The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, 1835

This 1835 volume of The Baptist Magazine opens with one of the most remarkable stories in Protestant missionary history. The memoir of Rev. Robert Morrison traces his journey from a young man in England who taught himself Chinese through sheer force of will, to his arrival in Canton in 1807 where he was told by the East India Company that no ship would carry him to his destination. He went anyway. The memoir details his struggles, his isolation, and his singular achievement: translating the Bible into Chinese while literally living among people who could have killed him for it. The remainder of the magazine offers the theology, debates, and spiritual anxieties of early 19th-century British Baptists. There are memorials to deceased ministers, reflections on foreign missions, theological disputations, and reports from congregations across England and America. It is a slice of evangelical culture at a moment when Baptists were defining themselves as a transatlantic movement convinced God had called them to redeem the world. For historians of Christianity, this volume is a primary source. For anyone curious about the origins of Protestant missionary work in China, the opening memoir alone justifies the read.