from Hackleton. His new-born humility made him unable to refuse the
duty, which he discharged for more than three years while filling
his cobbler's stall at Hackleton all the week, and frequently
preaching elsewhere also. The secret of his power which drew the
Northamptonshire peasants and craftsmen to the feet of their fellow
was this, that he studied the portion of Scripture, which he read
every morning at his private devotions, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

This was Carey's "college." On the death of his first master, when
he was eighteen, he had transferred his apprenticeship to a Mr. T.
Old. Hackleton stands on the high road from Bedford and Olney to
Northampton, and Thomas Scott was in the habit of resting at Mr.
Old's on his not infrequent walks from Olney, where he had succeeded
John Newton. There he had no more attentive listener or intelligent
talker than the new journeyman, who had been more influenced by his
preaching at Ravenstone than by that of any other man. Forty years
after, just before Scott's death, Dr. Ryland gave him this message
from Carey:--"If there be anything of the work of God in my soul, I
owe much of it to his preaching when I first set out in the ways of
the Lord;" to which this reply was sent: "I am surprised as well as
gratified at your message from Dr. Carey. 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." Scott had previously written this more detailed account
of his intercourse with the preaching shoemaker, whom he first saw
when he called on Mr. Old to tell him of the welfare of his mother: