The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker and Missionary Part 20

"The duties connected with the College of Fort William afforded him a change of scene, which relieved his mind, and gave him opportunities of taking exercise, and conduced much to his health. During the several years he held the situation of professor to the college, no consideration would allow him to neglect his attendance; and though he had to encounter boisterous weather in crossing the river at unseasonable hours, he was punctual in his attendance, and never applied for leave of absence. And when he was qualified by the rules of the service to retire on a handsome pension, he preferred being actively employed in promoting the interests of the college, and remained, a.s.siduously discharging his duties, till his department was abolished by Government. The business of the college requiring his attendance in Calcutta, he became so habituated to his journeys to and fro, that at his age he painfully felt the retirement he was subjected to when his office ceased. After this circ.u.mstance his health rapidly declined; and though he occasionally visited Calcutta, he complained of extreme debility. This increased daily, and made him a constant sufferer; until at length he was not able to leave his house."

Nor was it in India alone that the venerable saint found such causes of satisfaction. He lived long enough to thank G.o.d for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves by the English people, for which he had prayed daily for fifty years.

We have many sketches of the Father of English Missions in his later years by young contemporaries who, on their first arrival in Bengal, sought him out. In 1824 Mr. Leslie, an Edinburgh student, who became in India the first of Baptist preachers, and was the means of the conversion of Henry Havelock who married Dr. Marshman's youngest daughter, wrote thus of Carey after the third great illness of his Indian life:--

"Dr. Carey, who has been very ill, is quite recovered, and bids fair to live many years; and as for Dr. Marshman, he has never known ill-health is, during the whole period of his residence in India. They are both active to a degree which you would think impossible in such a country.

Dr. Carey is a very equable and cheerful old man, in countenance very like the engraving of him with his pundit, though not so robust as he appears to be there. Next to his translations Botany is his grand study. He has collected every plant and tree in his garden that will possibly grow in India, and is so scientific withal that he calls everything by its cla.s.sical name. If, therefore, I should at any time blunder out the word Geranium, he would say Pelargonium, and perhaps accuse me of ignorance, or blame me for vulgarity. We had the pleasure of hearing him preach from Rom. vii. 13, when he gave us an excellent sermon. In manner he is very animated, and in style very methodical.

Indeed he carries method into everything he does; cla.s.sification is his grand hobby, and wherever anything can be cla.s.sified, there you find Dr. Carey; not only does he cla.s.sify and arrange the roots of plants and words, but visit his dwelling and you find he has fitted up and cla.s.sified shelves full of minerals, stones, sh.e.l.ls, etc., and cages full of birds. He is of very easy access, and great familiarity. His attachments are strong, and extend not merely to persons but places.

About a year ago, so much of the house in which he had lived ever since he had been at Serampore, fell down so that he had to leave it, at which he wept bitterly. One morning at breakfast, he was relating to us an anecdote of the generosity of the late excellent John Thornton, at the remembrance of whom the big tear filled his eye. Though it is an affecting sight to see the venerable man weep; yet it is a sight which greatly interests you, as there is a manliness in his tears--something far removed from the crying of a child."

The house in which for the last ten years he lived, and where he died, was the only one of two or three, planned for the new professors of the college, that was completed. Compared with the adjoining college it was erected with such severe simplicity that it was said to have been designed for angels rather than for men. Carey's room and library looked towards the river with the breadth of the college garden between. On the other side, in the upper verandah, in the morning he worked at his desk almost to the last, and in the evening towards sunset he talked with his visitors. In 1826 the London Missionary Society sent out to Calcutta the first of its deputations. Dr. Carey sent his boat for them, and in the absence of her husband in England, Mrs. Marshman entertained the guests. They wrote:--

"We found Dr. Carey in his study, and we were both pleased and struck with his primitive, and we may say, apostolical appearance. He is short of stature, his hair white, his countenance equally bland and benevolent in feature and expression. Two Hindoo men were sitting by, engaged in painting some small subjects in natural history, of which the doctor, a man of pure taste and highly intellectual cast of feeling, irrespective of his more learned pursuits, has a choice collection, both in specimens and pictorial representations. Botany is a favourite study with him, and his garden is curiously enriched with rarities."

Of all the visits paid to Carey none are now so interesting to the historian of the Church of India, as those of the youth who succeeded him as he had succeeded Schwartz. Alexander Duff was twenty-four years of age when, in 1830, full of hesitation as to carrying out his own plans in opposition to the experience of all the missionaries he had consulted, he received from Carey alone the most earnest encouragement to pursue in Calcutta the Christian college policy so well begun in the less central settlement of Serampore. We have elsewhere[32] told the story:--

"Landing at the college ghaut one sweltering July day, the still ruddy highlander strode up to the flight of steps that leads to the finest modern building in Asia. Turning to the left, he sought the study of Carey in the house--'built for angels,' said one, so simple is it--where the greatest of missionary scholars was still working for India. There he beheld what seemed to be a little yellow old man in a white jacket, who tottered up to the visitor of whom he had already often heard, and with outstretched hands solemnly blessed him. A contemporary soon after wrote thus of the childlike saint--

"'Thou'rt in our heart--with tresses thin and grey, And eye that knew the Book of Life so well, And brow serene, as thou wert wont to stray Amidst thy flowers--like Adam ere he fell.'

"The result of the conference was a double blessing; for Carey could speak with the influence at once of a scholar who had created the best college at that time in the country, and of a vernacularist who had preached to the people for half a century. The young Scotsman left his presence with the approval of the one authority whose opinion was best worth having...

"Among those who visited him in his last illness was Alexander Duff, the Scots missionary. On one of the last occasions on which he saw him--if not the very last--he spent some time talking chiefly about Carey's missionary life, till at length the dying man whispered, Pray.

Duff knelt down and prayed, and then said Good-bye. As he pa.s.sed from the room, he thought he heard a feeble voice p.r.o.nouncing his name, and, turning, he found that he was recalled. He stepped back accordingly, and this is what he heard, spoken with a gracious solemnity: '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 Saviour.' Duff went away rebuked and awed, with a lesson in his heart that he never forgot."[33]

When with his old friends he dwelt much on the past. Writing of May 1832, Dr. Marshman mentioned: "I spent an hour at tea with dear Brother Carey last night, now seventy and nine months. He was in the most comfortable state of health, talking over his first feelings respecting India and the heathen, and the manner in which G.o.d kept them alive, when even Fuller could not yet enter into them, and good old John Ryland (the doctor's father) denounced them as unscriptural. Had these feelings died away, in what a different state might India now have been!" In September of that year, when burying Mrs. Ward, he seemed, in his address at the grave, to long for renewed intercourse with the friends who had preceded him in entering into the joy of the Lord.

On Mr. Leechman's arrival from Scotland to be his colleague, he found the old man thus vigorous even in April 1833, or if "faint, yet pursuing":--

"Our venerable Dr. Carey is in excellent health, and takes his turn in all our public exercises. Just forty years ago, the first of this month, he administered the Lord's Supper to the church at Leicester, and started on the morrow to embark for India. Through this long period of honourable toil the Lord has mercifully preserved him; and at our missionary prayer meeting, held on the first of this month, he delivered an interesting address to encourage us to persevere in the work of the Lord. We have also a private monthly prayer meeting held in Dr. Carey's study, which is to me a meeting of uncommon interest. On these occasions we particularly spread before the Lord our public and private trials, both those which come upon us from the cause of Christ, with which it is our honour and privilege to be connected, and those also which we as individuals are called to bear. At our last meeting Dr. Carey read part of the history of Gideon, and commented with deep feeling on the encouragement which that history affords, that the cause of G.o.d can be carried on to victory and triumph, by feeble and apparently inefficient means."

Carey's successor, Mack, wrote thus to Christopher Anderson ten months later:--

"SERAMPORE, 31st January 1834.--Our venerable father, Dr. Carey, is yet continued to us, but in the same state in which he has been for the last three months or so. He is quite incapable of work, and very weak.

He can walk but a few yards at a time, and spends the day in reading for profit and entertainment, and in occasionally nodding and sleeping.

He is perfectly tranquil in mind. His imagination does not soar much in vivid antic.i.p.ations of glory; and it never disquiets him with restless misgivings respecting his inheritance in G.o.d. To him it is everything that the gospel is true, and he believes it; and, as he says, if he can say he knows anything, he knows that he believes it.

When his attention is turned to his dismissal from earth, or his hope of glory, his emotions are tender and sweet. They are also very simple, and express themselves in a few brief and pithy sentences. His interest in all the affairs of the mission is unabated, and although he can no longer join us either in deliberation or a.s.sociated prayer, he must be informed of all that occurs, and his heart is wholly with us in whatever we do. I do not conceive it possible that he can survive the ensuing hot season, but he may, and the Lord will do in this as in all other things what is best.

"When our necessities were coming to their climax I concluded that I must leave Serampore in order to find food to eat, and I fixed upon Cherra-poonjee as my future residence. I proposed establis.h.i.+ng a first-cla.s.s school there, and then with some warmth of imagination I began antic.i.p.ating a sort of second edition of Serampore up in the Khasia hills, to be a centre of diffusing light in the western provinces. I became really somewhat enamoured of the phantom of my imagination, but it was not to be. The brethren here would not see it as I did."

This last sketch, by Mr. Gogerly, whom the London Missionary Society had sent out in 1819, brings us still nearer the end:--

"At this time I paid him my last visit. He was seated near his desk, in the study, dressed in his usual neat attire; his eyes were closed, and his hands clasped together. On his desk was the proof-sheet of the last chapter of the New Testament, which he had revised a few days before. His appearance, as he sat there, with the few white locks which adorned his venerable brow, and his placid colourless face, filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared as then listening to the Master's summons, and as waiting to depart. I sat, in his presence, for about half an hour, and not one word was uttered; for I feared to break that solemn silence, and call back to earth the soul that seemed almost in heaven. At last, however, I spoke; and well do I remember the identical words that pa.s.sed between us, though more than thirty-six years have elapsed since then. I said, 'My dear friend, you evidently are standing on the borders of the eternal world; do not think it wrong, then, if I ask, What are your feelings in the immediate prospect of death?' The question roused him from his apparent stupor, and opening his languid eyes, he earnestly replied, 'As far as my personal salvation is concerned, I have not the shadow of a doubt; I know in Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day; but when I think that I am about to appear in the presence of a holy G.o.d, and remember all my sins and manifold imperfections--I tremble.' He could say no more. The tears trickled down his cheeks, and after a while he relapsed into the same state of silence from which I had aroused him.

"Deeply solemn was that interview, and important the lesson I then received. Here was one of the most holy and harmless men whom I ever knew--who had lived above the breath of calumny for upwards of forty years, surrounded by and in close intimacy with many, both Europeans and natives, who would have rejoiced to have witnessed any inconsistency in his conduct, but who were constrained to admire his integrity and Christian character--whilst thus convinced of the certainty of his salvation, through the merits of that Saviour whom he had preached, yet so impressed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin, that he trembled at the thought of appearing before a holy G.o.d! A few days after this event, Dr. Carey retired to his bed, from which he never rose."

So long before this as 17th March 1802, Carey had thus described himself to Dr. Ryland:--"A year or more ago you, or some other of my dear friends, mentioned an intention of publis.h.i.+ng a volume of sermons as a testimony of mutual Christian love, and wished me to send a sermon or two for that purpose. I have seriously intended it, and more than once sat down to accomplish it, but have as constantly been broken off from it. Indolence is my prevailing sin, and to that are now added a number of avocations which I never thought of; I have also so continual a fear that I may at last fall some way or other so as to dishonour the Gospel that I have often desired that my name may be buried in oblivion; and indeed I have reason for those fears, for I am so p.r.o.ne to sin that I wonder every night that I have been preserved from foul crimes through the day, and when I escape a temptation I esteem it to be a miracle of grace which has preserved me. I never was so fully persuaded as I am now that no habit of religion is a security from falling into the foulest crimes, and I need the immediate help of G.o.d every moment. The sense of my continual danger has, I confess, operated strongly upon me to induce me to desire that no publication of a religious nature should be published as mine whilst I am alive.

Another reason is my sense of incapacity to do justice to any subject, or even to write good sense. I have, it is true, been obliged to publish several things, and I can say that nothing but necessity could have induced me to do it. They are, however, only grammatical works, and certainly the very last things which I should have written if I could have chosen for myself."

On 15th June 1833 the old man was still able to rejoice with others. He addressed to his son Jonathan the only brief letter which the present writer possesses from his pen, in a hand as clear as that of a quarter of a century before:--

"MY DEAR JONATHAN--I congratulate you upon the good news you have received. But am sorry Lucy continues so ill. I am too weak to write more than to say your mother is as well as the weather will permit us to expect. I could scarcely have been worse to live than I have been the last fortnight.--Your affectionate father, W. CAREY."

The hot season had then reached its worst.

His last letters were brief messages of love and hope to his two sisters in England. On 27th July 1833 he wrote to them:--

"About a week ago so great a change took place in me that I concluded it was the immediate stroke of death, and all my children were informed of it and have been here to see me. I have since that revived in an almost miraculous manner, or I could not have written this. But I cannot expect it to continue. The will of the Lord be done. Adieu, till I meet you in a better world.--Your affectionate brother, "W.

CAREY."

Two months later he was at his old work, able "now and then to read a proof sheet of the Scriptures."

"SERAMPORE, 25th Sept. 1833.

"MY DEAR SISTERS--My being able to write to you now is quite unexpected by me, and, I believe, by every one else; but it appears to be the will of G.o.d that I should continue a little time longer. How long that may be I leave entirely with Him, and can only say, 'All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.' I was, two months or more ago, reduced to such a state of weakness that it appeared as if my mind was extinguished; and my weakness of body, and sense of extreme fatigue and exhaustion, were such that I could scarcely speak, and it appeared that death would be no more felt than the removing from one chair to another. I am now able to sit and to lie on my couch, and now and then to read a proof sheet of the Scriptures. I am too weak to walk more than just across the house, nor can I stand even a few minutes without support. I have every comfort that kind friends can yield, and feel, generally, a tranquil mind. I trust the great point is settled, and I am ready to depart; but the time when, I leave with G.o.d.

"3rd Oct.--I am not worse than when I began this letter.--I am, your very affectionate brother, WM. CAREY."

His latest message to Christendom was sent on the 30th September, most appropriately to Christopher Anderson:--"As everything connected with the full accomplishment of the divine promises depends on the almighty power of G.o.d, pray that I and all the ministers of the Word may take hold of His strength, and go about our work as fully expecting the accomplishment of them all, which, however difficult and improbable it may appear, is certain, as all the promises of G.o.d are in Him, yea, and in Him, Amen." Had he not, all his career, therefore expected and attempted great things?

He had had a chair fixed on a small platform, constructed after his own direction, that he might be wheeled through his garden. At other times the chief gardener Hullodhur, reported to him the state of the collection of plants, then numbering about 2000. Dr. Marshman saw his friend daily, sometimes twice a day, and found him always what Lord Hastings had described him to be--"the cheerful old man." On the only occasion on which he seemed sad, Dr. Marshman as he was leaving the room turned and asked why. With deep feeling the dying scholar looked to the others and said, "After I am gone Brother Marshman will turn the cows into my garden." The reply was prompt, "Far be it from me; though I have not your botanical tastes, the care of the garden in which you have taken so much delight, shall be to me a sacred duty."[34]

Of strangers his most frequent visitor was the Governor-General's wife, Lady William Bentinck. Her husband was in South India, and she spent most of her time in Barrackpore Park retreat opposite to Carey's house.

From her frequent converse with him, in his life as well as now, she studied the art of dying. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, learned to delight in Serampore almost from the beginning of his long episcopate, and in later years he lived there more than in Calcutta.

On the 14th February 1833 he first visited Carey, "his interview with whom, confined as he was to his room, and apparently on the verge of the celestial world, was peculiarly affecting." In the last of subsequent visits the young Bishop asked the dying missionary's benediction. With all the talk was the same, a humble resignation to the will of G.o.d, firm trust in the Redeemer of sinners, a joyful grat.i.tude for the wonderful progress of His Kingdom. What a picture is this that his brethren sent home six weeks before he pa.s.sed away. "Our aged and venerable brother feels himself growing gradually weaker. He can scarcely rise from his couch, and it is with great difficulty that he is carried out daily to take the air. Yet he is free from all pain as to disease, and his mind is in a most serene and happy state. He is in full possession of his faculties, and, although with difficulty, on account of his weakness, he still converses with his friends from day to day."

The hottest season of the year crept wearily on during the month of May and the first week of June. Each night he slept well, and each day he was moved to his couch in the dining-room for air. There he lay, unable to articulate more than a word or two, but expressing by his joyful features union in prayer and interest in conversation. On the 22nd May the English mail arrived with gladdening intelligence from Mr.

Hope--G.o.d's people were praying and giving anew for the mission.

Especially was his own latest station of Cherra-poonjee remembered. As he was told that a lady, anonymously, had offered 500 for that mission, 500 for the college, 500 for the translations, and 100 for the mission generally, he raised his emaciated hands to heaven and murmured praise to G.o.d. When the delirium of departure came he strove to reach his desk that he might write a letter of thanks, particularly for Cherra. Then he would recall the fact that the little church he at first formed had branched out into six and twenty churches, in which the ordinances of the Gospel were regularly administered, and he would whisper, "What has G.o.d wrought!"

The last Sabbath had come--and the last full day. The constant Marshman was with him. "He was scarcely able to articulate, and after a little conversation I knelt down by the side of his couch and prayed with him. Finding my mind unexpectedly drawn out to bless G.o.d for His goodness, in having preserved him and blessed him in India for above forty years, and made him such an instrument of good to His church; and to entreat that on his being taken home, a double portion of his spirit might rest on those who remained behind; though unable to speak, he testified sufficiently by his countenance how cordially he joined in this prayer. I then asked Mrs. Carey whether she thought he could now see me. She said yes, and to convince me, said, 'Mr. Marshman wishes to know whether you now see him?' He answered so loudly that I could hear him, 'Yes, I do,' and shook me most cordially by the hand. I then left him, and my other duties did not permit me to reach him again that day. The next morning, as I was returning home before sunrise, I met our Brethren Mack and Leechman out on their morning ride, when Mack told me that our beloved brother had been rather worse all the night, and that he had just left him very ill. I immediately hastened home, through the college in which he has lived these ten years, and when I reached his room, found that he had just entered into the joy of his Lord--Mrs. Carey, his son Jabez, my son John, and Mrs. Mack being present."

It was Monday the 9th June 1834, at half-past five, as the morning sun was ascending the heavens towards the perfect day. The rain-clouds burst and covered the land with gloom next morning when they carried William Carey to the converts' burial-ground and made great lamentation. The notice was too short for many to come up from Calcutta in those days. "Mr. Duff, of the Scottish Church, returned a most kind letter." Sir Charles Metcalfe and the Bishop wrote very feelingly in reply. Lady Bentinck sent the Rev. Mr. Fisher to represent the Governor-General and herself, and "a most kind and feeling answer, for she truly loved the venerable man," while she sadly gazed at the mourners as they followed the simple funeral up the right bank of the Hoogli, past the College and the Mission chapel. Mr.

Yates, who had taken a loving farewell of the scholar he had been reluctant to succeed, represented the younger brethren; Lacroix, Micaiah Hill, and Gogerly, the London Missionary Society. Corrie and Dealtry do not seem to have reached the spot in time. The Danish Governor, his wife, and the members of council were there, and the flag drooped half-mast high as on the occasion of a Governor's death. The road was lined by the poor, Hindoo and Mohammedan, for whom he had done so much. When all, walking in the rain, had reached the open grave, the sun shone out, and Leechman led them in the joyous resurrection hymn, "Why do we mourn departing friends?" "I then addressed the audience," wrote Marshman, "and, contrary to Brother Mack's foretelling that I should never get through it for tears, I did not shed one.

Brother Mack was then asked to address the native members, but he, seeing the time so far gone, publicly said he would do so at the village. Brother Robinson then prayed, and weeping--then neither myself nor few besides could refrain." In Jannuggur village chapel in the evening the Bengali burial hymn was sung, P[oe]ritran Christer Morone, "Salvation by the death of Christ," and Pran Krishna, the oldest disciple, led his countrymen in prayer. Then Mack spoke to the weeping converts with all the pathos of their own sweet vernacular from the words, "For David, after he had served his own generation, by the will of G.o.d fell on sleep." Had not Carey's been a royal career, even that of a king and a priest unto G.o.d?

"We, as a mission," wrote Dr. Marshman to Christopher Anderson, "took the expense on ourselves, not suffering his family to do so, as we shall that of erecting a monument for him. Long before his death we had, by a letter signed by us all, a.s.sured him that the dear relatives, in England and France, should have their pensions continued as though he were living, and that Mrs. Carey, as a widow, should have Rs. 100 monthly, whatever Mackintosh's house might yield her."

Twenty-two years before, when Chamberlain was complaining because of the absence of stone, or brick, or inscription in the mission burial-ground, Carey had said, "Why should we be remembered? I think when I am dead the sooner I am forgotten the better." Dr. Johns observed that it is not the desire of the persons themselves but of their friends for them, to which Carey replied, "I think of others in that respect as I do of myself." When his second wife was taken from him, his affection so far prevailed that he raised a memorial stone, and in his will left this "order" to Mack and William Robinson, his executors: "I direct that my funeral be as plain as possible; that I be buried by the side of my second wife, Charlotte Emilia Carey; and that the following inscription and nothing more may be cut on the stone which commemorates her, either above or below, as there may be room, viz.:--

WILLIAM CAREY, BORN AUGUST 17, 1761; DIED

A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, On Thy kind arms I fall."

The surviving brethren seem to have taken the small oblong stone, with the inscription added as directed, and to have placed it on the south side of the domed square block of brick and white plaster--since renewed from time to time--which stands in the left corner of the G.o.d's-acre, now consecrated by the mingled dust of four generations of missionaries, converts, and Christian people. Ward's monument stands in the centre, and that of the Marshman family at the right hand. Three and a half years afterwards Joshua Marshman followed Carey; not till 1847 was Hannah Marshman laid beside him, after a n.o.ble life of eighty years. Mack had gone the year before, cut off by cholera like Ward.

But the brotherhood cannot be said to have ended till John Marshman, C.S.I., died in London in 1877. From first to last the three families contributed to the cause of G.o.d from their own earnings, ninety thousand pounds, and the world would never have known it but for the lack of the charity that envieth not on the part of Andrew Fuller's successors.

Carey's last will and testament begins: "I utterly disclaim all or any right or t.i.tle to the premises at Serampore, called the mission premises, and every part and parcel thereof; and do hereby declare that I never had, or supposed myself to have, any such right or t.i.tle. I give and bequeath to the College of Serampore the whole of my museum, consisting of minerals, sh.e.l.ls, corals, insects, and other natural curiosities, and a Hortus Siccus; also the folio edition of Hortus Woburnensis, which was presented to me by Lord Hastings; Taylor's Hebrew Concordance, my collection of Bibles in foreign languages, and all my books in the Italian and German languages." His widow, Grace, who survived him a short time, had the little capital that was hers before her marriage to him, and he desired that she would choose from his library whatever English books she valued. His youngest son, Jonathan, was not in want of money. He had paid Felix and William Rs.

1500 each in his lifetime. In order to leave a like sum to Jabez, he thus provided: "From the failure of funds to carry my former intentions into effect, I direct that my library be sold." In dying as in living he is the same--just to others because self-devoted to Him to whom he thus formally willed himself, "On Thy kind arms I fall."