In the meantime he opened a school, and preached to the natives in all the villages round, but without making much, if any, impression; indeed he was so disheartened, that he did not even teach his own children. The chief benefit of his residence in India was at present the example he set, and the letters he sent home, which bore in on the minds of others the necessities of their brethren in the East, and brought aid in subscriptions and, what was still more needed, men.
In 1799, four members of the Baptist communion offered themselves to go out as missionaries to India, and two of these were men who left most important traces behind them: William Ward, who had been a printer and editor of a newspaper at Derby, and had seen Mr. Carey before his going out to India, and Joshua Marshman. This latter was the person who, above all others, gave the struggling mission the strength, consistency, and prudence which it wanted. The descendant of an old Puritan officer on the one side, and of Huguenot refugees on the other, he was brought up in strict Baptist principles by his father, who was one of the cloth weavers then inhabiting Wiltshire in great numbers. As a child, he was passionately fond of reading, and his huge appetite for books and great memory made him a wonder in his village. A London bookseller, who was visiting the place, heard of this clever lad, and took him into his shop as an errand boy; but Joshua found that his concern was more with the outside of books than the inside, and came home, at the end of five months, to his father's loom.
He was a steady lad, with no passions save for reading and quiet heartfelt religion; but though he had never been guilty of any serious fault, the Baptist body to which his family belonged considered he had too much "head-knowledge" of Christianity to have much "heart-knowledge" of its truths; and for that reason only, and their distrust and contempt of human learning, refused to admit him to baptism.
However, this was no obstacle either to his marrying the daughter of a minister of his own persuasion, or taking the mastership of a school at Bristol, where he found less narrow-minded co-religionists, and was baptized by them in 1734, when twenty-six years of age. He was a successful schoolmaster, and was likewise able to join the classes at Bristol Academy, where he studied thoroughly Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. His circumstances were prosperous and rapidly improving when, after five years of great comfort at Bristol, his mind became so imbued with the sense of the need that some one should assist Carey, that he offered himself, together with Ward and two other young men, one of whom he had recently brought back to Christianity from Tom Paine's infidel doctrines. Again his "human learning" stood in his way. The honest, ignorant men who were working so earnestly, fancied it connected with Pharisaism, and had little idea that the Brahmin philosophy was as hard to deal with as the Greek. They accepted him, but with hesitation, and a passage for the whole party, including wives and children, was taken in an American vessel.
Mr. Charles Grant advised them not to attempt to land at Calcutta, where they would probably be at once arrested and sent home again, but to land at the Danish colony of Serampore, and there wait for an opportunity of joining Carey at Mudnabutty.
Serampore is on the Hooghly, sixteen miles above Calcutta, and here they found themselves on the 13th of October, 1799, in a town pleasantly situated, beautiful to look at, and full of a mixed population of Danes, Dutch, English, and natives of all hues. They were preparing to set forth for Mudnabutty when, on the fifth day after their arrival, they were informed that the British Government demanded that they should be immediately re-embarked and sent home again, whilst a local English paper, having never heard of Baptists, concluded that the word was a mistake for Papists, and announced the arrival of four Popish priests, emissaries of Buonaparte. The Danish governor, Colonel Bie, was resolved to stand his ground and not deliver them up; but they were prevented from setting foot upon the Company's territory, and the unwholesome, damp, little house that they were obliged to take while waiting at Serampore proved fatal to one of their number, the young man whom Marshman had rescued from infidelity, who died of chill and fever before his inexperienced associates were aware of his danger.
Another difficulty in the way of joining Carey and assisting in the printing of his translations, was that papers which were thought dangerous to the British power had lately been issued, and the Marquis Wellesley, who was then in the midst of his great war with Tippoo Sahib, was resolved not to allow any printing to be carried on except in Calcutta, where it could be under the eye of his officials. However, he had no objection to the establishment of mission, school, or press on the Danish ground, and Colonel Bie was only desirous to keep them there; so it was decided to send Ward alone, with a Danish passport, to visit Carey at Mudnabutty, and confer with him upon his removal to Serampore, and the establishment of a mission settlement there.
All doubt was removed, while this consultation was in progress, by finding that the jealous Anglo-Indians were prepared to arrest any missionary whom they caught upon their ground; and Carey's five years' covenant as an indigo planter being now run out, his supposed idol was taken down and packed up, and his four boys and poor insane wife removed to Serampore, where all their present capital was laid out in the purchase of a piece of ground and the construction of the habitations of the little colony. The expenses were to be defrayed from a common stock, each missionary in turn superintending the domestic arrangements for a month, all the household dining together at one table, and only a small allowance being made to each head of a family for pocket money.
Six families were here united, and only 200_l. was left to support them for the six months until remittances could be obtained from England; but all were used to cottage fare, and were not so dependent on servants as most Europeans in India. A piece of land attached to the house became, under Mr. Carey's care, a beautiful botanic garden. The press was set up under the care of Ward, and on the 18th of March, 1800, the first sheets of the Gospels in Bengalee were struck off. Mr. and Mrs. Marshman opened two boarding schools for European children for the maintenance of the mission, and their great ability in tuition rendered these so profitable as to become its main support. This was soon followed by another school for the natives, to which they eagerly thronged.
Meanwhile the missionaries went out, singly or in pairs, into the streets or the neighbourhood of the heathen temples, and attracted a crowd by singing hymns in Bengalee, and then preached to them, offering to receive any inquiries at the mission-house. Carey's time was almost entirely taken up in hearing and answering these questions; but, as usual, the ties of family, society, and custom almost always proved too strong to be broken through even by the conviction of the truth of Christianity. Ram- bosoo, Mr. Carey's first Hindoo friend, was like Serfojee, ready to do anything on behalf of Christianity except to embrace it openly himself.
Mr. Thomas had meantime engaged himself as superintendent of a sugar factory at Beerbhoom, whence he came to visit his brethren at Serampore, bringing with him one of his workmen named Fukier, whom he believed that he had converted. The man gave so good an account of his faith that the missionaries deemed him fit for baptism, and rejoiced in him as the first- fruits of seven years' labour; but he went home to take leave of his friends, and either they prevailed on him to give up his intention, or privately murdered him, for he never was heard of again.