Jack Voelkel
William Carey 1761-1834: Part 2
In August of this year, we celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, which marks a significant date in the history of American Protestant Missions. To recognize our debt to missionary pioneers, we will review the experiences of several who have made history. We begin with William Carey, often called the “Father of Modern Protestant Missions.”
William Carey 1761 - 1834
Part II - The Mission
When William Carey arrived with his family in Calcutta, India in November of 1793, the British East India Company had been functioning there for almost 200 years and was the dominant force in the land. The Company was not eager for Christian missionaries to enter the country. They felt that the sharing of a “new religion” could only cause a negative reaction among the Hindus and Muslims and complicate their commercial venture.
One writer describes the religious situation in India in these terms:
When Carey came, Hindus were in a pitifully backward condition. Learning had almost ceased; ordinary education facilities scarcely existed; spiritual religion was only to be met in the quietest places; and a coarse idolatry with cruel and immoral rites held all the great centers of population (Farquhar cited by Mangalwadi p. 28).
Dr. John Thomas, who had pled with Carey to accompany him back to India and aid him in his work, sought to help the family get established, but very soon his own financial problems forced him to invest his time as a physician to try and cover his considerable debts. The money they had all brought with them to supposedly support their needs for a year was gone in a matter of months.
For six years, the Careys moved from one place to another, seeking employment and a place to get established. The list of obstacles they encountered is staggering:
- The irresponsibility of Thomas, the “senior missionary.”
- The heat of the country (no air conditioning!)
- The lack of funds. They nearly starved.
- The difficult Bengali language.
- The defection of Ram Basu, a convert from Thomas’ former time of ministry, who at first had been a great help to them.
- The opposition of the East India Company, the dominant political force.
- A flood (once his land was covered with water from 2 to 20 feet in depth).
- A drought.
- The death of their son, Peter.
- After six years of faithful preaching, no Indian had come to Jesus. For a Hindu to receive Christ and be baptized would mean to be “thrown out of caste,” to be cut off from family, and friends, and make all social contact difficult. A number of Europeans had come to Christ, but Carey’s desire was to see Indians enter the Kingdom.
- Criticism of the Home Committee. “Why aren’t you seeing more fruit?” “Why are you wasting your time in economic employment?”
- Two new missionaries who came to help, died soon after they arrived.
- Dorothy, his wife, couldn’t take the strain. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. Culture shock gripped her. Nothing was familiar. Her sister married an English planter and left their home. But the death of her son, Peter, was the last straw. She sank into mental derangement, and never recovered.
During these first years of incredible trial, Carey worked on two languages, Bengali and Hindustani. At the end of his first year, he was able to preach publicly in Bengali. Three years later (1797) he had finished the first draft of the New Testament in that language, and by 1800 he had completed a draft of a translation of the whole Bible, while working to support his family, having moved several times, and carrying on in the midst of his trials. Carey found the Bengali language “rich, beautiful, and expressive” (Drewery p. 90). Over his lifetime he revised the Bengali Old Testament five times and the New Testament eight times.
The East India Company’s received a new Commercial Resident who was outspokenly opposed to missions, would not permit village evangelism, and would not tolerate the printing of the Gospel into native languages. Furthermore, a new ruling of the government prohibited the use or location of any printing press in Bengal outside of Calcutta. As a result, Carey decided to move his center of operations to the small Danish enclave, Serampore, situated on the Hooghli River, south of Calcutta. The Danes welcomed them, permitted them to preach, establish schools, and print the Scriptures in the native language.Carey’s vision consisted of three goals:
- Preaching the Gospel, and the founding of churches among the people of India.
- Bible translation, undoubtedly his greatest contribution.
- The training of young men and women, through the establishment of schools.
Added to these three main foci, however, we notice that over his 40 years of ministry, his social conscience pushed him to struggle against common practices such an infanticide, child marriages (girls as young as four years old), “sati” (widow burning - in 1802, 438 widows within a 30 mile radius of Calcutta perished on the funeral fires of their husbands}, and the lack of education for girls (Mangalwadi pp 31ff). For recreation he developed a large botanical garden for which he received seeds from all over the world. Six months after getting settled in Serampore he had a list of 427 species of plants in his garden (Miller p. 142).
At this time other missionary families joined him, most notably William Ward and Joshua Marshman. Carey’s vision was to form a community in which they would live and work together in harmony, sharing all they had with one another. These three, Carey, Marshman, and Ward worked together for the rest of their lives, and are known today at the “Serampore Trio.” Carey supervised the translating, Ward was the printer, and Marshman was an educator (though both Ward and Marshman also participated when they could in translation work). “Each acted as a complement to the others so perfectly and harmoniously that their living together tripled their work power. They had one household in common in Serampore until death, and stood by one another inseparably in weal and woe, during years of severe trial” (Miller, p. 75).
Even when the missionary community grew to 19 people they shared a common table, made decisions by majority vote, and forbade work for private gain. Each put anything they earned into a common stock and withdrew only what they needed. Any surplus (at times, considerable) went into the expenses of the Mission. Every Saturday evening they met together for prayer and to discuss family concerns. At these meetings they would deal with any differences of opinion that had arisen during the week and allocate duties for the next seven days (Drewery pp. 111, 122).
Carey was of such a mild temperament, he was not effective as a disciplinarian of his family. Dorothy’s mental state put her totally out of involvement. As a result, other members of the community , especially William Ward and Hannah Marshman, drew near to Carey’s four sons and were a great help to them.
Through his study of Bengali and Hindustani, Carey came to the conclusion that the most important language to learn was Sanskrit. This language was to India what Latin was to Europe, and is the mother language of Bengali. Carey wrote to an English friend, ‘I am learning the Sanskrit language which with only the helps to be procured here is perhaps the hardest language in the world” (Miller p. 63).
By April of 1796 (2 ½ years after arriving) he had been sufficiently fluent in Sanskrit to be comparing the Mahabarata, one of the two great Vedic epics, with Homer’s Iliad! “In order to be able to read fluently in the language, he translated a Sanskrit grammar and dictionary into English, and compiled his own Sanskrit/Bengali/English dictionary” (Drewery p. 90).
In 1800, the missionaries were overjoyed when the first native Indians confessed Christ and were baptized. Though it caused a riot among the Hindus the Christians received civil protection. The baptism was attended by the Governor, a number of Europeans, as well as a sprinkling of Hindus and Muslims. The next year the Bengali New Testament came off the press, the first book ever printed in that language. A copy was sent to the Kings of England and of Denmark, as well as the Earl of Spencer, who gave a large donation for the publication of the Old Testament.
That same year Carey received an invitation to be Professor of Oriental Languages at Fort William College in Calcutta, an institution founded to prepare young clerks of the East India Company who came out from England, a remarkable achievement for one who had had only six years of formal schooling and had resided in India only seven years! His generous salary was the major financial resource for the Mission.
Carey concentrated his translation work on Sanskrit and its derivatives, such as Bengalli, Hindustani, Marathi, Telinga, Kurmata, Orissa, Punjabee, Kashneera, Gujeratee, Nepalese, and Assam languages. He published grammars in all of them to aid other linguists. He collected material for a universal dictionary of the Oriental languages derived from the Sanskrit. At the time of Carey’s death, the entire Scriptures or parts of them had been translated into forty languages or dialects, including Chinese and the native language of Afghanistan. The Serapore Trio did many of them, but they used national linguists as well. More than 31,000,000 pages of the Old and New Testaments passed through the presses (Miller p. 116).
In 1807, his wife Dorothy died. He had loved her for many years and to the end treated her with the greatest affection and respect. Friends had wanted him to place her in an institution, but he refused. She was his wife, the mother of his children. Following her death, he married Lady Charlotte Rumohr, of a noble family of Denmark who had come to the settlement. A linguist in her own right, she was a great help to him and helped to fill his loneliness. “She shared with him what Marshman called ‘her blended Christian simplicity and patrician polish’” (Drewery p. 182).
In 1812, tragedy struck. A great fire roared through the print shop destroying precious type and manuscripts, including Carey’s dictionary of Sanskrit and its Indian cognates. Carey responded: “I wish to be still and know that the Lord He is God, and to bow to His will in everything. He will no doubt bring good out of this evil and make it promote His interests, but at present the providence is exceedingly dark” (Miller p. 117).
As the years went by the Trio began to establish schools, for both boys and girls, open to all including “outcastes” and Eurasians. By 1817, there were 45. The culmination of their educational effort was the founding of Serampore College for training Christian workers.
Carey lived to be 72. He never took a furlough. Four of his seven children lived to adulthood. Three became missionaries and one a civil servant. Starting out as a “nobody,” when he died one writer referred to him as “the very foremost name of our times in the whole Christian world” (Miller p. 152).
The young Scots missionary educator, Alexander Duff, visited Carey just before the pioneer’s death. Duff reviewed Carey’s long and famed missionary life. Finally the dying man whispered, “Pray,” which he did kneeling by Carey’s couch. When he was finished, the old man spoke to him in a solemn, gracious barely audible voice. “Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey. When I am gone say nothing about Dr. Carey – speak about Dr. Carey’s Savior” (Miller p. 148).
I close with his own words:
I have rejoiced that God has given me this great favor “to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” I would not change my station for all the societies in England, much as I prize them. Nor indeed for all the wealth of the world. May I but be useful in laying the foundation for the Church of Christ in India. I desire no greater reward and can receive no higher honor (Miller p. 152).
Bibliography
Drewery, Mary. William Carey. A Biography. Zondervan, 1978.Farquhar, J.N. Modern Religious movements in India. NY: Macmillan, 1951Mangalwadi, Vishal and ruth. The Legacy of William Carey. A Model for the Transformation of a Culture. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999.
Miller, Basil. William Carey, Cobbler to Missionary. Zondervan, 1952.
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