The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
Old Mr. Ryland always failed to recall the story, but we have it on the
testimony of Carey's personal friend, Morris of Clipstone, who was
present at the meeting of ministers held in 1786 at Northampton, at
which the incident occurred. Ryland invited the younger brethren to
propose a subject for discussion. There was no reply, till at last the
Moulton preacher suggested, doubtless with an ill-restrained
excitement, "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."
Neither Fuller nor Carey himself had yet delivered the Particular
Baptists from the yoke of hyper-calvinism which had to that hour shut
the heathen out of a dead Christendom, and the aged chairman shouted
out the rebuke--"You are a miserable enthusiast for asking such a
question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when
an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will
give effect to the commission of Christ as at first." Carey had never
before mentioned the subject openly, and he was for the moment greatly
mortified. But, says Morris, he still pondered these things in his
heart. That incident marks the wide gulf which Carey had to bridge.
Silenced by his brethren, he had recourse to the press. It was then
that he wrote his own contribution to the discussion he would have
raised on a duty which was more than seventeen centuries old, and had
been for fourteen of these neglected: An Enquiry into the Obligations
of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which
the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success
of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings,
are considered by WILLIAM CAREY. Then follows the great conclusion of
Paul in his letter to the Romans (x. 12-15): "For there is no
difference between the Jew and the Greek...How shall they preach except
they be sent?" He happened to be in Birmingham in 1786 collecting
subscriptions for the rebuilding of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr.
Thomas Potts, who had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering
that he had prepared the manuscript, gave him £10 to publish it. And
it appeared at Leicester in 1792, "price one shilling and sixpence,"
the profits to go to the proposed mission. The pamphlet form doubtless
accounts for its disappearance now; only four copies of the original
edition[4] are known to be in existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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