ought a remedy in
establishing an equality of force by the mutual communication of
knowledge and of all sorts of improvements by an extensive commerce.[5]
Samuel Johnson rose to a higher level alike of wisdom and
righteousness, when he expressed the indignation of a Christian mind
that the propagation of truth had never been seriously pursued by any
European nation, and the hope "that the light of the Gospel will at
last illuminate the sands of Africa and the deserts of America, though
its progress cannot but be slow when it is so much obstructed by the
lives of Christians."

The early movement which is connected most directly with Carey's and
the Northamptonshire Baptists' began in Scotland. Its Kirk,
emasculated by the Revolution settlement and statute of Queen Anne, had
put down the evangelical teaching of Boston and the "marrow" men, and
had cast out the fathers of the Secession in 1733. In 1742 the
quickening spread over the west country. In October 1744 several
ministers in Scotland united, for the two years next following, in what
they called, and what has since become familiar in America as, a
"Concert to promote more abundant application to a duty that is
perpetually binding--prayer that our God's kingdom may come, joined
with praises;" to be offered weekly on Saturday evening and Sunday
morning, and more solemnly on the first Tuesday of every quarter. Such
was the result, and so did the prayer concert spread in the United
Kingdom that in August 1746 a memorial was sent to Boston inviting all
Christians in North America to enter into it for the next seven years.
It was on this that Jonathan Edwards wrote his Humble Attempt to
promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in
Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of
Christ's Kingdom on Earth.

This work of Edwards, republished at Olney, came into the hands of
Carey, and powerfully influenced the Northamptonshire Association of
Baptist ministers and messengers. At their meeting in Nottingham in
1784 Sutcliff of Olney suggested and Ryland of Northampton drafted an
invitation to the people to join them, for one hour on the first Monday
of every month, in prayer for the effusion of the Holy Spirit of God.
"Let the whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately remembered,"
wrote these catholic men, and to give emphasis to their [oe]cumenical
missionary desires they added in italics--"Let the spread of the Gospel