Smith was born in
Wellington, Somerset on 19 June 1815. He obtained a
Bachelor of Arts (BA) in classics from
Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1837 (and a
Master of Arts {MA Cantab} in 1843 and
Doctor of Divinity {DD} in 1849) and was ordained in the
Church of England. He was made deacon on 20 October 1839 by
George Davys,
Bishop of Peterborough and ordained priest in July 1840 by
Charles Longley,
Bishop of Ripon. He rapidly became involved in the
Church Missionary Society and he and fellow priest Thomas McClatchie arrived in
Shanghai on 25 September 1844 to establish a mission. Poor health forced an early return to England, but Smith's
Narrative of his period in China was published in 1847. Smith worked hard to raise money for further missionary work in China, and in 1849 was made bishop of the new diocese of
Victoria, Hong Kong and warden of the newly founded St Paul's Missionary College (see
St Paul's College). He was consecrated a bishop on 29 May 1849 at
Canterbury Cathedral, by
John Bird Sumner,
Archbishop of Canterbury. With his new wife Lydia,
née Brandram, Smith arrived in Hong Kong on 29 March 1850 and threw himself into missionary and educational work. He learned
Mandarin, becoming sufficiently fluent to conduct services in it. Smith was also responsible for missionary work in China and Japan. A weak constitution limited this work, but he nevertheless visited Japan (1860), the
Ryukyu islands (1850),
India and
Ceylon (1852–1853), Australia (1859), and elsewhere, partly to work for emigrants from China. Smith had a misinformed sympathy on religious grounds for the
Taiping rebel movement in the neighbouring Chinese Empire. In 1853 he wrote in letter to Archbishop Sumner: "The rebel chiefs profess to believe in Protestant Christianity; declare that they are commissioned by the Almighty to spread the knowledge of the one true God; have everywhere shown a determination to destroy idolatry of every kind; and now profess to await a further revelation of the divine will, ere they advance upon the northern capital
Peking". He was still sympathetic as late as 1863, when he protested to the Foreign Secretary (then
Earl Russell), without checking his facts, over Hong Kong newspaper reports on the killing of Taiping prisoners in Taintsan by followers of the
Ever Victorious Army who were under command of
Charles George Gordon (but done without his knowledge). At that stage he considered the Taiping sincere if somewhat heretical Christians, and he was supported by a strong lobby of merchants in Hong Kong who profited from supplying the rebels. He had arrived back in Britain by
St Peter's Day (29 June 1864), when he presented
Charles Bromby for consecration as a bishop at
Canterbury Cathedral. Over the following years, he occasionally assisted successive
Bishops of Winchester (
Sumner and
Wilberforce at least) in north Surrey (what is now South London). He died in his house at
Blackheath (then in
Kent, now in Greater London), on 14 December 1871 after a short illness. ==Books by Smith==