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Westminster" began to work toward this new religious organization which, on March 8, 1699, took shape in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, (the S. P. C. K.) a society which, "in furthering the 'Gospel of Peace,' tended to bring concord to all nations."

In looking for one moment to the future rather than to the past, does not this event hold a happy augury for us?

At the first meeting of the S. P. C. K., five men were present—one a nobleman, one a country gentleman, two lawyers, and one a clergyman, Doctor Bray, the commissary to Maryland. At once Doctor Bray set forth the need of the American Plantations, asking for missionaries, libraries, pensions and provisions for widows and children of the missionaries.

Two years later, in March, 1701, he reports that "nine missionaries to the Plantations are in a very fair way of being completed," and £800 had been secured "for books for British subjects in the Plantations." In October of that year subscriptions for this purpose ceased, though for many years the society continued correspondence with New England, Virginia, etc., and from 1733–1741 renewed its gifts, sending missionaries to the Salzburger emigrants, who settled in Georgia after the Thirty Years' War, and furnishing John Wesley, then in charge of the English in that colony, with grants and books.

But when, in 1701, the Society gave up its care for the plantations, it had good reasons for its action. In 1699 Doctor Bray had presented the need so forcibly, that Convocation, Archbishop Tenison, Bishop Compton and the S. P. C. K. all became actively interested, and the Lower House of the Convocation of