Bilby, parish
clerk and schoolmaster, gave out the hymns, read the notices, and
published the banns of marriage. He was short and stout; his hair was
white; he wore a black gown with deep velvet collar, ornamented with
many tassels and fringes; and he carried a staff of office.
It was a great missionary parish. The vicar, Daniel Wilson, was a son of
that well-known Daniel Wilson, sometime vicar of Islington, and
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. The Church Missionary College, where many
young missionaries sent out by the Church Missionary Society are
trained, stood in our midst; and it was within St. Mary's Church the
writer saw the venerable Bishop Crowther, of the Niger, ordain his own
son deacon. Mr. Bilby had at one time been a catechist and schoolmaster
in Sierra Leone, and was full of interesting stories of the mission work
amongst the freed slaves in that settlement. He had a magic lantern,
with many views of Africa, and of the churches and schools in the
mission fields, and often gave missionary lectures to the school
children. It was on one of these occasions, when he had been telling us
about his work abroad, and how he soon got to know when a black boy had
a dirty face, that he said: "While I was in Africa, I composed a hymn,
and taught the black children to sing it; and now there is not a
Christian school in any part of the world where my hymn is not known and
sung.
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