H - INDEPENDENT ACTION OF C. M. SOCIETY

Summary

Terms of Acceptance of Candidates

Minute, etc.—The Rev. E. D. Rhodes having submitted a question to the Committee of the Church Missionary Society on the part of the ‘Bath and Wells Missionary Candidates Association,’ in these words:

‘Would the Committee of the Church Missionary Society refuse to examine a candidate for admission to the College at Islington, sent up by that Association?

After a full discussion of the question, the Committee passed the following resolution:

‘That having regard to the ecclesiastical character and constitution of the Bath and Wells Diocesan Missionary Candidates Association, this Committee would regard themselves as placed in a false position, if they were to enter upon the examination of missionary candidates who have been already examined and recommended as ‘missionary candidates’ by such Diocesan Association.

The Committee have since been requested to reconsider their resolution; they proceed, therefore, to review the whole subject, and to state more explicitly the grounds of that resolution.

During the Indian Mutiny an earnest call arose in many quarters for missionary candidates. The Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury to send a circular letter to all the Bishops of England and Wales, asking them to take such measures as might seem to them best for procuring missionary candidates for that Society.