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"Receiving, managing and disposing of the charity of His Majesty's subjects for those purposes."

The first anniversary sermon emphasized, however, as a paramount object of the society, that "especially this may be a great charity to the souls of many of those poor Natives who may by this be converted from that state of Barbarism and Idolatry in which they now live, and be brought into the Sheep-fold of our blessed Saviour." The conversion of Negroes and Indians formed a prominent branch of the society's operations from the first. Addresses by Bishop Gibson of London were sent, in 1727, to aid the society in "carrying on the work of instructing Negroes in our Plantations abroad," exhorting masters and mistresses of families "to encourage and promote the instruction of their Negroes in the Christian Faith," and the missionaries to do the same "in their several parishes."

For many years the meetings of the society were held in Archbishop Tenison's library in Saint Martin's in the Fields, and the members attended in large numbers, though the hour was often as early as eight or nine in the morning. In less than forty years nearly a hundred churches were built, above 10,000 Bibles and Prayer Books and 100,000 tracts were distributed, vessels and linen for the Holy Communion and ornaments for churches were supplied. Great multitudes "upon the whole" of Negroes and Indians were brought over to the Christian Faith, "many numerous congregations set up" which "supported the Worship of God at their own expense," and seventy persons were employed as missionaries.

The society began work when there were some two hundred and fifty thousand settlers in this western.