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The Hackleton apprentice was still a child when the great Goethe was again adding to the then artificial literature of his country his own true predecessor, Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nürnberg, the friend of Luther, the meistersinger of the Reformation.
Not in the penury of Hackleton and Moulton, not in the hardships of Calcutta and the Soondarbans, not in the fevers of the swamps of Dinapoor, not in the apprehensions twice excited by official intolerance, not in the most bitter sorrow of all the sixteen years' persecution by English brethren after Fuller's death, had the father of modern missions been so tried as in the years 1830-1833.
The young Pharisee, who entered Hackleton with such hate in his heart to dissenters that he would have destroyed their meeting-place, who practised "lying, swearing, and other sins," gradually yielded so far to his brother apprentice's importunity as to leave these off, to try to pray sometimes when alone, to attend church three times a day, and to visit the dissenting prayer-meeting.
In Hackleton itself his expositions of Scripture were so valued that the people, he writes, "being ignorant, sometimes applauded to my great injury." When in poverty, so deep that he fasted all that day because he had not a penny to buy a dinner, he attended a meeting of the Association of Baptist Churches at Olney, not far off.
A request from William Carey of Moulton, in Northamptonshire, was taken into consideration. He has been and still is in connection with a society of people at Hackleton. He is occasionally engaged with acceptance in various places in speaking the Word. He bears a very good moral character. He is desirous of being sent out from some reputable church of Christ into the work of the ministry.
He so taught his evening school and his Sunday congregations that the teaching to him, like writing to others, stereotyped or lighted up the truths. Indeed, the school and the cobbling often went on together a fact commemorated in the addition to the Hackleton signboard of the Piddington nail on which he used to fix his thread while teaching the children.
As we stand in the Hackleton shed, over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand Shoes Bought and ," we can realise the low estate to which Carey fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which he was called to become the apostle of North India as Schwartz was of the South.
For seven years he had failed to find relief. His attempt at work in the field were for two years followed by distressing agony at night. He was now sixteen, and his father sought out a good man who would receive him as apprentice to the shoemaking trade. The man was not difficult to find, in the hamlet of Hackleton, nine miles off, in the person of one Clarke Nichols.
The principal Question was 'In what manner shall we receive him? by a letter from the people of Hackleton, or on a profession of faith, etc.? The final resolution of it was left to another church Meeting. "July 14 Ch. Meeting. W. Carey appeared before the Church, and having given a satisfactory account of the work of God upon his soul, he was admitted a member.
He heard me preach only a few times, and that as far as I know in my rather irregular excursions; though I often conversed and prayed in his presence, and endeavoured to answer his sensible and pertinent inquiries when at Hackleton. But to have suggested even a single useful hint to such a mind as his must be considered as a high privilege and matter of gratitude."
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