REV F E WIGRAM 1880-1895 (PHOTO ELLIOTT & FRY) REV H E FOX appointed 1895 (PHOTO ELLIOTT & FRY) Robert A Shield 99 ] The name of Edward Bickersteth seems a natural succession to that of Simeon. The influence of both is still unexhausted. When the Church Missionary Society kept its second Jubilee in November, 1898, the sermon was preached by Bishop E. H. Bickersteth, the son of Edward Bickersteth. And the influence had been wider than the limits of any one Society, for Bishop Edward Bickersteth, of Japan, who died in 1897, represented another generation in this line of truly apostolic succession. Edward Bickersteth had been a solicitor in prosperous circumstances when zeal for missions led him to take holy orders, and join the Church Missionary Society as Assistant Secretary in 1816. Almost at once he was sent to examine the Society's work at Sierra Leone. There he admitted the Society's first African converts to the Holy Communion. In 1824 he succeeded Josiah Pratt in the Secretaryship of the Society. He was never an autocrat in the sense that Henry Venn was; but his work for the Society in the country was enormous. It has ceased to be the kind of work which is mainly done by the Honorary Secretary of the Society, but at that period it was work which was of inestimable value. It was the more important because public opinion at home still presented a front of mingled contempt and indifference to missions, whilst abroad the outlook was far from hopeful. [Illustration: ZENANA WORK. BIBLE SELLING IN EASTERN BAZAARS. TEACHING THE YOUNG. LECTURING TO CHINESE HELPERS. ITINERATING THROUGH THE VILLAGES. SOME METHODS OF WORK. ]