"There had been but few men at Serampore, but they were all giants," was said of them by one of the dignitaries of the Church and assuredly it was a wonderful triumph, that a shoe-maker, a schoolmaster, and a printer should in thirty-eight years not only have aroused the missionary spirit in England, but have, by their resolution and talent, established thirty- three stations for the preaching of Christianity in India; while at the time of the death of the last survivor, forty-nine ministers were in union with them, half of whom were natives of Hindostan, and around each of the elder stations was a fair proportion of converts. Still more amazingly, these self-educated men had, by their accurate knowledge and deep study, become most eminent authorities in matters of language and philology; and by their usefulness had actually compelled a prejudiced Government to depend on them for assistance, and thus to support the work for which alone they cared. Never were the words more completely fulfilled than in them, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
The reverses that chequered their wonderful success were not the more interesting difficulties of wild country, or persecuting heathen, but troubles with an obstructive Government, and with the Society at home, which endeavoured to rule them without understanding them. These vexations are inseparable from the conditions of Societies trying to govern from home instead of letting the management be carried on by a head upon the spot.
CHAPTER VI. THE JUDSON FAMILY.
We must turn to an important offshoot from the Serampore mission, which assumed extensive proportions and a character of its own, chiefly in consequence of American zeal. Here, be it observed, was the first ground attempted by modern missions (not Roman Catholic) which belonged to an independent sovereign.
The great Burmese Empire, roughly speaking, occupies the Eastern India peninsula, being separated from that of Hindostan by the Brahmapootra river. The mountainous formation of the country, its indented coast, and numerous rivers render it fertile, and the hills contain many valuable metals and beautiful precious stones.
The inhabitants are of the Mongolian race, short, stout, active, and brown, with a good deal of ingenuity in arts and manufactures, but not equal to the Chinese, their neighbours. Their language is monosyllabic, their religion Buddhist, their government a despotic empire, and at the time the mission was entered upon they had had little intercourse with strangers, but their women were not secluded, were not wholly uneducated, and were treated with consideration.
Buddha is regarded as a manifestation of Vishnu-the Hindoos say, to delude his enemies; the Buddhists, to bring a new revelation. Gautama was the almost deified being who spread the knowledge of Buddhism, about 500 B.C. In different countries the religion has assumed different forms, but it is nearly co-extensive with the Mongolian race, and the general features are the rejection of the Vedas and of most of the Hindoo myths, faith in the divinity of Buddha, and hope that the individual personality will be entirely absorbed in his essence, the human being lost in the Deity. Five laws of virtue must be observed, ten kinds of sin avoided; and the Buddhist expects that transgressions will be punished by the transmigration of his soul into some inferior creature, whence he will rise by successive stages into another trial as a man, and gradually improving by the help of contemplation, and of a sublime state of annihilation of all self-consciousness, may become fit for his final absorption into the Godhead. There is an extensive priesthood, called Lamas, who live in a state of celibacy in dwellings not at all unlike monasteries; and, in effect, so much in their practices seems to parody the ceremonies of Christianity that the Portuguese thought them invented by the devil for the very purpose. However, there is no doubt that Buddhism inculcates a much purer morality than the religion of Brahma, and far higher aims. In Burmah, however, the idea of the eternity of the Deity had evidently been lost, and Gautama had practically usurped the place that the higher Buddhists gave to Brahma. Indeed, though the true Buddhist system looks to the absorption in the Deity,-Nirvana, as it is called,-the popular notion, as received in Burmah and corrupted by less refined minds, made it into what was either absolute nonentity or could not be distinguished from it, so that the ordinary Burman's best hope for the future was of nothing but annihilation.
There was originally a Burman Empire, but it had become broken up, and the territories of Ava, Pegu, and Siam were separated, though Ava claimed them all, and owned a semi-barbarous magnificent court, with many gradations of dignitaries, sending out Viceroys to the different provinces and towns.
When in 1807 strong opposition was made by Sir George Barlow's government to the landing of the two Baptist missionaries, Robinson and Chater, the former obtained forbearance on account of his wife's health, but the latter was obliged to embark; and, rather than return to England, he chose a vessel bound for Rangoon, a city at the mouth of the river Irrawaddy, the nearest Burmese harbour. His was to be a reconnoitring expedition to discover the condition of the Burmese Empire, the progress that Roman Catholic missions were making there, and the possibility of undertaking anything from the centre of Serampore. Another missionary, named Mardon, went with him. They were well received by the European merchants resident at Rangoon, and returned with an encouraging report. It was decided that the attempt should be made; and as Mr. Mardon did not feel equal to the undertaking, fifteen days were set apart as a time of private prayer for direction who should be chosen in his stead.
It was Felix Carey, then nearly twenty-two, who volunteered to go with Mr. Chater, of whom he was very fond. His father was unwilling to send him, not only on account of his youth, but because he was very valuable in the printers' work, and had an unusual amount of acquaintance with Sanskrit and Bengalee, so that he could hardly be spared from the translations; but the majority of the council at Serampore were in favour of his going, and after a long delay, in consequence of the danger British trading vessels were incurring from French privateers from the Isle of France, they set sail and arrived at Rangoon early in the year 1808.
There they built themselves a house, and obtained a good deal of favour from the gentleness and amiability of Mr. Chater, and from young Carey's usefulness. He had regularly studied medicine for some years in the hospital at Calcutta, and his skill was soon in great request, especially for vaccination, which he was the first to introduce. His real turn was, however, for philology, and he was delighted to discover that the Pali, the sacred and learned language of Burmah, was really a variety of the Sanskrit, cut down into agreement with the Mongolian monosyllabic speech. He began, with the assistance of a pundit, to compile a grammar, and to make a rough beginning of a translation of the Scripture, a work indeed in which the Serampore people were apt to be almost too precipitate, not waiting for those refinements of knowledge which are needful in dealing with the shades of meaning of words of such intense importance and delicate significancy. But on their principles, they could do nothing without vernacular Bibles, and they had not that intense reverence and trained scholarly appreciation which made Martyn spend his life on the correctness of a single version, rather than send it forth with a flaw to give wrong impressions.