Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/119

 CAREY AND SRIRAMPUR MISSION 95 and which linked him to the earliest missionaries of Alexandria, of Asia Minor, and of Gaul, some of whom were shoe-makers, and to a succession of scholars and divines, poets and critics, reformers and_philanthro- pists who had used the shoe-maker’s life to’ become illustrious. The picture of young Carey, keeping school by day, preaching on Sundays, and cobling or making shoes by night, would remind one very forcibly of Carlyle’s picture of George Fox in his Sartor Resartus. But all this time, in poverty that would have very soon erushed the spirit of an ordinary man, he went on with his studies, although books were rare in those days and not easy to be begged or borrowed by a country-boy. It is remarkable that his taste inclined him to books of travel, adventure, history, and natural science to the exculsion of novels, plays, aud books on religious subjects. The religious earnestness which marked his later life had not yet dawned, and he had been hitherto a stranger to the gospel of Christ. A remarkable change took place in his} life about his eighteenth year. He joined the small church which was formed at Hackleton and afterwards the Baptist congregation at Moulton where he became a pastor. His mind was at this time occupied in acquiring the learned languages and almost every branch of useful knowledge. It was about this time that his great thought about the practicability and importance of a mission abroad took His missionary ardour, definite shape in his mind. His extensive study of geography and books of travel convinced him painfully of the fact that a very small portion of the human race had yet possessed any knowledge of Christ and his been a shoe-maker. “No, Sir, only a cobler!” (quoted in Dr, Culross’s William Carey).