Carlyle has, in characteristic style, seized on the true meaning that was in the man when he made to himself a suit of leather and became the modern hero of Sartor Resartus. The words fit William Carey's case even better than that of George Fox:—"Sitting in his stall, working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards and discern its celestial Home." That "shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine...Stitch away, every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery." Thirty-six years after Fox had begun to wear his leathern doublet he directed all Friends everywhere that had Indians or blacks to preach the Gospel to them.
But it would be too long to tell the list of workers in what has been called the gentle craft, whom the cobbler's stall, with its peculiar opportunities for rhythmic meditation, hard thinking, and oft harder debating, has prepared for the honours of literature and scholarship, of philanthropy and reform. To mention only Carey's contemporaries, the career of these men ran parallel at home with his abroad—Thomas Shillitoe, who stood before magistrates, bishops, and such sovereigns as George III. and IV. and the Czar Alexander I. in the interests of social reform; and John Pounds, the picture of whom as the founder of ragged schools led Thomas Guthrie, when he stumbled on it in an inn in Anstruther, to do the same Christlike work in Scotland. Coleridge, who when at Christ's Hospital was ambitious to be a shoemaker's apprentice, was right when he declared that shoemakers had given to the world a larger number of eminent men than any other handicraft. Whittier's own early experience in Massachusetts fitted him to be the poet-laureate of the craft which for some years he adorned. His Songs of Labour, published in 1850, contain the best English lines on shoemakers since Shakspere put into the mouth of King Henry V. the address on the eve of Agincourt, which begins: "This day is called the feast of Crispin." But Whittier, Quaker, philanthropist, and countryman of Judson though he was, might have found a place for Carey when he sang so well of others:—
"Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet,
In strong and hearty German;
And Bloomfield's lay and Gifford's wit
And patriot fame of Sherman;
"Still from his book, a mystic seer,
The soul of Behmen teaches,
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear
Of Fox's leathern breeches."
The confessions of Carey, made in the spiritual humility and self-examination of his later life, form a parallel to the Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the little classic of John Bunyan second only to his Pilgrim's Progress. The young Pharisee, who entered Hackleton with such hate in his heart to dissenters that he would have destroyed their meeting-place, who practised "lying, swearing, and other sins," gradually yielded so far to his brother apprentice's importunity as to leave these off, to try to pray sometimes when alone, to attend church three times a day, and to visit the dissenting prayer-meeting. Like the zealot who thought to do God service by keeping the whole law, Carey lived thus for a time, "not doubting but this would produce ease of mind and make me acceptable to God." What revealed him to himself was an incident which he tells in language recalling at once Augustine and one of the subtlest sketches of George Eliot, in which the latter uses her half-knowledge of evangelical faith to stab the very truth that delivered Paul and Augustine, Bunyan and Carey, from the antinomianism of the Pharisee:—
"A circumstance which I always reflect on with a mixture of horror and gratitude occurred about this time, which, though greatly to my dishonour, I must relate. It being customary in that part of the country for apprentices to collect Christmas boxes [donations] from the tradesmen with whom their masters have dealings, I was permitted to collect these little sums. When I applied to an ironmonger, he gave me the choice of a shilling or a sixpence; I of course chose the shilling, and putting it in my pocket, went away. When I had got a few shillings my next care was to purchase some little articles for myself, I have forgotten what. But then, to my sorrow, I found that my shilling was a brass one. I paid for the things which I bought by using a shilling of my master's. I now found that I had exceeded my stock by a few pence. I expected severe reproaches from my master, and therefore came to the resolution to declare strenuously that the bad money was his. I well remember the struggles of mind which I had on this occasion, and that I made this deliberate sin a matter of prayer to God as I passed over the fields towards home! I there promised that, if God would but get me clearly over this, or, in other words, help me through with the theft, I would certainly for the future leave off all evil practices; but this theft and consequent lying appeared to me so necessary, that they could not be dispensed with.
"A gracious God did not get me safe through. My master sent the other apprentice to investigate the matter. The ironmonger acknowledged the giving me the shilling, and I was therefore exposed to shame, reproach, and inward remorse, which preyed upon my mind for a considerable time. I at this time sought the Lord, perhaps much more earnestly than ever, but with shame and fear. I was quite ashamed to go out, and never, till I was assured that my conduct was not spread over the town, did I attend a place of worship.
"I trust that, under these circumstances, I was led to see much more of myself than I had ever done before, and to seek for mercy with greater earnestness. I attended prayer-meetings only, however, till February 10, 1779, which being appointed a day of fasting and prayer, I attended worship on that day. Mr. Chater [congregationalist] of Olney preached, but from what text I have forgotten. He insisted much on following Christ entirely, and enforced his exhortation with that passage, 'Let us therefore go out unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.'—Heb. xiii. 13. I think I had a desire to follow Christ; but one idea occurred to my mind on hearing those words which broke me off from the Church of England. The idea was certainly very crude, but useful in bringing me from attending a lifeless, carnal ministry to one more evangelical. I concluded that the Church of England, as established by law, was the camp in which all were protected from the scandal of the cross, and that I ought to bear the reproach of Christ among the dissenters; and accordingly I always afterwards attended divine worship among them."
At eighteen Carey was thus emptied of self and there was room for Christ. In a neighbouring village he consorted much for a time with some followers of William Law, who had not long before passed away in a village in the neighbourhood, and select passages from whose writings the Moravian minister, Francis Okely, of Northampton, had versified. These completed the negative process. "I felt ruined and helpless." Then to his spiritual eyes, purged of self, there appeared the Crucified One; and to his spiritual intelligence there was given the Word of God. The change was that wrought on Paul by a Living Person. It converted the hypocritical Pharisee into the evangelical preacher; it turned the vicious peasant into the most self-denying saint; it sent the village shoemaker far off to the Hindoos.
But the process was slow; it had been so even in Paul's case. Carey found encouragement in intercourse with some old Christians in Hackleton, and he united with a few of them, including his fellow-apprentice, in forming a congregational church. The state of the parish may be imagined from its recent history. Hackleton is part of Piddington, and the squire had long appropriated the living of £300 a year, the parsonage, the glebe, and all tithes, sending his house minister "at times" to do duty. A Certificate from Northamptonshire, against the pluralities and other such scandals, published in 1641, declared that not a child or servant in Hackleton or Piddington could say the Lord's Prayer. Carey sought the preaching of Doddridge's successor at Northampton, of a Baptist minister at Road, and of Scott the commentator, then at Ravenstone. He had found peace, but was theologically "inquisitive and unsatisfied." Fortunately, like Luther, he "was obliged to draw all from the Bible alone."