nd unattractive in appearance compared with its latest
successors. In truth the second edition, which appeared in 1806, was
almost a new version. The criticism of his colleagues and others,
especially of a ripe Grecian like Dr. Marshman, the growth of the
native church, and his own experience as a Professor of Sanskrit and
Marathi as well as Bengali, gave Carey new power in adapting the
language to the divine ideas of which he made it the medium. But the
first edition was not without its self-evidencing power. Seventeen
years after, when the mission extended to the old capital of Dacca,
there were found several villages of Hindoo-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-gooroos." They traced their new faith to a much-worn book kept
in a wooden box in one of their villages. No one 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 of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the wide and elastic bounds of Hindooism,
and even, as we shall see, amid fanatical Mussulmans beyond the
frontier, the Bible, dimly understood without a teacher, has led to
puritan sects like this, as to earnest inquirers like the chamberlain
of Queen Candace.

The third edition of the Bengali Testament was published in 1811 in
folio for the use of the native congregations by that time formed. The
fourth, consisting of 5000 copies, appeared in 1816, and the eighth in
1832. The venerable scholar, like Columba at Iona over the
thirty-fourth psalm, and Baeda at Jarrow over the sixth chapter of
John's Gospel, said as he corrected the last sheet--the last after
forty years' faithful and delighted toil: "My work is done; I have
nothing more to do but to wait the will of the Lord." The Old Testament
from the Hebrew appeared in portions from 1802 to 1809. Such was the
ardour of the translator, that he had finished the correction of his
version of the first chapter of Genesis in January 1794. When he read
it to two pundits from Nuddea, he told Fuller in his journal of that
month they seemed much pleased with the account of the creation, but
they objected to the omission of patala, their imaginary place beneath
the earth, which they thought should have been mentioned. At this
early period Carey saw the weakness of Hindooism as a pretended