The main focus of this book is the life and work of James Legge, the Victorian translator of many of the most important Chinese classics into English. Legge was born into a family of Scottish Congregationalists and served for 30 years as a missionary in Hong Kong. He returned to England to become the first professor of Chinese at Oxford, and died a celebrated Victorian sage, albeit someone judged slightly old-fashioned by his younger and more abrasive Orientalist rivals.
The combination of a life devoted to the writings of Confucius, Lao Tse and others with his own nonconformist Christianity lay at the root of his situation, and lies at the heart of this book. The common view when Legge started out on his career was that all non-Christian religions (and much of Roman Catholicism into the bargain) were "idolatry." Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and the rest were all "infidels," and the mission of Christians was to convert them to the true faith, a task the Bible promised would one day succeed. By the time of his death the more modern academic view was becoming established that all religions should be regarded in the same way, and studied for their differences and similarities without giving any one a privileged position.
Legge resided half way between these two points of view. While on the one hand never forsaking his Christian beliefs, on the other he pioneered the perspective of Confucius and the Buddha as benign and educative influences, and Chinese society, far from being a pagan wasteland, as having a great deal to be said in its favor.
Traditional missionaries at the time were, by contrast, quite likely to preach that Confucius was a depraved heathen whose unchristian soul was rotting in hell, and things got more extreme as the century progressed. The 1890s saw an increased aggressiveness in the imperialist push, and missionaries could all too easily be heard speaking of "conquering the heathen on behalf of Christ." Even Legge, perceived for most of his life as dangerously sympathetic to Chinese beliefs and customs, hardened his devotional language in revising the introductions to his translations.
Generally, though, he was a moderate. He opposed the British trade in opium (for which he was much mocked) and helped supervise the establishment of Somerville, Oxford's first college for women, resisting the idea that its students should be drawn from any particular religious denomination.
Legge's first experience of preaching the gospel to Asia was in Malacca where he was sent by the London Missionary Society, together with his young wife, in 1839. But four years later he moved on to the newly-established colony of Hong Kong. There, it was believed by the enthusiastic evangelical community, God was truly using the British to show forth his glory.
Things, however, did not go entirely according to plan. Of the three prize pupils Legge brought back to London in 1846 and introduced to Queen Victoria -- students who were intended to spearhead the conversion of China -- two used their knowledge of English to go into business, while the third joined the triads. Even Legge's Hong Kong seminary was itself eventually closed, none of its 17 Chinese graduates having opted to go into missionary work. James Legge finally left Hong Kong for the UK in 1873. Three years later he was inaugurated into the new professorship of Chinese at Oxford.
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