ate the Bible into a literary style so that it could be
understood by the people or influence their leaders. His temper kept
Charles Grant back from helping the infant mission, though anxious to
see Mr. Carey and to aid him and any other companion. The debts of
Thomas caused him and Carey to be excluded from the Oxford, in which
his friend the commander had agreed to take them and their party
without a licence; clouded the early years of the enterprise with their
shadow, and formed the heaviest of the many burdens Carey had to bear
at starting. If, afterwards, the old association of Thomas with Mr.
Udny at Malda gave Carey a home during his Indian apprenticeship, this
was a small atonement for the loss of the direct help of Mr. Grant. If
Carey proved to be the John among the men who began to make Serampore
illustrious, Thomas was the Peter, so far as we know Peter in the
Gospels only.

Just before being ejected from the Oxford, as he had been deprived of
the effectual help of Charles Grant through his unhappy companion, when
with only his eldest son Felix beside him, how did Carey view his
God-given mission? The very different nature of his wife, who had
announced to him the birth of a child, clung anew to the hope that this
might cause him to turn back. Writing from Ryde on the 6th May he thus
replied with sweet delicacy of human affection, but with true loyalty
to his Master's call:--

"Received yours, giving me an account of your safe delivery. This is
pleasant news indeed to me; surely goodness and mercy follow me all my
days. My stay here was very painful and unpleasant, but now I see the
goodness of God in it. It was that I might hear the most pleasing
accounts that I possibly could hear respecting earthly things. You
wish to know in what state my mind is. I answer, it is much as when I
left you. If I had all the world, I would freely give it all to have
you and my dear children with me; but the sense of duty is so strong as
to overpower all other considerations; I could not turn back without
guilt on my soul. I find a longing desire to enjoy more of God; but,
now I am among the people of the world, I think I see more beauties in
godliness than ever, and, I hope, enjoy more of God in retirement than
I have done for some time past...You want to know what Mrs. Thomas
thinks, and how she likes the voyage...She would rather stay in England
than go to India; but thinks it right to go with her husband...Te