c.s.lewis, the weight of glory...our spiritual longings..the sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. and surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. for glory meant good report with God, acceptance with God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. the door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.
perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being 'noticed' by God. but this is almost the language of the new testament. st. paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (I cor. 8.3). it is a strange promise. does not God know all things at all times? but it is dreadfully re-echoed in another passage.. there we are warned that it may happen to any one of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words: I never knew you. depart from Me. in some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. we can be left utterly and absolutely outside - repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. on the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. we walk every day on the razor edge between these towo incredible possibilities.
..at present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. we discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. we cannot mingle with the spendours we see. but all the leaves of the new testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. some day..we will get in..
meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a monday morning. the cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. the following Him is, of course, the essential point. that being so, it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which i have been indulging. i can think of at least one such use.
it may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. the load or weight or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it and the backs of the proud will be broken.
it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
all day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. it is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. there are no ordinary people. you have never talked to mere mortal.
nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. but it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. this does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. we must play. but our merriment must be of that kind ( and it is , in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. and our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment..
journal and selected letters of william carey by terry g. carter
..advice to his son jabez who has just married and taken a post in another area of india..
you are now engaging in a most important undertaking in which not only you and eliza have my prayers for your success but those of all who love our Lord..and know your engagement. i know a few hints for your future conduct from a parent who loves you very tenderly..
1. pay the utmost attention at all times to the state of your own mind both towards God and man. cultivate an intimate acquaintance with your own heart, labour to obtain a deep sense of your depravity and to trust always in Christ. be pure in heart and meditate much on..God. live a life of prayer and devotedness to god. cherish every amiable and right disposition towards man. be mild, gentle and unassuming yet firm and manly. as soon as you perceive any wrong in your spirit or behaviour set about correcting it..
2. you are now a married man. be not satisfied with conducting yourself towards your wife with propriety. let love to her be the spring of your conduct towards her. esteem her highly and so act that she may be induced thereby to esteem you highly..her honor is now yours and she cannot be insulted without you being degraded...end each day in uniting together to pray and praise God...
3. behave affably and genteelly to all but not cringingly or unsteadily towards any. feel that you are a man and always act with that dignified sincerity and truth which well command the esteem of all. seek not the society of worldly men but when called to be with them act and converse with dignity and propriety...gain a good acquaintance with history, geography, man and things..a gentleman..an enlarged understanding joined to engaging manners.
4. on your arrival at amboyna your first business must be to wait on mr. martin. you should first send a note to inform him of your arrival and know when it will suit him to receive you. ask his advice upon every occasion of importance and communicate freely to him all the steps you take.
5. as soon as you are settled begin your work. get a malay who can speak a little english and with him make a tour of the islands and visit every school. encourage all you see worthy of encouragement and correct with mildness yet with firmness. keep a journal of the transactions of the schools and enter one under a distinct head therein. take account of the number of scholars, the names of the schoolmasters, compare the progress at stated periods and in short consider this the work which the Lord has given ..
6. do not, however, consider yourself as a mere superintendent of schools, consider yourself as the spiritual instructor of the people and devote yourself to their good. God has committed the spiritual interests of the islands, 20,000 men or more to you - a vast charge - but He can enable you..revise the catechisms, tracts and school books used among them and labour to introduce among them sound doctrine and genuine piety. pray with them as soon as you can and labour after a gift to preach to them..you must say little till you know something of the language and then prove to them from scripture what is the right mode of baptism and who are the proper persons to be baptised. form them into gospel churches when you meet with a few who truly fear God and as soon as you see any fit to preach to others call them to the ministry and settle them in churches..avoid indolence and love of ease and never attempt to act the part of the great and gay in this world.
7. labour incessantly to become a perfect master of the ..language. in order to do this associate with the natives, walk about with them, ask the name of everything you see and note it down. visit their houses especially when any of them are sick. every night arrange the words you get in alphabetical order. try to talk as soon as you get a few words and be as soon as possible one of them. a course of kind and attentive conduct will gain their esteem and confidence and give you an opportunity of doing much good.
8. you will soon learn from mr. martin the situation and disposition of the alfoors - an original inhabitant - and will see what can be done for them. do not unnecessarily expose your life but incessantly contrive some way of giving them the word of life..
9. ..i wish you to learn correctly the number, size and geography of the islands, the number and description of the inhabitants, their customs and manners and everything not relative to them and regularly communicate these to me.
10. i wish you to pay the minutest attention to the natural productions of the islands and regularly to send me all you can - fishes and large animals excepted - but these you must describe. you know how to send birds and insects. send as many birds of every description alive as you possibly can and also small quadrupeds, monkeys etc and always send a new supply by every ship. shells, including crabs and tortoises, etc corals, stones of every description may be put in a box but each should have a label with the malay or country name, the place where found etc. rough stones broken from the rock are preferable to such as are worn or washed round by the sea. beetles, lizards, frogs and insects may be put into a small keg of rum to arkan and will come safely.
...your great work, my dear jabez, is that of a christian minister..the church has..borne a testimony to the grace given to you and will not cease to pray for you that you may be successful in every conflict and may our hearts be mutually gladdened with accounts from each other of the triumphs of divine grace. God has conferred a great favour on you in..this ministry. take heed to it..in the Lord that thou fulfill it. we shall often meet at the throne of grace. write to me by every opportunity and tell eliza to write to your mother.
after reading this i picked up a small biography of carey out of dad's books and am using that to piece together the parts not covered or alluded to in any way in the above book. i love reading the actual words of people, though, so the journal and letters were good!
carey, who originally was a shoe maker, had a call to go to india as a missionary. he had always had an attraction to languages and to nature. both were to play a part in what happened in india. he arrived there in 1793 and was there, at serampore near calcutta until his death at least 40 years later. after arriving he and his family were brought to great extremity (his wife had lost her mind due to her great fear of water, he had recieved no $ from the baptist mission he had helped start, was living illegally - the british owned east india company did not allow missionaries in the areas under their control) in a swampy area with small children in the midst of a jungle area with many dangerous animals, etc!) before God brought help in the form of other missionaries and the purchase of a house in serampore, which was a dutch possession which encouraged missionary activity.
carey started out by putting together a dictionary and grammer for the language of bengal which led to a bengali new testament 7.5 years after arrival. the putting of the bible into the various languages of the east was really the core of his life mission there. after bengali he realized that sanskrit was the mother language of many of the languages spoken in india. so he did the same for that as he had for bengali and that was the foundation to then doing the same for a number of other languages there.
the missionaries who came joined with carey, all living in the same house with their families, in a mix of self-support and ministry. carey did languages, bible translation and became a professor at a local college where a renaissance of ancient indian literature blossomed , ward printed these and many other various pieces of evangelistic and other literature and marshman and his wife ran a school which became very popular among the europeans as well as the native populations.
it took 7 years until the first hindu convert, krishna, to confess Christ. he ate with carey and his associates in so doing breaking cast and being disowned by his family and society in general. krishna told three others about Christ and they followed him in baptism and becoming outcasts. but God used their loving witness and more and more people became christians. carey encouraged all of this and a truly indigenous (native-centered) church began to grow. finally even a few of the brahmen (highest caste) confessed Christ and many came in to Jesus.
shortly after these event carey, ward and marshman began to have many trials and difficulties. reading about all that happened both in the first several years and then after the church was established among the people resembled, in a spiritual sense , crawling thru a thicket of thorns. very painful. it was amazing to see how they continued on.
for example on march 11, 1812..a fire raced thru the printing works, burning for 3 days, leaving only a shell of blackened walls and a few documents. for hours the workers labored to quench the flames. they did prevent the fire from spreading to the mission house and the school dormitories. some of the presses were saved, title deeds to the property and a few ledgers, but almost everything else was consumed.
a stock of paper just received from england went up in the blaze, as also did new type in tamil and chinese. fonts of hebrew, greek, persian, arabic, nagari, telegu and other vernaculars were burned. similarly, valuable manuscripts containing parts of the old and new testaments in the indian languages and in the sanskrit, pages of various dictionaries and grammars and all of ..carey's dictionary of the sanskrit and its indian cognate were consumed...manuscripts..represented years of labor...(carey)..'i wish to be still and know that the Lord He is God and to bow to His will in everything. He will no doubt bring good out of this evil and make it promote His interests, but at present the providence is exceedingly dark'.
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