Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
About this time he seems to have accommodated his name to English
pronunciation, and to have always written it Swartz. It was now that he
became acquainted with William Chambers, Esq., brother to the Chief
Justice of Bengal,--not a Company's servant, but a merchant, and an
excellent man, who took great interest in missionary labours, and himself
translated a great part of St. Matthew's Gospel into Persian, the court
language of India. From a letter of this gentleman, we obtain the only
description we possess of Swartz's appearance and manners. He says that,
from the descriptions he had heard, he had expected to see a very austere
and strict person, but "the first sight of him made a complete revolution
on this point. His garb, indeed, which was pretty well worn, seemed
foreign and old-fashioned, but in every other respect his appearance was
the reverse of all that could be called forbidding or morose. Figure to
yourself a stout well-made man, somewhat above the middle size, erect in
his carriage and address, with a complexion rather dark though healthy,
black curled hair, and a manly engaging countenance, expressive of
unaffected candour, ingenuousness, and benevolence, and you will have an
idea of what Mr. Swartz appeared to be at first sight." Mr. Chambers
adds that Swartz's whole allowance at Trichinopoly was ten pagodas a
year, that is, about 48_l._ (as Mr. Chambers estimates it). The
commanding officer of the English garrison was ordered to supply him with
quarters, and gave him a room in an old native building, where "there was
just room for his bed and himself, and in which few men could stand
upright." With this lodging he was content. His food was rice and
vegetables dressed native fashion, and his clothes were made of black
dimity. The little brass lamp which he had used for his studies at the
University went with him to India, and served him all his life, often
late at night, for he never preached even to the natives without much
study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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