William Ward, Serampore, to Lucius Bolles, Salem, MA, September 1818.

My Dear Brother

         It is now a long time since I receivd your very interesting letter giving us some account of the state of religion among different denominations in the U. S. And although yours lies among my unaswered letters I hope I may have written to you since I received it. If I have not you must fogive me. I have just closed a letter to Mr Sharp of Boston in which I have expressed our present want of divine influence, & this is a subject to which I could wish to direct the hearts of all our Brethren and Sisters all over the U. States. We want the day of Gods power. Neither by the best speakers of the native languages among us, nor by our best native preachers does any thing like genuine awakening, or melting work appear to have been even begun either among us or any other denomination in India. Those who have been called & baptized are mere dwarfs in religion, & in general we appear not to have got deep into the hearts of this people. The day of Gods power as felt in America sometimes moving whole congregations or very powerfully awakening & bringing under distress of soul even one individual is wholly unknown among us.  [blank space] converts confess sin without having felt its intolerable burden: they talk of the love of Christ but with a vast stoicism: I only know how to account for this except by the fact that their understandings even in such gross darkness & under such shocking deceptions that they still remain in very great darkness: Their consciences or rather they had no consciences and this part of the new man being only just born is still very weak, so that its voice is scarcely heard in the soul. This was in some degree the state of things when the gospel was first promulgated; hence scandals in apostolic churches, especially in the Corinthian, which are never heard of in our English or American chruches now. Still my dear Brother we cannot be ignorant that the powerful work of the holy spirit on the hearts of David Brainerd’s Indians & on the hearts of the sottish Greenlanders made wonderfully new men of them. This is the desideratum: The grand & crowning blessing wanted for India; the day of Gods power. Then what blessings would all those Bibles or parts of the Bible in so many languages become. Then what wonderful effects would follow all those thousands & ten thousands of Tracts. Then how interesting would become our Indian congregations filled with deeply attentive & deeply effected hearers. Then our native converts could start into warm lively & zealous itinerants & the word of the cross would spread from town to town & country to country with the utmost speed causing the desert to sing with joy. Then European Missionary feeling[,] the same impulses the same divine afflatus[,] would come forth like men fresh for the combat & one would then do the work of ten. Can you then my dear Brother stir up the churches to take the subject into consideration. India does not really want Translators or Missionaries or native converts or Books or Schools or friends to Missions. God has supplied in some measure all these. But all these are nothing without that other blessing for which every Mission Station languishes from the farthest extremity of the north to the last Island in the Indian Ocean –

         Where means cannot be multiplied as they are in our & your country Oh! how desirable doth those influences seem which so wonderfully render efficacious & multiply the means & instruments. In your great meeting & in your Associations press this point my dear Brother & who can tell & perhaps God may look upon our barrenness and give us a numerous progeny. God has blessed your society with four very suitable Instruments but they will greatly need the main blessing. Let us then altogether in your prayers & beseech the great fountain of Life & Salvation to remember his poor desponding servants & pour on them and their congregations the spirit of truth – to convince of sin of righteousness & of judgement. I learn with great grief from Brethren Colman & W* the great spread of socinianism among the congregationalists. I do not wonder at this in a country like yours where men have nothing of hereditary attachment to orthodoxy. We might expect such ^that^ graceless men to whom it was convenient to make some professions of attachment to christianity, would be carried away with op[in]ions so congenial with the pride & concupiscence of the heart; – still this dreadful attempt to remove from sin all its malignities & deserts to debase & degrade the Saviour, to heathenize the gospel to strip hell of its terrors, & heaven of its joys, may well fill us with horror.

         Intreating an interest in your prayer’s permit me to assure you that I am with sentiments of the sincerest regard

                     Yours indeed

                                             W Ward

* Wheelock

Address: none

Endorsed: Rev. W. Ward | Septr 1818 [most likely by Bolles]

Note on first page adds “Lucius Bolles” after the salutation in square brackets

Text: William Ward Letters, RG no. 1373, American Baptist Historical Society Archives, Atlanta.