The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
This now rare volume, to be found on the shelves of the Serampore
College Library, where it leads the host of the Carey translations, is
coarse and unattractive in appearance compared with its latest
successors. In truth the second edition, which appeared in 1806, was
almost a new version. The criticism of his colleagues and others,
especially of a ripe Grecian like Dr. Marshman, the growth of the
native church, and his own experience as a Professor of Sanskrit and
Marathi as well as Bengali, gave Carey new power in adapting the
language to the divine ideas of which he made it the medium. But the
first edition was not without its self-evidencing power. Seventeen
years after, when the mission extended to the old capital of Dacca,
there were found several villages of Hindoo-born peasants who had given
up idol-worship, were renowned for their truthfulness, and, as
searching for a true teacher come from God, called themselves
"Satya-gooroos." They traced their new faith to a much-worn book kept
in a wooden box in one of their villages. No one could say whence it
had come; all they knew was that they had possessed it for many years.
It was Carey's first Bengali version of the New Testament of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the wide and elastic bounds of Hindooism,
and even, as we shall see, amid fanatical Mussulmans beyond the
frontier, the Bible, dimly understood without a teacher, has led to
puritan sects like this, as to earnest inquirers like the chamberlain
of Queen Candace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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