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Genealogy IndexChapter XVI. Table of Contents
Smith, George, C.I.E., LL.D.
Life Of William Carey - Shoemaker & Missionary
Footnotes
1 Iphicrates, great Athenian
general, who was the son of a shoemaker, used this saying, fit motto for
Carey, έξ οζων εζς οζα. {Font=Courier New Greek}
2 The shopmate,
William Manning, preserved this signboard. In 1881 we found a Baptist
shoemaker, a descendant of Carey's wife, with four assistants, at work in
the shed. Then an old man, who had occasionally worked under Carey, had
just died, and he used to tell how Carey had once flipped him with his
apron when he had allowed the wax to boil over.
3 In the library
of the late Rev. T. Toller of Kettering was a manuscript (now in the
library of Bristol Baptist College) of nine small octavo pages, evidently
in the exquisitely small and legible handwriting of Carey, on the Psalter.
The short treatise discusses the literary character and authorship of the
Psalms in the style of Michaelis and Bishop Lowth, whose writings are
referred to. The Hebrew words used are written even more beautifully than
the English. If this little work was written before Carey went to
India--and the caligraphy seems to point to that--the author shows a very
early familiarity with the writings of one who was his predecessor as a
Christian Orientalist, Sir William Jones. The closing paragraph has this
sentence:--"A frequent perusal of the book of Psalms is recommended to
all. We should permit few days to pass without reading in Hebrew one of
those sacred poems; the more they are read and studied, the more will they
delight, edify, and instruct."
4 Twice reprinted, in Leicester,
and in London (1892) in facsimile.
5 Wealth of Nations,
Book IV., Chap. VII.
6 Mr. Thomas Haddon of Clipstone writes: "I
recollect when I was about ten years old, at my father's house; it was on
a Saturday, Carey was on his way to Arnsby (which is twenty miles from
Moulton) to supply there the following Sabbath; he had then walked from
Moulton to Clipstone, a distance of ten miles, and had ten miles further
to walk to Arnsby. My honoured father had been intimately acquainted with
him for some years before, and he pressed him to stay and take an early
cup of tea before he went further. I well recollect my father saying to
him, 'I suppose you still work at your trade?' (which was that of an army
and navy shoemaker). Mr. Carey replied: 'No, indeed, I do not; for
yesterday week I took in my work to Kettering, and Mr. Gotch came into the
warehouse just as I had emptied my bag. He took up one of the shoes and
said, "Let me see, Carey, how much do you earn a week?" I said, "About
9s., sir." Mr. Gotch then said: "I have a secret to tell you, which is
this: I do not intend you should spoil any more of my leather, but you may
proceed as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and I will
allow you from my own private purse 10s. a week!" With that sum and about
5s. a week which I get from my people at Moulton, I can make a comfortable
living' (although at that time he had a wife and three children to provide
for)."
7 Farewell Letters on Returning to Bengal in 1821.
8 Rev. A. T. Clarke succeeded Kiernander in 1789 in the Old or
Mission Church, according to Miss Blechynden's Calcutta Past and
Present (1905), p. 84.
9 At this time, and up to 1801, the
last survivor of the Black Hole tragedy was living in Calcutta and bore
his own name, though the missionary knew it not. Mrs. Carey was a
country-born woman, who, when a girl, had married an officer of one of the
East Indiamen, and with him, her mother, and sister, had been shut up in
the Black Hole, where, while they perished, she is said to have retained
life by swallowing her tears. Dr. Bishop, of Merchant Taylors'
School--Clive's School--wrote Latin verses on the story, which thus
conclude--
"...Nescit sitiendo perire
10 But not its Church. In October 1796 Mr. A.
Johnstone, thirty years elder in Lady Yester's congregation, beside the
University of Edinburgh, began a prayer meeting for Carey's work and for
foreign missions. He was summoned to the Presbytery, and there questioned
as if he had been a "Black-neb" or revolutionary. This meeting led to the
foundation of the Sabbath School and Destitute Sick Societies in
Edinburgh. See Lives of the Haldanes.
Cui sic dat lacrymas quas
bibat ipsa fides."
--See Echoes from Old Calcutta, by Dr.
Busteed, C.I.E.
11 Dr. Marshman's
English translation is still used, beginning--
"Oh! thou my soul forget no more
12 The chatookee is a bird which, they say,
drinks not at the streams below: but when it rains, opening its bill, it
catches the drops as they fall from the clouds.
The Friend who all thy
misery bore."
13 The sight of
the red coat of the military surgeon who attended him gave this form to
his delirious talk: "I treated him very roughly and refused to touch his
medicine. In vain did he retire and put on a black coat. I knew him and
was resolved."
14 In a criticism of the three Sanskrit grammars of
Carey, Wilkins, and Colebrooke, the first number of the Quarterly
Review in 1809 pronounces the first "everywhere useful, laborious, and
practical. Mr. Wilkins has also discussed these subjects, though not
always so amply as the worthy and unwearied missionary. We have been much
pleased with Dr. Carey's very sensible preface."
15 It was
reserved for a young Orientalist, whom the career of Carey and Wilson of
Bombay attracted to the life of a Christian missionary, to do full justice
to this book and its literature. In 1885 the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer,
M.A., published, at the Cambridge University Press, his Kalilah and
Dimnah, or The Fables of Bidpai: Being an Account of their Literary
History, with an English Translation of the later Syriac Version of the
Same, and Notes. The heroic scholar and humble follower of Christ,
having given himself and his all to found a Mission to the Mohammedans of
South Arabia, at Sheikh Othman, near Aden, died there, on 11th May 1887, a
death which will bring life to Yemen, through his memory, and the Mission
which he founded, his family support, and the United Free Church of
Scotland carry on in his name.
16 THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS,
MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE
First
Published in
1801. BENGALI--New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9.
1811. Ooriya " " in 1819.
1824. Maghadi " only.
1815-19. Assamese " " in 1832.
1824. Khasi.
1814-24. Manipoori.
1808. SANSKRIT " " in 1811-18.
1809-11. HINDI " " in 1813-18.
1822-32. Bruj-bhasa " only.
1815-22. Kanouji " "
1820. Khosali--Gospel of Matthew only.
1822. Oodeypoori--New Testament only.
1815. Jeypoori "
1821. Bhugeli "
1821. Marwari "
1822. Haraoti "
1823. Bikaneri "
1823. Oojeini "
1824. Bhatti "
1832. Palpa "
1826. Kumaoni "
1832. Gurhwali "
1821. Nepalese "
1811. MARATHI-- " Old Testament in 1820.
1820. Goojarati " only.
1819. Konkan " Pentateuch in 1821.
1815. PANJABI " " and Historical Books in 1822.
1819. Mooltani--New Testament.
1825. Sindhi--Gospel of Matthew only.
1820. Kashmeeri--New Testament; and Old Testament to 2nd Book of Kings.
1820-26. Dogri--New Testament only.
1819. PUSHTOO--New Test. and Old Test. Historical Books.
1815. BALOOCHI " Three Gospels.
1818. TELUGOO " and Pentateuch in 1820.
1822. KANARESE " only.
MALDIVIAN--Four Gospels.
EDITED AND PRINTED ONLY BY CAREY
Persian. Singhalese.
Hindostani. Chinese (Dr. Marshman's).
Malayalam. Javanese.
Burmese--Matthew's Gospel. Malay.
17 Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-77.
London, 1884.
18 Mr. John Marshman, in his Life and Times
of the three, states that Fry and Figgins, the London typefounders, would
not produce under £700 half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native
turned out at about £100. In 1813 Dr. Marshman's Chinese Gospels were
printed on movable metallic types, instead of the immemorial wooden
blocks, for the first time in the twenty centuries of the history of
Chinese printing. This forms an era in the history of Chinese literature,
he justly remarks.
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."
20
In 1795 Captain Dodds, a Madras officer front Scotland, translated part of
the Bible into Telugoo, and, lingering on in the country to complete the
work, died seven days after the date of his letter on the subject in the
Missionary Magazines of 1796.
21 Then Editor of the Friend of
India.
22 The Chaitanya Charita Amrita, by Krishna Dass
in 1557, was the first of importance.
23 Nor was his influence
confined to the Protestant division of Christendom. When, on the
Restoration of 1815, France became once more aggressively Romanist for a
time, the Association for the Propagation of the Faith was founded at
Lyons and Paris, avowedly on the model of the Baptist Missionary Society,
and it now raises a quarter of a million sterling a year for its missions.
The expression in an early number of its Annales is:--"C'est
l'Angleterre qui a fourni l'idée modèle," etc. "La Société des
Anabaptistes a formé pour ses Missions des Sociétés," etc.
24
Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., chapter i.
25 Fuller
more than once referred to the dying words of Sutcliff--"I wish I had
prayed more." "I do not suppose he wished he had prayed more frequently,
but more spiritually. I wish I had prayed more for the influences of the
Holy Spirit; I might have enjoyed more of the power of vital godliness. I
wish I had prayed more for the assistance of the Holy Spirit in studying
and preaching my sermons; I might have seen more of the blessing of God
attending my ministry. I wish I had prayed more for the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit to attend the labours of our friends in India; I might have
witnessed more of the effects of their efforts in the conversion of the
heathen."
26 The Baptist missionary, who became an Arian, and was
afterwards employed by Lord William Bentinck to report on the actual state
of primary education in Bengal.
27 The first India chaplain of the
Church of Scotland, superintendent of stationery and editor of the John
Bull.--See Life of Alexander Duff, D.D.
28 His
Majesty's Lord Chamberlain formally expressed to the British Minister at
Copenhagen, H.E. the Hon. Edmund Monson, C.B., the King's high pleasure at
"the author's noble expressions of the good his pre-possessors of the
throne and the government of Denmark tried to do for their Indian
subjects," when the first edition of this Life of William Carey,
D.D., was presented to His Majesty.--See Taylor and Son's
Biographical and Literary Notices of William Carey, D.D.,
Northampton, 1886.
29 In 1834, the year Carey died, there were in
the college ten European and Eurasian students learning Hebrew, Greek,
Latin, Bengali, mathematics, chemistry, mental philosophy, and history
(ancient and ecclesiastical). There were forty-eight resident native
Christians and thirty-four Hindoos, sons of Brahmans chiefly, learning
Sanskrit, Bengali, and English. "The Bengal language is sedulously
cultivated...The Christian natives of India will most effectually combat
error and diffuse sounder information with a knowledge of Sanskrit. The
communication, therefore, of a thoroughly classic Indian education to
Christian youth is deemed an important but not always an indispensable
object."
30 Serampore--Srirampur or place of the worshipful Ram.
31 Aitchison's Collection, vol. i., edition 1892, pp. 81-86
32 Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D., 1879.
33
William Carey, by James Culross, D.D., 1881.
34 For years,
and till the land was sold to the India Jute Company in 1875, the Garden
was kept up at the expense of John Marshman, Esq., C.S.I. Sa. Rs.
35 "From May 1801 to June 1807, inclusive, as Teacher of
Bengali and Sanskrit, 74 months at 500 rupees monthly 37,000
From 1st July 1807 to 31st May 1830, as Professor of
ditto, at 1000 rupees monthly 2,75,000
From 23rd Oct. to July 1830, inclusive, 300 rupees
monthly, as Translator of Government Regulations 24,600
From 1st July 1830 to 31st May 1834, a pension of 500
rupees monthly 23,500
"Sicca Rupees 3,60,100"
36 The Evangelical Succession. Third Series.
Edinburgh, Macniven and Wallace, 1884.
Proofreader's Note
I have had to insert a few comments mainly in regards to adjustments to fonts to allow for some of the characters in the Indian names; you will find any of my own notes enclosed in these brackets--{ }. I have also renumbered the footnotes and placed them at the end of this e-text, removing them from within the document where they fell at the end of each corresponding page.
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