William Carey, called “the father of modern missions,” was born in Paulersbury, England to a poor weaver. As a young man, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker but spent his spare time studying for the ministry. Amazingly, while still a teenager, he was able to read the Bible in six languages. This gift for languages would serve him well as a missionary. In 1787 he became pastor of a Baptist church where, in 1792, he preached a sermon with the famous line, “Expect Great Things from God, Attempt Great Things for God.” He helped organize the Baptist Missionary Society and became one of the group’s first members to go abroad when he went to India in 1793. He suffered greatly during the early years of his ministry due to financial setbacks, the death of his children, and the mental illness of his wife. In 1799 he was able to purchase a small indigo plantation and it was from here that he started his first successful mission. Opposition from the East India Company forced him to shut down his operation, however, so in 1800 he moved to Serampore where he and other missionaries preached, taught, and started Serampore Press to distribute Christian literature. In 1831 Carey was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Fort William College in Calcutta, a position he held for 30 years until his death. During this time he was largely responsible for translating the Bible into 36 dialects, making the Scriptures available to over 300 million people. In addition to Carey, the London Missionary Society sent its first missionaries into the islands of the Pacific Ocean, where they had remarkable success among the islanders, though they had to contend with cruel and greedy traders and sailors. The Wesleyan Missionary Society brought Christianity to the Pacific islands, Africa, and the Far East. The Scotch Presbyterians sent out pioneer missionaries to West Africa as early as 1796. Both the Established Church and the Free Church organized foreign mission committees. Among well-known Scotch missionaries were Alexander Duff, who established Presbyterian schools in India; John Paton, who spent the bulk of his life working in the New Hebrides; Robert Moffat, who started a mission station in South Africa in about 1820; and David Livingstone, who explored the Zambesi and the great lakes of the interior and who helped to destroy the African slave trade in the mid-nineteenth century.
Impact: English and Scottish missions in the late eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth centuries not only brought the Gospel message, they were also instrumental in fomenting social reforms, bringing medical care, and ending pagan practices that destroyed the lives of women and children.