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Legge urged missionaries to reach into the very heart of the Middle Kingdom and seek to fulfil the Chinese spirit through appeal to the traces of God left in their own Classics, while supplementing and fulfilling them through Christian revelation.
Why was Legge so persistent in this approach? One major factor in his motivation came from a special passage in the Old Testament. The nineteenth century Protestant missionary mandate to China was driven by a Biblical prophecy understood to include a promise of the eventual Christianization of China. According to many nineteenth century Protestant missionaries including Legge, the place referred to in Isaiah 49:12 as "Sinim" must refer to China. (More recent scholarship sometimes refers it to Assuan in Egypt.) Being thus convinced that God had a plan to include the Chinese peoples within the Kingdom of God, many 19th century Protestant missionaries believed that God's Spirit would accomplish this Christianization through the influence of great Christian leaders. A claim that this prophesy indicated essentially Protestant endeavours was also emphasized: the earlier Christian missionary groups, Nestorians, Jesuits and other Catholic orders, as well as a few Russian Orthodox priests, had been kept from completing this building up of the Kingdom of God in China. Thus it was claimed that the nineteenth century was the time for the Protestant nations to fulfil their Divine destiny in bringing to China the transformative message of Christ as well as their own brand of Christianized civilization.
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This particular attitude explains to a large extent why Legge himself was both supportive and critical of British and other colonial powers. If they were to be beacons of Christian civilization, they had to be criticized whenever they did not live up to this calling. Protestant missionaries therefore acted in relation to Chinese societies as social revolutionaries, and in relation to Western nations as prophets of either (and sometimes both) glory or judgement.
Legge was not only able to define a prophetic duty for missionaries, he was also deeply motivated to provide intellectual tools to make it all the more possible.
This is one of the motivations which explains Legge's important reassessments of Confucius (LF) in his second edition of the Four Books completed in 1895. (He did not find similar reasons to revise
200
Legge urged missionaries to reach into the very heart of the Middle Kingdom and seek to fulfil the Chinese spirit through appeal to the traces of God left in their own Classics, while supplementing and fulfilling them through Christian revelation.
Why was Legge so persistent in this approach? One major factor in his motivation came from a special passage in the Old Testament, The nineteenth century Protestant missionary mandate to China was driven by a Biblical prophecy understood to include a promise of the eventual Christianization of China. According to many nineteenth century Protestant missionaries including Legge," the place referred to in Isaiah 49:12 as "Sinim" must refer to China. (More recent scholarship sometimes refers it to Assuan in Egypt.) Being thus convinced that God had a plan to include the Chinese peoples within the Kingdom of God, many 19th century Protestant missionaries. believed that God's Spirit would accomplish this Christianization through the influence of great Christian leaders." A claim that this prophesy indicated essentially Protestant endeavours was also emphasized: the earlier Christian missionary groups Nestorians, Jesuits and other Catholic orders, as well as a few Russian Orthodox priests had been kept from completing this building up of the Kingdom of God in China. Thus it was claimed that the nineteenth century was the time for the Protestant nations to fulfil their Divine destiny in bringing to China the transformative message of Christ as well as their own brand of Christianized civilization.
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This particular attitude explains to a large extent why Legge himself was both supportive and critical of British and other colonial powers. If they were to be beacons of Christian civilization, they had to be criticized whenever they did not live up to this calling. Protestant missionaries therefore acted in relation to Chinese societies as social revolutionaries, and in relation to Western nations as prophets of either (and sometimes both) glory or judgement.
Legge was not only able to define a prophetic duty for missionaries, he was also deeply motivated to provide intellectual tools to make it all the more possible.
This is one of the motivations which explains Legge's important reassessments of Confucius (LF) in his second edition of the Four Books completed in 1895. (He did not find similar reasons to revise
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