Benjamin Broomhall
Encyclopedia
Benjamin Broomhall (15 August 1829 – 29 May 1911) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 advocate of foreign missions, administrator of the China Inland Mission
China Inland Mission
OMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...

, and author. Broomhall served as the General Secretary of the China Inland Mission
China Inland Mission
OMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...

 (CIM), (from 1878 to 1895). A boyhood friend of James Hudson Taylor
Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...

 (Founder and General Director of the China Inland Mission), he became husband to Hudson Taylor’s sister Amelia. As General Secretary of the CIM, he was involved in fund-raising and recruiting missionaries to send to China and acted as editor of the mission magazine, "China's Millions".

Born in Bradley
Bradley, Staffordshire
Bradley is a civil parish in Staffordshire, England. It is off the A518 road headed out to the villages of Haughton and Gnosall towards Telford....

 Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, Broomhall was the eldest child of Charles and Jane Broomhall. Benjamin and his wife Amelia married in 1859 and were members of the Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 Westbourne Grove Church in Bayswater
Bayswater
Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where they lived. It was pastored by their friend, William Garrett Lewis
William Garrett Lewis
William Garrett Lewis was a Baptist preacher and pastor of Westbourne Grove Church in Bayswater, London for 33 years. He was an apologist author of two books, Westbourne Grove Sermons and The Trades and Industrial Occupations of the Bible, published by the Religious Tract Society.- Influence...

, who was instrumental to Hudson Taylor
Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...

 publishing "China's Spiritual Need and Claims
China's Spiritual Need and Claims
China’s Spiritual Need and Claims is a book written by James Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, in October, 1865. It is arguably the most significant work regarding Christian missions to China in the 19th century...

". The Broomhalls did not go to China themselves, but they sent five of their ten children to China as missionaries, including Marshall Broomhall
Marshall Broomhall
Marshall B. Broomhall , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He also authored many books on the subject of Chinese missionary work. He was the most famous son of the anti-opium trade activist and General Secretary of the C.I.M...

, the author of many books on China and missionaries; Albert Hudson Broomhall, the Treasurer of the CIM in China from 1918 to 1934; and Amelia Gertrude Broomhall, who married Dixon Edward Hoste
Dixon Edward Hoste
Dixon Edward Hoste was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and the longest lived of the Cambridge Seven and successor to James Hudson Taylor as General Director of the China Inland Mission, ....

, recruited by her father as part of the Cambridge Seven
Cambridge Seven
The Cambridge Seven were seven students from Cambridge University, 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...

. (Dixon Hoste replaced Hudson Taylor as General Director of the CIM in 1901.)

Benjamin addressed breakfast gatherings in the homes of titled people and spoke for the mission at meetings throughout Britain. When the Cambridge Seven been accepted as missionary candidates, Broomhall organized large farewell gatherings in many centers and produced a book about the men, "A Missionary Band" (1876). A copy was accepted by Queen Victoria and some 20 thousand copies were sold.

For a while, Benjamin was Secretary of the Anti-slavery Association, one of many British anti-slavery societies formed during the mid-nineteenth century. His later interest in introducing Christianity into China, led to familiarity with Chinese slavery and opium addiction. Long opposed to the former, he also became an active opponent of the Opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

 trade, writing two books to promote the banning of opium smoking: “Truth about Opium Smoking” and “The Chinese Opium Smoker”. In 1888 Broomhall formed and became Secretary of the Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic and editor of its periodical, "National Righteousness". He lobbied the British Parliament to stop the opium trade. He and James Laidlaw Maxwell
James Laidlaw Maxwell
James Laidlaw Maxwell Senior was the first Presbyterian missionary to Taiwan . He served with the English Presbyterian Mission....

 appealed to the London Missionary Conference of 1888 and the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to condemn the continuation of the trade. When Broomhall was dying, his son Marshall read to him from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

the welcome news that an agreement had been signed ensuring the end of the opium trade within two years.

Benjamin Broomhall was buried in London in the Abney Park Cemetery
Abney Park Cemetery
Abney Park in Stoke Newington, in the London Borough of Hackney, is a historic parkland originally laid out in the early 18th century by Lady Mary Abney and Dr. Isaac Watts, and the neighbouring Hartopp family. In 1840 it became a non-denominational garden cemetery, semi-public park arboretum, and...

.

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