THE BIBLE IN CHINESE.
705
MORRISON'S LIFE WORK
From a Correspondent
One hundred years ago, almost to a day, 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 appointed 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 of Chinese to the service of the new order.
For a short time 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 in the history of China for other reasons; he was the first of a long line of Protestant missionaries to the Chinese people. Two years before he died he reported that only 10 Chinese had been baptized. 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 bibliography:—
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 do 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 52 when he died; the Canton of 1834 was little changed from the city to which he had come 27 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 The Dictionary and the Translation of the Bible have long been absorbed and superseded by other works; but in them he led the way, and the Christian Church in China will give him the honour which is due to the pioneer.
11
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 Intona, heroes of humble birth; Carey was a cobbler; 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 Hoxton Academy, he offered himself to the London Missionary Society in 1804. The directors accepted him, but whether for Timbuctoo 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.