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A concise image of Dr. Legge's sense of missionary duty was given in a lecture presented in Hong Kong a few months before he retired from his service. Having gained enough Chinese to write numerous tracts and church-related materials in the language, including some in colloquial Cantonese, Dr. Legge had not avoided his call to know the Chinese residents of Hong Kong. He recalls having travelled from house to house "conversing with them on all subjects, and trying to get them to converse with me on one subject."
In the light of these various evidences of Dr. Legge's spiritual motivations in Hong Kong and Oxford, as missionary and scholar, it seems most appropriate not to overemphasize his contributions to either the one or the other. Helen Legge's biography focuses on her father as a missionary; Lindsay Ride's autobiographical note places most attention on James Legge as the interpreter of the Chinese Classics for Westerners. In fact, Legge was both and more, and is described more adequately in W. E. Soothill's dedication: "a great scholar and a devoted missionary."
V. Legge's Non-Conformist Values
The values of Non-Conformist Protestantism had an immensely formative power in the Scotland of the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a more and more influential cultural force in British society, especially in the second half of the 19th century. In the middle of the 19th century, the Non-Conformists were to a large extent united with the Free Church movement, a conjoining of religious values which carried many political overtones in the 1840s. Primarily they arose from the lower middle classes, forming in the 19th century an informed fellowship of dissenters who rejected governmental control of church worship (whether Anglican or Presbyterian), focusing on active and informed belief rather than credal precision, instituted the Sunday School movement for poor children who might not otherwise be schooled, and were one of the major stimuli for the expansive Protestant missionary movement of the nineteenth century. James Legge was a second-generation Non-Conformist, representing the acme of their cultural influence as an evangelical intellectual and globally conscious religious leader.
Non-Conformists were reformists and, at their best, worked against the racialism and capitalistic militarism so often encountered in the
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A concise image of Dr. Legge's sense of missionary duty was given in a lecture presented in Hong Kong a few months before he retired from his service. Having gained enough Chinese to write numerous tracts and church related materials in the language, including some in colloquial Cantonese," Dr. Legge had not avoided his call to know the Chinese residents of Hong Kong. He recalls having travelled from house to house "conversing with them on all subjects. and trying to get them to converse with me on one subject","
In the light of these various evidences of Dr. Legge's spiritual motivations in Hong Kong and Oxford, as missionary and scholar, it seems most appropriate not to overemphasize his contributions to either the one or the other. Helen Legge's biography focuses on her father as a missionary; Lindsay Ride's autobiographical note places most attention on James Legge as the interpreter of the Chinese Classics for Westerners. In fact. Legge was both and more, and is described more adequately in W. E. Soothill's dedication: a great scholar and a devoted missionary."
V. Legge's Non-Conformist Values
The values of Non-Conformist Protestantism had an immensely formative power in the Scotland of the 18th and 19th centuries. becoming a more and more influential cultural force in British society. especially in the second half of the 19th century. In the middle of the 19th century the Non-Conformists were to a large extent united with the Free Church movement, a conjoining of religious values which carried many political overtones in the 1840s. Primarily they arose from the lower middle classes, forming in the 19th century an informed fellowship of dissenters who rejected governmental control of church worship (whether Anglican or Presbyterian), focusing on active and informed belief rather than credal precision, instituted the Sunday School movement for poor children who might not otherwise be schooled, and were one of the major stimuli for the expansive Protestant missionary movement of the nineteenth century. James Legge was a second generation Non-Conformist, representing the acme of their cultural influence as an evangelical intellectual and globally conscious religious leader.
Non-Conformists were reformists and, at their best, worked against the racialism and capitalistic militarism so often encountered in the
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