The Quiver 3/1900

(Drawn by Percy Tarrant.)

EASTER BLOSSOMS.

THE CENTENARY OF THECHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

By the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., Morning Preacher at the Foundling Hospital.

At "The Castleand Falcon,"in AldersgateStreet, onApril 12th,1799, theremet, in allthe solemnityof apublicgathering,sixteenclergymenand ninelaymen.

They founded there and then theChurch Missionary Society for Africa andthe East. That Society keeps its Centenarythis month; no longer an inconspicuousorganisation expressing the hopes ofa godly few, but a great Society whichhas girdled the earth with its missions.When, in November, 1898, its EstimatesCommittee surveyed its position, theyfound that its roll included the namesof 802 European missionaries, of whom 295were ladies, whilst, of the 802, no fewerthan eighty-four were serving altogetheror in part at their own expense. Someof them represented the missionaryenthusiasm of Australia and Canada;a fair proportion were duly qualifiedmedical workers, men and women.

MRS. J. A. BAILEY.

(The first lady missionary ofthe Society.)

With the exception of South America,there is no considerable quarter of theglobe in which they are not represented.They may be found ministeringto Esquimaux within the Arctic Circle,and to the Indians of the vast expansesof Canada; they are shepherding theMaoris of New Zealand; in India theirstations may be discovered alike amongstthe wild tribes of the northern frontier,the strange aboriginals found here andthere in the continent, and the milderraces of the south; in Africa theSociety begins in Egypt, but goes nofarther south than Uganda, though itis both on the east coast and thewest; it is strongly represented alongthe coasts of China, as well as in theinland province of Sze-Chuen; it worksboth amidst the Japanese themselvesand that strange people the hairyAinu; it is domiciled in Ceylon andMauritius; it has not forgotten Persia.From Madagascar it has retired, and ithas shown a wise indisposition to enterupon new fields whilst the old arestill insufficiently manned. It has everbeen known for the strictness withwhich it observes the comity of missions;and it may fairly be said thatthe zeal with which its friends haveworked in behalf of foreign missionshas reacted on all the missionaryagencies which have their origins inGreat Britain, as well as upon somewhich express the zeal of America andthe Colonies.