CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
Dr. Busteed has done in later years, and shook their heads over his unbecoming extravagance, when the poor man fell into pecuniary difficulties, as he did in the closing years of his long missionary career. To the Rev. John Zachary Kiernander belongs the credit of having built what is now the oldest Protestant church in Calcutta—the Old or Mission Church—the second oldest place of Christian worship, the Armenian church being the oldest. Kiernander himself was the first Protestant missionary in Bengal; he came to Calcutta in 1758, from Tranquebar, at the instance of the S.P.C.K., in whose missions in Madras he had been working for eighteen years, and with the cordial approval, if not the direct invitation, of Clive. Kiernander was warmly welcomed in Calcutta, and received the friendly support of the Company's chaplain, the Rev. Henry Butler, who assisted him in obtaining subscriptions for the mission work.
It is not very creditable to the Calcutta community of that period and the Court of Directors that, after the destruction of St. Anne's Church in 1756, no English church was erected in the town till Kiernander built his Mission Church in 1770, and there was no Presidency church till 1787, when St John's Church was completed. When Kiernander arrived in Calcutta Mr. Butler
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