The Scripture Union Almanac 1901

The Scripture Union Almanac 1901 

"Also day by day,from the first day unto the last day, he read in the book of the law of God,"

NEH viii, 18.

Children's Special Service Mission 

13a Warwick Lane London Price One Penny

Children's Special Service Mission 

Josiah Spiers at Islington, London (1867)

On 2 June 1867 Josiah Spiers spoke to fifteen children in the drawing room of Thomas ‘Pious’ Hughes’ home at 309 Essex Road, Islington, London, pioneering a new approach to sharing Christ with children. Josiah taught the children hymns and choruses and told them stories of Jesus in a way that they could understand. It was also so lively, so informal and so very different from the boring sermons they had sat through in their churches that all the children returned the following week with some of their friends. By 17 November, the Hughes’ had a capacity crowd of fifty children in their front room. They needed a larger auditorium, so on 8 December the Children’s Special Service Mission (CSSM) opened in a school-house in Islington with sixty-five children attending. Tom Bishop, a civil servant, had begun running similar meetings for children in South London. He met Spiers in 1868 and they began working together under the CSSM banner.

Josiah Spiers at Llandudno, North Wales (26 August, 1868)

Josiah was on holiday at the seaside at a place called Llandudno in North Wales. Holidays by the seaside were a new fashion in Britain at the time, and the beach was crowded with children. So Josiah saw an opportunity. He called a group of children to him and suggested that they should make a text in the sand. He marked out the words “God is Love” and encouraged the children to decorate the letters with shells and seaweed. When the text was finished, he told Bible stories to the children. The first Scripture Union beach mission was born.

Annie Marston at Keswick (1879)

Annie Marston was a young Sunday School teacher in Keswick, in the north of England, who wanted to encourage the children in her Sunday School class to read the Bible each day. Every Sunday she wrote our lists of passages for them to read during the week. The next Sunday she discussed the passages with them, and answered their questions. As time went by, more and more children asked for the list of passages, so Annie Marston wrote to the CSSM (Children’s Special Service Mission) in London suggesting that they should print the list of Bible passages for children to read. By this time the CSSM was printing leaflets useful for their ministry, however, the first reaction of the General Secretary and the Committee to Annie was negative. But she kept writing to them, and eventually they were persuaded to publish an annual card of daily Bible readings for children. The first Children’s Scripture Union Bible reading card appeared on 1 April 1879 attracting 6,000 members, all children. It was an immediate success and within months there were Scripture Union members as far away as Belgium, Spain and Russia including adult members with the introduction of adult Bible reading cards. By 1887 there were 328,000 members in the UK alone and by 1889 there were 470,000 cards printed in 28 languages in many different countries. By 1893 CSSM had distributed 13 million children’s leaflets in fifty languages all around the world. The unique combination of ministry with children and Bible ministry spread quickly to many countries around the world and eventually the name of the movement became Scripture Union.