
 From 6 to 7 a.m. one of the missionaries says 
 prayers with the children and the catechumens, 
 and expounds the catechism. 
 
 From 7 to 9 are the ordinary school hours. 
 Part of this time is also used in preparing female 
 candidates for baptism. Likewise some boys are 
 put to knitting in cotton. 
 
 From 9 to II the children continue their school- 
 ing. Some catechumens, being boys or men, are 
 instructed. The women and girls are employed 
 about knitting. 
 
 From II to I2 the children have dinner, with 
 such catechumens as cannot maintain themselves. 
 Those catechumens whose relatives have deprived 
 them of all necessaries receive fifteen cass apiece : 
 the same is allowed them also for supper. 
 
 From 12 to I the children have a resting hour. 
 
 From I to 2 they learn to write in the 
 sand, according to the custom of the country ; 
 but the more advanced are taught to handle 
 the iron tool, to fit them to print on 
 leaves. The Portuguese children knit during this 
 hour. 
 
 From 2 to 3, children at school. The slaves 
 are instructed in Christian knowledge : they are 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 29 
 
 taught " distinctly by themselves." The cate- 
 chumens are knitting. 
 
 From 3 to 5, children are at school. Some time 
 is again given to the instruction of the slaves. 
 
 From 5 to 6 " the Malabarick missionary hath 
 all the Malabarick youth together with the 
 catechumens before him, and goes over with 
 them a part of the Christian religion, and thus 
 concludes the ordinary lessons of the day." 
 
 " The same is done by the Portuguese mis- 
 sionary in the Portuguese school, where are now 
 present catechumens, children and slaves." 
 
 From 6 to 7 some entertainment is given to 
 the children ; the masters retire with them " to 
 the leads of the house," and histories or natural 
 occurrences are related to them, or hymns are 
 sung, &c. 
 
 From 7 to 8 supper. After supper, prayers ; 
 and about 9 the children lay themselves down 
 on their mats. 
 
 The Malabarick and Portuguese missionaries 
 visit the schools every day, themselves teaching 
 one or more hours, as their other business will 
 permit. 
 
 " We endeavour to spend the whole Lord's day 
 as nigh as possibly we can in devotion and 
 exercises of piety." 
 
30 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Once in six weeks the children were taken to 
 a garden adjoining a village near Tranquebar : 
 this was meant as a little excursion and refresh- 
 ment to them. All the missionaries and masters 
 accompanied them, and the conversation was on 
 the subject of the power and working of God 
 in creation and nature. " Many Malabarians 
 gather about us all this while and express a 
 great satisfaction at the pertinent answers our 
 Black Lambs — being but lately reclaimed from 
 heathenish vices and superstitions — do return to 
 the questions relating to God and Religion." 
 JL In 171 5 Ziegenbalg came to Europe by order 
 of the physicians. He was received by the king 
 of Denmark ; he then hurried onwards and was 
 welcomed by Francke at Halle, his presence and 
 his glowing appeals kindling anew the zeal of 
 the friends of the mission. 
 
 Having married, he set out again with his wife 
 for India, travelling through Holland and England. 
 King George I. received him, and the East India 
 Company gave him a free passage to India. 
 The English king afterwards — in 17 17 — wrote 
 to Ziegenbalg at Tranquebar a kindly and 
 sympathetic letter. 
 
 At Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg laboured with un- 
 tiring energy for two more years. New Year's 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 3 I 
 
 Day, 17 19, was the last occasion when he spoke 
 in public. On 23rd February of that year he 
 died — his age was only thirty-six. He was bright 
 and cheerful that morning, and after prayer with 
 his wife, death drew near. " Did he desire to 
 depart, and to be with Christ ? " " Ah, how 
 willingly ! " "I can scarcely speak," he said : 
 "may God bless what I have spoken. I have 
 daily given myself into Thy hands, O God ! The 
 Lord saith, ' Father, I will that where I am there 
 also shall My servant be ! '" The peace of God 
 rested upon him. Suddenly he put his hands 
 to his eyes and exclaimed, " How is it so bright 
 as if the sun shone into my face ? " Then at 
 his request they sang to him, with the accompani- 
 ment of the violin, his favourite hymn, "Jesus, 
 meine Zuversicht" — Jesus, my confidence. The 
 chords seemed to revive him, and his spirit 
 passed away. 
 
 In 1849 Dr Alexander Duff visited the spot. 
 " I mounted the pulpit — of Ziegenbalg's Church," 
 says Dr Duff, "and with no ordinary emotion gazed 
 around from the position from which Ziegenbalg 
 and Grundler and Schwartz so often proclaimed 
 free salvation to thousands in Tamil, German, 
 Danish, and Portuguese. At the end of one of 
 the wings, on either side of a plain altar, lie the 
 
32 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 mortal remains of Ziegenbalg and Grundler, two 
 such men of brief but brilliant and immortal career 
 in the mighty work of Indian evangelisation." 
 J As the result of those few years' work in India, 
 from 1706 to 17 19, Ziegenbalg left 355 converts 
 and numerous catechumens, a native church, the 
 complete New Testament in Tamil, a dictionary, 
 a mission seminary and the schools. '* Certainly," 
 says Dr Duff, "he was a great missionary, con- 
 sidering that he was the first : inferior to none, 
 scarcely second to any that followed him." 
 
 On the Malabar Coast there are still many con- 
 gregations of Syrian or St Thomas Christians who 
 have a fond but unverifiable tradition that the 
 Gospel was introduced into India by the Apostle 
 Thomas. More probably the first preacher of the 
 Cross in India was some Christian teacher whose 
 name is forgotten, but who went forth in one of 
 the ancient fleets which sailed from the Red Sea 
 to bring back the riches of the East. From that 
 first introduction of Christianity into India, about 
 the second century, there has evidently never been 
 a time when India has had no living witness for 
 Christ. 
 
 When the Portuguese navigators reached India, 
 after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, they found 
 that those ancient Syrian or Nestorian Christians 
 
BARTHOLOMEW ZIEGENBALG. 33 
 
 had been established there for more than a 
 thousand years. But the Syrian Christianity was 
 a declining power, and was still further weakened 
 by the Roman Catholic missionaries. It was at 
 this juncture that the Danish mission and Zeigen- 
 balg appeared, and by the grace of God he began 
 that great movement towards Christ which is now 
 every year spreading and deepening. 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 
 
 "A beautiful life, as brilliant and powerful as we find in any of 
 the centuries before him." "Standing out clear from all, — to 
 Christian thought and the history of the Church, perhaps the most 
 conspicuous figure in India of the eighteenth century." 
 
 W. Fleming Stevenson. 
 
 The honour of having sent the first Protestant 
 mission to India belongs to Denmark ; but the 
 majority of the European workers, for the first 
 fifty years at least, were Germans. So also was 
 the famous missionary at whose life we shall now 
 glance. Schwartz, if one of the earliest, was also 
 one of the most successful of Indian missionaries : 
 he worked in India for forty-eight years, having 
 never even once come back to Europe during that 
 time. 
 
 Christian Frederick Schwartz was born in Sonnen- 
 burg. a small town in the Electorate of Branden- 
 burg, in October 1726. After an elementary 
 education in Sonnenburg he was sent to a more 
 advanced school in the neighbouring town of 
 Custin. Before this he had been ''confirmed" 
 according to the rites of the Lutheran_ Church, 
 34 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 35 
 
 but received little impression. At Custin a lady 
 brought him some books to read : one of these 
 was " Demonstrations of the Footsteps of a Divine 
 Being yet in the World," by A. H. Francke. It 
 was a narrative of the rise and progress of the 
 Orphan House at Glaucha, near Halle. The 
 reading of this book proved the turning point in 
 his life. 
 
 In 1746 he proceeded to Halle, where he lodged 
 in the Orphan House while he pursued his studies 
 in the University. His intercourse with Francke 
 did him great good, and strengthened his resolu- 
 tion to devote himself to God. 
 
 The project was being spoken of at that time 
 of printing at Halle a new edition of the Bible 
 in Tamil, under the superintendence of the 
 missionary Schultz. This idea was never accom- 
 plished, but while the project was still on 
 foot, Schwartz and another student were recom- 
 mended to acquire what knowledge they could of 
 Tamil, in order to qualify them to help in cor- 
 recting the printing of the book. While engaged 
 in the study of this language, which occupied him 
 for several months, Francke asked him if he would 
 go to India ; and he resolved to do so if he could 
 receive his father's consent. This with some little 
 difficulty was obtained, and in August 1749 
 
2)6 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Schwartz with other two missionaries left Halle 
 for Copenhagen. In this city they were ordained 
 to the ministry by Bishop Horreboa. 
 
 Returning to Halle they made preparations for 
 their final departure ; and left Germany for 
 England, en route to India. In London they 
 were kindly received by the Society for the 
 Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and by 
 other friends, including the king's chaplain: "what- 
 ever could in any way contribute to our comfort 
 and encouragement, that he did." Schwartz was 
 called on to preach in the Royal Chapel ; and 
 the Directors of the East India Company granted 
 the three missionaries a free passage to India. 
 
 They embarked at Deal in January 1750, and 
 arrived at Cuddalore in the following July. Long 
 afterwards it was observed that for a century after 
 the founding of the Danish mission, and in the course 
 of which some fifty missionaries had proceeded to 
 India, no vessel had been lost in which any of 
 them sailed. 
 
 We shall now look at his work among the 
 Hindoos. A wealthy native merchant said to him, 
 " Sir, be not displeased, I wish to ask you a 
 question. Do all Europeans speak like you ? " 
 Schwartz replied that all Europeans were not true 
 Christians, but that there were many who were 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. ■^*] 
 
 really so, and who sincerely prayed for the 
 Hindoos that they might become acquainted with 
 Jesus Christ. "You astonish me," said he, "for 
 from what we daily observe and experience we 
 cannot but think Europeans, with but few excep- 
 tions, to be self-interested, incontinent, proud, full 
 of illiberal contempt and prejudice against us 
 Hindoos, and even against their own religion, 
 especially the higher classes. So at least I have 
 found it with the majority of those with v/hom I 
 have had any intercourse." 
 
 Meeting a Hindoo dancing master with a female 
 pupil, Schwartz told them that no unholy persons 
 should enter into the kingdom of heaven. "Alas, 
 sir," said the poor girl, "in that case hardly any 
 European will ever enter it." 
 
 This incident is of the same tone as some 
 remarks he made years afterwards. " The 
 wretchedness of many young people here is 
 difficult to be described. Of such, how many are 
 in a short time removed into eternity. They arrive 
 in this country, to make, as it is called, their 
 fortunes, and usually go down to the grave under 
 circumstances sorrowful indeed." 
 
 His fellow missionaries soon discovered 
 Schwartz's talents, and appointed him to super- 
 intend all the Christian schools and churches south 
 
38 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 of the river Caveri. This involved much itinerating 
 work which he cheerfully rendered. 
 
 Various drawbacks occurred in the conduct of 
 the mission. These arose from political circum- 
 stances, such as the success of the French in 
 some of their military enterprises in India. But 
 notwithstanding this feeling of uneasiness the 
 Danish mission celebrated its jubilee on 9th July 
 1756, the anniversary of the day on which fifty 
 years previously Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and 
 Henry Plutscho, the first Protestant missionaries 
 to India, landed at Tranquebar. 
 
 In this year, 1756, three Mohammedans were 
 baptized at Vepery, the first-fruits of Islam to 
 Christ on the coast of Coromandel. 
 
 The branches of the mission at Cuddalore and 
 Madras were seriously interfered with by the 
 hostilities between the French and English armies ; 
 but Tranquebar, where Schwartz was stationed, 
 belonged to a neutral state, and thus escaped the 
 horrors of war. 
 
 In 1760, some of the native Christians of the 
 Dutch mission in Ceylon having requested that 
 the Danish missionaries should visit them, Schwartz 
 set out for that island and visited Jaffnapatnam, 
 Colombo, and other towns. This visitation of the 
 Cingalese churches occupied three months. " The 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 39 
 
 Word of God being so scarce in that island, I assure 
 you that the Divine service was conducted in a 
 very solemn and edifying manner. Indeed my 
 inmost soul was moved by it." 
 
 In 1762 Schwartz determined to extend his 
 labours in India beyond the limits of the Danish 
 territory, and accordingly set out on foot to 
 Tanjore and Trichinopoli, where he preached to 
 both Christians and heathens. From that time his 
 work was chiefly connected with those two cities 
 even more than with Tranquebar. 
 
 At Caroor, near Trichinopoli, he found work of 
 all sorts among the Hindoos and Europeans, for 
 whose benefit he held divine service with the 
 soldiers. The country around was rich and beau- 
 tiful, "well watered even as the garden of the 
 Lord." 
 
 These were years of continual war, battles and 
 sieges following in rapid succession ; but amid it 
 all the missionaries pursued their way ; sometimes 
 in the besieged towns, having their goods seized, 
 and the converts often cruelly used : but through 
 it all the work went on which they were sent to 
 do. At the siege of Madura by the English, 
 Schwartz is reported to have been signally useful 
 to the English army. 
 
 In 1766, at the request of the Society for the 
 
40 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and with the 
 approval of the Royal Mission College at Copen- 
 hagen, Schwartz left Tranquebar and settled at 
 Trichinopoli. 
 
 In regard to his personal appearance and char- 
 acter we have this description : " His garb, which 
 was pretty well worn, seemed foreign and old 
 fashioned, but in every other respect his appearance 
 was the very reverse of all that could be termed 
 forbidding or morose. Figure to yourself a stout 
 well-made man, somewhat above the middle size, 
 erect in his carriage and address, with a complexion 
 rather dark though healthy, black curled hair, and 
 a manly engaging countenance expressive of 
 unaffected candour, ingenuousness and benevolence, 
 and you will have an idea of what Mr Schwartz 
 appeared to be at first sight." 
 
 The following particulars may be acceptable. 
 His annual income at Trichinopoli was about ^^48. 
 " Let us see, then, how he managed with this 
 income. He obtained of the commanding officer 
 a room in an old Gentoo building, which was just 
 large enough to hold his bed and himself, and in 
 which few men could stand upright. With this 
 apartment he was contented. A dish of rice and 
 vegetables dressed after the manner of the natives 
 was what he could always sit cheerfully down to ; 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 4 1 
 
 and a piece of dimity dyed black, and other 
 materials of the same homely sort, sufficed him for 
 an annual supply of clothing. Thus easily pro- 
 vided as to temporalities, his only care was to do 
 the work of an evangelist." He was never married. 
 
 The English garrison being without a chaplain, 
 Schwartz regularly preached to them. The govern- 
 ment of Madras granted him i^ioo a year for these 
 services, and this benevolent man spent it in 
 building a mission house and hall and school : 
 and after furnishing these buildings he resolved to 
 retain only half for himself and devote the other 
 half to the use of his congregation. 
 
 In 1768, the English being involved in war with 
 Hyder Ali, Schwartz found an addition to his 
 work in attending the sick and wounded from the 
 English camp. 
 
 At a visit to Combaconum he talked himself 
 quite weary with various heathen, and one of the 
 catechists read them our Lord's warning against 
 false prophets, whereupon a Brahmin declared 
 aloud, " It is the lust of the eye and of pleasure 
 that prevents us from embracing the truth." On 
 this Schwartz makes the unusual but just remark : 
 " St Paul enumerates idolatry among the works of 
 the flesh. If it were only an error of the understand- 
 ings the greater number of heathens would already 
 
 D 
 
42 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 have forsaken it, but being a work of the flesh, and 
 Christianity requiring its crucifixion, they stop 
 there." 
 
 Another Brahmin used the plain words, " The 
 reasons why we do not embrace the Christian 
 doctrines are avarice, pride and voluptuousness." 
 
 The Hindoos were accustomed to justify them- 
 selves after this fashion : — We cannot be better 
 than the gods : now the gods everywhere practised 
 lying, impurity, injustice and revenge; these can- 
 not, therefore, be sinful. In the temples the most 
 flagrant actions of the gods were described in 
 images and pictures, and as the result the people 
 were sunk in vice and misery. *' They that make 
 the idols are like unto them.'' 
 
 "But we faint not," said Schwartz : "we know 
 that Christ is ordained as a light of the Gentiles." 
 
 In regard to the hindrances to the conversion of 
 the heathen it was his conviction that the principal 
 cause which prevents most of the Hindoos from 
 embracing Christianity is the fear of man. In 
 regard to the Brahmins in particular he writes : 
 " Nothing but fear keeps them at present from 
 embracing the Christian religion. . . . For my 
 part I entertain a cheerful hope of seeing better 
 days, and therefore rejoice in the present oppor- 
 tunity of preaching the salutary doctrine of Christ, 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 43 
 
 frequently recalling to my mind that there is a 
 time of sowing preceding that of reaping." 
 
 Having visited Tanjore in 1769, he was intro- 
 duced to the king of that place, the Rajah Tuljajee : 
 and with this prince and his successors Schwartz's 
 history is much interwoven. Meanwhile he worked 
 at Trichinopoli. 
 
 " Padre," said the son of the Nabob at Trichin- 
 opoli, "we always regarded you Europeans as a 
 most irreligious race of men, unacquainted even 
 with the nature of prayer, till yon came and told 
 us you had good people amongst you in Europe : 
 since you are come here indeed we begin to think 
 better of you." 
 
 Seeing the opportunity of influencing the 
 Mohammedans of India by the Persian language, 
 the Gospels in Persian were to some extent circu- 
 lated among them, and an attempt was made to 
 procure the whole of the New Testament in that 
 language, but such a translation could not be got 
 then. But though Schwartz failed in this, the 
 thing itself has been long ago accomplished. 
 Henry Martyn did this work. The Persian trans- 
 lation of the New Testament is his enduring 
 monument : and it has been widely circulated 
 both in India and in Persia. 
 
 What with school work, visitation of the troops, 
 
44 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the regular services of the churches, evangelistic 
 and pastoral tours among the natives, and private 
 conversation, his time was well occupied. " The 
 day being cool," he writes, " I went round the fort, 
 the poor heathen collecting in numbers to hear the 
 Word of God. After conversing with them, a 
 Mohammedan approached and asked me, ' What 
 was the difference between his religion and mine } ' 
 To which I replied, ' We both have a heavy burden 
 of sin to carry. You have none to remove it, but 
 we have in Jesus Christ a perfect Deliverer.'" 
 ; The blessing of God rested on the work year by 
 year, and the native church continued to increase. 
 Many instances occurred of conversion both 
 among Roman Catholics and the heathen ; and 
 the genuineness of the change was shown by the 
 way in which they withstood allurement and 
 persecution. " The increase in the congregation," 
 he writes in 1771, "has been greater than the 
 preceding year, 140 persons in all having been 
 added to it. We have also remarked more of the 
 work of God in the heart of the catechumens, 
 which has encouraged us cheerfully to persevere." 
 His work among the Europeans was equally fruit- 
 ful, many of the soldiers coming out clearly and 
 fully in the Christian life. 
 
 He was always careful not to speak harshly: 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 45 
 
 "Were we to address the heathen in an angry and 
 cutting manner, it would be just as if we were to 
 throw sand in a man's eyes and then exhort him 
 to see clearly." 
 
 Among many interesting conversions was that 
 of a man said to have been more than a hundred 
 years old. Notwithstanding his extreme age he 
 comprehended well what he. was taught, .and he 
 was baptized. 
 
 The Rajah of Tanjore proposed to employ Mr 
 Schwartz as a mediator or ambassador in some 
 political negotiations with the English, but was 
 overruled by his officers. The rajah used these 
 remarkable words to Schwartz, " Padre, I -have 
 confidence in you, because you are indifferent to 
 money." 
 
 By the combined efforts of the English Govern- 
 ment of Madras and the Nabob of Arcot, Tanjore 
 was captured, and the rajah deposed. But these 
 proceedings did not meet with the approval of the 
 authorities in England, by whose orders the rajah 
 was restored to his throne. The rajah's restoration 
 once more opened the way to Schwartz for freely 
 preaching in Tanjore. The war had greatly 
 hindered him. 
 
 The languages in which he had hitherto carried 
 on his work were English, German, Tamil and 
 
46 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Persian, but at the request of the rajah he also 
 acquired Marathi. The princes of Tanjore as 
 descended from the Maratta conquerors used this 
 language ; and by thus learning it, Schwartz 
 increased his influence in that court. 
 
 An additional missionary having been appointed 
 at Trichinopoli, Schwartz was able from 1778 to 
 reside chiefly at Tanjore, though he continued to 
 visit Trichinopoli and to superintend the work in 
 both places. 
 
 At the request of the Governor of Madras, 
 Schwartz undertook a piece of political work : 
 some might blame him for it, but he thought it 
 right to comply with the request. It was that he 
 should go to Seringapatam to have a personal 
 interview with Hyder Ali for the purpose of ascer- 
 taining his actual disposition with regard to the 
 English, and to assure him of the pacific intentions 
 of the Madras government. It was thought that 
 Schwartz's knowledge of Hindustani, and his 
 incorruptible integrity, qualified him for this mis- 
 sion of peace. And viewing it as an endeavour to 
 avoid war and bloodshed, he also thought it would 
 be wrong to refuse. Accordingly he undertook 
 the journey and arrived at Hyder Ali's court, and 
 had the desired interview or several of them. He 
 gives some curious information about the court 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 47 
 
 of that prince and the terrible severity with which 
 he governed his subjects. This embassy, well as 
 Schwartz endeavoured to carry it out, proved 
 quite ineffectual to secure the desired end, for 
 Hyder Ali not long afterwards invaded the 
 Carnatic with an army of about a hundred thou- 
 sand men. This involved a war which lasted 
 three years, during which time the sufferings of 
 the natives were extreme ; famine prevailed. 
 Schwartz writes, " We have suffered exceedingly 
 in this fortress from hunger and misery. When 
 passing through the streets early in the morning 
 the dead were lying in heaps." " A vigorous and 
 strong man is scarcely to be met with : in outward 
 appearance men are like wandering skeletons." 
 Apprehending the outbreak of this war, Schwartz 
 had purchased 12,000 bushels of rice at a low 
 price, and this enabled him not only to support 
 his catechists and schoolmasters, but to assist 
 many others : indeed he was able to feed a con- 
 siderable number for seventeen months. " Such 
 distress I never before witnessed, and God grant 
 I never may again." 
 
 During this trying period the work of the mission 
 not only did not fall back, but even made cheer- 
 ing progress, while as regards Schwartz himself 
 his Christian character attracted universal con- 
 
48 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 fidence and esteem ; and even Hyder Ali, not- 
 withstanding his cruelty and the desolation which 
 he was spreading so widely, yet ordered his officers 
 "to allow the venerable padre to pass unmolested 
 and to show him respect and kindness, for he 
 is a holy man and means no harm to my govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Hyder All's career of conquest was cut short 
 by the defeats inflicted on him by Sir Eyre Coote 
 and Warren Hastings, and in 1782 he died at 
 Chittore. The war, however, was continued by 
 Hyder All's son Tippoo. After it had proceeded 
 for some time a new attempt was made by the 
 English to secure peace, and once more they 
 applied to Schwartz to accompany the peace com- 
 missioners as their interpreter. He agreed to do 
 so, and went so far on the way to meet the Sultan 
 Tippoo, when he was stopped by the Sultan's 
 officers, peace having been otherwise concluded. 
 Colonel Fullarton, the commander of the English 
 troops, writes of him at this time, " The knowledge 
 and the integrity of this irreproachable missionary 
 have retrieved the character of Europeans from 
 imputations of general depravity." 
 
 Returning to Tanjore he was a second time 
 requested to join the peace commissioners, but 
 not being well he declined. In the account which 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 49 
 
 he gives of this declinature he says : " When one 
 considers all, high and low, rich and poor, rulers 
 and those that are ruled, one is struck with grief 
 and a variety of passions. What blindness, in- 
 sensibility and obstinacy, greediness and rapaci- 
 ousness ! A thousand times I think with myself, 
 * God, must all those people die^ must they all 
 give a strict account of their lives, must they all 
 appear before the tribunal of Jesus the mediator 
 and judge? How little do they mind their end 
 and the consequences of their lives ! " 
 
 He had now been in India considerably more 
 than thirty years, and speaking of the heathen he 
 says, " They are almost entirely devoid of feeling : 
 they hear the doctrines of the gospel explained 
 and even applaud them, and yet go on in their old 
 way as if they had heard nothing about it. Some 
 Brahmins lately said to me, * We have no objection 
 to hear these things, but heavenly objects do not 
 make much impression upon us.' This avowal is 
 certainly too true ; and they are moreover so 
 timid that they would not dare to profess the 
 faith of Christ before their relations. This is 
 truly stoney ground which requires much seed 
 and returns but little fruit." 
 
 In consequence of these prolonged wars and 
 misgovernment by the native princes, the people 
 
50 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 inhabiting those parts of India were reduced to 
 much destitution. The Rajah of Tanjore not being 
 able to agree with the East India Company in 
 regard to the way in which these distressed people 
 should be governed, a commission was appointed 
 by the English Governor for the purpose of en- 
 deavouring to aid the inhabitants and to induce 
 the rajah to agree to certain needed reforms. And 
 on this commission Schwartz was invited to sit 
 as an ordinary member, the other members being 
 some three or four Englishmen of the highest rank. 
 Schwartz agreed to the proposal, and to aid on 
 all occasions that did not involve violent or coercive 
 measures, which, however expedient the English 
 government might esteem them, he nevertheless 
 considered unbecoming his position and character 
 as a Christian minister. On this commission he 
 did work which the government highly valued. 
 So highly were Mr Schwartz's services in this 
 matter esteemed by the government and council 
 of Madras that they resolved to grant him a salary 
 of ^ I GO a year as interpreter to the Company at 
 Tanjore. 
 
 In December 1790, a Christian Hindoo named 
 Sattianaden, w4io for some years had been engaged 
 as a preacher in the service of the mission, was 
 ordained by Schwartz and the other missionaries 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 5 1 
 
 according to the rites of the Lutheran Church. 
 " It was a sacred and most delightful day to us 
 all," says Schwartz. Sattianaden had already 
 approved himself as a trustworthy man, humble 
 and disinterested. " His love to Christ and his 
 desire to be useful to his countrymen are quite 
 apparent : his gifts in preaching afford universal 
 satisfaction. His love to the poor is extraordinary, 
 and it is often inconceivable to me how he can 
 subsist on his scanty stipend — 3 star pagodas per 
 month, about twenty-four shillings, and yet do 
 so much good." Sattianaden's career justified the 
 hopes which were entertained of him. 
 
 In 1791 he writes, "Though I feel age and the 
 infirmities connected with it, I have much cause 
 humbly to praise God that He so graciously 
 strengthens me to pursue my daily labours among 
 both Christians and heathens. ... I baptise no 
 one whom I have not instructed daily for two 
 and sometimes three months. There are two 
 villages of Christians round our garden, one of 
 Pariah and the other of Soodra caste ; and these 
 can conveniently attend our daily worship. That 
 which you for so many years desired, that we 
 might have a village of Christians, God has 
 brought about without our interference." 
 
 In 1792, writing to the Society for the Propaga- 
 
52 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 tion of Christian Knowledge, he says that, though 
 past the sixty-fifth year of his age, he was in good 
 health and able to discharge his duties, and that 
 ^7 converts had been baptized during the previous 
 year. 
 
 An interesting view of Schwartz's work is given 
 by one of his fellow missionaries writing in 1791. 
 ** His garden is filled from morning till late in the 
 evening with natives of every rank who come to 
 him to have their differences settled. . . . Both 
 morning and evening he has a service at which 
 many of the Christians attend. A short hymn 
 is first sung, after which he gives an exhortation 
 on some passage of Scripture and concludes with 
 a prayer. Till this is over, every one, even the 
 most respectable, is obliged to wait. The number 
 of those who come to him to be instructed in 
 Christianity is great. Every day individuals attend 
 requesting him to establish a Christian congrega- 
 tion in their part of the country." 
 
 About the same time Schwartz writes, " As 
 many of the natives daily come to me from all 
 parts of the country, I had the best opportunity 
 of declaring to them the counsel of God for their 
 salvation. Those who came at seven in the 
 morning attended our morning prayers. Others 
 who called at eight heard the instructions given 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 53 
 
 to candidates for baptism. Sometimes forty or 
 fifty persons are present, both of high and low 
 castes. Frequently from fifteen to twenty Brah- 
 mins are sitting by while I am catechizing. I 
 say to them, ' Sit down and you will hear what 
 doctrines I teach. I trust you will dedicate 
 yourself to the service of your Creator and 
 Redeemer and forsake your wretched idolatry.' 
 They quietly sit down for an hour and hear 
 anything I have to say. Thirty years ago they 
 would have looked on this as the greatest 
 scandal. . . . My hope that this country will be 
 brought to a saving knowledge of the gospel 
 daily gains strength; but whether I shall live 
 to see the change, the Lord only knows, nor 
 indeed is it material. My chief care is to train 
 up young people in the service of Christ." 
 
 The Rajah of Tanj ore's adopted son was named 
 Serfojee, and on the father's death the education 
 of this youth was entrusted by the English govern- 
 ment to Mr Schwartz's care : his influence over 
 the young man was excellent. " For two years 
 I have discharged the duties of a Resident. A 
 Resident usually receives 7000 star pagodas, or 
 ;^3000 sterling. I have not received anything, nor 
 .have I asked it. My journey to Madras I under- 
 took at the desire of government, as tutor of 
 
54 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Serfojee. The expenses of the journey / bore 
 myself. I was obliged for conscience' sake to 
 undertake it as the legal guardian of the young 
 man. His life was in the utmost danger. He 
 is now at Madras, learns English and reads good 
 books. What effect this may have on his future 
 life is known to Him alone who trieth the heart 
 and reins." 
 
 And so this good man continued to work year 
 in, year out, steadfast, unmovable, always abound- 
 ing in the work of the Lord, dwelling as a father 
 in the midst of the native Christians, for the 
 church was built in his garden, and they had 
 their houses erected close to it. 
 
 Schwartz died at Tanjore on 13th February 
 1798, surrounded by his fellow labourers, both 
 European and native, and even to the last he 
 ceased not to witness for Christ with great joy. 
 
 Bishop Heber, who visited Tanjore and Trichino- 
 poli in after years, while he says that once he had 
 been doubtful as to the wisdom of all the political 
 work in which Schwartz had engaged, yet records 
 that this impression had been a mistake. "Schwartz," 
 writes the bishop, " was one of the most active and 
 fearless, as he was one of the most successful 
 missionaries who have appeared since the apostles. 
 To say that he was disinterested in regard to 
 
CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 55 
 
 money is nothing : he was perfectly regardless of 
 power ; and renown never seemed to affect him, 
 even so far as to induce an outward show of 
 humility. His temper was perfectly simple, open 
 and cheerful. . . . His converts were between six 
 and seven thousand, beside those whom his pre- 
 decessors and companions in the cause had brought 
 over." 
 
 The respect in which he was held by the natives 
 of South-eastern India was extraordinary : he 
 enjoyed the confidence of poor and rich, of the 
 peasant and the prince. In the midst of war 
 he walked securely through the enemy's country. 
 Even Hyder Ali, when executing vengeance on 
 the English, remembered that there was one 
 European against whom he had no resentment. 
 
 Serfojee, the rajah whose cause Schwartz had 
 so successfully espoused, erected in Schwartz's 
 memory a monument executed in England by 
 Flaxman, and had it placed in the church at the 
 fort at Tanjore. And the East India Company 
 also sent out a monument which they erected in 
 the church at Madras. The inscription on it is 
 very long, but it testifies to the universal regard 
 in which the memory of this apostolic man was 
 held, — " his life was one continued effort to imitate 
 the example of his blessed Master." " The East 
 
56 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 India Company, anxious to perpetuate the memory 
 of such transcendent worth, and gratefully sensible 
 of the public benefits which resulted from his 
 influence, caused this monument to be erected 
 A.D. 1807." 
 
 This short view of the labours of this eminently 
 good man may be concluded with the first 
 sentence from his will, in which he bequeathed 
 all he possessed to the work of the mission — 
 " In the name of God. Into Thine hands I 
 commend my spirit : Thou hast redeemed me, 
 Thou faithful God ! Wherein I have sinned — 
 and I have often and greatly sinned against 
 Thee — forgive it graciously for the sake of the 
 reconciliation-sacrifice of Jesus Christ my Lord, 
 and let me find mercy. Grant me, for Christ's 
 sake, a blessed departure out of this sorrowful 
 world, and a blessed entrance into that joyful 
 life. Amen." 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 
 
 " For My name's sake thou hast laboured and hast not fainted." 
 
 Henry Martyn was born at Truro, in Cornwall, 
 on 17th February 1781. His father was John 
 Martyn, who, from a humble position in connec- 
 tion with some of the Cornish mines, had risen until 
 he became a merchant's clerk in Truro. Henry, as 
 well as his other brothers and sisters, was of a weak, 
 physical constitution ; all accounts say he was a 
 weak and ailing boy. When he was seven years 
 of age his father placed him at the grammar 
 school of the town, then taught by the Rev. Dr 
 Cardew, who found the boy to be "of a lively, 
 cheerful temper," and of excellent mental abilities. 
 In 1797 he entered St John's College, Cam- 
 bridge. Here he worked with great diligence. 
 There is an occasion recorded, when, in a fit 
 of passion as he sat at table, he threw a knife 
 at one of his companions, who in some way 
 had offended him. Fortunately the knife failed 
 to reach its mark : this incident caused him deep 
 
58 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 regret and humiliation. A college friend attempted 
 to persuade him that even his reading should be 
 with a view to the glory of God. This advice, 
 he says, "seemed strange to me, but reason- 
 able." 
 
 The influence which chiefly affected him for 
 the better was that of one of his sisters. She 
 did not cease to urge upon him the supreme 
 claims of Christ. This she took special occasion 
 to do during a visit home, which he paid during 
 a college vacation. But, as he writes in his 
 journal, he steadily resisted his sister, and paid 
 no regard to his father's counsels. " I left my 
 sister and father in October, and him I saw no 
 more. I promised my sister that I would read 
 the Bible for myself, but on being settled at 
 college, Newton engaged all my thoughts." 
 
 Returned to Cambridge, he soon received news 
 of his father's death. He took up the Bible ; but 
 how faint was the light in his soul may be seen 
 from what he says : " I took up my Bible, thinking 
 that the consideration of religion was rather suit- 
 able to this solemn time. ... I began with the 
 Acts as being the most amusing, and while I was 
 entertained with the narrative I found myself in- 
 sensibly led to enquire into the doctrine of the 
 apostles. It corresponded nearly enough with the 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 59 
 
 few notions I had received in my early youth. 
 I believe, on the first night after, I began to pray 
 from a precomposed form, in which I thanked 
 God in general for having sent Christ into the 
 world. But though I prayed for pardon, I had 
 little sense of my own sinfulness ; nevertheless 
 I began to consider myself a religious man." 
 Doddridge's " Rise and Progress of Religion in 
 the Soul," which he read at this time, caused him 
 much searching of heart — " it appeared to make 
 religion to consist too much in humiliation, and 
 my proud wicked heart would not bear to be 
 brought down into the dust." 
 
 This was the turning point in his life, as he 
 writes to his sister : " After the death of our 
 father, you know I was extremely low-spirited, 
 and, like most other people, began to consider 
 seriously, without any particular determination, 
 the invisible world to which he was gone and 
 to which I must one day go. Yet I still read 
 the Bible unenlightened, and said a prayer or 
 two, rather through terror of a superior power than 
 from any other cause. Soon, however, I began 
 to attend more diligently to the words of our 
 Saviour in the New Testament, and to devour 
 them with delight ; when the offers of mercy and 
 forgiveness were made so freely, I supplicated 
 
6o MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 to be made partaker of the covenant of grace 
 with eagerness and hope, and thanks be to the 
 ever blessed Trinity for not leaving me without 
 comfort." 
 
 Another helpful influence was that he attended 
 the ministry of Rev. Charles Simeon at Trinity 
 Church, Cambridge. Simeon greatly helped to 
 promote evangelical religion and to foster the 
 cause of foreign missions, then in its infancy in 
 England. Five Cambridge men, all of them 
 disciples of Simeon, had an important share in 
 making the gospel known in India. These were, 
 in the order of their arrival abroad, Brown, 
 Buchanan, Martyn, Corrie, and Thomason. 
 Thomason was Simeon's curate from 1796 till 
 1808, when he sailed for India, and Martyn 
 from 1803 to 1805, when he left for the same 
 destination. But this is anticipating the course 
 of events. 
 
 Martyn's pre-eminence as a student is seen in 
 the fact that in the public examination for his 
 university degree in January i8or, before he had 
 completed his twentieth year, the highest 
 academical honour was adjudged to him, that 
 of Senior Wrangler. His college friends would 
 crowd round him with congratulations, but his 
 own thoughts were these : " I obtained my 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 6 1 
 
 highest wishes, but was surprised to find that 
 I had grasped a shadow." As the result of 
 another examination he was chosen Fellow of 
 St John's College in 1802, and soon thereafter 
 took the first prize given to graduates for the 
 best Latin prose composition. In 1803 he was 
 appointed by his college public examiner in 
 classics, and in 1804 examiner in philosophy. 
 At the close of the same year he was a third 
 time selected one of the examiners in St John's 
 College. 
 
 During a visit home in 1801 his spiritual life 
 gained a decided impetus : " not till then," he 
 writes, "had I experienced any real pleasure 
 in religion." Under the fostering care of Mr 
 Simeon, his spiritual life continued to grow : and 
 now he abandoned his intention of being a 
 lawyer and consecrated himself to the ministry 
 of the gospel. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards' Memoir of David Brainerd 
 largely helped to lead Henry Martyn to offer 
 himself for foreign service. Brainerd's Memoir 
 quite attracted him. He felt a oneness of soul 
 with the young American who, almost at his own 
 age, left home and the comforts of civilisation, 
 to enter alone, for Jesus Christ's sake, the dark 
 forest of Indian superstition and sin, and who, 
 
62 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 like Martyn, finished his course with joy at so 
 early an age. Brainerd and Martyn were both 
 intensely introspective : both were fired with love 
 to Jesus Christ and a yearning love for souls. 
 " Fatigues and hardships," writes Brainerd, " serve 
 to wean me from the earth, and, I trust, will make 
 heaven the sweeter." Martyn found in him a 
 kindred spirit. And he too laid his life at the 
 feet of Jesus, that Jesus might use that life in 
 any way He saw fit. The immediate cause of 
 this decision, however, was a sermon preached by 
 Mr Simeon on foreign missions, in which attention 
 had been drawn to the good effected in India by 
 William Carey. 
 
 He now offered himself to the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society, one of the noblest of all societies 
 at work among the heathen. It was formed in 
 the year 1800, and the name of Charles Simeon 
 is among the founders. Events, however, proved 
 that it was not under the Society's auspices that 
 Martyn was to go to India. 
 
 In October 1803 he was ordained deacon, and 
 in due time began his ministry as curate to the 
 Rev. Charles Simeon, with whom he laboured 
 in Cambridge and the adjoining village of 
 Lolworth. 
 
 In 1804 a chaplaincy in India was offered him 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 63 
 
 by the East India Company, and he accepted it. 
 In March 1805 he was ordained a presbyter in St 
 James' Chapel, London, and after the ordination 
 the University of Cambridge conferred on him the 
 degree of Bachelor of Divinity. 
 
 " I see no business in life but the work of 
 Christ, neither do I desire any employment to 
 all eternity but His service." In this frame of 
 mind did he look forward to leaving England 
 for India. 
 
 A voyage to India in those days was something 
 to be remembered ; not as now in first class 
 steamers, luxuriously fitted up like floating hotels, 
 so that an Indian voyage becomes a delightful 
 holiday. Very different was the state of things 
 then. The ship in which he sailed was one of 
 a fleet consisting of fifty transports and five 
 men-of-war, besides the Indiamen ; for England 
 was then at war with Holland and France. 
 Added to all the discomforts of the voyage 
 was the extreme length of it : from the time 
 he sailed till the ship arrived in India was nine 
 months ! The disrespect shown to him by almost 
 all on board was a severe discipline. On Sundays 
 the captain would not allow him to preach oftener 
 than once. Seeing, therefore, that his usefulness 
 greatly depended on his private ministrations, he 
 
64 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 made it his daily habit to go between decks, where 
 he assembled all who were willing to attend. 
 "Some attend fixedly," he writes, "others are 
 looking another way ; some women are employed 
 about their children, attending for a little while, 
 and then heedless ; some rising up and going 
 away ; others taking their place ; and numbers, 
 especially of those who have been upon watch, 
 strewed all along upon the deck, fast asleep ; one 
 or two from the upper decks looking down and lis- 
 tening." And on Sundays things were no more 
 encouraging : the passengers were inattentive ; the 
 officers, many of them, sat drinking, so that he 
 could overhear their noise, and the captain was 
 with them. " I seemed uneasy at the thought 
 of calling forth the hatred of the people to- 
 morrow by preaching to them unpleasant truths," 
 But even in so unpromising a field the good seed 
 took root and grew. " Here I am," he writes, 
 " and have enough to break the heart of any one 
 who has a concern for the honour of God. God 
 has, however, had compassion on His unworthy 
 servant and the perishing souls in the ship, as 
 to gather some of His children from amongst 
 us. There is a small party of us who gather 
 every day on the orlop deck to sing and hear 
 an exposition of scripture. The rest are very 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 65 
 
 hardened and contemptuous, but I trust I shall 
 have grace to instruct in meekness those who 
 oppose themselves." 
 
 It was an eventful voyage, its chief incidents 
 being an attempt at mutiny by the crew; four 
 days spent at Funchal ; a short stay at San 
 Salvador in Brazil, where Martyn landed and 
 engaged in conversation in Latin with some 
 Roman Catholic priests, seeking to lead them 
 to Christ ; and the arrival of the fleet at the 
 Cape of Good Hope. The meaning of this 
 putting in at the Cape was that South Africa 
 then belonged to Holland, and the fleet was 
 conveying British troops to fight the Dutch. 
 Martyn, in his capacity of chaplain, was on the 
 field of battle in which the Dutch were defeated. 
 There he moved among the wounded and the 
 dying, speaking to them of the gospel and 
 pointing them to Christ for salvation. As he 
 was thus engaged, a drunken Highland soldier, 
 taking him for a Frenchman, presented his gun 
 at him. Martyn sprang toward him, and told 
 him if he doubted his word, to take him prisoner 
 to the English camp, but that he certainly was 
 an English clergyman. This pacified the soldier, 
 and Martyn's life was saved. Resuming the voy- 
 age, India was reached at last. The sickness in 
 
66 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the ship had been great. Shortly before reaching 
 the Cape the captain had died, and now there 
 was more ill health than ever. Throughout it all 
 Martyn was ever at the bedside of the sick and 
 dying, administering every temporal and spiritual 
 comfort. 
 
 In April 1806 the ship anchored in Madras 
 roads, and next month arrived at Calcutta. " Oh, 
 if I live," he writes, " let me have come hither to 
 some purpose." 
 
 His first impressions of India were certainly 
 rose-coloured. " You address me," he writes, " as 
 if there were hardships in any way : externally 
 there are none, except temptations may be called 
 so, as perhaps they ought to be. The air is so 
 soft and serene that you might sleep at night 
 under a tree ; and maintenance so easy that a 
 wholesome meal may be purchased for a farthing 
 or two." 
 
 Mission work in India at that time was carried 
 on under difficulties. Those in power showed 
 much hostility to the preaching of the gospel to 
 the natives, except, strangely enough, in South 
 India, where the Danish mission was protected 
 and encouraged by the East India Company. If 
 we would understand the devotion of men like 
 William Carey and Henry Martyn let us realise 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 67 
 
 what were the prospects of missionary success at 
 the beginning of this century under the East India 
 Company. The British flag was the emblem of 
 the determination that the gospel should not reach 
 the Hindoos. Some of the early missionaries, 
 Judson for instance, as soon as they landed in 
 British India, were ordered by the authorities to 
 leave immediately, and were forcibly compelled to 
 do so. This was the cause of Judson's settling in 
 Burmah. Carey, Marshman and Ward were not 
 allowed to reside in British India, but were forced 
 to live at the Danish settlement of Serampore. 
 Martyn's position as a chaplain had certain ad- 
 vantages, for he was appointed by the East India 
 Company to preach to the English residents ; but 
 it had its disadvantages too, for he was under 
 military rule, and must obey as much as any 
 private in the ranks. 
 
 Arrived in Calcutta he was hospitably received 
 by the Rev. David Brown. Here he worked 
 incessantly, acquiring the Hindustani language. 
 It would be impossible for the East India Com- 
 pany to keep tJiis chaplain within regulation rules 
 in regard to not preaching to the natives. " I lay 
 in tears," he says, "interceding for the unfortunate 
 natives of this country, thinking within myself that 
 the most despicable soodar of India was of as 
 
68 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 much value in the sight of God as the king of 
 Great Britain." The idolatrous rites of heathenism, 
 which he now witnessed, filled him with horror ; 
 and when he saw the natives prostrate before an 
 idol, he was moved with compassion. As he wrote 
 in another connection, " Let me never fancy I have 
 zeal till my heart overflows with love to every man 
 living." 
 
 " I have just been interrupted by the blaze of a 
 funeral pile within a hundred yards of my pagoda. 
 I ran out, but the wretched woman had consigned 
 herself to the flames before I reached the spot, and 
 I saw only the remains of her and her husband. 
 O Lord, how long shall it be ? Oh, I shall have no 
 rest in my spirit till my tongue is loosed to testify 
 against the devil, and deliver the message of God 
 to these his unhappy bondslaves. I stammered 
 out something to the wicked Brahmins about the 
 judgments of God upon them for the murder they 
 had just committed, but they said it was an act of 
 her own free will. Some of the missionaries would 
 have been there, but they are forbidden by the 
 Governor-general to preach to the natives in the 
 British territory." 
 
 His ministerial brethren did not relish the new 
 preaching : the doctrine of justification by faith 
 they could not endure. Accordingly Martyn had 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 69 
 
 to undergo much personal abuse even from the 
 pulpit. " The two ministers continue to oppose 
 my doctrine with unabated virulence." " These 
 clergy," he writes, *' denied in the pulpit, one by 
 one, all the leading doctrines of the gospel, as well 
 as abused the newly arrived missionary." Martyn 
 was wise enough, when he preached, not to make 
 the slightest allusion to these philippics. 
 
 This is a sufficient glimpse of the hostility 
 then at work everywhere against the gospel as 
 well as against all who loved it. Spiritual and 
 practical religion was the one thing that was not 
 tolerated. 
 
 An appointment soon came ordering Martyn to 
 proceed to Dinapore, a military station up the 
 Ganges. TraveUing up river was accomplished 
 in boats called budgerows. Embarked in one of 
 these, he used the time in the study of Sanskrit, 
 and afterwards of Persian, and also in beginning 
 the translation of the Scriptures with the native 
 moonshee whom he had engaged to help him in 
 this work. As the boat passed Serampore, Mr 
 Marshman, one of the Baptist missionaries, came 
 down to meet him, and after accompanying him a 
 little way, left him with prayer. 
 
 Going on shore from time to time during this 
 river journey, he found himself on one occasion in 
 
yo MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the midst of a crowd of Hindoos engaged in the 
 worship of idols. With one of the Brahmins he 
 had earnest conversation both on the subject 
 of idolatry and of the gospel. He asked the 
 Brahmin if the story were true which relates how 
 the Hindoo divinities Krishnoo and Brahma had 
 once stolen a horse : the Brahmin confessed that 
 it was true, and seemed to feel the consequences. 
 His comment on this incident is, " I learned that 
 the power of gentlenesss is irresistible." 
 
 At Berhampore, the first military station, he 
 landed and visited the sick in the hospital. His 
 journal shows the reception he so often met with. 
 " Rose early, and was at the hospital by daylight, 
 but after waiting a long time, wandering through 
 the wards, hoping the men would get up and 
 assemble, I went away amid the sneers and titters 
 of the common soldiers. It is extraordinary that 
 I seldom or never meet with contempt on account 
 of religion except from Englishmen, and from 
 them invariably." 
 
 Resuming the river journey he worked at Bible 
 translation, even wearying the moonshee with the 
 labour. He distributed tracts in the villages near 
 the river, though in, this he received little encour- 
 agement from the recipients. However, the people 
 seemed not to have the same objection to receive 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 7 I 
 
 copies of the New Testament from him. The 
 burden of those souls lay heavy on him. " I was 
 much burdened," he writes, " with the consciousness 
 of blood-guiltiness, and though I cannot doubt 
 of my pardon by the blood of Christ, how dreadful 
 the reflection that any should perish who might 
 have been saved by my exertions." As he sailed 
 past Patna the sight of the multitudes in that city 
 overwhelmed him, adding to the bodily weakness 
 and pain he suffered. The intensity of his soul was 
 consuming the earthly tenement in which it lived. 
 " The sight of the multitudes at Patna filled me 
 with astonishment and dread from which I have 
 not yet recovered : and the crowds in the bazaar 
 here (Dinapore) have had no tendency to diminish 
 it What shall be done for them all ? " 
 
 At length he arrived at Dinapore. Here, in 
 addition to his work among the Europeans, his 
 objects were threefold, to establish native schools ; 
 to attain such fluency in Hindustani as might 
 enable him easily to preach to the natives ; and 
 to prepare translations of the Scriptures. His 
 work among the Europeans was not begun under 
 encouraging auspices. At first, when he assembled 
 the soldiers for worship, he was desired to omit 
 the sermon. Many of the European families took 
 offence at his preaching without a written sermon. 
 
72 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 and a letter was sent him requesting him to cease 
 from extempore preaching. Though inclined to 
 resent this interference, yet to conciliate them he 
 complied with their wishes. 
 
 Speaking of the divinity of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, to the moonshee with whom he daily 
 worked at bible translation, Martyn told him that 
 he should pray that God would teach him what 
 the truth really is. The man said he had no need 
 to pray on the subject as the Koran was express. 
 Martyn asked him whether some doubt ought not 
 to arise in his mind as to whether the Koran is 
 the Word of God. The moonshee grew angry. 
 Martyn felt hurt and vexed. " If any quali- 
 fication," he writes, "seems necessary to a mis- 
 sionary in India, it is wisdom operating in the 
 regulation of the temper, and improvement of 
 opportunities." 
 
 In his work as chaplain he was grieved by the 
 neglect, levity and profaneness of many of the 
 English. " There seems no approach to seriousness 
 in any here, except perhaps one soldier. They 
 slumber away their time in idleness, and they 
 have lately set on foot something worse, viz., 
 theatricals." In vain he tried to speak of religion 
 in the houses of the wealthy. " The manner in 
 which it was received damped all further effort." 
 
HENRY MARTYN. ^ ^ 
 
 Still he laboured on, sometimes making long 
 journeys in his pastoral work : one journey of 
 seventy miles is mentioned, to perform a marriage. 
 
 In February 1807 he completed the translation 
 into Hindustani of the Book of Common Prayer, 
 and a few Sundays thereafter commenced worship 
 in the vernacular. " The spectacle was as novel 
 as it was gratifying, to behold two hundred women, 
 Portuguese, Roman Catholics and Mohammedans, 
 crowding to attend the service of the Church of 
 England, which had lost nothing, doubtless, of its 
 beautiful simplicity and devout solemnity in being 
 clothed with an Oriental dress." Soon thereafter 
 he finished a commentary in Hindustani on the 
 Parables. His moonshee's private thoughts on 
 this work may be seen from his remark that, after 
 that generation had passed away, a race of fools 
 might perhaps arise who would try to believe that 
 God could be a man, and man God, and who 
 would say that the Bible is the Word of God. 
 The attitude of the moonshee only made him 
 resolve that he would be surprised by no appear- 
 ances of the same temper in others. 
 
 His Sabbath duties now consisted of a service 
 for Europeans at seven a.m. ; another at two in 
 the afternoon for Hindoos ; then he attended the 
 hospital ; and in the evening he ministered in his 
 
 F 
 
74 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 own rooms to those soldiers who were interested 
 in divine things. Regarding one of his Enghsh 
 services he writes, " I preached on Luke xxii. 
 22. As is always the case when I preach about 
 Christ, a spiritual influence is diffused over my 
 soul." This patient unremitting labour for Christ, 
 apparently so barren of result, was yet not allowed 
 to be without fruit. Both among the privates and 
 the officers some hearts were touched by God's 
 grace, and with these he enjoyed true fellow- 
 ship. 
 
 Among the Hindoos he began work in addition 
 to the service for them each Sabbath, but found 
 their ignorance of divine things a serious hin- 
 drance. For example, he sent his pundit with 
 a copy of the gospels as a gift to the Ranee 
 of Daoudnagur. The princess accepted the 
 present, returned her compliments, and desired 
 to know what must be done to obtain benefit 
 from the book, whether prayer or making a 
 salaam to it. " I sent her word," he writes, " that 
 she must seek Divine instruction in secret prayer, 
 and I also added some other advice." 
 
 Miss Lydia Grenfell having declined to leave 
 England for the purpose of joining him, he 
 writes, "At first, like Jonah, I was more grieved 
 at the loss of my gourd than at the sight of 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 75 
 
 the many perishing Ninevehs all around me ; 
 but now my earthly woes and earthly attach- 
 ments seem to be absorbing in the vast concern 
 of communicating the gospel to these natives. 
 ... So remarkably and so repeatedly has God 
 baffled all my schemes of earthly comfort, that 
 I am forced at last to believe His determination 
 to be that I should live in every sense a stranger 
 and pilgrim on this earth." 
 
 With his moonshee and his pundit he had much 
 conversation, but made little headway. The 
 former threw much ridicule on the gospel ; the 
 latter seemed more impressible. " I find that 
 seriousness in the declaration of the truths of 
 the gospel is likely to have more power than 
 the clearest arguments conveyed in a trifling 
 spirit." Speaking to the moonshee of his own 
 personal experience, Martyn assured him that 
 his chief pleasure even now on earth was the 
 enjoyment of God's presence and a growing 
 conformity to Him, and therefore he says, " I 
 asked what motives could the promise of houris, 
 ghilmans, green meadows and eating and drink- 
 ing in paradise afford me. My soul sweetly 
 blessed the Lord in secret that this testimony 
 was true." 
 
 His work in Dinapore continued. Five schools 
 
76 MISSIONARY riONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 for children he supported out of his own purse. 
 The gospel he still preached amid the persistent 
 scorn of the Europeans ; the praise of man was 
 a temptation which did not fall to him. Like 
 Paul he was willing to impart to them, not the 
 gospel only, but his own soul also, because they 
 were dear to him ; but their response was 
 opprobrium and contempt. At his services 
 sometimes not a single European was present, 
 and he was thankful when he could explain 
 the Word of God in Hindustani to a few of the 
 native women. These difficulties are referred 
 to in a letter, dated July 1808, to the Rev. 
 D. Corrie : " How small and unimportant are 
 the hair-splitting disputes among the blessed 
 people at home compared with the formidable 
 agents of the devil with whom we have to 
 contend here. There are four castes of people 
 in India — the first, heathen ; the second, Moham- 
 medans ; the third, Papists ; the fourth, infidels. 
 Now I trust that you and I are sent to fight 
 this four-faced devil ; and by the help of the 
 Lord Jesus, whom we serve, we will." 
 
 Being asked to accept the pastorate of the 
 Mission Church in Calcutta, he declined, feeling 
 that if he gave himself to the ministry in that 
 city he must abandon his work among the 
 
HENRY MARTYN. "J J 
 
 natives ; but this he could not do. " When I 
 see a very small party of people who choose 
 to sit still, with their faces upon the right 
 way, and a flood of light poured upon it, and 
 not far from these, millions equally valuable 
 groping for the right way in midnight dark- 
 ness, I cannot help running with a lantern to the 
 latter." 
 
 Two fresh assistants now arrived to aid him 
 in bible translation — Mirza of Benares, a gifted 
 Hindustani scholar, and Sabat; an Arabian. 
 Sabat came with this recommendation — " He 
 will delight your heart, for he is a gentleman, 
 a scholar, and a Christian." Mirza was very 
 helpful, but Sabat proved a thorn in the flesh, 
 owing to his fierce temper, which would often 
 break out into ungovernable fits of fury. Instead 
 of being a comfort, Sabat became only an 
 additional trial. Yet Martyn bore with this 
 fiery Arab for two reasons ; because he felt 
 Sabat of use to him in the translation of the 
 New Testament into Persian, and also for the 
 man's own sake. " Sabat," he writes, " has been 
 tolerably quiet this week : but think of the 
 keeper of a lunatic and you see me." "We 
 wait for nothing but Sabat to examine the 
 translation ; but that, alas, is the greatest plague 
 
78 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 to come. How shall we ever get through it? 
 I do not expect, indeed, that we shall get 
 further than a few chapters, for if everything 
 is not altered according to his ipse dixit he is 
 angry; and this I certainly cannot do." "Another 
 of his odd opinions is that he is so under the 
 immediate influence and direction of the Spirit 
 that there will not be one single error in his 
 whole Persian translation. You perceive a little 
 enthusiasm in the character of our brother. As 
 often as he finds himself in any difficulty, he 
 expects a dream to set him right." " Sabat 
 has kept me much upon the fret this week. . . . 
 I grieve to say that he is deaf to all I urge 
 respecting the necessity of loving our enemies. 
 His love to Christ, he says, will ensure him 
 salvation, = though he does disobey that one 
 command. Hence he continues to hate Mirza 
 with a perfect hatred, inveighing against him 
 with dreadful bitterness, and declaring that if 
 he were not a Christian he would destroy him 
 instantly. What to do with him I am at a 
 loss to know." 
 
 Most unhappily Sabat ultimately apostatized. 
 
 In March 1808 Martyn joyfully completed 
 the version of the New Testament in Hindu- 
 stani, "a work for which," says his biographer 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 79 
 
 Sargent, " myriads in the ages yet to come will 
 gratefully remember and revere the name of 
 Martyn." ^ 
 
 " I have read and corrected the manuscript 
 copies of my Hindustani Testament so often 
 that my eyes ache. The heat is terrible, often 
 at 98°, the nights insupportable." This version 
 in a revised form is still doing God's work in 
 India. 
 
 In April 1809 he was ordered from Dinapore to 
 Cawnpore. Owing to the terrific heat he fainted 
 as soon as he reached the house of the friend, Mrs 
 Sherwood, where he was to reside for a few days. 
 In Cawnpore he received the same treatment as 
 in Dinapore, and was set at naught. The natives 
 to whom he preached met him with derision, 
 shouts and hisses, but he ceased not to beseech 
 them to be reconciled to God. 
 
 One feature of his residence in Cawnpore was 
 his preaching to the beggars. To prevent constant 
 interruptions he had arranged that they should 
 come to his house on a stated day for the dis- 
 tribution of alms. To this strange congregation 
 he determined to preach the gospel. The following 
 Sunday he again preached to the beggars, who 
 numbered about five hundred. This audience re- 
 ceived him in a different style from that to which 
 
8o MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 he was accustomed : instead of indifference or 
 scorn, there was great applause. He continued 
 to preach to the beggars as long as he resided in 
 Cawnpore ; their numbers sometimes were as high 
 as seven hundred. 
 
 Ill health now caused him much pain, but he 
 felt that he could not forego any part of his work, 
 neither that of preaching to the soldiers, nor to 
 the beggars, nor to the few Europeans. One 
 native woman, an old Hindoo, was baptized by 
 him in Cawnpore. So poor did his health become 
 that it was necessary either that he should try 
 a sea voyage, or return for a time to England. 
 The precise time of his departure from Cawn- 
 pore, as well as his route, was decided by 
 considerations affecting his Persian and Arabic 
 translations. 
 
 The Persian gospels he had submitted to the 
 judgment of the authorities in Calcutta, and their 
 decision was that the translation abounded too 
 much in Arabic idioms, and it was sent back to 
 him for revision. He therefore resolved to go to 
 Persia in order to make the necessary revision on 
 the spot. 
 
 He applied for sick leave, which was granted. 
 Then he sailed in July 1811 from Calcutta to 
 Bombay. In Bombay Sir John Malcolm gave 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 8 I 
 
 him a letter of introduction to Sir Gore Ouseley, 
 the British Resident in Persia. Sir John intro- 
 duces him as " altogether a very learned and 
 cheerful man, but a great enthusiast in his holy 
 calling. I am satisfied that if you ever see him 
 you will be pleased with him. He will give you 
 grace before and after dinner, and admonish such 
 of your party as take the Lord's name in vain ; 
 but his good sense and great learning will delight 
 you, while his constant cheerfulness will add to 
 the hilarity of your party." 
 
 There may be mentioned at this point several 
 things which show that Henry Martyn was no 
 recluse. He speaks of sometimes purveying his 
 dinner by shooting snipe. He could ride a horse ; 
 and play on the flute ; and his hopefulness was 
 great. There are no dark views of the world in 
 these words, '* Swiftly fly the hours of life away, 
 and then we shall be admitted to behold His 
 glory. The ages of darkness are rolling fast 
 away and shall soon usher in the gospel period 
 when the whole world shall be filled with His 
 glory." " The cause in which we are engaged is 
 the cause of mercy and truth, and therefore in 
 spite of seeming impossibilities it must eventually 
 prevail." 
 
 He tells us that he was sometimes led into in- 
 
82 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 temperate heat in argument, and was often liable 
 to be forgetful of his proper work as a minister of 
 Christ : " I visit the English very little, and yet 
 have had sufficient experience of the difficulty of 
 knowing how a minister should converse with his 
 people. I have myself fallen into the worst ex- 
 treme, and from fear of making them connect 
 religion with gloom, have been led into such 
 shameful levity and conformity to them, as ought 
 to fill me with grief and deep self-abasement." 
 
 The voyage from Calcutta to Persia occupied 
 five months. He landed at Bushire, and thence 
 travelled to Shiraz. Once upon Persian soil he 
 adopted the Persian costume. "The Persian dress," 
 he writes, " consists of stockings and shoes in one ; 
 next a pair of large blue trousers, or else a pair of 
 huge red boots ; then the shirt, then the tunic, and 
 above it the coat, both of chintz, and a greatcoat. 
 I have here described my own dress, most of which 
 I have on at this moment. On the head is worn 
 an enormous cone made of the skin of the black 
 Tartar sheep, with the wool on. If to this de- 
 scription of my dress I add that my beard and 
 mustachios have been suffered to vegetate undis- 
 turbed ever since I left India ; that I am sitting 
 on a Persian carpet in a room without tables 
 and chairs ; that I bury my hand in the pilaw 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 83 
 
 without waiting for spoon or plate, you will give 
 me credit for being already an accomplished 
 Oriental." 
 
 On the journey from Bushire to Shiraz the heat 
 was extreme, the thermometer rising to 126°. " In 
 this state," he writes, " I composed myself, and 
 concluded that, though I might hold out a day 
 or two, death was inevitable." It left him more 
 dead than alive. At length Shiraz was reached, 
 and here he immediately began a new version of 
 the New Testament in Persian. In this work he 
 had an able and willing assistant in the person of 
 Mirza Seid Ali Khan, the brother-in-law of his 
 host Jaffier Ali Khan. 
 
 Very soon he was the centre of observation in 
 the city : he had many callers, and with them he 
 entered into conversation on the subject of the 
 gospel. He found the Persians more unprejudiced 
 and more inquisitive than the Hindoos, and this 
 gave him hope that the gospel would soon win its 
 way among them. But what could have brought 
 him to Persia ? was the question discussed by 
 many. Some thought he had come to Shiraz in 
 order to become a Mussulman, with the ulterior 
 design of bringing five thousand men to seize the 
 country by force ! 
 
 Two Moollahs having listened to what he had 
 
84 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 to say regarding the person of Christ, seemed 
 quite satisfied, and remarked, " How much mis- 
 apprehension is removed when people come to an 
 explanation." While his amanuensis was writing 
 the translation of that passage in the gospel where 
 it is related how one of the servants of the high 
 priest struck the Lord Jesus on the face, the ir- 
 reverence and insult impressed him greatly : he 
 stopped and said, " Sir, did not his hand dry 
 up .? " 
 
 Anxious to pay respect to the powers that be, 
 he was presented at court to the Prince Abbas 
 Mirza. " I went wearing a pair of red cloth 
 stockings, with green high-heeled shoes." A 
 hundred fountains playing ; the dignitaries, some 
 standing, others seated. *' I never saw," he writes, 
 "a more sweet and engaging countenance than 
 the prince's." 
 
 His first public discussion was with the Moojtu- 
 hid or Professor of Mohammedan law: but fair 
 discussion did not come easily to the professor : 
 he preferred to dogmatise. These discussions, 
 and the fact of his being engaged on a transla- 
 tion of the New Testament, excited so much 
 enquiry that the Preceptor of all the Moolahs 
 published against Mr Martyn an Arabic defence 
 of Mohammedanism. Mr Martyn published a 
 
HENRY MARTVN. 85 
 
 reply in Persian, dividing his reply into two parts : 
 first, an attack on Mohammedanism ; second, a 
 statement of Christianity. He ends his reply in 
 the words, " If you do not see the evidence to 
 be sufficient, my prayer is that God may guide 
 you so that you who have been a guide to men 
 in the way you thought right, may now both see 
 the truth and call men to God through Jesus 
 Christ, who hath loved us and washed us from 
 our sins in His blood. His glory and dominion 
 be everlasting ! " The nephew of one of the 
 princes hearing of Mr Martyn's published reply, 
 observed that the proper answer to it was — the 
 sword ; but the prince confessed that he began 
 to have his doubts. 
 
 Toward the end of November such progress 
 had been made with the Persian version that 
 Mr Martyn ordered two splendid copies of it to 
 be prepared, one to be presented to the King 
 of Persia, the other to his son, Prince Abbas 
 Mirza. Intending to spend the winter in Shiraz 
 he resolved to translate the psalms into Persian. 
 Speaking of his assistants he says, " They are 
 employed in a work of the importance of which 
 they are unconscious, and are making provision 
 for future Persian saints whose time is, I sup- 
 pose, now near. ' Roll back, ye crowded years. 
 
86 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 your thick array ! ' Let the long, long period 
 of darkness and sin at last give way to the 
 brighter hours of light and liberty which wait on 
 the wings of the Sun of righteousness. Perhaps 
 we witness the dawn of the day of glory ; and 
 if not, the desire that we feel that Jesus may 
 be glorified and the nations acknowledge His 
 sway, is the earnest of the Spirit, that when He 
 shall appear we shall also appear with Him in 
 glory." 
 
 On Christmas day he made a feast for the 
 Russians and Armenians : the Soofie Master and 
 his disciples were also present. Addressing the 
 guests, Mr Martyn expressed his hope that though 
 they would never see him again they would re- 
 member that he had brought them the gospel. 
 The Soofie Master coldly replied that God would 
 guide those whom He chose. 
 
 At length the year 1812 dawned, the year when 
 Henry Martyn rested from his labours and found 
 himself in a world where all is love. On New 
 Year's day he wrote, " I look back with shame 
 and pity upon my former self, when I attached 
 importance to my life and labours. The more I 
 see of my works the more I am ashamed of them. 
 I am sick when I look at man and his wisdom 
 and his doings, and am relieved only by re- 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 87 
 
 fleeting that we have a city whose builder and 
 maker is God. The least of His works here is 
 refreshing to look at. A dried leaf or a straw 
 makes me feel myself in good company." 
 
 On January i6th there is a touching entry: 
 " Mirza Seid AH told me accidentally to-day of 
 a distich made by his friend Mirza Koochut at 
 Teheran in honour of a victory obtained by 
 Prince Abbas Mirza over the Russians. The 
 sentiment was that he had killed so many of the 
 Christians that Christ from the fourth heaven 
 took hold of Mohammed's skirt to entreat him 
 to desist. I was cut to the soul at this blasphemy. 
 . . . Mirza Seid Ali perceived that I was con- 
 siderably disordered, and was sorry for having 
 repeated the verse, but asked what it was that 
 was so offensive. I told him that I could not 
 endure existence if Jesus was not glorified. He 
 was astonished and again asked why. ' If any 
 one pluck out your eyes,' I replied, * there is no 
 saying why you feel pain — it is feeling. It is 
 because I am one with Christ that I am dread- 
 fully wounded.' On his again apologising, I told 
 him I rejoiced at what had happened, inas- 
 much as it made me feel nearer the Lord than 
 ever." 
 
 He must have rejoiced when, after months of 
 
88 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 enquiry and sometimes of opposition, Mirza Seid 
 Ali confessed himself a Christian ; that he granted 
 that Christ is the Son of God ; that he was willing 
 to trust in Him alone for salvation ; and that he 
 was also willing to confess Christ before men and 
 act conformably to His word. 
 
 On February 14th the last sheet of the Persian 
 New Testament was finished, and in March he 
 completed the translation of the Psalms. 
 
 On the day before he finished the New Testa- 
 ment he visited Mirza Ibraheem, who was en- 
 gaged lecturing in a room filled with Moolahs. 
 The Master asked him what he meant by calling 
 Christ God, and also if Christ had ever called 
 Himself God. Was He the Creator or a crea- 
 ture.-* " I replied, the Creator. The Moolahs 
 looked at one another. Such a confession had 
 never before been heard among Mohammedan 
 doctors." 
 
 On May 24th he left Shiraz for Tabriz, where 
 the British Ambassador, Sir Gore Ouseley, then 
 resided. The purpose of this journey was to 
 obtain from him a letter of introduction to the 
 king, before whom he wished to lay his transla- 
 tion. Arrived at the king's camp at Carach, he 
 attended the vizier's levee, where there was a 
 lengthened and clamorous controversy. It ended 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 89 
 
 when Mr Martyn said, " God is God," but added 
 instead of " Mohammed is the prophet of God," 
 *' and Jesus is the Son of God." The disputants 
 rose up in anger, and one of them exclaimed : 
 " What will you say when your tongue is burned 
 out for this blasphemy ? " The Persian transla- 
 tion of the New Testament was lying before 
 the vizier. "As they all rose up," writes Martyn, 
 " I was afraid they would trample upon the 
 book, so I went in among them to take it 
 up, and wrapped it in a towel before them, 
 while they looked at it and me with supreme 
 contempt." 
 
 Resuming his journey to Tabriz, he was seldom 
 free from headache and giddiness and fever ; " but 
 my heart, I trust, is with Christ and His saints." 
 He was thrown into a high fever and nearly 
 delirious, and almost despaired of getting alive 
 through what he calls "this unfortunate journey." 
 At last he reached Tabriz. But owing to the 
 fever, w^hich lasted nearly two months, he was 
 prevented from personally presenting the New 
 Testament to the King of Persia. Sir Gore 
 Ouseley, however, promised that he would present 
 it at court. His promise he fulfilled, and the king, 
 on receiving it, publicly expressed his approval 
 
 G 
 
90 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 of the work. Sir Gore Ouseley also carried the 
 manuscript to St Petersburg, where he super- 
 intended the printing of it, and afterwards the 
 putting of it into circulation. The ambassador 
 and his wife tenderly nursed Mr Martyn during 
 the whole of this illness. 
 
 After recovering he set out from Tabriz with 
 the intention of returning to England. He turned 
 his horse's head towards Constantinople — distant 
 about 1300 miles — a city he was destined not to 
 reach. He and his attendants journeyed on from 
 village to village, crossing the river Araxes, and 
 having Mount Ararat in view ; a hoary mountain, 
 he describes it, rising so high above the rest that 
 they sank into nothing. His remarks on seeing 
 Mount Ararat were that Noah had here " landed 
 in a new world ; so may I, safe in Christ, outride 
 the storms of life, and land at last on one of the 
 everlasting hills." 
 
 At Erivan he was kindly received by the 
 Governor. At Ech Miazin, or Three Churches, 
 he visited a large Armenian church and en- 
 couraged one of the ecclesiastics, named Serope, 
 in whom he thought he saw promise of some 
 reforming useful Christian work. With the clergy 
 of this church he stayed a few days, and left them 
 with sentiments of brotherly regard. 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 9 I 
 
 His party crossed the Araxes four times. 
 Ascendini^ the tableland they had a view of 
 Russian territory : at once they saw Persia, 
 Russia and Turkey. On 21st September he 
 rode into the city of Kars. Next day they passed 
 close to the country of the Kurds ; then onwards 
 to Erzeroum. Travelling on, they came to 
 Chiflick, where he was attacked again by ague 
 and fever. Next day they came to Sherean, and 
 thence travelled all the rest of the day and all 
 night : it rained most of the time : the ague 
 returned and he could get nowhere to lie down, 
 for, he writes, " Hassan had no mercy." After 
 sleeping three or four hours, Hassan once more 
 hurried him onward till night came on, when 
 Mr Martyn got off his horse, telling Hassan he 
 neither could nor would go any further. Seeing 
 a light he made toward it and got under shelter 
 — a stable-room. Here the fever increased : he 
 besought them to put out the fire or to carry 
 him out of doors, but they were deaf to his en- 
 treaties, so he put his head in among the luggage 
 and lodged it upon the damp ground, and slept. 
 In the morning the merciless Hassan hurried him 
 off. Next night the ague and fever returned and 
 he could not sleep. 
 
 The last entry in his journal is October 6th. 
 
92 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 " No horses being obtainable I had an unexpected 
 repose. I sat in the orchard and thought with 
 sweet comfort and peace of my God, in solitude 
 my company, my friend and comforter. Oh when 
 shall time give place to eternity ? when shall 
 appear that new heaven and new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness ? There — there shall in no 
 wise enter in anything that defileth, none of that 
 wickedness that has made men worse than wild 
 beasts ; none of those corruptions that add still 
 more to the miseries of mortality shall be seen 
 or heard of any more." 
 
 On October i6th at Tocat he died, " either falling 
 a sacrifice to the plague which then raged there, 
 or sinking under that disorder which, when he 
 penned his last words, had so greatly reduced him, 
 he surrendered his soul into the hands of his 
 Redeemer." He had not completed his thirty- 
 second year. 
 
 A man of the highest talents, his mathematical 
 and linguistic attainments leaving him almost 
 without a rival, he laid himself a willing sacrifice 
 on the Lord's altar. In a letter written in 1809 
 he mentions that he was acquainted more or 
 less with these languages — Latin, Greek, French, 
 Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Rabbinical 
 Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Ethiopic, Samaritan, 
 
HENRY MARTYN. 93 
 
 Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali, and Hindustani. 
 Of Arabic he says, " I approve most fully of your 
 new orders for commencing the Arabic. A year 
 ago I was not adequate to it : my labours in the 
 Persian and other studies have in the wisdom of 
 God been the means of qualifying me. So now, 
 favente Deo, we will begin to preach to Arabia, 
 Syria, Persia, India, Tartary, China, half of 
 Africa, all the south coast of the Mediterranean, 
 and Turkey, and one tongue shall suffice for them 
 all." 
 
 " All the dignity to which he aspired was to 
 be their servant among whom he laboured for 
 Jesus' sake." Even before he left England, so 
 thoroughly was his conversation in heaven, that, 
 to use his own words, "his soul longed for the 
 eternal world, and he could see nothing on earth 
 for which he would wish to live another hour." 
 " I wish for no service but the service of God 
 in labouring for souls on earth and to do His 
 will in heaven." " I do not wish for any heaven 
 upon earth besides that of preaching the precious 
 gospel of Jesus Christ to immortal souls." Even 
 when labouring at the great work of translating 
 the Bible into the languages of India, he writes, 
 " O my soul, be not deceived : thy chief work 
 
94 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 upon earth is to obtain sanctification and to walk 
 with God." 
 
 The Greek text upon the title page of Martyn's 
 memoir is an epitome of his life and work, *' For 
 My sake thou hast laboured and thou hast not 
 fainted " (Rev. iii. 2). 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 
 
 " Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God." 
 
 William Carey was born on 17th August 
 1 76 1, in the village of Pury, or Paulerspury, in 
 Northamptonshire. His father was a weaver, 
 and was also parish clerk and schoolmaster. 
 The education then given in village schools was 
 of a very limited character, but what advantages 
 there were, he made the most of He was noted 
 even as a boy for perseverance. Having been 
 severely hurt by a fall from a tree, when once 
 he was allowed out of doors, the first thing he 
 did was to climb that very tree. This deter- 
 mination of purpose stood him in good stead 
 in after life. The bent of his mind lay towards 
 natural history, and he had collected quite a 
 little store of insects which he kept in his own 
 room. Unfitted, through illness, for out-door 
 occupation, he was, at the age of fourteen, ap- 
 prenticed to a shoemaker at Hackleton. Here 
 his thirst for information led him to acquire 
 some knowledge of Greek. 
 
 95 
 
96 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Scott, the well-known com- 
 mentator, who was then curate of Olney, used 
 to visit the house of Carey's master, and it was 
 largely to the influence and ministry of Mr 
 Scott that Carey's conversion was due. During 
 his after life he never forgot the debt of gratitude 
 which he owed to his kind minister. 
 
 When only nineteen years of age he made his 
 first appearance in the pulpit, and was applauded 
 for his efforts, greatly to his own injury. This 
 his earliest sermon afterwards caused him much 
 humiliation. Some time afterwards he preached 
 at the village of Earl's Barton, and there, as well 
 as at his own village, he preached for three 
 years and a half. At this time his views on 
 baptism underwent a change, and he was baptized 
 by immersion in the river Nen at Northampton 
 by Dr John Rylands, his future associate in the 
 cause of missions. How unable any one then was 
 to read Carey's future career is evident from the 
 entry which Dr Rylands made of the event: — " This 
 day baptised a poor journeymen shoemaker." 
 
 He now joined the congregation of Rev. John 
 Sutcliffe at Olney, and when it was proposed 
 that he should receive a call to the ministry, 
 it was chiefly through Mr Sutcliffe's influence 
 that this was agreed to, as the members doubted 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 97 
 
 whether he possessed sufficient ability to make 
 a useful minister. His own description of the 
 sermon which he preached on this occasion is that 
 it was as " crude and weak as anything could be 
 which is called or has been called a sermon." 
 
 His studies were now enlarged, and he made 
 it his daily habit to read the Scriptures devo- 
 tionally in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. 
 
 The master to whom he was apprenticed 
 having died, Carey took over his stock and 
 business, and married his master's sister-in-law — 
 Dorothy Plackett — and all this before he was 
 twenty years of age. Trade became dull, and 
 his congregation at Barton were not able to 
 raise enough even to pay for the clothes used 
 by him in their service. At this period he also 
 suffered much from fever, which had the result 
 of making him bald for the rest of his life. 
 
 In 1786 he removed to Moulton and took 
 charge of the dissenting congregation there. In 
 this place he also taught a boys' school, but he 
 was quite unfitted for such work and had no 
 control over the pupils. The income which he 
 received from his congregation was £[i a year, 
 and ;£"5 from a fund in London ; and to eke 
 out a living he was compelled to resume his 
 former trade. Once a fortnight he walked eight 
 
98 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 or ten miles to Northampton carrying on his 
 shoulder a wallet filled with shoes, and then 
 returned home with a fresh supply of leather. 
 It has been usual to say that Carey was not 
 proficient in his trade, but his own words are 
 that he was accounted *'a skilful and honest 
 workman." Thirty years afterwards, when dining 
 one day at Barrackpore with Lord Hastings, the 
 Governor-general, one of the guests enquired of 
 another whether Dr Carey had not once been a 
 shoemaker. Happening to everhear the remark, 
 he stepped forward and replied — " No, sir, only 
 a cobbler." 
 
 The immediate cause of his being led to think 
 of the state of the heathen was his reading Cap- 
 tain Cook's " Voyages." The idea of missions now 
 took possession of him. The Rev. Andrew Fuller, 
 Baptist minister at Kettering, has related that 
 on going into Carey's workshop he saw hanging 
 on the wall a large map consisting of several 
 sheets of paper pasted together, on which he 
 had also written items of information regarding 
 the natural characteristics, the population, and 
 the religion of the various countries of the world. 
 Thus while he wrought with hammer and awl, 
 his eyes often glanced at the map, and his 
 thoughts were turned to what methods could be 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 99 
 
 devised for evangelising the heathen. Referring 
 to such a scene, Wilberforce afterwards said in 
 the House of Commons — "A sublimer thought 
 cannot be conceived than when a poor cobbler 
 formed the resolution to give to the millions of 
 Hindoos the Bible in their ow^n language." 
 
 At a meeting of ministers held at Northampton, 
 Mr Carey proposed as a topic of discussion — "The 
 duty of Christians to attempt the spread of the 
 Gospel among heathen nations," when Mr Rylands, 
 senior, rose and exclaimed — '* Young man, sit 
 down ! When God pleases to convert the heathen 
 He will do it without your aid or mine." The 
 lack of sympathy from his brethren did not make 
 him desist, but he embodied his views in a pam- 
 phlet ; and so carried a\vay was he with his project, 
 that while engaged in compiling this pamphlet 
 his own family could scarcely obtain a supply of 
 bread. This publication marked a new beginning 
 in the cause of missions. Its title is " An enquiry 
 into the obligation of Christians to use means 
 for the conversion of the heathens. In which the 
 religious state of the different nations of the world, 
 the success of former undertakings, and the prac- 
 ticability of further undertakings are considered. 
 By William Carey. Leicester, 1792." 
 
 In 1789 he had removed to a congregation in 
 
lOO MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Leicester, but this church too was exceedingly 
 poor ; and so once more the attempt was made to 
 teach a school ; this time also the attempt was 
 unsuccessful. His zeal in preaching the gospel 
 both in Leicester and in the surrounding villages 
 endeared him to all who loved the cause of religion. 
 
 In 1792, at a meeting of ministers at Nottingham, 
 he preached the sermon which really laid the 
 foundation of the Baptist Missionary Society. 
 The text was — " Enlarge the place of thy tent, 
 and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine 
 habitation : spare not, lengthen thy cords and 
 strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt break forth 
 on the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed 
 shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate 
 cities to be inhabited," Isaiah liv. 2, 3. From these 
 words he enforced two principles — " Expect great 
 things from God. Attempt great things for God." 
 The ministers now agreed that a plan should be 
 prepared for the establishment of a society for the 
 propagation of the gospel among the heathen, and 
 that this plan should be ready to be laid before 
 them at next meeting. 
 
 This meeting was held at Kettering on 2nd 
 October 1792, in the house, which is still standing, 
 of a widow lady, Mrs Beeby Wallis. Twelve 
 ministers were present, and in accordance with 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. lOI 
 
 their promise they formed the Baptist Missionary 
 Society, " to convey the message of salvation to 
 some portion of the heathen world." The twelve 
 ministers themselves then and there subscribed 
 ;^I3, 2s. 6d. No sooner was the subscription 
 list filled up than Mr Carey offered to embark 
 for any country the Society might select. The 
 Rev. Andrew Fuller was appointed the first 
 secretary. 
 
 Many congregations now began to send con- 
 tributions, but the churches and ministers in 
 London gave no help. " When we began in 1792," 
 Mr Fuller afterwards remarked, " there was little 
 or no respectability among us ; not so much as a 
 squire to sit in the chair or an orator to make 
 speeches to him. Hence good Dr Stennett 
 advised the London ministers to stand aloof and 
 not commit themselves." The only minister in 
 London who gave Mr Carey any sympathy was 
 the venerable John Newton, who " advised him 
 with the fidelity and tenderness of a father." In 
 1797 John Newton wrote: " Mr Carey has favoured 
 me with a letter, which indeed I accept as a favour, 
 and I mean to thank him for it. I trust my heart 
 as cordially unites with him for the success of his 
 mission as though I were a brother Baptist myself 
 I look up to such a man with reverence. He is 
 
I02 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 more to me than bishop or archbishop : he is an 
 apostle. May the Lord make all who undertake 
 missions like-minded with Mr Carey." 
 
 While the newly formed Society was deliberat- 
 ing in what quarter of the world their mission 
 should be located, the question was providentially 
 settled for them by the appearing of Mr John 
 Thomas on his return from Bengal. Mr Thomas 
 had been a surgeon in the service of the East 
 India Company. He was now endeavouring to 
 raise funds for a mission in India, and also to 
 secure some one to go out with him to the work. 
 The Society, after making enquiries regarding 
 Mr Thomas, invited him to go to India as one of 
 their missionaries, and Mr Carey was solicited to 
 accompany him. " It is clear," said Mr Fuller to 
 Carey, " that there is a rich mine of gold in India : 
 if you will go down I will hold the ropes." 
 
 It was with much difficulty that the amount 
 necessary to pay their fares to India was raised, 
 even though Mr Fuller himself went to London 
 to ask subscriptions from the wealthier members 
 of the denomination : and the difficulty increased 
 more than ever when the question arose what 
 ship the two missionaries should sail in. At that 
 time the only ships sailing from England to India 
 were those of the East India Company, and no 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. IO3 
 
 passengers were carried except those who had re- 
 ceived a license from the court of directors. The 
 East India Company being openly hostile to mis- 
 sions, it was out-of-the-question to get a license. 
 But the commander of the Oxford East Indiaman 
 offered to take the two missionaries and to do so 
 at his own risk. They accordingly went to the 
 Isle of Wight, where the fleet was lying, and 
 embarked in the Oxford. But when the fleet was 
 within four days of sailing, the captain of the ship 
 received a letter to the effect that he would be 
 informed on to the directors for carrying pas- 
 sengers without a license ; and without an hour's 
 delay Mr Carey and Mr Thomas were rowed 
 ashore. " Our plans are frustrated for the present," 
 wrote Mr Carey to Mr Fuller ; " but however 
 mysterious the dealings of providence, I have no 
 doubt they are directed by an infinitely wise God." 
 On receipt of the letter Mr Fuller's words were, 
 " We are all undone." 
 
 They were extricated from this difficulty by 
 Mr Thomas happening to hear that a Danish 
 East Indiaman was daily expected in the Downs. 
 He therefore immediately proceeded to Northamp- 
 tonshire, partly to raise funds, and also to make 
 a last attempt to persuade Mrs Carey to accom- 
 pany her husband to India. A reluctant consent 
 
I04 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 was secured, but only on condition that her sister 
 should go with her. With this addition to their 
 number, £600 were now required for the passage 
 money for the two missionaries, the two ladies 
 and the children. Notwithstanding the prolonged 
 efforts which had been made the funds had not 
 reached that amount. Mr Thomas therefore gen- 
 erously agreed with the shipping agents that he 
 and Mrs Carey's sister should be rated as assist- 
 ants, and take their meals at the steward's mess. 
 On 13th June 1793 the whole party embarked 
 on board the Kron Princessa Maria. On the 
 day after sailing the captain was so gentlemanly 
 as to request Mr Thomas and Mrs Carey's sister 
 to take their seats at the cabin table. 
 
 Under the supervision of Mr Thomas, Mr 
 Carey used his time on board ship in studying the 
 Bengali language. 
 
 On nth November they landed in Calcutta; 
 but they were soon in new difficulties owing to 
 Mr Thomas' unskilful management of money 
 matters : he was embarrassed with debt, and 
 seemed to have a nack of getting into difficult 
 positions. 
 
 To escape these troubles, and in order to secure 
 the means of livelihood, Mr Carey proceeded to 
 the Soonderbuns — a vast tract of land south of 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I05 
 
 Calcutta and facing the Bay of Bengal. It was 
 a region of jungle, tigers and malaria. He 
 obtained a piece of land, and began to erect 
 what he called his huts. " Wild hogs, deer, and 
 fowl," he writes to Mr Fuller, " are to be procured 
 with the gun, and must supply us with a con- 
 siderable portion of our food. I find an incon- 
 venience in having so much of my time taken 
 up in procuring provisions and cultivating my 
 little farm. But when my house is built I shall 
 have more leisure than at present, and have daily 
 opportunities of conversing with the natives and 
 pursuing the work of the mission." 
 
 From this unfavourable position he was rescued 
 by Mr Thomas, through whose influence he was 
 appointed to superintend an indigo factory at 
 Mudnabatty, near Malda, where Mr Thomas 
 himself received a similar appointment. With 
 a feeling of relief Mr Carey accepted the position, 
 but his action was not very acceptable to the 
 directors of the Missionary Society in England, 
 who do not themselves seem to have been too 
 liberal, or to have sent him during the previous 
 three years more than ;^200. They wrote a letter 
 of " serious and affectionate caution to him lest 
 he should allow the spirit of the missionary to 
 be swallowed up in the pursuits of the merchant." 
 
106 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 To this Mr Carey replied, " I can only say that 
 after my family's obtaining a bare subsistence, my 
 whole income, and some months more, goes for 
 the purpose of the gospel, in supporting persons 
 to assist in the translation of the Bible, in writing 
 out copies of it, and in teaching school. I am 
 indeed poor, and shall always be so until the Bible 
 is published in Bengali and Hindustani, and the 
 people want no further instruction." 
 
 His salary from the indigo factory was at this 
 time about ;^240 a year. The employees at the 
 factory numbered about ninety, and every day he 
 gathered them together for Christian worship. He 
 also constantly visited the surrounding villages, 
 preaching the gospel to the people. He made an 
 attempt at teaching a school for native children, 
 but his chief work was the translation of the New 
 Testament into Bengali, and this he now com- 
 pleted. The printers in Calcutta demanded ;^4400 
 for printing ten thousand copies unbound ; but 
 this sum being exorbitant and beyond his means, 
 another way was found of having it published. 
 Mr Udny, one of whose factories Mr Carey was 
 superintending, bought a second - hand printing 
 press and presented it to the mission ; and thus 
 the New Testament was printed. When the 
 natives saw the press and heard Mr Carey speak 
 
WILT JAM CAREY. IO7 
 
 of its wonderful power, they said that it was an 
 European idol ! 
 
 Mr Carey had now lived at Mudnabatty for 
 five years, during which he had preached the 
 gospel far and near and with untiring energy, but 
 little fruit had yet appeared. The providence of 
 God was opening up his way to another scene of 
 labour ; for the indigo factories had been so un- 
 profitable that Mr Udny was forced to part with 
 them, and thus Mr Carey's regular income ceased. 
 On hearing of this the Missionary Society in 
 England acted generously and paid him the 
 arrears of salary which he had previously de- 
 clined to receive. He now purchased from Mr 
 Udny, for i^300, a small indigo factory, from the 
 profits of which he hoped to be able to support 
 the mission. But events of which he had not 
 thought were now to open a career of success. 
 
 In 1799 Mr William Ward and Mr Joshua 
 Marshman were sent out to India by the Society 
 in England ; and as the regulations of the East 
 India Company were now exceedingly strict 
 against any European being allowed to set foot 
 on British India without a license, they resolved 
 to go at once to Serampore, a Danish settlement 
 on the Hoogly, fifteen miles above Calcutta. 
 
 On hearing that two missionaries had landed 
 
I08 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 — for Mr Carey and Mr Thomas entered them- 
 selves in the official government returns as " indigo 
 planters," — the British authorities made an attempt 
 to expel them from India ; but now that they were 
 actually on Danish territory, the attempt was given 
 up. 
 
 Mr Carey was invited to join Mr Ward and 
 Mr Marshman at Serampore, but was unwilling to 
 leave British territory where he had a footing. 
 His objections, however, were overruled by a 
 letter which Mr Marshman received to the effect 
 that "some of the higher officers of government 
 were incensed to find that the missionaries had 
 obtained an asylum beyond their reach in a foreign 
 settlement, and had expressed their determination 
 to arrest any of them who might be found in the 
 Company's territories." This seems to have deter- 
 mined the question, and he joined his colleagues 
 at Serampore. Here he arrived on loth January 
 1800 with his four children and his wife, who was 
 now helplessly jnsane.j - '• ^ 
 
 A carpenter in Serampore had dislocated his 
 arm, and Mr Thomas was called on to attend to 
 the injury. When he had set the arm, he fervently 
 exhorted his patient regarding the great truths of 
 salvation, and also about the folly of idolatry. 
 The man was deeply affected and became a con- 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. IO9 
 
 stant visitor at the mission house, where he eagerly 
 received further Christian instruction. He received 
 the truth in the love of it, and was baptized : 
 he then broke his caste by eating with the 
 missionaries, to the great astonishment of the 
 servants. 
 
 On this being known a commotion was caused 
 in the town : a wild crowd of some two thousand 
 persons surrounded his house, and dragged him 
 before the Danish magistrate. But instead of 
 doin"" as the mob wished him to do, the magis- 
 trate commended Krishna, for obeying his con- 
 science, ordered a soldier to protect him, and 
 commanded the crowd to disperse. He also 
 offered, should it be necessary, to protect the 
 missionaries from all violence whenever baptism 
 was to be administered. So altogether friendly 
 were the Danish authorities. Their kindly and 
 sympathetic action was of the utmost value to 
 the mission and saved it from being extinguished, 
 as would certainly have happened had the English 
 authorities been able to carry out their wishes. 
 These events took place in the first year of the 
 work at Serampore. 
 
 In 1 80 1 the first female convert was baptized : 
 she was a sister-in-law of Krishna, and was 
 named Joyminee. There was also baptised Mi 
 
I lO MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Fernandez, a gentleman of Portuguese descent. 
 He had been a friend of Mr Carey at Mudnabatty ; 
 and for more than thirty years he continued to 
 give active and wiUing help to the Serampore 
 missionaries, and was also the means of raising 
 a large and flourishing native congregation, of 
 which he took the pastoral oversight. 
 
 The printing of the Bengali New Testament 
 was completed in this year. A large part of 
 the type had been set by Mr Ward's hands. 
 
 The College of Fort William in Calcutta had 
 just been founded by Lord Wellesley for the 
 purpose of educating the junior members of 
 the civil service, and of giving them a gram- 
 matical knowledge of the native Indian languages. 
 It so happened that there was only one person 
 capable of filling the office of teacher of Bengali, 
 but he would accept it only on condition of being 
 allowed full freedom as a missionary. Notwith- 
 standing this condition. Lord Wellesley directed 
 that Mr Carey should receive the appointment. 
 This office carried with it a salary of 500 rupees 
 a month. Mr Carey at once wrote to Mr Fuller 
 that the mission would have an ample income 
 from this source as well as from the returns 
 of Mr Marshman's school, and that they would 
 require no further remittances from England 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I I I 
 
 for their personal support. This arrangement, 
 so altogether creditable to the missionaries, was 
 accordingly acted on. 
 
 In 1800 the political relations between England 
 and Denmark were ruptured, and in May of the 
 following year British troops took possession of 
 Serampore. This was a serious event for the 
 mission, which was thus deprived of the friendly 
 protection so willingly rendered by Denmark. 
 But the antagonism of the British government 
 to the spread of the gospel in India was now 
 modified, and nothing occurred to disturb the 
 working of the mission. 
 
 Soon after this time Mr Thomas died, and 
 the other three missionaries, Carey, Marshman 
 and Ward, were left to work alone. But the 
 Lord worked with them, and they had the 
 pleasure of seeing among the newly baptised 
 converts three men from the Kayust, or writer 
 caste, and one from that of the Brahmins. 
 
 The British government, while tardily refraining 
 from open hostility to the mission, was openly 
 patronizing to heathenism. " Last week," writes 
 Mr Ward, " a deputation from government went 
 in procession to Kalee ghaut — the most opulent 
 and popular shrine of the metropolis — and pre- 
 sented 5000 rupees to the idol in the name of 
 
112 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the Company, for the success which had attended 
 the British arms." 
 
 The attention of the Governor-general was 
 called to the practice of sacrificing children at 
 the annual festival held at Gunga Saugor, and 
 Mr Carey was directed by the government to 
 report upon it. This duty was most congenial 
 to him ; and his report was the means of a 
 law being passed, by which the sacrificing of 
 children was prohibited under severe penalties. 
 
 Meanwhile he continued his work in the 
 College, in which he was now also appointed 
 teacher of Sanskrit, but with no additional 
 salary. He compiled a Bengali grammar as well 
 as other books in that language, and also began 
 a Sanskrit grammar. 
 
 Mr Marshman's school was such a success that 
 he drew from it ^looo a year; yet of this sum 
 he took only ^34 annually for the personal 
 expenses of his family. Mr Ward drew from 
 the press a corresponding allowance of £20 \ 
 and Mr Carey received for himself and his 
 family £^0 a year, to which was added ^20 
 for " decent apparel " in which to appear at the 
 College and Government House. Such was the 
 self-denial of the Serampore missionaries. 
 
 On 19th July 1802, Serampore was handed 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. II 3 
 
 back to the Danish authorities ; but whether 
 under a Danish or British government the work 
 of the mission went on uninterruptedly. Scr- 
 amporc eventually was incorporated in British 
 India. 
 
 :;, Their method of proclaiming the gospel is 
 thus described: — "When the sun is going down, 
 one of us, taking some tracts in his hands, goes 
 out into some part of Serampore or its neighbour- 
 hood, talks to the people, and distributes the 
 papers ; another does the same in another 
 direction ; while a third goes one evening to 
 the Bengali schoolhouse, and another evening 
 to Krishnu's little meeting-house. After this 
 our Hindoo friends come every evening to our 
 house. In our family worship the chapter in 
 the Old Testament, after being read in Eng- 
 lish, is translated offhand and read in Bengali. 
 When proceeding to a distance we travel, eat 
 and sleep in a boat, and going from place to 
 place preach and distribute tracts." 
 
 The equalizing power of the gospel was now 
 seen in the little Christian community when 
 Krishnu-prisad the Brahmin received the com- 
 munion cup at the Lord's Table from the hand 
 of Krishnu, a Soodra; and about four months 
 thereafter the same Brahmin was united in 
 
114 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 marriage to the daughter of the same Soodra, 
 Krishnu the carpenter. After the bride and 
 bridegroom had ph'ghted their troth, they both 
 signed the marriage contract — the first to which 
 a Hindoo female had affixed her signature for 
 centuries. 
 
 In the beginning of 1804, three months be- 
 fore the British and Foreign Bible Society was 
 founded, the three missionaries at Serampore sub- 
 mitted to the home committee a plan or pro- 
 posal for the translation and publication of the 
 Bible into the languages of the East. They 
 wrote that there were at least seven languages 
 current in India — the Bengali, the Hindustani, 
 the Oriya, the Telugu, the Kurnata, the Mah- 
 rathi, and Tamil ; and they proposed to translate 
 at least the New Testament into some if not 
 all of these languages. 
 
 The home committee, under the direction of 
 Mr Fuller, heartily fell in with the plan, and 
 determined that such a work should not be 
 hindered through lack of funds. 
 
 The work of translation and dictionary-making 
 went on apace. Mr Carey and Mr Marshman 
 undertook the publication of some of the most 
 celebrated Sanskrit classics, with an English 
 translation ; and in this, too, their aim was the 
 
WILLIAM CAREV. I I 5 
 
 extension of the mission — "means would thus 
 be obtained of supporting at least one missionary 
 station." 
 
 The Serampore missionaries had again and 
 again called the attention of the English authori- 
 ties to sutteeism or the burning alive of Hindoo 
 widows on the funeral pile of their dead husbands. 
 The first time that Carey saw the burning of a 
 widow was when his residence at Mudnabatty 
 was Hearing its close. One evening as he was 
 returning by boat from Calcutta, on going ashore 
 near a village he observed a crowd of people by 
 the river side : they had come to burn the body 
 of a dead man, and the widow was to be burned 
 with him. A pile made of large billets of wood 
 had been erected, and on this the dead body lay 
 while the widow stood close by. Her nearest 
 relative stood beside her, and at a little distance 
 was a basket of sweetmeats. When Carey asked 
 whether it was the woman's choice to die on her 
 husband's funeral pyre, or whether she was in- 
 fluenced or compelled, he was told that she was 
 doing so of her own free will. He reasoned and 
 remonstrated, but to no purpose ; and then he 
 exclaimed against what they were about to do as 
 being no less than murder. It was in vain. They 
 told him it was a great act of holiness, and that he 
 
Il6 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 might go away if he did not wish to see it. But 
 he declined to go, and said he would be a witness 
 against their deed. Then turning to the widow 
 he pled with her not to throw away her life. In 
 reply she mounted the pile and danced on it, with 
 her hands extended. She had previously passed 
 six times round the pile, scattering the sweetmeats 
 among the spectators. After dancing on the pile 
 she lay down beside the corpse and put her arms 
 around its neck. Then a quantity of dry leaves and 
 other fuel was heaped above them, and some melted 
 butter was poured on the top. Two bamboos 
 were held down fast over them, and the nearest 
 relative then set fire to the pile, which immediately 
 blazed up fiercely. If the woman groaned or 
 screamed the shouting of the spectators prevented 
 her cries from being heard ; and if she tried to 
 escape the bamboos effectually prevented her, 
 for they held her down " like the leaves of a press." 
 Carey went away agonized and horror-stricken. 
 
 In 1804 Mr Carey found after enquiry that 
 in the villages within a circle of thirty miles 
 around Calcutta more than three hundred widows 
 had been burned alive within six months. He 
 laid these and other relative facts before Lord 
 Wellesley, and entreated him to prohibit the 
 practice, as had already been done in the case 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I I 7 
 
 of the sacrifice of children at Saugor. But Lord 
 Wellesley was about to leave India, and thought he 
 could not venture then to issue the prohibition. 
 Sutteeism therefore continued to exist for some 
 twenty-five years longer, during which seventy 
 thousand more widows were burned alive as the 
 victims of a cruel heathen superstition. 
 
 After Lord Wellesley left India, the East India 
 Company became more intolerant toward Pro- 
 testant missions, although it gave free scope to 
 the Church of Rome and even took heathenism 
 under its patronage. 
 
 Certain new military regulations had been made, 
 and among these it was enacted that the sepoys 
 should appear on parade with the chin shaved and 
 the moustache trimmed after a particular fashion ; 
 that they should cease to display any distinguish- 
 ing marks of caste, and should wear a turban of a 
 new pattern. 
 
 These orders were most unacceptable, and the 
 result was that the sepoys, being worked into 
 desperation, broke out in mutiny. On lOth July 
 1806, at two o'clock in the morning, they rose 
 against the European soldiers in Vellore as they 
 lay asleep, and massacred the colonel and thirteen 
 officers as well as ninety-seven non-commissioned 
 officers and men. This mutiny was quickly put 
 
115 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 down, and nearly four hundred of the mutineers 
 were put to death. 
 
 This event, though it was in no way connected 
 with Christian missions, was nevertheless laid to 
 their charge. The East India Company used the 
 fact of this mutiny as the strongest reason for trying 
 to bring the Baptist mission to an end, and the 
 Governor-general, Sir George Barlow, sent for one 
 of the magistrates and directed him to call on Mr 
 Carey and request him and his colleagues at once 
 to cease from mission work among the natives. 
 
 This entire prohibition was soon afterwards 
 relaxed a little ; but even with the partial liberty 
 proposed to be given, the mission was virtually 
 closed unless the public authorities in England 
 could be induced to grant a freedom which the 
 Indian officials refused. 
 
 On the arrival of two new missionaries who had 
 come to Calcutta in an American vessel, and who 
 on landing had proceeded to Serampore, the 
 authorities made every attempt to compel the 
 captain of the ship to take the two gentlemen 
 with him out of the country ; and were only 
 restrained from violent measures when it was 
 represented to them that this would involve 
 England in difficulties both with Denmark and 
 with the United States. 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. II9 
 
 The appeal to England brought little success. 
 The prejudices entertained by the East India 
 Company were then invincible, and all that could 
 be done, even by those of the directors who were 
 favourable to the mission and by Mr Robert 
 Dundas, the president of the board of control, was 
 to prevent an order from being drawn up for the 
 expulsion of Mr Carey and his colleagues from 
 India. It was not until six years had passed that 
 permission was obtained to itinerate and evan- 
 gelize throughout British India. 
 
 In the beginning of 1807 a statute was passed 
 by the Company to remodel the College of Fort 
 William ; and among other changes, Mr Carey, 
 from being merely a teacher, was raised to a 
 professorship, and his salary increased from 500 
 to 1000 rupees a month. In March of the same 
 year he received from Brown University, U.S.A., 
 the degree of D.D. 
 
 During this time of opposition and difficulty 
 his labours were never relaxed. An idea of 
 how his time was occupied is given in a private 
 letter dated June 1806: — -"I rose this morning 
 at a quarter before six, read a chapter in the 
 Hebrew Bible, and spent the time till seven in 
 private addresses to God, and then attended family 
 prayer with the servants in Bengali. While 
 
I20 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 tea was getting ready I read a little in Persian 
 with the moonshi, who was waiting when I left 
 my bedroom : read also before breakfast a portion 
 of the Scriptures in Hindustani. The moment 
 breakfast was over, sat down to the translation 
 of Ramayun from the Sanskrit, with a pundit 
 who was also waiting, and continued this trans- 
 lation till ten o'clock, at which hour I went to 
 College and attended the duties there till between 
 one and two o'clock. When I returned home I 
 examined a proof sheet of the Bengali trans- 
 lation of Jeremiah, which took till dinner time. 
 After dinner, translated, with the assistance of 
 the chief pundit of the College, the greatest part 
 of the eighth chapter of Matthew in Sanskrit. 
 This employed me till six o'clock. After six, 
 sat down with a Telugu pundit to learn that 
 language. At seven I began to collect a few 
 previous thoughts into the form of a sermon, 
 and preached in English at half- past seven. 
 About forty persons present. After sermon I 
 sat down and translated the eleventh of Ezekiel 
 into Bengali, and this lasted till near eleven, 
 and now I sit down to write to you. After 
 this I conclude the evening by reading a chapter 
 in the Greek Testament and commending my- 
 self to God. I have never more time in a day 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 121 
 
 than this, though the exercises vary." " It will 
 serve to give some idea of the strength of Dr 
 Carey's character, to state that the biblical and 
 literary labours in which he had been engaged 
 since his arrival at Serampore were prosecuted 
 with an insane w^ife, frequently wrought up to 
 a state of the most deplorable excitement, con- 
 fined in an adjoining room." 
 
 The translation of the Scriptures into the 
 languages of India had not been interrupted : 
 and in this work they had the cordial co-operation 
 of Rev. Mr Buchanan, and Rev. Mr Brown, two 
 of the chaplains in Calcutta, and their most 
 generous contributions too, Mr Buchanan con- 
 tributing no less a sum than ;^500, and Mr 
 Brown £ioo. The subscriptions in Calcutta 
 amounted to ^looo, and ^2000 were raised in 
 England and America. 
 
 The friendship was a cordial one between the Ser- 
 ampore missionaries and those likeminded chap- 
 lains Mr Buchanan and Mr Brown. And there 
 was now added to their number Henry Martyn. 
 He arrived in Calcutta in 1806, and soon came to 
 Serampore, where he resided with Mr Brown. 
 " As the shadow of bigotry is not known among 
 us here, writes Mr Carey, we take sweet counsel 
 together and go to the house of God as friends." 
 
 I 
 
122 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 An old pagoda in Mr Brown's garden was fitted 
 up by him as a Christian church, and in it denomi- 
 national feelings were forgotten while Brown, 
 Marty n and Corrie, with Carey, Marshman and 
 Ward, Churchman and Nonconformist joined to- 
 gether in fellowship and united in Christian 
 worship. This intercourse between the Church 
 of England chaplains and the Baptist mission- 
 aries during that time of protracted opposition 
 to mission work was an oasis in the desert. 
 
 On the arrival of Lord Minto as Governor- 
 general, the opposition became still more intense. 
 The idea under which the government then acted 
 was that nothing could be done to carry the 
 gospel to the natives without the greatest politi- 
 cal danger. A letter was sent to Dr Carey 
 ordering the discontinuance of preaching in a 
 little chapel recently opened in Calcutta, and 
 also containing the command that no publica- 
 tions with a view to the conversion of the 
 natives should be issued from the Serampore 
 mission press. The Governor-general also com- 
 manded them to remove the mission press from 
 Serampore to Calcutta in order that the govern- 
 ment might there exercise a more efficient control 
 over it. 
 
 On receipt of this communication Dr Carey 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I 23 
 
 exclaimed, " Never had such a letter been written 
 by any government before, Roman Catholics 
 have persecuted other Christians under the name 
 of heretics, but no Christian government that 
 I know of has ever prohibited attempts to 
 spread the gospel among the heathen." 
 
 This order involved no less than the suppression 
 of all mission work. Immediately on receipt of 
 this letter the three missionaries met and prayed 
 to be guided aright. In their reply they simply 
 acknowledged receipt of the letter. 
 
 Dr Carey and Mr Marshman, knowing how 
 friendly the Danish Governor was, were willing 
 to leave the matter in his hands, trusting to the 
 Danish authorities to protect them ; but Mr 
 Ward expostulated with his colleagues to the 
 effect that even if the press were not removed from 
 Serampore, in any case the British government 
 would now be their avowed enemies, and that 
 though they could not be turned out of Serampore, 
 yet their operations might be restricted to that 
 one town, their translations of the Scriptures 
 might be stopped, and other evils might result. 
 Mr Ward's argument ended by saying " Tender 
 words, with the consciences of men on our side, 
 go a long way. We may tell them that we are 
 willing to do everything they desire, except to 
 
124 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 renounce our work and character as ministers of 
 the Saviour of the world." 
 
 Mr Ward's advice was acted on, and an inter- 
 view was obtained with Lord Minto. The 
 interview was wholly successful. Lord Minto 
 accepted from Dr Carey a copy of the Ramayun. 
 They also offered him copies of any other literary 
 works which they had printed. Mr Marshman 
 then asked that they should be allowed to present 
 a private memorial ; and this also was agreed to. 
 They laid before Lord Minto a short history of 
 the origin and progress of the mission. Mr 
 Marshman also pled that the order for the removal 
 of the mission press to Calcutta should not be 
 enforced, for this would be equivalent to the ruin 
 of the mission. Lord Minto assured them that 
 he felt no hostility to them or to their work, and 
 said that men expected missionaries to have some 
 enthusiasm and to be able to bear the frowns of 
 those in authority ! 
 
 On his return to Serampore, Mr Marshman 
 drew up the memorial. It shortly described the 
 origin and work of the Baptist Missionary Society, 
 and strongly deprecated the removal of the 
 printing establishment. 
 
 On receipt of this memorial, Lord Minto pro- 
 posed a resolution in the council by which the 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I 25 
 
 former order was revoked, and works intended for 
 circulation in British India were simply to be 
 submitted to the inspection of the Company's 
 officers. This resolution was adopted ; and the 
 mission once more breathed freely. 
 
 Considerable hostility was still shown in England 
 both by the East India Company and by various 
 writers, one of the most notable of whom was 
 Sydney Smith, whose writings were skilfully aimed 
 for the purpose of throwing ridicule upon the work 
 at Serampore and trying to show that missions in 
 India would end in the insurrection of the natives, 
 that the persons engaged, i.e. Dr Carey and his 
 associates, were utterly unfit for the work, and 
 that Christian missions in present circumstances 
 were utterly hopeless. Sydney Smith's opinion 
 of what he had written is — " In rooting out a 
 nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to 
 light such a perilous heap of trash as we were 
 obliged to work through in our articles on 
 Methodists and Missionaries we are generally 
 considered to have rendered a useful service to 
 the cause of rational religion." But the author 
 of this attack lived to regret it, and he after- 
 wards expressed to Lord Macaulay his sorrow 
 for having written against the work at Seram- 
 pore. 
 
126 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 This controversy — for the missionaries had their 
 defenders — ended in an article which Robert 
 Southey wrote. It concluded in these words : 
 "We who have thus vindicated them are neither 
 blind to what is erroneous in their doctrines nor 
 ridiculous in their phraseology, but the anti- 
 missionaries cull out from their journals and 
 letters all that is ridiculous, sectarian and trifling ; 
 call them fools, madmen, tinkers, Calvinists and 
 schismatics ; and keep out of sight their love of 
 men and their zeal for God, and their self-devoted- 
 ness, their indefatigable industry, their unequalled 
 learning. These 'low born and low bred mechanics' 
 have translated the whole Bible into Bengali 
 and have by this time printed it. They are 
 printing the New Testament in the Sanskrit, 
 Orissa, the Mahrathi, the Hindustani, the Gujarati, 
 and translating it into Persic, Telinga, Kurnata, 
 Chinese, the language of the Sikhs, and the 
 Burmese. Extraordinary as this is, it will appear 
 still more so, when it is remembered that of these 
 men one was originally a shoemaker, another a 
 printer at Hull, and the third the master of a 
 Charity School at Bristol. Only fourteen years 
 have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in 
 India, and in that time these missionaries have 
 acquired this gift of tongues. In fourteen years 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 1 2/ 
 
 these low born, low bred mechanics have done 
 more to spread the knowledge of the Scriptures 
 among the heathen than has been accomplished or 
 even attempted by all the world beside." 
 
 The difficulties in the way of the opening of a 
 place of worship in Calcutta were at length sur- 
 mounted, and on ist January 1809, divine service 
 was begun in a large chapel in Bow bazaar. It 
 cost ;£"3200, of which nearly a half was with their 
 usual liberality and self-denial, given by the 
 Serampore missionaries themselves. 
 
 Dr Carey had enjoyed the best of health for 
 nearly ten years in Serampore, but in July 1809, 
 on the day after he had completed the publication 
 of the Bengali Bible, he was prostrated by fever 
 which was nearly fatal. He was now forty-eight 
 years of age, and on his recovery from this illness 
 he threw himself into his work with more vigour 
 than ever. In a letter written by him at this time 
 to Mr Fuller he urged the need of beginning 
 mission work in Siam, Pegu, Aracan, Nepaul, and 
 Assam. Like Wesley, he felt that the world was 
 his parish. 
 
 As the East India Company refused to allow 
 any new missionaries to land in India, Dr Carey 
 and his colleagues saw that one of their chief 
 requirements was to train a native ministry. In 
 
1^8 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the case of native preachers no licences or pass- 
 ports were needed. Two native preachers were 
 set apart, one to be stationed in Jessore, and 
 the other on the borders of Orissa. 
 
 The attitude of the government being now more 
 favourable to the working of the mission, measures 
 were at once taken to extend it. " Now," said 
 Mr Ward, " we shall be tolerated like toads and 
 not hunted down like wild beasts." 
 
 Dr Carey was not afflicted with self-esteem as 
 the following extract shows : — " I have often 
 thought that the work must be obstructed by 
 me, and that the God who aboundeth in all 
 wisdom and prudence in the dispensations of His 
 grace could not give a blessing to the labours of 
 such an one as I am." " I have for years been 
 obliged to drag myself on, to subject myself to 
 rules, to impose the day's work on myself, and 
 after all to sit down in confusion at my indolence 
 and inertness. I often compare myself with my 
 brethren Marshman and Ward. The first is all 
 eagerness for the work. Often have I seen him 
 when we have been walking together, eye a group 
 of persons as a hawk looks at his prey, and go 
 up to them with a resolution to try the utmost 
 effort of gospel reasons on them. In point of 
 zeal he is Luther, I am Erasmus. Brother Ward 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I29 
 
 has such a facility of addressing spiritual things 
 to the heart, and his thoughts run so naturally 
 in that channel that he fixes the mind of all 
 who hear him on what he says, while I, after 
 making repeated efforts can scarcely get out a 
 few dry sentences, and should I meet with a 
 rebuff at the beginning, sit like a silly mute and 
 scarcely say anything at all." In a letter to 
 Ryland he says, " I alone am unfit to be called 
 a missionary and often doubt whether I am a 
 Christian." 
 
 In March 18 12 the printing establishment was 
 consumed by fire ; in a single night there was 
 destroyed the labour of twelve years. In addition 
 to a large supply of English type and paper, 
 there were in the printing office no fewer than 
 fourteen founts in the Eastern languages. In 
 those days there were neither fire engines nor 
 fire insurance offices in India, so the premises 
 were utterly destroyed, and the loss amounting 
 to ^7000 fell wholly on the mission. But the 
 next day as Mr Ward examined the ruins caused 
 by the fire, he found to his great joy that the 
 punches and matrices were uninjured, and instantly 
 they set themselves to undo the work of the 
 flames. 
 
 The pundits were anew set to translation ; the 
 
130 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 typecasters were also busily employed ; and at 
 the end of thirty days two of the versions were 
 again in the press. All was in full operation 
 again within a few months. Subscriptions to 
 repair the loss poured in freely both in India 
 and in Britain. The fire had given a celebrity 
 to the Serampore mission press which would 
 have been otherwise unattainable. 
 
 Once more the hostility of the government 
 burst out with renewed violence, and this happily 
 was for the last time. Five American missionaries, 
 one of whom was Dr Judson, landed in Calcutta 
 and were immediately expelled. It was this 
 forcible expulsion that led to Dr Judson's settling 
 in Burmah. One of the newly arrived Serampore 
 missionaries, Mr Johns, was peremptorily ordered 
 to quit the country, and he returned to England. 
 Such were the violent and arbitrary measures of 
 Lord Minto's administration. 
 
 In writing of these things to Mr Fuller, Dr 
 Carey said, " I have endeavoured to acquit the 
 government of religious persecution, but my mind 
 will not do it. Lord Minto has no dislike to us ; 
 he is a man of amiable disposition and a professed 
 friend of liberty. But it is in the power of a 
 secretary to prepare and present such a state- 
 ment as the government cannot refrain from 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I3I 
 
 noticing. I never before heard of a man like 
 Mr Johns, of h'bcral education and scientific 
 acquirements and inoffensive conduct, being 
 sent back to Europe unless he had meddled 
 with politics, or in some way or other rendered 
 himself troublesome to government : and in no 
 instance of a man like Mr Robinson being ordered 
 out of the country after a residence of six years 
 in it. The fault lies in the clause which gives 
 the Company power to send home interlopers, 
 and it is just as reasonable as to forbid every 
 man to look at the moon, and will, I trust, be 
 modified in the next charter." 
 
 The renewal of the East India Company's 
 charter was to settle what liberty, if any, should 
 be granted to missions in India. It was round 
 this point that the battle was waged. " Almost 
 all men of influence, as was remarked by Mr 
 Charles Grant, appeared to think and act on the 
 conviction that duty and success lay in slighting 
 Christianity, while they manifested the most 
 delicate regard to the wildest superstitions of 
 heathenism." The strife was long and keen. 
 Champions like Wilberforce arose to plead in 
 the British Parliament the cause of the gospel 
 in India, and by God's blessing their efforts 
 were crowned with victory. 
 
132 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Mr Fuller died in 18 15. During his life the 
 intercourse between the Serampore missionaries 
 and the Home Committee had been most har- 
 monious and friendly. In clear judgment and 
 in resolution he was no less conspicuous than in 
 kindliness of heart. And during those first 
 twenty years of the infancy of the mission, when 
 its very existence was so often imperilled, his 
 master mind and hand surmounted the greatest 
 obstacles. He lived until all of these were over- 
 come or removed. 
 
 But his death was an untold loss. The Home 
 Committee were now personally unacquainted 
 with what had occurred during those twenty 
 years ; and almost at once friction arose in the 
 working of the mission. To such a length did 
 this go that Dr Carey, Dr Marshman, and Mr 
 Ward were left in a position of isolation, both 
 from the other Baptist missionaries in India and 
 from the Home Committee. 
 
 Mr Ward having returned to England for a 
 time on account of his health found everywhere 
 at work the most marvellous calumnies ac^ainst 
 himself, and Dr Carey, and Dr Marshman. They 
 were charged with the accumulation of private 
 wealth, and that all that they had said of disinter- 
 estedness was untrue. Contributions were falling 
 
WILLIAM CAREV. I ;^^ 
 
 off in consequence of these rumours. It was the 
 most cruel way to requite the work of the three 
 Serampore missionaries. " Had not my depen- 
 dence been upon God," wrote Dr Marshman, *' I 
 should either have been transported with anger 
 under the trials I have had to endure, and have 
 given up the support of the mission, or have sunk 
 under the treatment I have received . . . and have 
 died of a broken heart. In our late examination 
 which the unkindness of others constrained us to 
 make, we found that the sum contributed by my 
 family would have given us an income of ;^1200 
 a year in England and ;^2000 a year in India. 
 I rejoice more, unspeakably more, in having thus 
 devoted it to the cause of God than as though 
 the whole sum lay by me at this moment." How 
 unjust those charges against the Serampore mis- 
 sionaries were, appears from the fact that up to 
 1826 they had expended on the work in India 
 m.oi:e,that ;^5 8,000, and had received from England 
 only a little more than ;6^ 10,000. The total amount 
 contributed by them to the cause of missions has 
 been estimated at little short of i^8o,ooo. 
 
 The ungenerous suspicions circulating through- 
 out England were not allowed to slacken their 
 labours in India, nor to stop the erection of the 
 College which they were building on the Hoogly 
 
134 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 opposite to Barrackpore Park. The cost of the 
 College buildings was i^i 5,000, and this amount 
 Dr Carey, Dr Marshman, and Mr Ward themselves 
 contributed. Such was the work of the men who 
 at this period were unceasingly regarded in 
 England with suspicion and charged with greed 
 and avarice ! 
 
 They had now published translations of the 
 New Testament in no fewer than twenty of the 
 languages of India. The translation and printing 
 and publication of so many versions was not 
 effected without expense, not only of time and 
 care, but also of money. And as the whole ex- 
 penses of these as well as the erection of the 
 College had fallen on the resources of the 
 Serampore missionaries, they now found them- 
 selves involved in a state of financial embarrass- 
 ment and of extreme difficulty. These words of 
 Dr Carey explain the situation : — " The buildings 
 of the College have completely drained us. . . . 
 And our printing the Scriptures in the languages 
 of India, on the faith of supplies from Britain, 
 has involved us in such a state of debt as we 
 never knew before, and in which we little ex- 
 pected to be left in our old age, after so many 
 years' exertion for the cause of God in India." 
 
 In order to obtain some relief from this painful 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. I 35 
 
 position they wrote in urgent terms to the Bible 
 Society in London requesting help. It is to the 
 great honour of the Bible Society that they nobly 
 responded to this appeal, for they sent Dr Carey 
 for the translation fund ^3000, as well as a sum 
 of ;^2000 which they had voted before his appeal 
 reached them. Other amounts were also remitted 
 to them by the Bible Society, and in this way they 
 were extricated from their difficulties. 
 
 Literary labours for the government as well as 
 in the compiling of lexicons in the Bootan and 
 Bengali languages, now occupied much of Dr 
 Carey's attention. But he successfully accom- 
 plished these tasks by the magic of method and 
 by a cheerful temper. 
 
 A great loss was suffered by the mission through 
 the death of Mr Ward on 7th March 1823: he 
 died of cholera. Thus there was removed the 
 first of the three Serampore brethren. In business 
 talent, industry, and clear judgment he had been 
 eminent. His labour for the mission had been 
 unceasing. He never made an enemy. 
 
 An accident caused through Dr Carey's foot 
 slipping resulted in an illness of long duration, 
 during the course of which the river burst its 
 banks, covered the streets of Serampore, and in 
 its encroachment utterly destroyed the house in 
 
136 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 which the invalid had been lying. The Home 
 Committee, to their credit, treated the Serampore 
 mission in a more generous way, and sent ^1000 
 to repair the damage. It can scarcely be believed 
 that the missionaries were thereafter publicly ac- 
 cused in Calcutta of having embezzled (!) i^22,ooo 
 which the Home Society was said to have sent 
 them. They applied to the Home Committee to 
 exonerate them from this charge, but in reply 
 received a letter declining to audit their accounts, 
 and also declining to defend them from the charge 
 of inconsistency. On receipt of this communica- 
 tion Dr Carey exclaimed, " Is this the reward of 
 thirty-three years of labour, and of an entire 
 sacrifice of all personal advantage for so long a 
 period." 
 
 This unkind feeling toward the mission con- 
 tinued to increase until on 15th March 1827 the 
 Home Committee severed their connection with 
 Serampore — a melancholy event. 
 
 These unhappy disputes between the Serampore 
 missionaries and the Home Committee regarding 
 the management of the mission and of the mission 
 property, were largely the result of misunder- 
 standing. But the memory of this breach of 
 unity has well-nigh faded away, and no two 
 opinions now exist as to the disinterestedness 
 
WILLIAM CAREY. 1 37 
 
 and whole-hearted devotion of Carey, Marshman, 
 and Ward. 
 
 Meanwhile in India the mission was making 
 the most gratifying progress, and the number of 
 stations and of converts increased. 
 
 The year 1829 is that in which Sutteeism in 
 India was prohibited. Twenty-five years before 
 this time Dr Carey had pleaded in vain that the 
 government should do this ; but now Lord William 
 Bentinck was Governor-general, and he deter- 
 mined that the burning alive of widows should 
 be allowed no longer. A copy of the Act was 
 sent to Dr Carey to be translated into Bengali. 
 It was Sunday morning when he received it. 
 Throwing off his coat he exclaimed : " No church 
 for me to-day : if I delay an hour to translate 
 and publish this, many a Avidow's life may be 
 sacrificed." The translation was finished and in 
 the hands of the authorities before night. 
 
 Unhappily the financial embarrassment of the 
 Serampore mission continued more or less to the 
 end of Dr Carey's life. 
 
 Forty years' incessant labour in the exhausting 
 climate of Bengal had brought much weakness 
 with it. During those forty years he had never 
 left the shores of India. Dreading to be useless 
 as long as life endured, he continued to work 
 
 K 
 
138 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 even when scarcely able to sit at his desk. For 
 several months before his death he could not rise 
 from his couch. 
 
 "There is nothing remarkable in what I have 
 done," he said, "it has only required patience 
 and perseverance." " Indolence is my prevailing 
 sin," was his gratuitous self-condemnation. 
 
 "One passage of Scripture gives me great 
 comfort," he remarked. He was asked what 
 passage.-* "That passage which says, * If we 
 confess our sins He is faithful and just to for- 
 give us our sins and to cleanse us from all 
 unrighteousness.' Now I am sure I confess 
 my sins, and if God forgives them and cleanses 
 me from all unrighteousness, what more can I 
 desire } " 
 
 One of his last visitors was Rev. Alexander 
 Duff of the Scotch mission in Calcutta, who con- 
 versed with him on the subject of his past life, 
 and then prayed with him before leaving. Then 
 the dying man whispered, " Mr Duff, you have 
 been talking about Doctor Carey, Doctor Carey : 
 when I am gone say nothing about Dr Carey, — 
 speak about Dr Carey's Saviour ! " 
 
 He died on 9th June 1834: he was in his 
 seventy-third year. By his own directions the. 
 inscription on his tomb is in these words : 
 
william carey. 1 39 
 
 "William Carey, 
 Born August i'j6i ; Died gth June 1834." 
 
 "A wretched, poor, and helpless worm 
 On Thy kind arms I fall." 
 
 In a letter written years before the three Scram- 
 pore missionaries give us these words of cheer : — 
 " We are sure to take the fortress if we can per- 
 suade ourselves to sit down long enough before it. 
 And then, my dear brethren, when it shall be said 
 of the scene of our labours : The infamous swinging 
 post is no longer erected — the widow burns no 
 more on the funeral pile — the obscene songs and 
 dances are heard and seen no more — the gods are 
 thrown to the moles and to the bats, and Jesus is 
 known as the God 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 for uncleanness — the temples are forsaken, 
 and the crowd 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 
 come at once to Him who can save to the utter- 
 most — the sick and dying are no more dragged to 
 the Ganges, but look to the Lamb of God, and 
 
140 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 commit their souls into His faithful hands — the 
 children, no longer sacrificed to idols, are become 
 * the seed of the Lord ' — the public morals are im- 
 proved — the language of Canaan is learned — 
 benevolent societies are formed — civilization and 
 salvation walk arm in arm together — the desert 
 blossoms — the earth yields her increase, and re- 
 deemed souls from the different towns and villages 
 and cities of this immense country constantly add 
 to the number, and swell the chorus of the re- 
 deemed — ' Unto Him that washed us from our 
 sins in His own blood, unto Him be the glory' — 
 when this grand result of the labours of God's 
 servants in India shall be realised, shall we then 
 think that we have laboured in vain and spent our 
 strength for nought ? " 
 
REGINALD HEBER. 
 
 " Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King." 
 
 The Hebers are an English family of ancient 
 lineage and high standing. Their ancestral estate 
 is Hodnet in Shropshire, and not far off is the 
 parish of Malpas in the rectory of which on 2ist 
 April 1783, Reginald Heber was born. 
 
 The first fourteen years of his life were spent 
 "under the hourly influence of parents and teachers, 
 whose wisdom and culture were directed by the 
 love of God." And in this he was peculiarly 
 happy; for not only the Church of England, but 
 the Christian Church everywhere was at that time 
 in much spiritual torpor : not yet had she listened 
 to the call * Awake, awake, put on thy strength, 
 O Zion : put on thy beautiful garments, O Jeru- 
 salem the holy city;' but the era of revival and 
 benevolence to the outcast and the heathen, though 
 not yet come, was close at hand. That era was 
 almost synchronous with the French Revolution : 
 the new beginning of Protestant foreign missions 
 
 was made in 1793, v.-hen Carey sailed for India. 
 
 141 
 
142 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA, 
 
 The beginnings of Christian life in Heber are 
 dated from his infancy : his mother's living piety 
 influenced her son from his cradle. From a child 
 he knew the Holy Scriptures, and could read them 
 with ease before he was five years old. So free 
 was he from outbursts of temper, that the servants 
 used to say, " Master Reginald never was in a 
 passion." In his boyhood, as in after life he 
 was distinguished for unselfishness and sympathy. 
 Books he not only read but devoured, and that in 
 an omnivorous manner. 
 
 At fifteen he left home for Neasden, then near 
 London but now part of the mighty city, where 
 for the next five years he was under the tuition 
 and training of a clergyman, Dr Bristow. He 
 excelled in Latin and Greek, drawing was a 
 favourite pastime, and natural history gave scope 
 to his power of observation. Already there 
 appeared the poetic faculty which was after- 
 wards so marked ; and Spenser, along with the 
 Bible, was his vade vieann. 
 
 In his eighteenth year he went to Oxford. Sir 
 Charles Grey, afterwards Chief Justice in Calcutta, 
 then one of Heber's fellow-students, has recorded 
 that he was "beyond all question or comparison 
 the most distinguished student of his time. The 
 name of Reginald Heber was in every mouth ; his 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. 1 43 
 
 society was courted by young and old ; he lived 
 in an atmosphere of favour, admiration, and re- 
 gard, from which I have never known any one 
 but himself who would not have derived, and for 
 life, an unsalutary influence." 
 
 In 1803 he wrote his University prize poem 
 Palestine. Sir Walter Scott gives us these remin- 
 iscences of Heber and Palestine. " I spent some 
 merry days with him at Oxford when he was 
 writing his prize poem. He was then a gay 
 young fellow, a wit and a satirist and burning for 
 literary fame. My laurels were beginning to bloom, 
 and we were both madcaps. Who would have fore- 
 told our future lot ? " His wit had no malice in it, 
 nor was his humour tinged with grossness. 
 
 At a breakfast party in Heber's room Sir Walter 
 was present. Palestine was the subject of con- 
 versation, and it was produced and read. Sir 
 Walter said, " You have omitted one striking 
 circumstance in your account of the building of 
 the temple, that no tools were used in its erection." 
 Reginald retired from the breakfast table to a 
 corner of the room, and before the party separated 
 produced the lines which now form part of the 
 
 poem : — 
 
 " No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 
 Majestic silence ! " 
 
144 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Christopher North, another of his contem- 
 poraries, wrote in regard to Heber's recitation 
 of the poem before the University. " As his voice 
 grew bolder and more sonorous in the hush, the 
 audience felt that this was not the mere display 
 of the skill and ingenuity of a clever youth, the 
 accidental triumph of an accomplished versifier 
 over his compeers in the dexterity of scholarship, 
 which is all that can generally be truly said of 
 such exhibitions — but that here was a poet indeed 
 not only of bright promise but of high achieve- 
 ment — one whose name was already written in 
 the roll of the immiortals. And that feeling, what- 
 ever might have been the share of the boundless 
 enthusiasm with which the poem was listened to, 
 attributable to the genius loci^ has been since 
 sanctioned by the judgment of the world that 
 has placed Palestine at the very head of the 
 poetry on divine subjects of this age. It is now 
 incorporated for ever with the poetry of England." 
 
 From this scene of literary triumph Heber at 
 once retired to the privacy of his own room 
 where his mother found him giving thanks to 
 God. 
 
 Having taken his B.A. degree, and having 
 gained the University Bachelor's prize for the 
 English prose essay on A sense of Hononr, he 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I45 
 
 completed his University course by being elected 
 one of the fifty Fellows of All Souls College. 
 All grades of society were then permeated by 
 a code of honour which was far from being 
 that of the New Testament ; and Reginald Heber 
 in this as in many other matters was in advance 
 of his time. One who knew him well used to 
 say that " if his heart had no other covering than 
 a glass, its thoughts were so pure that no one 
 need fear to read them." 
 
 He left Oxford " the first man in the University 
 in personal influence and popularity, in litera- 
 ture and in scholarship." His purpose now was 
 to make such a tour of the continent and of the 
 East as was possible at that time of European 
 war and commotion. In this tour in which he 
 visited the countries of Europe from Norway to 
 the Crimea, he spent nearly the whole of his 
 twenty-second year. 
 
 On his return to England he went into residence 
 at All Souls and prepared for ordination. In the 
 summer of 1807 ^^^ ^^as ordained and was imme- 
 diately presented by his elder brother Richard to 
 the rectory of Hodnet. Here he lived and worked 
 in the ministry for fifteen years. 
 
 To all the labours devolving on a parish clergy- 
 man he gave himself without reserve, a guide, 
 
146 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 philosopher, and friend to all his people, devotedly- 
 studying their wants and interests, his time busily 
 occupied in visitation, in care for the sick, in 
 charities, in preparation for the pulpit both of 
 his own congregation and of the various chapels 
 of ease. Yet his sympathies were strongly with 
 " the church " as opposed to Nonconformity. For 
 example, he writes on 7th August 1807, "The 
 Methodists in Hodnet are, thank God, not very 
 numerous, and I hope to diminish them still more : 
 they are, however, sufficiently numerous to serve 
 as a spur to my emulation." He also writes that 
 his congregation appeared to be thinner since 
 Rowland Hill's visit to the country : " it has 
 made me really uncomfortable." Heber was to 
 learn to look upon his brethren in Christ with 
 far more sympathy : and then, " he burned, he 
 preached, he lectured, he wrote, he travelled, he 
 organised, he prayed with the one mission to 
 bring to Christ the Crucified every sinner of 
 mankind." 
 
 In 1809 he was happily married to Amelia, 
 the youngest daughter of Dr Shipley, Dean of 
 St Asaph. 
 
 In 1 8 14 he was appointed Bampton Lecturer. 
 The subject which he chose was "The Personality 
 and Office of the Christian Comforter." In these 
 
REGINALD HEBER. 1 47 
 
 sermons he both critically exposed the Arian 
 and other opposing systems, and also gave a 
 positive treatment of the subject. Of the work 
 of the Holy Spirit he says : " It is this which 
 gives life and vigour to every religious truth 
 which we hear ; this which imprints on our soul 
 and recalls to our attention those sacred principles 
 to which our reason has already assented. Distinct 
 from conscience, but the vital spark by which 
 our natural conscience is sanctified, it both enables 
 us to choose the paths of life, and to persist in 
 those paths when chosen ; and though, like the 
 free and viewless air, it is only by its effects that 
 we discern it, it is the principle of our moral 
 as the air is of our natural health, the soul of 
 our soul, and the shechinah of our bodily temple. 
 It prepares our hearts for the word of life and 
 engrafts the word in our hearts thus opened ; it 
 preserves and refreshes in our memory those 
 principles of action of which we have already 
 perceived the force, for it is the blessing of God 
 and His pervading energy which prospers to our 
 salvation what we learn and what we have learned." 
 In 1818 he was select preacher to the University 
 of Oxford. The last of these sermons was " On 
 the Atonement," from Romans vi. 3, 4 ; and in it 
 he says- — " Our salvation is then of grace alone, 
 
148 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 inasmuch as our admission into the covenant of 
 peace is without any previous virtue and in spite 
 of many previous sins ; it is of grace inasmuch 
 as the services which are afterwards required from 
 us have no aptitude in themselves to call down 
 reward from the Most High ; it is of grace since 
 to the performance of these very services the 
 strength is furnished from above by Him who 
 not only calls on us to hope, but bestows on us 
 the spiritual gifts by which that hope is seakd 
 and perfected. It is of free grace above all, 
 because we are not only first freely called and 
 afterwards freely strengthened to perform the 
 obligations of our calling, but even where we 
 have neglected our duty, the repentance and 
 faith which were at first our only passports to 
 Christianity, are still suffered to attend us and 
 plead for us, and by the same merits of the 
 Redeemer through which we are justified and 
 sanctified, we are accepted and glorified." 
 
 In 1 8 14 he had declined the offer of a prebend 
 of Durham; but in 1817, when Dr Luxmore 
 offered him a stall in St Asaph's Cathedral he 
 accepted it. Some of his hymns were composed 
 and committed to memory to beguile his way 
 to St Asaph while making the necessary and 
 frequent journeys to Wales on horseback. 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 49 
 
 In 1 8 19 he became a candidate for a vacancy 
 in the preachcrship of Lincohi's Inn, but was 
 not elected. Another vacancy occurring in 1822 
 he was chosen to this office. The position was 
 most agreeable to him, "and the more so as it 
 does not take me away from Hodnct more than 
 three months in the year." 
 
 Heber's hymns were mainly due to the desire 
 which he felt to improve the service of praise 
 in his own congregation. His first attempt to 
 reform the psalmody was by means of a selection 
 of hymns which he culled from various sources, 
 but this was not immediately successful. He 
 therefore attempted to meet the difficulty by 
 writing hymns for his people, and by requesting 
 the help of his friends, Milman and Southey. 
 He began by publishing a few in 181 1 and 1812. 
 These he intended as part of a series or collection 
 for use in public worship, not only in his own 
 congregation but generally. 
 
 Bishop Middleton had issued an appeal for 
 funds to found and endow a Mission College in 
 Calcutta. A hearty response was made in England, 
 and of sixty thousand pounds contributed for this 
 purpose, forty-five thousand were the result of 
 a royal letter written in 1819, authorizing collec- 
 tions in every church and chapel in England. 
 
150 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Heber all unconsciously was brought into close 
 contact with Indian missions, and on this wise. 
 
 On the Saturday before Whitsunday on which 
 the appointed collection was to be made in the 
 parish church of Wrexham — his father-in-law's 
 congregation — he was asked by Dr Shipley to 
 write " something for them to sing in the morning." 
 He retired to a corner of the room, and at once 
 wrote the first three verses of " From Greenland's 
 icy mountains." The Dean asked — " What have 
 you written } " Heber read the three verses, and 
 they were met with the approving words — " There, 
 there, that will do very well." " No," replied the 
 Poet," the sense is not complete," and then added the 
 fourth verse, and wished to add a fifth ; but to this his 
 father-in-law would not consent ; and the hymn, as 
 we have it, was sung next morning in Wrexham 
 Church. Such was the occasion of one of the 
 greatest missionary hymns in the language, being 
 composed as if by inspiration. Many years after- 
 wards, Dr Raffles of Liverpool found the original 
 MS. of this poem on the printer's file at Wrexham. 
 
 Thinking that it might be advantageous to his 
 hymnal to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for its 
 use, he wrote in 1820 to Dr Howley, Bishop of 
 London^ requesting his advice as to publishing 
 the hymns by authority, and with the same 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I5I 
 
 approval as had been given to the version of 
 the Psalms by Tate and Brady. He asked Ur 
 Howley if the hymns could receive the " sanction 
 of the Archbishop of Canterbury for general use 
 in churches." But Dr Howley, while replying in 
 the kindest and most encouraging terms, did not 
 think it advisable that such ecclesiastical sanction 
 should be given, but advised him to publish the 
 hymns on their merits. 
 
 The collection was proceeded with, and among 
 the contributors were Southey, who was then Poet 
 Laureate, Milman, and Sir Walter Scott. Fifty- 
 seven of the hymns were written by Heber himself, 
 the remaining twenty-nine were by these con- 
 tributors and from other sources, but the volume 
 was not published till 1827, after Heber's death. 
 
 The charm and melody of his hymns are to be 
 partly accounted for by the fact that he composed 
 many of them to Welsh and Scottish airs which 
 he had heard and admired. He was the first 
 English hymn writer to add the lyric spirit in 
 sacred poetry to the great objective truths on 
 which hymns must be based ; and hence the easily 
 flowing measures in which he writes. Scottish airs 
 seem to have peculiarly delighted him. " Brightest 
 and best of the sons of the morning " was written 
 to the air of " Here awa, there awa, wandering 
 
152 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Willie." It is believed that '* Ye banks and braes," 
 '•John Anderson my Jo," " Logie o' Buchan," and 
 " Auld Robin Gray" were some of the airs to 
 which others of his hymns were composed. 
 
 Dr George Smith gives the following list of 
 Heber's hymns which still hold a place in the 
 front rank of popular approval and use, beginning 
 with " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," a 
 hymn of which Tennyson expressed such warm 
 approval and which was sung at his funeral. 
 
 1. Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty. 
 
 2. From Greenland's icy mountains. 
 
 3. The Lord of might from Sinai's brow. 
 
 4. The Son of God goes forth to war. 
 
 5. Hosanna to the living Lord. 
 
 6. O Saviour is Thy promise fled ? 
 
 7. O King of earth and air and sea. 
 
 8. Forth from the dark and stormy sky. 
 
 9. O Lord, turn not Thy face away. 
 
 10. O most merciful, O most bountiful. 
 
 11. God that madest earth and heaven. 
 
 12. Thou art gone to the grave. 
 
 13. The winds were howling o'er the deep. 
 
 14. I praised the earth in beauty seen. 
 
 15. Brightest and best of the sons of the morning. 
 
 16. By cool Siloam's shady rill. 
 
 17. Incarnate Word, who wont to dwell. 
 
 18. The God of glory walks His round. 
 
 19. The Lord will come, the earth shall quake. 
 
 20. O Saviour, whom this holy morn. 
 
 21. Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! enthroned once on high. 
 
 Other literary labours occupied the intervals of 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 53 
 
 a busy life. Among these were articles written 
 for the Quarterly Revieiv : but the principal works 
 of this kind were a Dictionary of the Bible 
 designed to supply the defects of Calmet, but 
 left unfinished owing to his early death ; and a 
 new edition of the Works of Jeremy Taylor with 
 his life, and critical exaviination of his writings. 
 Between Jeremy Taylor and Reginald Heber 
 there was close affinity of soul, and the task 
 was congenial. Of Jeremy Taylor he uses words 
 which may well be applied to himself, describing 
 him as a saint and a Christian bishop from our 
 intercourse with whom we rise " impressed and 
 softened, with a sense how much our own practice 
 yet needs amendment, and how mighty has been 
 that faith of which these are the pledges and 
 prehibitions." 
 
 God prepares His workers for the work to which 
 He has called them ; and Heber was being grad- 
 ually trained and prepared for mission work in 
 India. Among those preparatory influences was 
 his enthusiastic advocacy of the claims of the 
 British and Foreign Bible Society. The ministers 
 of the Church of England were at first prejudiced 
 against the Bible Society on the ground that they 
 supposed it to be hostile to the interests of the 
 Established Church. The disappearance of those 
 
 L 
 
154 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 prejudices was partly due to Heber's defence of 
 the society ; and it was in its behalf that he 
 preached at Shrewsbury the first of his missionary 
 sermons from Rev. xiv. 6, '' 1 saw another angel 
 fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting 
 gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the 
 earth, and to every nation and kindred and tongue 
 and people." 
 
 Another of the influences which prepared him 
 for India was the career of Henry Martyn. Long 
 before he had any idea that he should follow in 
 Martyn's footsteps, he had watched with interest 
 the journeys and the work described in Martyn's 
 " Lifer " With Martyn he had, in idea, traversed 
 the sultry regions of India, had shared in his 
 privations, had sympathised in his sufl'erings, and 
 had exulted in the prospects of success occasion- 
 ally opened to him." 
 
 His interest in Indian missions was increased 
 when the first Anglican bishop, Dr Middleton, 
 was appointed ; but he little thought that he 
 himself should succeed that prelate. When the 
 news of Dr Middleton's death arrived in England 
 — five months after it had occurred, so slow was 
 communication in those days — many eyes were 
 turned to Hodnet for one fitted to succeed him. 
 The nomination of a new bishop was in the hands 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 55 
 
 of Heber's old college friend, the Right Honour- 
 able C. W. Williams VVynn, the President of the 
 Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India. 
 In December 1822, a letter was written by Mr 
 Wynn to Heber, intimating that the appointment 
 was now offered to him if he chose to accept of it. 
 
 In his interim reply, Heber suggested the pro- 
 priety of dividing India into three dioceses, and 
 of raising the three archdeacons in India to the 
 rank of bishop, one of whom, the Bishop of 
 Calcutta, might then be made the Primate. 
 
 After family consultation he wrote declining the 
 appointment ; but a fortnight's further considera- 
 tion led him to withdraw his refusal, and he 
 " cheerfully and gratefully " accepted the posi- 
 tion. In his letter to Mr Wynn, he writes : — 
 "The sacrifice which I would not make for the 
 sake of wealth and dignity, both my wife and 
 myself will cheerfully make in order to prevent 
 any serious inconvenience to a cause of so much 
 importance." 
 
 To the remark of a friend — "Yours is the very 
 quixotism of religion. I suppose you are going 
 in search of the lost ten tribes of Israel," he 
 replied, " I think I can be of use among the 
 natives; such will at least be my earnest en- 
 deavour, and I am very zealous in the cause ; and 
 
156 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 if I am permitted to rescue one miserable Brahmin 
 from his wretched superstition, I shall think myself 
 amply rewarded for the sacrifice." 
 
 His leave-taking from home and church and 
 friends showed how deeply he was loved. 
 
 His last sermon at Lincoln's Inn was from 
 Colossians iii. 3 — " For ye are dead, and your 
 life is hid with Christ in God." The subject was 
 the Atonement and its place in the Christian reli- 
 gion, '' its corner stone and master-key, the vicarious 
 and expiatory nature of the Christian sacrifice." 
 
 On 1st June he was consecrated second Bishop 
 of Calcutta. The ceremony took place in the 
 Chapel of Lambeth Palace. 
 
 On the i6th of the same month he left England 
 for Calcutta to be, as he declared to the Society for 
 Propagating Christian Knowledge, the chief mis- 
 sionary of the Society in the East. He was forty 
 years of age, and in the fulness of his strength and 
 manhood. 
 
 The ship in which the Bishop and his wife 
 and daughter sailed was the Thomas Grenville ; 
 and he kept a very full diary, both of this voyage 
 and of the journeys which he afterwards made 
 in India. These journals were published, and it 
 shows how very full our own day is of travel 
 and adventure when we read with astonishment 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. 157 
 
 that Bishop Heber's Indian Journal was the most 
 popular work on India published in the first half 
 of the nineteenth century. Lord Jeffrey's criticism 
 of it was in these very high terms — " Independently 
 of its moral attraction, we are induced to think 
 it the most instructive and important publication 
 that has ever been given to the world on the actual 
 state and conditions of our Indian Empire." 
 
 The old days of general and studied disrespect 
 to missions were passing away, as is seen by con- 
 trasting the treatment which Henry Martyn re- 
 ceived on shipboard in his endeavour to do good 
 to the passengers and crew with such an entry 
 as this by Bishop Heber : — " June 22. This day 
 being Sunday, the decks were all beautifully clean, 
 having been well scrubbed on Saturday night. 
 The awning was spread over the quarter deck, 
 and the capstan and sides of the vessel concealed 
 and ornamented with flags of different nations. 
 Chairs were set for the officers and passengers 
 on the poop and round the after part of the 
 deck, and spars laid across the remainder as 
 seats for the sailors who attended church in 
 clean shirts and trousers, and well washed and 
 shaved. In the space between the capstan ^and 
 half-deck was a small table set for me and the 
 purser, who acted as clerk, and I read prayers 
 
158 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 and preached one of my Hodnet sermons, slightly 
 altered, to a very attentive and orderly congrega- 
 tion of altogether, I should think, one hundred 
 and forty persons. The awning made really a 
 handsome church, and the sight was a very 
 pleasing one." 
 
 During the voyage he spent much time in 
 studying Hindustani and Persian, and to such 
 good purpose that on entering on his work in 
 India he was able at once to use Hindustani in 
 public worship. 
 
 On 3rd October the Thomas Grenville anchored 
 in Saugor Roads, and Heber at once plunged into 
 the arrears of ecclesiastical business awaiting him. 
 At Calcutta he received a warm welcome from the 
 Governor, Lord Amherst. The following prayer 
 which he now wrote out shows the spirit in which 
 he entered on his Indian duties : — " Accept, O 
 Blessed Lord ! my heartiest thanks for the pro- 
 tection which Thou hast vouchsafed to me and 
 mine during a long and dangerous voyage, and 
 through many strange and unwholesome climates. 
 Extend to us, I beseech Thee, Thy fatherly pro- 
 tection and love in the land where we now dwell ; 
 and among the perils to which we are now liable 
 give us health, strength and peace of mind. Give 
 us friends in a strange land, and favour in the eyes 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 59 
 
 of those around us. Give us so much of the 
 world's good as Thou knowest to be good for us ; 
 and be pleased to give us grace to love Thee 
 truly, and constantly to praise and bless Thee ; 
 through Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour. 
 Amen." 
 
 Of Calcutta he gives a most interesting de- 
 scription. " Calcutta, when seen from the south, 
 on which side it is built round three sides of a 
 great open plain, with the Ganges on the west, 
 and Fort William standing in the centre, is a 
 very noble city, with tall and stately houses orna- 
 mented with Grecian pillars, and each for the 
 most part surrounded by a little apology for a 
 garden. The churches are not large but very 
 neat and even elegant buildings, and the Govern- 
 ment House is, to say the least of it, a more 
 showy place than London has to produce. These 
 are, however, the front lines : behind them ranges 
 the native town, deep, black, and dingy, with 
 narrow, crooked streets, huts of earth baked in 
 the sun or of twisted bamboo, interspersed here 
 and there with curious brick bazaars, pools of 
 dirty water, coco trees, little gardens, and a few 
 very large, very fine and generally very dirty 
 houses of Grecian architecture, the residence of 
 wealthy natives. There are some mosques of 
 
l6o MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 pretty architecture very neatly kept, and some 
 pagodas, mostly ruinous and decayed, the religion 
 of the people being most conspicuous in their 
 worship of the Ganges, and in some ugly painted 
 wooden or plaister idols with all manner of heads 
 and hands, which are set up in different parts of 
 the city. 
 
 " Fill up this outline with crowds of people in 
 the streets, beyond anything to be seen even 
 in London, some dressed in tawdry silks and 
 brocades, more in white cotton garments ; and 
 most of all black and naked, except a scanty 
 covering round the waist; hideous figures of 
 religious mendicants with no clothing but their 
 long hair and beards in elf locks, their faces 
 painted white or yellow, their beads in one ghastly 
 lean hand, and the other stretched out like a 
 bird's claw to receive donations ; marriage pro- 
 cessions with the bride in a covered chair, the 
 bridegroom on horseback, and so swathed round 
 with garlands as hardly to be seen ; tradesmen 
 sitting on the ground in the midst of their different 
 commodities ; and old men, lookers-on, perched 
 naked as monkeys, smoking on the flat roofs of 
 the houses ; carts drawn by oxen and driven by 
 wild-looking men with thick sticks so unmerci- 
 fully used as perfectly to undeceive all our notions 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. l6l 
 
 of Brahminical humanity; attendants with silver 
 maces peeping through the crowd before the 
 carriage of some great man or other ; no woman 
 seen except of the lowest class, yet even these 
 with heavy silver ornaments on their dusky arms 
 and ankles ; while coaches covered up close with 
 red cloth are seen conveying the inmates of the 
 neighbouring seraglios to take what is called ' the 
 air'; a constant creaking of cart wheels which 
 are never greased in India ; a constant clamour 
 of voices, and an almost constant thumping and 
 jingling of drums, cymbals, &c., in honour of some 
 one or other of their deities ; and add to all, a 
 villainous smell of garlic, rancid coco-nut oil, sour 
 butter, and stagnant ditches, and you will under- 
 stand the sights, sounds, and smells of what is 
 called ' the black town ' of Calcutta. The singu- 
 larity of this spectacle is best and least offensively 
 enjoyed on a noble quay which Lord Hastings 
 built along the shore of the river, w^here the 
 vessels of all forms and sizes — Arab, Indian, 
 Malay, American, English, — the crowds of Brah- 
 mins and other Hindoos washing and saying their 
 prayers, the lighted tapers which toward sunset 
 they throw in, and the broad, bright stream which 
 sweeps them by, guiltless of their impiety and 
 unconscious of their homage, afford a scene such 
 
1 62 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 as no European and few Asiatic cities can at all 
 parallel in interest and singularity." 
 
 In the summer of 1824, Christian David, a native 
 of Malabar, was ordained by Heber. This act 
 linked the newly arrived Bishop to Christian 
 PVederick Schwartz and his work in Southern 
 India half a century previously, for Christian 
 David had been one of Schwartz's pupils : previous 
 to his being ordained, the Governor of Ceylon had 
 appointed him to a colonial chaplaincy. 
 
 Although in Tranquebar Christian missions had 
 been begun and had made good progress more 
 than a century before Bishop Heber's arrival in 
 India, yet in Bengal it was Carey and his col- 
 leagues in the Serampore mission who had made 
 any real attempt to preach the gospel to the 
 natives or to set up schools for their children. 
 It is gratifying, therefore, to find that for two or 
 three years previous to Bishop Heber's landing 
 in Calcutta, schools for native children had been 
 instituted both by the Church Missionary Society 
 and by the Society for the Propagation of Christian 
 Knowledge, in addition to similar schools already 
 established by the Baptist missionaries. Speaking 
 of a visit which he paid to some of these schools, 
 he says, *' You may guess the feelings with which 
 I have entered these huts, on seeing ninety or 
 
REGINALD HEP.ER. I 63 
 
 a hundred poor little naked urchins seated on 
 the ground like tadpoles, writing- their letters in 
 the sand or their copies on Banana leaves, one 
 after another stepping out to read either in English 
 or Bengali the history of Joseph or the Good 
 Samaritan, — proud of showing their knowledge to 
 the * Lord Padre Sahib ' (as they call me by a 
 strange mixture of English, Portuguese, and Indian 
 titles) and many of them able to render a good 
 account of their studies." 
 
 In his /ou7^na/ under date December 12th 1823, 
 there is the following entry in connection with an 
 examination of the Native Female Schools in- 
 stituted by Mrs Wilson. " It was very pretty to 
 see the little swarthy children come forward to 
 repeat their lessons and show their work to Lady 
 Amherst, blushing even through their dark com- 
 plexions, w^ith their muslin veils thrown carelessly 
 round their slim, half-naked figures, their black 
 hair plaited, their foreheads specked with white 
 or red paint, and their heads, necks, wrists, and 
 ancles loaded with all the little finery they could 
 beg or borrow for the occasion. Their parents 
 made no objection to their learning the catechism 
 or being taught to read the Bible, provided nothing 
 is done which can make them lose caste. And 
 many of the Brahmins themselves, either finding 
 
164 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the current of popular opinion too strongly in 
 favour of the measures pursued for them to 
 struggle with, or really influenced by the beauty 
 of the lessons taught in Scripture, and the ad- 
 vantage of giving useful knowledge and something 
 like a moral sense to the lower ranks of their 
 countrymen and countrywomen, appear to approve 
 of Mrs Wilson's plan, and attend the examination 
 of her scholars." 
 
 Among the evil customs then prevalent in India 
 were sutteeism and hook-swinging, of both of which 
 he writes ; and both are now happily abolished, 
 the former largely through the influence brought 
 to bear on the Government by William Carey. 
 
 With the Baptist missionaries Bishop Heber 
 had pleasant intercourse; "January 15th 1824, 
 Dr Marshman the Baptist missionary from Seram- 
 pore dined with me. Dr Carey is too lame to 
 go out. The talents and learning of these good 
 men are so well known in Europe that I need 
 hardly say that, important as are the points on 
 which we differ, I sincerely admire and respect 
 them and desire their acquaintance." 
 
 In June 1824, Dr Marshman forwarded to the 
 bishop a copy of the report of Serampore College, 
 and the following acknowledgement was sent : — 
 
 " I have seldom felt more painfully than while 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 65 
 
 reading your appeal on the subject of Serampore 
 College the unhappy divisions of those who are 
 servants of the same Great Master. Would to 
 God, my honoured brethren, the time were 
 arrived, when not only in heart and hope, but 
 visibly, we shall be one fold as well as under 
 one Shepherd. In the meantime I have arrived, 
 after some serious considerations at the conclu- 
 sion that I shall serve our great cause most 
 effectually by doing all which I can for the 
 rising institutions of those with whom my 
 sentiments agree in all things, rather than by 
 forwarding the labours of those from whom in 
 some important points I am conscientiously 
 constrained to differ. After all, why do we 
 differ? Surely the leading points which keep 
 us asunder are capable of explanation or of 
 softening, and I am expressing myself in much 
 sincerity of heart — (though perhaps according 
 to the customs of the world I am taking too 
 great a freedom with men, my superiors both 
 in age and in talent) that I should think 
 myself happy to be permitted to explain, to 
 the best of my power, those objections which 
 keep you and your brethren divided from that 
 form of church government which I believe to 
 have been instituted by the apostles and that 
 
1 66 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 admission of infants to the gospel covenants 
 which seems to me to be founded on the ex- 
 pressions and practice of Christ Himself If I 
 were writing thus to worldly men I know I 
 should expose myself to the imputation of 
 excessive vanity or impertinent intrusion. But 
 of you and Dr Carey I am far from judging 
 as of worldly men, and I therefore say that if 
 we are spared to have any future intercourse, 
 it is my desire, if you permit, to discuss with 
 both of you in the spirit of meekness and 
 conciliation the points which now divide us, 
 convinced that if a reunion of our churches 
 could be effected, the harvest of the heathen 
 would ere long be reaped, and the work of 
 the Lord would advance among them with a 
 celerity of which we have now no experience. 
 
 " I trust at all events you will take this hasty 
 note as it is intended, and believe me with much 
 sincerity, — Your Friend and Servant in Christ, 
 ''Reginald Calcutta." 
 
 ''June 2>, 1824." 
 
 In this year, 1824, the Abbe Dubois, a Roman 
 Catholic missionary in the south of India, who had 
 laboured there for twenty years, published a 
 volume on Indian missions, in which he not only 
 
RKCHNALD H?:BER. 1 67 
 
 asserted the non-success of Protestant missions, 
 but maintained that any Christian mission to 
 the natives of India was a hopeless undertaking-. 
 To this strange publication Dr Marshman re- 
 plied : and Bishop Heber also did not let it 
 pass unnoticed. In his answer to the Abbe's 
 charges he said, "Though I am far from placing 
 on the same level the Brahminical and the 
 Romish faith ; and though as a form — though a 
 corrupt form — of the knowledge whereby men 
 are brought to God I rejoice in every conquest 
 which this latter has made among the heathen, 
 I would rather, should God so far honour me, 
 be the instrument of bringing one idolator to 
 the worship of the one true God and the one 
 Mediator between God and man, than to have 
 persuaded like Xavier my tens of thousands to 
 patter their rosary in Latin instead of Sanskrit, 
 and transfer to the saints the honour which they 
 had paid to the Devtas." 
 
 Bishop Heber had spent some eight months 
 in the multifarious duties of his office in Calcutta ; 
 and he now began the first visitation of his 
 diocese, that is to say of those parts of it in 
 India proper, for he had the official charge of 
 territories so vast that Ceylon, the Mauritius, 
 and even Australasia were within its limits. 
 
1 68 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 Accompanied by his chaplain Mr Stow he 
 left Calcutta on 15th June on his visitation of 
 the Upper Provinces. Mrs Heber and their 
 children were not able to accompany him. 
 This tour occupied ten months, and in the 
 course of it he visited, among many other 
 places, Dacca, Ghazepoor, Allahabad, Cawnpoor, 
 Lucknow, Delhi and Agra. 
 
 They had not gone far when as the pinnace 
 was nearing Dacca, Stow was taken ill, and 
 though Heber devotedly nursed him, the illness 
 ended fatally. "If," said the dying man, "if I 
 lose sight of the Cross, though but for a moment, 
 I am ready to despair, but my blessed Lord 
 makes His mercy and His power more and more 
 plain to me." The Bishop writes, "July 12, I 
 this morning left Dacca after a residence of 
 eighteen days, marked by great and to me 
 most unusual anxiety and sorrow ; but during 
 which I, as well as my poor friend, received 
 in our affliction a degree of hospitality, attention, 
 affectionate and delicate kindness from the civil 
 and military officers attached to the station and 
 their families, and most of all from our excellent 
 host, Mr Master, which I shall never forget, and 
 for which I trust I shall be always grateful." 
 
 During this visitation he preached over fifty 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. I 69 
 
 times and confirmed many hundreds of candi- 
 dates, and brought strength and cheer to the 
 ministers of the various congregations. All the 
 other duties incumbent on him were also attended 
 to, the visitation of schools, the choosing of sites 
 for churches, the examination of native catechists. 
 In the words of his own hymn, lighted with 
 heavenly wisdom he could not " to men benighted, 
 the lamp of life deny." " I am often obliged to 
 be bishop, chaplain, and curate all in one ; and 
 in India, though there may be pluralities, there 
 is verily no sinecure." 
 
 " Then on ! then on ! where duty leads 
 
 My course be onward still, 
 O'er broad Hindostan's sultry mead, 
 
 O'er bleak Almorah's hill. 
 
 That course, nor Delhi's kingly gates 
 
 Nor wild Malwah detain, 
 For sweet the bliss us both awaits 
 
 By yonder western main. 
 
 Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, 
 
 Across the dark blue sea, 
 But ne'er were hearts so light and gay 
 
 As then shall meet in thee 1 " 
 
 At length the wishes which he had woven in 
 these verses were realised, when he reached Bom- 
 bay on 20th April 1825, and in a few days he 
 
 M 
 
170 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 was rejoined by his wife and family who had 
 travelled by sea from Calcutta. 
 
 In a letter written to his friend Horton on the 
 races and social customs of Northern India, he 
 says, " Of all idolatries which I have ever read 
 or heard of, the religion of the Hindoos, in which 
 I have taken some pains to inform myself, really 
 appears to me the worst, both in the degrading 
 notions which it gives of the Deity ; in the end- 
 less round of its burdensome ceremonies which 
 occupy the time and distract the thoughts without 
 either instructing or interesting its votaries ; in 
 the filthy acts of uncleanness not only permitted 
 but enjoined and inseparably interwoven with those 
 ceremonies ; in the system of castes, a system 
 which tends more than anything else the devil 
 has yet invented to destroy the feelings of general 
 benevolence, and to make nine-tenths of mankind 
 the hopeless slaves of the remainder ; and in the 
 total absence of any popular system of morals, 
 or any single lesson which the people at large 
 ever hear, to live virtuously and do good to each 
 other. I do not say, indeed, that there are not 
 some scattered lessons of this kind to be found 
 in their ancient books, but those books are neither 
 accessible to the people at large, nor are these 
 last permitted to read them ; and in general, all 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. I7I 
 
 the sins that a Soodra is taught to fear are, killing 
 a cow, offending a Brahmin, or neglecting one of 
 the many frivolous rites by which their deities 
 are supposed to be conciliated. 
 
 " Accordingly, though the general sobriety of 
 the Hindoos (a virtue which they possess in 
 common with most inhabitants of warm climates) 
 affords a very great facility to the maintenance 
 of public order and decorum, I really never 
 have met with a race of men whose standard of 
 morality is so low, who feel so little apparent 
 shame in beino- detected in a falsehood, or so 
 little interest in the sufferings ol a neighbour, 
 not being of their own caste or family: whose 
 ordinary and familiar conversation is so licentious ; 
 or, in the wilder and more lawless districts, who 
 shed blood with so little repugnance. The good 
 qualities which there are among them (and, thank 
 God, there is a great deal of good among them 
 still) are, in no instance that I am aware of, 
 connected with or arising out of their religion, 
 since it is in no instance to good deeds or 
 virtuous habits of life that the future rewards in 
 which they believe are promised. Their bravery, 
 their fidelity to their employers, their temperance, 
 and (wherever they are found) their humanity 
 and gentleness of disposition appear to arise ex- 
 
172 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 clusively from a naturally happy temperament, 
 from an honourable pride in their own renown 
 and the renown of their ancestors, and from the 
 goodness of God who seems unwilling that His 
 image should be entirely defaced even in the 
 midst of the grossest error. The Musalmans 
 have a far better creed, and though they seldom 
 either like the English or are liked by them, I 
 am inclined to think are, on the whole, a better 
 people. Yet even with them the forms of their 
 worship have a natural tendency to make men 
 hypocrites, and the overweening contempt with 
 which they are inspired for all the world beside, 
 the degradation of their women by the system of 
 polygamy, and the detestable crimes which, owing 
 to this degradation, are almost universal, are such 
 as even if I had no ulterior hope, would make 
 me anxious to attract them to a better or more 
 harmless system. 
 
 " In this work, thank God, in those parts of 
 India which I have visited, a beginning has been 
 made, and a degree of success obtained at least 
 commensurate to the few years during which our 
 missionaries have laboured." 
 
 In Bombay and Poona he remained for four 
 months. It was with regret he left Bombay : 
 " We had met with much and marked kindness 
 
REGINALD HEBER. 1 73 
 
 and hospitality, we had enjoyed the society of 
 several men of distinguished talent, and all my 
 views for the regulation and advantage of the 
 clergy and for the gradual advancement of 
 Christianity had met with a support beyond my 
 hopes and unequalled in any other part of 
 India." 
 
 In August he sailed for Ceylon where he spent 
 some time "confirming the Churches." He was 
 much impressed with the progress which the 
 gospel had made in that island, and he specially 
 notices the marked change to be seen in Kandy, 
 where the palace of the late king was. *' We 
 went up with the Governor, Sir Edward Barnes, 
 who, as well as Lady Barnes, has shown us much 
 attention and kindness, to Kandy, where I preached, 
 administered the sacrament and confirmed twenty- 
 six young people in the audience-hall of the late 
 King of Kandy, which now serves as a church. 
 Here, twelve years ago, this man, who was a 
 dreadful tyrant and lost his throne in consequence 
 of a large party of his subjects applying to General 
 Brownrigge for protection, used, as we were told, 
 to sit in state to sec those whom he had con- 
 demned, trodden to death and tortured by 
 elephants trained for the purpose. Here he 
 actually compelled by torments the wife of one 
 
174 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 of his prime ministers, whom he suspected of 
 plotting against him, to bruise with her own 
 hands two of her children to death with a pestle 
 and large mortar before he put her to death 
 also : and here at that time no Englishman or 
 Christian could have appeared except as a slave 
 or at the risk of being murdered with every 
 circumstance of cruelty. And now, in this very 
 place, an English Governor and an English con- 
 gregation, besides many converted natives of the 
 island, were sitting peaceably to hear an English 
 bishop preach." 
 
 From Ceylon he returned to Calcutta after an 
 absence of sixteen months. His residence in 
 Calcutta for the next few months was marked 
 as usual with much labour, and by friendly inter- 
 course with the Armenians and with missionaries 
 of other denominations. 
 
 In the end of January 1826 he left Calcutta for 
 the Southern Provinces on his second tour of 
 visitation. The vessel arrived at Madras on 25th 
 February, and next day, Sunday, he preached 
 in the Residency church from the words " To die 
 is gain:" it was prophetic. Before leaving Cal- 
 cutta he had been very ill with fever, and during 
 those days in Madras he describes himself as 
 " almost worn out." *' I do not eat the bread of 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. I 75 
 
 idleness in this country. Since my arrival at 
 Madras little more than three weeks ago, I have 
 preached eleven times (including my visitation 
 charge), have held four public and one private 
 confirmation, visited five schools, attended one 
 public meeting, travelled sixty miles in a palan- 
 quin, and one hundred and forty on horseback, 
 besides a pretty voluminous correspondence with 
 Government, different missionaries and chaplains, 
 and my Syrian brother Mar Athanasius, and the 
 thermometer this day stands at ninety-eight in 
 the shade. However I continue, thank God, on 
 the whole to enjoy as good health as I ever did 
 in England. Busy as I am, my business is mostly 
 of a kind which I like and which accords with 
 my previous studies." 
 
 The districts south from Madras are those 
 in which Ziegenbalg and Schwartz lived and 
 which they consecrated by their work. About 
 the middle of March he left Madras for the 
 south and visited Pondicherry, Cuddalor, and 
 other places. Arriving in Tanjore he visited 
 Schwartz's Chapel, in which that apostolic man 
 lies buried. On 26th March, Easter Day, he 
 preached in the Mission Church in the fort from 
 Rev. i. 18. This church had been built by 
 Schwartz and contains his monument, erected by 
 
176 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 the Rajah. " The group in white marble by Flax- 
 mann represents the good man on his death-bed, 
 Gericke standing behind him, the Rajah at his 
 side, two native attendants and three children of 
 his school around his bed." 
 
 In the evening he attended a Tamil service in 
 the same church, when more than thirteen hundred 
 native Christians were present. After this service 
 with full heart he exclaimed, " Gladly would I 
 exchange years of common life for one such day 
 as this." 
 
 From what he saw in Tanjore and in the 
 adjacent cities and towns, his conviction was, 
 that too little had been said of the work which 
 the gospel had accomplished in the South of 
 India, that the strength of the Christian cause 
 in India lay in those missions, and that it would 
 be a grievous and heavy sin, if the native churches 
 in those parts were not nourished and protected. 
 Comparing Southern India with the other parts 
 of India which he had visited, and with Ceylon, 
 he had seen nothing like the missions of the 
 South, and these, he concluded, were the fields 
 most ripe for the harvest. Time has shown that 
 he was correct. The ingathering of the natives 
 to the Christian Church in Southern India has 
 been on a scale to rebuke our apathy and indiffer- 
 
REGINALD HEBER. I 77 
 
 encc. In the Madras Province alone, the forty 
 thousand native Christians of Heber's day are 
 now increased to some six hundred thousand, 
 with eight hundred native pastors, in addition 
 to two hundred and seventy foreign ordained 
 missionaries. 
 
 The Bishop, accompanied by the President, 
 called on the Rajah, Serfojee, who received him 
 in state, and though himself a heathen, talked 
 much "of his dear father," Schwartz, and also 
 said he hoped Bishop Heber would resemble 
 Schwartz and stand in his room. 
 
 From Tanjore he proceeded to Trichinopoly, 
 so well known in connection with Schwartz's 
 work there. His intention was to visit Travan- 
 core, to act, as he had been requested to do, 
 as a peacemaker or arbiter among the Syrian 
 Christians, and then to return to Madras. 
 
 On Sunday 2nd April he preached in Trichino- 
 poly what proved to be his last sermon. The text 
 was I John v. 6-S. '' This is He that came by 
 water and blood, even Jesus Christ : " and from 
 these words he enforced the meaning of the 
 Atonement by the blood of Christ, and of 
 Regeneration by the Spirit, and of the new 
 power and duty to live as children of God. 
 
 Next morning he attended the Tamil church 
 
 N 
 
178 MISSIONARY PIONEERS IN INDIA. 
 
 in the Fort, and then visited the English and 
 Tamil schools. Bidding farewell to the aged 
 missionary Kohlhoff, he returned and visited his 
 chaplain, who was then lying sick. These duties 
 had occupied four hours in the Indian heat of 
 that April morning. Then he retired to bathe 
 before the usual late breakfast. Half an hour 
 later his native servant, alarmed that his master 
 had not reappeared, found the lifeless body in 
 the water. Every effort was immediately used 
 to restore animation, but in vain. Kohlhoff, from 
 whom he had parted only an hour before, ex- 
 claimed with tears, " We have lost our second 
 Schwartz, who loved our mission and laboured 
 for it : he had all the energy and benevolence 
 of Schwartz, and more than his condescension." 
 
 The bath at Trichinopoly has been restored, 
 and a slab has been erected on the side wall 
 with this inscription, " In memory of the devoted, 
 accomplished and universally honoured servant 
 of God, Reginald Heber, second Bishop of Cal- 
 cutta, and one of India's truest and most loving 
 benefactors, this stone was erected in the year 
 1882, at the expense of Government, on the 
 margin of the bath in which he was drowned 
 while bathing, April 3rd 1826. His body was 
 laid under the Chancel of the Church of St John, 
 
REGINALD IIEBER. I 79 
 
 Trichinopoly, in the hope of the Resurrection of 
 the just, to Eternal Life through Jesus Christ." 
 
 Dr George Smith in his "Bishop Heber, poet 
 and chief missionary to the East," writes, *' In 
 India, like Henry Martyn, Heber's aspirations 
 went out after the Hindoos and Mohammedans, 
 while he was full of care for the East India 
 Company's servants and troops, and for the 
 chaplains. Every week he lived, every mile he 
 travelled, caused the missionary fire to burn 
 within him. He combined, as no other foreigner 
 has done, the personal fascination, the influence 
 of a high office and broad culture, the zeal of 
 an evangelical in the best sense, true to the 
 commission of his Master, and the high faculty 
 of organisation directed by business habits and 
 common sense. All this made him the true 
 founder of the Church of England Missions in 
 India and the East." 
 
 " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet 
 of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth 
 peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that 
 publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy 
 God reigneth ! " 
 
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