WILLIAM CAREY,
Missionary to India.
BORN AUG. 17, 1761; DIED JUNE 9, 1834.
Part 1
WILLIAM CAREY,“the father and founder of modern missions,"
was born at Paulersbury, Northamptonshire, Eng., Aug. 17, 1761. It is believed
that his early ancestors were of considerable social prominence; yet at the
time of his birth his father, Edmund Carey, was a journeyman weaver with a
moderate income; but in 1767 he obtained the twofold office of schoolmaster and
parish clerk.
William was
taught by his father, and soon began an eager pursuit for knowledge, books of
science, history, and travel being of especial interest to him. When very young
he had great fondness for botany, and many were the specimens he brought home
as a result of quests amongst the lanes and haunts of Whittle- bury Forests.
Physical ailments unfitted him for outdoor occupations; and at the age of
seventeen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and thus linked, says Dr. George
Smith, to a succession of scholars and divines, poets and critics, reformers
and philanthropists, who have used the shoemaker's life to become illustrious.
A revolution
took place in William Carey's life at his eighteenth year. Though brought up as
a strict Churchman, as became the son of the parish clerk, he had fallen, through
association with dissolute
companions, into error ; but owing to the efforts of a
fellow-workman, he became converted, and from this time to the close of his
life he was a devout student of the Scriptures. On June 10, 1781, he married Dorothy Plackett, his employer's sister-inlaw. Mrs. Carey
had little sympathy with her husband's tastes, but he always treated her with
noble tenderness. Domestic and business troubles followed him closely. In her
second year his little girl was taken from him; he himself was stricken with fever;
starvation was staring him in the face, when his brother, only a youth, came to
his relief, and, with the aid of friends, secured for him a little cottage in Piddington, where
Carey, besides continuing his shoemaking, opened an evening school.
Attending the
meetings of the association at Olney, Carey met the future secretary of the
missionary society, Andrew Fuller. As a result of this meeting, Carey began to
exercise his gifts as a preacher. The Dissenters in his native village soon sent for him to
preach for them. His mother went openly to hear him, and declared if he lived
he would become a great preacher; his father, being the parish clerk, heard him
clandestinely on one occasion, and, though a reserved man, expressed himself as
highly gratified.
Soon after
Carey united with the church at Olney, and was by that body formally set apart
for the work of the ministry. A field of action soon offered in Moulton, where
he, after many preliminaries, was ordained pastor of the Baptist church. Here his income was only ten pounds per annum;
and after failing to increase it by teaching, he resumed his shoemaking in
connection with the ministry. During the time of his pastorate in Moulton, Mr. Carey brooded
continually over the condition of the world, and became convinced that the
spreading of Christianity was a responsibility which all the converted ought to assume.
More to come.........
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