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Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Edited by Gerald H. Anderson. New York: Macmillan Reference, 1998. xxviii + 845 pp. $100.00 cloth.
"The chief end of biography is to embalm virtue and perpetuate usefulness," wrote the Rev. William B. Sprague in his introduction to Lucius Smith's Heroes and Martyrs of the Modern Missionary Enterprise, published in 1854 (Hartford, Conn.: P. Brockett, 1854; 11). In his estimation, information about other cultures, inspiration to personal growth in the faith, and challenge to support missions stood as the hallmarks of missionary biography. Obviously, such a limited approach severely restricted what could be learned from the actual conduct and impact of missions.
The Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions represents a major publishing event in modern historical scholarship since nothing of this magnitude had ever been attempted before. Granted, biographical entries on missionaries can be found in earlier works such as The Encyclopedia of Missions (1891), Concise Dictionary of the Christian World Mission (1971), and the multivolume New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967-1995). Though valuable in scope and information, none of them focused exclusively on missionary biography. Without discounting the contributions of these and similar publications, Gerald H. Anderson's Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions reveals how far research on the lives and legacies of missionaries has come since the last century. This makes it an indispensable...