Up until this time, William was not an ordained (official) Baptist minister. His congregation urged him to become one. After passing a number of exams and preaching in front of many important Baptist ministers of the day, William Carey became an ordained Baptist minister on May 3, 1787. He was twenty-six years old.
Three ministers conducted the ordination service: John Sutcliff, John Ryland (who had baptized William), and Andrew Fuller. It was the first time the three men and William had met together, but it would not be the last. All four of them were destined to remain linked for the rest of their lives.
One of the advantages of being an ordained minister was that William was now able to attend the meetings of the Ministers’ Fraternal of the Northampton Association, where he got to listen to the views of many older, well-educated ministers. At the first few meetings, William was too shy to say anything, but he couldn’t stay out of such lively discussions for long! He soon found out, however, that many of the other ministers had very different views from his own and did not want a young, upstart minister challenging them.
Chapter 5
A Miserable Enthusiast
William sat nervously gathering his thoughts during a lull in the conversation at a meeting of the Ministers’ Fraternal. One of the older ministers, the Reverend Ryland Sr. (father of William’s friend, John Ryland), suggested that perhaps one of the younger members might have a new topic for conversation. All eyes seemed to turn to William, who knew what he wanted to say but just didn’t know how to say it the right way. The subject had to do with missions. The more William had read the Bible, the more convinced he had become that God expected Christians to share the gospel message with others, even people far across the ocean in newly discovered lands. This meant that churches in England had an obligation to send out missionaries to these newly discovered places.
This was not a popular view in 1787. Most ministers believed that Jesus had given the task of sharing the gospel message to his twelve disciples and that when they died, so did the job itself. Now no one was required to share his or her faith, especially not in dangerous, unknown regions. Many Christians went so far as to say that if God wanted the heathen in other lands to hear the gospel message, He could tell them Himself without any help from human beings. After all, He was all powerful, wasn’t He?
“Reverend Carey, have you come up with a topic yet?” asked the Reverend Ryland Sr.
“Yes,” said William, adjusting his wig while still trying to get his thoughts in order. Then he stammered on. “I would like to discuss the idea that when Jesus Christ gave the command to His disciples to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, He meant it to include, not just His disciples who were alive at that time, but all who would follow Him from then on.”
The Reverend Ryland Sr. shot William an angry look and cleared his throat. “Here we have an example of a young man who knows nothing about the plan of God,” he said matter-of-factly. “The Almighty does not need a man to speak for Him. He will enlighten the heathen in His own way, when He sees fit. It is not our place to interfere with this process.” He glared at William and pointed a finger in his direction for effect before continuing. “And you, young man, are a miserable enthusiast for suggesting otherwise.”
With that, the discussion was over. William sat silently thinking about what had been said. Was he really a miserable enthusiast, meddling in things he knew nothing about? Was the Reverend Ryland Sr. right? Should he give up his goal of sharing the gospel message with the heathen? He would have to give the whole subject some more serious thought.
The Reverend Ryland Sr.’s remarks were intended to stop William from considering a Christian’s role in evangelizing the world. Surprisingly, though, they encouraged him. The more William thought about the arguments that had been put forward, the more he studied to see who was right. As he studied, he took careful notes. Before long, the notes turned into an essay, which turned into the manuscript for a book.
William found the extra time needed to work on his manuscript from an unlikely source. Mr. Gotch, the man for whom he made shoes under contract, was a member of Andrew Fuller’s church in Kettering. The Reverend Fuller had told Mr. Gotch what a fine minister William Carey was becoming. Mr. Gotch began to think that the shoemaker he had contracted to work for him was wasting his talents, so he wrote a letter to William Carey in which he said:
I do not intend you should spoil anymore of my leather, but you may proceed as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and I will allow you from my own private purse ten shillings a week.
What a surprise awaited William as he opened the letter! From his savings, Mr. Gotch was going to pay him the same amount he had earned making shoes, only now he would be earning the money by studying to become a better minister. William kept on writing and studying, teaching himself Hebrew and Dutch to add to his Latin and Greek. He couldn’t have been happier.
Things at home were also going well. Felix now had two little brothers, William Jr. and Peter, who was named after William’s favorite uncle. Most of the time, Dolly was fine as well, though sometimes she sat and stared blankly at the walls. She would also cry easily and sometimes forget to take care of the children. This worried William, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. His mother had died in 1787, the year before William Jr. was born, and now William had no one to turn to for help.
Although he had the manuscript for his book tucked safely in a leather satchel under his bed, William could not afford to get it published. Ten pounds, the amount needed, was a seventh of his yearly income, and he did not have that kind of money to spare. Besides, he couldn’t be sure that anyone would buy a copy of it if it were published. Indeed, if a lot of other people thought the same way as the Reverend Ryland Sr., William could well be run out of town for publishing his manuscript!
Seventeen eighty-nine saw another change for William, who was invited to become the pastor of a slightly larger but more troubled Baptist church in Leicester. William accepted the invitation to pastor the church, even though it meant moving into the smallest cottage he had ever lived in. With three noisy little boys and his wife expecting another baby, it wasn’t easy fitting into the cottage, but they all did the best they could. William’s salary at the new church was the same small amount it had been in Moulton.
With his growing family, William once again had to think of a way to earn extra money. He decided to try schoolteaching again. While this was not his favorite thing to do, there was no school in Leicester at the time, and he felt sure he could attract enough students to make it worthwhile.
Of course, teaching school made William busier than ever. He taught school from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon. To fit everything in, he made himself a strict schedule for his evenings. The schedule, which he stuck to, was as follows:
Monday night: Study foreign languages and translate something
Tuesday night: Study science, history, and composition
Wednesday night: Preach at church
Thursday night: Visit friends and church members
Friday night and all day Saturday: Prepare sermon
Sunday: Preaching
Added to this were William’s responsibilities as secretary of the Committee of Dissenters, which involved preaching in nearby towns and attending ministerial meetings. All in all, William Carey was a very busy man!
The next Carey baby was a girl, whom they named Lucy. Sometimes William felt sad as he held her and watched her. She reminded him so much of Ann, his first baby daughter, who had died. Tragically, when Lucy was eighteen months old, she too became ill and died. While William was deeply upset by her death, Dolly was thrown more deeply into depression. It took many weeks before she could be coaxed back into family activities. Thankfully, Dolly’s younger sister, Kitty, stepped in to help William with the boys.
Despite the family tragedy and his exhaustingly busy schedule, William always had in the back of his mind the thought of telling people in foreign countries about the gospel message. He kept improving his manuscript until finally it was finished. It even had a name—An enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen 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. It was a very long title, even for those days when long book titles were fashionable. When the manuscript was finally published, most people just called it Enquiry.
The book had five chapters. The first dealt with whether Christians in England had an obligation and responsibility to tell people in other lands about the gospel. The second chapter covered all the missionary work that had gone on since the days of Jesus. This chapter had required a lot of research and included a history of the world. The third chapter was a survey of everything that English people knew about the rest of the world. William had spent many hours putting together twenty-three pages of tables about different countries. Each table showed the name of the country or island, its length and breadth, its estimated population, and its religions customs and beliefs. William had begun the basic research for this chapter eight years before, when he’d drawn the map of the world for the schoolhouse in Moulton. By the time he had finished his research, William Carey probably knew more about world geography than anyone else in England. In fact, his book contained more geography, history, and religion than had previously been put into any other single book.
The fourth chapter in William’s book was on ways in which Christians could preach the gospel message in foreign lands. It outlined some of the dangers and difficulties a missionary would face and explained the best way to travel to foreign places and how to avoid being killed by heathen people once the missionary arrived. It also covered what foods were safe to eat and how to find a place to live, as well as how to quickly learn a foreign language. William read many books in the course of preparing this chapter, though he had a lot of firsthand knowledge to share about learning foreign languages.
The fifth and final chapter was about how to raise the money needed to go as a missionary to another country.
For its time, Enquiry was the most well researched Christian paper ever written, and William Carey wanted desperately to get it published. The question was, How?
In 1791, soon after completing work on the final version of his manuscript, William was attending a ministers’ meeting in the city of Birmingham, where he was introduced to a young man named Tom Potts. Tom had been to America, and William wanted to hear all about his trip. William became very interested in Tom’s descriptions of the horrible slave trade Tom had seen while in America. Soon the two men were discussing all sorts of things, and William began to talk about the need for missionaries.
“You should write this down!” exclaimed Tom Potts after hearing William’s reasons why missionaries were needed in foreign lands. “Every Christian needs to hear the argument for missions as clearly as you have just told it to me.”
“As a matter of fact, it is all written down,” said William shyly.
“Then tell me where I can buy a copy of your book. What is it called?” asked Tom Potts eagerly.
William admitted the book was not yet published, because of lack of funds.
“The message must get out!” Tom Potts exclaimed. “I would count it an honor to pay for the book to be published myself.”
True to his word, Tom Potts paid for the first printing of Enquiry, which was published on May 12, 1792, and sold for one shilling and sixpence.
Three weeks after the book was published, William was scheduled to speak at a Baptist ministers’ meeting. As always, he spoke about the need for missionaries, but this time something was different. Many of his fellow ministers had already read his book and were beginning to understand what he had been telling them for so long. William Carey finished his speech with two phrases that would ring around the world for more than a century after his death: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”
