The perils of Christian mission : writing from the New World

Guest curator Suzi Higton writes about her current display in the Funk Reading Room case

In their quest to spread the Word of God, missionaries have for centuries traversed continents to reach some of the most isolated and hostile places on earth. Currently on display at New College Library is a mere handful of the wealth of literature written by those who risked their lives to introduce Christianity to nations only recently acquainted with Western influence.

Dating from the mid-1850s to the turn of the nineteenth century, these titles are notable not only for their vivid Victorian book bindings, but for the captivating stories of enduring hardship and inherent peril of which they tell.

The daughters of Syria : a narrative of efforts by Mrs. Bowen Thompson for the evangelization of the Syrian females; Bishop Hannington : the life and adventures of a missionary hero; A thousand miles of miracle in China; . From New College Library

A Thousand Miles of Miracle in China first published in 1904, recounts the personal experience of Archibald D. E. Glover, a missionary who witnessed first-hand the brutality of the Boxer Uprising of June 1900, an unrelenting attack on Western missionaries and Chinese Christian converts. Glover recalls half of the missionaries in the Shan-si region were murdered and that he and his family were lucky to escape with their lives.

The Cross and the Dragon or Light in the Broad East focuses on an earlier era of missionary work in China as described by the Reverend Benjamin Couch Henry. A Princeton graduate, Henry travelled to Canton (now Guangzhou) in 1874 and describes in detail the deeply unwelcoming reception of Western missionaries. Labelled as ‘foreign devils,’ it was widely believed they had brought misfortune to the country, including drought and famine.

The story of James Hannington, who became the first bishop of East Equatorial Africa, begins on a decidedly light-hearted note but ends ultimately in tragedy. The Life and Adventures of Bishop Hannington documents in often comical detail the Anglican minister’s travels to Zanzibar and Uganda between 1883 and 1885. Accompanied by striking colour illustrations and formed in part by humorous letters written to his young nephews, Hannington’s eventual kidnap and murder by tribesmen is recorded from his own pocket journal recovered by a later expedition after his death.

A number of missionary accounts from the period are noteworthy for their inclusion of foldable maps as seen in Fiji and the Fijians. Measuring just 18cm in length, the map included in this account which spans two volumes charts the cluster of islands as they would have appeared in the mid-nineteenth century to the missionaries who first arrived there. Missions to this region however were not without risk as demonstrated by the fate of English missionary Thomas Baker who was killed and eaten by cannibals in Nabatautau, Fiji in 1867.

The Daughters of Syria recounts the tireless work of female missionary Mrs Elizabeth Bowen. Following the outbreak of civil war which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians, Mrs Bowen travelled alone to Lebanon in 1860. Her efforts resulted in the establishment of the British Syria Schools in Beirut, providing a lifeline to the many widows and children left destitute by the conflict.

The diversity of missions undertaken during the Victorian era is perhaps best demonstrated by Village Work in India, the account of Normal Russell of the Canada Presbyterian Church. The Reverend’s mission to Madhya Pradesh, Central India between 1890 and 1902 is accompanied by a number of photographs taken during his often perilous travels.

Today, missionaries continue to travel the world and although many still encounter great danger, the fascinating yet harrowing accounts of these first missions provide unique insights into unexplored lands and of the lives of those who lived there.

Suzi Higton, School of Divinity

Writing from the Holy Land, writing from the heart – Robert Murray McCheyne

A post from guest curator Amy Plender, PhD student, School of Divinity

The theme of this month’s student led display at New College Library is diary writing, particularly diarists writing about their experience of missions overseas. The display features items from the New College Library collections relating to Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843) who was appointed by the Church of Scotland to be part of a deputation to visit Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East, with a view to future mission activity. Further details of his papers are available on the University’s Archives Online catalogue.

Robert Murray McCheyne’s diary from his trip to Palestine, 1838 (ref. MS MACCH1.8)

Robert Murray McCheyne’s diary from his trip to Palestine, 1838 (ref. MS MACCH1.8)

This diary was used for daily entries on McCheyne’s travels, with small sketches as well as notes on personal devotional techniques headed ‘Personal Reformation’. It also has a biographical section on the ‘Story of Robert Laing’ (perhaps a friend or fellow missionary), and an appendix on another missionary’s account of the trip. Continue reading

‘W’ Collection provides a window into the world of eighteenth-century India

One of the current Special Collections cataloguing projects at New College Library is the W4/5 section which includes works on ecclesiastical history and theology. In this collection we were pleased to discover three volumes of the Halle reports, a Protestant missionary magazine from a Danish mission to India in the eighteenth century.

Image from : Dansk-hallensiske mission (Tranquebar, India) Der Königl. Dänischen Missionarien aus Ost-Indien eingesandter ausführlichen Berichten. Erster ( -neunter) Theil. 1718-1772 New College Library W.169-171

Image from : Dansk-hallensiske mission (Tranquebar, India) Der Königl. Dänischen Missionarien aus Ost-Indien eingesandter ausführlichen Berichten. Erster ( -neunter) Theil. 1718-1772 New College Library W.169-171. Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

Advised by Dr. A. H. Francke (1663–1727), a professor of divinity in the University of Halle in Saxony, King Frederick IV of Denmark sent two missionaries from Halle to Tranquebar in India. In all over 60 missionaries were sent from Halle in the course of the eighteenth century, and they published their reports as Der Königl. Dänischen Missionarien aus Ost-Indien eingesandter ausführlichen Berichten. Continue reading

Global journals for World Christianity

The University of Edinburgh subscribes to a wide range of academic journals for the School of Divinity, but we’re also active in making the most of open access journals that are freely available on the web. Anabaptist Witness is one of these, and has recently been added to DiscoverEd. This journal aims to provide global Anabaptist and Mennonite dialogue on key issues facing the church in mission.

Anabaptist Witness

Korea Presbyterian Journal of Theology has also recently been added to DiscoverEd. Available in Korean and English, this journal aims to create academic discourse for theology that is evangelical and Biblical, is Reformed and ecumenical, and focuses on the Korean, Asian and global contexts in theological discourse.

KPJTChristine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

 

Mission to the Middle East : discovering collections

This week New College Library welcomes delegates of the 2016 conference of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity.

I’ve been discovering that New College Library’s unique collections include some fascinating materials from the Church of Scotland’s development of missions to Jews in the Middle East, in the nineteenth century. In particular we hold books, archives and objects relating to Rev. Andrew A. Bonar and Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne, and a selection of items from these collections are now on display in the New College Library entrance. Bonar and McCheyne were appointed by the Church of Scotland in 1838 as part of a deputation to visit Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East, with a view to future mission activity. Continue reading

Unique World Christianity Collections coming home to New College, Edinburgh

Now we’re in the in the final stages of the Centre for the Studies of World Christianity Library (CSWC) Project, we’re receiving daily deliveries of books to New College Library from the Library Annexe.Nearly 7,500 items have already been reclassified with Library of Congress classmarks, with roughly 2,500 of these set be housed at classmark BV, Practical Theology & Missions. CSWC books can be identified on the library catalogue as “Andrew Walls Library Collection. From the Library of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh. Presented by Professor Andrew Walls, OBE.” All of these items are unique within the University of Edinburgh Library, and I’ve found a number I’ve looked at to be unique in the UK.

I spent time this week looking through a selection of CSWC books that were published before 1900, and selected over 50 to be held in the Special Collections at New College Library. It’s fascinating to see how many titles are about women missionaries, or written by women, reflecting their engagement in the mission activity of this time. Many of these items have attractive pictorial Victorian publishers bindings, such as these books – A White Woman in Central Africa, Daughters of Syria and In Southern India.

A White Woman in Central AfricaDaughters of SyriaIn Southern India

Some items in the collection include signatures, such as the two Chinese-English dictionaries signed “Annie Buchan”, evidence that they were used by this missionary to China whose papers are in the care of the CSWC Archive. A number of volumes are signed by Robert Laws,  Free Church of Scotland missionary to Livingstonia, Nyasaland (now Malawi), whose diaries are held in New College Library’s Special Collections at MSS LAW.

Robert Laws signature

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Missionary to the North – The Paterson Bible Collection

Testamente nutak : Kaladlin okauzeennut nuktersimarsok. Copenhagen, 1799. New College Library PAT 53

Testamente nutak : Kaladlin okauzeennut nuktersimarsok [Eskimo Bible]. Copenhagen, 1799. New College Library PAT 53

In early 2014 we began work to catalogue the Paterson Bible Collection, as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library. This collection of over 300 Bibles in a huge variety of languages and scripts represents the interests and life’s work of John Paterson (1776–1855). Paterson was a Glasgow trained missionary for the Congregational Church, who originally intended to serve in India but instead forged a career in northern Europe (1).

Bible. New Testament. Estonian

Piibli Ramat, se on keik se Jummala Sanna [Bible. New Testament. Estonian]. Peterburri Linnas, 1822. New College Library PAT 60

His work involved translating and printing portions of the scriptures into Finnish, Georgian, Icelandic, Sami, Latvian, Moldavian, Russian, Samogitian, and Swedish. First based in Sweden, where he founded the Finnish Bible Society, in 1812 Paterson moved to St Petersburg, where he was involved in the work of what became the Russian Bible Society.  In later life he returned to Scotland where he continued to be active in the Scottish Congregational Church, but was also involved with early attempts to produce Bibles for the blind, in a precursor of Braille writing (2).

Meije Issanda Jesusse Kristusse Wastne Testament [Bible. New Testament. Estonian]. Riga, 1686

Meije Issanda Jesusse Kristusse Wastne Testament [Bible. New Testament. Estonian]. Riga, 1686 New College Library PAT 58

 

 

The Paterson Bible Collection reflects the linguistic spectrum of his Northern European work, but also includes Bibles in languages as diverse as Amharic, Armenian and Ethiopian.  It was received by the National Bible Society of Scotland in 1957 from A. G. C. Baxter of Gilston, Largoward, Paterson’s descendant, and subsequently gifted  to New College Library in 1991.

 

 

(1) G. C. Boase, ‘Paterson, John (1776–1855)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21533, accessed 19 Feb 2014]

(2) Alexander, James M. (1974) ‘Title John Paterson, Bible Society Pioneer, 1776-1855.  The later years – 1813-1855, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, vol viii, p196.

Behind the Scenes at New College Library #ILW2014

Objects for innovative Learning WeekA guest post from Liz Louis, student on the MLitt in Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of St Andrews and volunteer at New College Library Object Strongroom. Liz presented on a selection of New College objects as part of the Behind the Scenes at New College Library Innovative Learning Week event.

I want to show you some of the highlights of the collection and also how the resources which New College Library can provide us with are invaluable to my research.

New College Library’s impressive holdings on Thomas Chalmers, chair of theology at Edinburgh University and first Principal of New College include many portraits of Chalmers in the form of paintings, photos and prints. As an art historian, the Wax Relief Portrait of Thomas Chalmers is interesting because it is intensely sculptural and ‘photorealistic’: with wax best suited to imitate human skin and most eerily similar to the moment of arrested life.   No paper trail for the original paper has been discovered as of yet, although I have found a label which suggests that the portrait was made by Mme Tussaud’s. We do know that it was given to Prof Hugh Watt (Principal 1946-50) by Margaret Macphail, who was given the object by her friend who inherited it from Chalmers’s goddaughter.

Many objects in the strong room reflect the nineteenth century interest in sciences. The album with dried plants has a handwritten inscription on first page: In Memoriam / A Flower, a Plant, or a Weed, / gathered from every place/ mentioned in the Bible / which I visited in Palestine / 1852 / W.D. (William Dickson) 1852.  This makes it particularly interesting for us: we’re not often lucky to have name and date of objects ON an object. We know that it was donated by his sons to complete New College’s Dickson collection of objects related to Middle East. It was addressed to John Duns (Professor of Natural Science at New College, 1864-1909). To a modern eye one thing that stands out is that the names written in pencil next to the plant never refer to the plant itself, but always to the place where it was found, e.g. ‘Place where they stoned Stephen’; ‘Gethsemane’.

New College Library’s objects collection contains other objects collected by travellers to  the East, and the written accounts of their experiences are equally marked by the influence of their reading & knowledge of the Bible. One of these is Bonar’s Bible, a Bible dropped in (and subsequently retrieved from)  Jacob’s Wellin Samaria near the city of Sychar (north of Jerusalem). We know about this because the owner, Andrew Alexander Bonar, documented the event in his Narrative of a Visit to the Holy Land, and Mission of Inquiry to the Jews[1] This trip to Middle East in April 1839 was the first mission sent by Church of Scotland to Palestine, making Bonar’s Bible part of the story of the Church of Scotland’s efforts to convert the Jews. [2]

CasketAnd finally one of our favourite objects, a casket presented to the Rev. John Sinclair McPhail.  It contains an illuminated letter from the Members of the United Free Presbytery of Skye congratulating McPhail on his 50th anniversary of being ordained, praising his devotion and adherence to the Church’s Principles as well as his personal qualities and ‘sound wisdom’.
It’s one of the few objects in the collection that we know when and where it was made thanks to the marks. We know where because of the Assay mark is applied by the Assay Office as a guarantee for the purity of the precious metal (here: silver) according to national and international  standards. The casket’s mark has three towers with one at front and two at back, the symbol of the Edinburgh Assay Office. We know when from the assay mark,  indicated by a single letter and font – here,  sans serif Y: probably 1880-1. And we know who made it from the maker’s mark MC&Co = Mackay,Cunningham and Company, Edinburgh, in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition, the sovereign’s head, (in this case profile of Queen Victoria) aka duty mark certifies payment of tax to the Crown; Scottish thistle=silver standard mark: Sterling .925 for Edinburgh.

All of this shows how objects can begin to tell us stories if we know how to read them. So why are we doing all of this?
Firstly, to establish and record the collection that New College Library holds. This should enable collaboration with other institutions through shared knowledge and resources, and also enable preservation of sensitive objects and information about them as ethical obligation towards future generations (so nobody has to do my job all over again). Revealing the hidden stories should enable the University student and staff community to access basic information on objects as part of their own research, and make objects available to researchers for exploring new topics.


[1] Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D., & Rev. R. M. M’Cheyne, Narrative of a Visit to the Holy Land, and Mission of Inquiry to the Jews (Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Co., 1878), pp.211.2

[2] Michael Marten, Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home. Scottish Missions to Palestine, 1839-1917 (London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006), pp.9-26.12.

New journal for World Christianity

Akrofi-Christaller InstituteRecently added to the collections for Divinity at New College Library is the Journal of African Christian thought : journal of the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology. This journal was requested for World Christianity at the School of Divinity. The University of Edinburgh is the only location in Scotland for this journal.

J.H. Oldham (1874-1969) : Missionary and Ecumenical Pioneer

Faith on the frontier : a life of J.H. Oldham / K.W. Clements. New College Library BX6.8.O54 Cle.

Faith on the frontier : a life of J.H. Oldham / K.W. Clements. New College Library BX6.8.O54 Cle.

Today, 16 May, is the anniversary of the death of J.H. Oldham.

Joseph Houldsworth Oldham (1874-1969) was a missionary and pioneer of ecumenism. The organising secretary for the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, he also founded the journal International Review of Missions. During the Second World War the meetings of his ‘Moot’ group initiated new thinking about Christian responsibility in modern society.

New College Library holds a substantial collection of J.H. Oldham’s papers,  which include correspondence, material relating to the Moot including minutes (1938-1947), lectures, sermons, papers and reports.

You can read more about J.H. Oldham and the Oldham Papers here , or in Faith on the frontier : a life of J.H. Oldham  by K.W. Clements, in  New College Library at BX6.8.O54 Cle.