EDUCATION, CHIEFLY MISSIONARY
I have before had occasion to refer to the great influence education
has had on the awakening of China, and I think the Americans can fairly
claim to have been the greatest workers in this field. The Roman
Catholics have from time immemorial been most careful to train children
in Christian truth, and they have wonderful institutions for this
purpose. In 1852 the Jesuits founded the College of St. Ignatius for
the education of native priests, and since that day they have founded
many educational institutions. They have besides a very large number
of primary schools, intended originally merely to preserve their
converts from too intimate contact with the heathen world, and they
have also many higher schools. In those schools they teach modern
knowledge, making a speciality of teaching French, which they can do
with great efficiency, as many of their number belong to the French
nation. In the German sphere of influence there are Catholic schools
where German is taught; but though the work is excellent, it cannot be
compared with the work of the Americans, who were really the pioneers
of higher education in China.
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When the American missionaries began to arrive, a new departure was
inaugurated in education. The school and college were no longer places
where Christians were simply educated; they were places where
Christians, confident in the truth of their teaching, gave away to
heathen and Christian alike all the knowledge that the West possessed.
The conception was bold; it was grand. It showed a statesmanlike grip
of the situation and a courage which can only come from a consciousness
of the strength of the Christian position, that Christianity was not a
narrow religion fearing free inquiry. Christianity, on the contrary,
was a religion which could only be appreciated by those who had the
very fullest knowledge. These teachers boldly declared that ignorance
was the mother of religious error, and therefore the duty of every
Christian was at once to remove ignorance and to share with every one
the knowledge that can alone make the world capable of truly
appreciating God's power as manifested in every department of science.
So these schools and colleges grew up. Those who believed in this
policy did not belong to any one denomination, though they did belong
to one nation--America. There were many opponents to this policy. It
was argued that the duty of the mission bodies was to preach the
Gospel, and that however advantageous education might be, it was not
the business of the Christian to give it; but whatever doubt there was
then, facts have been too strong for those who {255} opposed the
educational policy, and any one travelling through China realises more
and more how the Mission that has spent money on education is the
Mission that has the power of expansion. The Mission that has no
educational system is always cabined and confined for want of money and
men. They are always writing home to ask that another man shall be
sent out; some one has broken down or some new opportunity for work has
been opened, and so "they must press upon the Home Board the great
importance of sending out at as early a date as possible one or more
helpers." The Home Board is always answering those letters, expressing
"every sympathy with their anxiety," but in reality pouring cold water
on their enthusiasm, and pointing out that the supply of men is limited
and that the supply of money is yet more limited. Thus the opportunity
passes and the mission cannot expand. The same little church stands
filled with converts; the same mission building houses the tired out
and climate-stricken white missionaries. Such a mission, while
inspiring the greatest respect for the heroism of the missionaries,
arouses also a feeling of despair. How is it possible that a mission
like this can really solve the problem of making Christianity a
national religion? How can spiritual ministrations be performed by
aliens, supported by alien money collected from a possibly hostile race?
A very different effect is made on the mind of the onlooker when he
comes upon some mission that {256} has made education a speciality.
There all is life, vigour and success. One of the most successful of
the American missionaries, Bishop Roots, of the Episcopal Church of
America, explained the system by which he is succeeding in making
Christianity an indigenous religion. At his large college, presided
over by Mr. Jackson, many are heathen. Some go through the college and
imbibe a certain respect for Christian ethics, which will not only make
them a benefit to China but will make an intellectual atmosphere
sympathetic to Christian teaching. Some, however, will become
Christians who will mostly go out into the world and take their place,
and a high place too, in the leadership of the future China, as much
owing to the excellence of the teaching that they have received as to
the high morality which is produced by their Christian faith. Then
there will be a few who will feel a distinct call to go out as
missionaries to their own people. These men will have no temptation to
become Christians for the loaves and fishes, because, owing to the
excellence of the education that they have received and the great
prosperity that is dawning over China, they could command a large
salary in the open market. These highly-educated clergy are able to go
out and put Christianity to the Chinese in a manner which no white man
could hope to equal.
What Bishop Roots told me can be well illustrated by two little
incidents. In Hankow, where his work is increasing by leaps and
bounds, the Lutheran {257} Mission failed, and therefore it resigned
the chapel to him. He accepted readily, and soon his Chinese clergy
were preaching to crowded congregations. The second incident was this:
I expressed a wish to make a present to one of these Christian
scholars, and I asked what books he would like to receive. I was told
that such books as Balfour's "Defence of Philosophic Doubt" and
Haldane's "Pathway to Reality" were the kind that would appeal to such
young men. Not only will these men carry the Gospel to their
fellow-countrymen far more efficiently than can the alien, but they
will to a great extent be able to live on the subscriptions of their
congregations, and so the communion to which they belong will become
not only self-propagating but self-supporting.
To understand the importance of this controversy the various aims of
missionary education must be realised, and it is because those aims are
different that the controversy has been confused and the value of
education as an assistance to missionary effort in China misunderstood.
There are really seven aims: three which are common to all missionary
effort in all lands, and four which especially apply to countries like
China which are passing through a transitional period of thought. The
three which are common to all missionary effort are (1) evangelisation;
(2) edification of the Christian body; (3) education of preachers and
teachers. The four that are peculiar to China in her present
transitional condition are (4) preparation of secular leaders; (5)
leavening of the whole public opinion; (6) opposition {258} to Western
materialism; (7) association of Christianity with learning.
The arguments for the first three are applicable to every land.
Evangelisation can no doubt be carried on most efficiently before the
mind has received any intellectual bias. The Jesuit priest is reported
to have said, "If I have the child till he is ten, I do not care who
has him afterwards;" and therefore, as in all the world so in China,
the Roman Catholics have always made a great effort to educate
children. They have preferred those who have had no home-ties, orphans
and waifs, and have by this policy built up a huge Christian population
numbering over a million. This population is thoroughly Christian in
sentiment; they have never known an idolatrous atmosphere, and they
live to a great extent by themselves in communities. While they are
thoroughly Christian, they are also absolutely Chinese; no effort is
made to Westernise the children in any way. From this great Christian
body Catholic priests are drawn, and I believe so completely Christian
are they, that no difference is made between them and white men by such
an important body as the Jesuits. When other Christian bodies began
missionary work in China they also started schools, but the difference
of their schools was that they aimed much more at the second than at
the first object. The school was not merely a place to attract
homeless children and bring them up as Christians; it was also intended
to edify and adorn with knowledge the children of Christians. {259}
Non-Christians were largely admitted, but I think that I am right in
stating that the object was much more edification than evangelisation.
In a corrupt society like China, where all knowledge is intermingled
with vice, it is inevitable that Christian schools should be erected
for the Christian body, and it is equally inevitable that those who are
non-Christians but who admire the schools greatly should try and enter
them. The feature of these schools for the most part, though not
invariably, in contrast to the earlier Roman Catholic schools, is that
Western education is to a certain extent, varying in each mission,
superadded to Chinese learning; and therefore, though the school is
essentially a school for Chinese learning, the children as a rule learn
something also of Western knowledge.
Out of these schools naturally arise others which have the third aim of
missionary education as their object, namely, the preparation of
preachers and teachers who in the future shall be the real missionary
body of China. Every thinking man realises that the alien missionary
can only exist in a brief transitional period. The true teachers of a
race must be those who are linked to it by ties of blood and tradition,
and nearly every mission has therefore set to work to create a native
ministry which is sooner or later to take over the task of the
conversion of China. This is regarded by many, nay, by most, as the
great aim of missionary educational work. The degree of preparation,
however, differs widely in different missions. {260} Some missions,
drawing their teachers from the lower ranks of society, are quite
content to give them an education which will enable them to lead and
teach the lower class among whom they move; other missions held that
the Christian teacher must not merely he able to lead the ignorant but
must be able also to meet in controversy those who may be well equipped
with Western knowledge; and therefore while in some missions the
education of native pastors is conducted solely in Chinese, in others
the teaching is in English, to enable the teachers and preachers to
keep abreast with the thought of Western countries and to defend their
land by pen and sermon as much against the errors of the West as
against the superstition of the East.
It is in the preparation of these highly educated men that an
opportunity is given for the fourth aim of missionary education in
China: one which would not be applicable in every country, but which is
vitally important in China, namely, the preparation of secular leaders
in China. To understand the importance of this we must be always
reminding our readers that China is in the midst of an intellectual
revolution. She is passing through a period which is in some way
comparable to the period of the Renaissance in Europe, but which
exceeds it both in importance and in danger, because in Europe, as the
name shows, it was essentially a reintroduction of forgotten but not
new knowledge with its subsequent enlargement and development. In
China {261} the revolution is caused by the introduction of foreign
knowledge, which is absolutely inharmonious and in many ways opposed to
native thought. In Europe the foundations of knowledge were always
secure; it was only the superstructure that was altered. In China the
very foundations are being uprooted; the result is that China is at the
present without leaders, except for a narrow band of men, who owing to
the foresight of some Christians in the past have received a Western
education. There are plenty of old-fashioned leaders, who have led or
failed to lead the sleepy China of years ago--men of considerable
ability but in a state of great mental confusion, owing to their
powerlessness to comprehend the many aspects of the civilisation which
is being forced upon them and which is unnatural to them. They cannot
understand our currency questions, our financial operations; they only
dimly realise the possibilities and problems connected with military
and naval armaments. They yearn for the years gone by, but an
inexorable fate urges their country forward into new positions, which
bring with them new responsibilities, new powers and new dangers.
China demands men to lead her through this terrible state of confusion
and change, and she turns round to find the men who understand Western
civilisation, who have the character and the knowledge necessary to
deal with all these problems. Just at this moment, any man of ability
who has an intimate knowledge of Western things stands a chance of high
{262} preferment. It may be that this demand will be satisfied by the
number of students China has sent abroad to be educated, but the size
of China and the great demand for men skilled in Western learning make
many of those having a most intimate knowledge of China confident that
this is an opportunity that is still open, that it is still possible to
direct to some degree the minds and thought of those who will lead
China as statesmen, as authors, and as men of learning. The production
of these men can be carried on to great advantage in the same
establishment as that in which the clergy are receiving their
education; the educated clergyman, the future pressmen and statesmen of
China are in this way brought in close contact with one another, and
even from one establishment the good that may come to China is quite
incalculable.
This brings us to the fifth great aim of education, the leavening of
public opinion in China so that Christianity will find ground prepared
for its sowing. The destruction of superstition, the production of
Western ethics make Christianity a reasonable instead of an
unreasonable religion to those who hear it preached. Clearly to leaven
public opinion influence must be applied to those who will control such
powers as those of the press and the school; the teacher and the writer
are the men who should be especially aimed at; and to attain this aim,
it is necessary to institute and maintain {263} places where higher
knowledge is taught rather than only primary schools.
But there is another object, the sixth aim for education in China. One
of the unpleasant features in the revolution that is going on in
Chinese thought is the present introduction of Western materialism,
which to judge by the example in Japan, will grow more rankly after
transplantation. The West has a double aspect when seen from the East;
it is a Christian world where women are pure and men are honourable; it
is a rich world where there are no moral obligations. The first aspect
is the one that is represented by the missionary; the second aspect is
too often taught by the sailor and merchant classes; and when the
Chinaman asks what is the thought and the base of Western teaching, the
Japanese materialist, pointing to the example set by many Western
lives, declares that Christianity in Europe is like Buddhism in Japan,
a religion that at one time had many adherents but whose influence is
fast waning, and it is in resisting this materialism that the
Missionary College and University perform perhaps their most important
task.
The men who are to do this work must be men most highly skilled in
Western knowledge; they must understand science and be able to meet a
follower of Haeckel in debate, they must be competent to discuss
sociology with disciples of Herbert Spencer, and they must not be
afraid to dip into the {264} study of comparative religion; in
addition, they must be qualified to write excellent Chinese and to be
firm in their Christian faith. The production of such men as these
should also satisfy the seventh and last aim of Christian education: it
will associate learning with Christianity in the minds of the Chinese.
The keynote of Chinese thought is its great admiration for learning.
In China there is no caste or class, no division except between the
ignorant and the learned; if Christianity is associated with ignorance,
its influence will be lost, and it is no mean object to make
Christianity and knowledge in the mind of the Chinaman two parts of one
great idea.
It is obvious that as missionary societies lay weight on one or the
other of these objects, they will support a different kind of school.
If their object is the first, they will seek to educate the orphan and
the waif, and the school and the orphanage will be, as they are in the
Roman Catholic body, intimately joined together. If the object is to
edify the Christian body and to provide it with a suitable pastor, the
missionary body will erect primary schools for Christian children and
theological and normal schools to complete their school system. If, on
the other hand, the missionary body aims at leavening the whole thought
of China, of capturing China for Christ, or if it aims at defending
China against the terrible pest of Western materialism--which will turn
the light that China now has into black darkness and harden her for
ever against Christian teaching--the High School, {265} College, and
the University will be the objects on which the money will be spent.
This last has been the object of the American bodies; and I think China
owes a great debt of gratitude, under God, to the great width of
thought and grasp of the situation that the American mind has exhibited.
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