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It was inconceivable that a poor, English cobbler would spend his Sunday this way. But it was not untypical of William Carey’s first year in India.

“In the morning and afternoon addressed my family,” he wrote in his diary in May 1794, “and in the evening began my work of publishing the Word of God to the heathen. Though imperfect in the knowledge of the language [Bengali], yet, with the help of moonshi [a translator], I conversed with two Brahmans in the presence of about two hundred people, about the things of God. I had been to see a temple, in which were the images of Dukkinroy, the god of the woods, riding on a tiger; Sheetulla, goddess of the small pox, without a head, riding on a horse without a head; Puchanon, with large ears .… I therefore discoursed with them upon … the folly and wickedness of idolatry, the nature and attributes of God, and the way of salvation by Christ.… I cannot tell what effect it may have, as I may never see them again.”

That Carey was in India at all was preposterous, and even more, that he survived and flourished there for more than forty years. Then again, William Carey expected great things and he attempted nothing less.

William Carey was born on August 17, 1761, in the obscure village of Paulerspury, a rural community of 800 inhabitants, buried in the middle of England, about as far from ocean vistas as one could get. It wasn’t any closer to cosmopolitan London.

Furthermore, Carey’s family was unexceptional. His father taught basic reading to children of the lowest classes. He supplemented his income as parish clerk (who helped say the Church of England liturgy, keep the church accounts, and launder clerical garb). In sum: Carey and his four siblings lived a poor and simple life.

So it’s difficult to know what in Carey’s boyhood sparked his far-flung imagination.

Yet that imagination roamed unchecked. He talked so much of Columbus, his boyhood friends nicknamed him after the adventurer. His uncle Peter, a soldier who served in Canada, told him tales of ships and seas, of American Indians and other wonders of the New World.

Still, it seemed he would live out his days in rural England. When Carey was 7, he developed several allergies and a skin disease so that his skin became painfully sensitive when exposed long to the sun. Thus, his parents sought a trade for him in which he could work indoors. Eventually, Clarke Nichols, a shoemaker in the nearby town of Piddington, took teenage Carey as an apprentice.

And it was in that small cobbling shop in that little village that Carey’s fantastic vision began to take shape.

In the cobbling shop, Carey met John Warr, a Congregationalist who immediately sought to convert him. Carey resisted, but within three years, his conscience convinced him of his need for a Savior and his desire to leave the “lifeless and carnal” Church of England. (See “William Carey Converts,” in this issue.)

An impassioned Carey became anxious about his Anglican relatives. On visits to Paulerspury, he would ask permission to lead in family prayers. But neophyte zeal outran tact. His sister Polly later wrote, “Often have I felt my pride rise while he was engaged in prayer, at the mention of those words in Isaiah ’that all our righteousness was like filthy rags.’ I did not think he thought his so, but looked on me and the family as filthy, not himself and his party.”

In Clarke Nichols’s workshop, Carey discovered a commentary on the New Testament, with part of the text printed in Greek. From a neighbor he borrowed a Greek grammar and glossary and soon taught himself Greek.

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