London Baptist Education Society (1804) 

London Baptist Education Society (1804) -- The society initially provided financial support for a select number of promising ministerial candidates each year. A report of the Society’s annual meeting in May 1809, which appeared later that year in the Baptist Magazine, proclaimed that the Society’s primary goal was to provide Baptist “churches with godly ministers, not wholly uneducated, at a time when education is sought after by reflecting persons of every class. It aims, not to make its pupils acquainted with the learned languages, but to give them such a knowledge of their mother tongue as to raise them above the charge of illiteracy. It seeks to inform their minds in Theological subjects, so far as to enable them to comprehend scriptural truths in their connection and harmony, and to express their ideas with clearness and precision, with sound speech that cannot be condemned.” Anderson spoke at the 1809 meeting, which was followed the next year by the founding of Stepney College. See Baptist Magazine 1 (1809), 342.