cultivate a Christian indifference towards every indulgence. Rather let us bear hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. No private family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness, even in the most prosperous gale of worldly prosperity, than we have done since we resolved to have all things in common. If we are enabled to persevere in the same principles, we may hope that multitudes of converted souls will have reason to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel into this country." Such was the moral heroism, such the spiritual aim of the Serampore brotherhood; how did it set to work? CHAPTER VI THE FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 1800-1810 A carpenter the first Bengali convert--Krishna Pal's confession--Caste broken for the first time--Carey describes the baptism in the Hoogli--The first woman convert--The first widow convert--The first convert of writer caste--The first Christian Brahman--The first native chapel--A Bengali "experience" meeting--Carey founding a new community as well as church--Marriage difficulties solved--The first native Christian marriage feast in North India--Hindoo Christian death and burial--The first Christian schools and school-books in North India--The first native Sunday school--Boarding schools for the higher education of country-born Christians--Carey on the mixed Portuguese, Eurasians, and Armenians--The Benevolent Institution for destitute children of all races--A hundred schools--English only postponed--Effect on native opinion and action--The leaven of the Kingdom--The Mission breaks forth into five at the close of 1810. For seven years Carey had daily preached Christ in Bengali without a convert. He had produced the first edition of the New Testament. He had reduced the language to literary form. He had laid the foundations in the darkness of the pit of Hindooism, while the Northamptonshire pastors, by prayer and self-sacrifice, held the ropes. The last disappointment was on 25th November 1800, when "the first Hindoo" catechumen, Fakeer, offered himself for baptism, returned to his distant home for his child, and appeared no more, probably "detained by force." But on the last Sunday of that year Krishna Pal was baptised in the Hoogli and his whole family soon followed him. He was thirty-five years of age. Not only as the first native Christian of North India of whom we have a reliable account, but as the first missionary to Calcutta and Assam, and the first Bengali hymn-writer, this man deserves study.