Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

was in his early years also a shoemaker, and member of Carey’s old church in Harvey Lane, when under the
great Robert Hall, who said to the youth’s father, “Your son, sir, will be a great scholar and a good preacher,
and he is a holy young man.” In 1814 he became the last of the young missionaries devoted to the cause by
Fuller, soon to pass away, Ryland, and Hall. Yates had not been many months at Serampore when, with the
approval of his brethren, Carey wrote to Fuller, on 17th May 1815: “I am much inclined to associate him with
myself in the translations. My labour is greater than at any former period. We have now translations of the
Bible going forward in twenty-seven languages, all of which are in the press except two or three. The labour of
correcting and revising all of them lies on me.” By September we find Yates writing: “Dr. Carey sends all the
Bengali proofs to me to review. I read them over, and if there is anything I do not understand, or think to be
wrong, I mark it. We then converse over it, and if it is wrong, he alters it; but if not, he shows me the reason
why it is right, and thus will initiate me into the languages as fast as I can learn them. He wishes me to begin
the Hindi very soon. Since I have been here I have read three volumes in Bengali, and they have but six of
consequence in prose. There are abundance in Sanskrit.” “Dr. Carey has treated me with the greatest affection
and kindness, and told me he will give me every information he can, and do anything in his power to promote
my happiness.” What Baruch was to the prophet Jeremiah, that Yates might have been to Carey, who went so
far in urging him to remain for life in Serampore as to say, “if he did not accept the service it would be, in his
judgment, acting against Providence, and the blessing of God was not to be expected.” Yates threw in his lot
with the younger men who, in Calcutta after Fuller’s death, began the Society’s as distinct from the Serampore
mission. If Carey was the Wyclif and Tyndale, Yates was the Coverdale of the Bengali and Sanskrit Bible.
Wenger, their successor, was worthy of both. Bengal still waits for the first native revision of the great work
which these successive pioneers have gradually improved. When shall Bengal see its own Luther?
The Bengali Bible was the first as it was the most important of the translations. The province, or lieutenantgovernorship
then had the same area as France, and contained more than double its population, or eighty
millions. Of the three principal vernaculars, Bengali is spoken by forty-five millions of Hindoos and Mohammedans.
It was for all the natives of Bengal and of India north of the Dekhan (“south”) tableland, but especially
for the Bengali-speaking people, that William Carey created a literary language a century ago.
The first Bengali version of the whole New Testament Carey translated from the original Greek before the
close of 1796. The only English commentary used was the Family Expositor of Doddridge, published in 1738,
and then the most critical in the language. Four times he revised the manuscript, with a Greek concordance in
his hand, and he used it not only with Ram Basu by his side, the most accomplished of early Bengali scholars,
but with the natives around him of all classes. By 1800 Ward had arrived as printer, the press was perfected
at Serampore, and the result of seven years of toil appeared in February 1801, in the first edition of 2000 copies,
costing £612. The printing occupied nine months. The type was set up by Ward and Carey’s son Felix with
their own hands; “for about a month at first we had a Brahman compositor, but we were quite weary of him.
We kept four pressmen constantly employed.” A public subscription had been opened for the whole Bengali
Bible at Rs. 32, or £4 a copy as exchange then was, and nearly fifty copies had been at once subscribed for. It
was this edition which immediately led to Carey’s appointment to the College of Fort William, and it was that
appointment which placed Carey in a position, philological and financial, to give the Bible to the peoples of
the farther East in their own tongue.
Some loving memories cluster round the first Bengali version of the New Testament which it is well to collect.
On Tuesday, 18th March 1800, Ward’s journal 19 records: “Brother Carey took an impression at the press of
the first page in Matthew.” The translator was himself the pressman. As soon as the whole of this Gospel was
19 The fervent printer thus wrote to his Hull friends: “To give to a man a New Testament who never saw it,
who has been reading lies as the Word of God; to give him these everlasting lines which angels would be
glad to read--this, this is my blessed work.”
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