Indebtedness is acknowledged for the materials of the present volume to the "Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Missionary Society;" the "Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward," by J. C. Marshman ; "Oriental Christian Biography," by W. H. Carey; and to Mr. John Taylor's "Biographical and Literary Notices." Those of our readers who wish to obtain further information upon the subject of this Memoir, may be referred to the excellent and exhaustive work recently written by Dr. George Smith. It now remains for the writer to express the prayerful hope that this biography, produced in such intervals as he has been able to secure, will help to inform many minds respecting the remarkable man who has been justly styled "The Father and Founder of Modern Missions;" and will stimulate many hearts to sympathise with the Christ-like enterprise Carey began, either by consecrating themselves personally, as he did, to the work abroad, or "by holding the ropes," like Fuller, Ryland, Sutcliff, and others, at home. F Thomas Fuller, the author of the "Worthies of I' England," himself a Northamptonshire man, had died a century after instead of exactly a century before William Carey was born, he might have written a work restricted to the worthies of his own county, and to those two hundred years, as voluminous and interesting as his well-known folio. From Dryden, whose birthplace, like his own, was the village of Aldwinkle, down to John Clare, who may be regarded as the English Robert Burns, how many celebrities, and that not alone of poet fame, would have received biographical notice! The dwellers in the midland shire may well be proud of the eminent men who have been born upon its soil. But as the years pass on, and the missionary enterprise, with which the subject of this memoir will ever be identified, shall come nearer to the fulfilment of its blessed purpose, we question whether the name of any distinguished man in any county or in any country will be uttered with more tender reverence and thankful wonder than that of William Carey, "the Father and Founder of Modern Missions." Paulerspury, a village with about half the population it now contains, situated three miles from the market town of Towcester and eleven from the county town, was the scene of William Carey's birth. The event took place on the 17th of August, 1761; at which date Philip Doddridge, the Independent minister at Northampton, President of the Academy, and author of "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," had been dead ten years; the Rev. James Hervey of Weston Flavel, who wrote "Meditations among the Tombs," three years; and the Rev. William Law of King's Cliffe, in the more northern part of the county, the writer of "The Serious Call," and a follower of whom appears to have been largely instrumental in Carey's conversion, had died but a few weeks. As the infant was being nourished in his cottage home in Paulerspury, the breezy fen in the Isle of Ely was giving sinew to a certain sturdy boy of seven ; whilst another boy, two years older, was being trained in the fear of God on the Yorkshire moorland above Todmorden; and a third of the same age-nine years-was astonishing his father, the quaint pastor of College Lane, Northampton, with his precocious learning. The first of these was Andrew Fuller, the second, John Sutcliff, the third, John Ryland, with all three of whom William Carey was hereafter to be brought into the most intimate fellowship. There is reason to believe that William Carey's early ancestors were of considerable social position; but if this were so, the lad had certainly no evidence |