Propagating the Gospel
Two hundred and fifty years is only a fragment of the Churcrs history, but the story of any body-corporate that has covered so long a span ought to be of general interest, especially if, like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, it has (with the aid of the Pilgrim Trust) cherished its archives. The book provides an authoritative record of the society's origin and growth, a reminder of the Churches it has fostered and a tribute to all founders and faithful emissaries. Even with an allowance of 750 pages, it was a formidable task, calling for just those gifts of grasp, proportion and literary general- ship with which Mr. Thompson is equipped. Writing currente calamo, he conceals the art and industry involved in marshalling such a host of witnesses and apportioning to each due emphasis.
The first 100 pages cover the first 100 years when the Society was pioneering in pre-Revolution America, handicapped at every turn by the refusal of the borne authorities to see anything paradoxical in an episcopal Church that had no bishops. Mr. Thompson then invites us to make three conducted tours of. S.P.G. forests, at intervals of 50 years (1851, 1901, 1951), covering each time the same ground in the same order, except that new plantations emerge and some of the old have grown to maturity and are no longer a liability and responsibility of the S.P.G. The table of contents provides a chart of the paths through the forest, so that we can find our way about easily, helped out in emergency by the finger-posts which a very competent index supplies. (Some rea4ers would sacrifice the fifteen somewhat jejune illustrations for a few, Maps.) The reader's interest is thus excited by the prospect_of second and third visits to see how the plantations fare and what new seedlings are developing. He will, of course, hear of casualties, of havoc wrought by the violence of nature, of war, pestilence and famine, literal and metaphorical. He will go far afield, for while no missionary society covers the whole of the Anglican Communion, the S.P.G. has an immense range.
Does the method adopted enable the reader to set both wood and trees ? There is, it is true, a multitude of trees, and of flowering shrubs not a few ; there are innumerable references to the capital
and maintenance costs of cultivation. But it is likely that a less personal treatment of human agents, and a bare statement of S.P.G. expenditure (it tots up over 50 years to over thirteen million pounds, or a yearly average of f260,000), 'would have failed to leave an impression on the reader, as this narrative does, long after he has forgotten who succeeded whom or how much the society spent on what. One such impression is of the overwhelming cost in human lives. A second is of the magnitude of the operations which the combined gifts of small givers can finance where they are wisely administered. This is somewhat qualified by a third impression, the sense of the might-have-beens if the nineteenth-(and twentieth-) century Church had been alive to its world-mission. A fourth is that to disregard the Christian movement as a significant factor in world affairs (and even the Cambridge Madern History passes it by on the other side) results in distorted history. Bishop Henson was nearer the mark when he said in his Gifford Lectures: "Take away foreign missions from the recent history of Britain and you would have robbed that history of its purest glory."
In his concluding chapter Mr. Thompson sums up the principles of the society. It has always been the servant of the Church, always waited to be invited before initiating new policies. " On Church lines always, on party lines never " is quoted as a motto ; " its membership has been shared by Church people of all views ; its grants have supported dioceses of all types ; its missionaries have been no less various." Its grants are always made to the bishops in the field for use in such ways as they think best. There may be an uncomfortable misgiving here that Mr. Thompson is overstating the case ; he does indeed mention some limitations on the bishops' freedom of action : " From time to time the Society has had to intervene." The susceptibilities of donors and the appeal-value of bishops' plans have to be taken into account. The principle of leaving it all to the bishops will not stretch to cover the decisions involved in allocating how much to whom.
It is to be hoped that its author will now be free to write an un- official commentary on his own text, containing some of the re- flections on Church history and policy which his researches have
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