A matter of missionaries commonly is to the fore as a cause of quarrel
among nations which have the hardihood to prefer their own religions
to ours. Missionaries constitute, in truth, a perpetual menace to the
national peace. I dare say the most of them are conscientious men and
women of a certain order of intellect. They believe, and from the way
that they interpret their sacred book have some reason to believe, that
in meddling uninvited with the spiritual affairs of others they perform
a work acceptable to God--their God. They think they discern a moral
difference between "approaching" a man of another religion about the
state of his soul and approaching him on the condition of his linen
or the character of his wife. I think there is no difference. I have
observed that the person who volunteers an interest in my spiritual
welfare is the same person from whom I must expect an impudent concern
about my temporal affairs. The missionary is one who goes about throwing
open the shutters of other men's bosoms in order to project upon the
blank walls a shadow of himself.
No ruler nor government of sense would willingly permit foreigners to
sap the foundation of the national religion. No ruler nor government
ever does permit it except under the stress of compulsion. It is through
the people's religion that a wise government governs wisely--even in our
own country we make only a transparent pretense of officially ignoring
Christianity, and a pretense only because we have so many kinds of
Christians, all jealous and inharmonious. Each sect would make this a
Theocracy if it could, and would that make short work of any missionary
from abroad. Happily all religions but ours have the sloth and timidity
of error; Christianity alone, drawing vigor from eternal truth, is
courageous enough and energetic enough to make itself a nuisance to
people of every other faith. The Jew not only does not bid for converts,
but discourages them by imposition of hard conditions, and the Moslem
True Believer's simple, forthright method of reducing error is to cut
off the head holding it. I don't say that this is right; I say only
that, being practical and comprehensible, it commands a certain respect
from the impartial observer not conversant with scriptural justification
of the other practice.
It is only where the missionaries have made themselves hated that there
is any molestation of Europeans engaged in the affairs of this world.
Chinese antipathy to Caucasians in China is neither a racial animosity
nor a religious; it is an instinctive dislike of persons who will not
mind their own business. China has been infested with missionaries from
the earliest centuries of our era, and they have rarely been molested
when they have taken the trouble to behave themselves. In the time of
the Emperor Justinian the fact that the Christian religion was openly
preached throughout China enabled that sovereign to wrest from the
Chinese the jealously-guarded secret of silk-making. He sent two monks
to Pekin, who alternately preached seriousness and studied sericulture,
and who brought away silkworms' eggs concealed in sticks.
In religious matters the Chinese are more tolerant than we. They let the
religions of others alone, but naturally and rightly demand that others
shall let theirs alone. In China, as in other Oriental countries
where the color line is not drawn and where slavery itself is a light
affliction, the mental attitude of the zealot who finds gratification
in "spreading the light" of which he deems himself custodian, is not
understood. Like most things not understood, it is felt to be bad, and
is indubitably offensive.