1800 THE FIRST BRAHMAN CONVERT. 139 for a time by his wife, Komal, who fled to her father's, but Krishna and his family brought in, first the husband, then the wife, whose simplicity and frankness attracted the missionaries. Unna, their widowed friend of forty, was also gathered in, the first of that sad host of victims to Brahmanical cruelty, lust, and avarice to whom Christianity has ever since offered the only deliverance. Of 124,000,000 of women in India in 1881, no fewer than 21,000,000 were returned by the census as widows, of whom 669,000 were under nineteen years, 286,000 were under fifteen, and 79,000 were under nine, all figures undoubtedly within the appalling truth. Jeymooni and Unna at once became active missionaries among their countrywomen, not only in Serampore but in Chandernagore and the surrounding country. The year 1800 did not close without fruit from the other and higher castes. Petumber Singh, a man of fifty of the writer caste, had sought deliverance from sin for thirty years at many a Hindoo shrine and in many a Brahmanical scripture. One of the earliest tracts of the Serampore press fell into his hands, and he at once walked forty miles to seek fuller instruction from its author. His baptism gave Carey just what the mission wanted, a good schoolmaster, and he soon proved to be, even before Krishna in time, the first preacher to the people. Of the same writer caste were Syam Das, Petumber Mitter, and his wife Draupadi who was as brave as her young husband. The despised soodras were represented by Syam's neighbour, Bharut, an old man, who said he went to Christ because he was just falling into hell and saw no other way of safety. The first Mohammedan convert was Peroo, another neighbour of Syam Das. From the spot in the Soondarbans where Carey first began his life of missionary farmer, there came to him at the close of 1802, in Calcutta, the first Brahman who had bowed his neck to the Gospel in all India up to this time, for we can hardly reckon Kiernander's case. Krishna Prosad, then nineteen, "gave up his friends and his caste with much fortitude, and is the first Brahman who has been baptized. The word of Christ's death seems to have gone to his heart, and he continues to receive the Word with meekness." The poita or sevenfold thread which, as worn over the naked body, betokened his caste, he trampled under foot, and another was given to him, that when preaching Christ he might be a witness to the Brahmans at once that Christ is irresistible and that an idol is nothing in the world. This he voluntarily ceased to wear in a few years. Two more Brahmans were brought in by Petumber Singhee in 1804, by the close of which year the number of baptized converts was forty-eight, of 1804 THE FIRST NATIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 141 whom forty were native men and women. With the instinct of a true scholar and Christian Carey kept to the apostolic practice, which has been too often departed from-he consecrated the convert's name as well as soul and body to Christ. Beside the " Hermes" of Rome to whom Paul sent his salutation, he kept the "Krishna" of Serampore and Calcutta. The first act of the first convert, Krishna Pal, was of his own accord to build a house for God immediately opposite his own the first native meeting-house in Bengal. Carey preached the first sermon in it to twenty natives besides the family. On the side of the high road, along which the car of Jagganath is dragged every year, the missionaries purchased a site and built a preaching place, a school, a house for Gokool, and a room for the old widow, at the cost of Captain Wickes, who had rejoiced to witness their baptism. The Brahman who owned the neighbouring land wished to sell it and leave the place, "so much do these people abhor us." This little purchase for £6 grew in time into the extensive settlement of Jannagur, where about 1870 the last of Carey's converts passed away. From its native chapel, and in its village tank, many Hindoos have since been led by their own ordained countrymen to put on Christ, as in the picture. In time the congregation in the chapel on the Hoogli became chiefly European and Eurasian, but to this day, on the first Sunday of the year, the members of both churches meet together for solemn and joyful communion, when the services are alternately in Bengali and English. The longing for converts now gave place to anxiety that they might continue to be Christians indeed. As in the early Corinthian Church, all did not perceive at once the solemnities of the Lord's Supper. Krishna Pal, for instance, jealous because the better educated Petumber had been ordained to preach before him, made a schism by administering it, and so filled the missionaries with grief and fear; but he soon |