In vain, with lavish kindness, The gifts of God are strown The heathen in his blindness Bows down to woods and stone! [Illustration: BISHOP HEBER'S MISSIONARY HYMN. (_Facsimile of part of the Original MS._)] The Church Missionary Society was really one of the fruits of the Evangelical Revival, though when the Society was born that movement was no longer young. Its first leaders had passed to their rest; it was their successors amongst whom the Church Missionary Society took its origin. They were, as history judges them, no mean persons, though in their own day they fell, for their religious zeal, under the condemnation of polite society, whether ecclesiastical or social. [Illustration: THE BOARD ROOM AT THE MISSION HOUSE.] That meeting in Aldersgate Street did not include some of those to whom the foundation of the Church Missionary Society must directly be referred; but, if we look at the circle they represented, we shall find that it was one of rare distinction in the religious history of the country. It included William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, Charles Grant, James Stephen, and Henry Thornton on the lay side; Charles Simeon, John Newton, Thomas Scott, Richard Cecil, and William Goode amongst the clergy. The impulse which moved them was moving others, for the Baptist Missionary Society had been founded by Carey in 1793, and the London Missionary Society in 1795. The Religious Tract Society also began its existence in this year 1799, and the Bible Society was founded in 1804. It was a fruitful epoch. Yet it has to be remembered that it began under ecclesiastical discouragement, and amidst such popular contempt of missions to the heathen as was reflected in Sydney Smith's essay. I do not propose to trace in detail the history of the Church Missionary Society: within the space of a magazine article such an attempt could do little more than produce a list of names and dates. It may be more useful, as well as more interesting, to look at some of the Society's great workers at home, at some of its heroes in the mission-field, and at some of the romances which diversify its history. [Illustration: THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S MISSION HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE.]