THE BIRTH OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS
1785-1792
Moulton the Mission's birthplace--Carey's fever and poverty--His
Moulton school--Fired with the missionary idea--His very large
missionary map--Fuller's confession of the aged and respectable
ministers' opposition--Old Mr. Ryland's rebuke--Driven to publish his
Enquiry--Its literary character--Carey's survey of the world in
1788--His motives, difficulties, and plans--Projects the first
Missionary Society--Contrasted with his predecessors from
Erasmus--Prayer concert begun in Scotland in 1742--Jonathan
Edwards--The Northamptonshire Baptist movement in 1784--Andrew
Fuller--The Baptists, Particular and General--Antinomian and Socinian
extremes opposed to Missions--Met by Fuller's writings and Clipstone
sermon--Carey's agony at continued delay--His work in Leicester--His
sermon at Nottingham--Foundation of Baptist Missionary Society at
last--Kettering and Jerusalem.
The north road, which runs for twelve miles from Northampton to
Kettering, passes through a country known last century for the doings
of the Pytchley Hunt. Stories, by no means exaggerated, of the deep
drinking and deeper play of the club, whose gatehouse now stands at the
entrance of Overstone Park, were rife, when on Lady Day 1785 William
Carey became Baptist preacher of Moulton village, on the other side of
the road. Moulton was to become the birthplace of the modern
missionary idea; Kettering, of evangelical missionary action.
No man in England had apparently a more wretched lot or more miserable
prospects than he. He had started in life as a journeyman shoemaker at
eighteen, burdened with a payment to his first master's widow which his
own kind heart had led him to offer, and with the price of his second
master's stock and business. Trade was good for the moment, and he had
married, before he was twenty, one who brought him the most terrible
sorrow a man can bear. He had no sooner completed a large order for
which his predecessor had contracted than it was returned on his hands.
From place to place he wearily trudged, trying to sell the shoes.
Fever carried off his first child and brought himself so near to the
grave that he sent for his mother to help in the nursing. At
Piddington he worked early and late at his garden, but ague, caused by
a neighbouring marsh, returned and left him so bald that he wore a wig
thereafter until his voyage to India. During his preaching for more
than three years at Barton, which involved a walk of sixteen miles, he
did not receive from the poor folks enough to pay for the clothes he
wore out in their service. His younger brother delicately came to his
help, and he received the gift with a pathetic tenderness. But a
calling which at once starved him, in spite of all his method and
perseverance, and cramped the ardour of his soul for service to the
Master who had revealed Himself in him, became distasteful. He gladly
accepted an invitation from the somewhat disorganised church at Moulton
to preach to them. They could offer him only about £10 a year,
supplemented by £5 from a London fund. But the schoolmaster had just
left, and Carey saw in that fact a new hope. For a time he and his
family managed to live on an income which is estimated as never
exceeding £36 a year. We find this passage in a printed appeal made by
the "very poor congregation" for funds to repair and enlarge the chapel
to which the new pastor's preaching had attracted a crowd:--"The
peculiar situation of our minister, Mr. Carey, renders it impossible
for us to send him far abroad to collect the Contributions of the
Charitable; as we are able to raise him but about Ten Pounds per Annum,
so that he is obliged to keep a School for his Support: And as there
are other two Schools in the Town, if he was to leave Home to collect
for the Building, he must probably quit his Station on his Return, for
Want of a Maintenance."
His genial loving-kindness and his fast increasing learning little
fitted him to drill peasant children in the alphabet. "When I kept
school the boys kept me," he used to confess with a merry twinkle. In
all that our Lord meant by it William Carey was a child from first to
last. The former teacher returned, and the poor preacher again took to
shoemaking for the village clowns and the shops in Kettering and
Northampton. His house still stands, one of a row of six cottages of
the dear old English type, with the indispensable garden behind, and
the glad sunshine pouring in through the open window embowered in roses
and honeysuckle.
There, and chiefly in the school-hours as he tried to teach the
children geography and the Bible and was all the while teaching
himself, the missionary idea arose in his mind, and his soul became
fired with the self-consecration, unknown to Wyclif and Hus, Luther and
Calvin, Knox and even Bunyan, for theirs was other work. All his past
knowledge of nature and of books, all his favourite reading of voyages
and of travels which had led his school-fellows to dub him Columbus,
all his painful study of the Word, his experience of the love of Christ
and expoundings of the meaning of His message to men for six years,
were gathered up, were intensified, and were directed with a
concentrated power to the thought that Christ died, as for him, so for
these millions of dark savages whom Cook was revealing to Christendom,
and who had never heard the glad tidings of great joy.
Carey had ceased to keep school when the Moulton Baptists, who could
subscribe no more than twopence a month each for their own poor,
formally called the preacher to become their ordained pastor, and
Ryland, Sutcliff, and Fuller were asked to ordain him on the 10th
August 1786. Fuller had discovered the value of a man who had passed
through spiritual experience, and possessed a native common sense like
his own, when Carey had been suddenly called to preach in Northampton
to supply the place of another. Since that day he had often visited
Moulton, and he thus tells us what he had seen:--
"The congregation being few and poor, he followed his business in order
to assist in supporting his family. His mind, however, was much
occupied in acquiring the learned languages, and almost every other
branch of useful knowledge. I remember, on going into the room where
he employed himself at his business, I saw hanging up against the wall
a very large map, consisting of several sheets of paper pasted together
by himself, on which he had drawn, with a pen, a place for every nation
in the known world, and entered into it whatever he met with in
reading, relative to its population, religion, etc. The substance of
this was afterwards published in his Enquiry. These researches, on
which his mind was naturally bent, hindered him, of course, from doing
much of his business; and the people, as was said, being few and poor,
he was at this time exposed to great hardships. I have been assured
that he and his family have lived for a great while together without
tasting animal food, and with but a scanty pittance of other provision."
"He would also be frequently conversing with his brethren in the
ministry on the practicability and importance of a mission to the
heathen, and of his willingness to engage in it. At several ministers'
meetings, between the year 1787 and 1790, this was the topic of his
conversation. Some of our most aged and respectable ministers thought,
I believe, at that time, that it was a wild and impracticable scheme
that he had got in his mind, and therefore gave him no encouragement.
Yet he would not give it up; but would converse with us, one by one,
till he had made some impression upon us."
The picture is completed by his sister:--
"He was always, from his first being thoughtful, remarkably impressed
about heathen lands and the slave-trade. I never remember his engaging
in prayer, in his family or in public, without praying for those poor
creatures. The first time I ever recollect my feeling for the heathen
world, was from a discourse I heard my brother preach at Moulton, the
first summer after I was thoughtful. It was from these words:--'For
Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake will I
give him no rest.' It was a day to be remembered by me; a day set
apart for prayer and fasting by the church. What hath God wrought
since that time!"
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.
This Enquiry has a literary interest of its own, as a contribution to
the statistics and geography of the world, written in a cultured and
almost finished style, such as few, if any, University men of that day
could have produced, for none were impelled by such a motive as Carey
had. In an obscure village, toiling save when he slept, and finding
rest on Sunday only by a change of toil, far from libraries and the
society of men with more advantages than his own, this shoemaker, still
under thirty, surveys the whole world, continent by continent, island
by island, race by race, faith by faith, kingdom by kingdom, tabulating
his results with an accuracy, and following them up with a logical
power of generalisation which would extort the admiration of the
learned even of the present day.
Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to His disciples is
still binding on us, having reviewed former undertakings for the
conversion of the heathen from the Ascension to the Moravians and "the
late Mr. Wesley" in the West Indies, and having thus surveyed in detail
the state of the world in 1786, he removes the five impediments in the
way of carrying the Gospel among the heathen, which his contemporaries
advanced--their distance from us, their barbarism, the danger of being
killed by them, the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life,
the unintelligibleness of their languages. These his loving heart and
Bible knowledge enable him skilfully to turn in favour of the cause he
pleads. The whole section is essential to an appreciation of Carey's
motives, difficulties, and plans:--
"FIRST, As to their distance from us, whatever objections might have
been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's
compass, nothing can be alleged for it with any colour of plausibility
in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty through
the Great South Sea as they can through the Mediterranean or any lesser
sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite us to the trial,
as there are to our knowledge trading companies, whose commerce lies in
many of the places where these barbarians dwell. At one time or other
ships are sent to visit places of more recent discovery, and to explore
parts the most unknown; and every fresh account of their ignorance or
cruelty should call forth our pity, and excite us to concur with
providence in seeking their eternal good. Scripture likewise seems to
point out this method, 'Surely the Isles shall wait for me; the ships
of Tarshish first, to bring my sons from far, their silver and their
gold with them, unto the name of the Lord, thy God.'--Isai. lx. 9. This
seems to imply that in the time of the glorious increase of the church,
in the latter days (of which the whole chapter is undoubtedly a
prophecy), commerce shall subserve the spread of the gospel. The ships
of Tarshish were trading vessels, which made voyages for traffic to
various parts; thus much therefore must be meant by it, that
navigation, especially that which is commercial, shall be one great
mean of carrying on the work of God; and perhaps it may imply that
there shall be a very considerable appropriation of wealth to that
purpose.
"SECONDLY, As to their uncivilised and barbarous way of living, this
can be no objection to any, except those whose love of ease renders
them unwilling to expose themselves to inconveniences for the good of
others. It was no objection to the apostles and their successors, who
went among the barbarous Germans and Gauls, and still more barbarous
Britons! They did not wait for the ancient inhabitants of these
countries to be civilised before they could be christianised, but went
simply with the doctrine of the cross; and Tertullian could boast that
'those parts of Britain which were proof against the Roman armies, were
conquered by the gospel of Christ.' It was no objection to an Eliot or
a Brainerd, in later times. They went forth, and encountered every
difficulty of the kind, and found that a cordial reception of the
gospel produced those happy effects which the longest intercourse with
Europeans without it could never accomplish. It is no objection to
commercial men. It only requires that we should have as much love to
the souls of our fellow-creatures, and fellow-sinners, as they have for
the profits arising from a few otter-skins, and all these difficulties
would be easily surmounted.
"After all, the uncivilised state of the heathen, instead of affording
an objection against preaching the gospel to them, ought to furnish an
argument for it. Can we as men, or as Christians, hear that a great
part of our fellow-creatures, whose souls are as immortal as ours, and
who are as capable as ourselves of adorning the gospel and contributing
by their preachings, writings, or practices to the glory of our
Redeemer's name and the good of his church, are enveloped in ignorance
and barbarism? Can we hear that they are without the gospel, without
government, without laws, and without arts, and sciences; and not exert
ourselves to introduce among them the sentiments of men, and of
Christians? Would not the spread of the gospel be the most effectual
mean of their civilisation? Would not that make them useful members of
society? We know that such effects did in a measure follow the
afore-mentioned efforts of Eliot, Brainerd, and others amongst the
American Indians; and if similar attempts were made in other parts of
the world, and succeeded with a divine blessing (which we have every
reason to think they would), might we not expect to see able divines,
or read well-conducted treatises in defence of the truth, even amongst
those who at present seem to be scarcely human?
"THIRDLY, In respect to the danger of being killed by them, it is true
that whoever does go must put his life in his hand, and not consult
with flesh and blood; but do not the goodness of the cause, the duties
incumbent on us as the creatures of God and Christians, and the
perishing state of our fellow-men, loudly call upon us to venture all,
and use every warrantable exertion for their benefit? Paul and
Barnabas, who hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, were not blamed as being rash, but commended for so doing;
while John Mark, who through timidity of mind deserted them in their
perilous undertaking, was branded with censure. After all, as has been
already observed, I greatly question whether most of the barbarities
practised by the savages upon those who have visited them, have not
originated in some real or supposed affront, and were therefore, more
properly, acts of self-defence, than proofs of ferocious dispositions.
No wonder if the imprudence of sailors should prompt them to offend the
simple savage, and the offence be resented; but Eliot, Brainerd, and
the Moravian missionaries have been very seldom molested. Nay, in
general the heathen have showed a willingness to hear the word; and
have principally expressed their hatred of Christianity on account of
the vices of nominal Christians.
"FOURTHLY, As to the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life,
this would not be so great as may appear at first sight; for, though we
could not procure European food, yet we might procure such as the
natives of those countries which we visit, subsist upon themselves.
And this would only be passing through what we have virtually engaged
in by entering on the ministerial office. A Christian minister is a
person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servant of
God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to him. By entering on
that sacred office he solemnly undertakes to be always engaged, as much
as possible, in the Lord's work, and not to choose his own pleasure, or
employment, or pursue the ministry as a something that is to subserve
his own ends, or interests, or as a kind of bye-work. He engages to go
where God pleases, and to do or endure what he sees fit to command, or
call him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids
farewell to friends, pleasures, and comforts, and stands in readiness
to endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord, and Master.
It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts of
a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilised country, legal
protection, affluence, splendour, or even a competency. The slights,
and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy prisons, and
tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech, miserable
accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger, and thirst, nakedness,
weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but little worldly
encouragement, should rather be the objects of their expectation. Thus
the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and endured hardness, as
good soldiers of Jesus Christ; and though we, living in a civilised
country where Christianity is protected by law, are not called to
suffer these things while we continue here, yet I question whether all
are justified in staying here, while so many are perishing without
means of grace in other lands. Sure I am that it is entirely contrary
to the spirit of the gospel for its ministers to enter upon it from
interested motives, or with great worldly expectations. On the
contrary, the commission is a sufficient call to them to venture all,
and, like the primitive Christians, go everywhere preaching the gospel.
"It might be necessary, however, for two, at least, to go together, and
in general I should think it best that they should be married men, and
to prevent their time from being employed in procuring necessaries,
two, or more, other persons, with their wives and families, might also
accompany them, who should be wholly employed in providing for them.
In most countries it would be necessary for them to cultivate a little
spot of ground just for their support, which would be a resource to
them, whenever their supplies failed. Not to mention the advantages
they would reap from each other's company, it would take off the
enormous expense which has always attended undertakings of this kind,
the first expense being the whole; for though a large colony needs
support for a considerable time, yet so small a number would, upon
receiving the first crop, maintain themselves. They would have the
advantage of choosing their situation, their wants would be few; the
women, and even the children, would be necessary for domestic purposes:
and a few articles of stock, as a cow or two, and a bull, and a few
other cattle of both sexes, a very few utensils of husbandry, and some
corn to sow their land, would be sufficient. Those who attend the
missionaries should understand husbandry, fishing, fowling, etc., and
be provided with the necessary implements for these purposes. Indeed, a
variety of methods may be thought of, and when once the work is
undertaken, many things will suggest themselves to us, of which we at
present can form no idea.
"FIFTHLY, As to learning their languages, the same means would be found
necessary here as in trade between different nations. In some cases
interpreters might be obtained, who might be employed for a time; and
where these were not to be found, the missionaries must have patience,
and mingle with the people, till they have learned so much of their
language as to be able to communicate their ideas to them in it. It is
well known to require no very extraordinary talents to learn, in the
space of a year, or two at most, the language of any people upon earth,
so much of it at least as to be able to convey any sentiments we wish
to their understandings.
"The Missionaries must be men of great piety, prudence, courage, and
forbearance; of undoubted orthodoxy in their sentiments, and must enter
with all their hearts into the spirit of their mission; they must be
willing to leave all the comforts of life behind them, and to encounter
all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, an uncomfortable
manner of living, and every other inconvenience that can attend this
undertaking. Clothing, a few knives, powder and shot, fishing-tackle,
and the articles of husbandry above mentioned, must be provided for
them; and when arrived at the place of their destination, their first
business must be to gain some acquaintance with the language of the
natives (for which purpose two would be better than one), and by all
lawful means to endeavour to cultivate a friendship with them, and as
soon as possible let them know the errand for which they were sent.
They must endeavour to convince them that it was their good alone which
induced them to forsake their friends, and all the comforts of their
native country. They must be very careful not to resent injuries which
may be offered to them, nor to think highly of themselves, so as to
despise the poor heathens, and by those means lay a foundation for
their resentment or rejection of the gospel. They must take every
opportunity of doing them good, and labouring and travelling night and
day, they must instruct, exhort, and rebuke, with all long suffering
and anxious desire for them, and, above all, must be instant in prayer
for the effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the people of their charge.
Let but missionaries of the above description engage in the work, and
we shall see that it is not impracticable.
"It might likewise be of importance, if God should bless their labours,
for them to encourage any appearances of gifts amongst the people of
their charge; if such should be raised up many advantages would be
derived from their knowledge of the language and customs of their
countrymen; and their change of conduct would give great weight to
their ministrations."
This first and still greatest missionary treatise in the English
language closes with the practical suggestion of these means--fervent
and united prayer, the formation of a catholic or, failing that, a
Particular Baptist Society of "persons whose hearts are in the work,
men of serious religion and possessing a spirit of perseverance," with
an executive committee, and subscriptions from rich and poor of a tenth
of their income for both village preaching and foreign missions, or, at
least, an average of one penny or more per week from all members of
congregations. He thus concludes:--"It is true all the reward is of
mere grace, but it is nevertheless encouraging; what a treasure, what
an harvest must await such characters as Paul, and Eliot, and Brainerd,
and others, who have given themselves wholly to the work of the Lord.
What a heaven will it be to see the many myriads of poor heathens, of
Britons amongst the rest, who by their labours have been brought to the
knowledge of God. Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth
aspiring to. Surely it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our
might, in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ."
So Carey projected the first organisation which England had seen for
missions to all the human race outside of Christendom; and his project,
while necessarily requiring a Society to carry it out, as coming from
an "independent" Church, provided that every member of every
congregation should take a part to the extent of fervent and united
prayer, and of an average subscription of a penny a week. He came as
near to the New Testament ideal of all Christians acting in an
aggressive missionary church as was possible in an age when the
Established Churches of England, Scotland, and Germany scouted foreign
missions, and the Free Churches were chiefly congregational in their
ecclesiastical action. While asserting the other ideal of the
voluntary tenth or tithe as both a Scriptural principle and Puritan
practice, his common sense was satisfied to suggest an average penny a
week, all over, for every Christian. At this hour, more than a century
since Carey wrote, and after a remarkable missionary revival in
consequence of what he wrote and did, all Christendom, Evangelical,
Greek, and Latin, does not give more than five millions sterling a year
to Christianise the majority of the race still outside its pale. It is
not too much to say that were Carey's penny a week from every Christian
a fact, and the prayer which would sooner or later accompany it, the
five millions would be fifty, and Christendom would become a term
nearly synonymous with humanity. The Churches, whether by themselves
or by societies, have yet to pray and organise up to the level of
Carey's penny a week.
The absolute originality as well as grandeur of the unconscious action
of the peasant shoemaker who, from 1779, prayed daily for all the
heathen and slaves, and organised his society accordingly, will be seen
in the dim light or darkness visible of all who had preceded him. They
were before the set time; he was ready in the fulness of the missionary
preparation. They belonged not only to periods, but to nations, to
churches, to communities which were failing in the struggle for
fruitfulness and expansion in new worlds and fresh lands; he was a son
of England, which had come or was about to come out of the struggle a
victor, charged with the terrible responsibility of the special servant
of the Lord, as no people had ever before been charged in all history,
sacred or secular. William Carey, indeed, reaped the little that the
few brave toilers of the wintry time had sown; with a humility that is
pathetic he acknowledges their toll, while ever ignorant to the last of
his own merit. But he reaped only as each generation garners such
fruits of its predecessor as may have been worthy to survive. He was
the first of the true Anastatosantes of the modern world, as only an
English-speaking man could be--of the most thorough, permanent, and
everlasting of all Reformers, the men who turn the world upside down,
because they make it rise up and depart from deadly beliefs and
practices, from the fear and the fate of death, into the life and light
of Christ and the Father.
Who were his predecessors, reckoning from the Renascence of Europe, the
discovery of America, and the opening up of India and Africa? Erasmus
comes first, the bright scholar of compromise who in 1516 gave the New
Testament again to Europe, as three centuries after Carey gave it to
all Southern Asia, and whose missionary treatise, Ecclesiasties, in
1535 anticipated, theoretically at least, Carey's Enquiry by two
centuries and a half. The missionary dream of this escaped monk of
Rotterdam and Basel, who taught women and weavers and cobblers to read
the Scriptures, and prayed that the Book might be translated into all
languages, was realised in the scandalous iniquities and frauds of
Portuguese and Spanish and Jesuit missions in West and East. Luther had
enough to do with his papal antichrist and his German translation of
the Greek of the Testament of Erasmus. The Lutheran church drove
missions into the hands of the Pietists and Moravians--Wiclif's
offspring--who nobly but ineffectually strove to do a work meant for
the whole Christian community. The Church of England thrust forth the
Puritans first to Holland and then to New England, where Eliot, the
Brainerds, and the Mayhews sought to evangelise tribes which did not
long survive themselves.
It was from Courteenhall, a Northamptonshire village near Paulerspury,
that in 1644 there went forth the appeal for the propagation of the
Gospel which comes nearest to Carey's cry from the same midland region.
Cromwell was in power, and had himself planned a Protestant Propaganda,
so to the Long Parliament William Castell, "parson of Courteenhall,"
sent a petition which, with the "Eliot Tracts," resulted in an
ordinance creating the Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating
the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England. Seventy English ministers
had backed the petition, and six of the Church of Scotland, first of
whom was Alexander Henderson. The corporation, which, in a restored
form, Robert Boyle governed for thirty years, familiarised the nation
with the duty of caring for the dark races then coming more and more
under our sway alike in America and in India. It still exists, as well
as Boyle's Society for advancing the Faith in the West Indies. The
Friends also, and then the Moravians, taught the Wesleys and Whitefield
to care for the negroes. The English and Scottish Propagation
Societies sought also to provide spiritual aids for the colonists and
the highlanders.
The two great thinkers of the eighteenth century, who flourished as
philosopher and moralist when Carey was a youth, taught the principles
which he of all others was to apply on their spiritual and most
effective side. Adam Smith put his finger on the crime which had
darkened and continued till 1834 to shadow the brightness of
geographical enterprise in both hemispheres--the treatment of the
natives by Europeans whose superiority of force enabled them to commit
every sort of injustice in the new lands. He sought a remedy in
establishing an equality of force by the mutual communication of
knowledge and of all sorts of improvements by an extensive commerce.[5]
Samuel Johnson rose to a higher level alike of wisdom and
righteousness, when he expressed the indignation of a Christian mind
that the propagation of truth had never been seriously pursued by any
European nation, and the hope "that the light of the Gospel will at
last illuminate the sands of Africa and the deserts of America, though
its progress cannot but be slow when it is so much obstructed by the
lives of Christians."
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
and go to its utmost limits. The charter, the encouragements of
Christians are exceeding great, and the returns promised infinitely
superior. "Suppose a company of serious Christians, ministers and
private persons, were to form themselves into a society."
The man was ready who had been specially fitted, by character and
training, to form the home organisation of the society, while Carey
created its foreign mission. For the next quarter of a century William
Carey and Andrew Fuller worked lovingly, fruitfully together, with the
breadth of half the world between them. The one showed how, by Bible
and church and school, by physical and spiritual truth, India and all
Asia could be brought to Christ; the other taught England, Scotland,
and America to begin at last to play their part in an enterprise as old
as Abraham; as divine in its warrant, its charge, its promise, as
Christ Himself. Seven years older than Carey, his friend was born a
farmer's son and labourer in the fen country of Cromwell whom he
resembled, was self-educated under conditions precisely similar, and
passed through spiritual experiences almost exactly the same. The two,
unknown to each other, found themselves when called to preach at
eighteen unable to reconcile the grim dead theology of their church
with the new life and liberty which had come to them direct from the
Spirit of Christ and from His Word. Carey had left his ancestral church
at a time when the biographer of Romaine could declare with truth that
that preacher was the only evangelical in the established churches of
all London, and that of twenty thousand clergymen in England, the
number who preached the truth as it is in Jesus had risen from not
twenty in 1749 to three hundred in 1789. The methodism of the Wesleys
was beginning to tell, but the Baptists were as lifeless as the
Established Church. In both the Church and Dissent there were
individuals only, like Newton and Scott, the elder Robert Hall and
Ryland, whose spiritual fervour made them marked men.
The Baptists, who had stood alone as the advocates of toleration,
religious and civil, in an age of intolerance which made them the
victims, had subsided like Puritan and Covenanter when the Revolution
of 1688 brought persecution to an end. The section who held the
doctrine of "general" redemption, and are now honourably known as
General Baptists, preached ordinary Arminianism, and even Socinianism.
The more earnest and educated among them clung to Calvinism, but, by
adopting the unhappy term of "particular" Baptists, gradually fell
under a fatalistic and antinomian spell. This false Calvinism, which
the French theologian of Geneva would have been the first to denounce,
proved all the more hostile to the preaching of the Gospel of salvation
to the heathen abroad, as well as the sinner at home, that it professed
to be an orthodox evangel while either emasculating the Gospel or
turning the grace of God into licentiousness. From such "particular"
preachers as young Fuller and Carey listened to, at first with
bewilderment, then impatience, and then denunciation, missions of no
kind could come. Fuller exposed and pursued the delusion with a native
shrewdness, a masculine sagacity, and a fine English style, which have
won for him the apt name of the Franklin of Theology. For more than
twenty years Fullerism, as it was called, raised a controversy like
that of the Marrow of Divinity in Scotland, and cleared the ground
sufficiently at least to allow of the foundation of foreign missions in
both countries. It now seems incredible that the only class who a
century ago represented evangelicalism should have opposed missions to
the heathen on the ground that the Gospel is meant only for the elect,
whether at home or abroad; that nothing spiritually good is the duty of
the unregenerate, therefore "nothing must be addressed to them in a way
of exhortation excepting what relates to external obedience."
The same year, 1784, in which the Baptist concert for prayer was begun,
saw the publication of Fuller's Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation.
Seven years later he preached at Clipstone a famous sermon, in which he
applied the dealing of the Lord of Hosts (in Haggai) to the Jewish
apathy--"The time is not come that the Lord's house should be
built"--with a power and directness which nevertheless failed
practically to convince himself. The men who listened to him had been
praying for seven years, yet had opposed Carey's pleas for a foreign
mission, had treated him as a visionary or a madman. When Fuller had
published his treatise, Carey had drawn the practical deduction--"If it
be the duty of all men, when the Gospel comes, to believe unto
salvation, then it is the duty of those who are entrusted with the
Gospel to endeavour to make it known among all nations for the
obedience of faith." Now, after seven more years of waiting, and
remembering the manuscript Enquiry, Carey thought action cannot be
longer delayed. Hardly was the usual discussion that followed the
meeting over when, as the story is told by the son of Ryland who had
silenced him in a former ministers' meeting, Carey appealed to his
brethren to put their preaching into practice and begin a missionary
society that very day. Fuller's sermon bore the title of The Evil
Nature and the Dangerous Tendency of Delay in the Concerns of Religion,
and it had been preceded by one on being very jealous for the Lord God
of Hosts, in which Sutcliff cried for the divine passion, the celestial
fire that burned in the bosom and blazed in the life of Elijah. The
Elijah of their own church and day was among them, burning and blazing
for years, and all that he could induce them to promise was vaguely
that, "something should be done," and to throw to his importunity the
easy request that he would publish his manuscript and preach next
year's sermon.
Meanwhile, in 1789, Carey had left Moulton[6] for Leicester, whither he
was summoned to build up a congregation, ruined by antinomianism, in
the mean brick chapel of the obscure quarter of Harvey Lane. This
chapel his genius and Robert Hall's eloquence made so famous in time
that the Baptists sent off a vigorous hive to the fine new church. In
an equally humble house opposite the chapel the poverty of the pastor
compelled him to keep a school from nine in the morning till four in
winter and five in summer. Between this and the hours for sleep and
food he had little leisure; but that he spent, as he had done all his
life before and did all his life after, with a method and zeal which
doubled his working days. "I have seen him at work," writes Gardiner in
his Music and Friends, "his books beside him, and his beautiful flowers
in the windows." In a letter to his father we have this division of
his leisure--Monday, "the learned languages;" Tuesday, "the study of
science, history, composition, etc;" Wednesday, "I preach a lecture,
and have been for more than twelve months on the Book of Revelation;"
Thursday, "I visit my friends;" Friday and Saturday, "preparing for the
Lord's Day." He preached three times every Sunday in his own chapel or
the surrounding villages, with such results that in one case he added
hundreds to its Wesleyan congregation. He was secretary to the local
committee of dissenters. "Add to this occasional journeys, ministers'
meetings, etc., and you will rather wonder that I have any time, than
that I have so little. I am not my own, nor would I choose for myself.
Let God employ me where he thinks fit, and give me patience and
discretion to fill up my station to his honour and glory."
"After I had been probationer in this place a year and ten months, on
the 24th of May 1791 I was solemnly set apart to the office of pastor.
About twenty ministers of different denominations were witnesses to the
transactions of the day. After prayer Brother Hopper of Nottingham
addressed the congregation upon the nature of an ordination, after
which he proposed the usual questions to the church, and required my
Confession of Faith; which being delivered, Brother Ryland prayed the
ordination prayer, with laying on of hands. Brother Sutcliff delivered
a very solemn charge from Acts vi. 4--'But we will give ourselves
continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.' And Brother
Fuller delivered an excellent address to the people from Eph. v.
2--'Walk in love.' In the evening Brother Pearce of Birmingham
preached from Gal. vi. 14--'God forbid that I should glory, save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me
and I unto the world.' The day was a day of pleasure, and I hope of
profit to the greatest part of the Assembly."
Carey became the friend of his neighbour, Thomas Robinson, evangelical
rector of St. Mary's, to whom he said on one occasion when indirectly
charged in humorous fashion with "sheep-stealing:" "Mr. Robinson, I am
a dissenter, and you are a churchman; we must each endeavour to do good
according to our light. At the same time, you may be assured that I
had rather be the instrument of converting a scavenger that sweeps the
streets than of merely proselyting the richest and best characters in
your congregation." Dr. Arnold and Mr. R. Brewin, a botanist, opened
to him their libraries, and all good men in Leicester soon learned to
be proud of the new Baptist minister. In the two chapels, as in that
of Moulton, enlarged since his time, memorial tablets tell succeeding
generations of the virtues and the deeds of "the illustrious W. Carey,
D.D."
The ministers' meeting of 1792 came round, and on 31st May Carey seized
his opportunity. The place was Nottingham, from which the 1784
invitation to prayer had gone forth. Was the answer to come just there
after nine years' waiting? His Enquiry had been published; had it
prepared the brethren? Ryland had been always loyal to the journeyman
shoemaker he had baptised in the river, and he gives us this
record:--"If all the people had lifted up their voices and wept, as the
children of Israel did at Bochim, I should not have wondered at the
effect. It would only have seemed proportionate to the cause, so
clearly did he prove the criminality of our supineness in the cause of
God." The text was Isaiah's (liv. 2, 3) vision of the widowed church's
tent stretching forth till her children inherited the nations and
peopled the desolate cities, and the application to the reluctant
brethren was couched in these two great maxims written ever since on
the banners of the missionary host of the kingdom--
EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD.
ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD.
The service was over; even Fuller was afraid, even Ryland made no sign,
and the ministers were leaving the meeting. Seizing Fuller's arm with
an imploring look, the preacher, whom despair emboldened to act alone
for his Master, exclaimed: "And are you, after all, going again to do
nothing?" What Fuller describes as the "much fear and trembling" of
these inexperienced, poor, and ignorant village preachers gave way to
the appeal of one who had gained both knowledge and courage, and who,
as to funds and men, was ready to give himself. They entered on their
minutes this much:--"That a plan be prepared against the next
ministers' meeting at Kettering for forming a Baptist Society for
propagating the Gospel among the Heathen." There was more delay, but
only for four months. The first purely English Missionary Society,
which sent forth its own English founder, was thus constituted as
described in the minutes of the Northampton ministers' meeting.
"At the ministers' meeting at Kettering, October 2, 1792, after the
public services of the day were ended, the ministers retired to consult
further on the matter, and to lay a foundation at least for a society,
when the following resolutions were proposed, and unanimously agreed
to:--
"1. Desirous of making an effort for the propagation of the gospel
among the heathen, agreeably to what is recommended in brother Carey's
late publication on that subject, we, whose names appear to the
subsequent subscription, do solemnly agree to act in society together
for that purpose.
"2. As in the present divided state of Christendom, it seems that each
denomination, by exerting itself separately, is most likely to
accomplish the great ends of a mission, it is agreed that this society
be called The Particular [Calvinistic] Baptist Society for Propagating
the Gospel among the Heathen.
"3. As such an undertaking must needs be attended with expense, we
agree immediately to open a subscription for the above purpose, and to
recommend it to others.
"4. Every person who shall subscribe ten pounds at once, or ten
shillings and sixpence annually, shall be considered a member of the
society.
"5. That the Rev. John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, William Carey, John
Sutcliff, and Andrew Fuller, be appointed a committee, three of whom
shall be empowered to act in carrying into effect the purposes of this
society.
"6. That the Rev. Reynold Hogg be appointed treasurer, and the Rev.
Andrew Fuller secretary.
"7. That the subscriptions be paid in at the Northampton ministers'
meeting, October 31, 1792, at which time the subject shall be
considered more particularly by the committee, and other subscribers
who may be present.
"Signed, John Ryland, Reynold Hogg, John Sutcliff, Andrew Fuller,
Abraham Greenwood, Edward Sherman, Joshua Burton, Samuel Pearce, Thomas
Blundel, William Heighton, John Eayres, Joseph Timms; whose
subscriptions in all amounted to £13:2:6."
The procedure suggested in "brother Carey's late publication" was
strictly followed--a society of subscribers, 2d. a week, or 10s. 6d. a
year as a compromise between the tithes and the penny a week of the
Enquiry. The secretary was the courageous Fuller, who once said to
Ryland and Sutcliff: "You excel me in wisdom, especially in foreseeing
difficulties. I therefore want to advise with you both, but to execute
without you." The frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to train
missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer was the
only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office into a
layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need now point only to
Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and
sent £70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to give himself
like Carey, became to him dearer than even Fuller was. The place was a
low-roofed parlour in the house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back
garden, which many a pilgrim still visits, and around which there
gathered thousands in 1842 to hold the first jubilee of modern
missions, when commemorative medals were struck. There in 1892 the
centenary witnessed a still vaster assemblage.
Can any good come out of Kettering? was the conclusion of the Baptist
ministers of London with the one exception of Booth, when they met
formally to decide whether, like those of Birmingham and other places,
they should join the primary society. Benjamin Beddome, a venerable
scholar whom Robert Hall declared to be chief among his brethren,
replied to Fuller in language which is far from unusual even at the
present day, but showing the position which the Leicester minister had
won for himself even then:--
"I think your scheme, considering the paucity of well-qualified
ministers, hath a very unfavourable aspect with respect to destitute
churches at home, where charity ought to begin. I had the pleasure
once to see and hear Mr. Carey; it struck me he was the most suitable
person in the kingdom, at least whom I knew, to supply my place, and
make up my great deficiencies when either disabled or removed. A
different plan is formed and pursued, and I fear that the great and
good man, though influenced by the most excellent motives, will meet
with a disappointment. However, God hath his ends, and whoever is
disappointed He cannot be so. My unbelieving heart is ready to suggest
that the time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be
built."
The other Congregationalists made no sign. The Presbyterians, with a
few noble exceptions like Dr. Erskine, whose Dutch volume Carey had
translated, denounced such movements as revolutionary in a General
Assembly of Socinianised "moderates." The Church of England kept
haughtily or timidly aloof, though king and archbishop were pressed to
send a mission. "Those who in that day sneered that England had sent a
cobbler to convert the world were the direct lineal descendants of
those who sneered in Palestine 2000 years ago, 'Is not this the
carpenter?'" said Archdeacon Farrar in Westminster Abbey on 6th March
1887. Hence Fuller's reference to this time:--"When we began in 1792
there was little or no respectability among us, not so much as a squire
to sit in the chair or an orator to address him with speeches. Hence
good Dr. Stennett advised the London ministers to stand aloof and not
commit themselves."
One man in India had striven to rouse the Church to its duty as Carey
had done at home. Charles Grant had in 1787 written from Malda to
Charles Simeon and Wilberforce for eight missionaries, but not one
Church of England clergyman could be found to go. Thirty years after,
when chairman of the Court of Directors and father of Lord Glenelg and
Sir Robert Grant, he wrote:--"I had formed the design of a mission to
Bengal: Providence reserved that honour for the Baptists." After all,
the twelve village pastors in the back parlour of Kettering were the
more really the successors of the twelve apostles in the upper room of
Jerusalem.