The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary — John Shaqi
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
The early movement which is connected most directly with Carey's and
the Northamptonshire Baptists' began in Scotland. Its Kirk,
emasculated by the Revolution settlement and statute of Queen Anne, had
put down the evangelical teaching of Boston and the "marrow" men, and
had cast out the fathers of the Secession in 1733. In 1742 the
quickening spread over the west country. In October 1744 several
ministers in Scotland united, for the two years next following, in what
they called, and what has since become familiar in America as, a
"Concert to promote more abundant application to a duty that is
perpetually binding--prayer that our God's kingdom may come, joined
with praises;" to be offered weekly on Saturday evening and Sunday
morning, and more solemnly on the first Tuesday of every quarter. Such
was the result, and so did the prayer concert spread in the United
Kingdom that in August 1746 a memorial was sent to Boston inviting all
Christians in North America to enter into it for the next seven years.
It was on this that Jonathan Edwards wrote his Humble Attempt to
promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in
Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of
Christ's Kingdom on Earth.
This work of Edwards, republished at Olney, came into the hands of
Carey, and powerfully influenced the Northamptonshire Association of
Baptist ministers and messengers. At their meeting in Nottingham in
1784 Sutcliff of Olney suggested and Ryland of Northampton drafted an
invitation to the people to join them, for one hour on the first Monday
of every month, in prayer for the effusion of the Holy Spirit of God.
"Let the whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately remembered,"
wrote these catholic men, and to give emphasis to their [oe]cumenical
missionary desires they added in italics--"Let the spread of the Gospel
to the most distant parts of the habitable globe be the object of your
most fervent requests. We shall rejoice if any other Christian
societies of our own or other denominations will join with us, and we
do now invite them most cordially to join heart and hand in the
attempt." To this Carey prominently referred in his Enquiry, tracing
to even the unimportunate and feeble prayers of these eight years the
increase of the churches, the clearing of controversies, the opening of
lands to missions, the spread of civil and religious liberty, the noble
effort made to abolish the inhuman slave-trade, and the establishment
of the free settlement of Sierra Leone. And then he hits the other
blots in the movement, besides the want of importunity and
earnestness--"We must not be contented with praying without exerting
ourselves in the use of means...Were the children of light but as wise
in their generation as the children of this world, they would stretch
every nerve to gain so glorious a prize, nor ever imagine that it was
to be obtained in any other way." A trading company obtain a charter
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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