Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their work, dream that this fire would prove to be the means
of making them and their work famous all over Europe and America as well as India. Men of every Christian
school, and men interested only in the literary and secular side of their enterprise, had their active sympathy
called out. The mere money loss, at the exchange of the day, was not under ten thousand pounds. In fifty days
this was raised in England and Scotland alone, till Fuller, returning from his last campaign, entered the room
of his committee, declaring “we must stop the contributions.” In Greenock, for instance, every place of worship
on one Sunday collected money. In the United States Mr. Robert Ralston, a Presbyterian, a merchant of
Philadelphia, who as Carey’s correspondent had been the first American layman to help missions to India,
and Dr. Staughton, who had taken an interest in the formation of the Society in 1792 before he emigrated,
had long assisted the translation work, and now that Judson was on his way out they redoubled their exertions.
In India Thomason’s own congregation sent the missionaries £800, and Brown wrote from his dying
bed a message of loving help. The newspapers of Calcutta caught the enthusiasm; one leading article concluded
with the assurance that the Serampore press would, “like the phoenix of antiquity, rise from its ashes,
winged with new strength, and destined, in a lofty and long-enduring flight, widely to diffuse the benefits of
knowledge throughout the East.” The day after the fire ceased to smoke Monohur was at the task of casting
type from the lumps of the molten metal.
In two months after the first intelligence Fuller was able to send as “feathers of the phoenix” slips of sheets of
the Tamil Testament, printed from these types, to the towns and churches which had subscribed. Every fortnight
a fount was cast; in a month all the native establishment was at work night and day. In six months the
whole loss in Oriental types was repaired. The Ramayana version and Sanskrit polyglot dictionary were never
resumed. But of the Bible translations and grammars, Carey and his two heroic brethren wrote: “We found,
on making the trial, that the advantages in going over the same ground a second time were so great that they
fully counter-balanced the time requisite to be devoted thereto in a second translation.” The fire, in truth, the
cause of which was never discovered, and insurance against which did not exist in India, had given birth to
revised editions.
125