This example was contagious. In 1795 °The Missionary Society" was formed in London by the union of notable men of four different de nominations. Its name was afterward changed to "The London Missionary Society?' It is (1915) substantially composed of Independents (Congregationalists) alone, and has 480 mis sionaries and 7,000 native preachers and teachers, in Polynesia, New Guinea, Madagas car, Africa, India and China. In 1796 two similar societies were formed in Scotland which at first aided the London Society, but later took up independent work in the West Indies and in South Africa, and finally (1624) became merged in the Church of Scotland Foreign Missionary Committee, of which a later (1843) offshoot was what has now become the Foreign Missionary Society of the United Free Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland Foreign Missionary Committee now has 120 mission aries and 1,200 native workers, and the United Free Church has 541 missionaries and 5,093 native preachers and teachers in India,. China, Africa, Arabia, the New Hebrides, Manchuria and the West Indies. The same impulse led in 1797 to the formation in Holland of the Netherlands Missionary Society. This was first an auxiliary of the London Missionary Society but soon undertook independent work. In 1913 it had 63 missionaries and 154 native workers in the Dutch East Indies.
The same conviction of responsibility to gether with realization of the extent and con dition of the heathen world led in 1797 to the organization in London of 26 men belonging to the Church of England as the "Society for Missions to Africa and the East." This name later gave place to the familiar one of the "Church Missionary Society?" Among its founders were William Wilberforce, Henry Venn and Charles Simeon; but the Church of England gave the Society no encouragement until the successes of nearly 50 years compelled recognition. Hence the first missionaries of this Society were commonly Germans; for the most part men of the highest ability and attain ments. The fields of the Church Missionary Society are India, Ceylon, China, Japan, Africa, Mauritius, New Zealand, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan and the Arctic regions of British North America. It has (1915) 1,369 missionaries and 11,181 native preachers and teachers.
Missionary enterprises next began to sprinr up in Germany and in America. The marked characteristic of the movement in every case was the same profound conviction of individ uals, commonly not officials of the churches to which they belonged. Five students of Wil liams College in Massachusetts furnished the initiative that resulted in the organization of the "American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" in 1810. This was at first an interdenominational society. Its first mis sionaries, Newell, Judson, Hall, Rice and Nott, were sent to India and were ordered out of the country by the East India Company the moment they landed. Judson and Rice took refuge with the English Baptists at Serampur, while the others succeeded in effecting a lodg ment at Bombay and in Ceylon. The fields of
this Society in 1915 were India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Africa, the Balkan States, Turkey, Aus tria, Spain, Mexico, the Philippines and Micro nesia. Its missionaries number 656 and its na tive laborers 4,777. After 40 years of exist ence as an interdenominational society, it handed over its missions in Persia, Syria and the Gabun region of West Africa to the Pres byterians, and part of its field in South India to the American Reformed (Dutch) Church, and has become substantially a Congregationalist body. Judson and Rice of the earliest mis sionaries of this Society decided on arriving in India that they would prefer to serve under a Baptist organization and this decision led to the formation in 1814 of what is now the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society of Boston. Burma was, the field selected for its first efforts and the heroic work of Adoniram Judson in that land made his name great among modern Protestant missionaries. The Society had in 1915 701 missionaries and 8,589 native laborers in Burma. Siam, Assam, India, China, Japan, the Philippines and Africa.
Meantime, in Germany, Jannicke of Berlin, whose brother was a missionary of the °Danish Halle" band in South India, opened a Mission ary Training School at Berlin in 1800. This school during the next 25 years furnished about 80 missionaries to the service of the English and Dutch societies, and served to arouse in terest in missions among the Germans. Its influence led in 1815 to the establishment of a Missionary Training Institute at Basel in Ger man Switzerland. The latter institute furnished many admirable men to the service of other societies and in 1822 began to send out mission aries of its own. The fields of the Basel Mis sionary Society are in India, China and Africa, and graduates of its institute are pastors of Protestant churches in Turkey. In 1913 it had in the field about 475 missionaries and 624 native workers.
In 1824 10 strong men in the Lutheran Church, among whom were Neander and Tho luck, formed the Berlin Missionary Society; beginning operations, according to the wise con tinental practice, by opening a training school for missionaries. It began to send out mission aries in 1834 and now carries on missions in Africa and China. It had in 1913 about 150 missionaries (wives of missionaries not counted) and 1,000 native preachers and teachers. Other missionary societies sprang up in Germany during the first quarter of the 19th century. Of these the Rhenish Missionary Society is perhaps the largest. Its fields were in South Africa, China, Sumatra, Borneo and New Cuinea. It has 382 missionaries and 1,340 native laborers. There are a score, at least, of other German missionary societies • of which the chief are the Gossner Society, the Her mannsburg, the Leipzig, the North German and the Breklum societies, working in the Dutch East Indies, Africa, India, China, Australia and Turkey.