Introduction

Biography

In the late 18th Cen­tu­ry, Krish­na Pal heard the Gos­pel be­cause of a brok­en limb, set for him by Dr. John Tho­mas, mis­sion­ary phy­si­cian in Ser­am­pore (at that time a Dan­ish set­tle­ment in In­dia). Af­ter Tho­mas ad­min­is­tered sur­gi­cal aid, he spoke to Pal of the more aw­ful dis­ease of sin, and of God’s good­ness in pro­vid­ing a great Phy­si­cian.

Pal was much af­fect­ed by the sto­ry of the cross. He soon af­ter pro­fessed faith in Christ and was bap­tized in the River Gan­ges, near the mis­sion­ary re­si­dence at Ser­am­pore, In­dia. Dur­ing the bap­tism, Grigg’s hymn Je­sus, and Shall It Ev­er Be was sung in Ben­ga­li.

Pal not only built him­self a house for wor­ship, but in 1804, was set apart for the work of the min­is­try. Dr. Ca­ry des­cribed him as a stea­dy, zea­lous, well-in­formed, and I may add, el­o­quent min­is­ter of the gos­pel, av­er­ag­ing twelve to four­teen ser­mons a week. In such self de­ny­ing la­bors he con­tin­ued for 20 years at the small sal­a­ry of six dol­lars a month. An­oth­er said of Pal:

This man, then at the prime of age, be­came an em­i­nent Chris­tian, en­gaged in the min­is­try, which he pur­sued for ma­ny years, bap­tized ma­ny hun­dreds of con­vert­ed idol­a­ters, and then died tri­um­phant in the Lord Je­sus. Joy­ful­ly did he bear wit­ness that the ser­vice of Christ was the work of love, and that in it he got no­thing but joy and com­fort. He wrote two or three hymns, one of which con­tin­ues to be sung in In­dia in the Ben­ga­lee lang­uage, in which it was com­posed; and a part of it, trans­lat­ed in­to English, is print­ed in most of our books.