Some
persons went about it by giving their money to any Missionary Society
that made fair promises, without heeding whether it were schismatic or
not; others had more patience, and trusted their alms to the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, which was managed by the English Bishops.
The American colonies had, by this time, grown impatient of the English
Government, and had shaken it off, calling themselves the United States.
The Church people among them obtained some Bishops from the Scottish
branch of the Church, which the Calvinists had never been able to put
down; and every one of the many United States has now a Bishop of its
own.
Calcutta was the first English colony to receive a Bishop, in the year
1814. The second Bishop was Reginald Heber, whose beautiful hymns seem
the birthright of our Church, like those of Bishop Ken, one hundred
and fifty years before. Still very little was done with the natives of
India; they were attached to their foul old religion, and Government
forbade any open measures against it, though here and there was a
conversion; and there have at length come to be three Bishops' Sees, and
in the south of the peninsula, in the See of Madras, there are a hopeful
number of Christians.
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