Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers

by W. E. Winks

At the first meeting in which Carey ventured to submit the subject of Christian missions, the senior minister present spoke in the following oracular manner: “Brother Carey ought certainly to have known that nothing could be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, would give effect to the commission of Christ, as at the first; and that he (Mr. Carey) was a miserable enthusiast for asking such a question.” And then, as if to settle the whole question once for all, and shut the mouth of Mr. Carey forever, the stern old man turned to the humble young pastor and said, “What, sir! can you preach in Arabic, in Persic, in Hindostani, in Bengali, that you think it your duty to preach the gospel to the heathen?” Little did the speaker imagine that he was addressing the very man who would subsequently hold the office of Professor of Oriental Languages, at Fort William for twenty years, become one of the greatest proficients the world has known in two of the very languages he had named, and not only preach in them but translate the Scriptures into them, as a boon and legacy of love to the people of Hindostan. When on another occasion Carey, nothing daunted by his first repulse, and willing to forgive and forget his rebuff for the sake of the cause he cherished, asked his brethren once more to consider the question of missions, the same stern voice exclaimed, “Young man, sit down; when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.”

But the old man was not a prophet. God did not choose to work without the aid of William Carey, though the time was not yet. The undaunted moral hero had other battles to fight before he stood on the field of missions.

In 1789 Carey became the pastor of a church in Leicester. For four years he labored zealously at his ministerial duties, studied with great diligence, availing himself of new and valuable friendships for this purpose, and never failing to bring up his favorite theme for discussion at the meetings of the Baptist ministers. Before he left Moulton, as we have seen, he began to raise the question in the public assemblies. On one occasion the debate ran on the question he had introduced, “Whether it were not practicable, and our bounden duty, to attempt somewhat toward spreading the gospel in the heathen world?” Not satisfied with the result of such discussions, the village shoemaker and pastor sat down to write a pamphlet on this subject, entitled “Thoughts on Christian Missions.” When he showed this pamphlet to his friends Fuller, Suttcliffe, and Ryland, they were amazed at the amount of knowledge it displayed, and deeply moved by Carey’s zeal and persistence in the good cause; but all they could do in the matter was to put him off for a time by counselling him to revise his production. It appears that at the time this brochure was penned the poor shoemaker with his family were “in a state bordering on starvation, and passed many weeks without animal food, and with but a scanty supply of bread.”

In the year 1791, at a meeting held at Clipstone in Northamptonshire, Carey again read his pamphlet, and was requested to publish it. This was a decided step in advance, and prepared the way for the events of the following year, when the desire of his heart was accomplished in the formation of a missionary society. In May, 1792, he preached the famous sermon which is said to have done more than anything else to consummate this missionary enterprise.[42] The two main propositions of this discourse have passed into something like a proverb on the lips of missionary advocates: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” Although the discourse made a deep impression, Carey was distressed beyond all self-control when he found his friends were about to separate without a distinct resolution to form a society. He seized Andrew Fuller’s hand “in an agony of distress,” and tearfully pleaded that some steps should at once be taken. Overcome at last by his entreaties, they solemnly resolved on the holy enterprise.

After this the history of the Society is a record of meetings, committees, travels, and labors, of deputations to the churches, difficulties and embarrassments, in the midst of which no one was more devoted and useful in bringing the plans of the young Society into working order than Carey’s valuable friend, Andrew Fuller. The first subscription list was made up at another meeting of the Association, held at Kettering, in Carey’s own county, in the autumn of the same year. Its promises amounted to £13 2s. 6d. This little fund was the precursor of the tens of thousands which have since flowed into the treasuries of our modern Christian Missionary Societies. In twenty-nine days after the fund was started at Kettering, Birmingham followed with the noble gift of £70.

The Society was now fairly started, with the resolution formally recorded on its minute-books “to convey the message of salvation to some portion of the heathen world.” On the 9th of January, 1793, Carey and a colleague were appointed by the Committee to proceed at once to India. Carey’s colleague was a man of extraordinary missionary zeal, who had “lately returned from Bengal, and was endeavoring to establish a fund in London for a mission to that country.”[43] He was a Baptist, and on hearing of the schemes of his brethren in England, he readily fell in with their proposal that he should accompany Carey to India. But the question of finding a berth on an English vessel was not easily settled. No English captain dare take them out without a government license, and to obtain a license as missionaries was not to be thought of. Having at one time gone on board a vessel with all their baggage, they were obliged by the captain, who felt that he was risking his commission in taking them on board, to land again and return to London. They were compelled at length to have recourse to a Danish vessel, the Cron Princessa Maria, whose captain, an Englishman by birth, though naturalized as a Dane, looked favorably on their enterprise. On the 13th of June, 1793, Carey and his companion set sail from the shores of England, their expedition as ambassadors for Christ as little heeded by the world at large as that of the Cilician tentmaker and his little band of preachers who set sail seventeen centuries before from the port of Alexandria Troas for the shores of Europe.

The story of Carey’s life and work in India cannot be followed in detail. We have come to the close of that portion of his history which properly belongs to these brief sketches of illustrious shoemakers. A few sentences must suffice to give a picture of his labors as a missionary and the result of those labors. For six or seven years Carey and his friends had to endure much hardship, and their proceedings were hampered by difficulties of various kinds. To begin with, they had no legal standing in the country, and were forced at length to take up their quarters under the Danish flag at Serampore. “Here they bought a house, and organized themselves into a family society, resolving that whatever was done by any member should be for the benefit of the mission. They opened a school, in which the children of those natives who chose to send them were instructed gratuitously.”[44] The funds supplied from home were but scanty, and they were compelled to resort to trade for their livelihood and the means of carrying on their work. “Thomas, who was a surgeon, intended to support himself by his profession. Carey’s plan was to take land and cultivate it for his maintenance.“[45] At one time, when funds were exhausted, Mr. Carey ”was indebted for an asylum to an opulent native;” at another time, driven to distraction by want of money, by the apparent failure of his plans, and the upbraidings of his unsympathetic partner, he removed with his family to the Soonderbunds, and took a small grant of land, which he proposed to cultivate for his own maintenance; and, later on, he thankfully accepted, as a way out of his difficulties and a means of furthering his missionary projects, the post of superintendent of an indigo factory at Mudnabatty. This post he held for five or six years. No sooner had he got into this position of comparative independence than he wrote home and proposed that “the sum which might be considered his salary should be devoted to the printing of the Bengali translation of the New Testament.” This generous proposal is a fair illustration of his self-sacrificing spirit from the beginning to the end of his missionary life. To the work of translating and circulating the Scriptures in the languages of India he devoted not only all his time and his vast mental powers, but whatever private funds might be at his command. As the work proceeded, and he became known and employed by the government in various professorships, these funds were often very considerable. In 1807, when Carey held the Professorship of Oriental Languages at the Fort William College, at a salary of £1200 a year, Mr. Ward, one of his colleagues, wrote, in reply to some unfriendly remarks made in an English publication, that Dr. Carey and Mr. Marshman “were contributing £2400 a year,“ and receiving from the mission fund ”only their food and a trifle of pocket-money for apparel.”

In 1800 the missionary establishment, now strengthened by the two worthy colleagues just named, was removed to Serampore, a Danish settlement about fifteen miles from Calcutta. A printing press and type were purchased, and the work of printing the Scriptures commenced. Carey had been quietly but most diligently going on with the translation of the Scriptures into Bengali during the previous years of anxiety and varied missionary labor. Whatever cares weighed on brain and heart, the true work of his life, to which he had devoted himself, was never relinquished.

On the 18th of March, 1800, the first sheets of the Bengali New Testament were struck off, and on the 7th of February in the following year, “Mr. Carey enjoyed the supreme gratification of receiving the last sheet of the Bengali New Testament from the press, the fruition of the ‘sublime thought’ which he had conceived fifteen years before.” It is not surprising that we should read the following record of the manner in which these humble missionaries expressed their devout gratitude to God on the consummation of this part of their Christian labors: “As soon as the first copy was bound, it was placed on the communion table in the chapel, and a meeting was held of the whole of the mission family, and of the converts recently baptized, to offer a tribute of gratitude to God for this great blessing.” In 1806 the New Testament was ready for the press in Sanskrit, the sacred language of India, the language of its most ancient and venerated writings, and the parent of nearly all the languages of modern India. Simultaneously with this were being issued proof-sheets of the New Testament in Mahratta, Orissa, Persian, and Hindostani, besides dictionaries and grammars, and other publications for the use of students. It is well-nigh impossible to form a correct idea of the amount of religious zeal, mental energy, and physical endurance involved in labors like those of Dr. Carey, extending over forty years in the climate of Bengal. He is said to have regularly tired out three pundits, or native interpreters, who came one after the other each day to assist him in the correction and revision of his translations. A letter written in 1807, when the degree of D.D. was conferred on Mr. Carey by the Brown University, United States, gives a graphic sketch of the ordinary day’s work performed by him at this period: “He rises a little before six, reads a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and spends the time till seven in private devotion. He then has family prayer with the servants in Bengali, after which he reads Persian with a moonshee who is in attendance. As soon as breakfast is over he sits down to the translation of the Ramayun with his pundit till ten, when he proceeds to the college and attends to its duties till two. Returning home, he examines a proof-sheet of the Bengali translation, and dines with his friend Mr. Rolt. After dinner he translates a chapter of the Bible with the aid of the chief pundit of the college. At six he sits down with the Telugu pundit to the study of that language, and then preaches a sermon in English to a congregation of about fifty. The service ended, he sits down to the translation of Ezekiel into Bengali, having thrown aside his former version. At eleven the duties of the day are closed, and after reading a chapter in the Greek Testament and commending himself to God he retires to rest.”[46]

Strangely enough, about this time a controversy was going on in certain English journals as to the value of the work that Carey and his coadjutors were doing in India. We have no wish to speak bitterly of the satire and severity of the articles written by Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review. They were not simply sallies of wit, but serious essays, written in a spirit of deliberate hostility to this missionary enterprise. What else can be thought of an article commencing with words like these: “In rooting out a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to light such a perilous heap of trash as we are obliged to work through in our articles on Methodists and missionaries, we are generally considered to have rendered a useful service to the cause of rational religion.” Such articles condemned themselves; and it is fair to add that their author himself lived to regard them as a mistake, and to express to Lord Macaulay his regret that he had ever written them.[47]