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[Biography of Young J. Allen]

Young J. Allen belongs to this remarkable group of young Georgians destined to great service. He belongs to Oxford by reason of his student days; and by reason of his repeated visits to his homeland, when Oxford was always included in his itinerary. His mighty personality was impressed on town and college in sermons and addresses, and always as Christ's Ambassador to China. On one of those visits he honored me with a good long talk, as he invited me to walk with him under the old trees which had sheltered him as a college-boy. in the Ante-Bellum days [deleted] It is not extravagant to call him a colossal figure in the history of modern missions.

He was converted while a young student in a school near Starrsville, GA. He exerted a deep religious influence over his fellow-students and we find him leading a daily prayer meeting for them at the "old log" during one of the historic revivals that visited the town in those days. He graduated young but was mature beyond his years. He soon married, sold his plantation and slaves, offered himself to the Board of Missions
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and was accepted for China.

He had scarcely laid out his work in and around Shanghai when the "War Between the States" broke out in his homeland. He was entirely cut off from home and forced to take a place as teacher and translator for the Chinese Government, in order to maintain his family and carry on his missionary activity. He held the Mission together until the Church of home was able to resume its conduct and support, he then resigned from the Government service and devoted all his time for the rest of his life to his work as a missionary.

I have heard him say that he considered himself as a missionary to the whole nation and to the entire body of the Chinese people. He fitted himself to be just that. And because China was a land of many spoken dialects and because it was also a land of one literary language, he realized that for his task the pen must become his instrument of service.

The output of his busy pen would comprise a library of nearly 250 volumes-- many of which were translations. 1.
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He founded the "Review of Missions [deleted] the Times" and edited it for more than thirty years. I once heard him forecasting one of his major literary projects. He wanted to show the Chinese people that the key to any civilization is to be found in the estimate it places on womanhood. He carried out that purpose; his monumental work "Women In All Lands" ran to twenty-one volumes. His "War Between China And Japan" ran to sixteen volumes. At a memorial service held for Dr. Allen in Shanghai, the Chinese presiding officer said: "While some missionaries worked only in one city or one church, Dr Allen through his writings was a missionary to an empire; not only to one, but to three--China, Japan and Korea. He reached emperors, empresses, princes, princesses, viceroys, governors, mayors, generals, the literate, and the common people." "In the last decade of the last decade of the last century Lin Le Chih (Young J. Allen) was probably more widely known than any (other) foreigner who has ever been to China".1.

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