Let us take another mission founded in answer to an appeal from without, and that an appeal from a layman. People who recall the missionary meetings of a generation ago will remember that no more thrilling story was told at them than the history of William Duncan's early work amongst the Tsimshean Indians of the North Pacific coast. It was a marvellous example of courage, tact, and patience, rewarded by the conversion of savages of a singularly unapproachable type. It was a naval officer, Captain Prevost, who suggested that mission to the Society, carried Mr. Duncan thither, and landed him at Fort Simpson in 1857. In ten years' time he had baptised nearly three hundred adult converts. In 1862 the Christian community was moved to Metlakahtla, where the spectacle of a cannibal and violent people living in peace and industry was long deemed one of the marvels of missionary enterprise.
I pass by such striking histories as those of Uganda, of the attempt of J. A. Robinson and Graham Wilmot Brooke to reach the Soudan from the Niger, and of the massacre of English women at Hwa-Sang in Fuh-kien, to recall romances of another kind. What could be more moving than the careers of some of the Society's converts? Is there any more striking history of its kind than that of the Rev. Dr. Imad-ud-din, a learned Mohammedan, who had sought the peace of God by every available means, and at last found it in Christ? Or what would they who distrust converts say to the career of that once notorious Border bandit, Dilawar Khan, baptised in 1858, who served as an officer in the Guides, and died in Chitral whilst in the service of the British Government?
But it is time to leave these things and to speak of some aspects of the Society's work which concern all missionary enterprise.
[Illustration: "IN THE UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE EARTH."
(_The peoples amongst whom the C.M.S. Missionaries are now working._)]
Twice in its career the Church Missionary Society has definitely committed itself to a policy of faith as it has committed itself to sending out all who offer and are found qualified. It is a policy which, judged by the most secular standard, must be accounted a success. The growth of its staff in recent years, under this system, has been most striking. The Society has had its periods of stagnation and disappointment; at times its directors have felt driven to retrenchment. Thus in 1859 the number of European missionaries on its roll was 226; ten years later it was only 228. But, whereas in 1889 the number was 360, in 1898 it had risen to 802. During the first ten years the Society sent out five agents; in the ten years ending with its Jubilee the number was 119; in the nine years ending 1898 it reached 719. The income of 1848 was £92,823; the income of 1898 was £331,598. Its latest statistics show that there are about 240,000 natives associated with its missions, and of late it would seem that its clergy baptise on an average about twenty adult converts every day.