in vain. As a last resort, he set out for Serampore on Christmas Day, 1799, to make his home there.

IV. SERAMPORE.

At Kidderpur, the place of Carey's choice, the Mission, humanly speaking, must have been a failure. At Serampore, whither necessity drove him, the Mission was to astonish the world with its success. Their own way would have ruined them and their plans. Their many disappointments were the doors that a kind Master kept shutting for them on ways that led to failure.

66 THE FIRST THREE."

In a spacious house and grounds which they ventured to buy, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, that three-fold cord of our early missionary strength, lived and laboured. They were men worthy of one another, of their cause, and of their time. By their labours and gifts and goodness they made the name of Serampore a household word for ever throughout the Christian world. Here Carey carried on his work of translation which Ward saw through the press. Ward had been a printer and a successful journalist, and left a lucrative employment to become a student for the ministry, "to incur," he writes, "the displeasure of the mermaids of professors, half sinners, half saints; to live, perhaps, on thirty pounds a year, to warn men night and day with tears, to tremble lest I myself should be a castaway."

Marshman had been a weaver and then a schoolmaster. His linguistic abilities surprised even Carey. He and his gifted wife, whose labours for the Mission and India were hardly less than her husband's, opened schools whose profits soon amounted to a thousand pounds a year. Here all the missionaries lived together as one family, in a self-denying, laborious holy unity, after the manner of the Moravians, having one table and one purse. Thomas, in a letter to the Rev. W. Staughton, of Philadelphia, thus describes his colleagues: "The indefatigable Carey, a man made on purpose for the work; Mr. Marshman, a good scholar, a circumspect Christian, a diligent, persevering man, with a soul easily put into motion by every fresh view of the abominations and perishing condition of the heathen on the one-hand, and by every ray of hope of their salvation by any means on the other; Mr. Ward, a printer, a regular warm Christian; zealous without en

thusiasm ; a man of circumspect walk, with a care of souls upon him; a man acquainted with the fulness and freeness of sovereign grace, and the efficacy of appointed ordinances; one that ploughs, sows, and harrows, without forgetting the rain and the sun, and one that remembers the rain and the sun without forgetting to plough; and lastly, one John Thomas. This man has one ground of hope at the very opening of that text, And base things of the world, and things that are despised, hath God chosen.'"

FIRST-FRUITS.

Here at last, at Serampore, the first-fruits of the harvest appeared for which Thomas and Carey had so long waited. And it is worth noting that Medical Missions at least share the glory of winning one who is said to be "the first native Christian of North India, of whom we have a reliable account "*-Krishnu Pal, a carpenter. This man had dislocated his arm, and after Thomas had set it he began to talk "with his accustomed fervour" on the folly of idolatry, and the great truths of Christianity. Krishnu had heard something of the Gospel before, and now sought regular instruction, and soon with another convert deliberately broke caste and asked for baptism. The news that he had broken caste drew a mob of two thousand people about his door; they dragged him before the magistrate, who at once dispersed the crowd, commended the man for obeying his conscience, and, at the request of the missionaries, set a Sepoy to guard his house.† What might have happened under an English magistrate? Many years later than this, under British jurisdiction, native Christians were publicly beaten with canes for refusing to drag an idol's car!

On the 28th of December, 1800, Carey was a grateful man as he moved down to the waters of the Hugli to baptize his eldest son and Krishnu, in the presence of the Danish Governor and "a dense crowd of natives." But a dark cloud chequered the day; for Thomas, who had suffered numberless disappointments from apparently hopeful converts who drew back from the decisive step of breaking caste, was now mad; the joy of this delayed success was, for a time, unbearable; and Mrs. Carey's sadder and hopeless madness was a still heavier burden to Carey in his home; so that one of the greatest of human sorrows mingled with the divine joy of that memorable day.

* Dr. George Smith's "Life of Carey."

† Periodical Accounts.

Soon after, caste was utterly broken, for Christ's sake, in eating, in marriage, and in burial; and converts from the highest caste Brahmans were baptized; the "impossible" had been achieved!

66

BENGALI NEW TESTAMENT.

Within two months followed another notable event in the history of Missions; the Bengali New Testament was printed, and the first copy was placed on the Communion table in the chapel, and a meeting was held of the whole of the Mission family and of the converts recently baptized to offer a tribute of gratitude to God for this great blessing." In communicating this intelligence to Mr. Fuller, Mr. Ward, with his characteristic modesty, remarks, "I think there have been too many encomiums on your last missionaries in the sixth number of your Periodical Accounts. I cannot get out of my mind a public show while I read these accounts. Very fine missionaries to be seen here; walk in, brethren and sisters!" But "No. 6" is written as soberly as became the facts of the case, for there were missionaries to be seen," as the world now knows well.

CAREY'S HONOURS.

66

very fine

Three months after the completion of the Bengali New Testament, Lord Wellesley appointed Carey teacher of Bengali, and soon after of Sanscrit, in the College of Fort William in Calcutta, founded by this great Governor-General to carry on the education, especially in the vernaculars, of the younger members of the Civil Service. Here the salary was at first £700, and, with the full professorship, rose finally to £1,800. The missionary brotherhood at once relinquished the occasional pecuniary aid that had reached them from England, and increased their princely contributions to the Mission.

This autumn, after restoration to mental health and a renewal of his ceaseless labours, Thomas passed away after much suffering. He was a man whom all men must blame, pity and admire; a beloved physician, a tireless evangelist, hasty, lavish, imprudent, unselfish, hopeful, brave; a man with Christ and India ever in his heart!

Ward now began to itinerate, and to use the Bengali with an easy mastery that drew crowds of hearers wherever he went. The first missionaries mapped out in their own practice the three-fold labours of their successors ever since-in preaching, translating and teaching; and a medical missionary, with a fine popular gift in vernacular