Grosey's Messages

The Cuckoo's Call- F W Boreham writes about William Carey.
From 'The Tide Comes In' – F.W. Boreham – 1958

William Carey has joined the ghostly company of the immortals at Westminster Abbey. A lectern has there been dedicated to his imperishable memory.

History abounds in striking coincidences; but, among them all, there is none more arresting than the fact that it was on 11th November 1793 – the day on which the French Revolutionists tore the Cross from Notre Dame and smashed it in the streets – that Carey sailed up the Hoogly, landed at Calcutta, and claimed a new continent for his Saviour.

With the eye of a statesman and a strategist, he saw the best way of regaining the ground that was being lost in Europe was to achieve new conquests in Asia. To gain that end, he played more parts than any man of his time. Cobbler, schoolmaster, preacher, missionary, diplomat, scientist, factory proprietor, and professor of Bengali, Sanskit and Marathi, he appears on the broad stage of world affairs as a veritable quick-change artist.

With every nerve in my body tingling with excitement, I embarked, shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, on a pilgrimage to all those scenes with which, a century and a half ago, William Carey was so familiar. How I revelled, during those long, luxurious mid-summer afternoons, in strolling about those lovely Northamptonshire lanes along which the brave little cobbler trudged with his rolls of leather and his boots and shoes.

With what a surge of emotion I explored the little village in which he was, at one and the same time, minister, schoolmaster and shoemaker, deriving from the three occupations a salary of fourteen shillings a week! I seemed to see him coming round every corner, chatting with the occupants of every cottage, and bestowing a wave of the hand or an affectionate smile on every child that passed.

Shall I ever forget the hour that I spent in his old home, standing in the very room in which he worked away at his trade, making of the bits and pieces of leather a map of the world to hang upon his wall? And the years seemed to fall away like a curtain when, entering the plain little meeting-house, I reverently laid my hand on the quaint old pulpit from which William Carey habitually preached.

As I leaned against a white gate in one of those fragrant lanes one afternoon, I fancied that I saw the agile figure of William Carey coming round the bend. He was making his way back to Moulton, evidently very tired, carrying enough leather to keep him busy for a week or two. The dappled cows in the green fields on either side of the lane stared silently up at him, as well they might.

The whole wide world would stare at him if it had the chance today. For the world salutes in William Carey the harbinger of a new order, the prophet of a new age, the creator of a new world. In the spirit of his Lord he cried, 'Let there be light!' and there was light; and the evening and the morning made a new day. The cattle in the long rich grass stare round at him, but he has no eyes for them. His thoughts are over the seas and far away. He is a dreamer; but he is a dreamer who means business; a dreamer who is resolved, at any cost, to make his stately dreams come true.

As twilight fell, a bird settled on the bough of a beech tree just down the slope, and with musical though monotonous persistence, made the same call again and again. My wayward mind was so preoccupied that it insisted on distorting the bird's reiterated note. What it really said was: Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! But to me it said Carey! Carey! Carey! For, to me, the entire landscape was haunted by one glorious ghost; the spirit of William Carey was everywhere!

Something startled the bird and it flew away. I myself shortly afterwards left the lane, and, after spending the night at Kettering, close to the house in which Carey's apostolic dreamed attained its fulfilment, I made my way next day to Nottingham that I might breathe the atmosphere in which, a hundred and fifty years ago, Carey's historic sermon was preached! 'Expect great things from God!' he cried. 'Attempt great things for God!'
I felt it good to carry the spirit of Australia to those sacred shrines. And I felt it good to saturate myself in the perfumed atmosphere of those lovely places in order to bear the fragrance back to Australia with me.

For Australia fits naturally into the picture. It is an integral part of the splendid romance. It was in the days in which the inspired shoemaker was audaciously planning the evangelism of the world that Australian history was born. It was one of earth's magnificent moments. There was sublimity in the air. God was abroad. The hammers of eternity were chiming on the anvils of history. Whilst, on one side of the planet, the seraphim were singing their 'Holy, Holy, Holy' above the twittering of the birds and the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cattle of that tranquil Northamptonshire countryside, the angels were, on the other, chanting their 'Gloria in Excelsis' amidst the wooded solitudes of an unopened continent. Earth was crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.

William Carey was the child of one revival and the father of another. On the day on which the curtain was rising upon the spacious drama of Australian history, England was crowded with illustrious and epoch-making men. There were giants in those days. But, of all of them, none are more significant or more prophetic than a certain very old man and a certain very young one.

He is eighty-five, this venerable, scholarly-looking gentleman, with finely chiselled face, and beautifully white hair falling in a graceful cataract of silver about his slightly drooping shoulders. And this sturdy young shoemaker is twenty-seven. On the day on which Captain Phillip cast anchor in Sydney Cove, John Wesley, this picturesque old gentleman with the velvet suit, the knee britches, the silk stockings, the silver buckles and the lovely hair, and William Carey, this robust and workmanlike figure with the well-knit frame and raven locks, mean much to this old world and to everybody in it. John Wesley represents a glorious sunset; Willian Carey represents a radiant sunrise. John Wesley represents all that is best in the era that is dying; William Carey represents all that is best in the era that is dawning.

Carey is the logical corollary of Wesley. John Wesley led the most notable revival in our history. But a revival cannot be localized. It is impossible to conceive of a genuine revival that is devoid of world-wide radiations and repercussions. If it be really a divine movement, its line will go out into all the earth and its words to the end of the world. When God speaks to Jerusalem, the echoes and reverberations of His voice are heard in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

Every really spiritual movement is instantly followed by a missionary movement. Monasticism failed because it attempted to enclose piety within stone walls. Given a Wesley in one generation, a Carey in the next is inevitable. 'Thine eyes', cried the prophet ecstatically, 'thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.'

As soon as John Wesley caught, and communicated to his countrymen, the vision of the King in His beauty, Carey arose to carry beatific revelations to the lands that were very far off. I like to think that, on the day on which Australia was born, Mr. Wesley, painfully conscious of his slackening gait, his clouded sight and his treacherous memory, was handing the blazing torch into the vigorous young hands of William Carey, leaving him, his comrades and successors, to carry the light that had transfigured England to earth's most spacious continents and most scattered islands.

Now that I am luxuriating in the tranquillity of a long Australian eventide, with no prospect of revisiting those dear English scenes that, in my time, have meant so much to me, I often close my eyes and think my way back to Carey's little cottage at Moulton. Everything there seems so significant and symbolic.
That map of the world, fashioned from snippets of leather, hanging on the wall of the little room at Moulton, is worth a second glance. It is a reflection of the man's very soul. The map of the world hung in his room because it already hung in his heart. It was of the world – the wide, wide world – that he was dreaming as, with his rolls of leather under his arms, the cattle stared at him. The thought of the world haunted his mind, sleeping and waking – the world, with its five vast continents and all the scattered islands of the rolling seas!

At that moment Captain Cook was electrifying mankind with the story of his epoch-making voyages; and the intrepid navigator's revelations acted like fuel to the fire of Carey's hot young heart. If Christianity had transfigured Britain, why should its gracious and enlightening influence be denied to the peoples beyond the seas?

Everybody knows the sequel. Like a clamorous and insistent alarm sounding from a village belfry, Carey's voice startled all the churches. The great missionary societies soon sprang into being. Carey led the gallant adventure in person. He went to India; and, in addition to his own evangelistic work, was soon able to earn enough money by his industrial and scholastic enterprises to plant his faith flourishingly in the Orient.

Just before Carey died, Alexander Duff arrived in India. He was a young Highlander of four and twenty, tall and handsome, with flashing eyes and quivering voice. Before setting out on his own life-work, he went to see the man who had changed the face of the world. He reached the college on a sweltering day in July. 'There he beheld a little yellow old man in a white jacket, who tottered up to the visitor, received his greetings, and, with outstretched hands, solemnly blessed him.' Each fell in love with the other. Carey, standing on the brink of his grave, rejoiced to see the stalwart and cultured young Scotsman dedicating his life to the evangelization and emancipation of India. Duff felt that the old man's benediction would cling to his work like a fragrance through all the great and epoch-making days ahead.

Not long after, Carey lay a-dying, and, to his great delight, Duff came to see him. The young Highlander told the veteran of his admiration and love. In a whisper that was scarcely audible, the dying man begged his visitor to pray with him. After he had complied, and taken a sad farewell of the frail old man, he turned to go. On reaching the door, he fancied he heard his name. He turned and saw that Dr. Carey was beckoning him.

'Mr. Duff', said the dying man, his earnestness imparting a new vigour to his voice, 'Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey! When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey – speak only of Dr. Carey's Saviour.'

It was in that spirit that William Carey wrought the work that changed the world: and it is because the work was wrought in that spirit that it has now been memorialized by the lectern in Westminster Abbey.