William Carey was born in Northamptonshire in 1761. What remains of his legacy in 2024 is his clear-sighted commitment to mission, to Bible translation and to theological training. Against all the odds he remained in India for 41 years, sometimes suffering great setbacks and at other times making significant progress. His life remains as a witness to us about it means to be a faithful servant.

Audio

9Marks
On William Carey (Missions Talk, Ep.37)
7 June 2024
Mack Stiles and Ryan Robertson talk to Sam Masters, the Rector of Seminario Biblico William Carey, about William Carey

https://www.9marks.org/episode/on-william-carey-missions-talk-ep-37/

Books

William Carey and the Early Years of the first Baptist Missionary Society, John Appleby (2010).
Published by: Grace Publications Trust

https://www.gracepublications.co.uk/products/i-can-plod-william-carey-and-the-early-years-of-the-first-baptist-missionary-society?srsltid=AfmBOorvQTqH-TSvvtOvUk1XjF3sDmNUYPSs3Y-IaiULXQqXjh_-QvVX

Faithful Witness – The Life and Mission of William Carey, Timothy George (1991).
Published by: IVP.

On-line articles

The Gospel Coalition
Title: The Unknown Printer Who Shaped Modern Missions
Author: Samuel Masters
(This article is about William Ward, Carey’s partner in India and one of the Semapore Trio. The other person who helped Carey in India was Joshua Marshman).

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/unknown-printer-shaped-missions/

Christian History Institute
Title: The Rest of the Serampore Trio
Author: Vinita Hampton Wright
(This article highlights the contribution made by William Ward and Joshua and Hannah Marshman to the success of Carey’s outreach in India).

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/rest-of-the-serampore-trio

IBHS Journal

Journal of the Irish Baptist Historical Society
Vol 19
An Enquiry into the Making of William Carey and of His Importance to the Development of Protestant Missions
Author: Kenneth Scott
Pages 33 to 49 – (extensive list of sources, plus helpful footnotes)

Contact IBHS:  https://www.irishbaptistcollege.org/contact/ibhs/

YouTube

William Carey’s life was characterised by faithfulness. In this sermon, based on 1 Kings 9, James Muldoon (Duke Street Baptist Church, Richmond, London) points out why unfaithfulness is bad and why faithfulness is good. 

https://www.youtube.com/live/adOLO8lEI9Q?si=69I2yfBkowkNSn9U

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From the Archives

March 1954 Issue, The Man Who Held The Ropes

Bi-Centenary of Andrew Fuller, The Great Missionary Advocate
By Rev. C. Ronald Goulding

When, on February 6^th, 1754, a third son was born to Robert and Philippa Fuller, in their humble farmhouse at Wicken, in Cambridgeshire, neither parents nor neighbours could have dreamed that the child, who was given the name of Andrew, was destined to become one of the founders of the Modern Missionary enterprise. It is a matter for debate whether William Carey could ever have accomplished as much as he did in India without the devoted backing and sacrificial labours of Andrew Fuller in England. Carey was the pioneer missionary of the Baptist Missionary Society. Fuller was the first secretary and organizer of the home base.

The relationship between the two men was defined in memorable words by Andrew Fuller himself:

‘The undertaking in India’, he said, ‘appears to me to be somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine, which had never before been explored. We had no one to guide us and while we were deliberating, Carey as it were, said “Well I will go down if you will hold the ropes”, but before he went down he, as it seemed took an oath from each of us at the mouth of the pit to this effect that while we lived we should never let go the rope’.

He never did let go.

Boyhood and Youth

When Andrew Fuller was six years old, his parents, who were firmly established in the strong, stern Calvinism of the day, moved from Wicken to Soham, and it was here that he lived and worked until he entered upon his memorable ministry at Kettering. Little is known of his boyhood, possibly because there was little of significance to record. He attended a free school in Soham, and from one of Fuller’s letters we know that there was a prevalent belief that he was more learned than his teacher – an idea he was reluctant to accept, although it won him respect in the village and secured to him a hearing when he began to preach.

He was a great reader and was constantly seeking more books. Yet he was by no means a bookworm. Of burly physique, and possessed of an adventurous spirit, he was a leader in athletics and excelled in wrestling. Many years later, when writing to Dr Stuart of Edinburgh, he confessed that long after his boyhood was never able to see a burly man without sizing him up an opponent. This fighting spirit, in due course, became consecrated to his Mater, and no man is more entitled to the claim of ‘a fighter for God’.

Under the influence of his home and upbringing he constantly gave thought to his spiritual welfare. In five letters to Dr Stuart, he gives a full and vivid account of his mental struggles before he found peace in Christ.

He writes:

‘I was not aware that any poor sinner had a warrant to believe in Christ, for the salvation of the soul, but supposed that there must be some king of qualification to entitle him to do it. I now found rest for my soul, and I should have found it sooner if I had not entertained the notion of my having no warrant to come to Christ without some previous qualification’.

The light dawned at last in 1770 in his sixteenth year. But this was not by any means the end of his striving, for the fear that he would fall back into evil ways constantly oppressed him.

Fighting Temptation

Every year in the village a fair was held at which there were the usual feats of strength and athletic exercises. The shouts of the young men were to Fuller a cause of great temptation and distress. On Crich fair day he would pack his bag and leave the village to be out of harm’s ay and to spend the time with Christian friends.

One day he remembered that Christ had resisted temptation by turning to the comfort of Scripture, and in his anxiety, he grasped the text, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths’.

He writes:

‘This made we weep for joy, and for 45 years I have scarcely entered upon any serious engagement without thinking of these words and entreating divine guidance’.

In March 1770, he witnessed believers’ baptism for the first time and was so impressed that a month later he was baptised and joined the Baptist Church in Soham. The following year, Rev John Eve left the church and Fuller was eventually invited to preach.

In his first attempt he experienced great freedom, but at his second attempt he was so discouraged that he declined all further invitations. In 1774 he preached again, and the next year was invited to assume responsibility for the church. He accepted the initiation and devoted himself to a review of at the doctrine he was to preach. He found he could not accept the Hyper-Calvinism of his day, and there grew within him an Evangelical fervour in the presentation of the Gospel. The climax of this theological development came in 1785 when, after much thought, he published a volume ‘The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation’. The title was significant in his day, and raised a storm of controversy which did not abate for 20 years.

After seven years of ministry in Soham, a call came from the Church in Kettering and after the most careful heart-searching, he settled there in October, 1782. The move was made with great reluctance and in the face of strong appeals from his Soham Church. Then began a ministry which was to extend over 32 years and to result in blessing far beyond the borders of this Midland town.

Much could be written about that ministry. The membership was doubled, and often on a Sunday afternoon Fuller would preach to a congregation of a thousand or more. Many would ride to the service from the surrounding towns and villages.

Fuller was actively concerned in many of the great theological controversies of his day. Rev James Culross says that ‘he did more perhaps, than any man of his day to remove current misunderstandings and perversions of the Gospel, especially in Antinomian and fatalistic tendencies, and to lead men back to the simplicity of Christ’.

A result of his clarifying of the vital doctrine of divine grace was revival of evangelistic fervour, which had much to do with making the missionary movement possible.

Friendship with Carey 

Among Fuller’s deacons at Kettering, was a shoe manufacturer, Thomas Gotch; who included among his employees a young cobbler from nearby Moulton, named William Carey. Far more than a cobbler, Carey was a man of kindred spirit to Fuller and the two quickly became friends. The friendship extended to include others in the locality, who soon were to be joined together in the great enterprise of the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society – the forerunner of modern missions. To the vision of Carey and Fuller were linked the contribution of Sutcliffe, Pearce and Ryland of Northampton.

Carey preached his great sermon at Nottingham in 1792, and as the meeting was breaking up it was the hand of Fuller that he grasped and the influence of these two stayed the breakup and turned it into the great forward movement which was to result in the foundation of the BMS.

This mission was founded amidst bitter opposition from the East India Company; from Imperialists who thought that mission would mean the end of the British Empire in India; and even from the churches.

The idea of converting the heathen on a collection of £13 2s 6d (the amount of the first collection for the Society) seemed a wonderful joke, and many were prepared to laugh away the whole thing as the enterprise of a few penniless young fanatics, unknown outside their own district.

As the missionary enterprise developed so greater became the opposition, and it was not long before political influences were directed against the mission. It was then that the strong figure of Fuller stood firm as a rock in a raging sea. He wrote pamphlets, he led deputations, he interviewed friends and opponents alike. He preached and pleaded for the mission. It is a touching picture of the strong, stern, great-souled man canvassing from door to door, and sometimes turning aside into a dark lane to weep tears of frustration and exhaustion.

He travelled incredible distances before the days of railways. His journeyings took him not only through England, but five times to Scotland as well as Ireland.

For 22 years he laboured in the cause of mission. It must often have seemed that the forces against him were too great, but there is never any suggestion of withdrawing. Every new opposition was met with new intensity and every new opportunity was eagerly accepted.

He maintained close contact with Varey and dealt with an ever-increasing flood of correspondence. The church in Kettering enjoyed the most conscientious pastoral oversight and although Fuller was worried about being away so often from his people, he was to the end in their esteem and warmest affection.

A background of his work was personal grief. While he was in Kettering his first wife died after a most distressing illness and nine of their 11 children also died. Something of the agony of his heart comes to light in letters quoted in Ryland’s biography of him. He married again, and this marriage was not spared its sorrow, for three of the six children of this union also died.

Again and again, one asks how this humble man could accomplish so much and so effectively. The secret is that he gathered his resources from long seasons of prayer. He counted all the moments of his life as God-given and in consequence was sometimes thought to be stern and almost unfriendly.

His tremendous task which demanded so much of spiritual and physical power eventually began to tell upon him. His strength was sapped and he died on Sunday, May 7^th, 1815, worn out for God. Fuller’s house adjoined the chapel, and he heard the singing of his people at the morning service. Calling his daughter to his bedside, he said, ‘How I wish I could go’. ‘Go where, father?’ she said. ‘Why to worship of course’. During the service Fuller passed on.

The news brought to his gathered people, caused great distress. A neighbouring minister preached a memorial sermon and concluded it with the words, ‘Andrew Fuller died as he lived a penitent sinner in sight of the cross’. The Baptist Chapel in Kettering which bears his name isa living memorial to him, but the greatest memorial is the Missionary Society he lived and died to serve.

Source: The Christian