Instructions.—September, 1854

We are met together to take leave of a large body of missionaries going to distant and widely differing fields of labour—to West Africa, India, Ceylon, China, and the Mediterranean.

The Committee have so frequently addressed their missionaries upon the main principles and chief motives of missionary work, that they feel justified in omitting these upon the present occasion, in order to touch upon a topic of great practical importance, which the present aspect of the missionary field brings into prominent notice—namely, the proper conduct of a missionary in respect of social and political questions which may seem to be connected with the progress of his spiritual work.

The one object of the Church Missionary Society is to provide for the preaching of the Gospel of Christ to those who have not yet received it, and to train up the Christian converts in the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.

But the blessings of the Gospel when received tend to elevate the social position of the converts, and to instruct them in the true principles of justice and humanity, and so to quicken in their minds the sense of the wrongs they may suffer through oppression and misgovernment. A knowledge also of Christian duty, while it secures obedience to the sovereign powers, limits that obedience to things lawful in the sight of God as defined in His Word, and so far often interferes with the institutions of heathen and Mohammedan governments.