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

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

Christian

missionary A missionary is a member of a religious group which 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.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

to China, Chinese

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, translator, educator and sinologist.

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 Protestant Christian preacher, evangelist and author. He was the great evangelist of the Third Evangelical awakening and preached during the Ulster Revival of 1859 which dr ...

. Baller applied to the

China Inland Mission OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship and before 1964 the China Inland Mission) is an international and interdenominational Evangelical Christianity, Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It ...

and left England on 3 September 1873 with

Charles Henry Judd __NOTOC__ Charles Henry Judd (1842 – 23 October 1919), was a British Protestant missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He was among the first to bring news of the Gospel to Guizhou, Hunan, and Hebei during the late Qing dynasty w ...

, 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) ''Lammermuir'' was an extreme clipper ship built in 1864 by Pile, Spence and Company of West Hartlepool for John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis & Son, London. She was the second ship to bear the name. The first had been the favorite ship of John ...

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. Baller studied the Chinese language in Nanking (

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

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

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

and

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...

with the

. He went to Shanxi in 1876, with George King, to distribute

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...

relief. Due to the continued famine in 1878, he returned to Shanxi with Taylor's wife

Jane Elizabeth Faulding Jane Elizabeth "Jennie" Faulding Taylor (6 October 1843 – 31 July 1904), was a British Protestant missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. She pioneered the work of single women missionaries in China and eventually married the ...

and single women missionaries Horne and Crickmay. Baller took a

party through

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...

, facing antiforeign opposition, to Guiyang in 1880, visiting the capital of

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the ...

. He was appointed secretary to the first

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, Sichuan. 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 grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...

in 1907, and the Old Testament 1907–1918. 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 orthodoxy ...

'', 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; he was also a vice-president of the

National Bible Society of Scotland Scottish Bible Society (SBS), founded in 1809 as the Edinburgh Bible Society, amalgamated in 1861 with the Glasgow Bible Society (founded 1812) to form the National Bible Society of Scotland, is a Scottish Christian charity that exists to make t ...

; 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, engage ...

. 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) *() *(the University of Michigan)

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

OMF International (formerly China Inland Mission and Overseas Missionary Fellowship)

References