Joseph Hughes, the
Nonconformist who was its first secretary, had been moved by the need
of the Welsh for the Bible in their own tongue. But the
ex-Governor-General, Lord Teignmouth, became its first president, and
the Serampore translators at once turned for assistance to the new
organisation whose work Carey had individually been doing for ten years
at the cost of his two associates and himself. The catholic Bible
Society at once asked Carey's old friend, Mr. Udny, then a member of
the Government in Calcutta, to form a corresponding committee there of
the three missionaries--their chaplain friends, Brown and Buchanan, and
himself. The chaplains delayed the formation of the committee till
1809, but liberally helped meanwhile in the circulation of the other
appeals issued from Serampore, and even made the proposal which
resulted in Dr. Marshman's wonderful version of the Bible in Chinese
and Ward's improvements in Chinese printing. To the principal
tributary sovereigns of India Dr. Buchanan sent copies of the
vernacular Scriptures already published.

From 1809 till 1830, or practically through the rest of Carey's life,
the co-operation of Serampore and the Bible Society was honourable to
both. Carey loyally clung to it when in 1811, under the spell of Henry
Martyn's sermon on Christian India, the chaplains established the
Calcutta Auxiliary Bible Society in order to supersede its
corresponding committee. In the Serampore press the new auxiliary,
like the parent Society, found the cheapest and best means of
publishing editions of the New Testament in Singhalese, Malayalam, and
Tamil. The press issued also the Persian New Testament, first of the
Romanist missionary, Sebastiani--"though it be not wholly free from
imperfections, it will doubtless do much good," wrote Dr. Marshman to
Fuller--and then of Henry Martyn, whose assistant, Sabat, was trained
at Serampore. Those three of Serampore had a Christ-like tolerance,
which sprang from the divine charity of their determination to live
only that the Word of God might sound out through Asia. When in 1830
this auxiliary--which had at first sought to keep all missionaries out
of its executive in order to conciliate men like Sydney Smith's
brother, the Advocate-General of Bengal--refused to use the
translations of Carey and Yates, and inclined to an earlier version of
Ellerton, because of the translation or transliteration of the Greek
words for "baptism," these two sch