A greater figure than that of Edward Bickersteth in the annals of the Church Missionary Society is that of Henry Venn. Here, too, the name appears in more than one generation. The first Henry Venn belongs, with Wesley, Whitfield, Romaine and others, to the beginnings of the Evangelical Revival. Then comes John Venn, who took the chair at "The Castle and Falcon" meeting. Then, in 1834, Henry Venn the younger, the son of John Venn and grandson of the first Henry Venn, began regularly to attend the Society's Committee. He was Hon. Secretary in 1841, and held office for thirty-one years. He is the standard by which, doubtless, for generations to come, Hon. Secretaries of the Church Missionary Society will be compared. He was a strong man in every sense; a statesman and an autocrat. But, like some other autocrats, he clung to his work too long. He resigned only a few months before his death, and left the Society in a condition of discouragement, from the failure both of candidates for the mission field and of means for carrying on the work. Under his successor, Henry Wright (who was drowned in Coniston Lake in 1880), the Society began almost at once to enter upon new life and activity. Here again the hereditary influence, so manifest in the work of the Church Missionary Society, is evident, for four of his children went to the mission field. His successor, Frederic Wigram, was one of the most munificent benefactors the Society ever had. He died, after resigning office, worn out by its responsibility and toil. He, too, has sent children to the mission-field. In his successor, the Rev. H. E. Fox, the hereditary impulse is manifest again. Mr. Fox's father was one of the founders of the Society's Telugu mission, and one of the most devoted of its workers in the foreign field. And now let us glance for a moment at some of the Society's agents abroad. The task of selection is difficult. There are names on the list that all men who care for missions have heard of. Samuel Marsden, Samuel Crowther, Valpy French, Pfander, John Horden, James Hannington, Alexander Mackay--these, to name but a few, and many others, are familiar far outside the limits of the Society's own friends. But there are more, less widely known, whose work deserves not a whit less to be had in remembrance. [Illustration: (_From Photo: supplied by the Church Missionary Society._) CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S TRAINING COLLEGE AT AGRA. (_With students in foreground._)] Amongst these was William Johnson, one of the first missionaries to Sierra Leone. He went out in 1816, and began an extraordinary work amongst the slaves released by British cruisers and landed at Sierra Leone. He died on the voyage home to England at the early age of thirty-four. Those were the days in which to face work in Sierra Leone meant facing a peril so imminent that each volunteer needed the courage of those who go upon a forlorn hope.