ON the right bank of the river Hoogly, fourteen miles above Calcutta, is the little town of Serampore, where William Carey, the first Englishman who became a missionary to the heathen, found protection under the Danish flag when prohibited from preaching the gospel within the territory of the East India Company. Here Carey and his colleagues, Marshman and Ward, labored, and here, too, they lie buried.
Last March, in company with Dr. Ridgaway, of Garrett Biblical Institute, I visited Serampore.
The educational and evangelistic work begun by the great founder of modern missions is still carried on by the Baptist Society.
The college building, a two-story structure of magnificent proportions, shows signs of decay, as if in sympathy with the general dilapidated condition of the town.
The college was built to accommodate five hundred students, but at present only a hundred are enrolled, the smallness in attendance being due to the present policy of admitting Christian students only.
Located on the riverside, the college building affords a fine view up and down the broad Hoogly.
The library is well stocked with books, and, from appearance, more for use than for show. Several oil paintings adorn the walls, among which were those of the king and queen of Denmark, whose protection Carey enjoyed, Joshua Marshman, and some others whose names we have forgotten; “what does it matter,” though, “when one pushes his little bark out upon the boundless sea of eternity, how long he is kept in sight by the watchers on the shore?”
The chairs of Carey, Marshman, and Ward are carefully preserved in the library, also Carey's pulpit. The house occupied by the three is still standing. Some distance down the river stands the ruined Hindu temple, called Martyn's Pagoda, after saintly Henry Martyn, who was accustomed to withdraw himself to this place and pour out his soul to God for India. I ventured beneath the tottering walls of this ancient heathen shrine, that I might stand on the spot hallowed by his feet who, far from Serampore and India, rests in a Persian grave.
The ancient car of Jaganath is still preserved here. Fifteen feet square and perhaps twenty-five feet high, it is fantastically carved and painted with representations of Hindu gods and goddesses. Yearly, thousands still gather to draw the idol car, though happily the time is past when Christians were sometimes forced to help drag the car, and human beings were crushed beneath its wheels.
A short distance from the East India railway station is the cemetery, in which Carey, Marshman, and Ward lie buried. A pillar ten feet high marks the resting place of the great missionary Carey, his two wives, for he was twice married, and his eldest son with his wife.
The following simple inscription is on the stone:—
WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.,
Born 17 August, 1761. Died, 9 June 1834.
“A wretched, poor, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall.”
On the other side of the gate is a grave, and on the stone above it are the words, “Joshua Marshman, the last of the Serampore missionaries, by whom Christian truth and general knowledge were first introduced into these provinces. He was born in Westbury, Wilts, England, April 20, 1768, and died at Serampore, December 5, 1837, and here lies buried at the foot of this stone and in the same cemetery with his beloved colleagues, Carey and Ward.”
“They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever.”
Back in the cemetery opposite the gate is the tomb of William Ward.
These devoted servants of God, “being dead, yet speaketh,” call upon the young men of to-day to follow them, even as they followed Christ.—Gospel in All Lands.