"Shoemaker by trade, but scholar, linguist and missionary by God's training," William Carey was one of God's giants in the history of evangelism and missions! His story profoundly influenced me as a young college student and pastor. Someone wrote of Carey, "Taking his life as a whole, it is not too much to say that he was the greatest and most versatile Christian missionary sent out in modern times."
Born in a small thatched cottage in Northamptonshire, England in August 17, 1761, his family made a living as weaver's. In 1781 he married and shortly afterwards joined the particular Baptists in Olney in his quest for more spiritual truth. Two years later he moved to Moulton to become a schoolmaster — and a year later he became pastor of the small Baptist congregation there. In Moulton he heard God’s call to be a missionary. In his own words he cried, "My attention to missions was first awakened after I was at Moulton, by reading the Last Voyage of Captain Cook." To many, Cook's journal was a thrilling story of adventure, but to Carey it was a revelation of human need!
The more he read and studied, the more convinced he was "the peoples of the world need Christ." He read, he made notes, he made a great leather globe of the world and, one day, in the quietness of his cobbler's shop — not in some enthusiastic missionary conference — Carey heard the call: "If it be the duty of all men to believe the Gospel ... then it be the duty of those who are entrusted with the Gospel to endeavor to make it known among all nations." And Carey sobbed out, "Here am I; send me!"
There were no missionary societies and there was no real missionary zeal among the particular Baptists. When Carey propounded this subject for discussion at a ministers' meeting, "Whether the command given to the apostles to teach all nations was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent." Dr. Ryland shouted, "Young man, sit down: when God pleases to covert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine." He met with a cool reception to say the least!
But Carey persisted. He later said of his ministry, "I can plod!" And he was a man who "always resolutely determined never to give up on any point or particle of anything on which his mind was set until he had arrived at a clear knowledge of his subject."
Carey prayed, pled, plodded, persisted and preached. He said, “Expect great things from God and attempt great things for God.“ And he preached — especially his epoch-producing message, "EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD. ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD." October 2, 1792 he told an assembly of pastors that he would go down the well if they‘d hold the rope. From this assembly the Particular Baptist Mission Society formed and Carey became the first missionary sent out.
It was in 1793 that Carey went to India. At first his wife was reluctant to go — so Carey set off to go nevertheless, but after two returns from the docks to persuade her again, Dorothy and his children accompanied him. There were years of discouragement (not one Indian convert for seven years), debt, disease, depression after the death of their 5 year old son, Peter, his dear wife, under the strain, became mentally unstable and remained so until her death, December 8, 1807. Still, Carey continued and conquered for Christ!
Did he ever see success? All that he suffered; all he endured; did our Father honor his faithfulness? Yes! When he died at 73 (1834), he had seen the Scriptures translated and printed into forty languages, he had been a college professor, and had founded a college at Serampore. He had seen India open its doors to missionaries, he had seen the edict passed prohibiting sati (burning widows on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands), but still he had seen only a few converts for Christ. As a result of Carey steadfastness, thousands of missionaries followed him to the mission fields of the world. Today Carey is know as the father of modern missions.
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