Samuel isaac joseph schereschewsky biography
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With the Taiping rebellion still raging, the new missionaries continued studying Chinese rather than beginning ministry among Chinese. Employing two Chinese copyists, one for the day and another after supper until ten or later every night, he devoted himself entirely to this one form of ministry. She was buried in Tokyo beside her husband.
Because their financial resources were always limited, she had to exercise great frugality and to be content living in one “shabby little” house after another.
For faculty, the school employed Schereschewsky, who taught Chinese classics and served as president, and three other men, one of them Chinese (Y. Fellow missionaries on the field tended to agree that he was unsuited for the role and responsibilities of a bishop, thinking that his gifts and calling lay in translation, not leadership of other missionaries.
His colleague Dr. Boone said that there was “no indication that he will recover full power of mind or body, or be capable of any sustained mental effort” (Muller 175). On the other hand, his usual disposition was genial and happy. I will follow Him without the camp [a reference to Hebrews 13:13]’” (Muller 32). The two of them also translated a number of hymns.
“He was of a merry, enthusiastic disposition” and happy at school.
He also served as a prime illustration of how the Christian faith transcends cultures and can use their various riches to establish an international church. Despite his almost total paralysis and though confined to a chair all day long, he labored at his task for an average of nine hours a day for the rest of his life.
I had to put them on for him” (Muller 239).
The New Testament committee assigned to him the books of Matthew, Hebrews, and Revelation. They also assumed the titles and status of high officials, further alienating the mandarins.
Conflict with one of his senior missionaries, Dr. Nelson, caused him acute pain, made worse when Nelson’s daughter resigned over the decision to merge the girls’ school of which she was principal with the other girls’ school to form St.
Mary’s Hall.
This he did, declaring that he had “a strong desire to devote his whole life to the China Mission” (Muller 38).
Since the United States had been going through an economic depression since 1873, no action was taken by the Foreign Board, which so discouraged Schereschewsky that he formally withdrew his acceptance of the bishopric.
He became convinced that he should become a Christian and in 1854 came to the United States. Amen.
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Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky was born in Lithuania in 1831, went to Germany to study for the rabbinate, there became a Christian, emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and in 1859 was sent by the Episcopal Church to China, where he devoted himself from 1862 to 1875 to translating the Bible into Mandarin Chinese.
In this way, he would be able not only to improve his Mandarin but also obtain residence in the capital, which was otherwise forbidden to foreign missionaries.
He was sent to Frankfurt, Germany at the age of 19 to be trained as a rabbi.