ABSTRACT
T here is no more glorious chapter in the modern history of Christianity than that which tells the story of its work in the mission-field. The bulk of that work has been suilt up in the last century, which has been the great age of the missionary societies. Government interest in missions died down after the seventeenth century, the missionary no longer being regarded as a necessary agent in colonisation. On the contrary, the effort to introduce Christianity seemed more likely to bring, not peace, but a sword; and so we find the Honourable East India Company charging itself with the upkeep of heathen temples while it refused the first English missionary to India a passage in a British ship and would not allow him to land on British territory. The deistic flavour of religion during the eighteenth century made the Churches only too ready to acquiesce in this neglect of the heathen, and if it had not been for the Roman Catholic Church the work of evangelisation would have almost died out. In 1784 there were, apart from the Roman missions, not more than six missionary societies and two hundred missionaries in the world, and of the latter at least half were Moravians. By the end of the century, when the population of the world was about 960 millions, the number of the Christians was not greater than 174 millions, and the vast majority of them were, of course, in Europe.
