From Mending Shoes to Mending Souls
Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.
William Carey, The Baptist Magazine
It is difficult to imagine this happening in a meeting of ministers, but it did: when William Carey stood before a group of Baptists to call for mission work in foreign lands, he was told to shut up and sit down. God would save the heathen if he wanted to and the Almighty didn’t need Carey’s help.
Carey sat, but he didn’t shut up. This balding former cobbler could not ignore the plight of the unreached, and would follow his words with action, even as it cost him dearly.
The Cobbler
William Carey called himself a plodder.1 His only genius was his ability to keep moving forward, one trudging step after another. His life bears out his statement. Plodding is the ability to keep moving forward when everything is trying to push you back. Carey was a master at it.
He was born into poverty in the village of Paulerspury in Northamptonshire, England. His father was a weaver who also taught school to make ends meet. Born with a keen mind but little opportunity, Carey made the best of his situation. He enjoyed reading and writing, and consumed books like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. When Carey was a teenager, his father arranged an apprenticeship with the cobbler Clarke Nichols in Piddington, a village near his home. There he met John Warr, another apprentice. Warr was a dissenter—he attended a church not part of the Anglican system. Carey attended church with Warr, and at the age of seventeen had a conversion experience.
During his days as an apprentice cobbler, Carey taught himself Greek and showed skill at self-education. He might have been financially poor but he was rich in intelligence. His greatest achievements were linked to his aptitude for languages.
When his master Clarke Nichols died, Carey went to work for shoemaker Thomas Old. Carey married Old’s sister-in-law Dorothy Plackett in 1781. Dorothy had no education and could barely sign her name. In time Thomas Old died, and Carey took over the business. He continued his self-education, teaching himself Hebrew, Dutch, Italian, and French.
Soles and Souls
Soon Carey began preaching in churches. During one period, he walked eight miles every Sunday to a neighboring town to fill the pulpit of a local church. He continued his cobbling work and his self-education, taught school when he could, and pastored.
William Carey had never been robust, and often suffered from ill health, but he continued on, dealing with poverty, the death of a child, and his wife’s resulting mental illness.
In the midst of this turmoil, Carey’s mind became more and more fixed on the need to take the gospel to the world. He found little support for this, however, as any focus on world missions was repeatedly shot down by one gathering of ministers after another.
In 1792, he wrote and published An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means of the Conversion of the Heathen. In the treatise he argued for a world missions effort. A few weeks later he received an invitation to speak at the minister’s association, which he accepted. There he uttered the line most associated with him: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”
The message was received politely but without enthusiasm. Nonetheless, a mission society was formed in part because of Carey’s message. Dr. John Thomas volunteered to go to India as a missionary if someone would go with him. Carey—a man prone to illness with a pregnant wife and three young sons—said he’d go.
Only Carey and his oldest son boarded an English ship. His wife refused to leave England. The ship set sail, but was soon forced to return to port shortly after it left. After some searching, he and Dr. Thomas booked passage to India on a Dutch ship. This time, Carey was able to convince his wife to accompany him, but only if his wife’s sister was allowed to go as well. By the time the ship sailed, Dorothy had given birth.
India
In November 1793, they arrived in Calcutta and set up work. Sadly, their health and financial troubles followed them. The Careys moved to Midnapore to manage an indigo plant. Carey worked in the dye business for six years while he learned Bengali, the language of the region. During this time he began translating the New Testament into the local language.
There were other problems and tragedies. Dr. Thomas was running up debt. Some suspect his motivation for going to India was to escape creditors, and Thomas would later abandon the mission. Despite Carey’s efforts, there were no converts. Then came the deepest loss: their youngest son, Peter, died of dysentery in 1796.
Still, Carey plodded on.
The Careys moved to Serampore in January of 1800 to join a group of Danish missionaries. It was there, after seven years of service, that he saw his first Hindu convert and baptism. He also became a professor of Sanskrit and Bengali at Fort Williams College, a school for civil servants. He formed a church, and in 1801 finished his Bengali translation of the New Testament.
Dorothy
The strain on Carey’s wife was enormous. She had never traveled more than a few miles from home before she found herself in the strange land of India. She never adjusted and her emotional and mental state declined, made worse by the loss of two children. At times she would accuse Carey of infidelity and even threatened his life. Carey had no means of helping her, and at times had to lock her in a room for her own safety.
Dorothy died in 1807. Carey wrote that she died of a fever that had plagued her for some time. He also noted that her sound mind had never returned.
The next year, Carey married a Danish woman in his church. Charlotte Rhumohr was bright and articulate, in many ways the opposite of Dorothy. Their marriage lasted until her death thirteen years later.
Lasting Impact
When William Carey’s life is discussed, the conversation often focuses on the “lack of success” he endured for so many years. He worked from late 1793 until 1800 before baptizing a single convert: Krishna Pal. While this shows Carey’s ability to “plod on” during what must have seemed an extended period of failure, there are other numbers that show great success in related efforts.
When Carey died in 1834, he left behind a remarkable body of work, including forty-four translations of the Bible. He (and the other missionaries who came to work with him) also started 126 schools, twenty-six churches, and mission stations in India, Burma, and Bhutan. He also was one of the first to see the need for an indigenous Indian church, one made up and led by Indians.
He also helped make social changes such as ending suttee, the Hindu practice of a widow throwing herself on her husband’s flaming funeral pyre. He began the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India in 1820, organized the first printing operation and paper mill in India, and made English translations of Indian epic literature.
Carey is often called the father of modern missions. He was certainly not the first modern missionary, but his determination provided an example for many to come. The poor, undereducated cobbler laid the groundwork for what would become a thriving Christian church in India.
He died in Serampore, India, on June 9, 1834. His grave marker reads: “A wretched, poor, and helpless worm. On Thy kind arms I fall.”