The work of foreign missions must be the most difficult of all Christian ministries. Probably no American Christian can fully understand the work and responsibility which falls on that servant of God laboring in a strange culture and strange field.
On December 26, 1793, Missionary William Carey wrote to his friend John Ryland, “A missionary must be one of the companions and equals of the people to whom he is sent, and many dangers and temptations will be in his way… It will be very important to missionaries to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an inconstancy of mind being quite injurious to that work.”
Three years later, on this day in 1796, Carey wrote back to England, pleading for more missionary help. He said, “Let the number of missionaries be increased as much as the finances of the Society will admit of, and let the missionaries be either married or single as they be procured. There are many advantages attending families engaging in the work provided proper rules are adhered to, and the missionaries wives are as much impressed with the missionary spirit as they themselves are, and are people of prudence, and not afraid of hardship, but if they are otherwise, they will prove a far greater burden than can well conceive of, as many things will occur that will feed a discontented mind as full as it can well be…. Let the missionaries be men possessed of gifts such as are not despicable, but perhaps the gift of utterance or rather eloquence may be accounted at present one of the best; a readiness to communicate knowledge to others; inward godliness, meekness, and zeal are the principle, but headlong rashness either in speaking, judging, or acting, if it predominates, should determine the Society to reject such.”