On the other hand, it was time to get the Bengali translation of the Bible printed and out to the people. To do it, he needed a printer, and William Ward was stuck in Serampore. Besides, the missionary society committee had sent out thirteen people expecting him to be their leader. But how could he do that effectively if he was nearly two hundred miles away from them?
It took two days for William to come to a decision to make the move to Serampore. But would it be the right decision?
Chapter 13
Sitting Together with the Missionaries
William Carey stepped off the boat onto the western bank of the Hooghly River. The red and white flag of Denmark flapped lightly in the breeze on a nearby flagstaff. There to meet him were two of the new missionaries: thirty-one-year-old Joshua Marshman, a schoolteacher from Bristol, and twenty-one-year-old Daniel Brunsdon. The men greeted each other warmly.
William was anxious to begin missionary work in Serampore. The first thing they needed was a place to live, and after seeing how expensive it was to rent houses, the group decided to buy a huge house on two acres of land located right beside the river. The house cost all the money the missionaries had brought with them from England, and the missionaries had to borrow a little more as well. While he didn’t like to borrow money, William felt that purchasing the house and land would save them a lot of money in the end.
Within a week, all ten adults and nine children had moved into the house, which had enough room for each family to have two bedrooms plus a meeting hall, a printing room, a dining room, and a schoolroom.
The adults held many meetings to discuss how to run their missionary community. Although William had been in India the longest, he listened carefully to everyone’s ideas. In the end, it was decided that each adult should take a month-long turn running the household. All the money that came into the community, whether from the missionary society committee, the proceeds from selling books, or fees from the school they planned to open, was to go into a group fund. No one would keep anything he earned for himself. Each person would be given a small monthly allowance.
William knew that in any community there would be disagreements and arguments, so he suggested they set aside Saturday nights to meet as a group and discuss any problems they might be having. He made each person promise to talk things out and forgive one another instead of holding a grudge.
Everyone was eager to get to work. William Ward unloaded the printing press from Kidderpore and gave it his seal of approval. The press was an older model, but it had been well looked after. William Ward housed it in a small outside room and the next day began handsetting the type for the Bengali edition of the Bible. He didn’t work alone, however. Felix and William Carey Jr. were both fascinated by the press and the whole printing process, and they eagerly ran errands and did whatever William Ward asked them to.
William Carey and John Fountain, the only two of the missionaries who could speak Bengali, went out to preach each day in the surrounding suburbs. By now, William knew just the right way to start up a conversation with an Indian. The trick was to grab the person’s attention with a question. “What is that mark you have on your face?” he would ask a Brahmin who had a painted white mark on his forehead.
“It is the mark of Telak,” the Brahmin would reply proudly, not knowing that the Englishman he was talking to knew a great deal about their culture.
“And why do you wear it?” William would continue.
“It is the way we worship our gods. Only the most holy can wear it. The shastras tell us it is good.”
William would nod, knowing that the shastras were the Brahmin holy books. Then he would pull a Bible from his bag. “Have you ever seen the Christian shastras?” he would ask. “It tells the story of one who is Lord of all creation.”
From there, William would tell the person about the gospel message and challenge him to read the Bible he was holding. By asking questions like this, William was able to tell many people about the gospel. And many people were interested in what he had to say, yet there were still no converts!
Joshua Marshman lost no time getting started on his project. It had been decided that he should run a boarding school for boys and girls in the house. He placed an advertisement for the school in the Calcutta Gazette and soon had more than enough students. Employees of the East India Company were more than happy to send their sons and daughters to the school instead of having them make the dangerous voyage back to England to get a good education. The school taught the basic subjects, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, and geography, and offered classes in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit.
Hannah Marshman was a very capable woman, and everyone soon realized that, unlike Dolly Carey, she was every bit as much a missionary as her husband. She worked alongside him and ran the girls’ side of the boarding school. She also took control of the two younger Carey boys, Jabez and Jonathan, who often ran wild around the house. Dolly had lapsed back into her unstable mental condition and hardly ever left her room or took care of the boys, and William just didn’t seem to notice when they got out of control.
Joshua and Hannah Marshman did the work of six missionaries, and within a month of opening the school, they opened a second one for Indian boys. The classes were to be taught in Bengali. Within a week, forty boys were enrolled.
Of course, William was delighted by it all. Things were finally beginning to fall into place. William had something positive to put in his reports to the missionary society committee. Yes, the days were long and hard, but the missionaries were beginning to see the results of their work.
Two months after arriving in Serampore, William learned just how right his decision had been to move there instead of going to Kidderpore. George Udney had returned to England and had been replaced by another commercial resident, who was completely opposed to the work of missionaries in India. George Udney’s replacement forbade any missionary from preaching in the villages of the district. Had William still been there, he would not have been allowed to continue with his missionary work. At the same time, Lord Wellesley, the governor-general of British India had been angered by some things printed in the newspaper and had issued an order banning all printing presses outside of Calcutta. Again, had William stayed in Kidderpore, his printing press would surely have been confiscated. Instead, it was safely in Serampore and ready to start printing the Bible in Bengali.
Realizing that printing the Bible in four volumes was a huge task, William Ward came up with a novel idea. Why not start with the Gospels and print them one at a time? His idea proved to be a success. William Ward was able to print the Gospels much faster and more cheaply than a four-volume Bible, and soon hundreds of copies of the Gospel of Matthew were being given away.
It wasn’t long before they had to hire some Indian workers to help with the press. Soon, the printshop had a typesetter, five pressmen, a folder, and a binder, as well as William Ward, Daniel Brunsdon, and Felix and William Jr., all working full time. The twelve of them printed six thousand half-sheets a week, more than William Ward had thought was humanly possible!
However, paying the Indian workers, not to mention buying paper and ink supplies, took a lot of money. Soon the mission ran out of funds for printing. William Ward came up with another bold idea. William Carey had told them all that there were many men in the East India Company who secretly cheered on their missionary work. William Ward thus wondered, Why not ask them to help? That’s exactly what they did. The mission placed an advertisement in the Calcutta Gazette asking readers to take out a subscription to help with the printing. For four pounds, a subscriber would eventually get a single printed copy of the Bible in Bengali, with the balance of the money going toward printing more Bibles. The subscription idea was a huge success, and enough money was raised to keep the printing press operating.
When the governor-general read the ad in the newspaper, he was outraged. Hadn’t he banned all printing presses from the Bengal district except for Calcutta? So why did these English people have a printing press in Serampore? He ordered the Reverend Brown, the army chaplain at Fort William, to visit him immediately to discuss the situation.
The Reverend Brown was the same person who, seven years earlier, had slammed the door in William Carey’s face and refused to help William and his family soon after they’d arrived in India. William was not a man to hold a grudge, however, and he had promised himself that day seven years earlier that he would not be bitter at the chaplain. True to his word, soon after moving to Serampore, he had visited the Reverend Brown. As a result, the two men had become good friends, and William visited the chaplain often to keep him up-to-date on the mission work in Serampore. The Reverend Brown was thus able to assure the governor-general that William and his group intended to print only Bibles on their printing press and nothing that would criticize the British government or the East India Company. Upon hearing this, the governor-general calmed down. Indeed, from then on, he began to take a positive interest in what William was up to.
By 1800, the missionary society had sent out seven men, accompanied by their families, as missionaries to India. By August of that year, only five of the men were still with the mission. William Grant had died twenty-two days after arriving in India, and Dr. Thomas had left the mission and his indigo dye factory and gone farther inland, where he had become involved in the lucrative business of distilling rum. And they were about to lose another one of their number. John Fountain had taken a trip up the river to quietly visit some of the villages in and around Mudnabatti, where he had once been a regular visitor. While there, he became ill with dysentery and died. He and Mary had been married for only nine months. Several months later, William Ward married Mary Fountain.
October 1800 marked seven years in India for the Carey family. Things had been desperate and difficult in the beginning, especially during the first year. But now William felt that things were finally going well for him. He spoke fluent Bengali and Sanskrit and had a team of fellow missionaries around him. Together they ran a successful English school and another for Indian children and had a printing press busily turning out dozens of copies of the Scriptures in Bengali.
Just one thing was lacking—there were still no converts. With no conversions to show for their efforts, William secretly worried that the missionary society back in England might become discouraged and stop sending more missionaries, money, and supplies. But that was about to change. A Serampore carpenter named Krishna Pal was taking his children down to the Hooghly River to bathe. As he did so, he slipped on the top step of the stairs leading down into the water, fell, and dislocated his shoulder. Since he was not far from the mission house, he sent his oldest child there to get help. Dr. Thomas happened to be visiting the house, and when he heard what had happened, he rounded up William and Joshua Marshman to help. Together the men rushed to the scene of the accident to help Krishna Pal. This “help” involved tying him to a tree to keep him still so that Dr. Thomas could jerk his shoulder back into place!
While Krishna Pal sat under the tree recovering from his ordeal, Dr. Thomas shared with him the gospel message. Krishna Pal listened politely, as so many other Hindus had, but said nothing. The next day, William visited Krishna Pal to see how his shoulder was and to invite him to visit the mission house. Later that day, Krishna Pal came to the house with a friend, Gokul. The two men came the following day, and the day after that, too. In fact, long after his shoulder had healed, Krishna Pal and Gokul continued to visit the mission house to talk to the missionaries about their God.
