Out of Weakness Were Made Strong by T. E. BOWEN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1907

“Out of Weakness Were Made Strong”

By T. E. BOWEN

T. E. BOWEN

In talking with his disciples one day, Jesus said: “And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor: other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors.” Jesus thus recognized that faithful men of God had been laboring for souls, and that that labor had in a great measure prepared the way for his own work. In these words are also expressed his appreciation of the value of this preparatory work of previous laborers.

Thus it is now. Pioneer work, in countries where the dense darkness of heathenism prevailed, has been done the past few years by men specially raised up by the Lord, which, in a wonderful way, has prepared these difficult fields for the speedy proclamation of the last warning message. Prominent in this preparatory work is the translating of the Word of God itself into the languages of the people in these darkened lands. Men have endured no small amount of hardship in accomplishing these stupendous tasks.

An illustration of an instance of this kind is found in the brief sketch of the life work of Dr. S. I. J. Schereschewsky (pronounced Shĕrĕshĕfskī), who recently died at Tokyo, Japan, as published in a recent number of The Bible in All the World:—

“On October 15 there passed away at Tokyo a most gifted Bible translator, Dr. S. I. J. Schereschewsky, formerly missionary bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. Born of Jewish parents at Tauroggen, in Russian Lithuania, in 1831, he was educated as a Jew in all the wisdom of the Jews; and was graduated at the University of Breslau. The study of a copy of the Hebrew version of the New Testament convinced him of the truth of Christianity, and soon afterward he made his way to the United States, where he was baptized by a Baptist minister, and trained at a Presbyterian theological college. In 1859, at New York, he received orders in the Episcopal Church, and at the end of the same year he landed in Shanghai as a missionary of that church. He removed to Peking in 1862, and became bishop in Shanghai in 1877.”

“His early training, whereby he came to know Hebrew better than any other language, specially fitted him to become a translator of the Old Testament. This peculiar fitness was soon recognized by his missionary colleagues, who about 1865 entrusted him with the translation of the Old Testament in Northern Mandarin. He also worked on the Peking Committee as a translator of the New Testament. His version of the Old Testament, first published by the American Bible Society in 1875, has since been repeatedly issued. A revised edition appeared in 1899. But a still greater work was his translation of the whole Bible into easy Wenli; he added the New Testament in this case, in order to secure uniformity; both Burdon and Blodget’s and Griffith John’s versions of the New Testament being in a somewhat different style. This Bible was published in 1902.”

“The significance of Bishop Schereschewsky’s achievements, however, lies not so much in their extent and scholarship as in their testimony to the indomitable courage of the man and his devotion to his work. Six years after his consecration as bishop he became paralyzed, and had to resign his episcopal jurisdiction. His malady increased till it left him with the use of only the middle finger of each hand. Fortunately his intellect remained unimpaired, and with these two fingers he was able to type out his manuscripts, which were afterward rewritten in Chinese characters by his secretary.

“But the toil was well worth while. To this man alone has it been granted to give to the two hundred and fifty million Mandarin-speaking Chinese, as well as to the mass of readers in China, the oracles of God as found in the Old Testament. Reviewing, therefore, his life in the light of these facts, we may surely trace the divine purpose in taking him from one task, for which a successor could without difficulty be found, and setting him free for another, for which

his whole previous life had been a unique preparation. As a translator his influence has been far wider than it could have been as a bishop, and Chinese Christians will ever remember, with gratitude to God, the great scholar who out of weakness was made strong—who laid so well and so truly the foundations of the Bible in their greatest vernacular, and in the more popular form of their written language.”