William Carey: Expect Great Things

Today's Reading

William Carey was a self-educated cobbler in rural England who taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, and French while mending shoes. He hung a homemade map of the world on his workshop wall and prayed over it daily, burdened by the billions who had never heard the gospel.

In 1792, at a meeting of Baptist ministers in Nottingham, Carey preached a sermon based on Isaiah 54:2–3 that would launch the modern missionary movement. His message had a two-part thesis that became famous: "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God" (Sermon, May 30, 1792).

The response was initially hostile. One senior minister reportedly told Carey to sit down: "Young man, when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine." This was the reigning theology — that missions was God's business, not ours. Carey's genius was to insist that it was both.

In 1793, Carey sailed for India with his reluctant family. The first seven years were brutal. His five-year-old son died. His wife suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered. He had no converts. The East India Company, which controlled British India, actively opposed his work.

Biblical Connection

The text that ignited Carey's vision was Isaiah 54:2–3: "Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations."

Paul had stated the logical chain that made missionary work necessary: "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14–15). Someone must go. Someone must be sent. The chain cannot be completed from a distance.

Going Deeper

Carey did not give up. Over the next four decades, he translated the complete Bible into six languages and portions of it into twenty-nine more. He established schools, a printing press, and a college. He campaigned against the practice of sati — the burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. He became one of the most accomplished linguists and social reformers in Indian history.

When asked the secret of his achievement, Carey's answer was characteristically modest: "I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything" (quoted in S. Pearce Carey, William Carey, Chapter 22).

Carey died in 1834 at the age of seventy-two. He had spent forty-one years in India without ever returning to England. At his request, his gravestone bore a single inscription: "A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, on Thy kind arms I fall." The father of modern missions wanted to be remembered not for his accomplishments but for his dependence on grace.