TO QUESTIONS ON PAGE 480.
THE CENTENARY OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
By the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., Morning Preacher at the Foundling Hospital.
At "The Castle and Falcon," in Aldersgate Street, on April 12th, 1799, there met, in all the solemnity of a public gathering, sixteen clergymen and nine laymen.
They founded there and then the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East. That Society keeps its Centenary this month; no longer an inconspicuous organisation expressing the hopes of a godly few, but a great Society which has girdled the earth with its missions. When, in November, 1898, its Estimates Committee surveyed its position, they found that its roll included the names of 802 European missionaries, of whom 295 were ladies, whilst, of the 802, no fewer than eighty-four were serving altogether or in part at their own expense. Some of them represented the missionary enthusiasm of Australia and Canada; a fair proportion were duly qualified medical workers, men and women.
MRS. J. A. BAILEY.
(The first lady missionary of the Society.)
With the exception of South America, there is no considerable quarter of the globe in which they are not represented. They may be found ministering to Esquimaux within the Arctic Circle, and to the Indians of the vast expanses of Canada; they are shepherding the Maoris of New Zealand; in India their stations may be discovered alike amongst the wild tribes of the northern frontier, the strange aboriginals found here and there in the continent, and the milder races of the south; in Africa the Society begins in Egypt, but goes no farther south than Uganda, though it is both on the east coast and the west; it is strongly represented along the coasts of China, as well as in the inland province of Sze-Chuen; it works both amidst the Japanese themselves and that strange people the hairy Ainu; it is domiciled in Ceylon and Mauritius; it has not forgotten Persia. From Madagascar it has retired, and it has shown a wise indisposition to enter upon new fields whilst the old are still insufficiently manned. It has ever been known for the strictness with which it observes the comity of missions; and it may fairly be said that the zeal with which its friends have worked in behalf of foreign missions has reacted on all the missionary agencies which have their origins in Great Britain, as well as upon some which express the zeal of America and the Colonies.
From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand,
From many an ancient river
From many a palmy plain
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain
What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's Isle
Though every prospect pleases
And only man is vile?
In vain, with lavish kindness,
The gifts of God are strown
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to woods and stone!
BISHOP HEBER'S MISSIONARY HYMN.
(Facsimile of part of the Original MS.)
The Church Missionary Society was really one of the fruits of the Evangelical Revival, though when the Society was born that movement was no longer young. Its first leaders had passed to their rest; it was their successors amongst whom the Church Missionary Society took its origin. They were, as history judges them, no mean persons, though in their own day they fell, for their religious zeal, under the condemnation of polite society, whether ecclesiastical or social.
THE BOARD ROOM AT THE MISSION HOUSE.
That meeting in Aldersgate Street did not include some of those to whom the foundation of the Church Missionary Society must directly be referred; but, if we look at the circle they represented, we shall find that it was one of rare distinction in the religious history of the country. It included William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, Charles Grant, James Stephen, and Henry Thornton on the lay side; Charles Simeon, John Newton, Thomas Scott, Richard Cecil, and William Goode amongst the clergy. The impulse which moved them was moving others, for the Baptist Missionary Society had been founded by Carey in 1793, and the London Missionary Society in 1795. The Religious Tract Society also began its existence in this year 1799, and the Bible Society was founded in 1804. It was a fruitful epoch. Yet it has to be remembered that it began under ecclesiastical discouragement, and amidst such popular contempt of missions to the heathen as was reflected in Sydney Smith's essay.
I do not propose to trace in detail the history of the Church Missionary Society: within the space of a magazine article such an attempt could do little more than produce a list of names and dates. It may be more useful, as well as more interesting, to look at some of the Society's great workers at home, at some of its heroes in the mission-field, and at some of the romances which diversify its history.
THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S MISSION HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE.
Of the men who helped to found the Church Missionary Society the first place must be given to Charles Simeon. He was not at "The Castle and Falcon" meeting, but it was he who, at the gathering of the Eclectic Society in March of the same year, when missionary plans were again under discussion, urged immediate action. "There is not a moment to be lost," he said; "we have been dreaming these four years, while all Europe is awake." The precise old bachelor, fellow of his college at Cambridge, and incumbent of Holy Trinity Church in that town, was not a person easily daunted by obstacles. As an Evangelical he had had to face the most strenuous opposition in his own parish. But he had been deeply stirred by plans and hopes for missionary work in India; he was the friend and mentor of Henry Martyn. He was able in time to wield at Cambridge an influence which the late Bishop Christopher Wordsworth compared to that of Newman at Oxford. Later generations somehow came to think of him as something other than a Churchman; but they were quite wrong. A careful scrutiny of Simeon's works, letters, and diaries will show that he was consistently loyal to his Church and her formularies. Of his influence upon foreign missions it is difficult to speak in exaggeration; but one or two illustrations may serve to show its extent. Henry Martyn was the first Englishman who offered to go out under the Church Missionary Society. But Simeon was especially anxious about India, and so Martyn went there as "Chaplain." His brief work in Persia, the example of his singularly beautiful character, and the swift end of so promising a career, still influence the minds of young and old. And the influence of Martyn, is, in a sense, the influence of Simeon. Less popularly known than Henry Martyn, but in some respects of wider power, were the others of the famous "Five Chaplains" who went out to India, the fruits of Simeon's zeal for that land. These men left an indelible mark upon the English in
