| May
2004
Mission
Heroes
William Carey: Founder and
father of modern missions
In the quietness of his shoe cobblers' shop in Moulton,
England, William Carey heard God's call to the nations:
“If it be the duty of all men to believe the Gospel
... then it be the duty of those who are entrusted with
the Gospel to endeavor to make it known among all nations.”
William Carey, a peasant with no formal education, was
a shoemaker because of a skin disease contracted when he
was 7 years old. The condition was exacerbated by sunlight,
so his parents realized that young William would have to
learn a trade that would keep him inside. At 14, Carey was
apprenticed to Clarke Nichols, the man about whom history
has forgotten, but who nevertheless led William Carey to
follow Jesus as his Savior and Lord.
Carey felt led to preach in the Baptist church, but he
was never considered a good speaker. Carey was slight of
build, prematurely bald, and crude in his speech. His first
year as a preacher was so unimpressive that the church refused
to ordain him. Carey often said of himself that his greatest
strength was “plodding,” and so he plodded on
in the ministry with great tenacity until he was ordained.
The same plodding tenacity was his greatest strength as
he led other English Baptists to understand and adopt the
Great Commission as their personal mandate.
The immediate problem Carey faced in his zeal to preach
to the “heathen” was how to get to the mission
field when no missionary societies existed to help him go
and few Christians had any interest in mission work. At
a ministers’ meeting, Carey raised the issue saying,
“Whether the command given to the apostles to teach
all nations was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers
to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise
was of equal extent,” Dr. Ryland, chairman of the
meeting, retorted, “Young man, sit down: when God
pleases to covert the heathen, He will do it without your
aid or mine.”
The reprimand served only to spur William Carey on in his
zeal for missions. In 1792 Carey wrote An Enquiry into the
Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion
of the Heathen which would become the Magna Carta for the
modern mission movement. Carey persisted and plodded and
through his writings, his preaching, and personal conversations,
the first English missionary society — called the
particular Baptist Missionary Society — was born in
Kettering, England, in 1792. One year later, the missionary
society heard about the need for evangelism in India from
a visiting Anglican missionary, Dr. Thomas. Carey’s
friend and fellow pastor, Andrew Fuller, said of the opportunity,
“There was a gold mine in India, but it was as deep
as the centre of the earth. Who will venture to explore
it?”
“I will venture to go down,” said Carey, “but
remember that you (addressing the other ministers) must
hold the ropes.”
Carey was commissioned to “the idolatrous and superstitious
heathen of India.” He and his son Felix attempted
to sail for India, but his reluctant wife, Dorothy, refused
to go. In a letter to her, Carey wrote, “If I had
all the world, I would freely give it all to have you and
the dear children with me; but the sense of duty is so strong
as to overpower all other considerations. I could not turn
back without guilt on my soul. ... Tell my dear children
I love them dearly and pray for them constantly. Be assured
I love you most affectionately.”
Obstacles threatened to thwart the journey on every side.
Besides his wife’s refusal to travel with him, Carey’s
58-year-old father did not support him, either. “Is
William mad?” he asked after receiving Carey's letter
telling him of the decision to go to India on God’s
mission.
The East India Company refused to give Carey permission
to enter India. He decided to enter illegally without permission,
but the captain of the ship he boarded was warned not to
sail with him and Carey and his company were obliged to
go ashore again. Finally, a Danish ship agreed to give them
passage and the journey was finally under way.
As the ship neared its Indian port, Carey wrote to the
missionary society: “A large field opens on every
side, and millions of perishing heathens, tormented in this
life by idolatry, superstition, and ignorance, and exposed
to eternal miseries in the world to come, are pleading with
every heart that loves God, and with all the churches of
the living God. Oh, that many labourers may be thrust out
into the vineyard of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the
Gentiles may come to the knowledge of the truth as it is
in Him!”
Carey was eager to be able to preach as soon as he reached
Bengal, India, so he had spent most of the voyage studying
the Bengali language. With introductions from Dr. Thomas,
Carey went into the “dense Hindoo population of Bengal
— to the people and to the centre, that is, where
Brahmanism had its seat, and whence Buddhism had been carried
by thousands of missionaries all over Southern, Eastern,
and Central Asia.”
During the first several years in Calcutta, Carey and his
family survived numerous trials. Dr. Thomas was a terrible
money manager and his many debts forced the little mission
band to move outside the city and left Carey's family penniless.
About their poverty, Carey wrote, “Now all my friends
are but one; I rejoice, however, that He is all-sufficient,
and can supply all my wants, spiritual and temporal.”
In 1796, fever swept through the Carey household, claiming
the life of 5-year-old Peter. Dorothy blamed Carey for Peter’s
death and never recovered from the shock. Her mental health
deteriorated until her death in 1807.
After Dorothy’s death, Carey married again quite
quickly. His new wife, Charlotte, was the companion for
Carey and mother to his four children that the family needed
to persist in the mission work. Their marriage lasted 13
years, the happiest of Carey’s life, until Charlotte’s
death in 1821. A year later, Carey married Grace who was
with him until the end of his life.
By 1799 more missionaries had arrived and finally the work
was established. Carey spent the first seven years without
a convert, but in December of 1800 he baptized his first
Hindu convert and by 1821 the missionaries had baptized
over 1400 new Christians. Working without any kind of a
real support system or missionary training and guidance,
William Carey had expected great things and attempted great
things. God had blessed his commitment.
By the time of his death in 1838, Carey had seen hundreds
of Indians follow Jesus as their Savior and Lord, founded
a 102 schools, including Serampore College which is still
operating today, and helped with the translation and printing
of the Bible in 40 languages. Carey’s influence on
Indian society was also evident. Through his papers and
efforts the Calcutta government finally outlawed the infanticide
of babies being thrown to the alligators in the Ganges River.
The practice of sati (widows being burned at their deceased
husband’s funeral pyre) especially horrified Carey
and through his bold stance along with other missionaries,
that practice came to an end in 1829.
On his deathbed Carey called out to a missionary friend,
“Dr. Duff! You have been speaking about Dr. Carey;
when I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey — speak
about Dr. Carey’s God.” England had sent its
nobles and military experts to rule the colony and establish
the throne of England among the East Indians, but in His
providence, God used a peasant Englishman to establish the
His everlasting throne in the hearts of the Indians. A “poor
village preacher [converted] the empire into a spiritual
force which should in time do for Asia what Rome had done
for Western Christendom.”
Resources:
http://www.biblebelievers.com/carey/Carey3.html
http://www.baptistpage.org/Portraits/carey.htm
http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biocarey.html
http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bcarey6.html
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