My Biographies of Carey of Serampore, Henry Martyn, Duff of Calcutta, and Wilson of Bombay, cover a period of nearly a century and a quarter, from 1761 to 1878. They have been written as contributions to that history of the Christian Church of India which one of its native sons must some day attempt; and to the history of English-speaking peoples, whom the Foreign Missions begun by Carey have made the rulers and civilisers of the non-Christian world.

CONTENTS

I. [CAREY'S COLLEGE]
II. [THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS]
III. [INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT]
IV. [SIX YEARS IN NORTH BENGAL—MISSIONARY AND INDIGO PLANTER]
V. [THE NEW CRUSADE—SERAMPORE AND THE BROTHERHOOD]
VI. [THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS]
VII. [CALCUTTA AND THE MISSION CENTRES FROM DELHI TO AMBOYNA]
VIII. [CAREY'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS]
IX. [PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI]
X. [THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST—BIBLE TRANSLATION]
XI. [WHAT CAREY DID FOR LITERATURE AND FOR HUMANITY]
XII. [WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE—FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA]
XIII. [CAREY'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA]
XIV. [CAREY AS AN EDUCATOR—THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN THE EAST]
XV. [CAREY'S CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA]
XVI. [CAREY'S LAST DAYS]
[APPENDIX]

LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.

CHAPTER I

CAREY'S COLLEGE

1761-1785

The Heart of England—The Weaver Carey who became a Peer, and the weaver who was father of William Carey—Early training in Paulerspury—Impressions made by him on his sister—On his companions and the villagers—His experience as son of the parish clerk—Apprenticed to a shoemaker of Hackleton—Poverty—Famous shoemakers from Annianus and Crispin to Hans Sachs and Whittier—From Pharisaism to Christ—The last shall be first—The dissenting preacher in the parish clerk's home—He studies Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Dutch and French—The cobbler's shed is Carey's College.

William Carey, the first of her own children of the Reformation whom England sent forth as a missionary to India, where he became the most extensive translator of the Bible and civiliser, was the son of a weaver, and was himself a village shoemaker till he was twenty-eight years of age. He was born on the 17th August 1761, in the very midland of England, in the heart of the district which had produced Shakspere, had fostered Wyclif and Hooker, had bred Fox and Bunyan, and had for a time been the scene of the lesser lights of John Mason and Doddridge, of John Newton and Thomas Scott. William Cowper, the poet of missions, made the land his chosen home, writing Hope and The Task in Olney, while the shoemaker was studying theology under Sutcliff on the opposite side of the market-place. Thomas Clarkson, born a year before Carey, was beginning his assaults on the slave-trade by translating into English his Latin essay on the day-star of African liberty when the shoemaker, whom no university knew, was writing his Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens.