The New Testament as a Missionary

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 8, 1908

The New Testament as a Missionary

WHEN William Carey went to India more than a hundred years ago, he translated the New Testament into Bengali. It was a very imperfect translation, but it went on its way in the power of God. Seventeen years after, when the mission extended to the old capital of Decca, there were found several villages of Hindu-born peasants who had given up idol-worship, were renowned for their truthfulness, and, as searching for a true teacher come from God, called themselves Satya-gurus. They traced their new faith to a much-worn book kept in a wooden box in one of their villages. None could say whence it had come; all they knew was that they had possessed it for many years. It was Carey’s first Bengali version of the New Testament. In the wide and elastic bounds of Hinduism, and even amid fanatical Mussulmans beyond the frontier, the Bible, dimly understood without a teacher, has led to Puritan sects like this.—Dr. George Smith’s “Life of William Carey”