History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

in both hemispheres, and which proposes the evangelization of the whole race, appeared in the latter
part of the eighteenth century. Societies for the propagation of the gospel had previously existed in
Great Britain, but they were provided chiefly, if not exclusively, for the Christianization of countries
which, by reason of their political dependence upon England, were deemed to have special claims
on British Christianity -- the inhabitants of India and the Indians of North America. An historian of
missions, writing in 1844, says: "It was not until almost within the last fifty years that the efforts of
the religious bodies by whom Christian missions are now most vigorously supported were
[8]
commenced." Methodism was essentially a missionary movement, domestic and foreign. It
initiated not only the spirit, but the practical plans of modern English missions. Bishop Coke so
represented the enterprise in his own person for many years as to supersede the necessity of any more
formal organization of it, but it was none the less real and energetic. The historian just cited says
"The Wesleyan Missionary Society was formed in 1817, but the first Wesleyan missionaries who
went out, under the superintendence of Coke, entered the British colonies in 1786. The Baptist
Missionary Society was established in 1792, the London Missionary Society in 1795, and the
Edinburgh or Scottish and the Glasgow Missionary Societies in 1796. The subject also engaged the
attention of many pious persons belonging to the Established Church, besides those connected with
the London Missionary Society, and by members of that communion. The Church Missionary
Society was organized in the first year of the present century." The London Missionary Society,
embracing most Dissenting bodies of England, arose under the influence of Calvinistic Methodism,
and the Church Missionary Society sprang from the evangelical Low Church party which
Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, had resuscitated in the Establishment, Venn, the son of the
Methodist churchman Venn, being its projector.
Though Coke represented the Arminian-Methodist Mission interest as its founder, secretary,
treasurer, and collector, it really took a distinct form some six years before the formation of the first
of the above named societies. Coke spent more than a year in bringing the Negro missions before
the English people immediately after his second visit to the West Indies. In 1786 a formal address
was issued to the public in behalf of a comprehensive scheme of Methodist missions. It was entitled
"An Address to the Pious and Benevolent, proposing an Annual Subscription for the Support of
Missionaries in the highlands and adjacent Islands of Scotland, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and
Newfoundland, the West Indies, and the Provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec. By Thomas Coke,
LL.D. 1786." It speaks of "a mission intended to be established in the British dominions in Asia,"
but which was postponed till these more inviting fields should be occupied. This scheme was called
in the address an "Institution;" it was really such; though not called a society, it was one in all
essential respects; and if the fact that it was not an extra-ecclesiastical plan, but a part of the system
of Methodism, should detract from its claim of precedence in respect to later institutions of the kind,
that consideration would equally detract from the Moravian missions, which were conducted in a like
manner. The address filled several pages, and was prefaced by a letter from Wesley indorsing the
whole plan.
The next year (1787) the Wesleyan Missions bore the distinctive title of "Missions established
by the Methodist Society." At the last Conference attended by Wesley (1790) a committee of nine
preachers, of which Coke was chairman, was appointed to take charge of this new interest. Coke
continued to conduct its chief business; but the committee were his standing counsel, and formed,
in fact, a Mission Board of Managers two years before the organization of the first of British