John Shaw Burdon

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Burdon entered the Anglican Mission College at age 23 and arrived in Shanghai in 1853.

He married Harriet Ann, whom he lost to cholera in 1854 in Shanghai. 

He and his wife Harriet Ann had befriended Hudson Taylor when Taylor arrived in Shanghai in 1854, alone and without money or friends. Fluent in Shanghainese, Burdon had already become known as “an adventurous pioneer evangelist” (Broomhall 2.140). So, after Taylor had settled in a bit, he began to travel with Burdon and sometimes Alexander Whyte in a boat on the nearby canal. 

His help to Taylor could be very practical: As Taylor was beginning to set up his own household, Burdon “showed Taylor how to check his cook’s daily purchases and avoid being overcharged and went with him to buy furniture” (Broomhall 2.185). When his time allowed, he would call on Taylor or invite him to go with him on short expeditions. 

Taylor reciprocated these kindnesses when he could. In September 1854, Burdon’s wife, who was expecting a child, came down with cholera. Burdon was sick, too. Hudson Taylor went over to them “to let John get some sleep… Until she died on the 26th he divided his time between his house and theirs, staying the night when needed, and after her death he remained with John until midnight, when his colleague, John Hobson the chaplain, came to be with him… And [Taylor] joined him again through the agony of packing up his wife’s possessions. Then in John’s desolation they went for walks together” (Broomhall 2.189). Here we see the tightness of the missionary community in Shanghai and the mutual help they afforded each other in times of need.

He lived in a house in the London Missionary Society compound for a while, then left it for Hudson Taylor to occupy.

After the First Opium War, the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) “placed the onus upon the mandarins to arrest any foreigners who ‘strayed into the country’ [beyond the five treaty ports] in breach of agreements between the local authorities and consuls. Whatever the spirit of the treaty, however, sportsmen ventured out undisguised in pursuit of the abounding game, merchants to size up the potentials for trade, smugglers to establish their contacts, and missionaries to distribute Scripture and preach… Walter Medhurst, Alexander Wylie, Joseph Edkins, William Muirhead, John Burdon and others deliberately tested the tolerance of the mandarins and the welcome of the people and found them satisfactory” (Broomhall 2.237).

In February 1855, he and Wylie and Hudson Taylor, after gaining permission from the consuls to go through the line of French ships protecting Shanghai from the Triad rebels who were besieging it, left Shanghai for a week of evangelism southwest of Shanghai to the city of Songjiang, preaching and distributing Scriptures along the way. They barely escaped from an angry mob on the 17th and on Sunday climbed to the summit of a high hill, where they sang hymns and read Scripture, until they saw a great pall of smoke arising from Shanghai. The rebels had set fire to the old city and left.

They reached Qingpu later that day, forcing their way through the gate. Then they began preaching in a temple. Returning to their boats, they were thronged by crowds wanting tracts. “A military mandarin came on board and shared their lunch, telling them the news about Shanghai” (Broomhall 2.243).

After the departure of the rebels, missionaries worked hard together to share the gospel with people in extreme distress. “Burdon was discouraged by the poor attendance at his chapel in the city, until Dr. William Parker offered to help. In the Church Missionary Record a letter was published in which he said, ‘Dr. Parker of the Chinese Evangelization Society [the mission to which he and Hudson Taylor belonged at this time] … has come forward in a very noble, unsectarian spirit to help me.’”

Parker ran a dispensary three times a week in Burdon’s chapel. “They saw the effect immediately. John Burdon’s hearers increased to a hundred daily, only half of them patients” (Broomhall 2.250). Later, he and Parker planned to open an outstation, consisting of a country dispensary and preaching point.

In April 1855, Burdon and Hudson Taylor traveled to Chongming Island, adjacent to Shanghai. When they preached, Hudson Taylor spoke first in Mandarin, then Burdon interpreted into Shanghainese, which was native to the island. “When hostilities [between the Imperial forces and the Taiping rebels] permitted, Hudson Taylor would load up with tracts, Bibles and medical bag and venture into the countryside. While the others preached [Taylor] would examine and treat people…’ We were everywhere welcomed by the people,’” wrote Taylor “after one expedition in June. When they reached home again [Taylor] stayed the evening with the Burdons, playing his concertina and singing. At last he could write, ‘I think I may have one friend now’” (Broomhall 2.173).

Then, while Taylor doctored at a temple of the city god, Burdon “preached, until the yard was filled with five or six hundred people and he was exhausted” (Broomhall 2.254). The crowd had been friendly and receptive but then turned boisterous and manhandled Taylor. The next day they moved on to another town. When he happened to say that he and Taylor were foreigners, the people expressed amazement. They had been taken for Fujianese, their language was so fluent.

The following day they climbed a small mountain and preached in a temple, “Well-educated Chinese, many with the gilt buttons of lower-ranking mandarins collected around them, and beautiful ladies came and went in their Buddhist worship” (Broomhall 2.256). Finally, Taylor could stand the idolatry all around them no longer and began to preach against the folly of worshiping lifeless “gods.”

The following day, disregarding advice from their Chinese boatmen and others, they pressed on to a place known for its rude men. Along the way, a big, powerful man assaulted Burdon and then Taylor. They were on the verge of being mobbed when calmer militiamen took them to the chief magistrate, who treated them with great courtesy and kindness, even giving them permission to continue selling books and preaching.

This brief tour demonstrated both the possibilities and the dangers of going beyond the treaty ports. The experience also revealed the character and courage of Burdon and Taylor, as well as their zeal to make Christ known to those who had never heard of him.

Ningbo

At the end of June 1855, Burdon, William Parker and Hudson Taylor journeyed from Shanghai to Ningbo, where they were kindly received by the missionaries residing there. After a short visit, they were summoned back to Shanghai with the news that Burdon’s child was very ill. They returned in time for Burdon to be with the child for a couple of weeks before it passed away, July 1855.

In November 1856, Hudson Taylor wrote his sister that John Burdon was building what appeared to be a very warm relationship with Burella, the older of the two Dyer girls. The two became formally engaged in 1857. Miss Aldersey, who adamantly opposed her younger sister Maria’s love for Hudson Taylor, could approve this match because Burdon belonged to a highly respected mission agency and dressed like an Englishman. 

Burdon advised Taylor to return to England, get a medical degree, and become ordained, so that he could be accepted by all. Though he loved Taylor as a Christian brother, Burdon considered that Taylor’s lack of connection with a denomination or mission society (he had resigned from the Chinese Evangelization Society earlier) reflected badly on his character. He also joined others energetically opposing Maria’s union with Taylor and trying to persuade her to marry someone else. But Burdon still cared for Taylor, as shown by his nursing him when Taylor became quite ill.

Early in 1857, Burdon and William Aitchison were “traveling and preaching together, penetrating throughout the area of Jiangsu province south of the Yangzi and Zhejiang north of Hangzhou … Unhindered and ‘always cordially received’ they distributed thousands of Scriptures at the imperial exams in major cities. Even two years earlier such liberty had been unthinkable. In October 1856 they had succeeded in renting a house in Pinghu, a city of one hundred thousand” (Broomhall 3.52).

In June 1857, Burdon was embroiled in a heated controversy over the marriage of a Chinese woman traveling on a ship with other missionaries who had become pregnant by an Englishman on the ship. The two asked C.J. Hall, an ordained minister, to marry them, which he did, with the captain’s approval. The merchant community reacted with outrage. “In the view of many, Chinese women could be used but marriage to them was a crime. The missionaries rallied behind Hall. John Burdon as acting chaplain to the Foreign Settlement declared the marriage to be valid and proper, and himself became the butt of strong criticism” (Broomhall 3.69).

Burdon and Burella Hunter Dyer, the daughter of missionary Rev. Samuel Dyer, were married in Shanghai in November 1857. She died the following year of cholera as well, also in Shanghai.

He had opposed Britain’s part in the First Opium War (1839-1842) and did so again in the Second Opium War (1856-1860). He also thought that when France set itself up as protector of Roman Catholic Christians in China, it was the action of “a powerful French ecclesiastical-political action in favor of Romish missions in China” (Broomhall 3.146).

After the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), when the freedom to travel and evangelize outside the treaty ports was legalized, there “began a series of ambitious travels by Muirhead, Griffith John, Edkins, Aitchison, Nevius, Burdon and others… [They] found Chinese Christians, with notable exceptions, still to be reluctant preachers but good in personal evangelism. The weight of pioneering would continue to rest on the foreigner while Chinese evangelists were being trained” (Broomhall 3.150). At this time, he wrote home, appealing for more workers:       

There is hardly an important city that we visited at which a judicious man, by kindness, and patience, and prayer, might not be able to establish himself, and, by living amongst the people, far from all foreign influence, gain a permanent footing, first for himself, and then for the Gospel… . Are we to have men to occupy [that is, live in] these cities … in the name of the Lord? (Broomhall 3.152).

In 1858, Burdon and Burella, now friendly to the Taylors, had been “making a home for William Aitchison” (Broomhall 3.153). Tragically, on August 30, 1858, Burdon wrote to Hudson Taylor and Maria, Burella’s sister, that his young bride had suddenly died of cholera: “I really feel unable to write. Please accept this as a token of unabated, affection and with love to Mr. Taylor.” Broomhall comments: “It was only nine months since the wedding. At thirty-two he had twice been bereaved of a wife, once of a child, and was solitary again. He returned to his evangelistic travels with Aitchison, as intrepid as ever, but months later he was still tearful when he spoke of Burella” (Broomhall 3.156).

In 1859 he made an attempt to settle in Hangzhou, at about the time as John and Helen Nevius, with whom he formed a close friendship. By June 1860, he was living in Shanghai, where he welcomed Hudson Taylor and Maria in their home for a furlough. In July, he joined Joseph Edkins, Griffith John, and two others on a second journey to visit the leaders of the Taiping movement in Suzhou. They received a royal welcome from Hong Ren, who entertained them lavishly and sang hymns with them. He made clear his Christian beliefs and hopes that Christianity, allied with Taiping doctrines, could become the religion of China. The other two went back impressed, but to John Burdon the “gross errors of the Taiping creed excluded cooperation and hope of reform” (Broomhall 3.211). In other words, he was the first to see that support for the Taipings would not advance the cause of true Christianity in China.

Burdon, with two Chinese catechists whom he had trained, made repeated efforts to gain a footing in Hangzhou, but was forced each time to withdraw. Instead, he worked in Ningbo again.  Like Aitchison, Wylie, Edkins, Muirhead, Griffith John, and Taylor, he labored by constant itineration while other missionaries remained in the treaty ports, waiting for China to open up. “He truly was the apostle of this part of Zhejiang” (Broomhall 3.265). He just would not give up.

In November 1861, the Taipings broke through the walls of Ningbo and began to lay waste to the Chinese city. Burden and W. Russell stayed behind to protect the CMS boys’ school if they could. At first, they were treated well but were soon ordered by the consul into the foreign settlement for safety after it became evident that the rebels were not under the control of their leaders. Within the settlement, although the preaching chapels were closed, “John Burdon, the only one who could make himself understood by the insurgents, was preaching to them” (Broomhall 3.275).

In January 1862, he wrote to Taylor from Ningbo that the “state of affairs ‘is a very sad one and a very dark one.’” In April, en route to Beijing “with the Bishop of Victoria on a kind of exploratory tour” he wrote that “the future looks dark and dreary so far as mission work is concerned. I feel for myself that perhaps it is not so much the aspect of the work that is discouraging as my own unfitness for such work. I want [need] more prayer, more faith, more self-denial, more of everything that is required for a missionary. Where I am going or what I am to do after returning from Peking, if I ever return, is very uncertain” (Broomhall 3.282).

Beijing

In 1862 Rutherford Alcock, the newly appointed British Minister in Beijing, asked Burdon to move to the capital, “and as quasi-chaplain to the [British] legation stayed on as an active missionary in Beijing for eleven years” (Broomhall 3.277). 

The CMS later sent W.H. Collins to Beijing to help him. 

Burdon first set up a chapel in the British embassy and later began a boarding school for Chinese boys. The school, named Tong We Guan, was officially opened on 11 June 1862, and Burdon was hired as the first English instructor. He served as head instructor from 1862 to 1869. The following year, he was consecrated by the bishop of Victoria, George Smith, as an Anglican presbyter. By then he was close enough either to British embassy personnel or to the imperial staff to tell W.A.P. Martin that his widely popular Evidences of Christianity, composed in literary Chinese, had reached members of the emperor’s household. 

He sailed to England on furlough in the summer of 1864.

After his furlough, he returned to China in 1865 and was commissioned to translate the Bible into guan hua, the official language. Burdon married his third wife, Phoebe Esther Alder, on June 14, 1865. She was the daughter of E.T. Alder, vicar of Bungay. She lived until 14 June 1898; they had three sons.

“In September 1865 he added to his other work the duties of chaplain to the British legation (1865-1872). In 1864 he had been appointed one of a committee of five eminent Chinese scholars to translate Easy Wenli [literary Chinese] Union Version of the New Testament into the vernacular of North China. The work, with which his name will be always associated, appeared in 1872, and was the foundation of all subsequent revisions. In 1872 appeared also a version of the Book of Common Prayer by Burdon and (Bishop) Schereschewsky, which likewise forms the basis of all the Prayer-books since printed for the North China missions. Subsequently he prepared other editions of the Prayer Book (1879, 1890, 1893), issued a revision of the New Testament translation with H. Blodget (1889), and from 1891 to 1901 was a member of a committee for revision of the Chinese Bible” (Dictionary of National Biography). 

He and Hudson Taylor remained close friends, despite their earlier disagreement about Taylor’s relationship with Maria. In 1865, he invited them and other Ningbo missionaries to the CMS premises in the foreign settlement for safety.

The Yangzhou Incident

In 1868, instigated by hostile mandarins, a mob attacked and sacked the premises that Taylor had rented in Yangzhou for the first big party of CIM missionaries to reside in China. After barely escaping with his life, Taylor requested and received protection from the local official. He also informed the British consul of the incident, not to request intervention, but simply to make the facts of this violation of the Treaty of Nanking known. To his chagrin and dismay, the consul dispatched warships to the city and demanded that Taylor and his team be reinstated in their home, which was done to the terrible embarrassment of the mandarin.

Taylor had not intended this sort of resort to force, but others reported that he had actually requested that a gunboat to be sent, and that slander has reverberated down the corridors of time to the present. The matter provoked a furious debate in the British House of Lords, where Taylor and missionaries in general were assailed as provocative agents in China and a threat to British trade and diplomatic relations with the imperial government.

The entire missionary movement came under ferocious attack in the press. Missionary societies began to restrain their members from living or traveling in the interior of China, and all the privileges of the Treaty of Nanking began to crumble before the onslaught.

Burdon and other missionaries in Beijing realized the issues at stake and wrote a long defense- later termed the “Missionary Memorandum” - of their peaceful and lawful residence and gospel work in China, as guaranteed by the Treaty of Nanjing. Burdon later submitted their letter to the Chinese Recorder, with his own introduction, with these main points:

He supported Taylor’s appeal to the magistrate for protection; resisted any further attempts to limit the lawful activities of missionaries within China; and insisted that missionaries intended to obey Chinese laws. The opposition of local mandarins against missionaries expressed a general abhorrence of all things foreign and was fully supported by the imperial government. 

In the end, British and other consuls supported the rights of foreigners, including missionaries, to reside in China and to practice and promote their faith, as the treaty stipulated. 

Anglican bishop

On his election as bishop of Victoria and Hong Kong, he returned to England on 25 Oct. 1873, and early next year received the degree of D.D. from the archbishop of Canterbury. Burdon was consecrated 15 March 1874, by John Jackson, Bishop of London, at Lambeth Parish Church to serve as the third bishop of the South China diocese of the Anglican Church, in Victoria and Hong Kong, a diocese which until 1883 included Japan as well as all South China. He lived on Victoria Island. Before his consecration, he went to Fujian and visited almost all of the Anglican churches in the province.

At his own request his name was kept on the roll of C.M.S. missionaries, and he had sometimes to insist on the fact that he was a missionary, as well as a colonial, bishop. His episcopate was marked by ceaseless if unobtrusive work and boundless hospitality at Hong Kong and by arduous visitations in Fukien and elsewhere. He enjoyed the regard alike of the merchants of Hong Kong and the missionaries in Fukien (Dictionary of National Biography). 

Anglican bishops recruited, trained, and ordained clergy; examined catechumens and administered the rite of confirmation to those who seemed solid in their faith; visited all congregations and supervised the clergy and lay leaders; handled the finances of the diocese; and represented their diocese in dealings with other Anglican dioceses in the region, other Christian denominations and organizations (such as the Tract Society), and the government.

He also oversaw diocesan educational work: “After his consecration, Burdon reopened St. Paul’s School in 1875 while tending to his flock across southern China and Japan. Aware of [the school’s] previous difficulties, he split the College into two programmes: a general education stream and a theological school. He additionally founded the Hong Kong Public School in 1880, which catered to European residents as an additional revenue source. Even though the bubonic plague in 1894 hurt enrollment, St. Paul’s recovered, and by 1896, it had more than 100 students… . While Hong Kong Public School was an Anglican school resident in the Glenealy campus, it was institutionally unaffiliated with St. Paul’s College, and had a separate administration. Burdon explicitly modelled the school after public schools in England, which are privately-funded institutions, not publicly-funded. The school folded in 1891” (St. Paul’s College, “Pioneering Paulines”).

“Burdon paid much attention to localising Christianity for the Chinese. One of his more interesting ideas was to replace bread and wine in the Eucharist with rice cakes and green tea. In an age before vernacular written Chinese was the norm, Burdon’s advocacy of using easier Chinese forms aided Christianity’s spread across China, which in turn played a key role in shaping standard written Chinese as we know it today” (St. Paul’s College, “Pioneering Paulines”).

The “Term Question”

In his role as missionary and later as translator, Burdon had to take a stand on the notorious “Term Question” concerning the proper Chinese term to use for the Hebrew and Greek words for “God” (“god, gods”). The Roman Catholics had chosen “Tian Zhu” (Heavenly Lord). Protestants were sharply divided between “Shen” and “Shang Di (Ti).” Burdon’s earlier translations, including the Bible and the Prayer Book, had employed “Shen” for “God.”

Most English missionaries favored Shang Di (Ti), however. Burdon gives the reasons why:

The explanation of so many English Missionaries using Shang-ti is simply this:—Twenty-five years ago, when English Missionaries chiefly, almost entirely, consisted of L.M.S. [London Missionary Society] men, Dr. Medhurst, Mr. Stronach and Mr. Milne were able to move the British and Foreign Bible Society to print the so-called Delegates’ version of the Scriptures, filling in the blanks that had been left by the Translators for God, god and gods with the term “Shang-ti.” 

The controversy had never been settled between the missionaries, but it was thus practically settled for English Missionaries, between the gentlemen just named and the Bible Society. Large numbers of this Bible with this term were then printed at the Society’s presses in China. The Million Testament Scheme, and soon after the Million Bible Scheme, suggested by the Taiping Rebellion, which was erroneously believed to be a national movement toward Christianity, increased these Bibles beyond all possibility of distribution. 

 

English Missionaries on arriving in China found these Bibles made ready to their hands and in overflowing abundance in the Bible Society’s warehouses, and what was more natural than that they should fall in with the books and the usage they found? This is the only course new Missionaries can take. Moreover, the majority of Missionaries are men who do not care to enter into controversy on such a subject. They learn the language and they cling to the use of their own Mission, for the most part without any special examination. 

 

The unwavering faithfulness of every L.M.S. man to Shang-ti, and the well-stored purse of the Bible Society as well as that of the Tract Society, are the secret of the success of this term among the majority of English Missionaries. But does this prove anything about the term itself? Is it fair to dwell so perpetually and so ostentatiously on the fact of so many English missionaries being favourable to it, when that adherence arises in so many cases from simple force of circumstances? (Burdon, The Chinese Term for God).

Almost uniquely among Protestants, Burdon preferred Tian Zhu, but he vigorously opposed the use of Shang Di as a translation for Elohim and Theos. He wrote: “My struggle is rather against Shang-ti than for any particular term. I believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that Shang-ti is simply the chief god in China, and that therefore it is unscriptural to apply the name to Jehovah… . In speaking, I use every term that is likely to convey the idea I want to the Heathen and is not likely to mislead them [thus excluding Shang Di]” (Burdon, The Chinese Term for God).

He continued:

Shang-ti implies a correlative term as much, yea far more than Tien-chu, and that the use of Shang-ti is infinitely more dangerous than that of Tien-chu, from the very fact that Christianity is thereby confounded in the heathen Chinese mind, either with Confucianism or with Taoism.

Shang-ti means the “Emperor above,” and naturally in the estimation of the Chinaman, corresponds to the Emperor below, that is the Emperor par excellence of the universe, that is, China. Moreover, if the classical meaning of Shang-ti be followed, namely Heaven, no Chinaman could hear it without thinking of “Empress Earth,” as the corresponding term. Hence in Peking the “Altar of Heaven,” where Shang-ti is worshipped by the Chinese Emperor, has its corresponding “Altar of Earth” in the appropriate relative position.

…

The use of Shang-ti is in even greater danger [than Tian Zhu] of confounding Christianity with Confucianism or with Taoism. The reading men in China, on hearing this term from the mouth of a Christian teacher, at once think of the traditional meaning of the term as given in the Classics, and no amount of Christian explanation, especially by a foreigner, acquainted with the language but to a limited extent at the best, will take from them the ideas they have acquired from infancy, and for that matter for well-nigh 1,000 generations, about Shang-ti and Heaven.

As for the mass of Chinese, every Missionary, whether opposed to Shang-ti or not, knows that the name [Shang Di] suggests nothing but a Taoist idol (Burdon, The Chinese Term for God),

Though he strongly opposed the use of Shang Di as a translation for “God,” Burdon pleaded even more strongly for toleration among missionaries: 

Each one must be left to form his views, and if need be (for who would profess himself infallible on this subject?) to modify them as time goes on and light is given. The great thing is that, while we must differ, we bear and forbear with each other and be perfectly fair and just to each other. We cannot as yet see eye to eye; but believing each other to be conscientious servants of God, we ought to be ready to help each other on Committees and not throw obstacles in the way of those who may differ from us obtain” (Burdon, The Chinese Term for God).

In 1876, Burdon went to Japan and visited the Anglican churches in Tokyo, Nagasaki, Osaka, and other cities.

Always a friend to the CIM, he welcomed James Cameron when he passed through Hong Kong early in 1878 on his way home from a long trip through China. “When Cameron arrived, John Burdon provided one of his Chinese students as a companion on the next adventure, and at his Beihai premises at his disposal as a base for penetration through Guangxi to Yunnan and Guizhou” (Broomhall 6.216). He later also insisted that Hudson Taylor stay at his episcopal residence whenever he came to Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Burdon himself 

was suffering the same frustrations imposed from London in 1872 by the division of territory with W.A. Russell taking North China. Burdon, ‘an able and large-minded man’ and always an evangelist, saw the Church [of England] undergoing fiery persecution, while various American and European missions continued under fierce opposition among the Cantonese and Hakkas of Hong Kong and Guangdong. So, he pioneered a virgin field of evangelism at Beihai (Pakhoi) on the most southerly tip of what is now Guangxi province, staffed with Christian Chinese and at Hong Kong trained theological students for future Church leadership (Broomhall 6.216).

Later in 1878, he attended the second general missionary conference held in England and shared the platform with Professor James Legge and Hudson Taylor, also home for a while. 

Throughout the 1880s, foreign missions in China suffered greatly from anti-foreign sentiment, often expressed in violence, triggered by the actions of France in Indochina and southern China. The CMS lost personnel through death and departure.

With recruitment and finances at a low ebb in 1882, Burdon had “succeeded in persuading the CMS to give China ‘a much more prominent position’ in its sympathies. A [very large gift] came to the CMS for training and supporting nationals as evangelists in China and Japan.” In 1882, Burdon himself started new missionary districts in the provinces of Guangxi and Hainan Island. The following year, Hudson Taylor “helped by assessing and sending him potential diocesan assistants and ordinances, explaining that his own objective was not to extend the CIM but the knowledge of Christ. He had already met [CIM] candidates of whom he thought ‘just the man for Bishop Burdon,’ and two had joined the CMS” (Broomhall 6.467).

In 1897, he resigned from the episcopate; thereafter he traveled in Europe and did some writing. 

He died at Bedford on 5 January 1907 and was buried at Royston. 

Evaluation

Burdon’s role in submitting “The Missionary Memorandum” highlights the vexing question of the connection between the work of foreign missionaries and their governments in China.

Further clouding the issue was Burdon’s role as chaplain to the British Embassy. As a minister of the Church of England, the established church of the nation, he was bound to serve his countrymen residing in China, including government employees. Thus, like all Anglican clergy, he was ex officio an agent of the state.

As A.J. Broomhall commented, from the time of Robert Morrison onward, in the words of another historian, “‘there were times when, even against his will, [the missionary’s] very presence became an excuse for his country’s power to be tightened over the land in which he worked.’ Today [into the present] he is having to answer for it” (Broomhall 5.187).

Despite this onerous legacy, however, Burdon’s overall achievements as a missionary were remarkable. A tireless evangelist, church planter, schoolteacher and pastor, he helped to bring into being an indigenous church that lasts to this day. His translation work furnished Chinese Christians with essential resources for knowing and serving God. As bishop, in his various roles he strengthened the Anglican church in southern China for decades of steady growth. His entire life set an example for others to follow.

G. Wright Doyle