All of these state enterprises in the line of foreign Protestant missions were uncertain in method and precarious in stability. They served, at least, to show the possibility of prosecuting missions in the colonies, but were sufficiently barren to suggest the formation of those volun tary societies for missionary effort which proved to be the effective form in which the mission ary idea among Protestants was to express itself.
Unsatisfactory religious conditions in the East India Company's trading posts led in 1698 to the organization of the "Society for the Pro motion of Christian Knowledge," with the pur pose of providing books and schools for neglected English communities, and in 1701 to the appearance of the "Society for the Propaga tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," intended to provide for the religious culture of English men residing in foreign lands. Both of these societies were directed by the Church of Eng land, although voluntary in form and in the sources of their revenues. Neither of them were foreign missionary societies. But the first now publishes books in Oriental languages, and it saved the Danish Mission in South India from dying with its royal founder, and supported it during a century, until it was taken over by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. This latter society, too, has gradually taken up the work of evangelizing pagans until it has (1915) 1,005 missionaries in India, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Africa and the West Indies, with nearly 3,500 native clergy and laymen in the various departments of its work. These two societies then, founded about the beginning of the 18th century, may be considered as the pio neers of the voluntary foreign missionary socie ties of Protestant Christendom.
It was not until the 19th century was about to dawn, however, that a general movement toward missionary enterprises began among Protestants in Europe and America. This movement grew out of that revival of personal religion in the 18th century which was fostered by the writings of Spencer and Franke, the Pietists of Halle, and by the devoted lives of -men like David Brainard of Connecticut, and Zinzendorf, the patron and leader of the Mora vians, and was stimulated 'by the exhortations of Whitefield, the Wesleys and Jonathan Ed wards, and by the example of the "Unity of 'Brethren" (Unitas Fratrum or Bride. Unita° as the Moravians call themselves. The Mora vians, not as a church that begs men to volun teer, but as a community in which every mem ber has equal interest in evangelism, were the first decided champions of Protestant missions.
They held it the duty of all Christians to tell men what benefits they had received from Jesus Christ. They established missions be tween 1732 and 1770 in the West Indies, in Greenland, in the Indian settlements of North America, among the Hottentots of South Africa, and in Labrador. They (1913) support 359 missionaries and 2,157 native preachers and teachers in their various mission fields which include, besides those already named, Alaska, Australia and the border lands of Tibet. The English Wesleyans should also be reckoned with the Moravians as having taken up mis sions in advance of the general movement of the Protestant churches. They did not formally organize the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society until 1814. But in 1779 they employed missionaries among the North American In dians, and in 1786 they began an important work among the slaves of the West Indies. The Society has (1915) 807 missionaries, and 5,756 native workers and teachers in India, Ceylon, South Africa, China, Polynesia and the West Indies.
Before this extension of Wesleyan missions took place a surprising outburst of zeal for the missionary idea appeared almost simultaneously in England, in the United States and on the Continent of Europe. It was a revolution, since formalism had made the Protestant churches almost forget that to be a Christian means to be always in some sense a missionary. The characteristic feature of the movement was its origin in the conscientious convictions of isolated individuals, from whom the Church did not expect initiative and whom it sometimes regarded as unsteady enthusiasts. William Carey, a cobbler and a Baptist minister in Eng land, made the first move in 1786 and was frowned down by his elders. But in 1792 his earnest conviction carried the day; 12 men united to form the Baptist Missionary Society (England), and Carey and Thomas went to India as its first missionaries. There is no space here to describe the marvelous activities of Carey and his associates Marshman, Ward and others, at the Danish trading post of Serampur near Calcutta, where they were given asylum when the East India Company refused to tolerate their presence in its territories. The great school buildings which these missionaries erected at Serampur stands to-day, and their press added to the then slender stock of Bible translations passably good versions of Scrip ture in 34 Oriental languages and dialects. The Baptist Missionary Society has (1915) 477 mis sionaries and 2,000 native preachers and teachers in India, Ceylon, China, Africa and the West Indies.