The free alliance of believers in missionary societies has become an inestimable blessing to the church itself; it began in the church the removal of a social defect which was very materially to blame for the fact that, until the end of the previous century, there had been inside of Protestantism so little of combined action. These societies, which became more and more naturalised outlets for the activities of love in the church at home, supplied to Protestantism an evangelical substitute for the corporations which the church of Rome possesses in its Orders. They had their starting-point already in the ecclesiolæ in ecclesia of Pietism. It was a sign of the soundness of the present constitution of missions, that single individuals, who had been persuaded of their Divine call to missionary service, did not go to the heathen as independent individuals, an error which in recent times has taken the place of a regular sending in the case of the so-called free missionaries, of whom we shall come to speak later; but that the beginning was made with the founding at home of missionary institutions in the form of free societies. Only by such regular missionary institutions-not to speak of other advantages-was it possible that missions could strike those. deep roots at home without which they would have had no secure and lasting support.

57. From the declinature of service by the official church there arose a second emergency: theologians were lacking. What kept pastors and probationers from becoming missionaries was hardly any longer the dogmatic objection that no summons to mission work among the heathen now exists, or it was so only in a faint degree; the inward call and the spiritual qualification were wanting. In face of this lack, men bethought them of what Jesus did when the priests and scribes of His time declined His service. Recourse was had to laymen, and this recourse, imposed by necessity, came to be of great importance for the future, for through it powers for service in the kingdom of God at home and abroad were set free which have become the source of greatest blessing to the church. These "unlearned people and laymen" have had indeed for a long time to endure very disdainful treatment, but their courageous faith and their self-sacrifice have put the theologians to shame, and the ability of many of them has given proof that the blessing of success is not bound up with a regular call of the church and a university education. Pietism and Methodism broke through the old rigid dogma of "a call," by giving practical effect to the good evangelical doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, namely, that every living Christian possesses function and gift to be a

worker for God, and that the call of God to the work of His kingdom is not bound by ordinances of men. On the basis of this intuition of the theology of the revival the church of the Brethren had already called to missionary service several laymen, of whose inward qualification and Divine calling they were certified by prayer; and the missionary societies, founded after the end of the eighteenth century, followed that example everywhere where no theologians were to be found. Certainly the appointment of "unlearned persons and laymen " to service has its darker aspects; many weak even incapable subjects have become missionaries, but even the university curriculum offers no absolute guarantee against uselessness in missionary service, as e.g. the majority of the Dutch and English colonial clergy proves. At first not much pains was bestowed on the training of laymen for the service of missions, personal conversion, and of course a certain measure of Bible knowledge, being regarded as the materially sufficient preparation. More and more, however, except in the case of some missionary organisations with a specially chiliastic aim, a comparatively thorough seminary training has been almost everywhere introduced. Most missionary societies established missionary schools, in which the plan of instruction is gradually becoming more and more scientific. Only in America, some English Dissenting communities, and the Scottish churches, did the theological seminaries supply the most of the missionaries.

CHAPTER V

HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION AND GROWTH OF MISSIONARY SOCIETIES

58. WITH the exception of the Established Church of Scotland, in no Protestant State church have missions been from their beginning the concern of the church. In Sweden a State church mission was founded twenty-five years ago, alongside of the free missions, but it has not absorbed these. Only in a number of free churches, especially in America, are missions the affair of the church as such, conducted for the most part by a committee or board, which is responsible to the Synod. Thus since the end of the eighteenth century the development of missionary life at home has been really accomplished in the history of the foundation and growth of missionary societies. Of this let us now attempt to give a survey. We must, however, confine ourselves to the principal societies. For in the course of the nineteenth century the number of Protestant missionary societies has so largely increased, that it is scarcely possible to specify them all with absolute certainty, especially as almost every year new ones are added. Limiting the number only to those which send out missionaries independently, it reaches (with inclusion of those in the colonies) in round numbers about 150, of which scarcely 60 support more than 201 missionaries.1 Gladdening as, on the one hand, is the great number of this missionary host, and much as they have done to kindle an ever stronger missionary fire in all sections of the Protestant church, on the other hand, it signifies an amount of division which works alike to confusion and weakness. It is a fatal watchword which since a short time ago has been given forth, especially in America, by rhetorical enthusiasts, "Not

1 The handbook of foreign missions already referred to gives general surveys of those societies. Bliss, The Encyclopædia of Missions, 2 vols., New York, 1891. Gundert, Die Evangelische Missions, Calw. 1894, 3rd ed. Vahl, Missions to the Heathen: a Statistical Review, Copenhagen. It has appeared annually from 1892. This review, however, takes notice also of all nonindependent auxiliary societies. Dennis, "Statistical Summary of Foreign Missions throughout the World," in Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York, 1900, vol. ii. p. 424.

concentration but diffusion," for it leads to a kind of franc-tireur mission work, which dissolves organisation, divides the forces into atoms, and complicates the enterprise. Certainly there is to-day still much pioneer work to be done in new mission fields, but it is just this pioneer work which needs disciplined troops, and in the older mission fields we have already entered on the stage in which the great battles are fought. Not dispersion but concentration and organisation is for to-day a sound missionary watchword; not ever new little missionary societies, which experiment with novices, but accessions to the larger, experienced, well-ordered missionary societies is what we need. Towards this multiplication of missionary organisations manifold causes have contributed, besides the strengthening of the sense of missionary duty,-confessional peculiarities, denominational loyalty, new theological tendencies and ecclesiastical formations, differences as to missionary methods, personal eagerness to found missions, occurrences in colonial politics, etc.

To make the survey of this vast home apparatus for missionary work as clear as possible, let us arrange it chronologically according to countries, and begin with the country from which the missions of the nineteenth century took their rise, and in which they are most energetically maintained, principally because it has the largest colonial possessions.

SECTION 1.-ENGLAND.

59. On the 2nd October 1792, at the call of Wm. Carey, twelve Baptist preachers joined at Kettering in Northamptonshire to found The Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen (B. M. S.). Already since 1764 the first missionary prayer meetings had been held in a little circle of devout Baptists under the guidance of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, afterwards the intimate friend of Carey. The impulse to these was given through the reading of a little tract by Jonathan Edwards, published in 1747: An humble attempt to promote an explicit agreement and visible union of God's people for the revival of religion, and the advancement of Christ's kingdom in the earth. Then followed Carey's Inquiry, already noticed, and the decision was reached in his worldfamed sermon on Isaiah liv. 2 and 3. Carey offered himself as the first missionary. His original intention to go to Tahiti, to which he was moved by the narratives of Cook's voyages, was changed through a ship surgeon, Thomas, who had returned from India, where of his own motive he had done occasional mission work, with the result that India was chosen

as the first field for the labours of the young society. The intolerance of the East India Company, however, compelled the beginning of mission work in the Danish province of Serampore, and it was not till after more than ten years that the work was first permitted in British territory. Men such as Ward, Marshman, and Yates followed. As early as 1809 there appeared the complete Bengali translation of the Bible, done by Carey, who had a gift of languages, the first of his extensive literary-mainly linguistic-works, which admittedly do not all merit the excessive praise which was formerly lavished upon them. (According to Smith, 238, Carey translated the Bible, or parts of the Bible, into thirty-four languages.) To Hindostan, where in time the field of the Baptists extended to the north, west, and south, were added Ceylon in 1811, in 1813 Jamaica and other West Indian Islands, in 1840 West Africa (Fernando Po, the Cameroons, Congo), and China in 1859. In India, besides Carey, the German Wenger in particular won celebrity by his linguistic labours; in Jamaica, Burchell and Knibb were specially conspicuous as champions of slave-emancipation; in the Cameroons, Saker and Grenfell; Comber and Bentley on the Congo did eminent service. The income of the society now reaches in round figures1 £75,000 ($360,000), but hardly suffices to cover its growing needs. The number of missionaries2 is 160; that of native pastors, 70; that of communicants, i.e. of actual church members 3 admitted to the Lord's Supper (including the West Indies, where the principal field, Jamaica, alone includes 40,000), 55,000. The organ of the society is the Missionary Herald of the Baptist M.S

60. Far more deeply than the founding of the Baptist M. S. did that of the London Missionary Society (L. M. S.) stir Christian circles at home. Enthusiasm had been kindled amongst clergymen and laymen in the Episcopal church and in Dissenting communities by a series of truly edifying letters to "Lovers of the Gospel," which Dr. Bogue opened with a

I give the statistical statement in round figures, as they are annually changing. In the present connection they must serve to furnish only an approximate standard for the position of the societies to-day.

2 Only male missionaries are reckoned throughout.

3 In the English and American statistics only the number of communicants -separate church members entitled to partake of the Lord's Supper-is generally given. The number of Christians is about three to three and a half times as great, often greater.

Cox, History of the B. M. S., London, 1842. Underhill, Christian Missions in the East and West in connection with the Bapt. M. S., London, 1862. Myers, Centenary of the B. M. S., London, 1892. The General Baptists united with the B. M. S. in 1891; the missions (instituted 1861) of the so-called Strict Baptists are unimportant. That the B. M. S., like all the larger English and American missionary societies, has an active auxiliary in a ladies' association may here at once be noted.