MY LITTLE readers certainly know the difference between a big man and a great man, don’t you? Now, I will tell you about a great man; although he was only a poor shoe maker, who sat in his simple work shop every day cheerfully mending and making shoes. He had a warm love for the Lord Jesus, and while busy at his work, he used to meditate on the wonderful love of the Son of God, who left heaven and came down on earth to seek and to save poor, lost sinners. And then he would often think of the many thousands and millions of people who had never even heard the name of the Lord Jesus.
One day he attended a prayer-meeting, where many prayers were sent up for the conversion of sinners, and also for the heathen. His soul was deeply moved with pity for these poor people, and at the end of the meeting he enquired of those present, if nothing could be done for the conversion of the heathen. There was much talk about the matter, but no one knew what to suggest. The difficulties were so great; the work of preaching the gospel among the heathen had not yet begun (this was in the latter part of the 18th century): so that they all went to their homes without coming to any decision.
But our friend, the cobbler, had no rest. He could not sleep that night, and the following day his thoughts were continually occupied with the same subject. He was a lover of study and had, in spite of his work, mastered both Latin and Greek; and now he set to studying industriously, so that pretty soon some Christians of means helped him to go through college, and within two years, he took out his degree with the title of doctor of literature. Having got so far, he made his decision, and in 1793 Dr. Carey, with two other missionaries, set out for India.
Innumerable were the difficulties against which this courageous man had to struggle. Besides being despised on account of having been a poor cobbler, the English Government at that time was quite opposed to the efforts for converting the natives. You can understand that he had anything but an easy and pleasant life. But the Godly and capable man allowed nothing to prevent him from performing the task that he had undertaken, or the calling with which the Lord had entrusted him.
He arrived in India in 1793, and had already in operation in 1806 the translation and printing of the Holy. Scriptures in six different languages; and in 1819 the Bible was translated by him into twenty-seven different languages, and appeared in print.
In 1834 he closed his important work here below. Some days before he fell asleep in Jesus, when they carried him down the steps of his dwelling in a state of utter exhaustion, the corrected sheets of his last Bible-translation on which he was working, lay on the table. His work was finished; now he might enter into rest, after preaching the gospel in India with untiring zeal for more than forty years, and after translating the Holy Scriptures entirely, or partly, into thirty different languages.
Dear readers! was he not in truth a great man? A man full of faith and courage. A man in whom the word of Paul was demonstrated: “When I am weak, then am I strong;” and the word of the Lord: “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
ML 07/30/1922