[b]The Great Missionary Revival[/b]

In every revival there is the reassertion of the Church' s missionary character. Men return to Calvary, and the world is seen afresh through the eyes of Christ. The infinite compassion of Christ fills the heart, and the passion evoked by Calvary demands the whole wide world as the fruit of His sacrifice. Thus the evangelical awakening of the 18th century culminated in a mighty missionary movement which restored the Church' s Pentecostal witness to every nation, and established a real and growing dominion of Christ in every land.

In the accomplishment of this great work, God, who loves to uplift the small and despised, was pleased to use a poor cobbler in the Midlands of England. Born in 1761, in Paulerspury, near Northampton, born again of the Divine Spirit in his eighteenth year, the story of William Carey is one of fierce, almost desperate, struggle with poverty. He found solace in books, the money for which he obtained by the simple expedient of starving himself, so that he literally fed his mind at the expense of his body. His cobbler' s shed in Hackleton became pulsed by his brethren, he turned to the Press. He wrote his "Inquiry," showing the still-binding force of Christ' s last command, and pleading for concerted prayer for men and money. Repression only served to make the fire within him burn the more intensely, and gradually some of the men about him began to share his passion, notably Andrew Fuller, of Kettering. Then, after six years of waiting, came his great opportunity. Now pastor of the church in Harvey Lane, Leicester, he was invited to preach to the ministers' meeting at Nottingham, and in his sermon the long-curbed fire leapt forth, a fire that was destined to set the whole Church ablaze. He took for his text Isaiah 54. 2-3, applying its truth in two mighty maxims that have been the inspiration of missionary endeavour from that day to this:

"Expect great things from God,
Attempt great things for God."

His brethren were deeply stirred, but even then there was danger that feeling might evaporate in tears, and fail to move the springs of action. The meeting closed; the ministers were about to separate. Even Fuller, on whom he had counted, made no sign. It was a moment big with fate. If it passed without some definite deed, all was lost. In an agony he seized the arm of Fuller. "Oh ,' he cried, "are you, after all, going to do nothing?" Fuller looked into Carey' s eyes, and found their appeal irresistible. He recalled his brethren, and then there was inserted in their minutes this momentous decision: "That a place be prepared against the next meeting at Kettering for forming a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the heathen." The Society was formed a few months afterwards, on October 2nd, 1792 (it is one of God's dates), in the low-roofed back parlour of Widow Wallis, at Kettering. It consisted in the beginning of twelve men, and its first subscriptions amounted to £13 2s. 6d. Its first secretary was Andrew Fuller, and its first missionary was William Carey.

The Society was nearly strangled in its birth. The East India Company refused to convey missionaries to India. It held them more dangerous than the pestilence. Thus Carey and his companion, Dr. Thomas, sailed in a Danish vessel, and it was finally in the Danish soil of Serampore that the young Society struck its roots. Long and cruel were the hardships he now endured, but he toiled and toiled with unfailing faith and hope. He laboured for seven years without a convert. Then Krishna Pal, long burdened by the sense of sin, found in Carey' s Saviour the great Rest-Giver and. the great Deliverer. Carey baptised him in the river on December 28, 1800, the first of a countless host, who, from every kindred and tongue and nation, have come to adore the Name that is above every Name.

For fourteen months no news came to England of the great venture of faith. But Fuller and his little Society laboured in prayer and held fast the ropes in the Homeland, assured that God was with the toilers in the dark mine beneath. When at last Carey' s letters arrived, a joy that was truly unspeakable and full of glory filled their hearts. They came together and sang the hymn of Williams of Pantycelyn, the triumph-song of Missions:

"0 'er those gloomy hills of darkness,
Look, my soul, be still and gaze;
All the promises do travail
With a glorious day of grace."

In that same year, 1794, they began to publish their "Periodical Accounts," relating the story of the Mission, and then fast-crowding and glorious events showed that the Spirit of Missions had indeed gone forth. These simple leaves went through the land and over the earth like flakes of Pentecostal fire, and society after society sprang into being in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and America. In 1794 the London Missionary Society, in 1799 the Church Missionary Society, entered upon their glorious careers. So deeply moved was Robert Haldane that he at once sold his estate of Airthrey, and gave himself and all he had to the Heavenly Cause. Thwarted by the Government in his design of going abroad, his eyes were opened to see that the great Field of Missions is one and that it begins at a man's own door. He and his brother James became missionaries in Scotland, and bore the Evangel to the remotest glens of their native land. Haldane's Home Mission, now merged in the Baptist Union of Scotland, is one of the finest proofs of the great law enunciated by Dr. Chalmers, that Foreign Missions act upon the Home Church, not by exhaustion, but by fermentation, revitalising its drooping life. On the other hand, the manna that is kept unused becomes a fount of corruption. When the life energies of a Church are restrained, and turned in selfishly upon itself, at once they begin to break it up; they are transmuted into the awful and horrible activities of death. But the Church lives and flourishes exceedingly when it gives its life to a perishing world. Carey never returned, but lived to a green old age in India, dying in 1834, no less than thirty four distinct translations of the Bible into the Indian tongues having come from his hands. On his tombstone, by his own desire, are inscribed the words: "A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, on Thy kind arms I fall."

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SI Moderator - Greg Gordon