ions like Dr. Erskine, whose Dutch volume Carey had
translated, denounced such movements as revolutionary in a General
Assembly of Socinianised "moderates." The Church of England kept
haughtily or timidly aloof, though king and archbishop were pressed to
send a mission. "Those who in that day sneered that England had sent a
cobbler to convert the world were the direct lineal descendants of
those who sneered in Palestine 2000 years ago, 'Is not this the
carpenter?'" said Archdeacon Farrar in Westminster Abbey on 6th March
1887. Hence Fuller's reference to this time:--"When we began in 1792
there was little or no respectability among us, not so much as a squire
to sit in the chair or an orator to address him with speeches. Hence
good Dr. Stennett advised the London ministers to stand aloof and not
commit themselves."

One man in India had striven to rouse the Church to its duty as Carey
had done at home. Charles Grant had in 1787 written from Malda to
Charles Simeon and Wilberforce for eight missionaries, but not one
Church of England clergyman could be found to go. Thirty years after,
when chairman of the Court of Directors and father of Lord Glenelg and
Sir Robert Grant, he wrote:--"I had formed the design of a mission to
Bengal: Providence reserved that honour for the Baptists." After all,
the twelve village pastors in the back parlour of Kettering were the
more really the successors of the twelve apostles in the upper room of
Jerusalem.

CHAPTER III

INDIA AS CAREY FOUND IT

1793

Tahiti v. Bengal--Carey and Thomas appointed missionaries to
Bengal--The farewell at Leicester--John Thomas, first medical
missionary--Carey's letter to his father--The Company's "abominable
monopoly"--The voyage--Carey's aspirations for world-wide
missions--Lands at Calcutta--His description of Bengal in
1793--Contrast presented by Carey to Clive, Hastings, and
Cornwallis--The spiritual founder of an Indian Empire of Christian
Britain--Bengal and the famine of 1769-70--The Decennial Settlement
declared permanent--Effects on the landed classes--Obstacles to Carey's
work--East India Company at its worst--Hindooism and the Bengalees in
1793--Position of Hindoo women--Missionary attempts before
Carey's--Ziegenbalg and Schwartz--Kiernander and the
chaplains--Hindooised state of Anglo-Indian society and its reaction on
England--Guneshan Dass, the first caste Hindoo to visit
England--William Carey had no predecessor.

Carey h