Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

husband. It was too dark to distinguish the miserable victim... On going out to walk with Martyn
to the pagoda, the noise so unnatural, and so little calculated to excite joy, raised in my mind an
awful sense of the presence and influence of evil spirits.”
Corrie married the daughter of Mrs. Ellerton, who knew Serampore and Carey well. It was Mr. Ellerton who,
when an indigo-planter at Malda, opened the first Bengali school, and made the first attempt at translating
the Bible into that vernacular. His young wife, early made a widow, witnessed accidentally the duel in which
Warren Hastings shot Philip Francis. She was an occasional visitor at Aldeen, and took part in the pagoda
services. Fifty years afterwards, not long before her death at eighty-seven, Bishop Wilson, whose guest she
was, wrote of her: “She made me take her to Henry Martyn’s pagoda. She remembers the neighbourhood, and
Gharetty Ghat and House in Sir Eyre Coote’s time (1783). The ancient Governor of Chinsurah and his fat
Dutch wife are still in her mind. When she visited him with her first husband (she was then sixteen) the old
Dutchman cried out, ‘Oh, if you would find me such a nice little wife I would give you ten thousand rupees.’”
It was in Martyn’s pagoda that Claudius Buchanan first broached his plan of an ecclesiastical establishment
for India, and invited the discussion of it by Carey and his colleagues. Such a scheme came naturally from one
who was the grandson of a Presbyterian elder of the Church of Scotland, converted in the Whitefield revival at
Cambuslang. It had been suggested first by Bishop Porteous when he reviewed the Company’s acquisitions in
Asia. It was encouraged by Lord Wellesley, who was scandalised on his arrival in India by the godlessness of
the civil servants and the absence of practically any provision for the Christian worship and instruction of its
officers and soldiers, who were all their lives without religion, not a tenth of them ever returning home. Carey
thus wrote, at Ryland’s request, of the proposal, which resulted in the arrival in Calcutta of Bishop Middleton
and Dr. Bryce in 1814: “I have no opinion of Dr. Buchanan’s scheme for a religious establishment here, nor
could I from memory point out what is exceptionable in his memoir. All his representations must be taken
with some grains of allowance.” When, in the Aldeen discussions, Dr. Buchanan told Marshman that the
temple lands would eventually answer for the established churches and the Brahmans’ lands for the chaplains,
the stout Nonconformist replied with emphasis, “You will never obtain them.” We may all accept the
conversion of the idol shrine into a place of prayer--as Gregory I. taught Augustine of Canterbury to transform
heathen temples into Christian churches--as presaging the time when the vast temple and mosque endowments
will be devoted by the people themselves to their own moral if not spiritual good through education,
both religious and secular.
The change wrought in seventeen years by Carey and such associates as these on society in Bengal, both rich
and poor, became marked by the year 1810. We find him writing of it thus: “When I arrived I knew of no person
who cared about the Gospel except Mr. Brown, Mr. Udny, Mr. Creighton, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Brown an
indigo-planter, besides Brother Thomas and myself. There might be more, and probably were, though unknown
to me. There are now in India thirty-two ministers of the Gospel. Indeed, the Lord is doing great
things for Calcutta; and though infidelity abounds, yet religion is the theme of conversation or dispute in almost
every house. A few weeks ago (October 1810), I called upon one of the Judges to take breakfast with
him, and going rather abruptly upstairs, as I had been accustomed to do, I found the family just going to engage
in morning worship. I was of course asked to engage in prayer, which I did. I afterwards told him that I
had scarcely witnessed anything since I had been in Calcutta which gave me more pleasure than what I had
seen that morning. The change in this family was an effect of Mr. Thomason’s ministry... About ten days ago I
had a conversation with one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, Sir John Boyd, upon religious subjects. Indeed
there is now scarcely a place where you can pay a visit without having an opportunity of saying
something about true religion.”
Carey’s friendly intercourse, by person and letter, was not confined to those who were aggressively Christian
or to Christian and ecclesiastical questions. As we shall soon see, his literary and scientific pursuits led him to
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