The Cambridge Seven in Chinese clothing — 1885
The Cambridge Seven were six students from Cambridge University and
one from the Royal Military Academy, who in 1885,
decided to become missionaries in China; the seven were:
- Charles Thomas Studd
- Montagu Harry Proctor Beauchamp
- Stanley P. Smith
- Arthur T. Polhill-Turner
- Dixon Edward Hoste
- Cecil H. Polhill-Turner
- William Wharton Cassels
| 1. C. T. Studd 2. D. E. Hoste 3. W. W. Cassels 4. S. P. Smith |
5. C. Polhill-Turner
|
Dixon Edward Hoste and fellow China Inland Mission missionaries in native dress.
First Party of Americans to join the CIM in 1888.
OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship and before 1964 the China Inland Mission) is an international and interdenominationalProtestant Christian missionary society with an international centre inSingapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.
The conversion and example of the seven, was one of the grand gestures of 19th century missions
— making them religious celebrities; as a result their story was published as "The Evangelisation of the
World" and was distributed to every YMCA and YWCA throughout the British Empire and the United States.
Though their time together was brief, they helped catapult the China Inland Mission from obscurity to
"almost embarrassing prominence," and their work helped to inspire many recruits for the CIM and other
mission societies. In 1885, when the Seven first arrived in China, the CIM had 163 missionaries; this had
doubled by 1890 and reached some 800 by 1900 —
which represented one-third of the entire Protestant missionary force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Seven
