Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

Felix Carey was a medical missionary of great skill, a printer of the Oriental languages trained by Ward, and a
scholar, especially in Sanskrit and Pali, Bengali and Burman, not unworthy of his father. He early commended
himself to the goodwill of the Rangoon Viceroy, and was of great use to Captain Canning in the successful
mission from the Governor-General in 1809. At his intercession the Viceroy gave him the life of a malefactor
who had hung for six hours on the cross. Reporting the incident to Ryland, Dr. Carey wrote that “crucifixion
is not performed on separate crosses, elevated to a considerable height, after the manner of the Romans; but
several posts are erected which are connected by a cross piece near the top, to which the hands are nailed,
and by another near the bottom, to which the feet are nailed in a horizontal direction.” He prepared a folio
dictionary of Burmese and Pali, translated several of the Buddhist Sootras into English, and several books of
Holy Scripture into the vernacular. His medical and linguistic skill so commended him to the king that he was
loaded with honours and sent as Burmese ambassador to the Governor-General in 1814, when he withdrew
from the Christian mission. On his way back up the Irawadi he alone was saved from the wreck of his boat, in
which his second wife and children and the MS. of his dictionary went down. Of this his eldest son, who “procured
His Majesty’s sanction for printing the Scriptures in the Burman and adjacent languages, which step he
highly approved,” and at the same time “the orders of my rank, which consist of a red umbrella with an ivory
top, gold betel box, gold lefeek cup, and a sword of state,” the father wrote lamenting to Ryland: “Felix is
shrivelled from a missionary into an ambassador.” To his third son the sorrowing father said: “The honours
he has received from the Burmese Government have not been beneficial to his soul. Felix is certainly not so
much esteemed since his visit as he was before it. It is a very distressing thing to be forced to apologise for
those you love.” Mr. Chater had removed to Ceylon to begin a mission in Colombo.
In July 1813, when Felix Carey was in Ava, two young Americans, Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, tempest-tossed
and fleeing before the persecution of the East India Company, found shelter in the Mission House
at Rangoon. Judson was one of a band of divinity students of the Congregational Church of New England,
whose zeal had almost compelled the institution of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He, his wife, and
colleague Rice had become Baptists by conviction on their way to Serampore, to the brotherhood of which
they had been commended. Carey and his colleagues made it “a point to guard against obtruding on missionary
brethren of different sentiments any conversation relative to baptism;” but Judson himself sent a note to
Carey requesting baptism by immersion. The result was the foundation at Boston of the American Baptist
Missionary Society, which was to win such triumphs in Burma and among the Karens. For a time, however,
Judson was a missionary from Serampore, and supported by the brotherhood. As such he wrote thus:
“RANGOON, Sept. 1, 1814.--Brother Ward wishes to have an idea of the probable expense of
each station; on which I take occasion to say that it would be more gratifying to me, as presenting
a less temptation, and as less dangerous to my habits of economy and my spiritual welfare,
to have a limited monthly allowance. I fear that, if I am allowed as much as I want, my wants
will enlarge with their gratification, and finally embrace many things, which at first I should
have thought incompatible with economical management, as well as with that character among
the heathen which it becomes the professed followers of Him who for our sakes became poor,
even to sustain. It is better for a missionary, especially a young man, to have rather too little
than rather too much. Your case, on coming out from England, was quite different from mine.
You had all that there was, and were obliged to make the most of it.
“If these things meet the ideas of the brethren, I will be obliged to them to say, what sum, in
Sicca Rupees, payable in Bengal, they think sufficient for a small family in Rangoon--sufficient
to meet all common expenses, and indeed all that will be incurred at present, except that of passages
by sea. You have all the accounts before you, especially of things purchased in Bengal,
which I have not; and from having seen the mission pass through various changes, will be more
competent to make an estimate of expense than I am. And while you are making this estimate
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