e, a work indeed
in which the Serampore people were apt to be almost too precipitate, not
waiting for those refinements of knowledge which are needful in dealing
with the shades of meaning of words of such intense importance and
delicate significancy. But on their principles, they could do nothing
without vernacular Bibles, and they had not that intense reverence and
trained scholarly appreciation which made Martyn spend his life on the
correctness of a single version, rather than send it forth with a flaw to
give wrong impressions.

Neither does Felix Carey seem to have been a missionary in anything but
that bent which is given by training and family impulse. He delighted in
languages, but rather as an end than a means; and though he did what the
guiding fathers at Serampore required of him, it was as a matter of
course, not with his whole heart. In the meantime, the fact of Mr.
Chater being a married man occasioned difficulties. Like their kinsmen
the Chinese, the Burmese much objected to the residence of foreign
females within their bounds; and when Mr. Chater obtained leave to bring
his wife, she was so forlorn that he was obliged to seek for another
station, and, receiving an invitation to Ceylon, left Felix alone, except
for his marriage with a young woman of European extraction, but born in
Burmah.

Soon after a dispute arose between the British and Burmese governments,
and two English ships of war appeared off Rangoon. The native
authorities wished the young missionary to act as interpreter, and on his
refusal he was accused of being a spy, and was forced to take refuge on
board one of the British ships where he remained for two months before
the differences were adjusted, and he was allowed to return on condition
that he should not refuse his services as interpreter another time. In
the October of 1812 he came home to Serampore to print his Burmese
grammar and Gospel of St. Matthew, and not only did this, but carried a
press back with him to Rangoon. A youth who was sent from the
congregation at Calcutta to co-operate with him proved unfit for the
work, and was advised to return to secular business; but in the meantime,
the person who was, above all others, to be identified with the Burmese
mission, had heard the call and was on his way.

This was Adoniram Judson, a native of New England, the eldest son of the
minister of Malden, in Massachusetts, born in 1788, and bred up first at
a school near home,