China: Schoolboys studying at an American-sponsored school, Late Qing Dynasty photograph (1872)

In 1847, the American Methodist Episcopal Society (North) entered the field of China, and soon surpassed all others in the number of its agents and members. Its pioneer was Rev. Judson Dwight Collins, who passionately asked the society to enter China.

Mr. Collins was sent to Fuzhou, where, after ten years weary preparation, a mission was established, which spread itself over six large districts, and comprised sixty stations. A printing press was kept busily employed, which, in the year 1888 alone, issued 14,000 pages of Christian literature. A large college was also established.

The mission also wound along the banks of the Yangtze for three hundred miles, and had stations in Jiujiang and other large cities. Northwards it has churches in Beijing, Tianjin and Isunhua, with full accompaniments of schools and hospitals, and it extended westward to Chongqing, 1,400 miles from the sea. In 1890 it had thirty-two missionaries, seventeen lady agents, forty-three native ordained pastors, ninety-one unordained native helpers, and over four thousand communicants.

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