MORRISON OF CHINA

Evening Star, Issue 21820, 8 September 1934, Page 23

MORRISON OF CHINA

(From c The Times. 7 ]

One hundred years ago Robert Morrison died in Canton. By his death literature and the Christian missions both lost a notable figure, and Lord Napier, the Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, his newly-ap-pointed Chinese secretary and translator. Morrison had long served the East India Company in that same city, and now that the charter of the company had lapsed and Lord Napier had arrived to represent for trade purposes “ the barbarians ” of the outer world Morrison was invited to bring his incomparable knowledge ol Chinese to the service of the new order. For a short and troubled time he drafted letters to the disdainful Ministers of the Celestial Empire. Neither he nor Lord Napier lived to see the doors of that Empire open. But Morrison has his place m the history of China for other reasons; ho was the first ol a long line of Protestant missionaries to the Chinese people. Two years before he died he reported that only ten Chinese had been baptised. But to that infant church he had given by patient and heroic toil a gift of incalculable value. It may be briefly described by taking two entries in his biography:— A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, six volumes, Macao. The Holy Bible, 21 volumes, Malacca. Morrison never ceased to count himself first and foremost a missionary. He did all that he could by the spoken word in China;, but there was another way into the heart of the Chinese, and this way he took. For his memorial he left a dictionary and a Bible in Chinese, but a great Chinese has said of him that the revolution in China began on the day on which Morrison landed at Canton. Strange explosive forces were being prepared when Morrison on the little strip of land outside the city of Canton plodded at his Chinese. He was only fifty-two when lie died; the Canton of 1834 was little changed from the city to which he had come twenty-seven years before; the “barbarians” were still only tolerated outside the gate; but Morrison had done more than he knew for China. The dictionary and the translation of the Bible have long been absorbed and superseded by other works; but iu them he led the way, and the Christian Church in China will give him the honour which is due to the pioneer. EARLY STUDIES. Morrison, who was of Scottish descent, was born at Wingates, near Morpeth. His parents were intimate friends of the Stephensons, and it may be taken as certain that George Stephenson, who built the first railway train, and Robert Morrison played together in boyhood. Like Carey and Livingstone, he was of humble birth; Carey was a cobbler; Morrison made lasts for boots; and for a time he was a strolling player. All the time he was studying hard and keeping a journal of his inner life. , During his years of training for the ministry in lloxton Academy, lie offered himself to the London Missionary Society in 1304. The directors accepted him, but whether for Timbuotoo or for China they did not decide at first. At Gosport, under the teaching of Dr Bogue, he was further prepared for the mission field. By the time he sailed to China he had become a good classical scholar, who had besides a knowledge of astronomy and medicine. But his most important study in his training for China was of a manuscript in Chinese in the British Museum. This had been given to Sir Hans Sloan by a Mr Hodgson, of the East India Company; it contained a Gospel Harmony and the greater part of the remainder of tlie New Testament translated by Roman Catholic missionaries. This book Morrison transcribed with the aid of an educated young Chinese whom he met in London. Morrison always acknowledged his debts; and of this manuscript, “ Sloan 3,659.” he wrote that it was “ the foundation of the New Testament in Chinese which I completed and edited.” In Canton Morrison took his place among the traders of various nations, who lived on a piece of land about fifteen acres in size by the river outside the city. There and in Macao Mornson lived-most of his days, doing his one appointed task. Like Carey, with whose life his own ran a parallel course, he boasted only that he could plod. In 1809 he was appointed Chinese translator to the company; but he did not cease from his work as an evangelist, when opportunity served, and as linguist and the successive stages of his life are marked by the printing of books. It was on January 28, 1814, for example, that he wrote to Lord Teignmouth of the Bible Society: “Allow me this day, as if present from the land of China in the midst of your animating'assembly, to lay before you a translation of the New Testament into Chinese made and published at Canton.” DAYS OF VICTORY. There were other hours of rejoicing in Morrison’s life; he baptised his first convert after seven years’ ministry; ho helped to found a college in Malacca lor tho Ultra-Ganges Mission; during bis only furlough in England he presented his Bible to George IV.; he was invited but could not go to see Sir Walter Scott. He began a school of Oriental studies which did not last long; and he even undertook to teach Chinese to a class of young ladies, one of whom, Mary Aldersey, _ afterwards went out to Ningpo, the first unmarried woman missionary to reach China. When Morrison spoke at Singapore for his friend Sir Stamford Raffles, he described how in the new college which was being planned there “ native missumaries of science ” Mould be trained. “ Why should it he thought impossible that natural history, that botany, that mineralogy, and other departments ot science may be thus greatly enriched by stores brought from sources to which Europeans can have no access?” There is a curiously modern note in this and in many passages in Morrison’s letters and speeches. His faith had enabled him to sink his own personality in the life of the Chinese, and to become in a real sense a citizen of the world. “ Christianity is in its spirit,” ho wrote, “the religion of the world. It buries national prejudices, and the more it is understood, believed, and loved, the more rapidly will it unite all men in each country and the men of each country as brethren.” Grave in bearing, l solemn in word, courteous in manner, he won all men s respect. When Lord Napier and all the merchants of Canton followed the mourners down to the quay from which his body was to be carried from Canton to 'Macao, they mourned a fine Chinese scholar and public servant, but they could not foresee what Morrison would come to mean to the Church of Christ in China.