THE CITY OF SUIFU--THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, WITH SOME GENERAL REMARKS
ABOUT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA.
At Suifu I rested a day in order to engage new coolies to go with me to
Chaotong in Yunnan Province, distant 290 miles. Neither of my two
Chungking men would re-engage to go further. Yet in Chungking Laokwang
the cook had declared that he was prepared to go with me all the way to
Talifu. But now he feared the loneliness of the road to Chaotong. The
way, he said, was mountainous and little trodden, and robbers would see
the smallness of our party and "come down and stab us." I was then glad
that I had not paid him the retaining fee he had asked in Chungking to
take me to Tali.
I called upon the famous Catholic missionaries, the Provicaire Moutot
and Père Béraud, saw the more important sights and visited some
newly-arrived missionaries of the American Board of Missions. Four of
the Americans were living together. I called with the Inland missionary
at a time when they were at dinner. We were shown into the drawing-room,
where the most conspicuous ornament was a painted scroll with a well
executed drawing of the poppy in flower, a circumstance which would
confirm the belief of the Chinese who saw it, that the poppy is held in
veneration by foreigners. While we waited we heard the noise of dinner
gradually cease, and then the door opened and one of the single ladies
entered. She was fierce to look at, tall as a grenadier, with a stride
like a camel; she was picking her teeth with a hairpin. She courteously
expressed her regret that she could not invite us to dinner. "Waal now,"
she said, looking at us from under her spectacles, "ahm real sorry I
caan't ask you to have somethin' to eat, but we've just finished, and I
guess there ain't nothin' left."
Fourteen American missionaries were lately imported into Suifu in one
shipment. Most of them are from Chicago. One of their earliest efforts
will be to translate into Chinese Mr. Stead's "If Christ came to
Chicago," in order the better to demonstrate to the Chinese the lofty
standard of morality, virtue, probity, and honour attained by the
Christian community that sent them to China to enlighten the poor
benighted heathen in this land of darkness.
Szechuen is a Catholic stronghold. There are nominally one hundred
thousand Catholics in the province, representing the labours of many
French missionaries for a period of rather more than two hundred years.
Actually, however, there are only sixty thousand Chinese in the province
who could be called Catholics. To use the words of the Provicaire, the
Chinese are "_trôp matèrialistes_" to become Christian, and, as they are
all "liars and robbers," the faith is not easily propagated amongst
them. Rarely have I met two more charming men than these brave
missionaries. French, they told me, I speak with the "_vrai accent
parisien_," a compliment which I have no doubt is true, though it
conflicts with my experience in Paris, where most of the true Parisians
to whom I spoke in their own language gave me the same look of
intelligence that I observe in the Chinaman when I address him in
English. Père Moutot has been twenty-three years in China--six years at
the sacred Mount Omi, and seventeen years in Suifu; Père Béraud has been
twenty-three years in Suifu. They both speak Chinese to perfection, and
have been co-workers with the bishop in the production of a
Mandarin-French dictionary just published at Sicawei; they dress as
Chinese, and live as Chinese in handsome mission premises built in
Chinese style. There is a pretty chapel in the compound with scrolls and
memorial tablets presented by Chinese Catholics, a school for boys
attended by fifty ragamuffins, a nunnery and girls' school, and a fit
residence for the venerable bishop. When showing me the chapel, the
Provicaire told me of the visit of one of Our Lord's Apostles to Suifu.
He seemed to have no doubt himself of the truth of the story. Tradition
says that St. Thomas came to China, and, if further proof were wanting,
there is the black image of Tamo worshipped to this day in many of the
temples of Szechuen. Scholars, however, identify this image and its
marked Hindoo features with that of the Buddhist evangelist Tamo, who is
known to have visited China in the sixth century.
In Suifu there is a branch of the China Inland Mission under an
enthusiastic young missionary, who was formerly a French polisher in
Hereford. He is helped by an amiable wife and by a charming English girl
scarcely out of her teens. The missionary's work has, he tells me, been
"abundantly blessed,"--he has baptised six converts in the last three
years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant,
sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a
missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:--"Those
Chinese who have never heard the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty
as He thinks fit"--a contention which does not admit of dispute--"but
those Chinese who have heard the Christian doctrine, and still steel
their hearts against the Holy Ghost, will assuredly go to hell; there is
no help for them, they can believe and they won't; had they believed,
their reward would be eternal; they refuse to believe and their
punishment will be eternal." But the destruction that awaits the Chinese
must be pointed out to them with becoming gentleness, in accordance with
the teaching of the Rev. S. F. Woodin, of the American Baptist Mission,
Foochow, who says:--"There are occasions when we must speak that awful
word 'hell,' but this should always be done in a spirit of earnest
love." (_Records_ of the Shanghai Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91.)
It was a curious study to observe the equanimity with which this
good-natured man contemplates the work he has done in China, when to
obtain six dubious conversions he has on his own confession sent some
thousands of unoffending Chinese _en enfer bouillir éternellement_.
But, if the teaching of this good missionary is unwelcome to the
Chinese, and there are hundreds in China who teach as he does, how
infinitely more distasteful must be the teaching of both the Founder and
the Secretary of the Mission which sent him to China.
"They are God's lost ones who are in China," says Mr. C. L. Morgan,
editor of _The Christian_, "and God cares for them and yearns over
them." (_China's Millions_, 1879, p. 94.) "The millions of Chinese,"
(who have never heard the Gospel,) says Mr. B. Broomhall, secretary of
the China Inland Mission, and editor of _China's Millions_, "where are
they going, what is to be their future? What is to be their condition
beyond the grave? Oh, tremendous question! It is an awful thing to
contemplate--but they perish; that is what God says." ("Evangelisation
of the World," p. 70.) "The heathen are all guilty in God's eyes; as
guilty they perish." (_Id._, 101.) "Do we believe that these millions
are without hope in the next world? We turn the leaves of God's Word in
vain, for there we find no hope; not only that, but positive words to
the contrary. Yes! we believe it." (_Id._, p. 199.)
The Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, the distinguished Founder of the Mission,
certainly believes it, and has frequently stated his belief in public.
Ancestral worship is the keystone of the religion of the Chinese; "the
keystone also of China's social fabric." And "the worship springs," says
the Rev. W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., of the Tung Wen College, Peking,
"from some of the best principles of human nature. The first conception
of a life beyond the grave was, it is thought, suggested by a desire to
commune with deceased parents." ("The Worship of Ancestors--a plea for
toleration.") But Dr. Hudson Taylor condemned bitterly this plea for
toleration. "Ancestral worship," he said (it was at the Shanghai
Missionary Conference of May, 1890), "Ancestral worship is idolatry from
beginning to end, the whole of it, and everything connected with it."
China's religion is idolatry, the Chinese are universally idolatrous,
and the fate that befalls idolaters is carefully pointed out by Dr.
Taylor:--"Their part is in the lake of fire."
"These millions of China," I quote again from Dr. Taylor, "These
millions of China" (who have never heard the Gospel), "are unsaved. Oh!
my dear friends, may I say one word about that condition? The Bible says
of the heathen, that they are without hope; will you say there is good
hope for them of whom the Word of God says, 'they are without hope,
without God in the world'?" (Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_,
i., 176.)
"There are those who know more about the state of the heathen than did
the Apostle Paul, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
'They that sin without law, perish without law,' nay, there are those
who are not afraid to contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
God gave unto Him to shew unto His servants, in which He solemnly
affirms that 'idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake
that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Such being the state of the
unsaved of China, do not their urgent needs claim from us that with
_agonising eagerness_ we should hasten to proclaim everywhere the
message through which alone deliverance can be found?" (_Ut supra_, ii.,
31.)
Look then at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven
missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves,
the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of
their director, Dr. Hudson Taylor. They tell the Chinese inquirer that
his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius,
perished eternally. But the chief of all virtues in China is filial
piety; the strongest emotion that can move the heart of a Chinaman is
the supreme desire to follow in the footsteps of his father. Conversion
with him means not only eternal separation from the father who gave him
life, but the "immediate liberation of his ancestors to a life of
beggary, to inflict sickness and all manner of evil on the
neighbourhood."
I believe that it is now universally recognised that the most difficult
of all missionary fields--incomparably the most difficult--is China.
Difficulties assail the missionary at every step; and every honest man,
whether his views be broad or high or low, must sympathise with the
earnest efforts the missionaries are making for the good and advancement
of the Chinese.
Look for example at the difficulty there is in telling a Chinese, who
has been taught to regard the love of his parents as his chief duty, as
his forefathers have been taught for hundreds of generations before
him--the difficulty there is in explaining to him, in his own language,
the words of Christ, "If any man come to Me and hate not his father, he
cannot be My disciple. For I am come to set a man at variance against
his father."
In the patriarchal system of government which prevails in China, the
most awful crime that a son can commit, is to kill his parent, either
father or mother. And this is said to be, though the description is no
doubt abundantly exaggerated, the punishment of his crime. He is put to
death by the "_Ling chi_," or "degrading and slow process," and his
younger brothers are beheaded; his house is razed to the ground and the
earth under it dug up several feet deep; his neighbours are severely
punished; his principal teacher is decapitated; the district magistrate
is deprived of his office; and the higher officials of the province
degraded three degrees in rank.
Such is the enormity of the crime of parricide in China; yet it is to
the Chinese who approves of the severity of this punishment that the
missionary has to preach, "And the children shall rise up against their
parents and cause them to be put to death."
The China Inland Mission, as a body of courageous workers, brave
travellers, unselfish and kindly men endowed with every manly virtue
that can command our admiration, is worthy of all the praise that can
be bestowed on it. Most of its members are men who have been saved after
reaching maturity, and delicately-nurtured emotional girls with
heightened religious feelings.
Too often entirely ignorant of the history of China, a mighty nation
which has "witnessed the rise to glory and the decay of Egypt, Assyria,
Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still remains the only monument
of ages long bygone," of its manners and polity, customs and religions,
and of the extraordinary difficulties in the acquirement of its
language, too often forgetful that the Chinese are a people whose
"prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth of
millenniums," they come to China hoping that miraculous assistance will
aid them in their exposition of the Christian doctrine, in language
which is too often impenetrable darkness to its hearers.
"They are God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and
yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans,
with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response
to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls,"
who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having
sinned without law."
Six months after their arrival they write to _China's Millions_: "Now
for the news! Glorious news this time! Our services crowded! Such bright
intelligent faces! So eager to hear the good news! They seemed to drink
in every word, and to listen as if they were afraid that a word might be
lost." Five years later they write: "The first convert in Siao Wong Miao
was a young man named Sengleping, a matseller. He was very earnest in
his efforts to spread the Gospel, but about the beginning of the year
he became insane. The poor man lost his reason, but not his piety."
(_China's Millions_, iv., 5, 95, and 143).
A young English girl at this mission, who has been more than a year in
China, tells me that she has never felt the Lord so near her as she has
since she came to China, nor ever realised so entirely His abundant
goodness. Poor thing, it made me sad to talk to her. In England she
lived in a bright and happy home with brothers and sisters, in a
charming climate. She was always well and full of life and vigour,
surrounded by all that can make life worth living. In China she is never
well; she is almost forgetting what is the sensation of health; she is
anæmic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; she
can have no pleasure, no amusement whatever; her only relaxation is
taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting. She is
cooped up in a Chinese house in the unchanging society of a married
couple--the only exercise she can permit herself is a prison-like walk
along the top of the city at the back of the mission. Her lover, a
refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week's
journey away, in Chungking, a depressing fever-stricken city where the
sun is never seen from November to June, and blazes with unendurable
fierceness from July to October. In England he was full of strength and
vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is
always ill, anæmic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low
forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his
bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is
making--no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family
altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion
is laying up for himself in Heaven. No man with a healthy brain can
discern "Blessing" in the work of these two missionaries, nor be blind
to the fact that it is the reverse of worshipful to return effusive
thanks to the great Almighty, "who yearns over the Chinese, His lost
ones," for "vouchsafing the abundant mercies" of a harvest of six
doubtful converts as the work of three missionaries for three years.
There are 180,000 people in Suifu, and, as is the case with Chinese
cities, a larger area than that under habitation is occupied by the
public graveyard outside the city, which covers the hill slopes for
miles and miles. The number of opium-smokers is so large that the
question is not, who does smoke opium, but who doesn't. In the mission
street alone, besides the Inland Mission, the Buddhist Temple,
Mohammedan Mosque, and Roman Catholic Mission, there are eight
opium-houses. Every bank, silk shop, and hong, of any pretension
whatever, throughout the city, has its opium-room, with the lamp always
lit ready for the guest. Opium-rooms are as common as smoking rooms are
with us. A whiff of opium rather than a nip of whisky is the preliminary
to business in Western China.
[Illustration: OPIUM-SMOKING.]
An immensely rich city is Suifu with every advantage of position, on a
great waterway in the heart of a district rich in coal and minerals and
inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs of brine. Silks and furs and
silverwork, medicines, opium and whitewax, are the chief articles of
export, and as, fortunately for us, Western China can grow but little
cotton, the most important imports are Manchester goods.
Szechuen is by far the richest province of the eighteen that constitute
the Middle Kingdom. Its present Viceroy, Liu, is a native of Anhwei; he
is, therefore, a countryman of Li Hung Chang to whom he is related by
marriage, his daughter having married Li Hung Chang's nephew. Its
provincial Treasurer is believed to occupy the richest post held by any
official in the empire. It is worth noticing that the present provincial
Treasurer, Kung Chao-yuan, has just been made (1894) Minister
Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and
Norway, and one can well believe how intense was his chagrin when he
received this appointment from the "Imperial Supreme" compelling him, as
it did, to forsake the tombs of his ancestors--to leave China for
England on a fixed salary, and vacate the most coveted post in the
empire, a post where the opportunities of personal enrichment are simply
illimitable.
In Suifu there are two magistrates, both with important yamens. The Fu
magistrate is the "Father of the City," the Hsien magistrate is the
"Mother of the City;" and the "Mother of the City" largely favours the
export opium trade. When Protestant missionaries first came to the city
in 1888 and 1889 there was little friendliness shown to them. Folk would
cry after the missionary, "There goes the foreigner that eats children,"
and children would be hurriedly hidden, as if from fear. These taunts
were at first disregarded. But there came a time when living children
were brought to the mission for sale as food; whereupon the mission made
formal complaint in the yamen, and the Fu at once issued a proclamation
checking the absurd tales about the foreigners, and ordering the
citizens, under many pains and penalties, to treat the foreigners with
respect. There has been no trouble since, and, as we walked through the
crowded streets, I could see nothing but friendly indifference.
Reference to this and other sorrows is made in the missionary's report
to _China's Millions_, November, 1893:--
"Soon after this trial had passed away (the rumours of baby eating),
still more painful internal sorrow arose. One of the members, who had
been baptised three years before and had been useful as a preacher of
the Gospel, fell into grievous sin, and had to be excluded from Church
fellowship. Then a little later a very promising inquirer, who had been
cured of opium-smoking and appeared to be growing in grace, fell again
under its power. While still under a cloud he was suddenly removed
during the cholera visitation."
The China Inland Mission has pleasant quarters close under the city
wall. Their pretty chapel opens into the street, and displays
prominently the proclamation of the Emperor concerning the treaty rights
of foreign missionaries. Seven children, all of whom are girls, are
boarded on the premises, and are being brought up as Christians. They
are pretty, bright children, the eldest, a girl of fourteen,
particularly so. All are large-footed, and they are to be married to
Christian converts. When this fact becomes known it is hoped that more
young Chinamen than at present may be emulous to be converted. All seven
are foundlings from Chungking where, wrapped in brown paper, they were
at different times dropped over the wall into the Mission compound. They
have been carefully reared by the Mission.
At the boys' school fifty smart boys, all heathens, were at their
lessons. They were learning different subjects, and were teaching their
ears the "tones" by reading at the top of their voices. The noise was
awful. None but a Chinese boy could study in such a din. In China, when
the lesson is finished, the class is silent; noise, therefore, is the
indication of work in a Chinese school--not silence.
The schoolmaster was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in grey. He was
in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of
the death of his father. This was an important day of mourning, because
on this day, the forty-second after his death, his dead father became,
for the first time, aware of his own decease. A week later, on the
forty-ninth day, the funeral rites would cease.