e. After begging
them to consider their own state, we prayed, sung Moorad's hymn, and
distributed papers. The concourse of people was great, perhaps 500:
they seemed much struck with the novelty of the scene, and with the
love and regard Christians manifest to each other, even in death; so
different from their throwing their friends, half dead and half living,
into the river; or burning their body, with perhaps a solitary
attendant."

Preaching, teaching, and Bible translating were from the first Carey's
three missionary methods, and in all he led the missionaries who have
till the present followed him with a success which he never hesitated
to expect, as one of the "great things" from God. His work for the
education of the people of India, especially in their own vernacular
and classical languages, was second only to that which gave them a
literature sacred and pure. Up to 1794, when at Mudnabati he opened
the first primary school worthy of the name in all India at his own
cost, and daily superintended it, there had been only one attempt to
improve upon the indigenous schools, which taught the children of the
trading castes only to keep rude accounts, or upon the tols in which
the Brahmans instructed their disciples for one-half the year, while
for the other half they lived by begging. That attempt was made by
Schwartz at Combaconum, the priestly Oxford of South India, where the
wars with Tipoo soon put an end to a scheme supported by both the Raja
of Tanjore and the British Government. When Carey moved to Serampore
and found associated with him teachers so accomplished and enthusiastic
as Marshman and his wife, education was not long in taking its place in
the crusade which was then fully organised for the conversion of
Southern and Eastern Asia. At Madras, too, Bell had stumbled upon the
system of "mutual instruction" which he had learned from the easy
methods of the indigenous schoolmaster, and which he and Lancaster
taught England to apply to the clamant wants of the country, and to
improve into the monitorial, pupil-teacher and grant-in-aid systems.
Carey had all the native schools of the mission "conducted upon
Lancaster's plan."

In Serampore, and in every new station as it was formed, a free school
was opened. We have seen how the first educated convert, Petumber, was
made schoolmaster. So early as October 1800 we find Carey writing
home:--"The children in our Bengali free school, about fifty, are
mos