Yct^ vu ' ll,a ' VA P A iH « ilOG. ©IHe Maying of A***' ©Wiffiam (©areu. f 4 J BY Prof.(T. HARWOOD PATTI SON, D. D. AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY. * Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/makingofwilliamcOOpatt (Hfte Maying I3Y Prof. T. HARWOOD PATTISON, D. D. AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by the AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CARLY. Our story opens in the stately Intkoduction. Government House at Calcutta. The time is somewhere in the first years of our century. In the saloon of the governor-generars mansion, he himself is talking with another English nobleman. At this moment a little gentleman, pale, thoughtful and refined, passes through the room and at¬ tracts the nobleman’s attention. “ Who is this gentle¬ man?” he inquired of the governor-general. “Oh, that is Dr. Carey, the professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Mahratta in the college of Fort William; ” and then the governor added, “ He was once a shoemaker.” The little gentleman overheard the words, and stepping for¬ ward, in a very modest but perfectly self-possessed way, said : “ Excuse me, my lord, I was only a cobbler.” “Only a cobbler.” Yes, and this not so many years before the scene in the great house at Calcutta. The last century, in its parting decades, saw a poor, unknown man struggling for a livelihood; preacher, school¬ master, shoemaker, and yet for whole weeks at a time unable out of all these employments to furnish meat for 3 4 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. his table. The present century, in its opening decades, heard Lord Wellesley, the Governor-General of India, second only to the Sovereign in rank in the British Em¬ pire, say when he was praised by that same poor man: “I esteem such a testimony from such a man a greater honor than the applause of courts and parliaments.” Now how did this change come about ? How did the cobbler get into the palace ? Robert Hall, the most eloquent of preachers, spoke of Carey as : “ That extra¬ ordinary man, who from the lowest obscurity and pov¬ erty, without assistance, rose by dint of unrelenting industry to the highest honors of literature, became one of the first of Orientalists, the first of missionaries, and the instrument of diffusing more religious knowledge among his contemporaries than has fallen to the lot of any indi¬ vidual since the Reformation ; a man who united with the most profound and varied attainments the fervor of an evan¬ gelist, the piety of a saint, and the simplicity of a child.” In all that glowing eulogy there is not one word of exaggeration. But this only throws us back again on the question: How did it come about that a penniless cobbler, in an obscure English village, rose to be the pioneer of modern missions ? It was no accident. Nor was it an accident, either, that the eighteenth century, brutal, coarse, and ignorant, as it is often charged with being, when its sun came to set, brightened so that its last hours were all aglow with the splendor of unpar- CAREY. 5 alleled Christian promise. What I propose now is to trace some of the main lines which led up to that hour and to that man. Suppose that for our present purpose we strike a circle with radii running from the centre to the circumference. In that centre write the name of William Carey. Now let us draw the lines to the outer rim of our circle from this name which we have written in the centre. I find that six such lines will be sufficient for all that has to be said about the visible and human causes which transformed the cobbler of Paulerspury into the professor at Fort William College. The first line we may call Carey , the second England , the third The South Seas, the fourth America , the fifth Andrew Fuller, and the last India. Now here is a fact in itself very suggestive. Humanly speaking, Carey might never have been heard of but for each one of these six lines. They are like the spurs of a great mountain, which thrusting themselves far down anchor it to the country around about, and lift it to its position of solitary prominence and grandeur. Our first line starts in the little vil- I. Carey. lage of Paulerspury, which is eleven miles from Northampton, in Old England. Another Northampton will come into its own place in our story later on. Long centuries ago, the Romans ran a road from London to Chester, and it remains—as 6 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. work done by the Romans is apt to remain—even yet. Our little country village has risen on either side of this road, along which hundreds of years before tramped Ro¬ man legions with flashing eagles and gleaming armor. To-day, however, a more peaceful picture catches our eye. School is over, and the boys and girls are Ailing the air with their shouts. They are all eager for play—all but one boy, “ Columbus,” his companions had nick-named him, for he is full of stories of travel and adventure. But in the opinion of his schoolmates he is not good for much. He cannot manage a spade nor a plough. He does not care for prisoner’s base or marbles. He scarcely knows a bat from a ball. All he can do is to imitate the par¬ son ; and at preaching he is much better than the parson himself. When the other boys tire of play, they mount “ Columbus ’ ’ on the stump of an old elm and call for a ser¬ mon. His father scarcely approves, for is he not parish- clerk and schoolmaster ? This trifling with the learned profession, of which he is a sort of poor relation himself, seems a little dangerous. For the rest, William is a good boy enough. His schoolfellows may call him awkward and lumpish, but certainly he is active enough in some ways. At whatever time of night his father calls to him he seems to be awake. His mother says she hears him in the darkness saying his lessons of the past day over again, a very unusual occupation with the ordinary schoolboy. The Careys were an old family. Readers of “ West- CAEEY. 7 ward Ho ” will recall the hearty Devonshire hero of the same name as the boy we are looking at now. Nobles and soldiers and scholars have been Careys in the past. Per¬ haps some of their heroic blood flows in the veins of our young Columbus. He certainly possesses that most prized of boyish virtues, pluck. The other day, when he w&s in the agonies of toothache, his companions, half in fun, offered to take the tooth out for him. Dentists were not very frequent at that time. So the boys took William in hand, tied one end of a string to the tooth and the other to a wheel used for grinding malt, gave a sharp turn or two to the wheel, and in a trice out came the tooth. Carey said he felt as though his head would come out too, but he bore it like a man. “ Columbus ” was good for something after all. Yes, and then there was the story of the tree. Carey was climbing it one day, when just as he reached the top his foot slipped and he fell. He fractured a limb, and was kept in bed for some weeks, but when he got well enough to be out, the first thing that he did was to go and climb that tree again. And this time he did not fall. His sister Mary —he used to carry her in his arms in his rambles after plants and insects—says that he was always “resolutely determined never to give up any point or particle of anything on which his mind was set, until he had arrived at a clear knowledge and sense of his sub¬ ject. He was not to be allured or diverted from it; 8 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. he was firm in his purpose and steady in his endeavor to improved ’ This reminds me to add that his great passion was for collecting things. Up to the very door of the village schoolhouse came the royal forest of Whittlebury, which six or seven hundred years before, William the Conqueror had given to one of his sons. But the real William the Conqueror came to it now, when the lessons of the day were done, and the schoolmaster’s boy went wandering on and on in among the oaks and beeches. He had a room all to himself in the cottage, and it was full of birds and insects and plants and flowers. He kept an eye on the hedges as he walked, and found “ Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.” Mary used to wonder why her brother William would carry her across the dirtiest road just to get a plant or an insect, and still more what he could find in them when he had them in his hands. He looked so long and so carefully that she never forgot it. No, and he never forgot it either. Thirty-five years after when living in India, he writes thus to his son, whose name was William too; “ When you come down take a little pains to bring down a few plants of some sort. There is one grows plentifully about Sada- madal, which grows about as high as one’s knee, and produces a large red flower. There is a plant which produces a flower of a pale bluish color .... and indeed several other things there. Try and bring CAREY. 9 something. Can’t you bring the grasshopper which has a saddle on its back, or the bird which has a large crest which he opens when he settles on the ground ? I want to give you a little taste for natural objects.” The schoolmaster’s boy when he plunged into the royal forest took the first step in a journey of inquiry which only ended when he died. Botany was his de¬ light. His garden in India was famous for rare and val¬ uable plants. To it his very last visit was paid. He was carried, when he could walk no longer, to say fare¬ well to it. Then, when too weak to go, he would have his head gardener come to his room to tell him how the plants were growing. He said, as he prepared to die, that he had not a wish that was not fulfilled ; but one day in a moment of depression he exclaimed: “When I am gone Brother Marshman will turn the cows into the garden.’’ “ Far be it from me,” was Marshman’s reply; “though I have not your botanical tastes, I shall con¬ sider the preservation of the garden in which you have taken so much delight as a sacred duty. ” The assurance really seemed to rob death of one of its terrors. The boy is father of the man : and our study of the lines which led up to William Carey the great missionary must begin with William Carey the little villager. What he was afterward we shall see later on. I am content now to leave him for a while—a boy of twelve, awkward, but wide awake, not caring for games, but full of pluck and 10 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. perseverance, and loving every plant that grows, and every bird that sings in the royal forest all about his father’s home. Our second radius we named Eng- II. England. land: What was the country like in which our young Columbus was born and trained ? The year before he appeared in the world George III. became king. It was a great time in which to come to the throne. “Never,” says Green, “had England played so great a part in the history of man¬ kind as in the year 1759. It was a year of triumphs in every quarter of the world.” The French were defeated by sea and land. On the heights of Abraham the gal¬ lant Wolfe, mortally wounded, gave his last order, heard that the battle was won, said only, “ Now, God be praised ! I die in peace,” and expired. In India, Clive had made for himself a splendid name, and given to his country a new empire. “We are forced to ask every morning,” says Horace Walpole, “what victory there is, for fear of missing one.” But when we look at home, at life in the city and in the country, we find enough to make us serious. George III. was the first English-born sovereign of his house ; the first who could speak the language of his people; the first whom his people loved. His mother called him “ a dull good boy,” and we know him to have kept that character to ENGLAND. 11 the last. He could not help it that he had a very small mind, and it was no fault of his that he had been wretchedly educated. He was obstinate, stupid, and ignorant. No one trained him to be anything else. But he was conscientious and high-principled and pious. In his desk they found a prayer which he him¬ self composed for his own coronation : “ Keep me, O Lord, from silly and unguarded friends, and from secret and designing enemies, and give me those things which are best for me, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It was a new thing in England for a king to pray, and the phenomenon has not been frequent since. But it was a hopeful sign. Thackeray says truly, “Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a court society as dissolute as our country ever knew ” ; and he adds, “ I believe that a knowledge of that good man’s example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity and God-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country, and purify the whole nation.” Certainly it needed purifying. On the other side of the road, opposite to Carey’s chapel at Moulton, where he was ordained and really began his ministry, was a club -house about which he would hear terrible tales; how in it wines flowed like water, and indeed a great deal more plentifully, and how vast sums of money were staked and lost there at cards. Gambling was a passion with all classes. Lotteries, the curse of any nation 12 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAKEY. which allows them, were used for all sorts of purposes. The lottery helped to build Westminster Bridge, London, and to stock the British Museum, and even to put up churches, and to endow charitable institutions. One natural consequence was a dislike for steady work, and a haste to be rich. It was the age of bubbles, which rose and glittered and burst. The people at large were degraded and brutal. Cock-fighting was a favorite game with schoolboys, and sometimes the master claimed the runaway birds as his special perquisite. Moralists pre¬ tended that the sport would put an end to war by giving this superfluous spirit a chance of escaping in what was called “an innocent and regal recreation.” Prize¬ fighting and wrestling were popular sports. Every parish had its feast-day in which these wei;e the popular amusements. Revel-Sunday was an institution yet in many parts of England, and it began with a sermon and closed in an orgy. Public morals must have been at a very low ebb. As late as 1802, as I read in the “Morning Herald,” of London, “a butcher sold his wife by auction at the last market day at Hereford. The lot brought £1 4s. and a bowl of punch. ’ ’ And exceptional as such a case was, it reveals a condition of shameless depravity which was, one fears, very general in the early days of good King George. But what were the churches doing ? Very slowly they ENGLAND. 13 were responding to the remarkable revival of religion which was being talked of from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s house when Carey was born. The Episcopal Church, with a few memorable exceptions, was fiercely opposed to that revival. Bishop Butler said that White- field’s belief in the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit was “a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.” The Bishop of London denounced the Methodists for preach¬ ing to “the rabble.” “It is monstrous,” said a daughter of James II., “ to be told that you have a heart as simple as the common wretches that crawl on the earth.” The Tory farmer of whom it was said, “As to religion he had none; in all other respects he was a Protestant,” was not singular. Of too many of the clergy the same remark would have held true. When Carey was yet a boy, the greatest lawyer England has ever seen went from one church in London to another and listened in vain for a word which might not have come from Cicero as aptly as from a clergyman, and from a follower of Confucius as fittingly as from a fol¬ lower of Christ. Carey’s first master was a shoemaker, in the little village of Hackleton. He is described as being a strict churchman, and yet one who now and then got drunk. But what else could we expect in such a place ? The ’squire of the parish had appropriated the living, the parsonage, the glebe, and all the tithes; and only sent his chaplain to take the service when it pleased him. 14 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. Such flagrant wrongs as this, and hundreds like it, roused the Nonconformists into political activity. One by one they were wresting from the hands of the govern¬ ment those liberties which were their birthright. Carey’s ■ father, as became a parish clerk whose duty it was to say £< Amen ” to the clergyman, never reconciled him¬ self to the change in William’s views. He did indeed contrive to hear his son preach, but only “ unseen by him or any one. ’ ’ Methodism was scarcely more welcome to the Dis¬ senters than it was to the clergy in the Established Church. There were not many men among the Baptists when Carey was baptized and joined that body, who emulated either the fervor of Whitefield or the unction of Wesley. That they knew better what truth was than did their neighbors in the Episcopal Church, only added to their guilt. William Jay sums up the religious state of England when Wesley began to preach, in one sentence : “ The Establishment was asleep in the dark, and the Dissenters were asleep in the light.” “ Sound and sound asleep,” is another and still briefer summary, which is only half true as regards the soundness, but wholly so as regards the sleep. The sturdiest preacher of that era never wore a parson’s gown nor mounted a pulpit. His name was William Hogarth, and his sermons may yet be seen on canvas. Among other things he painted “ The Sleeping Congregation,” and even now ENGLAND. 15 it is hard work for any one who looks at it to keep awake. The people are all locked in slumber, from the boy in the distant gallery to the old woman in the shady nook underneath the pulpit. The clerk indeed keeps half an eye open; but only that he may detect his erring neighbors. By means of a big magnifying glass the somnolent parson is spelling a sermon out of a book, and his text is “ Come unto me all ye that labour, and I will give you rest.” No inapt picture this of the slumbering church in the first half of the eighteenth century. “An age,” says Mr. Mark Pattison, with only too much truth, “ destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of ‘light without love/ whose very merits were ‘ of the earth, earthy/ ” But now, having said so much that is unfavorable about the era in which Carey was born, let me add that he came to it just at the right time. Wesley had been preaching in the open air for over twenty years. On commons and in fields, Whitefield had thrilled multi¬ tudes by his matchless eloquence. The country was waking up from its torpor. And what a great country it was! “Full,” as has been said, “of strong and brave men.” “Upon the ocean,” Johnson writes, in his grand manner, “ we are allowed to be irresistible, to be able to shut up the ports of the continent, imprison 16 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. the nations of Europe within the limits of their own territories, deprive them of all foreign assistance, and put a stop to the commerce of the world.” The stuff out of which a missionary should be made was never so abundant as it was at this time. From the coalpit, the quarry, and the loom, Wesley rescued scores of manly souls. England is feeling her strength now. The Stuarts are gone. The foreigners are gone. She has her own king, and slowly she will get her own in many other things much more important than King George III. Already there are prophetic souls uttering their faith in a coming revival of religion. On his death-bed, the father of the Wesleys laid his hand on the head of his son Charles, and said to him, “ Be steady ! The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom : you shall see it, though I shall not. ’ ’ Before twenty sum¬ mers had blossomed above the grave of Samuel Wesley the whole country was in a blaze of religious fervor. It is far from England to the Pacific. III. The South But there we will go for our next line. Seas. What could the South Seas have to do with the making of William Carey? He was a boy of ten when a wonderful event happened in England. A Yorkshire lad, who had run away to sea and risen to command a ship of his own, came home with the most stirring tales that had been heard since THE SOUTH SEAS. 17 Queen Elizabeth. Somewhere in the Pacific—so it was believed—there was a vast, undiscovered continent. Columbus had found America. This other continent must now be found. James Cook, the boy who went to sea rather than be a draper’s apprentice, was the man who started out to discover it. He failed to find the continent, and that for the very best of reasons—there was no con¬ tinent to find. But he sailed into the South Seas. He saw Tahiti, and New Zealand, and Australia. Every¬ where he planted on the new-found shores the British flag. A second voyage of discovery added new islands, all beautiful beyond words of his to paint them. Such skies there were, such seas, such coral reefs, such fringes of palm, such splendor of birds and of flowers. When he came home and told his story, all England went wild over it. Captain Cook was the hero of the hour. Carey would hear this talked over around his father’s fire, and by-and-by he would talk of it himself. The botany fascinated him. The new geography was delightful. How big the world was getting, and how bright! Then came the sad news that on Hawaii the brave sailor had been clubbed to death. Cook was gone ; yes, but those enchanted islands remained. And so also did the story of Cook’s voyage, which was to be the favorite reading of English boys for fifty years to come. Only old Doctor Johnson, who had such a habit of differing with every one, growled that a sai’or’s life was worse than a dog’s, 18 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. and that if there was one thing worse than his life it was the books which he wrote about his travels. “A man had better work his way before the mast than read these through. There can be no entertainment in such books.” Not so thought young William Carey. Had they not called him “Columbus”? He was full of enthusiasm at these sailors’ tales. He was cobbling shoes, and teaching children, and he had just begun to try to preach. His little workshop he hung around with maps of his own making. He did not know much about geography, but he did his best with what he did know. He constructed a rude globe out of leather, and marked the countries on it. Then he put signs of his own on the parts where heathenism was darkest and most savage. Tahiti had filled and fired his imagination. This was the group of islands he had first heard of in connection with Captain Cook. He dreamed of the country by day and saw it in vision by night. He could see the white cliffs rising above the heads of the great forest trees, and the lovely waterfalls flinging themselves over the precipices or tumbling down the glades, and the huge palms crowned with fruit, and the dense under¬ growth of giant ferns. He could hear, in his poor cobbler’s stall, the waves breaking on the coral reefs. His mind was all alive with bright pictures and sweet sounds. Ah, and he could see the grim idols too, and catch the wild music of the heathenish worship. These NORTHAMPTON. 19 natives, so graceful, and simple-hearted, and gentle, must be won to Christ. The walls of the workshop seemed to fall away, the whole world sent its sights and sounds to fill that mean hut with unspeakable glories. These people must be reached with the gospel, and he, yes, he must go. Tahiti should be saved. His eye rested on that one spot upon the map. There he would work, and preach, and die. The runaway Yorkshire boy touched hands in the missionary chain with the young shoemaker in his stall. James Cook had much to do with the making of William Carey. Our first radius started from the IV. Northampton, village schoolhouse of Paulerspury, our second from the throne of George III., our third from the coral reefs of Tahiti. Now for a fourth, we write again the word Northampton. Not the English town, however, but the pleasant New England village, where to-day, beneath the great elm trees, lies all that is mortal of Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards had his share in bringing about William Carey. How? Well, in this way. There came in the early years of the last century a powerful spiritual revival to Scotland. You see everything was waking up, because the Stuarts were gone, and this land was slowly escaping from the religious intolerance which, like a crimson line, is drawn across all their reigns. In 1742, a Scottish min- 20 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. ister, called John Bonar, published a letter on “ The Duty and Advantages of Religious Societies.” It was really a call to united prayer and work. Two years after this a number of ministers in Scotland banded themselves together to pray that God’s kingdom might come. Every Saturday evening, every Sunday morning, and on the first Tuesday of every quarter, they prayed. Two more years followed, and by that time such a wonderful blessing had come to these praying ministers that the whole country was affected by them, and in August, 1746, they sent across to North America, and invited all Christians there to enter into their prayer union for seven years. See what faith and what patience these men had. They were willing to wait, if only the king¬ dom might be extended. This was a great missionary society, a pentecost united not for action, but only first of all for prayer. The message from England came to Northampton, Massachusetts, and when it struck Jona¬ than Edwards it struck fire. He wrote an address entitled an “An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extra¬ ordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth”—a long and awkward title, as befits a man who never learned how to write clear English; but how weighty it is with meaning. By the time this pamphlet had done its best work, America had ceased to be an English prov- ANDREW FULLER. 21 ince, and poor, demented George III. was spluttering and storming over the loss of his colony. But when that pamphlet by Jonathan Edwards found its way to Moulton, one might almost say that the shot was fired which has been heard all around the world. Carey read what Edwards had to say. He was profoundly moved. So were other Baptist ministers. They were prepared to pray. So, in 1784, the Northamptonshire Association of Baptist Ministers invited all the people to pray with them for one hour of every month, for the coming of the Holy Spirit. In their message to the churches they j say, “ Let the spread of the gospel to the most distant : part of the habitable globe be the object of your most fervent requests.” Ah, the pale, intense preacher in the li New England village of Northampton did his part toward making William Carey when he wrote his famous pamphlet. The elms of Northampton had their part to play in this wonderful story. Without Edwards there might have been no Carey. 1 I now come to what is perhaps the i V. Andrew most significant of all these lines Fuller. which we have been drawing. Let us call it Andrew Fuller. It starts in the village of Wicken, among the fens of l For the influence of David Brainerd's missionary labors on Carey, see his “ Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen." London reprint, 1891, pp. 70, 87. 22 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. Cambridgeshire. It is not a beautiful part of England. Far as the eye can see there are only stretches of flat, green pasturage, broken here and there by a church tower. Like Holland, only even more so, it lies at the mercy of the water. Whittlesea Mere a swampy morass lined with reeds and bulrushes, would often, in the time we speak of, rise and spread, drowning cattle and flood¬ ing villages. The people would perhaps be roused from their beds at night, and by the light of lanthorns hun¬ dreds of them would set to work in hot haste mending the holes in the banks through which the waters threat¬ ened to break. Andrew Fuller had his share in this forced labor, we may be sure. He came of a sturdy race, and he was born into a land of heroic memories. Here, Hereward the Wake, last of the English, fought the Normans inch by inch, and this sea country was itself the last to yield to the conquering William. And here, long afterward, Oliver Cromwell lived, and in the church at Wicken his second son Henry was buried, and was let lie there until the sexton sold his skull to some curiosity hunter for five shillings. A flat country enough it is, but equal to turning out great men, as a flat country will. There were no hills where Milton sang of Paradise Lost and Regained, or where Shakespeare saw in fancy, claud-Capped towers and gorgeous palaces, or where Bunyan dreamed of the Delectable mountains, or where Cromwell towered up, the loftiest Englishman of ANDREW FULLER. 23 his times. When some one ventured to tell Andrew Fuller that an air which he had composed was in a flat key, he answered truly enough, “ Very likely. I think that I was born in a flat key.” And there can be no doubt that he was. ‘ ‘ Yet, ’ ’ says Kingsley, in his tale of ‘ ‘ Hereward, ’ ’ ‘‘they have a beauty of their own, those great fens, even now when they are dyked and drained, tilled and fenced—a beauty as of the sea, of boundless expanse and freedom.” Listen again : “ Dark and sad were those short autumn days when all the distances were shut off, and the air choked with foul, brown fog and drenching rains from off the eastern sea; and pleasant the keen northeast wind, with all its whirling snowstorms. For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm to drive the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snowdrifts, and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and snow, yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenmans yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and sledges, to run races, township against township, visit old friends full forty miles away, and meet every¬ where faces as bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wine of that dry and bracing frost.” Well, this was the country in which Andrew Fuller was born. If you look at his picture you may see that 24 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. he came fairly enough by his homely, honest face. He was no beauty, so far as his looks went, any more than were the fens. But he had what was better than beauty. He had goodness. His mother lived to see him buried. She was a very old woman, of ninety-two years, and on the day of Andrew’s funeral her two surviving sons stood beside her bed, and one of them said, “Well, mother, we have had a great loss in Andrew’s death.” “Ah, my dear, I feel it very much indeed; and to think he should be called before me! ” “ He was a great man, mother.” “ What did you say ? ” “ He was a great man.” “I don’t know what you mean.” “Why, he wrote many books thought very much of.” “ Well, well, I don’t know much about that; he never said anything to me about what people thought of them. I know that he was a good man, and a good son to me.” Who can tell how much he owed to this mother? He was scarcely four years old when one day he found her pacing her bedroom, speaking with great earnestness, with her hands fast clasped, and her eyes as though they saw things that were far off. “ Mother, who are you talking to? ” “ To God, my child, about you.” And then she took the little hand in hers, and kneeling with him, showed him how to pray. ANDREW FULLER. 25 He was a farmer’s boy, and he loved the farm life. There was a certain laborer at work there who was a re¬ ligious man. Andrew, when he began to think about religion himself, walked several miles to talk to him, and then had nothing to say. But he grew more confident by-and-by. He would hinder the man’s threshing in the barn by his questions, and would make up for the lost time by doing a couple of hours’ work for him. “ Ain’t I in your way? ” he asked his friend, on one occasion, when the long flail almost hit him. “ Not at all,” was the reply. A minute or two more and the flail swept his coat. “ I told you I was in your way.” “No,” was the answer, dry enough to come from a practiced theologian. “You’re not in my way, but I shall be in yours if you don’t take care.” So much had Fuller to do with Carey that we ought to set the man well before us. He was very strong in body. There are stories about his prowess in boxing, and it is certain that he was fond of wrestling. Once, when he had risen to be a very grave and reverend missionary deputy he fell to discussing with a farmer, whose guest he was, the wrestling bouts of earlier days. The farmer challenged Fuller to a conflict. Early next morning, stripped for the contest, they stood face to face in the orchard. Then Fuller saw some people walking along a footpath, on their way to early prayer meeting. 26 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. “Brother,” he said, slipping on his coat, “ this will not do; these people will think we are fighting, and we must avoid the very appearance of evil. ’ ’ He walked back to the house, but the farmer could not help flinging after him the friendly jeer that this was all an excuse. “You were afraid,” said he, “I should throw you.” Fuller was a man of peace, and yet he has been known to say that he never saw a strong, muscular man come into a chapel where he was preaching without mentally calculating what would be the best way to conquer him in a pitched battle. Like other strong and healthy men, he had a genial and winning way about him. As he waited for a coach one day, he leaned upon a gate, watching some mowers. “Easy enough,” one of them called to him, “for a gentleman to do the looking-on part. Wouldn’t he like to try his hand at it? ” “Well,” said Fuller, “I think I have seen as hard work as you seem to make of it; I don’t mind trying what it is like.” With that he took the scythe, and mowed away with such rapidity and so clean a swath that the men stood looking on with open mouths. “ Oh, sir,” one of them said, “ you have had a scythe in your hand before to-day.” “Yes, my friend, before you were born.” Born in the land of Cromwell, Fuller possessed not a 27 ANDREW FULLER. little of Cromwell’s independence. He was in the height of his influence, preaching for missions and collecting great sums of money for them, when he visited Glasgow. The Baptists there sent him word that it his views agreed with theirs, he might preach in their Chapel. Fuller answered that he was not a candidate for their pulpit, and that he did not care whether he preached for them or not. The perplexed brethren had another meeting, and decided that unless he would make a confession of his faith they could not listen to him. “Very well, then,” said Fuller, “ I shall go to the Tabernacle ”—the great meet¬ ing house built for evangelistic work. “ I consider your conduct as a renunciation of connection with us as English churches, for it implies that you have no confi¬ dence in us.” Too late the slaves of the letter found that they had to do with a man who was in the liberty of the spirit of the gospel. Fuller preached in the Tabernacle to four thousand people in the afternoon, and to nearly five thousand in the evening, and collected two hundred pounds. Calling on an Episcopal clergyman once to ask for a subscription, he was met somewhat scornfully. The clergyman did not know Fuller personally, and had very little opinion either of Baptists or of their mission. “However,” he said, “there is one great man among you, and his treatise entitled, ‘ The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation,’ is one of the most masterly productions I know.” 28 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. “ For all the faults in that work, sir,” said Mr. Fuller, “ I am responsible.” The clergyman at once rose from his chair, expressed the greatest regret at his rudeness, and pressed a sub' scription upon the collector. “No, sir,” said Fuller, “not a farthing. You do not give in faith.” Only after much persuasion could he be induced to receive the money. A somewhat similar story tells us how he went to his native town, on the same mission, and one of his ac¬ quaintances said, “Well, Andrew, I’ll give five pounds, seeing it is you.” “ No,” was the answer again ; ” I can take nothing for the cause, seeing it is me ,” and the money was handed back. “ Andrew,” his friend said, after a moment’s reflection, “ you are right. Here are ten pounds, seeing it is for the Lord Jesus Christ.” It was this man who met Carey at an Association to which the poor shoemaker had come fasting and pen¬ niless. They were kindred spirits, and they became close friends. Fuller found his way into the cottage at Moulton, and saw the maps and the leathern globe; and also the school, about which Carey was wont to say, with a twin¬ kle in his eye, “ When I kept school, my scholars kept ANDREW FULLER. 29 The two men had very much in common. The first time that Fuller heard Carey preach he seized his hand as he left the pulpit, and told him of his pleasure that their sentiments so closely corresponded. When, long years after, news reached Carey in India that his friend was dead, he declared that his wish to see England again died too. In their long talks together there were two subjects which oftenest engaged their thoughts. Was it the duty of all men to whom it was made known to believe the gospel ? Was it the duty of the Christian church to publish this gospel ? Carey began at one end of the difficulty, but Fuller had to begin at the other. Unless men were bound to believe, the church was hardly bound to preach. Now the Baptists, as a rule, held at that time that it was not the duty of all men to whom the gospel is preached to repent and believe in Christ. The best known Baptist minister of the time was John Gill. For over half a century he ministered to the church which has since became so famous through the pastorate of Mr. Spurgeon. He was a man of strong character, will, and intellect. Mr. Spurgeon himself says of Gill that he was never a great soul-winner, and that “ his method of address to sinners, in which for many years a large class of preachers followed him, was not likely to be largely useful.’’ Himself a native of Kettering, where Andrew Fuller became pastor, and from which 30 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAEEY. our missionary enterprise was launched, it is not to be supposed that he made the work any easier for the two great men whose hearts were full of pity for the heathen and of longing to save them. We can readily see how if the duty of the obligation to urge sinners to repent, and to insist upon their guilt if they refuse, be not binding upon a preacher or upon a church, apathy and ease must come. The ministers who held such deadening views had no need to disturb or bestir themselves. So we read of the genial club in which the London ministers met every week, and of the open tables which were kept for them by hospitable parishioners. From these men Fuller and Carey might look in vain for enthusiasm. “ Above all, no zeal,” the direction which a bishop of those days gave to his clergy was a direction very much to their minds. Into this stagnant air Andrew Fuller fired his mem¬ orable shot, “The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation.’* He contended that it was the duty of all to whom the gospel was preached to accept it heartily. At once the quiet was changed to strife. For nearly eight years the battle went on. The sun was darkened by the discharges of pamphlets, and tractates, and volumes of all sorts and sizes. But at the end of that time the victory was won, Fuller had brought almost all intelligent men who gave the matter devout thought around to his view. Mean¬ while Carey had been talking, preaching, praying Mis- ANDREW FULLER. 31 sions to the Heathen. In 1792, he preached at North¬ ampton his sermon—his epoch-making sermon—which was summed up in two mighty sentences : “ Expect great thi?igs from God. Attempt great things for God. ’ ’ Into that sermon he put himself. “The sluices of his soul were thrown full open, and the flood that had been accumulating for years rushed forth in full volume and irresistible power. 7 ’ Dr. Ryland, one of the strongest characters of his time, listened to it, and declared that “ If all the people had lifted up their voices and wept, 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 people were staggered and thunderstruck under Carey’s words. The very force of their feeling was in itself a danger. It looked as if the meeting would break up without action. Carey seized Fuller’s hand now, as in an earlier day Fuller had seized Carey’s. In an agony of distress he demanded whether they could separate without something being done. The appeal was made to the right man, in the right place, and at the right time. It was immediately resolved “ that plans be prepared against the next ministers’ meeting at Kettering for the establishment of a society for propagating the gospel among the heathen. Those two clasped hands, one thrilling with the an¬ guish of Carey, the other strong with the nervous grip of 32 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. Fuller, joined the two great forces from which our mis¬ sionary enterprise sprang. It was Fuller who prepared England for Carey, and when Carey went down into the mine, it was Fuller who, as he himself said, held the ropes. The respectable people, who drove their own horses, farmed their own fields, and worshiped the great god¬ dess Decorum, would none of this new-fangled teaching. Fuller bluntly confessed that “when the work began in 1792, there was little or no respectability among us, not so much as a ’squire to sit in the chair.” In England this is the unpardonable sin at public meet¬ ings. And Fuller adds that the London ministers let them severely alone. But what did it matter if the ’squire would not counte¬ nance them, if London knew them not ? They were doing a great work and they could not come down. Glorious rebels against the tyranny of stagnation, their hour had come at last ! “ A goodly thing is prudence, And they are valued friends, Who never make beginnings Until they see the ends : But give us now and then a man And we will make him king, Just to scorn the consequences, Just to do the thing.” INDIA. 33 One more radius remains to be VI. India. struck, India. Again we have to do with an English boy, but with one very unlike William Carey as he searches the hedgerows for rare flowers, or Andrew Fuller as he listens to the pious thresher in his father’s barn. This boy, who was born in 1725, was alike the terror and the pride of his native town. He was the leader in every feat of daring. He headed a band of boys only less fearless than him¬ self, and led the shopkeepers of Market Drayton a life scarcely worth living, breaking their windows and carry¬ ing off their goods, unless they paid the freebooters’ tribute of apples and pence. He climbed the tall church steeple and sat on a stone spout near the top, enjoying the horror of the people beneath, who half- feared that he would fall and half-feared that he would not. No school could or would keep him. He was as passionate as he was courageous. Nothing could be done with him at home, and so Bob Clive, as they all called him, was packed off before he was eighteen, to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras. He did neither for a time, for he never did do what others expected of him. At first he chafed under the dull life of a clerk, and twice he tried to shoot himself, but failed. Then he found a library, and buried himself in books. Suddenly the jealousy of the French, who were virtually the masters of that part of India, flung the 34 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. little company of English traders into prison. Clive escaped, disguised as a Mussulman, threw aside the pen forever, and took up the sword. He became a soldier, and with amazing rapidity rose to command great bodies of troops. Everywhere victory crowned his arms. I need not follow a course which reads even now like a romance; but it is enough for me to say that Clive made the English soldiers the one victorious force in India. Another turn of the wheel of fortune lifted him higher yet. Surajah Doulah, sovereign of the great province of Bengal, a boy in years, but old in every kind of wickedness, seized the little English settlement of Fort William, Calcutta, ordered the managers of the factory to be brought before him, and after grumbling at the smallness of the treasure which he had found in the place, wound up by promising the captured people their lives, and handing them over to his guards. “Then,” says Macaulay, in a passage which has become historical, “was committed that great crime memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribu¬ tion by which it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of ‘ the Black Hole.’ Even for a single European male¬ factor that dungeon would in such a climate have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet INDIA. 35 square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated ; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them. Nothing in history or fiction approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. They trampled each other down, fought for places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of their murderers mocked their agonies; raved, prayed, blas¬ phemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The jailers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gasp- ings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be 36 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors by piling up on each side the heap of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies, one hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up.” This atrocity called Clive into the field afresh, and the negotiations which followed the routing of the murder¬ ers at Fort William and the recapture of Calcutta made him a statesman. The British dominion in India may almost be dated from that awful night in the Black Hole. At Fort William a college was subsequently opened for the training of servants of the East India Com¬ pany. When Carey came to India it was not to a number of torn and distracted provinces, but it was rather to a vast nation, which was rapidly feeling the vigorous touch of England. All things are possible to the gospel when once it gets a foothold. Not long, as we know, was that foothold denied the Baptist missionaries. Nine years after landing in India, William Carey was ap¬ pointed Professor of Bengali, in that very college of Fort William, which but for the barbarity of Surajah Doulah and the magnificent generalship of Robert Clive, 'would probably never have come into existence. INDIA. 37 Thus Clive unconsciously made India ready for a greater than he, the poor shoemaker of Paulerspury. Our task is now done. We set out to trace some of the lines which led up to William Carey. Commencing far enough from one another they all meet in him. Upon the moment when he set foot in India and began his work, these various lines converge. The boy stumbling upon a Greek Testament in a cob¬ bler’s stall, and upon a Dutch quarto in an old woman’s cottage, was already preparing himself for the professorship at Fort William. The simple-hearted young prince ascending an English throne, and resolving to cleanse the moral condition of his country, was, although insensibly to himself, making that country ready for its mission to the nations of the world. Wesley, speeding from village to village, was kindling a new fervor of faith, and Whitefield crying, “ Oh, earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord,” was preparing a way for the foot of the missionary. The hardy seaman I * who girdled the world, and came back to tell his wonder¬ ful story to his countrymen, did nothing else so important as to fire Carey with a passion for carrying the gospel to Tahiti. The greatest intellect of the age, speculating amid the elms of New England, touched its highest point when it appealed to Christians the world over to pray for the triumph of the Redeemer, and that appeal fell 38 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. into no soil more fertile than the gathering of obscure Baptist ministers from which Carey’s mighty project sprang. The last of the English, driven into the fens, sent their fearless blood coursing through the veins of Andrew Fuller. And the wild schoolboy, Robert Clive, drafted off to India, chiefly in order that his relations might be rid of him, opened that great continent to the simple shoemaker who came to its shores with the mes¬ sage of a Saviour’s love. These varied and contrasted influences all met in William Carey, as he entered on the work which has made his name immortal. I cannot close without referring to another harbinger of the dawn which had for half a century before this time been filling the air with its music. The hymns of the Christian Church had been sung in dark hours, but they had already struck the high note of confident faith. Nahum Tate, although he was poet-laureate, did little more than set the dullness of his age to kindred rhyme; but amid his intemperance and inanity he sang : “ To bless thy chosen race, In mercy, Lord, incline ; And cause the brightness of thy face On all thy saints to shine; “ That so thy wondrous way May through the world be known ; Whilst distant lands their tribute pay, And thy salvation own.” Williams, the laureate of Wales, did not witness the INDIA. 39 launching of British missions to the heathen. He died the year before Carey sailed to India. And yet all the fruitful and inspiring events of this last hundred years have given us no nobler hymn than that in which we still join so heartily : “ Fly abroad thou mighty gospel, Win and conquer, never cease, May thy lasting wide dominion Multiply and still increase ; Sway thy sceptre, Saviour, all the world around.” The poets were right. Mounting into a loftier and purer air than was breathed by others, they saw the day of the Lord which was at hand ; they saw it and were glad. The study which we now bring to a close has furnished us with a powerful argument for the sovereignty of God. These various lines were all of his appointing. He trained Carey in the cobbler’s stall. He prepared Wesley to prepare England. He taught Fuller to break down the barriers of doctrinal prejudice. He guided James Cook in his course, and he controlled the passion¬ ate nature of Robert Clive. Not accident, but divine foresight, struck that circle of which Carey was the centre; and drew each separate radius which converged upon him. To the last Carey was never ashamed of his humble origin. Whatsoever his hand found to do he did with 40 THE MAKING OF WILLIAM CAREY. v all his might, whether it was cobbling a peasant’s shoes, or composing a Mahratta dictionary. He seems to have pursued his great enterprise under the mastering convic¬ tion that he was, as one said of Judson, “Jesus Christ’s man.” He lived to see his brightest hopes realized, his mightiest faith justified, and the vision at which all England had smiled contemptuously transformed into reality. Long before he died the scoffers had ceased to jeer, and the sneerers were themselves objects of con¬ tempt. The “consecrated cobbler,” who had once gone hungry and penniless to the Association, was feasted in palaces; and nobles and dignitaries of the church tended him in his dying hours. Yet he never swerved in his simple devotion to his Saviour. When young Alexander Duff, himself destined to be one of the leaders in Indian missions, visited Carey in his last moments, it was not to be wondered at that something should be said about the work which the dying missionary had accom¬ plished. But as he left the room, Duff thought that he heard a feeble voice calling him back. It was Carey. “Mr. Duff,” he said, painfully and with difficulty, ‘ ‘ you have been speaking about Dr. Carey. Dr. Carey. When I am gone say nothing about Dr. Carey—speak about Dr. Carey’s Saviour.” The name of William Carey dies away from that cen¬ tre ; and in its place we write the name of Jesus Christ.