the French version of Ditton on the Resurrection, which he purchased
for a few coppers. He had the linguistic gift which soon after made
the young carpenter Mezzofanti of Bologna famous and a cardinal.
But the gift would have been buried in the grave of his penury and
his circumstances had his trade been almost any other, and had he
not been impelled by the most powerful of all motives. He never sat
on his stall without his book before him, nor did he painfully toil
with his wallet of new-made shoes to the neighbouring towns or
return with leather without conning over his lately-acquired
knowledge, and making it for ever, in orderly array, his own. 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.

But that which sanctified and directed the whole throughout a
working life of more than half a century, was the missionary idea
and the missionary consecration. With a caution not often shown at
that time by bishops in laying hands on those whom they had passed
for deacon's orders, the little church at Olney thus dealt with the
Father of Modern Missions before they would recognise his call and
send him out "to preach the gospel wherever God in His providence
might call him:"

"June 17, 1785.--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