THE NEED OF A UNIVERSITY EXPLAINED
The great danger that threatens mission schools, a danger which is
increasing every year, is that the best pupils of these schools have to
go to Universities in search of Western knowledge where they are
exposed to the insidious attacks of Western materialism.
The teachers have at present no alternative; they have to send the best
and brightest of their pupils somewhere to complete their education.
It would be unfair on a boy to refuse to send him on, and if he is to
receive a higher education, where can he get it but at some place where
the atmosphere is distinctly anti-Christian.
There is in the East no place with a neutral atmosphere as there is in
the West. In the West most people have had some Christian training, or
at least they comprehend Christian ethics. So in a Western
institution, even if the education be wholly secular, a Christian does
not find everything antipathetic to his faith. But in the East the
vast majority are non-Christian, and consequently the moral and
intellectual atmosphere is hostile and antipathetic to a Christian.
Here if an institution is non-religious it is probably not hostile to
religion. {306} In the East if an institution is non-religious it is
probably anti-Christian. At present the only University in action is
that of Tokio, though we are promised others, and its ill effects have
been so obvious that the Chinese Government have ordered a wholesale
withdrawal of pupils from its unhealthy influence.
As we have already pointed out, Western civilisation is magnificent but
it is destructive, and when taught without any constructive religious
teaching it inevitably tends to destroy all spiritual ideas and too
often also to pervert the moral ideals of the race. As the pupil goes
through the mission school he learns within its walls to shake himself
free from the haunting fear of demons which besets every Chinaman; he
has slowly realised that God is holy, good and loving, and has either
accepted Christianity or stands on the threshold of the formal
acceptance; he has reached the end of the curriculum of the school or
college and his brilliancy demands a higher education. Attracted by
the reputation of Tokio, he goes to its University, and there he finds
himself in an atmosphere where all the destructive thought of Europe
grows rankly; the good God in whom he has learned to believe in the
mission school follows in the track of the demons of his youth, and he
is left believing in a world founded by blind chance, where ethics are
things of service to restrain your neighbour but folly to follow
yourself. "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," is the lesson which
is not perhaps taught in so many words, but {307} which none the less
is forced into his mind; his views become those of Falstaff; all that
is fine, all that is noble, flees from his life; though he no longer
believes in the God of Love, he does not return to the belief in the
demons of his youth; there is nothing in his world beyond getting rich
or gratifying the flesh and laughing at those people who believe in
higher ideals. He has been acquainted with and has learnt to loathe
from his youth up the philosophy of Yang Choo. He has, for instance,
despised such a sentence as this: "The people of high antiquity knew
both the shortness of life and how suddenly and completely it might be
closed by death, and therefore they obeyed every suggestion of the
movements of their hearts, refusing not what was natural for them to
like, nor seeking to avoid any pleasure that occurred to them, they
paid no heed to the incitement of fame; they enjoyed themselves
according to their nature; they did not resist the common tendency of
all things to self-enjoyment; they cared not to be famous after death.
They managed to keep clear of punishment; as to fame and praise, being
first or last, long life or short life, these things did not come into
their calculations." And now he finds that the philosophy of Yang Choo
is as he supposes the newest thought of the great rich successful
Western world; as he returns to his home and spreads abroad the
poisonous doctrines that he has imbibed, the missionary wonders
whether, after all, it would not have been better to have left the man
to his primitive demonology.
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The American mission bodies saw this danger from the first, and have
already set up great educational establishments which to a certain
extent supply this need. That great institution Bishop Graves' College
at Jessfield, the Boone College at Wuchang, the British College at
Weihsien, and Methodist Universities at Soochow and Peking, are all
examples of good work. But they do not, any of them, bring the student
up to what we call University standard, or what I understand is called
in America the post-graduate course; what is felt is, that there is
need of an institution in which the highest knowledge shall be taught,
where the true aspect of Western thought shall be shown--not that
aspect which is bringing France to destruction, not that aspect which
makes Belgium unconcerned at the Congo scandals, but the aspect which
both in America and in England we have always admired at least in
theory, and in practice when we have been strong. The fundamental
truth on which our civilisation rests is that God is good, and that
therefore truth and progress are right and possible, and that the
highest expression of the goodness of God is in His incarnation as it
is universally taught by Christians of various views and of many
denominations. The West owes to the East, if there is any common duty
of man to man, to set before it the real truth as to the greatness of
Western civilisation, namely, that it is the result of Christianity.
But missions are not anxious merely for a University {309} as a means
of defence against the materialistic onslaught which threatens their
work--they need it for many other reasons; for instance, the University
would make it possible for all denominations to have highly educated
native ministers. No student of missions can ever be content to regard
them as an ideal arrangement. The conception of a race being
ministered to spiritually by another race is obviously inadequate; it
is open to many criticisms; there must be a confusion in the mind of
the convert between what is national and what is Christian; one Chinese
regarded Christianity with doubt because he had heard that the German
Emperor is a Christian, and to his mind he is the embodiment of the
fierce piratical Western races. The word which the Chinese use for
robbers means red-bearded men, so associated, alas, is the Western race
in China with war and rapine; it is easy for a member of the Western
races to be misunderstood when he is talking about the religion of
love. Would any English parish like as its Rector a Chinaman, even if
he were saintly and went so far as to cut off his queue?
Setting aside the associations of the Western race, the Western race
has great difficulty in speaking Chinese without making ridiculous
mistakes. Who among us has not smiled when the Chinaman's inability to
say the letter "r" has caused him to offer us "lice" to eat, but what
must it be to the Chinaman when he hears the Western preacher lost
amidst those mysterious Chinese intonations, and {310} therefore making
some wonderful statement. A Chinese gentleman assured me that he had
listened to a missionary extolling the virtues of a wild pig.
Reverence forbids explaining what was really meant. If the ministers
of religion are to be Chinese, it is obvious that they must be highly
educated Chinese; to have religion taught by ignorant men in a country
like China where learning is reverenced so profoundly, must be to
condemn it as the religion of the coolie. The Chinese minister must be
able to maintain his position, not only against the Confucian scholar,
but against the Western materialist, and must therefore have an equally
good education. Without saying that it is reasonable to expect that
the Western missionary should be withdrawn within the next few years, I
think it is wisdom for every mission body to aim at founding a body of
educated native clergy who can free Christianity from the taunt of
being a foreign religion, and who can, when the foreigner leaves China,
take his place and uphold the faith.
If to have an educated native ministry is one great object of the
University, another great and only less important object is the
creation of an intellectual Christian laity who shall form and direct
Christian public opinion. The school teacher, the writer, are only one
degree less important, if indeed they are so, than the Christian
minister; and if as China assimilates Western civilisation, she finds
in her midst a body of men conversant {311} with the best side of that
civilisation, able to interpret its mysteries to her, so that it does
not become subversive to all spiritual religion and morality, it is
more than probable that she will take those men and put them in high
positions, and the grain of mustard seed will by their means grow into
a plant which shall overshadow the whole of China. The other day I was
reading how St. Grimaldi and St. Neots founded the University of Oxford
in 886. Theology, grammar and rhetoric, music and arithmetic, geometry
and astronomy, were the subjects taught. After a thousand years we are
in a position to judge of the success of the experiment. Surely every
one will wish to have a hand in founding a similar undertaking.
The foundation of this University cannot for two or three reasons be
left to one body. In the first place, no one communion will be rich
enough to undertake such a work; secondly, it might cause a certain
narrowness of atmosphere; thirdly and chiefly, co-operation among
Christians would afford an object-lesson to the Chinese of the real
unity there is between them. We are constantly twitted with the fact
that we confuse the heathen by professing the religion of love and then
setting before them a mass of warring sects. If we can unite in the
founding of such a University, we shall show that though we see the
Christian truth in different aspects we have agreed that truth is one,
and have in spite of our divisions a fundamental unity. When {312}
this matter was referred to at the Shanghai Conference, considerable
difficulty was felt among missionaries as to the terms on which such a
University should be founded. It was agreed to refer it to the
Committee on Education, and that Committee of Education has in the year
1909 welcomed the formation of such a University. Dr. Hawks Pott, who
of all men in China can best speak as an authority on education, since
he has organised and maintained that wonderful institution at
Jessfield, warmly advocated its formation.
No doubt one of the reasons why the missionaries now see their way to
the acceptance of this University is because a neutral body has come
forward to initiate the undertaking. Committees of the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge have been sitting for many months considering the
question with all the skill and ability which their great learning and
technical knowledge enable them to bring to bear on this subject.
Though of course they have a thorough knowledge of education in all its
aspects, they were aware that they lacked knowledge of China and the
Chinese, so for many months they heard and examined the evidence of any
one who was thoroughly acquainted with China and with the conditions of
missionary work. They devised a scheme which they thought would at
once satisfy the workers in the mission field and be acceptable to the
Chinese. The mere outline of the scheme is that this University should
encourage the formation of denominational hostels, which shall {313} be
under the control of individual missionary bodies, and which shall form
colleges at the University; and while the University alone would
concern itself with giving secular teaching from a neutral standpoint,
the colleges would give Christian teaching to their pupils. In this
way all conflict between missions would be avoided; each mission would
continue to care for the pupils which it had hitherto sheltered and
educated. To the University would accrue the great gain of having a
supply of properly prepared pupils coming into it from the mission
schools, one of the causes of disappointment of ill-considered
University schemes being that there is no proper provision for a supply
of pupils. In the West there are numerous secondary schools, and any
University can easily find a sufficient number of pupils properly
grounded in knowledge. In the East to erect a University without
feeding schools is like building a house in the Chinese fashion roof
first. The Yale University Mission found itself compelled to set up
elementary schools to teach the elementary Western knowledge which was
necessary before even the lowest grade of college work could be
attempted. Western teachers are, as we have before explained, few and
far between outside the mission schools, and therefore mission schools
would both help and be helped by a University. The University
completes the work they have begun, and returns the men to the mission
to carry on its work with honour and efficiency. On the other hand,
the mission supplies the {314} University with pupils, which after all
are the prime necessity of education.
Another great feature of the Oxford and Cambridge scheme was that the
University should aim to be a native University, and this no doubt was
the side which attracted the Chinese. Instead of using knowledge, the
common heritage of all men, as the means of imposing the domination of
the alien on China, knowledge is offered by this University as
essentially the thing which belongs to China as well as to any other
race. If in the commencement the majority of the professors must
belong to the Western race, it is to be hoped that many of its
professors will soon come from China, and that when the University is
well begun, and Christianity has become as national a religion as it is
in our land, and Western civilisation has lost the right to describe
itself by that epithet, and has become the civilisation of the East as
of the West, then the University whose foundation is now being laid may
be the great light of the future China.
Perhaps the most important part of the scheme is that which suggests
denominational hostels as the proper solution of the difficulties that
beset union and interdenominational work in the mission field.
There are obvious difficulties in arranging for a common religious
teaching, and, on the other hand, it is very advantageous for the many
mission bodies at work in China to show a united front against the new
materialism and the ancient superstition. {315} Nothing so shows the
power of Christian love as a union work of this nature.
We Christians are often taunted with our differences, and we are
assured that many will support any scheme that makes for union and
peace between the different elements of the Christian world. Here is a
scheme which will tend to bring Christians together, and to induce that
mutual respect and toleration which must be the foundation of a closer
union. The baby must walk before he runs, and if the Christians of
China can maintain such a University, their daily intercourse will
greatly assist any further scheme for unity.
But there is another use in the hostel system which should not be
overlooked. At all times one of the great hindrances to the education
of young men is the tendency that they have to waste their strength in
riot and wantonness. The Chinaman is perhaps more subject to these
temptations than the Westerner. A student said: "We cannot work; we
are too profligate." A Chinese statesman advised against certain towns
as possible sites for a University because of their tendency to entice
men into vicious courses. Far the most efficient way of opposing this
evil is to make some one responsible for the moral welfare of the young
men, and this is done in the hostel system.
Every hostel would be governed by some person who would make the moral
welfare of the young men his peculiar care and study. The head of the
hostel might or might not be on the teaching staff of the {316}
University; but whether he taught or not, his first duty would be the
care of the moral and spiritual welfare of those committed to his
charge. He would give all his energy to reproduce the highest moral
tone of a Western University.
This scheme is being tried in Chentu, where a union University is being
started. And I believe it is in every way proving successful. Those
who have not realised the size of China will be perhaps inclined to ask
why not unite the two schemes? The simple answer to those who have
travelled is that the distances are too vast. You might as well talk
of uniting Oxford and Harvard, for those two Universities are about as
far from one another in time as Hankow is from Chentu. Even when the
railway is built the distances will be immense. The enormous distances
of China are also a reason why it was impossible to amalgamate the
Hong-Kong scheme and the Oxford and Cambridge scheme. Hong-Kong is now
ten days to a fortnight away from Hankow, and such a different language
is spoken there that the dwellers in Northern and Central China are
often forced to use English to understand one another.
The University of Hong-Kong will be very beneficial to the colony, and
is an example of the generosity of the merchants and citizens of that
town; but as a means of naturalising the higher side of our
civilisation it labours under the great disadvantage of not being
either in China nor under the Chinese flag, nor of speaking the
prevailing language.
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