ABSTRACT
China, which gave the world paper, gunpowder, the compass and the printing press and vaunted its self-sufficiency, was unaware of, uninterested in and eventually undone by the European industrial revolution. The first Protestant missionary to work in China was Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society (LMS), in 1807; over the next 30 years barely fifty followed in his wake. Methodism in north China was of two varieties, American and British. The Methodist New Connexion launched its mission in the port of Tianjin 1861 and concentrated its activities in Shandong province, while the Americans were based in Beijing. The life of the District, along with all Christian mission in China, was overshadowed throughout the period by the international treaties imposed on the Chinese. David Hill's furlough was as momentous as his ministry. He made the case for lay missionaries, still a rarity for the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS), though increasingly employed by the China Inland Mission (CIM).
