{130}
_The manufacturing of the blind--“Before born”--The Rev. Hill
Murray--“The Message”--Geography--Marriage--A brave little
explorer--Massacre of the blind--Deposits of one tael--A missionary
career--The charitable Chinese--A Buddhist orphanage--Invitation to a
funeral--An intellectual abbot--The youngest orphan--Pity and mercy._
|The blind musician I had seen playing to the village folk with the
setting sun, that he could not see, on his face, remained in my mind.
Why especially, I do not know, for it is a common enough sight in China.
Terrible as is the affliction, the Chinese, by their insanitary habits,
more or less manufacture their blind. The cult of the bath is not theirs
yet, they live, apparently happily, amongst filthy surroundings, they
neglect the eyes of the new-born child, they suffer from smallpox, and
ophthalmia, and the barber with his infected razor shaves, not only
close round the outside, but with the laudable intention of making all
clean and neat, as far down as he can get round the delicate inside of
the eyelid. The result one may see any day in the streets of Peking, or
any Chinese town. A beggar in China is always a horrible-looking object.
He belongs to a guild. His intention is to attract pity, and it would
seem to him going the wrong way about it, to begin by being neat and
clean. Besides, though many people {131}in China are neat, I suspect
very few of them are what we arrogant Westerners would describe
as clean, and among a dirty people, the blind beggar stands out,
pre-eminent, as the filthiest creature I have ever seen. On the
roadside, again and again in a country place where many people are
passing, I have seen a half-naked man, who looked as if he had never
since his birth even looked at water, clad, or rather half-clad, in
filthy rags with raw red sores where his eyes should have been. He was
so horrible, so ghastly a specimen of humanity that he seemed almost
beyond pity. And yet a blind person always receives a certain amount
of respect and consideration from the Chinese, even from the poorest
Chinese. Never in his hearing would the roughest rickshaw coolie call
him “Hsia Tze” that is “Blind man.” That would be discourteous. Though
he be only a beggar, forlorn, hungry, unkempt, he is still addressed by
all passers as “Hsien Sheng,” “Before Born,” a title of respect that is
given to teachers, doctors, and men of superior rank and age.
Hard though, in spite of the respect that is paid them, must be the lot
of those who are handicapped by the loss of sight. It is hard in any
land, but in China, where even among those in full possession of their
senses, there are hundreds of thousands just on the verge of starvation,
the touch needed to send a man over the brink is very, very slight
indeed. Not even the close family ties of the Chinese can help them
much, for where the strongest suffer, the weak must go to the wall.
And there are very few crafts open to the blind man. He may be a
storyteller, or a fortune-teller, or a musician, I cannot {132}imagine
what he would do if his talents did not run in those lines, and even
then he is dependent upon the doles of a people who have very, very
little to give away, and naturally guard that little carefully. Once
blind there is nothing more to be done. The beautiful blue sky of China,
the golden sunshine have gone, and in its place there is the darkness,
warm sometimes, bitter cold sometimes, the enveloping darkness that
means for so many helplessness and starvation, often at the very best
semi-starvation, borne with the uncomplaining stoicism of the Chinese.
Now once upon a time a man stood upon the Beggars' Bridge in Peking,
outside the walls of the Tartar City, selling Bibles, and noticed as
everyone must do, the number of blind who passed by. Was there none to
pity, asked the Rev. Hill Murray, none among all those who had devoted
their lives to bringing the Gospel to the heathen to help?
“What?” said some. “When you know that already the Chinese declare we
missionaries take the children for the sake of making medicine of their
eyes, will you give colour to the accusation by setting up a mission to
the blind?” And then, when he still persisted, “They need us, they need
us,” they said: “Since you are so keen, why don't you do it yourself?”
To him it was “The Message.” Why should he not do it himself? And there
and then he set to work. It was years ago. What the cost, what the
struggle, I do not know. I only know that one sunny April day wandering
round Peking in a hu t'ung in the east of the Tartar City I came upon
the house, or rather, for it is all done Chinese fashion, {133}the nest
of little houses with their courtyards and little gardens, that is the
Mission to the Blind.
[Illustration: 0204]
The Rev. Hill Murray is gone to his rest, but his wife and daughters
keep up the Mission, waiting for the time when his young son, away in
England training, shall be ready to take his place. Fifty pupils, boys
and girls, the missionaries send in from the various stations, and
here they are taught, taught to read and write according to the Braille
system, taught to play musical instruments, and prepared for being
preachers, which of course the missionaries consider the most important
avocation of all. I, in my turn, am only concerned that the unfortunate
should be happy, or as happy as he can be under the circumstances, and
I should think that the preacher, the man who feels himself of some
importance in spite of his affliction, competent to instruct his fellows
in what, to him, is a matter of deep moment, has possibly the best
chance of happiness. The girls are taught much the same as the boys, and
in addition to knit, and such household work as they are capable of.
It seemed to me sad, when I went there one bright sunny morning, that
these young things should be for ever in the dark, but I am bound to say
it was only my thoughts that were sad. The girls came laughing into the
front courtyard with their knitting in their hands to see--see, save
the mark!--the stranger, and have their photographs taken. The sun, the
golden sun of April, streamed down on the stone-paved courtyard, all the
plants in pots were in bloom, and the girls, dressed in Chinese fashion,
made deep obeisance in the direction they were told I was. All around
were the quaint roofs, dainty {134}lattice-work windows, and Eastern
surroundings of a Chinese house, and the girls were grave at first,
because they were being introduced to an older woman, and one whom they
thought was their superior, therefore they thought it was not fitting
they should laugh and talk, but when I remarked on their gravity, Miss
Murray, shepherding them, laughed.
“Oh they are very happy. They don't feel their lot, not yet at any rate.
They are proud because they have learned so much. They can read and
write, they can knit, and they have learned geography.”
Geography seemed a great asset, and presently, they, when they knew they
might, were laughing and talking, and saying how proud they were to have
their photographs taken. They sat there knitting, and even while they
talked, did exactly what they were told, for like all Chinese, they
have a great sense of the fitting. On one occasion a friend brought in a
gramophone and set it going for their amusement.
“I could have shaken them all,” said Miss Murray, “they received the
funniest sallies in solemn silence,” and when the entertainer was gone,
she reproached them, “You never even smiled.”
A dozen eager voices responded. “Oh but it was so hard not to laugh.
We wanted to so much, but we thought it would not be right. It was so
hard.”
The lot of all women in China is hard; doubly hard, it seemed to me,
must the lot of these poor little girls be, cut off from the only hope
of happiness a Chinese woman has, the chance of bearing a son. {135}“And
they can never marry,” I said sorrowfully to Miss Murray.
There came a smile into her bright young eyes. “Oh, I don't know. Some
of them may. They are so very well-educated, and the Chinese admire
education, and in a Chinese household, where there are so many people to
do the work, a blind wife would not be so useless. Only the other day we
heard of the marriage of one of our girls.”
And I looked at them again with other eyes, and hoped there were many
households that would like a wife for their son who knew geography.
We went from the outer to the inner courtyard, a rock garden where, in
true Chinese fashion, are set out plants and rockeries, a little winding
river with a stone bridge across it, a miniature lake--there is no water
in it now--and many creeping plants hiding the stones. It is a charming
spot, but naturally the blind are not allowed to go there by themselves.
It is too dangerous. However, on one occasion, one curious little boy
objected to these restrictions, and went on an exploring expedition on
his own account. Groping about in the darkness, he fell into the river,
which has steep cement sides, and out of that he could not get. You
would think that he would have yelled lustily to call attention to his
predicament, but that is not the Chinese way. He had disobeyed, Fate
was against him, and he must suffer, and there he lay the livelong day
without a murmur, and not till they called the roll in the evening,
was his absence discovered, and a search for him instituted. Even that
lesson was not sufficient, for once again he was missing, and once again
he was discovered fallen into one of the many traps of the rock garden.
{136}It was unexplored country to him, and he was willing to risk much
to see what it was like.
In the parts of the house with which they are familiar they can all run
about, up and down steps, and in and out of courtyards and down passages
as easily as people with sight. The boys came out of their class-rooms
where they learn to read, and write, and sing, and play the harmonium,
and raced about much as other boys in other lands would do.
They have two meals a day--one in the morning and one at four o'clock in
the afternoon, and as much tea and bread at other times as they care
to have. Mrs Murray apologised for the dampness of the stones of the
dining-room floor. It is a Chinese house, and stone floors are not a
sign of poverty. These stones are damp because at twelve o'clock the
boys come and pour themselves out cups of tea, and naturally they make a
mess. The cook is busy, he cannot be with them always. For this charity
is run on very simple lines, and the people who see are very few. There
is the cook and the house-coolie, a woman for the girls, a doorkeeper,
frail and old, he may be seen standing just outside the door in the
picture of the hu t'ung, and a couple of men who attend to the making of
the Braille books, for their making and binding requires the attention
of someone with sight. But with these exceptions, the blind have it all
to themselves; they learn, and they play, and they eat by themselves.
In one of the pictures I have taken, the boys have come out of school
and are playing cat and mouse. All join hands in a circle, and one boy
creeping in and out softly is chased by another. How they manage it in
their darkness I don't know, but they {137}chattered, and laughed, and
shouted happily though what they said of course I did not know. They are
all, boys and girls alike, dressed in the ordinary blue cotton of the
country; the boys had their hair cut short, for nowadays the queue,
that most curious of fashions in the dressing of hair, is going out. The
girls were also dressed like the peasants, with their trousers neatly
drawn in at the ankles and their smooth, straight hair drawn back and
plaited in a tail down the back, much like an English schoolgirl; the
little ones though, have their heads shaven in front, very ugly, but in
conformation with Chinese custom, which always shaves part at least of
the little one's head.
In the courtyard where the boys were playing, was a rocking-horse, a
dilapidated and battered toy without either tail, or mane, or eyes. And
this toy is pathetic, when you know its history. It was bought with
the pennies saved by Mr Hill Murray's children. They, too, out of
their small store, wanted to do something for the blind; and the blind
children, immediately it came into their possession, took out its eyes.
They were not going to have the rocking-horse spying on them when they
could not see themselves.
They all wisely live in native fashion. Their food is the food of the
well-to-do lower classes, plenty of bread, steamed instead of being
baked, and plenty of vegetables and soup, with just a little meat in it;
the food to which they have been accustomed, and which they like best.
Their beds, I have tried to depict one, are just the ordinary k'ang, a
stone platform to hold three in summer, and five in winter. Under it is
a small fireplace where a fire can be built {138}to warm it, above, it
is covered with matting, and each boy spreads his own bed of quilted
cotton, which is rolled up in the daytime.
I would have thought that the Mission to the Blind was so good and great
a thing that it could rouse no bitter feelings in any breast. It has
for its object the succouring of those whom the Chinese themselves treat
with great respect, yet so fanatical was the Boxer outbreak, that in the
hu t'ung outside the Mission, forty of the pupils and their teachers,
helpless in their affliction, were done to death by those who would have
none of the Westerner and his works, even though those works were works
of mercy.
More often, perhaps, in China than anywhere in the world where I have
been, am I reminded of the passage in Holy Writ that tells how as
the Man of Pity came nigh unto Jericho a certain blind man sat by the
wayside begging. And, hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it
meant, and they told him, “Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.” We may not
give sight to the blind nowadays, but if we walk in the streets of
Peking, and then turn in to the Mission to the Blind with its kindly
care for the helpless, and its brightening of darkened lives, we know
that that man who stood on the Beggars' Bridge pitied, as his Master had
pitied before him. All that he could do he has done, and those who have
come after him have followed faithfully in his footsteps, can any man do
more? I think not. Truly I think not.
“What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?” asked the Lord of the World
of the blind beggar.
And he said, “Lord that I may receive my sight.”
Those who charge themselves with the care of the {139}blind may not
give so royally now. Theirs is the harder part, they tend and care with
unfailing patience, untiring diligence, and then they stand, and wait.
[Illustration: 0212]
I was so lost in my admiration for the Mission to the Blind, that I
began to think and to say, that missionary enterprise, which I had
always thought should turn its attention to its own people, was at least
justified in this land of China, where no provision was made for the
sick and afflicted, and where charity was unknown. I said it very often,
and every foreigner approved, until at last, there came one or two who
promptly showed me the utter folly of drawing deductions when I didn't
know anything about the facts.
The foreigner in China is divided into two camps. He is either
missionary or he is anti-missionary. Both sides are keen on the matter.
And, of course, there are always two sides to every question, as the
little girl saw whose sympathies went out to the poor lion, who hadn't
got a Christian.
China needs medical missionaries, needs them as badly as the city slums
of London or New York; and China is going to get them, for there are
thousands of people who think a deal more of the state of the soul of
the materialistic Chinaman than they do of the starving bodies, and
more than starved intellects of the slum children of a Christian land.
Formerly the missionary had a worse time than he has now. He came among
a people who despised him, and more than once he suffered martyrdom, and
even when there was no question of martyrdom, some of the regulations
he submitted to must have been unpleasant. Unwisely I think, for you can
{140}never make a European look like a Chinaman, the powers that ran
the missionary societies, decided that the missionary must wear Chinese
dress, even to the shaven head and the queue behind. A hatchet-faced
Scot with a fiery red pigtail, they say was an awesome sight, certainly
calculated to impress the Celestial, though whether in the way the
newcomer intended I should not like to say. The growing of a proper
queue was, of course, a question of months, and the majority of
missionaries began their career with a false one. A story is told of one
luckless young man in Shanghai who lost his, and went about his business
for some little time unaware of the fact. When he did discover his loss
he went back on his tracks, searching for it at all the places he had
visited. At last he arrived at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and
there, pinned high on the wall, was his missing property, and attached
to it by some facetious clerk was the legend in great letters that all
might read: “Deposits of one tael not accepted here!” For the benefit of
the uninitiated, one tael is a sum of money, varying with the price of
silver, from half-a-crown to three shillings.
But those days are gone by. Nowadays missionary societies are wiser, and
the medical missionaries are pleasant, cheerful, hard-working men and
women doing an immense amount of good among the suffering poor, so
kindly, so thoughtful are they that I grudge their services to the
heathen when I think how many of the children, aye and those who are not
children, in the mean streets of the great cities of the West need their
services. They trouble themselves about the souls of the people too,
and the example of kindly lives must be good. Again I grudge it all to
{141}the Oriental, though I have come to realise that there are many
ways of doing good in the world. I do occasionally feel that the
missionaries are a little too strenuous in inculcating prayer and
praise, and exhorting to a virtue that is a little beyond the average
mortal. The caring for both bodies and souls can certainly be overdone.
However I dare say it all works right in the end, and I, who do nothing,
should be the last to judge. Still sometimes I could not but remember
the picture of the two babies discussing the situation, the fat, plump
baby, and the thin, miserable, scrawny one.
Said the thin baby: “How do you manage to keep so fat? My milk's
sterilised, and the milkman's sterilised, and even the cart's
sterilised, and yet look at me,” and he stretched out his thin, starved
hands.
“Ah, so's mine,” said the fat baby serenely, “but, when no one's
looking, I climb down and get a chew at the corner of the floor-rug, and
get enough bacteria to keep a decent life in me!”
Listening to the talk of the missionaries, hearing of the foolishness
of smoking, the wickedness of alcoholic drinks, and various forms of
sinfulness, I have rather hoped, and more than suspected, that the
converts sometimes got down and had a chew at the corner of the
floor-rug when no one was looking.
Not that many of the missionaries don't endeavour to live up to
their own moral code, many of them do, and many of them lead lives of
abnegation and self-denial. We all know that the missionary of the Church
of Rome gives up everything, and expects never again to see his
country once he enters the mission-field, and many of the China Inland
Missionaries, {142}except in the matter of celibacy, run them close.
Their pay is very, very small, no holidays can be counted upon, and
their lives are isolated and lonely. Even the American missionary, who
is far better paid, gives up his own individuality. The ministers earn
more, I believe, than they would in their own country, because people
give gladly to missions, while at home the minister's salary is often a
burning question. “Far fields are ever fair,” but a clever surgeon who
is kept hard at it from dawn to dark, once the Chinese appreciate him,
certainly receives far less than he could earn working for himself. He
is given a comfortable home, he may marry and have children without a
qualm, for, for every child twenty pounds a year is allowed till he is
of age; the societies see to it that a six weeks' holiday is given every
year, and a year's furlough every seven years with passage paid home
for wife and children. No business firm could afford to make more
comfortable provision for its employees.
In China, service is cheap and good, the food and the cooks both
excellent, and the climate, at least in the north, exhilarating and
delightful. But the missionaries do their duty, and do it well, and they
are pioneers of Western civilisation. In their wake comes trade, though
that is the last thing the majority of them think about. The only
trouble for the American missionary seems to me the danger that hangs
over every dweller in China--a danger they share with every other
foreign resident. It is hard to think of danger when one looks at the
courteous, subservient Chinese, but Sir Robert Hart put it succinctly:
“Anything may happen at any time in China.” And for all the New
Republic, {143}and for all the fair promise, his words are still worthy
of attention.
“Do you really think,” said R. F. Johnston, the well-known writer on
things Chinese, “that the Chinese knew nothing about charity till it was
preached to them by Christian missionaries?”
I intimated that such had been my faith.
“The Chinese,” said he, a little indignantly, “are one of the most
charitable peoples on earth.”
And then he told me what I, a stranger and ignorant of the language,
might have gone years without learning. To begin with, family ties
are far stronger in China than in European countries, and a man feels
himself bound to help his helpless relatives in a way that would seem
absurd to the average Christian, and in addition there are numerous
societies for helping those, who, by some mischance, have no one upon
whom they can depend. There are societies for succouring the sick,
societies for looking after orphans, and other kindly institutions.
There are even societies for paying poor folks' fares across ferries!
There certainly are a good many rivers in China, but this society I must
admit strikes me as a work of supererogation. I don't think much merit
can really attach to the subscribers, for the majority of poor folks I
have seen would be so much better for walking through the river, clothes
and all.
However, we have a good few foolish charities of our own, and even if
the Chinese charities do not cover all the ground, we must remember that
China is, in so many things, archaic; and these charities run on archaic
lines are naturally shocking to men steeped in the sanitary lore of
the West, {144}We have only to read the novels of Charles Dickens and
Charlotte Brontë to see a few flaws in the way the charities of the
Early Victorian era were administered; what would we think if we could
take a peep into thetlazar-house of the Middle Ages--yet there were kind
hearts, I doubt not, in the Middle Ages--and China, with her overflowing
population, is yet in the matter of charity where we were some time
about the reign of the seventh Henry. Could we expect much?
“Would you like to see a Buddhist Orphanage?” asked Mr Johnston.
I said I would, and he promised to take me to one they were trying to
run on Western lines.
It was a pleasantly warm Sunday, with a wind blowing that lifted the
filthy dust of Peking from the roadways, and flung it in our faces.
We interviewed first two rickshaw coolies with a view to ascertaining
whether they; knew where we wanted to go, or rather he interviewed them,
for I have no Chinese. They swore they did, by all their gods. Still he
looked doubtful.
“Why don't you take them?” said I, feeling mistakenly that nowhere else
in the town could the dust and the wind be quite so bad as just outside
the Wagons Lits Hotel.
“Because I want to find out if they really know where we want to go.
They always swear they do, for fear of losing the job.”
However, at last we set out with rickshaw coolies who seemed to have a
working knowledge of the route we wished to follow, and we went through
the Chien Men into the Chinese City, and away to the west through a
maze of narrow alley-ways, hung {145}with long Chinese signs, past the
closely packed, one-storied shops where they sold china and earthenware,
cotton goods and food-stuffs, lanterns, and rows of uninteresting
Chinese shoes. The streets of course were thronged. There were
rickshaws, laden donkeys, broughams with Venetian shutters to shut out
the glare, the clanging bell and outrider to tell that some important
man was passing, mules, camels, men on foot with or without burdens,
with bamboos across their shoulders and loads slung from them, and some
few women tottering along on maimed feet. And every man was giving his
opinion on things in general to the universe at the top of his voice.
“How I wish I could understand what they were saying,” I said to my
companion once, when the exigencies of the way brought our rickshaws
side by side.
He laughed. “Sometimes it's as well you shouldn't.” And then he
corrected himself lest I should have got a wrong impression. “No, on the
whole they are very polite to each other.”
Once we came upon a man with a packet of papers in his hand. He was
standing upon something to raise him a little above the passing crowd,
and distributing the papers not to everyone, but apparently with great
discrimination. Both of us were deemed worthy of a sheet, and I wondered
what on earth the hieroglyphics could mean. It was an invitation to
a funeral, my cicerone informed me, the next time we were in speaking
distance. Some woman, who had been working for a broader education for
women, had died, and her friends were going to mark their appreciation
of her labours by {146}a suitable funeral. So is the change coming to
China.
As we went on the houses grew fewer, there were open spaces where
kaoliang and millet were being reaped, for this, my second charity, I
visited in September, the grey walls of the city rose up before us,
and still there was no sign of the monastery. Our men were panting, the
sweat was running down their faces and staining their thin coats, still
they dragged us on, never dreaming; of using the tongues Nature had
given them to lighten their labours. To ask the way would have been to
show the foreigner in the rickshaw that they had not known it in the
first instance, and that would be to lose face.
But one of the foreigners had grasped that already, and he insisted on
the necessary inquiries being made, and presently we had gone back on
our tracks and were at the monastery, being received by the abbot who
had charge of it, and a tall Chinese, who spoke German, and was deeply
interested in the Orphanage.
It was the great day of the year, for they were having their annual
sports. Over the entrance gateway was a magnificent decoration to mark
the event. The place was built Chinese fashion, with many courtyards
and low-roofed houses round them, and we were led from one courtyard
to another until at last we arrived at a large courtyard, or rather
playground. Here were the monks and their charges, and a certain number
of spectators who had been invited to see the show, all men, for men and
women do not mingle in China, and the next day the entertainment
would be repeated with women only as spectators. I received a warm
{147}invitation to come again, but I felt that once would be enough. We
sat down on a bench with a table in front of us, a boy was told off to
keep us supplied with tea, and I had leisure to look around me and see
what manner of people were these among whom I had come.
[Illustration: 0222]
[Illustration: 0223]
There are thirty monks here, and they have charge of two hundred and
fifty orphans whom they teach to read and write, and all the useful
trades, give them, in fact, a good start in the world, and the best of
chances to earn their own living. The bright sunshine was everywhere,
the walls in a measure shut out the wind and the dust, and the
sports were in full swing. At the upper end of the ground, in a room
overlooking the play, sat the abbot and some of his subordinates. They
wore loose gowns of some dark material girt in at the waist, their only
ornament, if ornament it could be called, was a rosary, and head
and face were absolutely bare of hair. The abbot from a neighbouring
monastery was introduced to me too, a man with a pleasant, thoughtful,
cultured face and the most beautiful milk-white teeth. I was sorry I
could not speak to that man. I felt somehow as if we might have met on a
plane where nationalities and race count for little; but that would have
been due to his culture and broadmindedness, not to mine.
Then there were the orphans. They were fat, well-fed looking little
chaps dressed in unbleached calico trousers, and coats of the very
brightest blue I have ever seen. Each wore on his breast, as a mark of
the festive occasion, a bright pink carnation, and every head was
shaven as bare as a billiard ball. They looked happy and well, but to
my Western {148}eyes that last sanitary precaution, as I suppose it was,
spoiled any claim they had to good looks. They ran races, they jumped
about in sacks, they picked up hoops, they stood in clusters of six and
sang in shrill young voices, weird and haunting songs that I was told
were patriotic and full of hope for China. The three first in the races
had their names proclaimed in black characters on white flags that were
carried round the grounds, and there and then received their prizes, a
handkerchief or some such trifle.
It was interesting not so much for the sports themselves, those may be
better seen in any well-regulated boys' school, but because this is the
first time such efforts have been made in China, and made by the Chinese
themselves. That a man should take any violent exercise, unless he were
absolutely obliged, that he should have any ideal beyond looking fat,
and sleek, and well-fed, is entirely contrary to all received Chinese
ideas, and must mark a great step in their advancement.
And then they brought me the youngest orphan, a wee, fat boy of eight,
and though he looked well, he seemed much younger. Probably he was. As
I understand it, the Chinese counts himself a year old in the year he
is born, and the first New Year's day adds another year to his life, so
that the child born on the last day of the old year, would on New Year's
Day, be two years old! There is something very lovable about a small
child, and there was about this little smiling chap, though he was
unbecomingly dressed in coat and trousers of unbleached calico, and his
head was shaven bare. He held out his hand to me when he was told, bowed
low when {149}I gave him a little piece, a very little piece, of money,
and then trotted across the grounds to where a young monk was looking on
at the show. He caught hold of the monk's robe, and nestled against him,
and the man put down a tender hand and caressed him. No child of his
own, by his vows, would he ever have, but he was a tender father to this
little lonely waif. A waif? He was well-fed, he was suitably clad, and
here I saw with my own eyes he had tenderness, could any child have had
more? Could men do more? And again I say, as I said when I looked at the
Mission to the Blind, I think not. Very surely I think not. At least
one of these monks was giving what no Westerner could possibly give to
a child of an alien race, that tenderness that softens and smooths life.
“They brought young children to Him, that He should touch them... and He
took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them.”
These monks profess a faith that was old when Christianity was born, but
they are carrying out as faithfully as ever did any follower of Christ
His behests. What matter the creed? What matter by what name we call it?
Away in this old Eastern city here, they are preaching, in deeds, the
gospel of love and kindness, and no man can do more.
We are apt to think that charity and pity are attributes of the
Christian faith only but that is to insult the many good and holy men of
other faiths. I am not scorning the kindness and self-sacrifice of
the Christian missionary, but it is better, where it is possible, that
charity and pity for the Chinese should come from those of their own
race. For, however tender and kind an alien may be, he still {150}stands
outside, and the recipient to a certain extent is necessarily alone.
Therefore am I doubly grateful to Mr Johnston for taking me to this
Orphanage, where I could see how good the Chinese could be to the waifs
and strays of their own people.
Pity and mercy belong not to the Western nations alone. They come from
the Most High, and are common to all His people, Christian missionary
selling Bibles, and pitying the blind upon the Beggars' Bridge, or
Buddhist monk taking to his heart the little forsaken child in the
monastery of an older faith in the Chinese City. For such love as that
we find in the world we, who look on, can only bow our heads and give
thanks.