The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel commenced work in 1873; and has its headquarters at Tokio. The work of the two Community Missions, founded by Bishop Bickersteth in 1887, is apparently included in the statistics assigned to the S. P. G. in the table before us. At St. Andrew's University Mission, five clergy--all of whom are University Graduates,--live in community with several native students preparing for Ordination, while at St. Hilda's Mission, a staff of English ladies is engaged in work, which includes schools, a hospital, and a home for mission women. Both these Missions are supported by the "Guild of St. Paul,"--a society which has branches all over England,--whose occasional papers are full of interesting information. Several other priests of the S. P. G. are engaged at various mission stations; and these, with seven native ministers, make in all some nineteen clergy at work in Japan. The adult baptisms in 1892 numbered 151, and the membership at the present time is given as 784.
The Wyckliffe College Mission was sent out by the Canadian Church in 1888. At present it provides only three clergy, who are engaged at Nagoya, a flourishing commercial city situated about midway between Kyoto and Tokio. Bishop Bickersteth, however, in his recent Pastoral Letter, refers to its work in hopeful and appreciative terms.
The total number of adherents of the Nippon Sei Kokwai will thus be seen to be about 4,300 (with upwards of 2,000 Sunday Scholars); and of these the Church of England can claim barely 3,000. At the same time evidence is by no means lacking that the work is being carried on upon thoroughly sound principles and along right lines; and there are many reasons for believing that, with adequate resources, a future awaits it, under God, far exceeding the calculations that might be suggested by its present numerical strength. Some of the readers of these pages may, possibly, be in greater sympathy with the general position of the S. P. G. than of the C. M. S; but no consideration of this sort should allow us to be inappreciative of the splendid work which the C. M. S. has done in the past, and is still doing in non-Christian countries. Its chief centre in Japan is at Osaka, another huge commercial city, some twenty miles from Kyoto where there is a considerable European settlement. Bishop Bickersteth--as does also the American Bishop, Dr. Williams(32)--resides at Tokio, the capital; where the services at St. Andrew's Church, adjoining the Episcopal residence, are such as may well gladden the heart of an English Churchman, who finds himself 11,000 miles from home. They include, I may mention, a Daily Celebration. A striking feature of the Nippon Sei Kokwai is presented in its Biennial Synods, three, if not four, of which have already been held. The Synods are composed of clergy and laity, every congregation of twenty persons being entitled to send its representative; and they indicate a stage of organization rarely, if ever, attained to by so youthful a Church. In a word, what is being aimed at throughout is not to Europeanize, but to Christianize; not to form a "branch of the Church of England," but to establish, on those lines of Catholic and Apostolic Christianity which we believe the Church of England faithfully represents, a _Japanese Church_, which may be committed, as soon as ever circumstances allow, entirely into the hands of the Japanese themselves.