A selection from a letter by Samuel Pearce, pastor of the Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, England, to William Carey, missionary in India. Pearce desired to join Carey in his work but his congregation and other pastor friends persuaded him not to go. He regarded their counsel “as the voice of God.” Though he did not go to India, he was a major supporter of the work of Carey and did much to promote missions. This letter was written March 27, 1795:
Daily in our closets and in our families do we remember you before God; and, in the sanctuary, the tribes of God’s spiritual Israel wrestle hard for you Sabbath after Sabbath. Nor shall we pray in vain—God, even our own God, will bless you; his promise is on your side, and through him you shall do valiantly; never will he forsake his servants, nor leave them unassisted in their work; but your ‘confidence is strong;’ I rejoice that it is so, for ‘this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith;’ and he who hath been the author of that faith will, I doubt not, be the finisher of it too.
A Heart for Missions: The Classic Memoir of Samuel Pearce, by Andrew Fuller, with an introduction by Michael Haykin, reprinted by Solid Ground Christian Books, 2006, p. 53.
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