George Bayley, [London], to William Gurney, Esq., Camberwell, 18 January 1843.

Dear Sir

   Excuse me for troubling you once more with a line or two on the subject of a Baptist Mission to China and first allow me to thank you for your prompt answer to my note of enquiry. I feel the force of your reasons as to the desirableness of keeping up the present stations at the same time I do think the interest that is now felt in China is such as would justify an attempt to raise a separate fund to support one missionary at Hong Kong. Who can baptize that mighty nation except Baptists!—shall Independents sprinkle their tens of thousands and shall not the Baptists immerse their thousands!—Honestly, my dear Sir, I think we dare not withold our missionaries from China.

   As to morrow is the meeting of the Baptist Association at Park St could not the question be put to the meet’g in the following form—”Will you support one mission’y to China?”   The Church to which I belong I feel some would contribute £20 pr anm to that object and I will undertake to collect it—will not Mr Steanes contribute another 20—Park St another Church St another—Lion St another—Eagle St another  Devonshire Square another?—I verily believe that were the question put that the several Pastors would pledge themselves to raise that sum without drawing one farthing from the funds of the Bap. Mission.

   Only let the effort in collecting be quite seperate [sic] and specific and a commencement will be made immediately.

   Could not a missy be sent out with Mr Dyer to study the language at Hong Kong?—leaving this matter with You and earnestly hoping that at least an attempt will be made to support one missy amongst the teeming millns of China I am dear Sir

                           Yours truly

                                       G B

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 292-93 (annotated version); also MAW, Box 39 (BMS 2420), John Rylands University Library of Manchester. George Bayley, Esq., was a Baptist layman from Camberwell and member of the Committee of the Baptist Building Fund and the Baptist Theological Education Society, as well as ship inspector (“surveyor”) for Lloyd’s Register of London. Bayley's request led to a donation of £500 in 1843 from the BMS Jubilee Fund to the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society’s operation in Hong Kong, proposed by Edward Steane of Camberwell on 22 March 1843. The churches mentioned above include Steane’s congregation at Denmark Place, Camberwell; New Park Street, Southwark (formerly the Carter Lane congregation); Green Street, Blackfriars (founded in 1785 by James Upton), which moved to Church Street, Lambeth, Southwark, in 1801; Lion Street Church, Southwark; Eagle Street, London; and Devonshire Square, London. Samuel Dyer (1804-1843) was a Congregationalist missionary to Malay, China, and Hong Kong, 1828-1843.