LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY
Few organisations in Hongkong have rendered such splendid and disinterested service to the Community as the London Missionary Society. Established here in 1843, ninety years of constant effort to relieve suffering and spread the Gospel.
But the history of the London Missionary Society goes back further than a mere ninety years. As far back as 1896, its centenary was celebrated in Hongkong. On Wednesday, March 4 of that year, a meeting was held in the City Hall to bring before the public, facts relating to the work that had been accomplished by missionaries in Hongkong since it became a British Colony.
The Acting Chief Justice (the Hon. Mr. W. M. Goodman) presided and Burdon, Dr. Eitel, the Rev. J. Chalmers, Dr. Thompson, the Rev. J. Bennett, the Rev. T. W. Pierce, the Rev. G. J. Williams, the Rev. W. Musson, Commander A. R. Risk, the Hon. Dr. Ho Kai, Messrs. J. H. Dyer Ball, Granville Sharp, and Wong Shing.
According to a pamphlet read to the meeting, the London Missionary Society, originally the Missionary Society, was founded in September, 1795, by a number of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists on non-sectarian lines, the propagation of the Gospel being the sole object in view. Gradually the two former sects withdrew, and by 1895 the Society was chiefly though not entirely Congregationalist.
During the hundred years the Society had been working, it had sent out more than 1,000 missionaries to all parts of the world.
The Society began work in Hongkong almost immediately after the cession of the island to Great Britain. A hospital was opened in 1843 and the first superintendents were Dr. Hobson and Dr. Legge. Shortly afterwards, the Society's Anglo-Chinese College was removed from Malacca to Hongkong and with a missionary attached to this college rests the credit of making the first fount of Chinese characters to be used for printing purposes in Hongkong. Among those attracted to the Society were such famous men as Dr. Morrison, Dr. Medhurst and Dr. Legge.
One of the principal duties of the workers of the Society was the establishment of hospitals, in which the benefits of a Christian civilisation might more plainly and practically be presented to the native residents.
Prosperous from the very start, the Society in time acquired the Alice Memorial and Nethersole Hospitals which were supported entirely by local funds. A number of dispensaries were opened in various parts of the city and stations were erected in outlying villages where advice and medicine were supplied free.
Addressing the centenary meeting, Mr. W. H. Whiting, one of the secretaries of the Society, said: "It has been arranged that a brief statement concerning the history of Christian Missions in Hongkong shall be placed before you. That history is altogether different from that of most missions, and you will fail to appreciate the work done in this Colony unless those differences are clearly understood. While, for instance, in India, in Polynesia, in Madagascar and in South Africa first Christian missionaries found old races long in possession of the soil, those who came to this island have from the first had to deal with a shifting and variable population, of recent importation, of differing languages, of (to a large extent) unsettled occupations, and possessing few of those characteristics of a long established community, which in every age and country have been found to facilitate the introduction of Christianity. They have had to deal with men drawn by commercial and industrial considerations from their homes in the towns and villages of south-east China; men whose deepest interests lie in those homes, and who frequently return to them. Such removals may help to spread the Gospel in China, but they necessarily weaken the young churches here, and the constant tendency is to swamp the Christian community by fresh bodies of men and women drawn from the enormous population on the mainland. Nor has Christianity had many aids in its progress here. It has not acquired
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