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The selection and training of missionaries in the early nineteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peter Hinchliff*
Affiliation:
Rhodes University, South Africa

Extract

Anyone who studies the techniques and strategy of early nineteenth-century missionaries and (even more) of early nineteenth-century missionary societies can hardly avoid gaining the impression that they suffered from a romantic casualness. It is as if zealous Christians of the period were so convinced that the Lord would guide and provide for the missionary that he really did not need much mundane preparation. Nineteenth-century missionaries often simply disappeared into bush, desert or jungle, stopped when they came to a site where there was food, water and heathen, and preached in whatever language happened to be available.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1970

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References

Page 131 of note 1 Some of these portraits still survive and are kept in the society’s archives.

Page 131 of note 2 See e.g. letter from Whitworth, J., dated 8 April 1826, defending himself against charges of ‘unjustifiable expenditure’—the Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Box IV — Cape, File 1826 Google Scholar.

Page 132 of note 1 Krüger, B., Genadendal and its Satellites (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1965), pp. 15 fGoogle Scholar.

Page 132 of note 2 London Missionary Society Archives, Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A, J. T. Vanderkemp, 26 July 1797.

Page 132 of note 3 See also the society’s undated instructions to Vanderkemp in the same jacket.

Page 132 of note 4 London Missionary Society Archives, Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket C, T. Haweis, 22 February 1799.

Page 133 of note 1 United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Archives, South Africa — Box 2, Folder 32, W. A. Steabler, 9 September 1846.

Page 133 of note 2 Ibid. W. A. Steabler, 21 October 1846.

Page 133 of note 3 Bentley, Muriel, ‘Philip Quaque’, Church Quarterly Review, CLXVII (April-June 1966), 151 fGoogle Scholar.

Page 133 of note 4 For the early, and comparatively enlightened, rules of the Glasgow Missionary Society relating to the selection of missionaries, their training and qualifications, see Glasgow Missionary Society Quarterly Paper (June 1828), pp. 3 f.

Page 133 of note 5 Shepherd, R. H. W., Lovedale, South Africa, 1841-1141 (Lovedale 1941), p. 29 Google Scholar.

Page 133 of note 6 Ibid. pp. 153 f.

Page 133 of note 7 See the regulations of the Glasgow Missionary Society referred to above, and those of Bishop Cotterill of Grahamstown in Lewis, C. and Edwards, G. E., Historical Records of the Church of the Province of S. Africa, SPCK (London 1934), p. 263 Google Scholar.

Page 134 of note 1 Ayliff’s Diary, Government Archives, Cape Town, Acc. 80/I.

Page 134 of note 2 Moffat, Robert, Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa (London 1842), P. 243.Google Scholar