as translator and editor of the
translations, was even more important. Such a man was found in William
Yates, born in 1792, and in the county, Leicestershire, in which Carey
brought the Baptist mission to the birth. Yates was in his early years
also a shoemaker, and member of Carey's old church in Harvey Lane, when
under the great Robert Hall, who said to the youth's father, "Your son,
sir, will be a great scholar and a good preacher, and he is a holy
young man." In 1814 he became the last of the young missionaries
devoted to the cause by Fuller, soon to pass away, Ryland, and Hall.
Yates had not been many months at Serampore when, with the approval of
his brethren, Carey wrote to Fuller, on 17th May 1815:--"I am much
inclined to associate him with myself in the translations. My labour
is greater than at any former period. We have now translations of the
Bible going forward in twenty-seven languages, all of which are in the
press except two or three. The labour of correcting and revising all
of them lies on me." By September we find Yates writing:--"Dr. Carey
sends all the Bengali proofs to me to review. I read them over, and if
there is anything I do not understand, or think to be wrong, I mark it.
We then converse over it, and if it is wrong, he alters it; but if not,
he shows me the reason why it is right, and thus will initiate me into
the languages as fast as I can learn them. He wishes me to begin the
Hindi very soon. Since I have been here I have read three volumes in
Bengali, and they have but six of consequence in prose. There are
abundance in Sanskrit." "Dr. Carey has treated me with the greatest
affection and kindness, and told me he will give me every information
he can, and do anything in his power to promote my happiness." What
Baruch was to the prophet Jeremiah, that Yates might have been to
Carey, who went so far in urging him to remain for life in Serampore as
to say, "if he did not accept the service it would be, in his judgment,
acting against Providence, and the blessing of God was not to be
expected." Yates threw in his lot with the younger men who, in
Calcutta after Fuller's death, began the Society's as distinct from the
Serampore mission. If Carey was the Wyclif and Tyndale, Yates was the
Coverdale of the Bengali and Sanskrit Bible. Wenger, their successor,
was worthy of both. Bengal still waits for the first native revision
of the great work which these successive pioneers have gra