Livro Memoir of the REV. Samuel J. Mills; Late Missionary to the South Western Section of the United States, and Agent of the American Colonization Society, Deputed to Explore the Coast of Africa

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Among the projects in which Mr, Mills took a deep interest. and which was the first in his own estimation at the time it was conceived, was the design of propagating the Gospel among the Heathen in foreign lands, by means of Missionaries from this country.

It is interesting to trace the connexion between the plans and measures devised by this single youth in Williams' College, and many of the great movements which have since taken place in the American Church.

Though very little is to be found among his own papers, which would disclose his instrumentality, the almost universal acknowledgement of men interested in Missionary concerns, attributes to Mr. Mills a distinguished agency in bringing forward a new era in the history of Missions in this Western World.

The dawn of a Missionary spirit had began to appear in some of the American churches before. To those who have observed the signs of the times, it cannot be doubtful that a new and splendid era on the other side of the Atlantic was introduced about eight-and-twenty years ago.

In the year 1792, the first Missionary Society was established by Carey, Fuller, Pearce, and Ryland, at Kettering, in England. In 1795, the London Missionary Society was instituted; and from this period Missionary Institutions have been increasing in number throughout the four quarters of the globe.

America began gradually to participate in the sacred spirit. Aside from an establishment formed by the Moravians in 1734, and a branch of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge among the Indians in North America, which was instituted at Boston, in 1787, the honour of commencing the first Missionary exertions in the United States belongs to the General ...