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."