John Ross

From Mayfield Salisbury Church Website

The Revd Dr John Ross

Korean Missionary and Elder in Mayfield U F

The Revd Dr John Ross (1842 – 1915) was born on 6th July 1842 on a farm in the parish of Chapelhill, Nigg in Easter Ross. The son of a tailor, he studied at the United Presbyterian Divinity Hall in Edinburgh 1865 – 1869. He was licensed in 1870. Though attracted to the Gaelic ministry, he accepted the call of the UP Church's Foreign Mission Committee to serve in Manchuria. At the time of decision, a friend said to him, 'Better to be a spark in China than a flame in the Highlands.' Ross took the advice of his friend.

Ross's work involved itinerancy and the training of an indigenous evangelistic and pastoral ministry. Significantly, he held that Christian teaching did not conflict with Confucian (his first school provided free teaching, using only Chinese classics), asserted the existence of a monotheistic strand in ancient Chinese religion, denied that Chinese ancestral rites were idolatrous (while insisting that adjudication on traditional customs was the local church's province) and believed Buddhist ascetics to be the most earnest seekers and, when converted, the most dynamic evangelists. Ross commented, 'The role of the missionary was not to change customs but to renew the heart.'

In 1874, he saw the possibilities of Christian mission in the closed neighbouring land of Korea. Persuading Korean visitors to Manchuria to be his first teachers, he worked at the language, produced a primer in 1877 and a grammar in 1882. He directed the first Korean translation of the New Testament. Not permitted to travel into Korea himself, a Korean friend and Korean traders carried the Scriptures over the border. Ross chose to translate the Bible into the language of the common people rather than Chinese, which was the language of the educated and upper classes. It has been argued that Ross's 'decision to use only the language of the common people was the most important event in the entire history of the Korean Church.' Produced at a time when no standard Korean grammar was available, the Ross translation 'seems to have formed the basis of a new vernacular literature.' Ross himself noted that, 'the translation goes to the women of that country, and to the lowliest and illiterate poor, to speak to them plainly, in the language which all understand and employ in daily life, of the wondrous love of Him who is Saviour of the world.'

John Ross retired in 1900. He came to Edinburgh and became an Elder in Mayfield United Free Church of Scotland (now Mayfield Salisbury). In addition to his translation of Scripture, Ross also wrote on East Asian history and culture: Chinese Foreign Policy (1877), History of Corea (1879), The Manchus (1880), The Boxers of Manchuria (1901), Mission Methods in Manchuria (1903), The Original Religion of China (1909) and the posthumous Origin of the Chinese People (1916). He received the DD from Glasgow University in 1894. Ross died in 1915 and is buried in Newington Cemetery.

South Korea has a population of 40 million and a Christian Church numbering over 12 million members. The dramatic growth of the Korean churches over the past one hundred years is directly linked to the spread of the Scriptures in the language of the people. John Ross was not permitted to enter Korea yet over 12 million Korean Christians know his name.

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