Frederick William Baller (21 November 1852 – 12 August 1922) was a British

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

to China, Chinese

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, translator, educator and

sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...

Missionary career

Following his conversion to Christianity at age 17, Baller was one of the first students of the Missionary Institute established in the East End of London by

Henry Grattan Guinness Henry Grattan Guinness (11 August 1835 – 21 June 1910) was an Irish Nonconformist Protestant preacher, evangelist and author. He was the great evangelist of the Third Evangelical awakening and preached during the Ulster Revival of 1859 wh ...

. Baller applied to the China Inland Mission (CIM) and left England on 3 September 1873 with Charles Henry Judd, M. Henry Taylor, and Mary Bowyer. They arrived at Shanghai on 5 November 1873. The following year, he and Mary Bowyer were married at Shanghai, on 17 September. Mary was a veteran missionary to China who had ventured out with Hudson Taylor on the Lammermuir (clipper) in 1866, at the beginning of the China Inland Mission. She had been baptised by Taylor, along with some others, en route at the

Sunda Strait The Sunda Strait () is the strait between the Indonesian islands of Java island, Java and Sumatra. It connects the Java Sea with the Indian Ocean. Etymology The strait takes its name from the Sunda Kingdom, which ruled the western portion of Ja ...

. Baller studied the Chinese language in Nanking (

Nanjing Nanjing or Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400. Situated in the Yang ...

), then just recently liberated from the ravages of the Taiping rebels. Baller was then appointed superintendent of missions in

Anhui Anhui is an inland Provinces of China, province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiang ...

and

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

with the China Inland Mission. He went to

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

in 1876, with George King, to distribute

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenom ...

relief. Due to the continued famine in 1878, he returned to Shanxi with Taylor's wife Jane Elizabeth Faulding and single women missionaries Horne and Crickmay. Baller took a China Inland Mission party through

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

, facing anti-foreign opposition, to

Guiyang Guiyang; Mandarin pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively as Kweiyang is the capital of Guizhou, Guizhou province in China. It is centrally located within the province, on the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau, eastern part of the Yun ...

in 1880, visiting the capital of

Guizhou ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province , map_caption = Map s ...

. He was appointed secretary to the first China Inland Mission China Council in 1885.

Writing and teaching career

In 1896, he was appointed principal of the new training home for CIM male missionaries at

Anqing Anqing ( zh, s=, t=安慶, p=Ānqìng, l=, also Yicheng, Nganking and formerly Hwaining, now the name of Huaining County) is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Anhui province of China, province, China, People's Republic of China. Its popu ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

. There he not only helped train missionaries in the Chinese language but also published his lectures in ''Letters, from an Old Missionary to His Nephew'' (1907). In 1897, he began his extensive literary work. From 1900 to 1918 he served on the committee to revise the Mandarin Bible as a member of the Union Mandarin Bible Revision Committee at Beijing, for the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

in 1907, and the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

1907–1918. He was one of the translators of the Christian Union Version of the Bible, along with

Calvin Wilson Mateer Calvin Wilson Mateer (, sometimes misspelt "Matteer") (9 January 1836 – 28 September 1908) was a missionary to China with the American Presbyterian Mission. He was of Scottish-Irish descent and a native of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.Da ...

Cheng Jingyi Cheng Jingyi or Cheng Ching-yi (; 22 September 1881, Beijing – 15 November 1939, Shanghai) was a Christianity in China, Chinese Protestant leader who worked for an independent, unified Chinese Christian Church and a nondenominational unity of Chr ...

and George Owen. Among his many books, the best known are ''An Anglo-Chinese Dictionary'', ''The Mandarin Primer'' (at least 14 editions), ''An Idiom a Lesson, An Analytical Vocabulary of the New Testament'', ''Lessons in Wenli'', ''An English Translation of the

Sacred Edict In 1670, when the Kangxi Emperor of China's Qing dynasty was sixteen years old, he issued the Sacred Edict (), consisting of sixteen maxims, each seven characters long, to instruct the average citizen in the basic principles of Confucian orthodo ...

'', and ''The Life of Hudson Taylor''. After the death of his first wife, Baller married H. B. Fleming on 23 January 1912. Due to his work with the Chinese language, in 1915 he was made a Life Governor of the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The ...

; he was also a vice-president of the National Bible Society of Scotland; and a Life Member of the

American Bible Society American Bible Society is a U.S.-based Christian nonprofit headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the American member organization of United Bible Societies, it supports global Bible translation, production, distribution, literacy, engag ...

. In 1919, Baller went on furlough after nineteen years of uninterrupted service in China. Baller died in 1922 and was buried in Shanghai shortly after completing his book on Taylor.

Works authored or translated

* * * * * * ''Life of C. H. Spurgeon Translated into Mandarin'' * ''A Retrospect'' by J. Hudson Taylor (translated into Chinese)
''An analytical Chinese-English dictionary : compiled for the China Inland Mission'' (1900)

An analytical vocabulary of the New Testament'' (1907)

''A Mandarin primer'' (1911)

''An idiom a lesson; a short course in elementary Chinese'' (1921)
*(Harvard University) *(Harvard University) *(Princeton University) *(Columbia University) *(the University of California) *University of Pennsylvania website, Library section, ''Online Books by F. W. Baller''
/ref> *(the University of Michigan)

Bibliography

* * * *

References

External links

OMF International (formerly China Inland Mission and Overseas Missionary Fellowship)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baller, Frederick William English Protestant missionaries Protestant missionaries in China British missionaries in China Translators of the Bible into Chinese Protestant writers British sinologists British lexicographers 1852 births 1922 deaths Burials in Shanghai British missionary linguists