1800] SKETCH OF THE BROTHERHOOD 111 as much as I did in double the time." After eight months of study and evangelising work they are thus described:"Our brother Marshman, who is a true missionary, is able to talk a little; he goes out frequently, nay almost every day, and assaults the fortress of Satan. Brother Brunsdon can talk a little, though not like Marshman. Brother Ward is a great prize; he does not learn the language so quickly, but he is so holy, so spiritual a man, and so useful among the children." Thus early did Carey note the value of Hannah Marshman, the first woman missionary to India. Granddaughter of the Baptist minister of Crockerton in Wiltshire, she proved to be for forty-six years at once a loving wife, and the equal of the three missionaries of Christ and of civilisation whom she aided in the common home, in the schools, in the congregation, in the Native Christian families, and even, at that early time, in purely Hindoo circles. Without her the mission must have been one-sided indeed. It still gives us a pathetic interest to turn to her household books, where we find entered with loving care and thoughtful thrift all the daily details which at once form a valuable contribution to the history of prices, and show how her "prudence" combined with the heroic self-denial of all to make the Serampore mission the light of India. Ward's journal supplies this first sketch of the brotherhood, who realised, more than probably any in Protestant, Romanist, or Greek hagiology, the life of the apostolic community in Jerusalem: January 18, 1800.-This week we have adopted a set of rules for the government of the family. All preach and pray in turn; one superintends the affairs of the family for a month, and then another; brother Carey is treasurer, and has the regulation of the medicine chest; brother Fountain is librarian. Saturday evening is devoted to adjusting differences, and pledging ourselves to love one another. One of our resolutions is, that no one of us do engage in private trade; but that all be done for the benefit of the mission. ઃઃ “ August 1.—Our labours for every day are now regularly arranged. About six o'clock we rise; brother Carey to his garden; brother Marshman to his school at seven; brother Brunsdon, Felix, and I, to the printing-office. At eight the bell rings for family worship: we assemble in the hall; sing, read, and pray. Breakfast. Afterwards, brother Carey goes to the translation, or reading proofs: brother Marshman to school, and the rest to the printing-office. Our compositor having left us, we do without: we print three half - sheets of 2000 each in a week; have five pressmen, one folder, and one binder. At twelve o'clock we take a luncheon; then most of us shave and bathe, read and sleep before dinner, which we have at three. After dinner we deliver our thoughts on a text or question: this we find to be very profitable. Brother and sister Marshman keep their schools till after two. In the afternoon, if business be done in the office, I read and try to talk Bengali with the bràmmhàn. We drink tea about seven, and have little or no supper. We have Bengali preaching once or twice in the week, and on Thursday evening we have an experience meeting. On Saturday evening we meet to compose differences and transact business, after prayer, which is always immediately after tea. Felix is very useful in the office; William goes to school, and part of the day learns to bind. We meet two hours before breakfast on the first Monday in the month, and each one prays for the salvation of the Bengal heathen. At night we unite our prayers for the universal spread of the Gospel.” The "Form of Agreement" which regulated the social economy and spiritual enterprise of the brotherhood, and also its legal relations to the Baptist Society in England, deserves study, in its divine disinterestedness, its lofty aims, and its kindly common sense. Fuller had pledged the Society in 1798 to send out £360 a year for the joint family of six missionaries, their wives, and children. The house and land at Serampore cost the Society Rs.6000. On Grant's death, leaving a widow and two children, the five missionaries made the first voluntary agreement, which "provided that no one should trade on his own private account, and that the product of their labour should form a common fund to be applied at the will of the majority, to the support of their respective families, of the cause of God around them, and of the widow and family of such as might be removed by death." The first year the schools and the press enabled the brotherhood to be more than self-supporting. In the second year Carey's salary from the College of Fort-William, and the growth of the schools 1800] THE BOND OF THE BROTHERHOOD 113 and press, gave them a surplus for mission extension. They not only paid for the additional two houses and ground required by such extension, but they paid back to the Society all that it had advanced for the first purchase in the course of the next six years. They acquired all the property for the Serampore mission, duly informing the home Committee from time to time, and they vested the whole right, up to Fuller's death in 1815, in the Society, "to prevent the premises being sold or becoming private property in the families." But "to secure their own quiet occupation of them, and enable them to leave them in the hands of such as they might associate with themselves in their work, they declared themselves trustees instead of proprietors." The agreement of 1800 was expanded into the "Form of Agreement" of 1805 when the spiritual side of the mission had grown. Their own authoritative statement, as given above, was lovingly recognised by Fuller. In 1817, and again in 1820, the claims of aged and destitute relatives, and the duty of each brother making provision for his own widow and orphans, and, occasionally, the calls. of pity and humanity, led the brotherhood to agree that "each shall regularly deduct a tenth of the net product of his labour to form a fund in his own hands for these purposes.' We know nothing in the history of missions, monastic or evangelical, which at all approaches this in administrative perfectness as well as in Christlike self-sacriIt prevents secularisation of spirit, stimulates activity of all kinds, gives full scope to local ability and experience, calls forth the maximum of local support and propagation, sets the church at home free to enter incessantly on new fields, provides permanence as well as variety of action and adaptation to new circumstances, and binds the whole in a holy bond of prayerful co-operation and loving brotherhood. This Agreement worked for seventeen years, with a success in England and India which we shall trace, or as long as Fuller, Ryland, and Sutcliff lived "to hold the ropes," while Carey, Marshman, and Ward excavated the mine of Hindooism. fice. I The spiritual side of the Agreement we find in the form which the three drew up in 1805, to be read publicly at all their stations thrice every year, on the Lord's Day. It is the ripe fruit of the first eleven years of Carey's daily toil and consecrated genius, as written out by the fervent pen of Ward. In the light of it the whole of Carey's life must be read. In these concluding sentences the writer sketches Carey himself:-"Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen, without whose salvation nothing could make you happy. Prayer, secret, fervent believing prayer, lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the languages current where a missionary lives, a mild and winning temper, and a heart given up to God in closet religion; these, these are the attainments which more than all knowledge or all other gifts, well fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of human redemption. Finally, let us give ourselves unreservedly to this glorious cause. Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our strength, our families, or even the clothes we wear are our own. Let us sanctify them all to God and His cause. Oh! that He may sanctify us for His work. Let us for ever shut out the idea of laying up a cowrie (mite) for ourselves or our children. If we give up the resolution which was formed on the subject of private trade, when we first united at Serampore, the mission is from that hour a lost cause. Let us continually watch against a worldly spirit, and cultivate a Christian indifference towards every indulgence. Rather let us bear hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. No private family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness, even in the most prosperous gale of worldly prosperity, than we have done since we resolved to have all things in common. If we are enabled to persevere in the same principles, we may hope that multitudes of converted souls will have reason to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel into this country." Such was the moral heroism, such the spiritual aim of the Serampore brotherhood; how did it set to work? CHAPTER VI THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 1800-1810 A carpenter the first Bengali convert-Krishna Pal's confession-Caste broken for the first time-Carey describes the baptism in the Hoogli The first woman convert-The first widow convert-The first convert of writer caste-The first Christian Brahman-The first native chapel-A Bengali "experience" meeting-Carey founding a new community as well as church-Marriage difficulties solved-The first native Christian marriage feast in North India-Hindoo Christian death and burial-The first Christian schools and school-books in North India-The first native Sunday school-Boarding schools for the higher education of country-born Christians-Carey on the mixed Portuguese, Eurasians, and Armenians-The Benevolent Institution for destitute children of all races-A hundred schools-English only postponed-Effect on native opinion and action-The leaven of the Kingdom-The Mission breaks forth into five at the close of 1810. FOR seven years Carey had daily preached Christ in Bengali without a convert. He had produced the first edition of the New Testament. He had reduced the language to literary form. He had laid the foundations in the darkness of the pit of Hindooism, while the Northamptonshire pastors, by prayer and self-sacrifice, held the ropes. The last disappointment was on 25th November 1800, when "the first Hindoo catechumen, Fakeer, offered himself for baptism, returned to his distant home for his child, and appeared no more, probably "detained by force." But on the last Sunday of that year Krishna Pal was baptized in the Hoogli, and his whole family soon followed him. He was thirty-five years of age. Not only as the first native |