He was educated at
St Paul's School and
Lincoln College, Oxford, and ordained in 1885. After a
curacy at St Mary,
Westport, he spent 20 years in
India and
Burma as a
missionary (ending this part of his career as
Archdeacon of Rangoon). In 1887 he was appointed the fourth
Bishop of Jerusalem, a post he held for 27 years. A
Sub-Prelate of the
Order of St John of Jerusalem, he died on 5 November 1914. He had become a
Doctor of Divinity (DD). During his ministry, as an Anglo-Catholic, he found himself unable to convert either
Christ Church, Jerusalem (under the LJS) or St Paul's (Jerusalem, under the evangelical
Church Missionary Society) into his episcopal church. Therefore, he founded the
Jerusalem and the East Mission and purchased land outside of the Old City walls, and raised the funds to build what is today
St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem. To raise funds for his own work he started the Good Friday Offering, still observed in the Episcopal Church of the USA. Unlike his predecessor
Samuel Gobat, who had resorted to proselytising among Christians of other, mostly Orthodox
denominations, legalised by the
Porte by a
ferman in 1850 issued under the pressure of the Protestant powers of Britain and Prussia, Blyth preferred missions among Jews and Muslims.
Proselytism among Christians had been criticised by proponents of the Anglican
High Church faction. Blyth wanted to maintain good relations with the Orthodox churches. ==References==