THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.* WHEN we say that these three
volumes are equal in bulk of contents to a dozen ordinary octavoea we do not suggest that the book is too long. The subject is so large, the ramifications so numerous and so wide, that it would be difficult to fix any limits of space. Our purpose is to excuse ourselves for what could not but be a casual and cursory treatment of a work so fall of matter, as varied as it is interesting, that an adequate account of it would be impossible.
The founders of the Church Missionary Society had no small difficulties to contend with. A very great majority of the nation was indifferent ; the interested minority was not by any means agreed; the kindred societies already established looked doubtfully at the new effort ; the Bishops were governed by a more than episcopal caution. In one great field of action, India, the Government was little less than hostile. Missionaries were refused permission to land at Calcutta. The utmost concession that could be obtained was that they might go to Burmah. One who con- trived to get into the country was deported, and the Mission (an American society) compelled to pay £500 for the expense of the proceeding. Nor was feeling at home much more friendly. Sydney Smith attacked the movement in the Edinburgh Review. The question was hotly debated in the House of Commons ; and after a fierce resistance from the Anglo-Indian faction—not that all Anglo-Indians were hostile —India was practically thrown open to Christian effort. This was, we may say, the first great achievement of the Christian Missionary Society.
It implied a growth in public opinion which soon showed itself in a great increase in the means and the operations of the Society. In 1812 — the Indian debate was on June 22nd, 1811—the income of the Society was something less than £3000. Twelve years afterwards it was £34,500, and in the next twelvemonth rose to £40,000, a total below which it never afterwards fell. By this time it had sent out a hundred missionaries. These figures are, of coarse, only relatively large. Even now, if we compare them with the huge Bums spent,. not to speak of the great public services, on trivial amusements—the expendi- ture on golf balls probably exceeds the income of all the missionary societies—they are insignificant, but they show growth, and growth is the essence of success. So far India had been the chief field of action ; West Africa had been added in 1807 when the abolition of the slave trade opened the door. Not that the door was opened very wide. The slavers were still busy, and the restoration to France of its old possessions at Goree and Senegal, by the treaty of 1814, meant the active revival of the legalised trade. However, Napoleon abolished it by edict in 1815—one good deed of the Hundred Days—and the restored Bourbons were ashamed to revive it, though France still allows its flag to cover it. But • The History of the Church Missionary Society. By Eugene S&pck.." 3 vols. London: Church mkslonary Society, Salisbury Square. the Mission felt the benefit of the change. Its history is the history of an army of heroes and martyrs, not the less to be honoured because the fruits of victory were too often dis. ippointing.
Another sphere of action was New Zealand. Here the Society became involved in the complicated question of the relation of the white settler to the native population. The missionaries were accused of taking aa • sntage of their posi. tion to acquire land at unfair prices. The battle raged with especial fury around one man of high character and singular devotion, Archdeacon Henry Williams. We shall not at,- tempt to give any account of it. It must suffice to say that it ended in the substantial acquittal of the accused. We have mentioned it here as an instance of the multiform difficulties with which the Society has to deal, and, we may add, of the admirable candour with which Mr. Stock treats all the diffi- cult matters which necessarily come under his review.
In the year following, 1846, East Africa was added to the pro. vinces which missionary enterprise had acquired. The first
labourers in this field were Krapf and Rebmann, who settled amorrg the Wanika. It is an interesting instance of the in- direct gains that came to the world from the enterprise of these enthusiasts—a word which it is now permitted to use in a good sense—that the evangelistic journey of the two corn. panions gave a great impulse to geographical discovery. On May 11th, 1848, Rebmann saw the snow-clad summit of Kili. manjaro. He mentioned the fact quite incidentally in his report to the Society published a year afterwards. The scientific journals pronounced it a delusion. It must have been a dome of porphyry that he had seen, for was not Kilimanjaro under the Equator ? A few years later another missionary, Erhardt by name, constructed a provisional map of Equatorial Africa, showing what he called the Uniamezi Sea. This was published in the Church Missionary Intelligencer, and exhibited in an enlarged form by the Royal Geographical Society. Next year Burton and Speke went on their great expedition. The latter afterwards wrote : "The missionaries are the prime and first promoters of this dis- covery."
A little later than this, to turn to India again, there came with the Mutiny a crisis in the history of missionary enter- prise. Chap. 45, "India : The Mutiny—its Victims and its Lessons," is profoundly interesting, as are also those that follow relating the controversy, so often renewed, of the relation of the British Government to Christianity, and describing the results of the lilwiny on the cause of the Gospel. Mr. Stock is not going beyond the truth when he says that "the Englishmen who saved India were the English- men who were not only Christians themselves, but openly avowed their desire to see India evangelised."
Another region in which the Church Missionary Society has been at work for the past half-century is China. In 1850 Bishop George Smith, recently appointed to the See of Hong- kong—he had made an earlier effort to take up the work— reached his diocese. Not long after his arrival the Taeping Rebellion broke out. The movement had some remarkable resemblances to, or at least coincidences with, Christianity. Mr. Stock seems somewhat at a loss to pronounce upon its real character,—a pardonable hesitation, considering the obscurity of the subject. But he finds a saving quality in the Taeping denunciation of opium and image-worship, pro- tests which ensured, he tells us, the hostility of ecclesiastical and commercial authorities. Possibly he is here less open- minded than usual. Was there not a Royal Commission on the use of the opium drug? Surely outsiders who are content to abide by its verdict are not so very much in the wrong after all.
China naturally suggests Japan, and Japan is peculiarly interesting because of recent attempts to depreciate the results of missionary effort in that country. Mr. Stock is manifestly anxious in describing the work of the Church Missionary Society to keep within the limits of fact. He does not ignore the fact that the high hopes entertained at one time have been disappointed. The State recognition of Christianity, once contemplated, would probably have done more harm than good to real religion. Still, circum- stances seemed to present a magnificent opportunity. But the men to use it were not forthcoming. Before long the tide began to ebb. Even so, the results obtained are by no means
contemptible. That there were fourteen Christians out of a total of three hundred Members of the Lower House in 1890, and that one of the fourteen was nominated Speaker by the Emperor out of three chosen by the Assembly, mean some- thing.
One difficulty that the founders of the Society did not con- template, its relation to episcopal authority, has arisen more than once. A century ago there was no one to question its rule over the missionaries whom it sent out and supported ; now there is a large Colonial missionary episcopate, and some friction could not but follow. Mr. Stock does not avoid the subject. He tells the story, for instance, of the serious difference that occurred with Bishop Copleston of Colombo, and tells it with his usual fairness. On the whole, the story does credit to both sides. A difficult position was dealt with wisely and kindly. Special honour is due to the unwearied patience and unfailing tact of Arch- bishop Tait.
To the hundreds of zealous, self-sacrificing men whose names appear in these pages it is impossible to do justice. The English Church has no machinery of canonisation, and perhaps fares well enough without it. But if she needed to construct a calendar of her own there are not a few among those who have served the Church Missionary Society who might well hold high places in the roll of Anglican saints.
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