1799 FAILURE OF THE INDIGO MANUFACTURE. 109 Hurree-Bol, Hurree-Bol, which is common shout of joy, and an invocation of Hurree, the wife of Hur or Seeb. It was impossible to have heard the woman had she groaned, or even cried aloud, on account of the mad noise of the people, and it was impossible for her to stir or struggle on account of the bamboos which were held down on her like the levers of a press. We made much objection to their using these bamboos, and insisted that it was using force to prevent the woman from getting up when the fire burned her. But they declared that it was only done to keep the pile from falling down. We could not bear to see more, but left them, exclaiming loudly against the murder, and full of horror at what we had seen." In the same letter Carey communicates information he had collected regarding the Jews and Syrian Christians of the Malabar coast. Mr. G. Udny had now found his private indigo enterprise to be disastrous. He resolved to give it up and retire to England. Year after year, with one partial exception, inundations had ruined the plant or the manufacture, and, to crown all, agrarian discontent was showing itself like that which culminated in 1860. Thomas had left his factory, and was urging his colleague to try the sugar trade, which at that time meant the distillation of rum. Carey rather took over from Mr. Udny the out-factory of Kidderpore, twelve miles distant, and there resolved to prepare for the arrival of colleagues, the communistic missionary settlement on the Moravian plan, which he had advocated in his Enquiry. Mr. John Fountain had been sent out as the first reinforcement, but he proved to be almost as dangerous to the infant mission from his outspoken political radicalism as Thomas had been from his debts. Carey seriously contemplated the setting up of his mission centre among the Bhooteas, so as to be free from the intolerance to Christianity of the East India Company. The authorities would not license Fountain as his assistant, would they allow future missionaries to settle with him, would they always renew his own licence, and what if he must cease altogether to work with his hands, and give himself wholly to the work of the mission as seemed necessary? Four new colleagues and their families were already on the sea, but God had provided a better refuge for His servants, till the public conscience which they were about to quicken and enlighten should cause the persecution to cease, while the East India Company itself became the victim of its own fears. CHAPTER V. THE NEW CRUSADE—SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD. 1800. Effect of the news in England on the Baptists—On the home churches—In the foundation of the London and other Missionary Societies—In Scotland—In Holland and America—The missionary home—Joshua Marshman, William Ward, and two others sent out—Landing at the Iona of Southern Asia—Meeting of Ward and Carey—First attempt to evangelise the non-Aryan hill tribes—Carey driven by providences to Serampore— Dense population of Hoogli district—Adapts his communistic plan to the new conditions—Purchase of the property—Constitution of the Brotherhood—His relations to Marshman and Ward—Hannah Marshman, the first woman missionary—Daily life of the Brethren—Form of Agreement adopted in 1800 expanded in 1805, and revised in 1817 and 1820—Carey's ideal system of missionary administration realised for fifteen years— Spiritual heroism of the Brotherhood. The first two English missionaries to India seemed to those who sent them forth to have disappeared for ever. For fourteen months, in those days of slow Indiamen and French privateers, no tidings of their welfare reached the poor praying people of the midlands, who had been emboldened to begin the heroic enterprise. The convoy, which had seen the Danish vessel fairly beyond the French coast, had been unable to bring back letters on account of the weather. At last, on the 29th July 1794, Fuller, the secretary; Pearce, the beloved personal friend of Carey; Ryland in Bristol; and the congregation at Leicester, received the journals of the voyage and letters which told of the first six weeks' experience at Balasore, in Calcutta, Bandel, and Nuddea, just before Carey knew the worst of their pecuniary position. The committee at once met. They sang "with sacred joy" what has ever since been the jubilee hymn of missions, that by William Williams— "O'er those gloomy hills of darkness." They "returned solemn thanks to the everlasting God whose mercy endureth for ever, for having preserved you from the perils of the sea, and hitherto made your ways prosperous. In reading the short account of your labours we feel something of that spirit spoken of in the prophet, 'Thine heart shall fear and be enlarged.' We cordially thank you for your assiduity in learning the languages, in translating, and in every labour of love in which you have engaged. Under God we cheerfully confide in your wisdom, fidelity, and prudence, with relation to the seat of your labours or the means to carry them into effect. If there be one place, however, which strikes us as of more importance than the rest, it is Nuddea. But you must follow where the Lord opens a door for you." The same spirit of generous confidence marked the relations of Carey and the committee so long as Fuller was secretary. When the news came that the missionaries had become indigo planters, some of the weaker brethren of the committee, estimating Carey by themselves, sent out a mild warning against secular temptations, to which he returned a half-amused and kindly reply. John Newton, then the aged rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, on being consulted, reassured them: "If the heart be fired with a zeal for God and love to souls," he said, "such attention to business as circumstances require will not hurt it." Since Carey, like the Moravians, meant that the missionaries should live upon a common stock, and never lay up money, the weakest might have recognised the Paul-like nobleness, which had marked all his life, in relinquishing the scanty salary that it might be used for other missions to Africa and Asia. The spiritual law which Duff's success afterwards led 1794 THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS GONE FORTH. 113 Chalmers to formulate, that the relation of foreign to home missions acts not by exhaustion but by fermentation, now came to be illustrated on a great scale, and to result in the foundation of the catholic missionary enterprise of the evangelicals of England, Scotland, Ireland, America, Germany, and France, which has marked the whole nineteenth century. We find it first in Fuller himself. In comforting Thomas during his extremest dejection he quoted to him from his own journal of 1789 the record of a long period of spiritual dejection and inactivity, which continued till Carey compelled him to join in the mission. "Before this I did little but pine over my misery, but since I have betaken myself to greater activity for God, my strength has been recovered and my soul replenished." "Your work is a great work, and the eyes of the religious world are upon you. Your undertaking, with that of your dear colleague, has provoked many. The spirit of missions is gone forth. I wish it may never stop till the Gospel is sent unto all the world." Following the pietist Franke, who in 1710 published the first missionary reports, and also the Moravians, Fuller and his coadjutors issued from the press of J. W. Morris at Clipstone, towards the end of 1794, No. I. of their Periodical Accounts relative to a Society formed among the Particular Baptists for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen. That contained a narrative of the foundation of the Society and the letters of Carey up to 15th February 1794 from the Soondarbans, as well as an eccentric communication from Thomas, which, as we shall see, called forth the ridicule of Sydney Smith and the defence of Southey. Six of these Accounts appeared up to the year 1800, when they were published as one volume with an index and illustrations. The volume closes with a doggerel translation of one of several Gospel ballads which Carey had written in Bengali in 1798. He had thus early brought into the service of I |