Church Mission Society

The late Rev.

Henry Venn, for thirty years secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the son of Simeon's friend John Venn, records what follows from his own experience.

In the present day it will hardly be credited, but one of these early recollections, of about 1808, may serve as a specimen.

A near relative of the Bishop of London, after being a guest at Fulham Palace, was to visit Mr. John Venn at Clapham.

But their appointed field was the British colonies, not the pagan world as such.

The admirable work of the London Missionary Society had recently been begun, but its constitution was unsectarian, and its Anglican members found that it would be better for all parties that the ecclesiastical difference should be recognized candidly, while personal Christian friendship and all possible cooperation on parallel lines should be maintained.

So the thought of a society within the Church of England with a purely missionary purpose rose in many minds, and the issue of it was the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, or as it was called in its first account, a society for missions to Africa and the East instituted by members of the established Church.

Simeon's part in the origination of the CMS was important.

The late Rev.

Henry Venn, for thirty years secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the son of Simeon's friend John Venn, records what follows from his own experience.

In the present day it will hardly be credited, but one of these early recollections, of about 1808, may serve as a specimen.

A near relative of the Bishop of London, after being a guest at Fulham Palace, was to visit Mr. John Venn at Clapham.

But their appointed field was the British colonies, not the pagan world as such.

The admirable work of the London Missionary Society had recently been begun, but its constitution was unsectarian, and its Anglican members found that it would be better for all parties that the ecclesiastical difference should be recognized candidly, while personal Christian friendship and all possible cooperation on parallel lines should be maintained.

So the thought of a society within the Church of England with a purely missionary purpose rose in many minds, and the issue of it was the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, or as it was called in its first account, a society for missions to Africa and the East instituted by members of the established Church.

Simeon's part in the origination of the CMS was important.

Lugard went back to England to make a buzz against abandoning Uganda—that is to say, to write letters to the press, to make speeches, to conduct a strenuous propaganda in favor of a government grant to the company.

The Church Missionary Society was persuaded to advance a few thousand pounds to postpone the evil day of evacuation; for to missionary organizations evacuation meant abandonment of Protestant converts either to native paganism or French Catholicism.

The Church's contribution, a trifling sum, could doubtless have been raised by the East Africa Company's wealthy directors, but it was shrewd tactics to obtain the funds from the Church, for it presented the issue as a matter of religion and altruism.

The influential London Times likewise gave support, by editorials appealing to British patriotism or representing Uganda, in very exaggerated terms, as a great market without which English labor would be unemployed, or as a field for British capital.

The Government, however, had caution enough to investigate the enterprise it was asked to finance, and the commissioner sent to study the East African Company's administration presently returned to London with the report that: "The history of British East Africa for the last five years, and its present condition, show us clearly that the experiment of combining administration and trade in the same hands has proved a failure so far as this part of Africa is concerned; and that the sooner this system is discontinued the better it will be for native races, for British commerce, for Zanzibar, and, as I believe, for the company itself." This was plain enough.

The Government decided to buy out the company's rights and properties in East Africa and Uganda.

If the establishment of British protectorates in Uganda, 1894, and British East Africa, 1895, was an answer to the Church's prayer, as the Church Missionary Society described it, providence in this case worked through somewhat devious financial negotiations.

An offer of £200,000 sterling was refused by the company as too small a valuation of its humane and patriotic achievements.

The late Rev.

Henry Venn, for 30 years secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the son of Simeon's friend John Venn, records what follows from his own experience.

In the present day it will hardly be credited, but one of these early recollections of about 1808 may serve as a specimen.

A near relative of the Bishop of London, after being a guest at Fulham Palace, was to visit Mr. John Venn at Clapham.

But their appointed field was the British colonies, not the pagan world as such.

The admirable work of the London Missionary Society had recently been begun, but its constitution was unsectarian, and its Anglican members found that it would be better for all parties that the ecclesiastical difference should be recognized candidly, while personal Christian friendship and all possible cooperation on parallel lines should be maintained.

So the thought of a society within the Church of England with a purely missionary purpose rose in many minds, and the issue of it was the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, or as it was called in its first account, a society for missions to Africa and the East, instituted by members of the established Church.

Simeon's part in the origination of the CMS was important.

On his return to England he wrote a historic letter to a great London newspaper describing his visit to Uganda, and challenging the Christian churches of Britain to send missionaries to that land.

It was this letter that led the Church Missionary Society shortly afterwards to undertake that work in Uganda with which the name of Alexander McKay will always be associated.

Mackay was a young Scotchman, the son of a Presbyterian minister in Aberdeenshire, who at an early age had made up his mind to devote himself to the service of Christ in the foreign field, and had conceived the original idea of becoming what he called an engineer missionary.

From the first he saw, as most missionary societies have now come to see, that Christianity and modern civilization should go hand in hand, and that mechanical work is as legitimate an aid to missions as medical science.

By and by the stirrings of the heart began to urge him forth to a larger and more difficult field than he could find at home.

In particular, when word came to England of the murder of Lieutenant Smith and Mr. O'Neill on the Victoria Nyanza, he felt the impulse of the brave soldier to step into the gap where a comrade has fallen.

And when the Church Missionary Society decided to send a fresh party to Uganda to reinforce Mackay, who was holding the ground with a single companion in the face of infinite difficulties and discouragements, Hannington was one of the first to volunteer.

He was most happily settled by this time as incumbent of St. George's Chapel, Hurst Pierpoint, the home of his boyhood and youth, and had besides a wife and young children to whom he was passionately attached.

The late Rev.

Henry Venn, for thirty years secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the son of Simeon's friend John Venn, records what follows from his own experience.

In the present day it will hardly be credited, but one of these early recollections of about 1808 may serve as a specimen.

A near relative of the Bishop of London, after being a guest at Fulham Palace, was to visit Mr. John Venn at Clapham.

But their appointed field was the British colonies, not the pagan world as such.

The admirable work of the London Missionary Society had recently been begun, but its constitution was unsectarian, and its Anglican members found that it would be better for all parties that the ecclesiastical difference should be recognized candidly, while personal Christian friendship and all possible cooperation on parallel lines should be maintained.

So the thought of a society within the Church of England with a purely missionary purpose rose in many minds, and the issue of it was the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, or as it was called in its first account, a society for missions to Africa and the East instituted by members of the established church.

Simeon's part in the origination of the CMS was important.