Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers

by W. E. Winks

One can imagine his feelings when told that he must be apprenticed to a shoemaker. Not that such an occupation was necessarily a bugbear to a boy in his position, for thousands of village lads would not have regarded it in that light; but it was so to him. His heart had been set on a very different kind of occupation. He was eager for study, and felt within him the movement of an impulse to do something great in the world, and this apprenticeship was a bitter disappointment, saddening his young heart, and quenching for a time all his bright hopes. But only for a time did he lose heart. He was one of those who are no friends to despair, who do not understand defeat, and whose spirit and determination rise in the face of difficulties. It was not to be expected in his circumstances that life could offer him any position of greater honor or advantage than a cobbler’s stool. He would not, therefore, murmur at his necessary lot. He would rather take to it with as good a grace as possible, and make the best of it. He would use every means and chance of self-improvement, and if he could not have his heart’s desire in the way he had intended, he would have it in some other way; anyhow he would have it. A broken purpose should no more stand in the way of his climbing the “tree of knowledge” than a broken leg had prevented his climbing to the top of the tree in his father’s garden.

So he settled to his work with Charles Nickolls of Hackleton at the age of fourteen, with no prospect but that of being bound to wield the awl and bend over the last until he had come to be twenty-one years of age. Soon after entering the shoemaker’s room he found a copy of the New Testament, in the notes to which occurred a number of Greek words. This opened up another field of study, and he determined to enter upon it. Copying out the words, he took them for explanation to a young man who was a weaver in the village where his father lived. This weaver came from Kidderminster, had seen better days, and had received a good education. He assisted young Carey, then fifteen years of age, in mastering the rudiments of Greek. With such a start he did not rest until he had procured and could read the Greek New Testament. In the second year of his apprenticeship his indentures were cancelled on account of the death of his master, and Carey became a journeyman, of course at very low wages, under Mr. Old. At this time there lived in the neighborhood a clergyman who was one of the lights of a dark period in the religious history of this country—the Rev. Thomas Scott, the popular evangelical preacher, writer, and Bible commentator. His own career was very remarkable. From the position of a laboring man he had risen to occupy good rank as a clergyman, and with very meagre advantages in early life he had become, or was rapidly becoming, one of the best sacred classics in the country. The man who had laid aside the shepherd’s smock for the clergyman’s surplice, and who on one occasion doffed his clerical attire, donned the shepherd’s clothes again, and sheared eleven large sheep on an afternoon, was not likely to neglect or overlook a youth of more than ordinary intelligence and application to study because the youth happened to spend his days at the shoemaker’s stall. Mr. Scott on his visiting rounds now and then turned in at Mr. Old’s, and was struck with the boy’s bright look and rapt attention to any remarks that the visitor might make. Occasionally young Carey would venture to ask a question. So appropriate and far-seeing were his inquiries that Mr. Scott discerned his young friend’s uncommon powers, and often declared that he would prove to be “no ordinary character.” In later years, when William Carey was known throughout England as a pioneer in mission work, as a great Oriental linguist, and the first translator of the New Testament into Bengali, Mr. Scott, as he passed by the old room where the thoughtful and studious young shoemaker had once sat at work, would point to it and say, “That was Mr. Carey’s college.”

But with all this mental activity and zest for knowledge there was no moral purpose in his life, and as he grew older he became more and more loose and careless in his habits, and, as he himself would have it, even vicious, until he came to be about eighteen years of age. But there is no proof of any evil conduct to justify the use of such a term as “vicious” in describing his life at this time. He spoke of himself, no doubt, after the religious fashion of the age, and judged his early conduct by the severe moral standard adopted by his co-religionists. His complete mental awakening, like that of Samuel Drew, seems to have come as a result of the moral change wrought in him at the time of his religious conversion. A variety of causes, as is the rule, led to this crucial event in his life, “that vital change of heart which laid the foundation of his Christian character.” First of all he was indebted to the good example of a fellow-workman, then to the earnest preaching of the Rev. Thomas Scott. Mr. Marshman says, “It was chiefly to the ministrations of Mr. Scott that Carey was indebted for the progress he made in his religious career, and he never omitted through life to acknowledge the deep obligation under which he had been laid by his instructions.” Brought up as a strict Churchman, he was confirmed at a suitable age, and regularly attended the services at the parish church. But at the time we are speaking of, when personal religion became the chief subject of his thoughts, he sought light and help by every available means. The little Baptist community, among whom he had many friends, showed him much sympathy: he began to attend their meetings for prayer, and eventually cast in his lot among them. They encouraged him to become a preacher, and his first sermon, delivered at Hackleton when he was nineteen years of age, was delivered in one of their assemblies. For three and a half years he was on the preachers’ plan, and regularly “supplied the pulpits” in this village and Earl’s Barton as a kind of pastor. “It was during these ministerial engagements,” says his biographer, “that his views on the subject of baptism were altered, and he embraced the opinion that baptism by immersion, after a confession of faith, was in accordance with the injunctions of Divine Writ and the practice of the apostolic age. He was accordingly baptized by Dr. John Ryland, his future associate in the cause of missions, who subsequently stated at a public meeting that, on the 7th of October, 1783, he baptized a poor journeyman shoemaker in the river Nene, a little beyond Dr. Doddridge’s chapel in Northampton.”[38]

During these years he was diligently prosecuting his studies, and read the Scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Like many another poor student, he was fain to borrow what he could not buy in the way of books, and “laid the libraries of all the friends around him under contribution.” Notwithstanding his extraordinary abilities and diligence, he does not seem to have displayed any marked qualities as a preacher. It was with difficulty he got through his trial sermons before the church of which he was now a member. The very decided “personal influence” of the pastor, the Rev. John Suttcliffe, was required to enable the modest young shoemaker to obtain the church’s sanction to his receiving “a call to the ministry.” The church to which he ministered at Earl’s Barton was poor, and scarcely able to keep its pastor in clothing, much less provide for his entire maintenance. For this he was dependent on his trade, and as the times were now very bad he was obliged to travel from village to village to dispose of his work and obtain fresh orders. Nothing but the assistance of his relatives saved him at this time from destitution.

And here we are bound to pause and notice the greatest mistake Carey made in all his life. We refer to his marriage at the age of twenty to the sister of his former employer. “This imprudent union,” it is said, “proved a severe clog on his exertions for more than twenty-five years.” The match was about as unfortunate and unsuitable as a match could be. Mrs. Carey was much older than her husband, ill-educated in mind and temper, and quite incapable of sympathizing with her husband’s studies and projects. How he came to contract such a miserable union passes comprehension, for he was remarkably sensible and business-like in common affairs. But there are those who can cultivate another man’s vineyard while they neglect their own, wise for others and simple for themselves; and in regard to this particular business, as Froude the historian has well said, some men are apparently “destined to be unfortunate in their relations with women.” The judicious Hooker was judicious in everything else but the choice of a wife, for he married a jade who was wont to give him the baby to nurse and stand and scold him into the bargain, as he sat writing the works that were destined to make his name illustrious for all time. Molière, who exposed in the most masterly manner in his plays the follies and foibles of the women of Parisian society in his day, married, to his bitter regret, as weak and vain a woman as any that figures in his own works. Milton’s second wife went home again within three months of their wedding-day; and John Wesley’s wife left him a short while after their marriage. But if these good men made a mistake in their choice, they one and all acted with good sense and feeling in their treatment of their ill-matched partners. Nothing could be better than the common-sense of stern John Wesley in his reply to a friend who asked him if he would not send for his truant wife home again. He answered in Latin, but this is what his words mean, “I did not send her away, and I will not fetch her back again.” Carey acted with much kindness and discretion toward his miserable partner; but he found it harder to transform her into a sensible woman than to transform his own Baptist Conference into a missionary society.[39]

In 1786, he took the pastorate of a small church at Moulton; yet, even here, he was obliged to eke out his poor living by shoemaking, and even to add to his other labors the task of teaching a school. For this task he was utterly unfit. However well he might teach himself, he could never teach boys. He knew this, and was accustomed to say, “When I kept school, it was the boys who kept me.” His circumstances at this time ought to be fully stated in order that the reader may form some idea of the hardship Carey had to endure and the absorbing personal duties and cares in the midst of which he began to cherish his great purpose “to convey the gospel of Jesus Christ to some portion of the heathen world.” His ministerial stipend from all sources and the proceeds of his school would not together put him in the position of Goldsmith’s ideal village pastor, who was “passing rich on forty pounds a year.” So that he was obliged, even at Moulton, to have recourse to shoemaking. A friend of his at the time remarks, “Once a fortnight Carey might be seen walking eight or ten miles to Northampton, with his wallet full of shoes on his shoulder, and then returning home with a fresh supply of leather.”

The time spent at Moulton was, in spite of its many cares and hardships, a time of great progress in study. It was during these years he adopted the plan of allotting his time, a plan to which he rigidly adhered all through his life, and by means of which he was able in after-years to accomplish tasks which seemed to onlookers sufficient for the energies of two or three ordinary men. Now began also the acquaintance with men whose friendship was of the greatest service to a man like Carey, and largely influenced and helped him in his life-work—Mr. Hall (the father of the eminent pulpit orator Robert Hall), Dr. Ryland, John Suttcliffe, and Andrew Fuller. All these lived within a few miles of each other, and belonged to the same association of Baptist churches, called the Northamptonshire Association. It was at one of the meetings of this association that Fuller first met with Carey and heard him preach. So delighted was Fuller with the devout thoughtfulness and Christian catholicity of Carey’s discourse, that he met the preacher as he came down from the pulpit and thanked him in the warmest manner. In this cordial meeting commenced a friendship and fellowship in Christian work which lasted for twenty years until Fuller’s death, and which proved a source of untold blessings to the heathen world.

Carey’s first thought of missions came into his mind when reading Captain Cook’s account of his voyage round the world. He was in the habit of blending study with his task as a shoemaker, or while sitting among his boys at school. This book impressed his imagination, and stirred his compassion to the utmost, as he contemplated the vast extent of the world and the large proportion of its inhabitants who were living in ignorance of the true God, and of the Saviour of mankind. In order to realize the facts more vividly, he constructed a large map of the world, and marked it in such a manner as to indicate the numerical relation of the heathen to the Christian nations. This map was fixed on the wall in front of his work-stool, so that he might raise his head occasionally and look upon it as he sat at his daily toil. While he mused on the map and the facts it represented, “the fire burned.” It was the means of inspiring in him the purpose never to tire nor rest until he and others had gone out to convey the good news of the Gospel to his suffering fellow-men in distant lands. It was to this circumstance that William Wilberforce alluded, in a speech made in the House of Commons twenty years after, when, urging Parliament to grant missionaries free access to India, he said: “A sublimer thought cannot be conceived than when a poor cobbler formed the resolution to give to the millions of Hindoos the Bible in their own language.”

With this purpose in mind, Carey went to the meetings of his brethren, longing for an opportunity of expressing his thoughts and calling forth their sympathies. But he had to endure a terrible trial at the outset—a trial which only Christian faith and love could endure. The older men, who ruled in an almost supreme manner in these councils, sternly rebuked his presumption, as they deemed it, and called him an “enthusiast”—a term employed very recently by a noble duke in the House of Lords in the same connection. No term could have described Carey more correctly. It was a term of honor, though meant in reproach and condemnation. The word means one inspired by God, and surely Carey’s Christlike thought and zeal for his fellow-men was an inspiration. He was an enthusiast of the type of Robert Raikes of Gloucester, who only six or seven years before[40] had begun the work of Sabbath-schools in that city; or John Howard, whose great work, published within a year or two of this time,[41] on the condition of the prisons in Europe, and especially in England and Ireland, created a merciful revolution in the treatment of our criminal class; or Thomas Charles of Bala, whose pity for the Welsh girl who had no Bible of her own, and had been unable to walk six or seven miles to a place where she could have access to one, led him to take steps which resulted in the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The founder of the Baptist Missionary Society was a man of this type, and such men are the greatest benefactors of their race, no matter whether they be clergymen like Charles, or country gentlemen like Howard, or cobblers and Nonconformist village pastors like Carey.