ABSTRACT
The lengthy intermediate period between the death of the first Protestant bishop in Jerusalem, Michael Solomon Alexander, and the inauguration of the new Jerusalem bishop was not beneficial to the London Society mission station. The total identification that existed between the modest mission station in Jerusalem and the prestigious institution of the bishopric during the Alexander period had raised the missionary enterprise to heights it had not earlier known. Now, after the death of the charismatic figure who had led this forward stride, a feeling of depression overcame those engaged in the missionary field in Palestine. The experienced missionary, Erasmus Scott Calman, gave voice to this feeling in his letter to Alexander’s widow written a few months after her husband’s death:
The affairs of the Jerusalem mission…is neither I fear prospering nor is it in a healthy state. The Jerusalem mission has lost much in my estimation and judgment of what is really true and valuable, by the removal of the Bishop your late beloved husband who acted as a connected link between Jews and Gentile. Since that event, I am sorry to say, everything here has assumed a form of isolation and separation.1
