ise me. He lent me a pamphlet, and turned me
over to his son," who thus told the story when the Baptist Missionary
Society held its first public meeting in London:--"October 5th, 1783: I
baptised in the river Nen, a little beyond Dr. Doddridge's
meeting-house at Northampton, a poor journeyman shoemaker, little
thinking that before nine years had elapsed, he would prove the first
instrument of forming a society for sending missionaries from England
to preach the gospel to the heathen. Such, however, as the event has
proved, was the purpose of the Most High, who selected for this work
not the son of one of our most learned ministers, nor of one of the
most opulent of our dissenting gentlemen, but the son of a parish
clerk."

The spot may still be visited at the foot of the hill, where the Nen
fed the moat of the old castle, in which many a Parliament sat from the
days of King John. The text of that morning's sermon happened to be the
Lord's saying, "Many first shall be last, and the last first," which
asserts His absolute sovereignty in choosing and in rewarding His
missionaries, and introduces the parable of the labourers in the
vineyard. As Carey wrote in the fulness of his fame, that the
evangelical doctrines continued to be the choice of his heart, so he
never wavered in his preference for the Baptist division of the
Christian host. But from the first he enjoyed the friendship of Scott
and Newton, and of his neighbour Mr. Robinson of St. Mary's, Leicester,
and we shall see him in India the centre of the Episcopal and
Presbyterian chaplains and missionaries from Martyn Wilson to Lacroix
and Duff. His controversial spirit died with the youthful conceit and
self-righteousness of which it is so often the birth. When at eighteen
he learned to know himself, he became for ever humble. A zeal like
that of his new-found Master took its place, and all the energy of his
nature, every moment of his time, was directed to setting Him forth.

In his monthly visits to the father-house at Paulerspury the new man in
him could not be hid. His sister gives us a vivid sketch of the lad,
whose going over to the dissenters was resented by the formal and stern
clerk, and whose evangelicalism was a reproach to the others.

"At this time he was increasingly thoughtful, and very was jealous for
the Lord of Hosts. Like Gideon, he seemed for throwing down all the
altars of Baal in one night. When he came home we used to wonder at
the