Diocesan Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Pennsylvania. [membership certificate] [graphic].

Issued to John R. Whitney on December 19, 1854. Signed D.S. Miller, Cor[respondence] Sec[retar]y, Alonzo Potter, President, and Edwd. Biddle, Treasurer.

Life membership certificate containing an allegorical scene. Shows a boy, in a field, spreading seeds from a sling around his chest. A farmer and plow follow behind him and an angel holding the Holy Bible floats on a cloud above him. In the background, parishioners arrive at a church at which the boy directs his gaze. The missionary society, approved in 1854, sought the "extension of missionary effort under the direction of ecclesiastical authority in said diocese and better support of clergyman, the education of persons for ministry, and such objectives incidental to above, as may tend to the extension of said church."