[
    {
        "id": 210827,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 178,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "161\n\nreligious purposes, recommended that no charge be levied against the lots, thus somewhat redeeming officialdom in the eyes of the missionaries.\n\nDr. Legge describes the site as in the healthiest part of town. This was important when there were daily deaths due to “Hong-kong fever.” The lots were up the hill a distance from Queen's Road, hence removed from its bustle and noise.\n\nThe premises were bounded to the south by Staunton Street, to the north by Hollywood Road, to the east by Elgin Street and to the west by Aberdeen Street. While being in the European section it was within five minutes' walk of the centre of the Chinese population.\n\nThe main building for the site was planned as a residence for missionaries and a school. Two rooms were reserved on both the lower and upper floors for classrooms.\n\nThe building was typical of the colonial architecture of Hong-kong, substantially built to resist typhoons with large airy rooms and wide verandahs to shade the interior from the summer sun.\n\nWhile plans for the large Mission House were being prepared, smaller outbuildings were erected on the lot. One of these was finished in July 1844, and Dr. Legge was planning to move his family into it as he had given up his rented quarters. Dr. Benjamin Hobson advised, however, that it would be unwise to occupy the building while the plaster was drying and paint fumes were strong. The school, however, was able to take up temporary quarters in another of the outbuildings until the Mission House was finished.\n\nIn addition to problems regarding land, building and students, there was the matter of a name for the relocated institution. Some thought it not wise to retain the name it had borne at Malacca. It had come into disrepute and its past reputation would not serve to promote the reorganised school.\n\nThe name adopted by the missionaries at a formal meeting in 1843 - The Theological Seminary of the London Missionary",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210831,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "165\n\nsess qualifications which will make them highly prized and liberally salaried, as interpreters, clerks, and in other services. They cannot and ought not to be treated on the same plan of rigid economy as mere boys. To ensure the prosperity of the institution there ought to be an annual allowance of £25 each, to cover all expenses and support the young men in a manner respectable and befitting the position in life which they are intended to occupy.\n\nThe school at the London Mission House in Hongkong could now become what the missionary meeting of 1843 intended it to be, the Theological Seminary of the London Missionary Society in China. The meeting had dropped the designation of college as being too pretentious for the character of the reorganised school.\n\nIn adopting the name Theological Seminary, they intended to let the world know their labours were all directed to one end, the preparation of Christian workers. This did not mean the abandonment of a general education in literature and science, but it did mean the inclusion of definite theological studies.\n\nIf the name college had been too ambitious, so had the name Theological Seminary. From 1843 to 1847 there were no theological students. Now with the three young men Dr. Legge had brought back from England, the long delayed plans for his school could be realised. But the future was filled with disappointments.\n\nHIGH EXPECTATIONS,\n\nTHEN DEFECTIONS AND SETBACKS\n\nDr. James Legge returned to Hongkong from England in August 1847, renewed in health and with high expectations for the future of his school. He now could organise a theological class in addition to his other classes. The three boys, baptised during their visit overseas, would be the foundation for advanced studies. They showed every evidence of the sincerity and dedication necessary for the achievement of their announced intention to become preachers and evangelists.\n\nTheir enthusiasm was infectious. The school took on new vitality. There was an increased interest in its religious objectives.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212269,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 211,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "188\n\nevaluation of Legge's overall scholarship would consequently demand expertise in a wide range of Chinese history, literature, and religion as well as awareness of his Christian background. Very few scholars have the background to provide a balanced account of Legge's achievements, especially given our modern love of specialisation.\n\nThe second pragmatic problem is that there are major obstacles in gaining access to all the materials. Oxford's Bodleian does not own all of Legge's library, because much of it was bought by Mr. Wilberforce Eames in 1899 for the New York Public Library. This, however, does not solve the problem, for in 1909 the New York Public Library sold more than half of this collection to the Case Memorial Library of the Hartford Theological Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. These materials remained in Hartford until the mid-1970s, when most of them were sold once more to Pitts Theology Library of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The total number of titles in this divided collection is nearly two thousand, including a large number of Chinese multi-volumed sets as well as a large number of sinological works and serials in many European languages. Many of these important sources still have Legge's notes in the margins, making them particularly valuable for revealing Legge's sources and his responses. Yet, for obvious reasons, there is no easy way to obtain access to these materials without travelling to all of these different locations. Furthermore, almost all of the earlier texts employed by Legge in the theological education of Chinese students in Hong Kong have apparently been destroyed by the humid climate.\n\nThe anti-missionary bias mentioned earlier has led to a third problem of some practical significance: Legge's lengthy professional career with the London Missionary Society has caused some scholars to suspect Legge's academic standards and competence in Chinese translation and in the evaluation of non-Christian traditions. A close look at his texts does show the strong Christian commitments underlying his work, but they are present in ways which do not substantially hinder a generally sensitive translation. Certainly Legge's philosophical commitments reflect the limitations of his age, but he was remarkably free of the conventions and biases which left far more disturbing marks in the work of some other scholars.\n\nFinally, a basic dilemma involving all sinological work in the 1990s is still the inaccessibility of many basic texts. Gradually, since",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212274,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 216,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "19.3\n\nDuring the two years of theological training, James was directed to take initial Chinese lessons at the University of London under the recently returned missionary from Malacca, Samuel Kidd.1 The lessons made the new student aware of the difficulties of the language, of the unrefined nature of some of the tools, and of the unusual context (Malacca rather than China, among expatriated Chinese) within which they were prepared.\n\nHaving completed seminary training in 1838, he was delegated by the London Missionary Society to replace Samuel Kidd in Malacca. Legge was presented with the task of being a teacher, and then, mostly because of the limited personnel, made the administrator-principal of the Anglo-Chinese College (#18) which the pioneer Protestant missionaries, Robert Morrison and William Milne, had established in Malacca in the second decade of the 19th century. Legge interpreted Morrison's and Milne's original intentions as including plans to remove the school to China whenever the opportunity arose. This attitude threatened others in the institution, but in the end the Society supported a move to Hong Kong when it became possible in 1843.40\n\nIn spite of the fact that the administrative task was not much to his liking, Legge achieved rapid progress in language studies and so was considered worthy of the new position. (In fact, the strain on his health during the first ten months of intense language preparation brought him to the edge of a physical breakdown.) His first major literary task was editing the translation of a long novel, but his concern for teaching was fulfilled in the production of his Lexicogus, which rendered for College students sentences in parallel English, Malay, written Mandarin, spoken Hoklo, and demotic Cantonese.1 It was apparently for these efforts that the twenty-five-year-old Legge gained enough of a reputation to be awarded in absentia an honorary Doctorate from New York University in the United States on July 13, 1841.\n\nHaving demonstrated his competence even further after he arrived in Hong Kong in 1843, Dr. Legge was designated the President of the London Missionary Society's Theological Seminary. This further promotion into an authoritative position occurred after an extended sick leave in Scotland (1846-1847), during which the thirty-one-year-old seminary president designate gave serious thought to his future.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212278,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 220,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "197\n\nbecause, after Legge himself had remarried back in England in 1858, Rengan arranged for his relatives to stay with the Legge family until he called for them from Tianjing. The final demise of the rebellion included the capture and execution of Rengan by the Qing armies. In spite of the personal training given and closeness felt by Legge, the power of blood relations carried more influence than the power of Christian care. This made the need to understand the Chinese heart and mind all the more concrete to Legge.\n\nA more direct influence was the inability of Legge and his teaching staff to produce through the Anglo-Chinese College and its Seminary a continual supply of Chinese pastors and teachers. The government licensed the school with the understanding that some of those who graduated would be sent on to government placements as translators. Since the pay from the government was far more than any pastor could receive while working with a very small community at best, most students were drawn into government and business.\n\nThere is no doubt that there were also strong theological reasons behind the change. Legge's missionary service was directed toward the Chinese population. In order to know them and to be accepted by them, he felt he had to display a knowledge which they would honour: a knowledge of the Confucian Classics. Convinced that the earliest Chinese did know the true God named Shangdi, as found in The Book of Documents (HK) and the oldest portions of The Book of Odes, Legge was all the more concerned to discover how Chinese themselves responded to these religious dimensions of Confucianism. This attitude informed Legge's educational philosophy.\n\nThus, Legge supported the provision of general education for selected Chinese students, rather than requiring them to follow any rigidly missionary curriculum. He closed his own parochial school in 1858. He was the head of the education committee for the Hong Kong government which developed the new public educational system in Hong Kong. This is remarkable, since general education was not standard even in many European countries at that date. Legge arranged to have Frederick Stewart, a fellow Scotsman, come to act as headmaster of Queen's College, the new school designed to provide a higher-level general education for Chinese boys.\n\nEarly in his career as the London Missionary Society representative",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
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    }
]