institute a process so flagrantly at variance with that discipline? The catechist proposal was quickly dropped; missionaries must be ordained clergy. Venn had previously toyed with the idea of a special ordination for overseas service, which would be justified on the ground that preaching to people at a low stage of civilization did not demand the social and educational attributes necessary to the place the clergy held in English society. But the counter was obvious: a person ordained for overseas service could not be prevented from returning to an English benefice. The mission field would then become an open invitation to social climbers. It was for this reason that the CMS took five years to get its first mission-aries to the mission field. The office of missionary was a clerical one, not to

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-90

Chapter

institute a process so flagrantly at variance with that discipline? The catechist proposal was quickly dropped; missionaries must be ordained clergy. Venn had previously toyed with the idea of a special ordination for overseas service, which would be justified on the ground that preaching to people at a low stage of civilization did not demand the social and educational attributes necessary to the place the clergy held in English society. But the counter was obvious: a person ordained for overseas service could not be prevented from returning to an English benefice. The mission field would then become an open invitation to social climbers. It was for this reason that the CMS took five years to get its first mission-aries to the mission field. The office of missionary was a clerical one, not to

Chapter

institute a process so flagrantly at variance with that discipline? The catechist proposal was quickly dropped; missionaries must be ordained clergy. Venn had previously toyed with the idea of a special ordination for overseas service, which would be justified on the ground that preaching to people at a low stage of civilization did not demand the social and educational attributes necessary to the place the clergy held in English society. But the counter was obvious: a person ordained for overseas service could not be prevented from returning to an English benefice. The mission field would then become an open invitation to social climbers. It was for this reason that the CMS took five years to get its first mission-aries to the mission field. The office of missionary was a clerical one, not to

ABSTRACT

In Scotland missionary activity before 1829, when the Church of Scotland began its own mission, was mainly conducted through voluntary societies based in Edinburgh and Glasgow on the ecumenical model of the London Missionary Society.23 This involved less the bridging of denominational divides than the uniting of Presbyterians of diverse affiliation, holding together members of the established church with those of the various voluntarist seceding bodies. (The strain eventually became too much for the Glasgow Missionary Society, which split into establishment and voluntarist sections.) Both societies adopted a rule that their missionaries should have completed the procedures for ordination in their respective churches before being sent out. The rule proved impossible to implement; most of the early offers of service were from artisans, and few of the early missionaries completed the course of study for the ministry. The results of the early commissions were not uniformly encouraging: one missionary turned slave trader, another returned to promote atheism in Scotland. The Glasgow society decided to send no more artisans; the Edinburgh society decided to establish its own hall for training missionaries. The society had been in existence 25 years before the hall was set up.24