laymen, elected at the annual meeting, all clergy who have subscribed not less than half-a-guinea for not less than a year, and all honorary and other governors—the former by election, the latter by an annual subscription of five guineas or a donation of £50. The administration is divided among several departments. There are three groups of missions, each in charge of a secretary. There is an editorial department with two secretaries ; a home department for the collection of funds and the supply of deputations; a finance department; and a department for the selection and preparation of candidates—each in charge of a secretary. Besides these, according to a long-standing custom, there is an honorary secretary whose department, if not exactly defined, keeps in touch with all the others, both for the unifying of the work and for representing the Society in its dealings with the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church at home and abroad.
The democratic government which obtains with the C.M.S. has been suggested as a source of danger. It has proved otherwise—i.e., a fountain of strength. A proposal was said to have been made in the days of the Oxford movement that the C.M.S. should be captured in the interests of the High Church party by the introduction of a number of half-guinea subscribers to outvote the authorities. But the C.M.S., it is said, viewed such a proposal as impossible of accomplishment, for, in the first place, however bitterly party feeling may have
