Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/134

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DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

become, it was felt that Englishmen were too honourable to condescend to such an act, and, in the second place, that the people responsible for the proposal would not have captured the Society so long as it had vitality and was doing God's work as He meant it to be done.

The secretaryship of a missionary society is no sinecure. An illustration of this fact is found in the recent action of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a committee of Bishops in prevailing upon the Bishop of Tasmania, the Right Rev. Henry Hutchinson Montgomery, D.D., son-in-law of Dean Farrar, to resign his Bishopric in order to undertake the secretaryship of the S.P.G. Immensely different in character to the oversight of a Colonial Diocese, there is arduous work before Dr Montgomery. The services and devotion to the C.M.S. of Prebendary Wigram, the late Hon. Secretary, are well remembered. So completely did he identify himself with the Society that his beautiful home at Hampstead was always open to missionaries in sickness and in health. On several occasions he made handsome gifts to the Society.

The Rev. H. E. Fox, who has succeeded him and has just been offered a prebendal stall in St Paul's Cathedral, has what may be described as a hereditary interest in the C.M.S. His father was one of the two pioneers who commenced the Society's missions to the Telugus in South India in 1841.