Wycliffe UK blog

William Carey lived an extraordinary life. The missionary to India –  known as ‘the Father of Modern Missions’ — lived his life completely based on his love for God and the lost people of the world. He did extraordinary things, yet described himself merely as ‘plodding’.

At a young age, he demonstrated an unusual talent for languages, teaching himself Latin. It was a practice he continued: as a shoemaker, he taught himself Hebrew, Italian, French and Dutch while working.

He was radical in his passion for the world, a passion not shared by many of his contemporaries. In his early thirties, he put it into practice, travelling to India. The method of his mission seemed strange: he took over the management of an Indigo factory, but during his six years doing that work, he translated the New Testament into Bengali.

When offered a professorship, he used his students to check his translation for accuracy and fluency, and to begin a translation into Sanskrit, from which he hoped others would be able to translate the Bible into indigenous languages.

The first page of Carey's Bengali translation

Over the course of his life, he was involved with the translation of about 35 Bibles. He also did considerable work for women’s rights, childhood literacy and even botany in India. His continued commitment despite many struggles shows his passion for the people of India and for giving people the Bible in their own language.

This 177th anniversary of his death, we are reminded of his extraordinary example, all the more so because he was an ordinary man, the son of a weaver, one of five children. The work of Bible translation still needs ordinary people to do the extraordinary out of a love for God and those without his word.

Wycliffe is working, with partners around the world, to start a project to the Bible into all languages where it’s needed by 2025. It’s an extraordinary challenge of which you could be part.

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Tags: biography, India, William Carey

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Missionary life, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.