ortance of a mission to the
heathen, and of his willingness to engage in it. At several ministers'
meetings, between the year 1787 and 1790, this was the topic of his
conversation. Some of our most aged and respectable ministers thought,
I believe, at that time, that it was a wild and impracticable scheme
that he had got in his mind, and therefore gave him no encouragement.
Yet he would not give it up; but would converse with us, one by one,
till he had made some impression upon us."

The picture is completed by his sister:--

"He was always, from his first being thoughtful, remarkably impressed
about heathen lands and the slave-trade. I never remember his engaging
in prayer, in his family or in public, without praying for those poor
creatures. The first time I ever recollect my feeling for the heathen
world, was from a discourse I heard my brother preach at Moulton, the
first summer after I was thoughtful. It was from these words:--'For
Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake will I
give him no rest.' It was a day to be remembered by me; a day set
apart for prayer and fasting by the church. What hath God wrought
since that time!"

Old Mr. Ryland always failed to recall the story, but we have it on the
testimony of Carey's personal friend, Morris of Clipstone, who was
present at the meeting of ministers held in 1786 at Northampton, at
which the incident occurred. Ryland invited the younger brethren to
propose a subject for discussion. There was no reply, till at last the
Moulton preacher suggested, doubtless with an ill-restrained
excitement, "whether the command given to the Apostles, to teach all
nations, was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of
the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent."
Neither Fuller nor Carey himself had yet delivered the Particular
Baptists from the yoke of hyper-calvinism which had to that hour shut
the heathen out of a dead Christendom, and the aged chairman shouted
out the rebuke--"You are a miserable enthusiast for asking such a
question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when
an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will
give effect to the commission of Christ as at first." Carey had never
before mentioned the subject openly, and he was for the moment greatly
mortified. But, says Morris, he still pondered these things in his
heart. That incident marks the wide gulf