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"Carey and his son have been in Bengal fourteen years, the other
brethren only nine; they had all a difficult language to acquire before
they could speak to a native, and to preach and argue in it required a
thorough and familiar knowledge. Under these circumstances the wonder
is, not that they have done so little, but that they have done so much;
for it will be found that, even without this difficulty to retard them,
no religious opinions have spread more rapidly in the same time, unless
there was some remarkable folly or extravagance to recommend them, or
some powerful worldly inducement. Their progress will be continually
accelerating; the difficulty is at first, as in introducing vaccination
into a distant land; when the matter has once taken one subject
supplies infection for all around him, and the disease takes root in
the country. The husband converts the wife, the son converts the
parent, the friend his friend, and every fresh proselyte becomes a
missionary in his own neighbourhood. Thus their sphere of influence
and of action widens, and the eventual issue of a struggle between
truth and falsehood is not to be doubted by those who believe in the
former. Other missionaries from other societies have now entered India,
and will soon become efficient labourers in their station. From
Government all that is asked is toleration for themselves and
protection for their converts. The plan which they have laid for their
own proceedings is perfectly prudent and unexceptionable, and there is
as little fear of their provoking martyrdom as there would be of their
shrinking from it, if the cause of God and man require the sacrifice.
But the converts ought to be protected from violence, and all cramming
with cow-dung prohibited on pain of retaliation with beef-tea.

"Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which the scoffers and
alarmists have represented the missionaries. We, who have thus
vindicated them, are neither blind to what is erroneous in their
doctrine or ludicrous in their phraseology; but the anti-missionaries
cull out from their journals and letters all that is ridiculous
sectarian, and trifling; call them fools, madmen, tinkers, Calvinists,
and schismatics; and keep out of sight their love of man, and their
zeal for God, their self-devotement, their indefatigable industry, and
their unequalled learning. These low-born and low-bred mechanics have
translated the whole Bible into Bengali, and