CHAPTER V.

ITS MISSIONARY LABORS.

A DISTINGUISHED English writer, a layman of the Church of England, has said that "the Methodism of the last century, even when considered apart from its consequences, must always be thought worthy of the most serious regard: that, in fact, that great religious movement has, immediately or remotely, so given an impulse to Christian feeling and profession, on all sides, that it has come to present itself as the starting-point of our modern religious history; that the field-preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, in 1739, was the event whence the religious epoch, now current, must date its commencement; that back to the events of that time must we look, necessarily, as often as we seek to trace to its source what is most characteristic of the present time; and that yet this is not all, for the Methodism of the past age points forward to the next-coming development of the powers of the Gospel." *

These remarks are especially true in respect to the relation of Methodism to modern Christian Missions. The idea of religious Missions is as old as Chris

* Isaac Taylor's Wesley and Methodism, Preface.

tianity, and has been exemplified by the Papal Church through much of its history and in the ends of the world. The Moravians early embodied it in their system. In the Protestantism of England it had but feeble sway till the epoch of Methodism. That sublime form of it which now characterizes English Protestantism in both hemispheres, and which proposes the evangelization of the whole race, appeared in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Societies for the propagation of the Gospel had previously existed in Great Britain, but they were provided chiefly, if not exclusively, for the Christianization of countries which, by reason of their political dependence upon England, were deemed to have special claims on British Christianity-the inhabitants of India and the Indians of North America. An historian of missions, writing in 1844, says: "It was not until almost within the last fifty years that the efforts of the religious bodies by whom Christian missions are now most vigorously supported were commenced."*

Methodism was essentially a missionary movement, domestic and foreign. It initiated not only the spirit, but the practical plans of modern English missions. Bishop Coke so represented the enterprise in his own person for many years as to supersede the necessity of any more formal organization of it, but it was none the less real and energetic. The historian

Ellis's History of the London Missionary Society, vol. i, p. 3.

just cited says: "The Wesleyan Missionary Society was formed in 1817, but the first Wesleyan missionaries who went out, under the superintendence of the Rev. Dr. Coke, entered the British colonies in 1786. The Baptist Missionary Society was established in 1792; the London Missionary Society in 1795; and the Edinburgh or Scottish and the Glasgow Missionary Societies in 1796. The subject also engaged the attention of many pious persons belonging to the Established Church, besides those connected with the London Missionary Society, and by members of that communion the Church Missionary Society was organized in the first year of the present century." The London Missionary Society, embracing most Dissenting bodies of England, arose under the influence of Calvinistic Methodism, and the Church Missionary Society sprang from the evangelical Low Church party which Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, had originated in the Establishment, Venn, the son of the Methodist churchman Venn, being its projector.

Though Bishop Coke represented the ArminianMethodist Mission interest, as its founder, secretary, treasurer, and collector, it really took a distinct form some six years before the formation of the first of the above named societies. Coke spent more than a year in bringing the Negro missions before the English people immediately after his

second visit to the West Indies. In 1786 a formal address was issued to the public in behalf of a comprehensive scheme of Methodist missions. It was entitled "An Address to the Pious and Benevolent, proposing an Annual Subscription for the Support of Missionaries in the Highlands and adjacent Islands of Scotland, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and Newfoundland, the West Indies, and the Provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec. By Thomas Coke, LL.D. 1786." It speaks of "a mission intended to be established in the British dominions in Asia," but which was postponed till these more inviting fields should be occupied. This scheme was called in the address an "Institution;" it was really such; though not called a society, it was one in all essential respects; and if the fact that it was not an extra-ecclesiastical plan, but a part of the system of Methodism, should detract from its claim of precedence in respect to later institutions of the kind, that consideration would equally detract from the Moravian missions, which were conducted in a like manner. The Address filled several pages, and was prefaced by a letter from Wesley indorsing the whole plan.

The next year (1787) the Wesleyan Missions bore the distinctive title of "Missions established by the Methodist Society." At the last Conference attended by Wesley (1790) a Committee of nine preachers, of which Coke was chairman, was appointed to take

The

charge of this new interest. Coke continued to conduct its chief business; but the committee were his standing council, and formed, in fact, a Mission Board of Managers two years before the organization of the first of British missionary societies. Collections had been taken in many of the circuits for the institution, and in 1793 the Conference formally ordered a general collection for it. Coke published accounts of its "receipts and disbursements." The amount for 1787 was £1,167. names of eminent Churchmen, Dissenters, and Calvinistic as well as Arminian Methodists, are reported on its list of subscribers. Among them are those of Whitbread, Wilberforce, the Thorntons, the Earl of Dartmouth, Earl of Belvidere, Lord Elliott, Lady Mary Fitzgerald, Lady Maxwell, Sir Charles Middleton, (afterward Lord Barham,) Sir Richard Hill, Sir John Carter, Sir William Forbes, Lady Smythe, Hon. Mrs. Carteret, and the Hon. Mrs. Bouverie; the Rev. Mr. Dodwell, of Lincolnshire; Melville Horne, of Madeley; Berridge, of Everton; Abdy, of Horsleydown; Dr. Gillies, of Glasgow; Simpson, of Macclesfield; Pentycross, of Wallingford; Easterbrook, of Bristol; Kennedy, of Teston, and others.

In this manner did Methodism early prompt the

* This clergyman (of the Establishment) several years afterward made a contribution of £10,000 to the Wesleyan Missionary Society.