History of the Church in China by Frank Norris

Frank Norris’s contribution to the Handbooks of English Church Growth series provides a snapshot of missionary work in China up to around 1907. Norris served with the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) [Anglo-Catholic] missionary in North China and was chaplain to the Bishop of that Diocese.

Frank L. Norris [1864-1945], China. Handbooks of English Church Expansion. London & Oxford: A.R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd., 1908. Hbk. pp.219. [Download complete book in PDF]

Contents

1. Heathen China
2. Heathen China and Christian England
3. The English Church Enters China
4. Heathen China and Christian England Again
5. The English Church Enters Peking
6. The Church in South China
7. The Church in Fuhkien
8. The Church in Chehkiang
9. The Church in the Yangtse Valley
10. The Church in Western China
11. The Church in Shantung
12. The Church in Chihli
13. Inter-Diocesan Organisation
14. The “Open Door”
    

General Index
Index to Names
Bibliography

Chapter 1

“In the beginning” God made China. Read ” Heaven ” for GOD, and the sentence not inaptly expresses the Chinese idea of the superiority of China as compared with the rest of the world. Heaven, having made China, set a Son of Heaven on the Chinese throne, and to this day there has never been wanting a monarch who thus claims what may be considered the divinest right to a throne that any earthly monarch has ever put forward.

Let us enter the gateway which leads from the main road of the Chinese, or outer, city of Peking into the sacred precincts of what is known to foreign visitors as The Temple, to the Chinese themselves as The Altar of Heaven. Hither, once a year at least, in person, oftener by deputy, comes the Son of Heaven, the reigning Emperor. Passing under a magnificent avenue of trees, he is carried over a little marble bridge into the court-yard of the Hall of Fasting, where he passes the night, and keeps the vigil of the great day of sacrifice by abstinence from all flesh-meat. [Continue reading]