Missionaries--Good and bad--Christianity at the point of the
sword--Under a terrific strain--Missionaries and the Boxer
movement--A political as well as a religions movement against all
foreigners alike--Providence and machine guns--Practical missionaries
wanted--Timothy Richards--A power in himself--Missionary refugees--In
fancy dress--Undisguised merriment of the Chinese.
It is the general impression that, during the recent war, the Chinese
have been treated with unnecessary harshness by the Allies, “for, after
all,” I have often heard people exclaim, “the Chinese did no further
harm than murder the German Minister, and that might have happened
anywhere.” Again, people who know slightly better will argue that, if
one or two missionaries have been killed, that is their own fault, for
it is no business of theirs to go to foreign countries to worry the
natives. This is all very well, but whatever one’s personal feelings
may be towards tactless and incompetent heralds of the faith of Christ
in distant lands, one cannot help being shocked and revolted at the
barbarity with which men, women, and children of one’s own blood have
been treated by the Chinese. Besides, there were among these martyrs
many--indeed, the majority--who were far from tactless and incompetent,
and were even held in great esteem for the good they had done to the
natives, whether converts or otherwise, by supplying them with food,
medicines, and medical advice.
[Sidenote: GOOD AND BAD MISSIONARIES]
There are in China, as in every other heathen country, good
missionaries and bad ones. The bad ones generally seem to escape
unhurt. Nor would there be much ground of complaint if the heathens,
in their desire to settle disputed points of religion, would limit
themselves to killing outright the male portion of those who try to
convert them, after the fashion which I have heard advocated on several
occasions during the present war by missionaries who declare that
Christianity should be spread through China at the point of the sword.
In fact, in a lecture given by a distinguished missionary, he expressed
his opinion that every Chinaman should be seized, and should have the
choice given him of becoming a Christian or having his head cut off.
[Illustration: ON THE WALL OF TIENTSIN NATIVE CITY THE DAY IT WAS
CAPTURED BY THE ALLIES]
It must be admitted, however, that when the eminent missionary spoke
in these terms he was speaking under a terrific strain, for, after
giving up forty years of his life to educate, to help, to defend the
Chinese, and after being their devoted friend and protector in the most
trying circumstances, he had now been abandoned by them, his house
and property destroyed, and even the graves of his dearest belongings
had been desecrated and the bones scattered to the winds. In such
circumstances one could hardly blame him for expressing such strong
views; and, indeed, those who knew what prompted the feelings of the
much-respected orator felt that those particular Chinese who could
perpetrate such outrages should not even have the option of becoming
Christians left them.
But, on the other hand, as there are missionaries and missionaries,
there are also Chinese and Chinese, and, as in the case of
missionaries, it is usually the good ones that suffer, while the bad
ones get away unpunished. This was certainly the case in the Chinese
War.
People go too far when they declare that the Boxer movement was brought
about entirely by missionaries. It was a political and religious
movement, directed against all white men and their civilisation, their
books, their railways, their telegraphs, their ships, and everything
belonging to them. The missionaries were not attacked because they were
missionaries, but because they were foreigners. Railway engineers and
their wives, traders and merchants, were similarly attacked, regardless
of their position. The missionaries suffered more in the present
war because there were swarms of them all over the Chinese Empire,
in places in the interior, difficult of access, where they lived
defenceless and helpless, trusting in God for protection in case of
danger. A machine-gun would be a further security, and in the future
the various large mission-houses, hundreds of miles inland, should not
be without one.
[Sidenote: TIMOTHY RICHARDS]
There is plenty of good work to be done in China by sensible, practical
missionaries, not so much in Christianising the natives as in teaching
them what is of most consequence in our civilisation, science, art,
industries, medicine and agriculture. There are a few men of this stamp
already in China, such as that really great and noble man, Timothy
Richards, who is beloved and revered in all China. He is a simple,
good-humoured, tactful, and absolutely sensible man, of exquisite
intelligence, and he has done more practical good in China than
probably any other missionary in the country. He is a power in himself.
To him the Chinese owe the translation and publication in their own
tongue of our greatest literary, religious, and scientific works,
which have been faithfully rendered, and are now studied by hundreds
of thousands of Chinese. It is extraordinary how the younger Chinese
have taken to reading these publications, all leading to the moral and
intellectual improvement of the race; and, indirectly, it has been this
great desire among the younger generations to know more, to know all
that “foreign devils” know, which has alarmed and aroused the Buddhist
Lamas, who exist only through the degradation and ignorance of the
country. It is the fear that these books, eagerly bought and circulated
among the Chinese, should gradually open the eyes of the better classes
to the trickery, bigotry, and corruption of the bonzes, that has driven
these to make one supreme effort to drag the whole Empire back into its
former state of hermit seclusion, in order that they themselves might
once more prosper, like parasites thriving on helpless victims.
It is men like Richards who are needed in China--men who have the
courage of their opinions, men who can speak and write Chinese as
well as their own tongue, and have brains and tact enough to discuss
and forcibly argue on any subject with the natives--who, it must be
remembered, can, when it comes to arguing with real sound sense, give
points to most Europeans.
It is by impressing them with his theories--not by asking them to
accept them--that Richards gains his power over the Chinese; he shows
them what is good in our civilisation, where we are more advanced than
they, with their long-established but obsolete culture; and he proves
to them that he is right, not by aggressive methods, too often used
by missionaries, or by demanding that his statements must be taken
for granted, but by bringing forward parallels and examples that they
cannot refute.
But Timothy Richards is a highly cultured man; he is a man of the
world, and, above all, he is humane. There are indeed few, if any,
missionaries like him.
In these moments of distress the treaty ports were swarming with
missionary refugees. Take Shanghai, for instance. It almost made
one’s heart bleed to see the number of overgrown, round-backed,
anæmic, long-toothed, weak-chinned men and women masquerading in
Chinese clothes up and down the Bund, with swarms of children round
them, in perambulators, on bicycles, on wheeled horses, or carried in
arms--usually by a meek-looking male parent. The majority of British
and American missionaries of the stronger sex seem to possess fair
or red hair, which they match more or less accurately by a long, fat
pigtail of a bright golden or glowing auburn tinge, according to
circumstances, which hangs (from a seam in the cap, instead of from the
scalp, as it should do according to the laws of nature) down the back
to the heels over their silk disguise. This fancy-dress costume is now
very largely adopted by British and American missionaries, for we are
told that, in assimilating themselves to the natives (to whom nothing
could be more unlike), the missionaries gain much influence over the
latter. Personally, I have noticed only undisguised merriment among the
Chinese as the disguised foreigners went by.
[Sidenote: UNDISGUISED MERRIMENT]
The missionary women in Chinese clothes, fortunately, look less
ridiculous than their men, probably because they are generally smaller;
yet it seems incomprehensible that, in going to a country to convert
people, they should themselves adopt customs and costumes which in
others they condemn as barbarous.