in North India was at first reinforced by the creation of a second Conference; this in process of time was divided into two, and the two were again divided into four, so that we now have five Annual Conferences within the limits of India proper, and a Mission Conference, which includes our work in distant Malaysia.”
This outline of our immense mission field is, of course, a mere outline as viewed upon the map. We do not pretend to occupy all the country, and as yet have no missionaries nor native preachers in some large cities and towns. Very recently a party of our missionaries have been exploring a vast region lying southwest of Calcutta, where no Christian worker of any kind is found. In a report recently sent to me by one of these missionaries it was stated that between six and seven millions of people were living in that region, among whom no one had yet preached Christ. In other parts of the country, no doubt, similar neglected areas might be found, but after making all due allowance we still find ourselves with a field extended so far beyond its original limits that our task may now be said to be ten times as great as the one which was originally set before us.
One interesting feature of the work in its more recent development is the creation of what we sometimes call “our foreign mission.” I have spoken above of the extension of our work down the southeastern coast of the Bay of Bengal to Penang and Singapore. These large cities are not in India at all, nor in any way under the Indian Government, but belong to the colony known as the Straits Settlements. By the ordinary sea route down the coast, Singapore is nineteen hundred miles from Calcutta, and thus, both politically and geographically, the whole region is foreign to India, indeed as much so as Liverpool and the British Islands are to the United States. Led by providential indications, which space will not permit me to mention here, it was resolved at the beginning of 1885 to send an expedition to Singapore with a view to begin a new mission in that city, which should make itself felt among all the adjacent islands. The importance of Singapore, especially in the almost
