Christian History Magazine Collection

No matter how great the obstacles, William Carey expected great things and attempted great things.

by Mark Galli from Christian History magazine No. 36

It was inconceivable that a poor, English cobbler would spend his Sunday this way. But it was not untypical of William Carey’s first year in India.

“In the morning and afternoon addressed my family,” he wrote in his diary in May 1794, “and in the evening began my work of publishing the Word of God to the heathen. Though imperfect in the knowledge of the language [Bengali], yet, with the help of moonshi [a translator], I conversed with two Brahmans in the presence of about two hundred people, about the things of God. I had been to see a temple, in which were the images of Dukkinroy, the god of the woods, riding on a tiger; Sheetulla, goddess of the small pox, without a head, riding on a horse without a head; Puchanon, with large ears …. I therefore discoursed with them upon … the folly and wickedness of idolatry, the nature and attributes of God, and the way of salvation by Christ…. I cannot tell what effect it may have, as I may never see them again.”

That Carey was in India at all was preposterous, and even more, that he survived and flourished there for more than forty years. Then again, William Carey expected great things and he attempted nothing less.

Unexceptional Beginnings

William Carey was born on August 17, 1761, in the obscure village of Paulerspury, a rural community of 800 inhabitants, buried in the middle of England, about as far from ocean vistas as one could get. It wasn’t any closer to cosmopolitan London.

Furthermore, Carey’s family was unexceptional. His father taught basic reading to children of the lowest classes. He supplemented his income as parish clerk (who helped say the Church of England liturgy, keep the church accounts, and launder clerical garb). In sum: Carey and his four siblings lived a poor and simple life.

So it’s difficult to know what in Carey’s boyhood sparked his far-flung imagination.

Yet that imagination roamed unchecked. He talked so much of Columbus, his boyhood friends nicknamed him after the adventurer. His uncle Peter, a soldier who served in Canada, told him tales of ships and seas, of American Indians and other wonders of the New World.

Still, it seemed he would live out his days in rural England. When Carey was 7, he developed several allergies and a skin disease so that his skin became painfully sensitive when exposed long to the sun. Thus, his parents sought a trade for him in which he could work indoors. Eventually, Clarke Nichols, a shoemaker in the nearby town of Piddington, took teenage Carey as an apprentice.

And it was in that small cobbling shop in that little village that Carey’s fantastic vision began to take shape.

Vague Visions

In the cobbling shop, Carey met John Warr, a Congregationalist who immediately sought to convert him. Carey resisted, but within three years, his conscience convinced him of his need for a Savior and his desire to leave the “lifeless and carnal” Church of England.

An impassioned Carey became anxious about his Anglican relatives. On visits to Paulerspury, he would ask permission to lead in family prayers. But neophyte zeal outran tact. His sister Polly later wrote, “Often have I felt my pride rise while he was engaged in prayer, at the mention of those words in Isaiah ‘that all our righteousness was like filthy rags.’ I did not think he thought his so, but looked on me and the family as filthy, not himself and his party.”

In Clarke Nichols’s workshop, Carey discovered a commentary on the New Testament, with part of the text printed in Greek. From a neighbor he borrowed a Greek grammar and glossary and soon taught himself Greek.

Carey was beginning to expect great things, however vaguely, but his place in the social scheme conspired against great attempts. He continued as an apprentice cobbler when Clarke Nichols died, transferring himself to Thomas Old of Hackleton. And he became responsible for a family, marrying Dorothy “Dolly” Plackett, who soon gave birth to daughter Ann.

His poverty increased, and disease struck. Before her second birthday, Ann died of fever. That fever also nearly took Carey, and it left him bald the rest of his life. When his mother joined the family to help nurse Carey, she discovered, to her shock, how deeply the family had sunk into poverty. Between his younger brother’s meager savings and a collection taken in his home village, Carey was able to buy a decent cottage in Piddington.

When Thomas Old died, he handed over his shoemaking business (and the care of his widow and children) to 22-year-old Carey. Carey turned out to be an ineffective businessman, probably because he failed to attend to details and to confront customers who owed him money.

So he was forced to open an evening school in the village to supplement his income. But, as he himself recognized, he wasn’t a good teacher. His sister Mary once wrote, “He probably had much less faculty for teaching than for acquiring [information]. And then he could never assume the carriage, nor utter the tones, nor wield the sceptre of a schoolmaster. He would frequently smile at his incompetency in these respects.”

He seemed hopelessly caught in the web of bills and family responsibilities, with few if any skills to untangle himself.

All the while, the vision became clearer, and a trait Carey had shown since boyhood began to make a mark on his life: “I can plod,” he wrote toward the end of his life, “I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”

So during the drudge days in Piddington, he continued plodding through Latin and Greek. He began plodding his way to Earls Barton every other week to preach to a local meeting there. And, after hearing a particularly moving sermon by one Andrew Fuller, a local Baptist preacher, he began a slow, patient search of the Scriptures, which by the fall of 1783 convinced him to submit to baptism and throw in his lot with the Particular Baptists.

Ironically, though, the most religious event of his life that fall had nothing to do with such things. He borrowed a copy of “Captain Cook’s Voyages”, the famous sailor’s journals from the South Seas. By the time he finished reading it, Carey was entranced, his imagination catapulted to distant lands and foreign peoples. “Reading Cook’s voyages,” he later wrote, “was the first thing that engaged my mind to think of missions.”

He began expecting great things as never before.

Learning Geographical Grammar

In the fall of 1785, Carey was invited to become the preacher of a small, dying Baptist church in the town of Moulton. Though he was now relieved of taking care of Thomas Old’s widow and children, his own family responsibilities increased. Three sons were born in quick succession—Felix, William, and Pete—so he couldn’t shake poverty. Even his church admitted their “Beloved Pastor” continued to be “in considerable straits for want of Maintenance.” He had to supplement his income by teaching, and later, when his students deserted him for another teacher, by cobbling.

Carey sought ordination, but after hearing him preach, the ordination committee balked at his lack of illustrations: “Brother Carey, you have no likes’ in your sermon,” evaluated one member of the committee. “Christ taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was like to leaven hid in meal, like to a grain of mustard…. You tell us what things are; but never, what they are like.”

The dogged Carey kept at it, but he wasn’t ordained for another two years. Three ministers officiated at the service: John Sutcliff, John Ryland, and Andrew Fuller—three cornerstones of the future Baptist Missionary Society.

That missionary society was already crystallizing in Carey’s mind. Between his rounds of preaching, teaching, and cobbling, Carey consumed Guthrie’s Geographical Grammar, John Entick’s The Present State of the British Empire, and the international news section of the weekly Northampton Mercury. He pasted several sheets of paper together and made a world map, which he hung in his cobbler’s workshop. He noted the population, the religion, and other pertinent facts of every country he traced.

His shoemaker employer, recognizing Carey’s true gifts, agreed to pay him what he had been earning part-time: “I do not intend you should spoil any more of my leather, but you may proceed as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.” And that Carey did, adding in a few weeks French and Dutch.

The Enthusiast

By late 1786, Carey’s far-flung ideas were clarified enough that he was ready to debate them. Debate would be needed. His hyper-Calvinist colleagues, Carey felt, left human beings too passive. When a Baptist association meeting sought topics for discussion, Carey proposed his growing passion: “Whether the command given to the apostles to teach all nations was not binding on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world.”

“Young man, sit down, sit down!” was the reported response of one minister. “You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he’ll do it without consulting you or me. Besides there must be another Pentecostal gift of tongues!”

The story may be apocryphal, but the sentiment was not. The rebuke moved Carey to study further and begin a book. In 1792, it was published: An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, are Considered. The cumbersome title, typical for the day, accurately conveyed the contents. In it he forcefully answered the objections of hyper-Calvinists and those who raised practical obstacles to missions.

By spring 1791, though, sentiments about missions had been shifting. At a Baptist ministers’ meeting, Carey was pleased to hear two sermons that supported his notions. He immediately proposed organizing a missionary society. The group hesitated, but they asked Carey to preach at next year’s meeting.

Carey brought his book’s arguments to bear in that sermon, based on Isaiah 54:2, 3—”Enlarge the place of thy tent.” He concluded with an unforgettable call: “Expect great things! Attempt great things!”

The sermon was riveting, but the ministers hesitated again. As one biographer puts it, “Carey was an embarrassment to them; he had a ‘bee in his bonnet’ about missions.”

As the group readied to adjourn, Carey gripped Andrew Fuller’s arm: “Is nothing again going to be done?”

Carey’s passion prevailed. Within five months, on October 2, 1792, twelve ministers formed a society “for the propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen, according to the recommendations of Carey’s Enquiry.” They passed around Andrew Fuller’s snuff box, embossed with a picture of St. Paul’s conversion, and collected pledges for the mission.

Great things were expected. It was now time for the great attempt.