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 "The
temper of our times is for instant gratification
and short-term commitment – quick answers to prayer and quick
results with a minimum of effort and discomfort. But there
is no such thing as easy and instant discipleship. One can
commence a walk of discipleship in a moment, but the first
step must lengthen into a life-long walk." 1
If one did not know better he would think those words of J.
Oswald Sanders were written about William Carey. If anyone
everyone took a life-long walk with God it was William Carey,
the father of modern foreign missions. There have been over
50 biographies written about him since his death, which tells
something of the impact this diminutive bald headed shoe cobbler
made on the entire world.
William Carey was born in 1761 in the remote village of Paulerspury,
Nothamptonshire, England. At the time of his birth John and
Charles Wesley were at the pinnacle of their influence and
George Whitfield was preparing for his sixth journey to the
Americas. 2 Whitfield
and the Wesleys were educated within the confines of prestigious
Oxford but Carey would know no such formal education. Instead,
the majority of his education would be of the trial-and-error
method, his school a heart set afire for lost people in far
away lands, and his degree a Doctorate in suffering for the
cause of Christ.
Just as both Bunyan and Spurgeon
rose from rural obscurity, so did William Carey. His parents
were rather plain people who belonged to the accepted church.
At the age of seven young William developed a skin disease
that was aggravated by exposure to sunlight. Because of this
condition Carey’s parents realized he would have to learn
a skill which allowed him to stay inside. So at the age of
fourteen William was apprenticed as a shoemaker with Clarke
Nichols. John Warr, a fellow apprentice and a Dissenter stands
as one of those great unknowns who led a person to Christ
whose name would be remembered above his own. Through careful
seed-planting John led Carey to a realization of his own sinfulness
and need for a Savior. Soon he was saved and seeking baptism
among those same Dissenters. Carey now had to add to his list
of lower-class traits that of being a Baptist.
Soon after his conversion William Carey began to speak at
various Dissenting churches and soon felt called to pastor
among the Baptists. If Carey’s future success had been judged
by his early days in preaching he would have been deemed hopeless
for the ministry. He was never considered a good speaker.
Carey was slight of build, prematurely bald, and crude in
his speech. His first year at Olney was so unimpressive that
the church refused to ordain him. One hearer commented about
his sermon as, "weak and crude as anything ever called a sermon."3
Carey often said of himself that his one great strength was
that he was a "plodder". He may not have had the greatest
skills but he had extraordinary tenacity. So, the young preacher
persevered and was finally ordained. His next ten years were
served first as bi-vocational and then full-time pastor. In
1781 Carey married Dorothy Plackett. He was only 19 and she
was 25. Though they were married for 26 years there was great
sorrow in that time and the ending was tragic.
As
a young boy, William developed a love for the explorers; so
much so that his friends nicknamed him Columbus. That love
for adventure became a love for adventuring for Christ as
an adult. As a pastor, Carey also worked as a schoolteacher.
While serving in that capacity he designed a shoe-leather
globe to teach his students about geography. It is said that
at times while he was teaching his eyes would fall on that
globe. Soon Carey would be weeping, crying out, "And these
are pagans, pagans!" 4
Many a young Christian, including this author, have been moved
toward the ministry by reading the account of Carey’s shoe-leather
globe and his passion for the unreached masses. As he studied
and prayed William Carey saw in Christ the perfect example
of a missionary. He wrote:
"If
Christ could stoop so low as to visit our ... sinful world,
and be moved with compassion upon the most undeserving and
guilty, the most sinful and depraved ...in what better way
could we demonstrate that we are partakers of His grace
than by earnest endeavor to imitate His example ... by laboring
to promote the salvation of the most ignorant and helpless
of mankind?" 5
Through
his association with Andrew Fuller
and others, Carey began to formulate a distinct sense of his
calling to missions from God. That calling soon translated
into a burden for others to see the same need for missionaries
to far off lands. Sadly, Carey met a great deal of opposition
to begin with concerning foreign missions. When He addressed
the Minister's Fraternal of the Northampton Baptist Association
in 1787 concerning missions John Ryland Sr. replied, "Sit
down young man. You are an enthusiast! When God pleases to
convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting you
or me." Such a reprimand only served to spur William Carey
on in his zeal for missions. In 1792 Carey wrote
An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means
for the Conversion of the Heathen. This would become the
Magna Carta for the modern mission movement. It was also in
that year that he preached his famous sermon, "Expect great
things. Attempt great things." By the end of that same day
the Northamptonshire Baptist Association adopted a resolution
penned by Andrew Fuller:
"Resolved,
that a plan be prepared against the next minister's meeting
at Kettering, for forming a Baptist Society for propagating
the gospel among the heathen." 6
With Carey’s sermon and Fuller’s resolution, the modern mission
movement was born. Nearly a century later that great Southern
Baptist, B.H. Carroll wrote of Carey’s sermon:
"William
Carrey ... preached his great sermon, 'Expect Great Things,
Attempt Great Things.' From the top of that sermon, if you
were to sight backwards on a dead level,, no other sermon
will be high enough to cross the line until you strike Peter's
sermon on the Day of Pentecost." 7
Before
long it was William Carey who had been chosen by the new missionary
society to head for India with the Gospel. Dorothy, Carey’s
wife was not so ready to leave England and only after much
persuasion did she agree to go. Time would prove that Dorothy’s
heart probably never made it to the distant shores of India.
Times for missionaries were quite different then than they
are now. Today, missionaries tend to go to lands they have
been well prepared for. They go with the benefit of language
school and seminary degrees in missiology. Such was not the
case in 1800. Like the first missionaries who followed him,
William Carey was in unknown waters when he went to India.
There was no precedent to follow. There were no mission textbooks
to carry along. There were no experienced missionaries to
show the way. "For the first few years in India, Carey was
essentially in missionary orientation. He had not precedents
to guide him, no sizeable body of missionary literature to
offer insights, and few missionary colleagues with whom to
compare notes. Carey's work was trial and error until after
a few years he hammered out a missionary strategy to go with
the missionary theology he had developed in England." 8
Along
with his associate, a Doctor Thomas, William Carey and family
arrived in the city of Calcutta in 1793. It was a town of
over 200,000 people from many parts of the world. Because
of the British influence, Calcutta was a town of varied shades.
It teemed with everything from Indian street beggars to English
aristocrats. It seemed like the perfect place to begin a mission.
Perfect, accept for the greater plans of God. From the beginning
things began to fall apart. Dr. Thomas was a terrible money
manager and they were quickly forced to move 30 miles out
into the countryside. Almost immediately Thomas faced something
he would for the rest of his life, creditors. Soon he squandered
most of the mission money leaving Carey and his family nearly
penniless. At this point Carey wrote, "Now all my friends
are but one; I rejoice, however, that He is all-sufficient,
and can supply all my wants, spiritual and temporal." 9
There is much we could learn from the spirit of a man
who was willing to reveal his doubts and fears and rejoice
in the great faithfulness of his God at the same time.
All
did not remain bleak, however. Under conviction for what he
had done, Dr. Thomas returned to Carey and they soon found
employment managing an indigo plantation. Carey’s love for
reading books about horticulture and farming proved a great
preparation for providing their livelihood in India. India
was a formidable environment for the fair skinned Britts.
In her jungles lurked man-eating tigers, rogue elephants,
snakes, malaria and death with a thousand faces. In 1796 fever
swept through the Carey family and claimed the life of their
5 year old son, Peter. Dorothy never recovered from this and
blamed Carey for their son’s death. Mrs. Carey was to become
mentally unstable and unable to cope with life throughout
the rest of her years on earth. Feeling the depth of loss
and alienation from his wife Carey wrote in his diary:
"This
is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me ... O
what I would give for a sympathetic friend ... to whom I
might open my heart! But I rejoice that I am here, not withstanding;
and God is here, who can not only have compassion, but is
able to save to the uttermost." 10
Trials
always precede triumphs as night does day. By 1799 more missionaries
had arrived and finally the work was established. Carey spent
the first seven years without a convert but now the tide was
turning. Finally in December of 1800 Carey baptized his first
Hindu and by 1821 the missionaries had baptized over 1400
new Christians. Working without any kind of a real support
system, William Carey had expected great things and attempted
great things. God had blessed his commitment.
During
this period, Carey's first wife, Dorothy, passed from this
world. He was married again quite quickly to Charlotte which
caused some talk among the other missionaries. Soon, however,
others in the mission compound realized the need Carey had
for a companion and a mother to his four children. They were
to be married for 13 years that would prove to be the happiest
of Carey's life. In 1821, William laid another wife to rest
in the soil of India. In 1822 he married his third wife, Grace.
They would remain together for the rest of their lives.
William Carey was not a formally educated man. He had none
of the worldly training of someone with money. Yet, In spite
of his poor education, Carey proved to be a brilliant linguist.
After 71/2 years of work his first edition of the Bengali
New Testament was ready in 1801. The Old Testament was finished
in segments by 1809. Carey's translating work was prodigious.
By 1837, he and his helpers had translated portions of the
Scripture into more than 40 languages. The mission's first
school for natives was opened in 1798 and in the next 20 years
102 more schools were opened with nearly 7,000 students. Carey's
crowning jewel was the Serampore College which is still in
operation to this present day.
On
June 9, 1834, William Carey left this earth at the age of
73. Once he left England he never returned to his homeland.
At his death he had requested the words of an Isaac Watts
hymn be written on his tombstone: "A wretched, poor, and helpless
worm, On Thy kind arms I fall." A young missionary who attended
the funeral wrote these words:
" And what shall we do? God has take up our Elijah to heaven
... But we must not be discouraged. The God of missions lives
forever. His Cause must go on ... With our departed leader
all is well. He had finished his course gloriously. But the
work now descends on us."
Like
most great men, Carey was complex. He experienced many triumphs
and yet also many defeats. His life and witness were forged
in the hot furnace of trial and disappointment. There can
be no doubt that Dorothy's mental illness was the darkest
thing in Carey's life. She never adjusted to the wild life
of the jungles of India. After Peter's death, Dorothy slowly
slipped into an ever-increasing madness. Imagine William Carey
trying to study and translate in the still night hours as
he heard the screams and curses of his demented wife from
the room next door. Finally, after 12 years of deep oppression
Dorothy died on December 8, 1807. Should he have brought his
reluctant wife to such a distant and remote land? God is the
judge of that.
Carey’s other great trial was the schism that rose between
the mission society he had helped form in England and the
missionaries in India. In our day of instant communication
it is quite possible that the problems which arose would never
have even happened. Because news traveled so slowly with no
way to confirm information without month’s delay, rumors had
a way of becoming fact before the accused could even speak.
Some accused Carey of becoming wealthy as a missionary. Nothing
could have been further from the truth. Everything he made
was turned into the mission compound. After Andrew Fuller’s
death, there was no one in Great Britain to speak sense to
younger nay-sayers. So, Carey and the mission society his
sermon began over 40 years earlier parted ways.
Great
men cast long shadows. Carey’s influence shadowed an entire
world. His influence reached America quickly. Missionaries
on their way to India often traveled through America and stayed
with Baptists along the way. Their zeal for missions was passed
on to American Christians. Carey influenced missionaries even
before he met them. When Ann and Adonirum Judson left the
states as Congregationalists they knew they would soon meet
Carey, a Baptist. In preparation the Judsons studied everything
they could in their Greek New Testament concerning baptism.
Thinking they would find a rebuttal to immersion for Carey,
they instead came to embrace immersion and were baptized when
they arrived in India.
William
Carey's influence on Indian society was also felt keenly.
Through his papers and efforts the Calcutta government finally
outlawed the infanticide of babies being thrown to the alligators
in the Ganges River. The practice of sati (widows being burned
at their deceased husband's funeral pier) especially horrified
Carey. Through his bold stance along with other missionaries,
that practice came to an end in 1829.
Most
importantly, Carey was a theological missionary. He was a
committed follower of the Doctrines of Grace along with Fuller
and yet was equally committed to the Great Commission. William
Carey once called himself a "plodder for Christ." He just
kept on doing what he was called to do and plodded toward
the kingdom with sure and measured steps. May we have more
plodders!
NOTE:
Footnotes to this article have been lost. We hope to restore
them soon.
READ
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE OBLIGATIONS OF
CHRISTIANS TO USE MEANS FOR THE
CONVERSION OF THE HEATHENS.
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