which Carey had to bridge.
Silenced by his brethren, he had recourse to the press. It was then
that he wrote his own contribution to the discussion he would have
raised on a duty which was more than seventeen centuries old, and had
been for fourteen of these neglected: An Enquiry into the Obligations
of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which
the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success
of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings,
are considered by WILLIAM CAREY. Then follows the great conclusion of
Paul in his letter to the Romans (x. 12-15): "For there is no
difference between the Jew and the Greek...How shall they preach except
they be sent?" He happened to be in Birmingham in 1786 collecting
subscriptions for the rebuilding of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr.
Thomas Potts, who had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering
that he had prepared the manuscript, gave him L10 to publish it. And
it appeared at Leicester in 1792, "price one shilling and sixpence,"
the profits to go to the proposed mission. The pamphlet form doubtless
accounts for its disappearance now; only four copies of the original
edition[4] are known to be in existence.

This Enquiry has a literary interest of its own, as a contribution to
the statistics and geography of the world, written in a cultured and
almost finished style, such as few, if any, University men of that day
could have produced, for none were impelled by such a motive as Carey
had. In an obscure village, toiling save when he slept, and finding
rest on Sunday only by a change of toil, far from libraries and the
society of men with more advantages than his own, this shoemaker, still
under thirty, surveys the whole world, continent by continent, island
by island, race by race, faith by faith, kingdom by kingdom, tabulating
his results with an accuracy, and following them up with a logical
power of generalisation which would extort the admiration of the
learned even of the present day.

Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to His disciples is
still binding on us, having reviewed former undertakings for the
conversion of the heathen from the Ascension to the Moravians and "the
late Mr. Wesley" in the West Indies, and having thus surveyed in detail
the state of the world in 1786, he removes the five impediments in the
way of carrying the Gospel among the heathen, which his conte