. Almost his last act had been to write to Carey
urging him to publish a reply to the attack of the Abbe Dubois on all
Christian missions. Another friend was removed in Bentley, the scholar
who put Hindoo astronomy in its right place. Bishop Heber began his
too brief episcopate in 1824, when the college, strengthened by the
abilities of the Edinburgh professor, John Mack, was accomplishing all
that its founders had projected. The Bishop of all good Christian men
never penned a finer production--not even his hymns--than this letter,
called forth by a copy of the Report on the College sent to him by Dr.
Marshman:--

"I have seldom felt more painfully than while reading your appeal on
the subject of Serampore College, the unhappy divisions of those who
are the servants of the same Great Master! Would to God, my honoured
brethren, the time were arrived when not only in heart and hope, but
visibly, we shall be one fold, as well as under one shepherd! In the
meantime I have arrived, after some serious considerations, at the
conclusion that I shall serve our great cause most effectually by doing
all which I can for the rising institutions of those with whom my
sentiments agree in all things, rather than by forwarding the labours
of those from whom, in some important points, I am conscientiously
constrained to differ. After all, why do we differ? Surely the
leading points which keep us asunder are capable of explanation or of
softening, and I am expressing myself in much sincerity of
heart--(though, perhaps, according to the customs of the world, I am
taking too great a freedom with men my superiors both in age and in
talent), that I should think myself happy to be permitted to explain,
to the best of my power, those objections which keep you and your
brethren divided from that form of church government which I believe to
have been instituted by the apostles, and that admission of infants to
the Gospel Covenants which seem to me to be founded on the expressions
and practice of Christ himself. If I were writing thus to worldly men
I know I should expose myself to the imputation of excessive vanity or
impertinent intrusion. But of you and Dr. Carey I am far from judging
as of worldly men, and I therefore say that, if we are spared to have
any future intercourse, it is my desire, if you permit, to discuss with
both of you, in the spirit of meekness and conciliation, the points
which now divide us, convinced that, if a reu