The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
In July 1813, when Felix Carey was in Ava, two young Americans,
Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, tempest-tossed and fleeing before the
persecution of the East India Company, found shelter in the Mission
House at Rangoon. Judson was one of a band of divinity students of the
Congregational Church of New England, whose zeal had almost compelled
the institution of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He, his
wife, and colleague Rice had become Baptists by conviction on their way
to Serampore, to the brotherhood of which they had been commended.
Carey and his colleagues made it "a point to guard against obtruding on
missionary brethren of different sentiments any conversation relative
to baptism;" but Judson himself sent a note to Carey requesting baptism
by immersion. The result was the foundation at Boston of the American
Baptist Missionary Society, which was to win such triumphs in Burma and
among the Karens. For a time, however, Judson was a missionary from
Serampore, and supported by the brotherhood. As such he wrote thus:--
"RANGOON, Sept. 1, 1814.--Brother Ward wishes to have an idea of the
probable expense of each station; on which I take occasion to say that
it would be more gratifying to me, as presenting a less temptation, and
as less dangerous to my habits of economy and my spiritual welfare, to
have a limited monthly allowance. I fear that, if I am allowed as much
as I want, my wants will enlarge with their gratification, and finally
embrace many things, which at first I should have thought incompatible
with economical management, as well as with that character among the
heathen which it becomes the professed followers of Him who for our
sakes became poor, even to sustain. It is better for a missionary,
especially a young man, to have rather too little than rather too much.
Your case, on coming out from England, was quite different from mine.
You had all that there was, and were obliged to make the most of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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