ad desired to go first to Tahiti or Western Africa. The natives
of North America and the negroes of the West Indies and Sierra Leone
were being cared for by Moravian and Wesleyan evangelists. The
narrative of Captain Cook's two first voyages to the Pacific and
discovery of Tahiti had appeared in the same year in which the
Northampton churches began their seven years' concert of prayer, just
after his own second baptism. From the map, and a leather globe which
also he is said to have made, he had been teaching the children of
Piddington, Moulton, and Leicester the great outlines and thrilling
details of expeditions round the world which roused both the scientific
and the simple of England as much as the discoveries of Columbus had
excited Europe. When the childlike ignorance and natural grace of the
Hawaiians, which had at first fired him with the longing to tell them
the good news of God, were seen turned into the wild justice of
revenge, which made Cook its first victim, Carey became all the more
eager to anticipate the disasters of later days. That was work for
which others were to be found. It was not amid the scattered and
decimated savages of the Pacific or of America that the citadel of
heathenism was found, nor by them that the world, old and new, was to
be made the kingdom of Christ. With the cautious wisdom that marked
all Fuller's action, though perhaps with the ignorance that was due to
Carey's absence, the third meeting of the new society recorded this
among other articles "to be examined and discussed in the most diligent
and impartial manner--In what part of the heathen world do there seem
to be the most promising openings?"

The answer, big with consequence for the future of the East, was in
their hands, in the form of a letter from Carey, who stated that "Mr.
Thomas, the Bengal missionary," was trying to raise a fund for that
province, and asked "whether it would not be worthy of the Society to
try to make that and ours unite with one fund for the purpose of
sending the gospel to the heathen indefinitely." Tahiti was not to be
neglected, nor Africa, nor Bengal, in "our larger plan," which included
above four hundred millions of our fellowmen, among whom it was an
object "worthy of the most ardent and persevering pursuit to
disseminate the humane and saving principles of the Christian
Religion." If this Mr. Thomas were worthy, his experience made it
desirable to begin with Bengal. Thomas answere