“Who in India’s bowers has stood
But thought on England’s good green wood,
And blessed, beneath the palmy shade,
Her hazel and her hawthorn glade,
And breathed a prayer (how oft in vain)
To gaze upon her oaks again?”
One morning Dr. Carey came running into the) house—”Marshman! Ward! make haste,” he cried. “Come with me.” “What is the matter, William?” inquired Marsh-man. “Have you found a treasure?”
“Ay, a treasure indeed! Such a treasure as I never dared hope to see in this land,” exclaimed Carey. “Come quickly. Mind, brother Marshman, that you do not step upon the flower beds. Brother Ward, you have broken of that shrub. Be careful of the flowers there. Now here it is,” and stepping back, William Carey showed the company a real English daisy. “There,” he exclaimed, cheerily, “What do you think of that? A real English daisy growing in India.”
“Indeed it is,” said Marshman, stooping over the flower. “Don’t be afraid, brother Carey; I will not touch it. How did it come here?”
“Why, some time ago, I received, as you know, a parcel of seeds from England,” said Carey. “I carefully took theta out of the paper, and then I shook the bag over this spot, in case any seeds should be in the corner of the bag. This must have been in the bag. What a treasure! Doesn’t it make you think of dear old England?”
The emotions of the company have been well expressed by James Montgomery, who wrote
The Daisy in India
“Thrice welcome, little English flower,
My mother country’s white and red;
In rose or lily till this hour,
Never to me such beauty spread;
Transplanted from thine island bed,
A treasure in a grain of earth,
Strange is a spirit from the dead
Thine embryo springs to earth.
“Thrice welcome, little English flower,
To this resplendent hemisphere,
Where Flora’s giant offsprings tower
In gorgeous liveries all the year.
Thou, only thou, art little here,
Like worth. unfriended and unknown;
Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.
“Thrice welcome, little English flower:
To me the pledge of hope unseen,
When sorrow would my soul o’erpower,
For joys that were or might have been.
I’ll call to mind hew fresh and green
I saw thee waking from the dust,
Then turn to heaven, with brow serene,
And place in God my trust.”
A day or two after the incident recorded above, Carey came back from Calcutta, weeping like a child. The Government had been hostile for a long time, and now a sentence in one of the mission tracts had given the opportunity they had eagerly sought to harm the mission.
“I did not see the sentence,” said Ward. “I thought we could trust that man to translate the tract without putting any of his own opinions in.”
“What shall we do? The Government mean to put an end to our mission work,” said Carey.
“They cannot,” rejoined Marshman. “It is of God, and they cannot overthrow it. But this is no ordinary difficulty.”
By the good offices of the Danish Governor the difficulty was at last arranged. In England, however, the enemies of missions now began an attack upon the missionaries.
Sidney Smith forgot himself so much that, professing to be a minister of the religion whose Lord and Master was a carpenter at Nazareth, he sneered at Carey and his colleagues. Amidst the storm of abuse and persecution that followed Carey stood firm. Not one of the three at Serampore was dismayed. Day after day the three laid their case before God, and day after day the chant of the Serampore missionaries, as the natives called it, arose upon the air.
“Come, let us have our hymn, Marshman,” said Carey, “it will lift as out of their power;” and the three devoted men accordingly lifted their voices, and sang—
“O Lord our God, arise;
The cause of truth maintain;
And wide o’er all the peopled world
Extend her blessed reign.
“Thou Prince of Life, arise,
Nor let Thy glory cease,
Far spread the conquests of Thy grace,
And bless the earth with peace.
“Thou Holy Ghost, arise,
Expand Thy quickening wing,
And o’er a dark and ruined world
Let light and order spring.
“All on the earth arise,
To God the Savior sing,
From shore to shore, from earth to heaven
Let echoing anthems ring.”
And God did arise! Although the friends of missions did not obtain all that they desired, they were permitted a legal settlement in India. So much was permitted, and that, evidently, in answer to prayer. But now a new trouble came upon the heroic three. Early one morning Marshman went over to Calcutta to see Carey.
“Come, Marshman, you seem to be depressed; what is wrong? The cows have not got into my garden, I hope?”
“No, no; the garden is safe,” replied Marshman. “What is wrong then? The ants have not got at the paper, I hope?”
“Worse, far worse! O Carey! worse trouble than we have ever had!”
“What is wrong; tell me?”
“Last evening at six o’clock brother Ward went into the printing office. He saw that it was on fire. Every effort was made to extinguish the blaze, but the flames swept from room to room, and about midnight the roof fell in. Then the tongues of fire leaped up to the sky! For hours the huge column of fire burned steadily. The labors of twelve long years are all lost in a few hours! Think, twelve hundred reams of paper all burned; the sets of types for printing in fourteen Eastern languages; all the Scriptures that we had collected for distribution, and all the valuable manuscripts! How can we replace our loss? Alas! alas! all gone, brother Carey; all gone!”
Carey sat silent for some time. The blow had stunned him; he sat looking vacantly at his friend. At length he repeated mechanically, “All gone; all gone! Nothing saved! All gone!”
“Come, let us go to Serampore,” observed Marsh-man. “Shall we start at once?”
“Yes, let us start,” said Carey. “All gone; all gone!”
The two friends returned to their former habitation. The tidings had spread rapidly through the little Danish town, and a large crowd stood watching at a respectful distance. Ward greeted his two friends, and the three stood together, too sorrowful to speak about their grief.
“Nothing left of all our work but smoking ruins,” said Carey. “Alas, the strokes of God’s hand are sometimes very heavy! Woe is me!”
“Yet even this may be turned to good account, brother Carey,” said Ward. “Are not even adverse events given by God’s permission?”
“It may humble us,” said Carey. “How quickly all our glory passes away? Oh, for grace to remember how helpless we are without God! Without Me ye can do nothing,’ He says, and we know that it is true.”
“This providence, it is true, has a voice to us,” said Ward; “but what shall we do to repair the damage? I have sent everywhere, and there are no types to be had anywhere, though I have sought far and near.”
“God will open the way; let us go to prayer over the matter,” said Carey hopefully.” I have found that prayer will often remove obstacles that defy all other human skill. Pray God it may be so in our case.”
After a season of prayer the friends searched the ruins once more.
“Praise God,” cried Ward, “some of the punches and type molds are uninjured! Yes, yes; thank God.”
“Let the warehouse be cleared out,” said Carey. “That will do for type casting.”
Day and night relays of workmen were employed, and within a month two languages were printing, and at the end of six weeks the types for four other languages were ready.
The calamity was indeed overruled for good, as all afflictive providences in the Church and personal Christian life are. Within three months the churches of England contributed sufficient funds to repair the loss.
“The fire has given your undertaking a celebrity which nothing else, it seems, could; but a celebrity which makes me tremble,” wrote Fuller. “The public, after deriding us, are now praising us. Pray God that as our missionaries have stood their ground in evil report, so they may not be moved by flattery. I dread the quicksand as much as the tempest. The pirate is as much to be feared as the rock. Oh, that having done all, they may, stand!”
The prayer was abundantly answered. Neither popularity nor abuse harmed the missionaries, who were kept in success, as they had been in adversity, humble and trustful in God.