Pioneering Paulines

Born in Glasgow, John Burdon was a missionary, translator, the third Bishop of Victoria (1874–97), and warden of St. Paul’s College ex officio.

Burdon’s ministry in China began in 1853, in Shanghai and eastern China. Later, he was assigned to Beijing, where he was the first English teacher at the Tongwen Guan, which was one of China’s first schools for learning foreign languages. There, Burdon began his other lifelong mission of translating scripture into Chinese. Collaborating with other missionaries, he co-translated the Book of Common Prayer and the Easy Wenli [literary Chinese] Union Version of the Bible, while indirectly contributing to the Chinese Union Version, which remains the most used Chinese Protestant Bible today.

After his consecration, Burdon reopened St. Paul’s in 1875 while tending to his flock across southern China and Japan. Aware of Alford’s previous difficulties, he split the College into two programmes: a general education stream and a theological school. He additionally founded the Hongkong Public School in 1880,* which catered to European residents as an additional revenue source. Even though the bubonic plague in 1894 hurt enrolment, St. Paul’s recovered, and by 1896, it had more than 100 students.

Post-retirement, Burdon continued missionary duties in China until 1899.

Burdon paid much attention to localising Christianity for the Chinese. One of his more interesting ideas was to replace bread and wine in the Eucharist with rice cakes and green tea. In an age before vernacular written Chinese was the norm, Burdon’s advocacy of using easier Chinese forms aided Christianity’s spread across China, which in turn played a key role in shaping standard written Chinese as we know it today.

* While Hongkong Public School was an Anglican school resident in the Glenealy campus, it was institutionally unaffiliated with St. Paul’s College, and had a separate administration. Burdon explicitly modelled the school after public schools in England, which are privately-funded institutions, not publicly-funded. The school folded in 1891.

包爾騰生於蘇格蘭格拉斯哥，爲傳敎士及翻譯，一八七四至九七年間任維多利亞敎區第三任會督，兼任聖保羅書院監院。

包爾騰一八五三年起赴海外佈道，先在蘇浙滬傳敎，後調派北京，期間於京師同文館敎授英語，爲中國首間現代洋式學校首批敎師之一。包爾騰駐京時亦開始聯同其他傳敎士漢譯經文，後來成爲畢生事業，譯有《公禱書》及淺文理和合本（淺白文言）聖經，亦參與國語和合本（白話文）部份早期譯本，後者於一九一九年面世，至今仍爲華人新敎徒常用之聖經本。

獲祝聖維多利亞會督後，包爾騰遂爲華南和日本信眾服務。經營聖保羅書院方面，包爾騰獲悉前任會督曾面對的困難後，在一八七五年聖保羅書院重開後決定將書院分拆成神學班（寄宿）與普通班（走讀／非寄宿）。在一八八〇年又增辦專爲洋人而設的Hongkong Public School 校舍【註】，以補助敎區收入。以致一八九四年爆發鼠疫，聖保羅書院也得以復原，到一八九六年有逾百名書生就讀。

退任後，包爾騰繼續於中國多處傳敎，至一八九九年返英。

包爾騰一生致力讓華人易於接受基督敎，當中曾建議聖餐禮換用米餠和綠茶代替餠和葡萄酒。而華人書寫仍用文言文之時，包爾騰推廣簡易文體，助基督敎在中國快速散佈，間接促使白話文普及，部分更漸漸塑成我們現今的日用語。

【註】　Hongkong Public School（「香港公校」）雖爲座落己連拿利校舍之英格蘭敎會學校，惟辦學方面與聖保羅書院本身毫無關聯。「Public School」乃跟隨英格蘭之傳統意義，「public」指開放予公眾報讀，與私人授課作對比，並非由公帑資助，實際較接近私立學校的定義；Hongkong Public School亦有徵收學費，不應與義學混淆。該校後於一八九一年停辦。政府曾於憲報暫譯「港眾男義學」，惟該譯名僅供當時參考，無任何正式地位。