and he doesn't believe in Christianity which doesn't give. We want less talk and more giving and more work.

The chairman, the Rural Dean, then makes such suitable introductory remarks as become a rural dean, after which the Deputation is called upon to make his speech. He remembers the oft-told injunction to begin low, proceed slow, to rise higher, and catch fire. He does his best, poor man, within an hour and a quarter. He is amusing without being funny, instructive without being tedious, statistical without being dry, and pathetic without being sentimental. Whether he succeeds or not, it is impossible for him to tell, but as he sits down he receives an approving smile from the vicar's wife, who is on the front seat below, and the old vicar presses his hand warmly, and with tearful eyes whispers, "Thank you, dear friend, we shall not forget you when you are far away from us."

The Deputation is followed by the London Canon. The speech is an eloquent one-the Canon always is eloquent (how the poor Deputation wishes he could speak like that!)-but it must be confessed that there is very little about Missions in it. It is a comprehensive speech. It embraces School-Board Education, Convocation Reform, Ritualism, Rationalism, and Protestantism, but little-indeed nothing— affecting any real missionary question. The reverend gentleman does not seem to study Missions; but still his speech is received with the most vociferous cheering, in which the Deputation joins, and every one, including the Deputation, pronounces it the speech of the evening. The meeting is concluded with a few words from the vicar, who presses homo a cw points in the Deputation's address, and the Rural Dean pronounces the benediction. The collection at the door amounts to 217. 10s. 6d., the sixpence representing the gift of an old farm-labourer, who has gone without his pipe for a week in order to give sixpence to "the missionaries."

But, although the meeting is over, the Deputation's work is not done, for as he leaves the platform there are several people who wish to speak to him. There is an old schoolfellow, whom he has not met for nearly thirty years, who wishes to shake him by the hand. There is Mrs. A., who wants to know if he has ever met her dear son in India. There is Mrs. B., who would like to ask him if he would kindly visit her dear husband's grave at Patanpur, upon his return to India. There is Miss C., who would be glad if he would take out a small parcel for her sister; she resides quite near (only 2000 miles distant) to the missionary's station. There is Miss F., who wants to know something about the two orphans she has supported in China for the last fifteen years, and who seem quite youthful yet. The Deputation is interesting and obliging to all, and even consents to take the small parcel. It is a cause of regret to him to say that he knows nothing of the orphans in China. It has, however, been a good Lord's Day's work, and right thankful is he to get back to his host's hospitable dwelling, and to take his "well-earned rest" for the night.

The next morning he leaves by an early train, and as he enters the station he purchases from the book-stall a copy of the Godwell Adver

tiser, which contains a full report of last evening's meeting. The speech of the London Canon is given verbatim; the missionary is reported to have related some interesting details of his work in India. A few hours' journey brings him back to his home, where he will be permitted to enjoy a whole day's rest before he starts on deputation duty again, for he is engaged to address a Zenana meeting on Wednesday, a young ladies' boarding-school on Thursday, and a Young Men's Christian Association on Friday. On Saturday he must leave for Berwick-on-Tweed for their twenty-fifth anniversary.

Such, although a fictitious representation, is virtually a true account of the way in which a missionary is interviewed, and worked, and knocked about as a Deputation. Of course he makes many new friends, gets many new ideas, and accumulates a good deal of knowledge of both men and things; but the probability is that he can stand it only for a few months, and it all ends in his being enrolled amongst the number of defunct missionaries who perished in the attempt to become "efficient and interesting Deputations."

The truth is that people have no mercy upon a returned missionary if once they get hold of him. Within the last few years the number of Missionary Associations has increased a hundredfold, and Missionary Deputations are necessary to keep up the missionary interest. A live missionary, fresh from his work, is regarded as absolutely necessary. And how indignant do some of the clergy become when the missionary shows that he intends to put some limit upon these demands! During my brief stay in England I was seized with a very severe attack of bronchitis, of which I nearly died; but, upon my recovery, I consented to preach in a certain cathedral city in behalf of the Society. I preached with very great difficulty, but, instead of my case exciting the least sympathy amongst my brother-clergy, one of them was positively indignant because I would not stay to address the meeting. My chief persecutor was a devoted old clergyman who had never had a day's illness in his life.

People, however, are usually very kind, very hospitable, and very considerate to the returned missionary on deputation. And now that I am once more far away from the shores of old England, and am writing my Reminiscences beneath a punkah with the thermometer at 104° in the shade, I look back with the deepest gratitude and pleasure upon the visits I paid to different parts of England as "a Deputation from the Parent Society." How I think with very shame as I remember that my request for a fire in my bed-room on one occasion compelled my kind hostess to take up the coal-box herself and prepare it at midnight! How well do I recollect another friend driving me through a heavy storm of rain to a distant railway station! What care do some kind missionary friends take of their Deputation! And how often does the Deputation count up these many "cups of cold water" when he is far removed from those pleasing scenes of country vicarages and town rectories!

Some missionary anniversaries are admirably managed. My mind at once reverts to that of a very successful association in one of the

large manufacturing towns in the centre of England. The anniversary begins with an address from the Deputation to missionary collectors and some of the local clergy on Saturday evening. Then, on Sunday, the Deputation is spared attendance at a children's meeting, but is sent to two leading churches to preach, morning and evening. Monday he addresses a large gathering of Sunday-school scholars. On Tuesday morning he meets the local clergy for the discussion of some missionary subject (for example, "What elements of God's own truth do you find existing in the false religious systems with which you contend?"), and in the evening he addresses a crowded and enthusiastic meeting in the Town Hall. The Bishop and the Archdeacon are generally present. The truth is that everything depends upon the view the local secretaries take of Missions. If they regard Missions just merely as one of the Church's charities, very much as a clothing-club or a soup-kitchen, or a temperance society-well, then the probability is that neither people, pastor, or Deputation will rise to the occasion. But if, on the contrary, a very high and grand view of Christ's great missionary legacy to His Church is taken, and Missions are regarded as par excellence the Church's work, then the probability is that the missionary anniversary becomes a means of stirring up, and of infusing new life and energy into all-including the Bishop and the Archdeacon. "Missionaries first," said a Church dignitary to me on one occasion as we went up on to the platform together; but it is only in the Free Church of Scotland that this high position has been indeed assigned to the missionary office. Its best men have become missionaries, and its best missionaries have been made Moderators.

But

The latest novelty in deputation work is the lawn party. although there are very ridiculous and amusing phases of this department of deputational service, I am of opinion that they are of immense service to the cause of Missions. They might be multiplied with advantage; but a genial, good-tempered, sociable, and "interesting" Deputation is absolutely required for a lawn party. A dry, dull, phlegmatic missionary in the midst of a green sward, with singing birds, rosebuds, and tea, is altogether out of place. The thin, pale, wan, emaciated returned missionary is the best Deputation for a small ladies' working party. Amongst such he becomes an object of pity and of interest.

If a Missionary Deputation may be allowed to have an opinion on the subject, I would venture to remark that, as a rule, societies do not take sufficient pains to ascertain the special gifts of their missionaries for deputational work. It is taken too much for granted that a returned missionary can do everything, from speaking in Exeter Hall to giving an address to an infant-school; although his labours abroad are by no means such as tend to cultivate the gifts of oratory.

There seems to be no probability of the demand for Missionary Deputations decreasing. People must be interested or they won't give. The age for great public meetings is perhaps passing away; and yet people are just as anxious to obtain reliable information on the subject of Missions, and will still go to meetings if they can get facts and figures put in an interesting way. The religious public care less about

"fireworks" than they did in the days of Hugh Stowell, but I think I observed, when at home, a desire to return to a more primitive form of missionary meeting, the object of which should be, as of old, to enable evangelists, on their return home, to "rehearse all that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles."

TWENTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN THE MISSIONS OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.*

N endeavouring to measure the progress of Foreign Missions during the last twenty years, it is not enough to compare the statistical returns of 1860 with those of 1880. Such a comparison can give but a very inadequate idea of the real change which in so short a time has come over the position and prospects of missionary enterprise. We need to project ourselves, so to speak, back into the atmosphere of 1860, and to see the world with the eyes of that period. Of course this is not really possible. We cannot, if we would, divest ourselves of the knowledge and experience that twenty years have gained. We cannot so abstract ourselves from the present as to live again in the past. Still, some imperfect conceptions of the missionary outlook in 1860 may be formed by seeing what the men who then stood upon the watch-tower said and thought. And I know nothing more deeply interesting than to take down the Annual Report of that or any other long past year, and just read it. Those who think current Reports dry will probably not relish this suggestion that they should read old ones; but I venture to think there is no more instructive literature, to those at least who delight in tracing out the accomplishment of the merciful purposes of God to a fallen world. A history will not do: it is written from the point of view of the writer's own date. What we want are contemporary documents. With a view to this paper, therefore, I have taken the Society's Annual Reports of 1859-60 and 1860-61, and have gleaned from them a very few of their facts and features, over against which I shall now place the facts and features of this present year. And when it is remembered that the Reports at that time were compiled by the revered Henry Venn, no doubt will be felt that the statements they contain are the statements of unequalled missionary experience and missionary foresight.

Beginning, as we naturally do, with AFRICA, we find the Report of 1860 lamenting that, owing to a fatal epidemic at Sierra Leone, thirteen European agents there had been reduced to six, and remarking that the motto of the Mission, as in former years, still was, "Troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed." These words may well be yet the motto of African Missions in 1880, though it is not to Sierra Leone that we

*The substance of a paper read at a Church Missionary Conference held at Leicester, June, 1880; and subsequently at similar conferences held at Lowestoft, Cambridge, and Nottingham.

should now apply them. Out of the very calamities the Society was then deploring, God brought good. "The Lord has reasons," continues Mr. Venn, "for every afflictive dispensation, and every apparent check to His work. It is for man to learn the lessons. One lesson taught by the deaths of Europeans is manifestly to urge forward the organization of the Native Church." And accordingly in that very year we find a new Bishop of Sierra Leone going out to succeed the sainted Bowen (who had been struck down by the epidemic), and making Native Church organization his special work. What is the result, in 1880? The European staff has never been restored to its former strength; it is lower now than ever before; the Society's expenditure in Sierra Leone is only one-third of what it was twenty years ago; yet the number of Native Christians has risen from 7000 to 15,000, and the Native Clergy are twenty-five instead of eight. And if we take in the other West Coast Missions, Yoruba and the Niger, we find 23,000 Native Christians against 9000, and fifty Native clergy against ten.

One of these West Coast Missions was in its infancy in 1860. Only three years before, Samuel Crowther had made the first attempt to plant Christian teachers at one or two points on the River Niger; and at the date of the Report he could not visit them because there was no vessel to take him. Two years more were to elapse before there would be any converts to baptize. The names, so familiar to us, of Brass and Bonny do not occur at all in the Report. A severe struggle, says Henry Venn, was to be anticipated with "the spirit of evil which had hitherto held undisputed sway in those regions, and had made the Niger a bye-path of cruelty, oppression, and blood;" but the Committee would rest upon the promise, "An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the redeemed shall walk there." And what do we see in 1880? We see a Native Bishop and ten other Native clergymen at work. We see ten stations occupied, some in the delta, and others extending more than 300 miles up the river. We see converts sealing their testimony with their blood. We see the people of Brass and Bonny-who, twenty years ago, were cannibals-now, led by kings and chiefs who have grown rich upon trade with England, attending Christian worship by hundreds, and giving signs of soon coming over to Christianity almost en masse. We see the royal idols handed over to the missionaries-and these we need not go to Africa to see-they stand conspicuous in the Society's museum in Salisbury Square. We see the mission steamer, so happily named the Henry Venn, speeding up and down the river from station to station, under the charge of a devoted Englishman, who is content thus to serve tables, that his African brethren may give themselves to the ministry of the Word. We have seen that same steamer, in 1879, ascending the unknown waters of the Upper Binue into lands never before visited by either trader or missionary, and finding large populations ready to welcome the messengers of the cross. And in this very year, 1880, we have seen the Royal Geographical Society presenting Bishop Crowther with a gold watch of the value of 401. in recognition of his services in the