SARGENT, Edwin

[s. 666] : Born at Paris, France, Died October 10, 1889. Spent the early part of his life at Madras; went in 1835 to Pal am cotta, Tinnevelli, as a mi ionary of the Church Mi ionary i Society; in 1839 he went to England, studied three years in the Church Mi ionary College at Isling ton; was ordained in 1842, and 1815. the same year returned to his work in Tinnevelli. The first eight years he was located at Suviseshapuram, having charge of a mi ionary district. In 1850 he was transferred to Pal am cotta, and two years later appointed principal of the Pre par and i Institution, which had a high character for proficiency while he was at the head of it. More than 500 young men were instructed by him, many of whom are now pastors of native Christian churches in the towns and villages, and many more are catechists and schoolmasters. In 1874 he was nominated a suffragan or coad- 64S jut or bishop to the Bishop of Madras, and on March 11, 1877, consecrated in Calcutta by Bishop Johnson, a isted by the bishops of Madras, Bombay, and Colombo. He had charge eight of the ten districts into which the Society’s Tinnevelli Mi ion was divided. In these districts were 51,000 Christians, 66 native pastors, and many catechists and schoolmasters, all under his care. During the first fifty years of the bishop’s mi ionary service, the number of villages containing Christians in the Church Mi ionary Society’s portion of Tinnevelli rose from 224 to 1,018, the Christians and catechumens from 8,693 to 56,287, and the native clergy from 1 to 68. In the earlier period native Christians did nothing for the support of the Gospel among themselves; at the later peribd their contributions for church work amounted to over 33,000 rupees annually. The affairs of the church are now managed to a very large extent by the Christians themselves, and no native of clergyman draws his stipend from the Mi ionary Society. The succe of church work is due very largely, under God, to the practical wisdom, untiring zeal, and loving labor of Bishop Sargent. He had a remarkable knowledge of the vernacular. 666