The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary

by George Smith

"Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which the scoffers and alarmists have represented the missionaries. We, who have thus vindicated them, are neither blind to what is erroneous in their doctrine or ludicrous in their phraseology; but the anti-missionaries cull out from their journals and letters all that is ridiculous sectarian, and trifling; call them fools, madmen, tinkers, Calvinists, and schismatics; and keep out of sight their love of man, and their zeal for God, their self-devotement, their indefatigable industry, and their unequalled learning. These low-born and low-bred mechanics have translated the whole Bible into Bengali, and have by this time printed it. They are printing the New Testament in the Sanskrit, the Orissa, Mahratta, Hindostan, and Guzarat, and translating it into Persic, Telinga, Karnata, Chinese, the language of the Sieks and of the Burmans, and in four of these languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary as this is, it will appear more so when it is remembered that of these men one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at Hull, and a third the master of a charity-school at Bristol. Only fourteen years have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in India, and in that time have these missionaries acquired this gift of tongues, in fourteen years these low-born, low-bred mechanics have done more towards spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted, by all the princes and potentates of the world—and all the universities and establishments into the bargain.

"Do not think to supersede the Baptist missionaries till you can provide from your own church such men as these, and, it may be added, such women also as their wives."

Soon after the Charter victory had been gained "that fierce and fiery Calvinist," whose dictum Southey adopted, that the question in dispute is not whether the natives shall enjoy toleration, but whether that toleration shall be extended to the teachers of Christianity, Andrew Fuller, entered into rest on the 7th May 1815, at the age of sixty-two. Sutcliff of Olney had been the first of the three to be taken away[25] a year before, at the same age. The scholarly Dr. Ryland of Bristol was left alone, and the home management of the Mission passed into the hands of another generation. Up to Fuller's death that management had been almost ideally perfect. In 1812 the Committee had been increased by the addition of nineteen members, to represent the growing interest of the churches in Serampore, and to meet the demand of the "respectable" class who had held aloof at the first, who were eager that the headquarters of so renowned an enterprise should be removed to London. But Fuller prevailed to keep the Society a little longer at Kettering, although he failed to secure as his assistant and successor the one man whose ability, experience, and prudence would have been equal to his own, and have prevented the troubles that followed—Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated a letter to Ryland wherein he thus referred to the evangelical doctrine of grace which he had been the one English theologian of his day to defend from the hyper-calvinists, and to use as the foundation of the modern missionary enterprise:—"I have preached and written much against the abuse of the doctrine of grace, but that doctrine is all my salvation and all my desire. I have no other hope than from salvation by mere sovereign, efficacious grace through the atonement of my Lord and Saviour: with this hope I can go into eternity with composure. We have some who have been giving it out of late that if Sutcliff and some others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards they would have been more useful. If those who talk thus had preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is. It is very singular that the Mission to the East originated with one of these principles, and without pretending to be a prophet, I may say if it ever falls into the hands of men who talk in this strain (of hyper-calvinism) it will soon come to nothing."

Andrew Fuller was not only the first of Foreign Mission Secretaries; he was a model for all. To him his work was spiritual life, and hence, though the most active preacher and writer of his day, he was like Carey in this, that his working day was twice as long as that of most men, and he could spend half of his time in the frequent journeys all over the kingdom to raise funds, in repeated campaigns in London to secure toleration, and in abundant letters to the missionaries. His relation to the Committee, up to the last, was equally exemplary. In the very earliest missionary organisation in England it is due to him that the line was clearly drawn between the deliberative and judicial function which is that of the members, and the executive which is that of the secretary. Wisdom and efficiency, clearness of perception and promptitude of action, were thus combined. Fuller's, too, was the special merit of realising that, while a missionary committee or church are fellow-workers only with the men and women abroad, the Serampore Brotherhood was a self-supporting, and to that extent a self-governing body in a sense true of no foreign mission ever since. The two triumvirates, moreover, consisted of giants—Carey, Marshman, and Ward abroad; Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland at home. To Carey personally the death of Fuller was more than to any other. For almost the quarter of a century he had kept his vow that he would hold the rope. When Pearce died all too soon there was none whom Carey loved like Fuller, while Fuller's devotion to Carey was all the greater that it was tempered by a wise jealousy for his perfectness. So early as 1797, Fuller wrote thus to the troublesome Fountain:—"It affords us good hope of your being a useful missionary that you seem to love and revere the counsels of Brother Carey. A humble, peaceful, circumspect, disinterested, faithful, peaceable, and zealous conduct like his will render you a blessing to society. Brother Carey is greatly respected and beloved by all denominations here. I will tell you what I have foreborne to tell him lest it should hurt his modesty. Good old Mr. Newton says: 'Mr. Carey has favoured me with a letter, which, indeed, I accept as a favour, and I mean to thank him for it. I trust my heart as cordially unites with him as though I were a brother Baptist myself. I look to such a man with reverence. He is more to me than bishop or archbishop; he is an apostle. May the Lord make all who undertake missions like-minded with Brother Carey!'" As the home administrator, no less than as the theological controversialist, Andrew Fuller stands only second to William Carey, the founder of Modern English Missions.

Fuller's last letter to Carey forms the best introduction to the little which it is here necessary to record of the action of the Baptist Missionary Society when under the secretaryship of the Rev. John Dyer. Mr. John Marshman, C.S.I., has written the detailed history of that controversy not only with filial duty, but with a forgiving charity which excites our admiration for one who suffered more from it than all his predecessors in the Brotherhood, of which he was the last representative. The Society has long since ceased to approve of that period. Its opinion has become that of Mr. Marshman, to which a careful perusal of all the documents both in Serampore and England has led us—"Had it been possible to create a dozen establishments like that of Serampore, each raising and managing its own funds, and connected with the Society as the centre of unity in a common cause, it ought to have been a subject of congratulation and not of regret." The whole policy of every missionary church and society is now and has long been directed to creating self-supporting and self-propagating missions, like Serampore, that the regions beyond may be evangelised—whether these be colleges of catechumens and inquirers, like those of Duff and Wilson, Hislop and Dr. Miller in India, and of Govan and Dr. Stewart in Lovedale, Kafraria; or the indigenous churches of the West Indies, West Africa, the Pacific Ocean, and Burma. To us the long and bitter dispute is now of value only in so far as it brings out in Christ-like relief the personality of William Carey.

At the close of 1814 Dr. Carey had asked Fuller to pay £50 a year to his father, then in his eightieth year, and £20 to his (step) mother if she survived the old man. Protesting that an engraving of his portrait had been published in violation of the agreement which he had made with the artist, he agreed to the wish of each of his relatives for a copy. To these requests Fuller had replied:—"You should not insist on these things being charged to you, nor yet your father's £50, nor the books, nor anything necessary to make you comfortable, unless it be to be paid out of what you would otherwise give to the mission. To insist on their being paid out of your private property seems to be dictated by resentment. It is thus we express our indignation when we have an avaricious man to deal with."

The first act of the Committee, after Fuller's funeral, led Dr. Ryland to express to Carey his unbounded fears for the future. There were two difficulties. The new men raised the first question, in what sense the Serampore property belonged to the Society? They then proceeded to show how they would answer it, by appointing the son of Samuel Pearce to Serampore as Mr. Ward's assistant. On both sides of their independence, as trustees of the property which they had created and gifted to the Society on this condition, and as a self-supporting, self-elective brotherhood, it became necessary, for the unbroken peace of the mission and the success of their work, that they should vindicate their moral and legal position. The correspondence fell chiefly to Dr. Marshman. Ward and he successively visited England, to which the controversy was transferred, with occasional references to Dr. Carey in Serampore. All Scotland, led by Christopher Anderson, Chalmers, and the Haldanes—all England, except the Dyer faction and Robert Hall for a time, among the Baptists, and nearly all America, held with the Serampore men; but their ever-extending operations were checked by the uncertainty, and their hearts were nearly broken. The junior missionaries in India formed a separate union and congregation by themselves in Calcutta, paid by the Society, though professing to carry out the organisation of the Serampore Brotherhood in other respects. The Committee's controversy lasted sixteen years, and was closed in 1830, after Ward's death, by Carey and Marshman drawing up a new trust-deed, in which, having vindicated their position, the old men made over properties which had cost them £7800 to eleven trustees in England, stipulating only that they should occupy them rent free till death, and that their colleagues—who were John Marshman and John Mack, of Edinburgh University—might continue in them for three years thereafter, paying rent to the Society. Such self-sacrifice would be pronounced heroic, but it was only the outcome of a life of self-devotion, marked by the spirit of Him who spake the Sermon on the Mount, and said to the first missionaries He sent forth:—"Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves." The story is completed by the fact that John Marshman, on his father's death, again paid the price of as much of the property as the Hoogli had not swallowed up when the Committee were about to put it in the market.

Such was Dr. Carey's position in the Christian world that the Dyer party considered it important for their interest to separate him from his colleagues, and if not to claim his influence for their side, at least to neutralise it. By trying to hold up Dr. Marshman to odium, they roused the righteous indignation of Carey, while outraging his sense of justice by their blows at the independence of the Brotherhood. Dr. Marshman, when in England, met this course by frankly printing the whole private correspondence of Carey on the subject of the property, or thirty-two letters ranging from the year 1815 to 1828. One of the earliest of these is to Mr. Dyer, who had so far forgotten himself as to ask Dr. Carey to write home, alone, his opinion of his "elder brethren," and particularly of Dr. Marshman. The answer, covering eleven octavo pages of small type, is a model for all controversialists, and especially for any whom duty compels to rebuke the minister who has failed to learn the charity which envieth not. We reproduce the principal passages, and the later letters to Christopher Anderson and his son Jabez, revealing the nobleness of Carey and the inner life of the Brotherhood:—

"SERAMPORE, 15th July 1819.

"MY DEAR BROTHER—I am sorry you addressed your letter of January the 9th to me alone, because it places me in a most awkward situation, as it respects my elder brethren, with whom I have acted in concert for the last nineteen years, with as great a share of satisfaction and pleasure as could reasonably be expected from a connection with imperfect creatures, and whom I am thereby called to condemn contrary to my convictions, or to justify at the expense of their accusers. It also places me in a disagreeable situation as it respects my younger brethren, whom I highly respect as Christians; but whose whole conduct, as it respects the late unhappy differences, has been such as makes it impossible for me to do otherwise than condemn it...