In 'Christians in China' before the Year 1550' Professor A. C. Moule of Cambridge gives some interesting Sidelights on Latin Bibles in this country. He gives a quotation from "Martinus Martini (1655) which says "My companion and I also saw here (n Ch'ang-Chou, Kiangsu...not. far from Shanghai) an old book in the house of a scholar very well written in Gothic letters, of the thinnest parchment in place of paper and con-ming the greater part of the holy scripture in Latin. I tried to obtain book, but its owner, though he vas a heathen, could not be prevailed upon by entreaty or money to give it up, for he said that the book had been kept in his family for many generations past as a most rare relic 9t antiquity." I like to think that that Chinese wouldn't part with his Latin Bible for money or. gifts!
In the Layrentian Library at Florence there is a Latin Bible of the isth century which was obtained at Ch'ang-chou and it seems to be quite possible that this is the book which Martini says he saw. I wonder.
While it is fascinatingly interesting to glimpse at these early days of bringing the Scriptures to China, the Church which truly gave the Bible to China was the Protestant Church and the spiritual father of this Bible was Robert Morrison, Now I wish to give to you an account of this great missionary from the March number of the Society magazine The Bible In The World.
Everything seemed against him until in 1809 the East India Company made him, their official translator, a position which not only entitled him to reside in China but provided him with the means for more efficiently and speedily carrying out his work. After seven years—seven years, mark you—Morrison baptized his first con-Vert. That was the beginning.of the Protestant Church in China—one Christian. Today Protestant Missions report over 807,000 adherents" and 239,055 pupils in their schools. "In 1812 Morrison finished his Grammar, in 1813 the New Testament, in 1819 the; whiole Bible, and in 1821 his great Dictionary. Ir 1824 Morrison returned to England, when he was received by the King. He went to China again in 1826 and stayed there until his death in 1834.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.