William Carey: The Cobbler Who Would Not Give Up

William Carey was a poor man who mended shoes in a little English village. He was not clever in the way rich men were clever — he had left school early to work — but he had a hungry mind. While his hands stitched leather, he taught himself languages, one word at a time, from books propped up on his workbench.

On the wall of his workshop William hung a map of the whole world, drawn by his own hand, with notes scribbled all over it. As he worked, he looked at the great lands far away — India, China, Africa, the islands of the sea — where millions of people had never once heard the name of Jesus. And it broke his heart.

In those days many Christians thought there was nothing to be done about it. If God wanted those far-off people to hear, they said, God would see to it without any help from us. But William did not believe God worked that way. He stood up among older, grander men and said something that changed the world: Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.

Then he did the hard part — he went. William sailed to India, and there he stayed for the rest of his life, forty years, and never came home. He set himself the enormous task of putting the Bible into the languages of India, so that the people could read God's words for themselves. With his friends he translated the Bible, in whole or in part, into dozens of Indian languages — more than most people could even learn to speak.

He did more than translate. He started schools. He planted gardens and studied the plants of India. And he fought hard, and at last successfully, against a cruel custom of burning widows alive.

People remember William Carey as the father of modern missions — the one who woke the church up to the whole wide world. But he never thought himself anything special. If anyone remembered him at all, he once said, let it be only as a man who could plod — who kept on and on and would not give up. And plod on he did, until the far countries on his hand-drawn map could read the good news in their own tongues.