``Is the gospel then simply a patent arrangement by which idolaters

can get to heaven, without disturbing their idolatry or the vices associated

with it? was not Christ a reformer? and Paul also, and his successors,

who, by their preaching, gave the idols of Rome to the moles and the

bats, and robbed the Coliseum of its gladiatorial shows? It is the glory

of Christianity that on questions of truth and righteousness it makes no

compromise. Its mission is to save the world by reforming it....

Who that understands the genius of Christianity can fail to see that China

Christianized must be very different from China as it now is?''[76]

[76] The Rev. Dr. Calvin Mateer, Teng chou.

After making all due allowance for these things, however,

the fact still remains that opposition of this sort in

China is usually local and sporadic. It affects a greater

or less number of individuals and families and occasionally

a community, but it does not move a whole population to

the frenzy of a national uprising. The anti-foreign hatred

of the Boxers was fierce in thousands of cities and villages

where there were no missionaries or Chinese Christians at

all. In the sphere of religion proper, the Chinese are not an

intolerant people. They are almost wholly devoid of sec-

tarian spirit. The coming of another religion would not of

itself excite serious opposition, for having become accustomed

to the presence and intermingling of several religions, it would

not antecedently occur to the Chinese that a fourth faith would

involve the abandonment of the others. They would be more

apt to infer that the new could be accepted in harmony with

the old in the established way. So the worst foe that the

Christian missionary has to encounter is not hostility but indifference.

As a rule, the Chinese have not strenuously objected to the

Protestant missionaries as missionaries. It is the policy of the

mission boards to avoid all unnecessary interference with native

customs. So far from coveting official equality with Chinese

magistrates, an overwhelming majority of the Protestant missionaries

throughout the Empire expressly declined to avail

themselves of the offer of the Chinese Government to give them

the same privileges and official status that was accorded to the

Roman Catholic priests and bishops in the Imperial decree of

March 15, 1899.

``The very thing which missionaries seek to avoid is

denationalizing their converts. So far as mission schools at the

ports are concerned, it is not the missionary who is chiefly

responsible for what foreignizing is done. The Chinese who

patronize these schools want their children to learn foreign

accomplishments. Such schools, however, form but a very small

part of the extensive educational work done by American

missionaries in China.''[77]

[77] The Rev. Dr. Calvin H. Mateer.

Many of the missionaries, especially in the interior stations,

don Chinese clothing, shave their heads and wear a queue.

Everywhere the missionaries learn the Chinese language, try to

get into sympathy with the people, teach the young, heal the sick,

comfort the dying, distribute relief in time of famine, preach the

gospel of peace and good-will, and, in the opinion of unprejudiced

judges, are upright, sensible and useful workers. Not

only men but women travel far into the interior, the former

frequently alone and unarmed. They go into the homes of the

people, preach in village streets, sleep unprotected in Chinese

houses, and receive much personal kindness from all classes.

The experience of the Presbyterian mission at Chining-chou

is an illustration of what has occurred in scores of communities.

When Dr. Stephen A. Hunter and the Rev. William Lane tried

to open a station in 1890, they were mobbed and driven out,

barely escaping with their lives. But in June, 1892, the Rev.

J. A. Laughlin arrived and was permitted to buy property and,

in September, to bring his family and begin permanent residence.

There are hereditary bands of robbers in the neighbourhood,

and more than once they attacked the mission compound.

But gradually the peaceful purpose and the beneficent

life of the missionaries became known and active opposition

ceased. When the Boxer outbreak occurred, there were about

150 baptized adults, besides a considerable number of children

and adherents. During the troubles, only two of the Christians

recanted, the rest holding together and continuing regular services.

The mission property was undisturbed during the

whole period. It is true, the officials were friendly; but even

Governor Yuan Shih Kai's influence could not prevent some

loss in his own capital. In Chining-chou not a thing was

touched, a striking testimony to the friendliness of the people

towards the missionaries whom they had learned to love. As

I approached the city with the returning missionaries, a group

of thirty met us with beaming faces. For nearly a year, they

had been without a missionary and their joy at seeing Mr.

Laughlin was unmistakable. As we passed through the city to

the mission-compound in the southeast suburb, people in almost

every door and window smiled and bowed a welcome.

Nor was this cordiality confined to the Christians; many of all

classes being outspoken in their manifestations of respect and

affection.

Nor is it true that the Chinese sense of propriety is so out-

raged, as some critics would have us believe, by the coming of

single-women missionaries. It is true that in a land where all

women are supposed to marry at an early age and where their

freedom of movement is rigidly circumscribed, the position of

the unmarried woman, however discreet she may be, is sometimes

embarrassingly misunderstood until the community becomes

better acquainted with her mission and character. But

the opposition of the Chinese on this account has been grossly

exaggerated by those whose prior hostility to all missionary

work predisposed them to make as much capital as possible out

of the small gossip on this subject. Even if the misunderstanding

were as general and as bitter as some allege, it would not

follow that single women should be withdrawn, for such misunderstanding

grows out of a false and vicious conception of

the female sex and its relation to man and society, and it is

just that conception which Christianity should and does correct.

For that matter, the position of the single man is also

misunderstood, while no other person in all China is more

fiercely hated by the Chinese than the white traders in the

treaty ports who are the chief source of the criticisms upon

missionaries. The experience of every mission board operating

in China has shown that a Chinese town soon learns that the

single-woman missionary is a pure-minded, large-hearted and

unselfish worker, who from the loftiest of motives devotes herself

to the teaching of women and children and to self-sacrificing

ministries to the sick and suffering. No other foreigners

are more beloved by the people than the single-women missionaries.

It is simply foolish to say that the missionary is responsible

for the prompt appearance of the consul and the gunboat.

The true missionary goes forth without either consul or gunboat.

He devotes his life to ameliorating the sad conditions

which prevail in heathen communities. His reliance is not

upon man, but upon God. But as soon as his work begins to

tell, the trader appears to buy and sell in the new market.

The statesman casts covetous eyes on the newly opened territory.

Christianity civilizes, and civilization increases wants,

stimulates trade and breaks down barriers. The conditions of

modern civilization are developed. Then the consul is sent,

not because the missionary asks for him, but because his

government chooses to send him. Sooner or later some local

trouble occurs, and the Government takes advantage of the opportunity

to further its territorial or commercial ambitions.

``Missionaries responsible, indeed!'' writes Dr. H. H. Jessup.

``The diplomats of Europe know better. Had there been no

grabbing of seaports and hinterlands, no forcing modern improvements

and European goods down the throats of the Chinese,

the missionaries would have been let alone now as in the

past.''

It is the foreign idea that the Chinese dislikes, the interference

with his cherished customs and traditions. A railroad

alarms and angers him more than half a hundred missionaries.

A plowshare cuts through more of his superstitions than a mission

school. He does not want the methods of our western

civilization, and he resents the attempt to push them upon him.

If no other force had been at work than the foreign missionary,

the anti-foreign agitation would never have started. It is significant

that those who protest that we ought not to force our religion

upon the Chinese do not appear to think that there is

anything objectionable in forcing our trade upon them. The

animosity of the Chinese has been primarily excited, not by the

missionary, but by the trader and the politician, and the missionary

suffers chiefly because he comes from the country of

the trader and the politician and is identified with them as a

member of the hated race of foreigners.

On this whole subject, I have been at some pains to collect

the testimony of men whose positions are a guarantee not only

of knowledge but of impartiality.

The Hon. George F. Seward, formerly United States

Minister to Chipa, declares:--

``The people at large make too much of missionary work as an occasion

for trouble. There are missionaries who are iconoclasts, but this is not

their spirit. In great measure, they are men of education and judgment.

They depend upon spiritual weapons and good works. For every enemy

a missionary makes, he makes fifty friends. The one enemy may arouse

an ignorant rabble to attack him. While I was in China, I always

congratulated myself on the fact that the missionaries were there. There

were good men and able men among the merchants and officials, but it

was the missionary who exhibited the foreigner in benevolent work as

having other aims than those which may justly be called selfish. The

good done by missionaries in the way of education, of medical relief and

of other charities cannot be overstated. If in China there were none

other than missionary influences, the upbuilding of that great people

would go forward securely. . . . I am not a church member, but I

have the profoundest admiration for the missionary as I have known him

in China. He is a power for good and for peace, not for evil.''

President James B. Angell, also formerly United States

Minister to China, replies as follows to the question, ``Are

the Chinese averse to the introduction of the Christian

religion'':--

``No, not in that broad sense. They do not seem to fear for the permanency

of their own religion. It is not that they object to missionaries

and the Christian religion as much as it is that the missionaries are

foreigners. A more serious cause of the uprising is the wide-spread

suspicion among the natives, since the Japanese war, that the foreigners

are going to partition China. It is not strange that all these conditions

cause friction and excitement. The Chinese want to be left to themselves

and the one word `foreigners' sums up the great cause of the present

trouble.''

The Hon. Charles Denby, after thirteen years' experience as

United States Minister to China, wrote:--

``I unqualifiedly, and in the strongest language that tongue can

utter, give to these men and women who are living and dying in China

and the Far East my full and unadulterated commendation. . . . No

one can controvert the fact that the Chinese are enormously benefited by

the labours of the missionaries. Foreign hospitals are a great boon to the

sick. In the matter of education, the movement is immense. There are

schools and colleges all over China taught by the missionaries. There are

also many foreign asylums in various cities which take care of thousands

of waifs. The missionaries translate into Chinese many scientific and

philosophical works. There are various anti-opium hospitals where the

victims of this vice are cured. There are industrial schools and workshops.

There are many native Christian churches. The converts seem to be as

devout as people of any other race. As far as my knowledge extends, I

can and do say that the missionaries in China are self-sacrificing; that

their lives are pure; that they are devoted to their work; that their

influence is beneficial to the natives; that the arts and sciences and

civilization are greatly spread by their efforts; that many useful western

books are translated by them into Chinese; that they are the leaders in all

charitable work, giving largely themselves and personally disbursing the

funds with which they are intrusted; that they do make converts, and

such converts are mentally benefited by conversion.'' And after the

Boxer outbreak he added:--``I do not believe that the uprising in China

was due to hatred of the missionaries or of the Christian religion. The

Chinese are a philosophic people, and rarely act without reasoning upon

the causes and results of their actions. They have seen their land disappearing

and becoming the property of foreigners, and it was this that

awakened hatred of foreigners and not the actions of the missionaries or

the doctrines that they teach.''

The present United States Minister, the Hon. Edwin H.

Conger, has repeatedly borne similar testimony, publicly

assuring the missionaries of his ``personal respect and profound

gratitude for their noble conduct.''

The Hon. John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State and

counsel for the Chinese Government in the settlement with

Japan, writes:--

``The opinion formed by me after careful inquiry and observation is

that the mass of the population of China, particularly the common people,

are not specially hostile to the missionaries and their work. Occasional

riots have occurred, but they are almost invariably traced to the literati or

prospective office-holders and the ruling classes. These are often bigoted

and conceited to the highest degree, and regard the teachings of the

missionaries as tending to overthrow the existing order of Government and

society, which they look upon as a perfect system, and sanctified by great

antiquity. . . . The Chinese, as a class, are not fanatics in religion

and if other causes had not operated to awaken a national hostility to

foreigners, the missionaries would have been left free to combat

Buddhism and Taoism, and carry on their work of establishing schools

and hospitals.''

Wu Ting-fang, Chinese Minister to Washington during the

Boxer uprising, while frankly stating that ``missionaries are

placed in a very delicate situation,'' and that ``we must not

be blind to the fact that some, in their excessive zeal, have

been indiscreet,'' nevertheless as frankly added:--

``It has been commonly supposed that missionaries are the sole cause

of anti-foreign feeling in China. This charge is unfair. Missionaries

have done a great deal of good in China. They have translated useful

works into the Chinese language, published scientific and educational

journals and established schools in the country. Medical missionaries

especially have been remarkably successful in their philanthropic work.''

The Hon. Benjamin Harrison, late President of the United

States, replied to my inquiry in the terse remark:--``If what

Lord Salisbury says were true, the reflection would not be upon

the missionaries, but upon the premiers.''

General James H. Wilson, of the United States Army, the

second in command of the American forces in Peking, adds

his testimony:--

``Our missionaries, after the earlier Jesuits, were almost the first in

that wide field (China). They were generally men of great piety and

learning, like Morrison, Brown, Martin and Williams, and did all in their

power as genuine men of God to show the heathen that the stranger was

not necessarily a public enemy, but might be an evangel of a higher and

better civilization. These men and their co-labourers have established

hospitals, schools and colleges in various cities and provinces of the

Empire, which are everywhere recognized by intelligent Chinamen as

centres of unmitigated blessing to the people. Millions of dollars have

been spent in this beneficent work, and the result is slowly but surely

spreading the conviction that foreign arts and sciences are superior to

`fung shuy' and native superstition.''

The Hon. John Goodnow, American Consul-General at

Shanghai, emphatically declares:--``It is absurd to charge

the missionaries with causing the Boxer War. They are

simply hated by the Chinese as one part of a great foreign element

that threatened to upset the national institutions.''

Viceroy Yuan Shih Kai when Governor of Shantung, in the

spring of 1901, wrote to the Baptist and Presbyterian

missionaries of the province as follows:

``You, reverend sirs, have been preaching in China for many years,

and, without exception, exhort men concerning righteousness. Your

church customs are strict and correct, and all your converts may well

observe them. In establishing your customs you have been careful to see

that Chinese law was observed. How, then, can it be said that there is

disloyalty? To meet this sort of calumny, I have instructed that

proclamations be put out. I purpose, hereafter, to have lasting peace.

Church interests may then prosper and your idea of preaching

righteousness I can promote. The present upheaval is of a most

extraordinary character. It forced you, reverend sirs, by land and water to

go long journeys, and subjected you to alarm and danger, causing me

many qualms of conscience.''

A charge which has been so completely demolished by such

competent and unprejudiced witnesses can only be renewed at

the expense of either intelligence or candour. Dr. Arthur H.

Smith truly says that ``amid the varied action of so many

agents it is vain to deny that Christianity has sometimes been so

presented as to be misrepresented, but on the whole there had

for some time been a marked and a growing friendliness on the

part of both people and officials. . . . The convulsion which

shook China to its foundations was due to general causes, slow

in their operations, but inevitable in their results. It was the

impact of the Middle Ages with the developed Christian commercial

civilization of the nineteenth century, albeit accompanied

with many incidental elements which were neither Christian

nor in the true sense civilized. If Christianity had never come

to China at all, some such collision must have occurred.''[78]

[78] ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 204-206.

XXII

THE CHINESE CHRISTIANS

THE real effect of the operation of the missionary

force is to be seen in the Chinese who have accepted

Christianity. As the commercial force is causing an

economic revolution and as the political force resulted in the

Boxer uprising, so the missionary force is developing a great

spiritual movement which is crystallizing into a Chinese Church.

Much has been said about the character of the Chinese Christians

and doubts have been cast on the genuineness of their faith.

It is admitted that they sometimes try the patience of the missionary.

But is the home pastor never distressed by the conduct

of his members? I am inclined to believe that the Christians in

China would compare favourably with the same number selected

at random in America. A Chinese laundryman posted on his

door this significant notice to his foreign customers:--``Please

help us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy by bringing

your clothes to the laundry before ten o'clock on Saturdays,''

while in another place a Chinese servant left the morning

after a card party at which much money had changed

hands, stating to his mistress in explanation, ``Me Clistian;

me no stay in heathen house!'' The Chinese Christian does

not content himself with church attendance once a week when

the weather is pleasant or an attractive theme is announced.

He does not find himself in vigorous health for an evening entertainment,

and with a bad headache on prayer-meeting night.

There are of course exceptions, but as a rule, the Chinese

Christians worship God with regularity in all kinds of weather.

A missionary told me that the attendance at his mid-week

meeting was as large as at his Sunday morning service, that

every member of his church asked a blessing at the table, had

family prayers and tried to bring his unconverted friends to

Christ. If there is a pastor in America who can say that of his

people, he has modestly refrained from making it public.

But such comparisons are, after all, unfair to the Chinese

Christian for he should be compared, not with Europeans and

Americans who have had far greater advantages, but with the

people of his own country. ``At home, you have the ripe

fruits of a Christianity which was planted more than a thousand

years ago. The Word of God has been among you all

these Christian centuries. You have in every part of the

country a highly trained ministry, a gifted and devoted eldership,

and a whole army of Christian workers of all ranks. You

work in the atmosphere of a Christian society, and under a

settled Christian government. You have an immense and

varied Christian literature, and notwithstanding all defects and

drawbacks, you have on your side a weight of Christian tradition

and a wealth of Christian example. Under such circumstances

and in such an atmosphere, what are we not entitled to

expect of those who bear the Christian name? What justice is

there, or what reasonableness, in demanding as a test of genuineness

the same degree of attainment on the part of Christian

people, many of them uneducated, who are only just emerging

from the deadness and insensibility of heathenism?''[79]

[79] Gibson, pp. 239, 240.

The real question is this:--Is the Christian Chinese a better

man than the non-Christian Chinese--more moral, more truthful,

more just, more reliable? The answer is so patent that no

one who knows the facts can doubt it for a moment. The best

men and women in China to-day are the Protestant Christians.

This is not saying that all converts are good or that all non-

Christian Chinese are bad. But it is saying that comparing

the average Christian with the average heathen, the superiority

of the former in those things which make character and conduct

is immeasurable. ``The conscience of those who have been

born into a new life is not suddenly transformed, yet the change

does take place and upon a larger scale. When once it has

been accomplished, a new force has been introduced into the

Chinese Empire, a salt to preserve, a leaven to pervade, a seed

to bring forth after its kind in perpetually augmenting abundance

and fertility.''[80]

[80] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' p. 107.

The character of the Chinese Christian will appear in still

more striking relief if we consider the circumstances in which

he hears the gospel and the difficulties which he has to overcome.

On this subject the following remarkable passage from

Dr. Gibson is worth quoting entire:--

``Out there the great issue is tried with all external helps removed.

The gospel goes to China with no subsidiary aids. It is spoken to the

people by the stammering lips of aliens. Those who accept it do so with

no prospect of temporal gain. They go counter to all their own preconceptions,

and to all the prejudices of their people. Try as we may to become

all things to all men, we can but little accommodate our teaching to

their thought. . . . Often and often have I looked into the faces of a crowd

of non-Christian Chinese and felt keenly how many barriers lay between

their minds and mine. Reasoning that seems to me conclusive makes no

appeal to them. Even the words we use to convey religious ideas do not

bear to their minds one-hundredth part of the meaning we wish to put into

them. I have often thought that if I were to expend all my energies to

persuade one Chinaman to change the cut of his coat, or to try some new

experiment in agriculture, I should certainly plead in vain. And yet I

stand up to beg him to change the habits of a lifetime, to break away

from the whole accumulated outcome of heredity, to make himself a target

for the scorn of the world in which he lives, to break off from the consolidated

social system which has shaped his being, and on the bare word of

an unknown stranger to plunge into the hazardous experiment of a new

and untried life, to be lived on a moral plane still almost inconceivable to

him, whose sanctions and rewards are higher than his thoughts as heaven

is higher than earth. While I despair of inducing him by my reasonings

to make the smallest change in the least of his habits, I ask him, not with

a light heart, but with a hopeful one, to submit his whole being to a change

that is for him the making of his whole world anew. `Credo quia impossis-

ble,' I believe it can be done because I know I cannot do it, and the smallest

success is proof of the working of the divine power. The missionary must

either confess himself helpless, or he must to the last fibre of his being believe

in the Holy Ghost. I choose to believe, nay I am shut up to believe,

by what my eyes have seen.

``I do not mean that one sees the results of preaching directly on the

spot. In China at least one seldom does. But by the power of God the

results come. We have seen unclean lives made pure, the broken-hearted

made glad, the false and crooked made upright and true, the harsh and

cruel made kindly and gentle. I have seen old women, seventy, eighty,

eighty-five years of age, throwing away the superstitions of a lifetime, the

accumulated merit of years of toilsome and expensive worship, and when

almost on the brink of the grave, venturing all upon a new-preached faith

and a new-found Saviour. We have seen the abandoned gambler become

a faithful and zealous preacher of the gospel. We have seen the poor

giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many

Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of

their hard-earned month's wages, or more, yearly, to help the church's

work. We see dull and uneducated people drinking in new ideas, mysteriously

growing in their knowledge of Christian truth, and learning to

shape their lives by its teachings. We have seen proud, passionate men,

whose word was formerly law in their village, submit to injury, loss and

insult, because of their Christian profession, until even their enemies were

put to shame by their gentleness, and were made to be at peace with them.

And the men and women and children who are passing through these experiences

are gathering in others, and building up one by one a Christian

community which is becoming a power on the side of all that is good in

the non-Christian communities around them. . . . Everything is hostile

to it. It is striking its roots in an uncongenial soil, and breathes a

polluted air. It may justly claim for itself the beautiful emblem so happily

seized, though so poorly justified, by Buddhism--the emblem of the

lotus. It roots itself in rotten mud, thrusts up the spears of its leaves and

blossoms through the foul and stagnant water, and lifts its spotless petals

over all, holding them up pure, stainless and fragrant, in the face of a

burning and pitiless sun. So it is with the Christian life in China Its

existence there is a continuous miracle of life, of life more abundant.''[81]

[81] ``Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China,'' pp. 29-31,

240.

Is it said that these Asiatics have become Christians for

gain? Then how shall we account for the fact that out of

their deep poverty they gave for church work last year $2.50

per capita, which is more in proportion to ability than Christians

at home gave? The impoverished Tu-kon farmers rented

a piece of land and worked it in common for the support of

the Lord's work; the Peking school-girls went without their

breakfasts to save money for their church, and eight graduates

of Shantung College refused high salaries as teachers, and accepted

low salaries as pastors of self-supporting churches.

``Rice Christians?'' Doubtless in some instances, just as at

home some people join American churches for business or

social ends. But those Chinese Christians are receiving less

and less from abroad and yet their number grows.

And it costs something to be a Christian in China. All

hope of official preferment must be abandoned, for the duties

of every magistrate include temple ceremonies that no Christian

could conduct. For the average Christian, loss of business,

social ostracism, bitter hatred, are the common price.

Near Peking, a young man was thrice beaten and denied the

use of the village well, mill and field insurance, because he became

a Christian. A widow was dragged through the streets

with a rope about her neck and beaten with iron rods which

cut her body to the bone, while her fiendish persecutors yelled:--

``You will follow the foreign devils, will you!'' And that

Chinese saint replied that she was not following foreigners but

Jesus Christ and that she would not deny Him!

And so on every hand there are evidences of fidelity in service,

of tribulation joyfully borne, of systematic giving out of

scanty resources. While sapient critics are telling us that the

heathen cannot be converted, the heathen are not only being

converted but are manifesting a consecration and self-denial

which should shame many in Christian lands. At a Presbyterial

meeting in north China, the native ministers held a two-

hours' prayer-meeting before daylight. Such prayer-meetings

are not common in America. Is it surprising that in that

little North China Presbytery 292 baptisms were recorded that

year?

Nor is this a solitary instance. Every Sunday the little

congregations gather. Every day the native helpers tell the

Bible-story to their listening countrymen.

The history of missions in China has shown that it requires

more time to convert a Chinese to Christianity than some other

heathen, but that he can be converted and that when he is

converted, he holds to his new faith with a tenacity and fortitude

which the most awful persecution seldom shakes. The

behaviour of the Chinese Christians under the baptism of blood

and fire to which they were subjected in the Boxer uprising

eloquently testified to the genuineness of their faith. That

some should have fallen away was to be expected. Not every

Christian, even in the United States, can ``endure hardness.''

Let a hundred men anywhere be told that if they do not abandon

their faith, their homes will be burned, their business

ruined, their wives ravished, their children brained, and they

themselves scourged and beheaded, and a proportion of them

will flinch.

It was to be expected, too, that when, after the uprising, the

Christians found their supporters triumphing over a prostrate

foe, some of them should unduly exult and take advantage of

the opportunity to punish their enemies or to collect money

from them as the price of protection. The spirit of retaliation

is strong in human nature in China as well as in America.

When the armies of the Allies, led by educated and experienced

officers, and controlled by diplomats from old-established

Christian countries, gave way under the provocation of the

time to unmeasured greed and vindictive cruelty, it is not surprising

that some of the Chinese Christians, only just emerged

from heathenism, should betray a revengeful spirit towards

men who had destroyed their property, slaughtered their wives

and children, and hunted the survivors with the ferocity of

wild beasts. In some places, the missionaries had a hard task

in restraining this spirit. It was inevitable, also, that in the

confusion which followed the victory of the foreigners, some

``wolves'' should put on ``sheep's clothing,'' and, under the

pretense of being Christians, extort money from the terror-

stricken villagers, or try to deceive the foreigner with false

claims for indemnity.

But as I visited the scenes of disaster, saw the frightful ruin,

heard the stories of Christians and missionaries, faced the

little companies of survivors and learned more of the awful

ordeal through which they had passed, I marvelled, not that

some yielded, but that so many stood steadfast. Edicts were

issued commanding them to recant on pain of dire punishment,

but promising protection to those who obeyed. The following

proclamation posted on the wall of the yamen at Ching-chou-fu

is a sample of hundreds:--

``The Taku forts have been retaken by the Chinese. Gen.

Tung Fu Shiang has led the Boxers and the goddesses, and

has destroyed twenty foreign men-of-war, killing 6,000 foreign

soldiers. The seven devilish countries' consuls came to beg for

peace. General Tung now has killed all the foreign soldiers.

The secondary devils (the native Christians) must die. General

Tung has ordered the Boxers to go to the foreign countries

and bring out their devil emperors from their holes. One foreigner

must not be allowed to live. All who are not Chinese

must be destroyed.''

It requires no large knowledge of Chinese character to calculate

the effect of such official utterances on the minds of lawless

men.

Word sped from a Chinese city that on a certain day all

Christians who had not recanted could be pillaged. From

every quarter, the lawless streamed in, eager for the shambles.

Ruffians pointed out the women they intended to take. And

there was no foreigner to protect, no regiment or battleship

for the Chinese Christian.

Those poor people, hardly out of their spiritual infancy,

stood in that awful emergency absolutely alone. Could an

American congregation have endured such a strain without

flinching? Let those who can safely worship God according

to the dictates of their own consciences be thankful that the

genuineness of their faith has never been subjected to that

supreme test.

Those were grievous days for the Christians of China.

Two graduates of Teng-chou College remained for weary

weeks in a filthy dungeon when they might have purchased freedom

at any moment by renouncing Christianity. Pastor Meng

of Paoting-fu, a direct descendant of Mencius, was 120 miles

from home when the outbreak occurred. He was safe where

he was, but he hurried back to die with his flock. He was

stabbed, his arm twisted out of joint and his back scorched

with burning candles in the effort to make him recant. But

he steadfastly refused to compromise either himself or his

people and was finally beheaded.

The uneducated peasant was no whit behind his cultivated

countrymen in devotion to duty. A poor cook was seized and

beaten, his ears were cut off, his mouth and cheeks gashed

with a sword and other unspeakable mutilations inflicted. Yet

he stood as firmly as any martyr of the early Church.

One of the Chinese preachers, on refusing to apostatize,

received a hundred blows upon his bare back, and then the

bleeding sufferer was told to choose between obedience and

another hundred blows. What would we have answered? Let

us, who have never been called on to suffer for Him, be modest

in saying what we would have done. But that mangled, half-

dead Chinese gasped:--``I value Jesus Christ more than life,

and I will never deny Him.'' Before all of the second hundred

blows could be inflicted, unconsciousness came and he

was left for dead. But a friend took him away by night,

bathed his wounds and secretly nursed him to recovery. I saw

him, when I was in China, and I looked reverently upon the

back that was seamed and scarred with ``the marks of the

Lord Jesus.'' Of the hundreds of Christians who were taken

inside the legation grounds in Peking, not one proved false to

their benefactors. ``In the midday heat, in the drenching

night rains, under storms of shot and shell, they fought, filled

sand-bags, built barricades, dug trenches, sang hymns and

offered prayers to the God whom the foreigner had taught

them to love.'' Even the children were faithful. During the

scream of deadly bullets, and the roar of burning buildings,

the voices of the Junior Christian Endeavour Society were

heard singing:--

``There'll be no dark valley when Jesus comes.''

Such instances could be multiplied almost indefinitely from

the experiences of Chinese Christians during the Boxer uprising.

Indeed the fortitude of the persecuted Christians was so remarkable

that in many cases the Boxers cut out the hearts of

their victims to find the secret of such sublime faith, declaring:

``They have eaten the foreigner's medicine.'' In those humble

Chinese the world has again seen a vital faith, again seen

that the age of heroism has not passed, again seen that men

and women are willing to die for Christ. Multitudes withstood

a persecution as frightful as that of the early disciples in

the gardens and arenas of Nero. If they were hypocrites why

did they not recant? As Dr. Maltbie Babcock truly said:--

``One-tenth of the hypocrisy with which they were charged

would have saved them from martyrdom.'' But thousands

of them died rather than abjure their faith, and thousands

more ``had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover

of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were

sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the

sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being

destitute, afflicted, ill-treated; wandering in deserts and

mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.''

Col. Charles Denby, late United States Minister to China,

declared:--``Not two per cent. of the Chinese Christians proved

recreant to their faith and many meet death as martyrs. Let

us not call them `Rice Christians' any more. Their conduct

at the British Legation and the Peitang is deserving of all

praise.''[82] Beyond question, the Chinese Christians as a body

stood the test of fire and blood quite as well as an equal

number of American Christians would have stood it.

[82] Letter, April 28, 1902.

One of the most trying experiences of the missionaries

has been the dealing with those who did recant. Some of the

cases were pitiful. Poor, ignorant men, confessed their sin

with streaming eyes, saying that they did not mean to deny

their Lord, but that they could not see their wives outraged

and their babies' heads crushed against stone walls. Others

admitted that, though they stood firm while one hundred blows

were rained upon their bare backs, yet after that they became

confused and were only dimly conscious of what they said to

escape further agony than flesh and blood could endure.

Still others made a distinction, unfamiliar to us, but quite in

harmony with Oriental hereditary notions, between the convictions

of the heart and the profession of the lips, so that they

externally and temporarily bowed their heads to the storm

without feeling that they were thereby renouncing their faith.

One of the best Chinese ministers in Shantung, after 200

lashes, which pounded his back into a pulp, feebly muttered

an affirmative to the question: ``Will you leave the devils'

church?'' But he explained afterwards that while he promised

to leave ``the devils' church,'' he did not promise to

leave Christ's Church. The deception was not as apparent to

him as it is to us whose moral perceptions have been sharpened

by centuries of Christian nurture which have been denied

to the Chinese.

When the proclamation ordering the extermination of all

foreigners and Christians was posted on the walls of Ching-

chou-fu, a friendly official hinted that if the Chinese pastors

would sign a document to the effect that they would ``no

longer practice the foreign religion,'' he would accept it as

sufficient on behalf of all their flocks, and not enforce the

order. Warrants for the arrest of every Christian had already

been written. Scoundrels were hurrying in from distant villages

to join in the riot of plunder and lust. Two women

had already been killed. What were the pastors to do?

There was no missionary to guide them, for long before the

consuls had ordered all foreigners out of the interior. The

agonized pastors determined to sacrifice themselves for their

innocent people, to go through the form of giving up the

``foreign'' religion. That word ``foreign'' must be emphasized

to understand their temptation, for the Chinese Christians

do not feel that Christianity is foreign, but that it is

theirs as well as ours. Moreover, the pastors were made to

understand that it was simply a legal fiction, not affecting

the religion of their hearts, but only a temporary expedient

that the friendly magistrate might have a pretext for giving

his protection to the Christians. They were not asked to

engage in any idolatrous rite or to make any public apostasy,

but simply to sign a statement ``no longer to practice the

foreign religion.'' ``So far from recanting,'' it was urged

upon them, ``you are preventing recanting.''

Their decision may be best given in the words of Pastor

Wu Chien Cheng: ``When I thought of these people,'' he

said, his emotion being so great that the tears were running down

his face, ``in most cases with children and aged parents dependent

upon them, and thought of all that was involved for

them if I refused to sign the paper--well, I couldn't help it.

I decided to take on myself the shame and the sin.''

As the Rev. J. P. Bruce, of the English Baptist Mission,

who told me of this incident, truly says: ``Who could listen

to such a narrative--so sad and painful and yet not without

much that was noble--without sympathy and tears?'' In this

spirit of tenderness, so marked in the Lord's dealings with

sinful Peter, the missionaries dealt with the recanting Christians.

With the impostors, indeed, they had less mercy. The

Rev. R. M. Mateer secured the arrest of two scapegraces who,

under pretense of being Christians, had blackmailed innocent

villagers. Very plainly, too, did the missionaries deal with

Christians, who, like some people in the United States after a

fire, placed an extravagant valuation upon what they had lost.

But these were exceptional cases.

On the whole, Christians in Europe and America may well

have stronger sympathy and respect for their fellow-Christians

in China who have suffered so much for conscience' sake.

Purified and chastened by the fearful holocaust through which

they have passed, they are stronger spiritually than ever before.

Like the apostles after Pentecost, they are giving ``with great

power their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.''

``The Chinese Church is not yet strong enough to stand

entirely alone, but it is far stronger and more self-conscious of

the eternal indwelling Spirit than ever before. It has learned

the power of God to keep the soul in times of deadly peril,

and to enable the weakest to give the strongest testimony. It

has learned by humiliation and confession to put away its sins,

and to gird itself for new conflicts and new victories....

Its ablest leaders are more trustworthy men than before their

trials, and the body of believers has a unity and a cohesiveness

which will certainly bear fruit in the not distant future.''[83]

[83] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' p. 212.

XXIII

THE STRAIN OF READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

THE economic revolution in Asia, discussed in a

preceding chapter,[84] bears heavily on the Chinese

Christians. So far as the pressure affects the rank and file

of the membership, the mission boards cannot give adequate

relief. Abroad as well as at home, it must remain the inexorable

rule that a Christian must live within his income and buy

new things only as he can pay for them. Any other policy

would mean utter ruin. Here also, men must ``work out their

own salvation''; and the missionary, while trying to lift men

out of barbarous social conditions on the one hand, should on

the other resolutely oppose the improvident eagerness which

leads a blanketed Sioux Indian to buy on credit a rubber-tired

surrey.

[84] Chapter IX.

But what about the native ministers and teachers, who find

it impossible to live on the salaries of a decade ago? The

problem of the ordinary helper is not so difficult. Springing

from the common people, accustomed from childhood to a

meagre scale of living, the small salaries which the people can

pay either in full or in large part are usually equal to the

income which they would have had if they had not become

Christians. But some native ministers come from a higher

social grade. They are men of education and refinement.

They cannot live in a mud hut, go barefooted, wear a loin cloth

and subsist on a few cents' worth of rice a day. They must not

only have better houses and food and clothing, but they must

have books and periodicals and the other apparatus of educated

men. These things are not only necessary to their own maintenance,

but they are essential to the work, for these men are

the main reliance for influencing the upper classes in favour of

Christianity. It is not a question of luxury or self-indulgence,

but of bare respectability, of the simple decencies of life which

are enjoyed by an American mechanic as distinguished from

the poverty which, for a cultivated family, falls below the level

of self-respect. But this requires a salary which, save in a

very few places, cannot at present be paid by the churches.

``Our pastors,'' writes a missionary, ``are supposed to live as

the middle-class of their people do, but of late years, with the

great rise in prices, they are living below the middle-class.''

The consequences are not only pinching poverty but sometimes

a feeling of wrong, and, in some cases, a yielding to

temptation. One Chinese pastor, for example, who was trying

to support a wife and five children on $10 Mex. ($5) a month,

shipwrecked his influence by trying to supplement his scanty

income by helping in lawsuits. Can we wonder that he felt

obliged to do something, almost anything?

But who is to pay the higher salaries that are now so necessary?

The first impulse is to look to the mission boards in

Europe and America, and accordingly missionaries and Christians

are importunately calling for increased appropriations.

But whatever temporary and occasional relief may be given in

this way, as a permanent remedy, it is plainly impossible. If

the conditions were simply sporadic and local, the case might

be different. But they are universal, or fast becoming so, and

they will be permanent. It is quite visionary to suppose that the

income of the mission boards will permit them to meet the

whole or even the larger part of the increased cost of living

among the myriads of ministers, teachers and helpers in the

growing churches of China. American Christians cannot be

reasonably expected to add such an enormous burden to the

already large responsibilities which they are carrying in their

varied forms of home work and the present scale of foreign

missionary expenditure. Even if they could and would, it

would be at the expense of all further enlargement of the work,

and at the same time it would still further weaken an already

weak sense of self-reliance among the native ministers and

helpers of Asia.

Moreover, the average Christian giver in America is feeling

the same strain himself. The so-called ``era of prosperity''

has given more steady employment to the mechanic, has given

better markets to the producer, and has enormously increased

the wealth of many who were already rich. But the men on

fixed salaries find that ``prosperity'' has increased the prices

of commodities without proportionately increasing earnings.

Millions of American church members find it harder to give

than they did ten years ago, for while their incomes are about

the same, they must pay higher prices for meats, groceries and

clothing. True, many salaries were cut down during the financial

stringency of 1896-1897, but while some of them have

been restored to their former figure, few have been raised above

their original level, while others are still below it. Meantime

official statistics show that the average cost of food is 10.9 per

cent. higher than the average for the decade between 1890 and

1899, and that there has been an increase of 16.1 per cent. as

compared with 1896, the year of lowest prices.[85] It is urged that

the wages of workmen have increased in proportion. But however

true this may be of organized labour, it is palpably untrue of

the great middle-class who are neither capitalists nor members

of labour unions. They form the bulk of the church membership

and to them ``Mr. Wright's statement will carry no reassurance.

It is they who have been hit hardest by the increased

cost of living for their incomes have not kept pace with it.

Indeed, they are actually worse off to-day than they were

eight, ten or fifteen years ago.''[86] Dun's Review, an acknowledged

authority, declares that not in twenty years has it cost

so much to live as now, and that March 1, 1904, the average

prices of breadstuffs were thirty per cent. higher than they were

seven years ago.

[85] Report of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour, 1903

[86] The Youth's Companion, October 29, 1903.

In such circumstances, it is clearly out of the question for

the Christians of the United States to meet these enlarged demands

for the support of their own families and, in addition,

meet them for the churches in China.

If then, the problem of the increased cost of living in Asia

cannot be solved by increased gifts from America, what other

solutions are possible? As an experienced missionary says:--

``To ask for more from America seems like a step backward;

but to leave matters as they are is to see our churches seriously

crippled.'' Four possible solutions may be mentioned.

First:--Stop all expansion of the work and use any increase

in receipts to raise salaries. This is undoubtedly worthy of

thoughtful consideration. To what extent is it right to open

new fields and enlarge old ones when the workers now employed

are inadequately paid? Plainly, the mission boards

should carefully consider this aspect of the question. As a

matter of fact, many of them have already considered it. The

Presbyterian Board has repeatedly declined urgent requests to

establish new stations on the ground that it could not do so in

justice to its existing work. But as a practicable solution, this

method is open to serious difficulties. A living work must grow,

and the living forces which govern that growth are more or less

beyond the control of the boards. The boards are amenable

to their constituencies and those constituencies sometimes imperatively

demand the occupation of a new field, as, for example,

they did in the case of the Philippine Islands, some

boards which at first decided not to enter the Philippines being

afterwards forced into them by a pressure of denominational

opinion that they could not ignore. Moreover, the missionaries

themselves are equally insistent in their demands for enlargement.

Some boards are literally deluged with such appeals.

The missionaries who have most strenuously insisted on

the policy of no further expansion till the existing work is better

sustained have sometimes been the very ones who have

strongly urged that an exception should be made in their particular

fields, without realizing that the argument from ``exceptions''

is so often pressed that it is really the rule and not the

exception at all. And the churches and missionaries are

usually right. God is calling His people to go forward. His

voice is frequently very plain, and the boards, with all their

care and conservatism, are then obliged to expand.

Second:--Diminish the number of native pastors, helpers and

teachers and increase their work. In some places, this might

be done by grouping congregations and fields. But the places

where this could be wisely effected are so few that the relief to

the situation as a whole would not be appreciable, especially as

the native Christians would not give so liberally under such an

arrangement. Their sense of responsibility would be weakened

if they had only a half or a quarter of a pastor's time instead

of the whole of it. Besides, the native force is far too

small now. Instead of being diminished it should be largely

increased. The great work of the future must be done by native

ministers. If China is ever to be evangelized, it must

be to a large degree by Chinese evangelists. To adopt deliberately

the policy of restricting the number of such evangelists

and teachers would be suicidal. As a solution, therefore, this

method is quite impracticable, as it would be a relief at the expense

of efficiency.

Third:--Require native leaders to earn their own living either

wholly or in part. There is Pauline example for this method.

Some of the Presbyterian missionaries in Laos have adopted it

by inducing the members of a congregation to secure a ricefield

and a humble house for their minister. The Korea missionaries

have very successfully worked this method by insisting

that the leaders of groups shall continue in their former occupations

and give their services to Christian work without pay,

in some such way as Sunday-school superintendents and other

unpaid workers do in America. This method is deserving of

wider adoption. It would give considerable relief in many

other fields. It was probably the way that the early church

grew.

``Two opinions,'' says Dr. J. J. Lucas, ``have been held in regard to

the basis on which the salaries of native agents should be fixed. One is

that such a salary should be paid as would remove all excuse for engaging

in secular work, demanding all the time of the pastor for spiritual work;

another is, that acknowledging the salary to be insufficient, the pastors be

expected to supplement it by what they can get from field and vineyard.

If self-support is to be aimed at, at all cost, then the latter plan is the only

feasible one, with the dangers of its abuse. There is no doubt, however,

that a man who loves the gospel ministry and is devoted to it can, without

the neglect of spiritual affairs, do enough outside to lessen materially the

burden that would fall on the church in his support.''

But this method of itself would hardly solve the problem.

However well adapted to the beginnings of mission work, it

fails to provide a properly qualified native leadership. To do

efficient work, a native pastor must give his whole time to it,

and to that end he must have a salary that will make him ``free

from worldly cares and avocations.'' We insist on this in the

United States and the reasons for such a policy are as strong

on the foreign field. The minister in Asia as well as the minister

in America must have a salary. The labourer is worthy of

his hire.

Fourth:--Insist upon a larger measure of self-support. The

native churches must be led to a fuller responsibility in this

matter. Grave as are the temporary embarrassments which the

increased cost of living is forcing upon them and trying as is

the permanent distress of some of them, yet as a whole the

economic revolution will undoubtedly enlarge the earning

capacity of the native Christians. Indeed, the new principles

of life which the gospel brings should make them among the

first to profit by the changed conditions, and as their wealth

increases, their spirit of giving should, and under the wise lead-

ership of the missionaries undoubtedly will, increase. For

these reasons, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took

the following action July 2, 1900:--

``As having reference to the question of self-support of the native

churches on the mission field, and in view of the fact that some of its missions

are proposing to increase the salaries of native preachers and helpers

on account of the increased cost of living, the Board is constrained to look

with no little apprehension upon the prospect of continuing and increasing

demands of foreign aid in proportion to the contributions made by the

churches themselves. Increased intercourse of eastern nations with those

of the west has led and will still further lead to a gradual assimilation to

western ways and western prices, and unless the self-reliant spirit of the

churches can be stimulated to a proportionate advance, there is a sure

prospect that the drafts upon mission funds will be larger and larger in

proportion to the amount of work accomplished. In view of these considerations,

it was resolved that the missions in which such increase is

proposed be earnestly requested to arouse the churches to the purpose and

the endeavour to meet this increased expenditure instead of laying still

larger burdens upon the resources of foreign funds. The Board deems

this necessary not merely to the interest of its expanding work but to the

self-reliant character, the future stability and self-propagating power of

the churches themselves.''

There appears to be no alternative. And yet this policy,

while adhered to, should be enforced with reasonable discretion

and due regard to ``this present distress.'' How can Christians,

who can barely live themselves and pay a half or two-

thirds of their pastor's present support, suddenly meet this call

for enlarged salaries? For reasons already given, it is harder

for them to make ends meet now than it was in the old days

of primitive simplicity, while in many places a profession of

Christianity is followed by the loss of property and employment

so that the Christian is impoverished by the loss of the income

that he already had. In these circumstances, both boards and

missions must simply do the best they can, and neither allow

the emergency to sweep them into a mistaken charity that

would be fatal to the ultimate interests of the cause nor allow a

valuable native worker to suffer for the necessaries of life.

``We need to bear in mind that the low salaries of China are not the

product of Christianity, but of heathenism, and the ability to live on five

or six Mexicans per month is not the result of a laudable economy unknown

to Christian countries, so much as it is the result of a degradation

of manhood to the level of beasts. The church is responsible for

the knowledge of a better way of living. We have created the desire for

a clean house, clean clothing, healthful food, and books, on the part of our

educated young men. Shall we implant this desire for six or eight years

and take the rest of the man's life in trying to squelch it? We have come

as apostles of truth to a mighty empire, to the great and the small, to the

rich and the poor, and if we had a native ministry which could appeal to

a different class of men than most of them are now appealing to, would

not the day of self-support be hastened beyond what we dare to hope? Is

there not a feeling out for something better on the part of the well-to-do,

the more intelligent, just as really as there is on the part of the lowest

classes? Do not we have a mission to the man who can pay $100.00

a year to the church just as really as to the one who pays 100 cash?

There is nothing so costly as cheap men. Let us have a higher grade of

men and we shall have a higher grade of church-membership. Is it not

true that nothing more stands in the way of self-support than some of our

native clergy? We must not turn down better men because they must

have a little more to live upon than poor men.''[87]

[87] Mr. F. S. Brockman, Address--``How to Retain to the Church the

Services of English-Speaking Christians,'' Shanghai, 1904.

It is idle, however, to urge as a reason for increasing the salaries

of Chinese ministers that a qualified Asiatic can earn more

in commercial life than in the ministry. Such arguments often

come to mission boards. But religious work cannot compete

with business in financial inducements either at home or

abroad. It is notorious that in America, ministers and church

workers generally do not receive the compensation which they

could command in secular employments or professions. The

qualities that bring success in the ministry are, as a rule, far

more liberally remunerated in secular life. The preacher who

can command $6,000 or $8,000 in the pulpit could probably

command three or four times that amount in the law or in

business. Men who are as eminent in other professions and in

the commercial world as the most eminent clergymen are in the

ministry usually have incomes ranging from $20,000 to $100,000

a year and have no ``dead line'' of age either. As for

others, the Rev. Dr. B. L. Agnew, Secretary of the Presbyterian

Board of Ministerial Relief, is authority for the statement

that the average salary of Presbyterian ministers is $700 and

that for all denominations it does not equal the wages of the average

mechanic. A missionary writes:--``Practically all our native

pastors are underpaid.'' The same thing might be said of all

the home missionaries and of most of the pastors of non-missionary

churches at home, one-third of whom receive only

$500 or less.

The churches of America cannot, or at any rate will not, do

for the native ministers of Asia what they are not doing for

their own ministers. The world over, the rewards of Christ's

service are not financial. Those who seek that service must be

content with modest support, sometimes even with poverty.

This is not a reason for the home churches to be content with

their present scale of missionary giving, nor does it mean that

mission boards are disposed to refuse requests for appropriations.

The boards are straining every nerve to secure a more

generous support and they will gladly send all they can to the

missions on the field. But it is a reason for impressing more

strongly upon the young men in the churches of Asia that they

should consecrate themselves to the Master's service from a

higher motive than financial support and that while the boards

will continue to give all the assistance that is in their power,

yet that the permanent dependence of the ministers of China

must be in increasing measure upon the Christians of China and

not upon the Christians of America. Hundreds of native pastors

are already realizing this and are manifesting a self-sacrificing

courage and devotion that are beyond all praise. Said Mr.

Fitch of Ningpo to a Chinese youth of fine education and exceptional

ability:--``Suppose a business man should offer you

$100.00 a month and at the same time you had the way opened

to you to study for the ministry, and after entering it, to get

from $20.00 to $30.00 a month, which would you take?''

And the youth answered--``I would enter the ministry.''

``He is now teaching a mission school at $12.00 a month,

though he could easily command $30.00 a month in a business

position.'' The hope of the churches of China is in such men.

Mr. F. S. Brockman declares:--

``There is a wide-spread conviction among missionaries that the allurements

of wealth alone are keeping English-speaking young men from the

ministry. The facts do not bear out this belief. . . . In order to hold

them in the ministry we need not appeal to their love of money. It is

death to the ministry when we do it; we have opened the vial of their

fiercest passion; we are doing what Jesus Christ never did; we are working

absolutely contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom of God.

. . . We must teach prospective ministers to look upon their lives as

an unselfish expenditure of God-given power. For once make the allurement

of the ministry the allurement of comfort, ease, or wealth, and we

have closed up every fountain of the minister's power.''

XXIV

COMITY AND COOPERATION

THE Hon. Charles Denby, then United States Minister

at Peking, wrote in 1900:--

``With all due deference to the great missionary societie,

who have these matters in charge, my judgment is that missionary work

in China has been overdone. Take Peking as an example. There are located

at Peking the following Protestant missions: American Boards

American Presbyterian, American Methodist, Christian and Missionary

Alliance, International Y. M. C. A., London Missionary Society, Society

for the Propagation of the Gospel, International Institute, Mission for

Chinese Blind, Scotch Bible Society, and the Society for the Diffusion of

Christian Knowledge. To these must be added the Church of England

Mission, the English Baptist Mission and the Swedish Mission. The

above list shows that of American societies alone there are seven in Peking,

not counting the Peking University, and that all western Powers

taken collectively were represented by about twenty missions. A careful

study of the situation would seem to suggest that no two American societies

should occupy the same district.''[88]

[88] Missionary Review of the World, October, 1900.

It may be well to examine this criticism, partly because it

was made by an able man of known sympathy with mission

work, and partly because it relates to the city where, if anywhere,

in China, overcrowding exists. In considering Peking,

therefore, we are really considering the broad question of the

practicability of withdrawing some missionary agencies in the

interest of comity and efficiency. The Presbyterian missionaries

themselves opened the way for the discussion of the

question by proposing to the Congregational missionaries, after

the Boxer uprising had been quelled, ``an exchange of all work

and fields of our Presbyterian Church in the province of

Chih-li in return for the work and fields of the American

Board in the province of Shantung, subject to the approval of

our respective Boards.'' The Mission added:--

``It means no little sacrifice to sever attachments made in long years of

service in fields and among a people whom God has enabled us to lead to

Christ, but we feel that a high spirit of loyalty to Christ and His cause,

inspiring all concerned, will lead us to set aside personal preferences and

attachments, if thereby the greater interests of His Church in China can be

conserved.''

The whole question was thoroughly discussed during my

visit in Peking. Much time was spent traversing the entire

ground. Then a meeting was called of the leading missionaries

of all the Protestant agencies represented in Peking.

The result of all these conferences was the unanimous and

emphatic judgment of the missionaries of all the boards concerned

that there is not ``a congestion of missionary societies

in Peking,'' and that no one board could be spared without

serious injury to the cause. In reply to the proposal of the

Presbyterian missionaries, the North China Mission of the

American Board wrote--

``After considering the matter in all its bearings we are constrained to

say that we contemplate with regret any plan which looks to the withdrawal

of the Presbyterian Mission from the field which they have so long

occupied in northern Chih-li. We think that instead of illustrating comity

this would appear as if comity was not to be attained without a violent

dislocation from long-established foundations, and that in this particular

there would be a definite loss all around. . . . We further deprecate the

proposed step because there is now an excellent opportunity for the adoption

or actual measures of cooperation between our respective missions. . . .

We are ready to readjust boundaries in such a way as to remedy the waste

of effort in the crossing of one another's territory. . . . We are confident

that the ultimate outcome could not fail to be a greater benefit than the sudden

rupture of long-existing relations for the sake of mere geographical

contiguity of the work of missions like yours and ours, each keeping its own

district, careful not to encroach upon the other. In the higher unity here

suggested we should expect to realize larger results in the promotion of

comity not only, but also in the best interests of that kingdom of God for

which we are each labouring.

``ARTHUR H. SMITH,

``D. Z. SHEFFIELD,

``Committee.''

Moreover, several of the agencies enumerated by Colonel

Denby, such as the Y. M. C. A., the International Institute,

the Mission to the Blind, the various Bible Societies, and the

Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge, are not

competing missionary agencies at all, but are doing a special

work along such separate lines that it is unfair to take them

into consideration. As a matter of fact, with the exception of

a comparatively small work by the Society for the Propagation

of the Gospel, the real missionary work in Peking is being done

by only four Boards,--The American, Methodist, London, and

Presbyterian. This is not a disproportionate number, considering

the fact that Peking is one of the great cities of the world

and the capital of the Empire. It is of the utmost importance

that a strong Christian influence should be exerted in such a

centre. Indeed, if there is any place in all China where this influence

ought to be intensified, it is Peking. It is granted that

Christian work is more difficult in a great city, that it is harder

to convert a man there than in a country village. But, on the

other hand, he is more influential when he is converted.

Peking is the heart of China. Alone of all its cities, it is

visited sooner or later by every ambitious scholar and prominent

official. The examinations for the higher degrees bring

to it myriads of the brightest young men of the country. The

moral effect of a strong Christian Church in Peking will be felt

in every province. If Christianity is to be a positive regenerative

force in China it cannot afford to weaken its hold in the

very citadel of China's power.

It should be borne in mind that the work of the missionaries

stationed at Peking is not confined to the city, but that Peking

is a base from which they work out on the east and south till

they reach the boundaries of the Tien-tsin and Paoting-fu

station fields, while on the north and west a vast and populous

region for an indefinite distance is wholly dependent upon them

for Christian teaching. Extensive and densely inhabited areas

of the province are not being worked by any board. The Rev.

Dr. John Wherry, who has lived there for a generation, says

that there are a hundred times as many people in the Peking

region as are now being reached, and that there are 20,000,000

in the province who have never yet heard of Christ. For this

enormous field the missionary agencies now at work are really

few. Hundreds of American cities of half a million inhabitants

have a greater number of ordained workers than this entire

province of Chih-li with a population nearly half as large as that

of the United States. Indeed there is room for a great extension

of the work without overcrowding.

Each denomination occupies a large and distinct geographical

field in this province. For example, all that portion of the city

and suburbs of Peking north of the line of the Forbidden City,

with a population of about 200,000, is considered Presbyterian

territory. No other missionaries are located in

that part of Peking. In the country, the counties of San-ho,

Huai-jou, Pao-ti, to the north and east of Peking, are also

understood to be distinctively Presbyterian ground. San-ho

County alone is said to have 1,200 towns and villages, while

the other counties are also very populous. No other Protestant

denomination is working in any of these counties. At Paoting-fu,

the Congregationalists and Presbyterians have made a

division of the field, the former taking everything south of a

line drawn through the centre of the city and the latter everything

north of that line. Each denomination thus has wholly

to itself half the city of Paoting-fu and about a dozen outlying

counties.

The missionaries of the three other boards concerned plainly

stated that, in the event of the withdrawal of the Presbyterians,

they would not be able to care for the work that would be left.

They declared that they were not able adequately to sustain

the work they already had and that there was not the slightest

reason to hope that their home boards would find it possible to

give them the reinforcements in men and money which would

be required if their present responsibilities were to be increased.

The large district now occupied by any given board would simply

be vacated if its missionaries were transferred to other regions.

The ties formed with the Chinese Christians and people

in more than a generation of continuous missionary work

would be broken and the influence acquired by faithful missionaries

in long years of toil would be lost.

In these circumstances, would it be right for any one of

these four boards to withdraw? There will, indeed, come a

time when it will be the duty of the missionary to leave the

Chinese church to itself. But is this the time to go, when the

native church, instead of being strong and able to care for

itself, is torn and bleeding after frightful persecution? These

Christians look to the missionaries, who have hitherto led them,

as spiritual fathers who will guide them in the future. They

feel that the time has come for a new consecration to the task

of evangelizing all their people. As directed by the missionaries,

they may become a great influence for the conversion

of their countrymen. Should they be left when other missionaries

expressly state that they cannot care for them?

The question of closer cooperation, however, is worthy of

careful consideration. At a conference of representatives of

foreign mission boards of the United States and Canada having

work in China, held in New York, September 21, 1900,

the following resolution was unanimously adopted:

``It is the judgment of this conference that the resumption of mission

work in those parts of China where it has been interrupted would afford a

favourable opportunity for putting into practice some of the principles of

mission comity which have been approved by a general concensus of

opinion among missionaries and boards, especially in regard to the over

lapping of fields and such work as printing and publishing, higher

education and hospital work, and the conference would commend the subject

to the favourable consideration and action of the various boards and their

missionaries.''

Christian America, which ought to set the example of

comity, is distractingly divided. Should it not learn something

from its experience at home and, as far as possible, organize

its work abroad in such a way as to avoid perpetuating

unnecessary divisions? Should it not at least carefully consider

whether a limited force cannot be used to better advantage

for China and for Christ? I admire the ingenuity of those

at home who can find good reasons for having half a dozen

denominations in a town of a few thousand inhabitants. But on

the foreign field, we should adopt a different policy. In the

large cities--the Londons, and Berlins, and New Yorks, and

Chicagos, of Asia, it is conceded that more than one Board

may properly work. But with such exceptions, it should be

the rule not to enter fields where other evangelical bodies are

already established. Indeed it is already the rule. The

Shanghai Conference of 1900 voted that missionary agencies

should not be multiplied in small places, though that cities of

prefectural rank should not be considered the exclusive territory

of any one board. The American Presbyterian Board declared

in 1900, and its action was specifically approved by the

General Assembly of that year:--``The time has come for a

larger union and cooperation in mission work, and where

church union cannot be attained, the Board and the missions

will seek such divisions of territory as will leave as large districts

as possible to the exclusive care and development of separate

agencies.''

In several places, boards and missions are moving actively in

this direction. In 1902, the American and Presbyterian Boards

entered into a union in educational work in the province of

Chih-li by which the Presbyterians conduct a union boarding-

school for girls in Paoting-fu and for boys in Peking, while the

Congregationalists educate the boys of both denominations in

Paoting-fu and the girls in Peking. A medical college in

Peking was agreed upon in 1903, to be supported and taught

jointly by the London, American and Presbyterian missions.

In the province of Shantung, a notable union in both educational

and medical work was effected in 1903 between English

Baptists and American Presbyterians. Instead of developing

duplicate institutions with all the large expenditure of men and

money that would be involved, the boards and missions concerned

are uniting in the development of the Shantung Protestant

University with the Arts College on the Presbyterian

compound at Wei-hsien and the Theological and Normal

School on the Baptist compound at Ching-chou-fu. The

medical class will be taught alternately at the Baptist and

Presbyterian stations until funds warrant the erection of suitable

buildings, probably at Chinan-fu, the capital of the province. In

Shanghai, the Northern and Southern Methodists established a

union publishing house in 1902, and in several other parts of

China, plans for union of various kinds are being discussed.

All these enterprises met with opposition at first. There was,

indeed, little objection to union in medical education, for few

questions of a denominational character are involved in the

training of medical students. But it was urged by some that

it would not be expedient to press consolidation in educational

work, as the chief object of such work was held to be the

training of a native ministry and each mission could best educate

its own helpers and should do so in the interest of self-

preservation. The example of the Meiji Gakuin in Tokio, Japan,

which is supported by the Presbyterian and Reformed Boards,

was not deemed determinative as in Japan but one native

church is involved, so that the cases are not parallel. Moreover,

it was thought that in a large school there would not be as

good an opportunity for that close personal contact between

missionary and pupil which is so desirable.

These difficulties, however, are believed by many of the mis-

sionaries to be more theoretical than practical, or, at any rate,

not sufficiently formidable to prevent a more effective cooperation.

No plan will be free from all objections and a good effort

should not be abandoned because they are found to confront

it. The defects in union are less grave than those that experience

has shown to be inherent in the old method of numerous

weak and struggling institutions whose support requires a

ruinous proportion of the mission force and the mission funds

that might otherwise be available, in part at least, for the enlargement

of the evangelistic work. ``It certainly seems unnecessary

that two missions should maintain distinct high

schools looking towards a college grade side by side, when the

whole number of pupils in both could be instructed more

economically and perhaps more efficiently in one institution.''

Nor is this all, for, wherever practicable, union of allied

churches is being sought. I know we are told that Christ's

words do not call for this. But when I hear the laboured arguments

which defend the splitting of American Presbyterianism

into more than a dozen sects, I sympathize with the child who,

after a sermon in which the minister had eloquently urged that

the unity for which the Lord prayed was consistent with

separation, said: ``Mamma, if Christ didn't mean what He

said, why didn't He say what He meant?''

Premature and impracticable efforts should indeed be

avoided. The deeply rooted differences of centuries are not to

be eradicated in a day. We must feel our way along with

caution and wisdom. To attempt too much at first would be

to accomplish nothing. Work abroad is necessarily a projection

of the work at home and it will be more or less hampered by

our American divisions. A prominent clergyman told me that

he doubted the wisdom of a union of the Asiatic churches as he

feared that such a union would weaken the sense of responsibility

of the home churches. He thought that a denomination

in America would take a deeper interest in a comparatively

small native church wholly dependent upon it than it would in

an indeterminate part of a larger church. Must the unity of

the foreign church be sacrificed to the divisions of the home

church? Perhaps there is some ground for anticipating such

objections from home. But if they are found to exist, we

should not cease seeking union in Asia, but begin preaching

juster views in America.

I must not be understood as depreciating the historic differences

of Christendom. I am aware that each of the

great religious bodies stands for some cardinal principle that

is not emphasized to the same degree by others. The freedom

of any given number of believers to witness to a specific

truth should not be and need not be limited by union.

The contention here is that the differences of the West

should not be forced upon the East but that the churches of

Asia should be given a fair chance to develop a unity large

enough to comprehend these various forms. If they must be

divided, let them separate later along their own lines of

cleavage, not on lines extended from western nations. In one

place, I met a swarthy Asiatic who knew just enough English

to be able to tell me that he was a Scotch Presbyterian. Are

we then to have a Scotch Presbyterian Church in Asia, and a

Canadian Presbyterian Church, and an Australian Presbyterian

Church? Is the American Civil War forever to divide

communities of Chinese believers into American Northern

Presbyterians and American Southern Presbyterians? Why

should we force our unhappy quarrel of a generation ago

upon them? The American Presbyterian Board has truly

declared that ``the object of the foreign missionary enterprise

is not to perpetuate on the mission field the denominational

distinctions of Christendom but to build up on Scriptural lines

and according to Scriptural principles and methods the

Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ.'' It has advised all its

missions that ``we encourage as far as practicable the formation

of union churches in which the results of the mission

work of all allied evangelical churches should be gathered, and

that they (the missions) observe everywhere the most generous

principles of missionary comity.'' The specific approval of

this declaration, by the General Assembly of 1900, makes this

the authoritative policy of the Presbyterian Church in the

United States of America.

In harmony with this general position, several significant

efforts towards union are being made. The first movements,

naturally, are towards a union of communions that are substantially

alike in polity and doctrine. Already all the Presbyterian

and Reformed Boards operating in Japan, Korea,

Mexico and India have joined in the support of a united native

church in those lands, and similar movements are in progress

in other lands and in several churches, notably the Protestant

Episcopal and the Methodist Episcopal. In China, the

representatives of the eight Presbyterian denominations of

Europe and America have met in loving conference and

planned to unite all the native Christians connected with their

respective missions into one magnificent and commanding

Church.

And now unions of wholly different denominations are being

discussed. The American Board missionaries intimated to the

Presbyterian Mission in 1901 that there might be ``no inherent

difficulty in uniting the membership of the Presbyterian and

Congregational churches in Chih-li in one common body.'' A

similar question is being informally discussed by the American

Presbyterian missionaries and those of the English Baptist

Mission in Shantung. The fellowship between the two bodies

there, as between Presbyterians and Congregationalists in

Chih-li, is close.

The local difficulties do not appear to be serious. An

English Baptist missionary frankly stated in an open conference

of missionaries of various boards in Chefoo, that his mission,

with the full knowledge of the home society, took the position

that the Chinese Christians are not yet fit for congregational

government, being, as a rule, comparatively ignorant farmers

just out of heathenism; that it had been found necessary to

select the best men in a local church and give them powers

which, for all practical purposes, constituted them a session,

and that the native church as a whole was being more and

more directed by a body consisting of representatives from such

sessions. An American Board missionary told me substantially

the same thing regarding the churches of his mission. We

should not infer too much from such admissions. Both Baptists

and Congregationalists are loyally attached to their independent

policy. Both referred, of course, to the temporary

adaptions necessary in the present stage of mission work.

As for Presbyterians, their Board's Committee on Policy and

Methods declared, March 6, 1899:--

``It is inexpedient to give formal organization to churches and Presbyteries

after American models unless there is manifest need therefor, and

such forms are shown to be best adapted to the people and circumstances.

In general, the ends of the work will be best attained by simple and

flexible organizations adapted to the characteristic and real needs of the

people and designed to develop and utilize spiritual power rather than

merely or primarily to secure proper ecclesiastical procedure.''

As a matter of fact, neither the representative nor the independent

forms of church government are yet in unmodified

operation on any mission fields, except perhaps in Japan, for

the simple reason that the typical foreign missionary has thus

far necessarily exercised the functions of a superintendent or

bishop of the native churches. Undoubtedly, however, the

Asiatic churches are being educated to expect self-government

as soon as they are competent to exercise it.

Doctrinal differences may present greater difficulties. And

yet there is a remarkable unanimity of teaching among the

missionaries of the various denominations in China. However

widely they may differ among themselves, nearly all agree in

preaching to the Chinese the great central truths of Christianity

so that most of the native Christians know little of the sectarian

distinctions that are so well-understood in America. Such

differences as are necessary in China might be provided for by

recognizing the liberty of the local church and the individual

believer to hold whichever phase of the truth might be preferred.

The China Inland Mission has shown that this plan

is feasible. It is composed of missionaries of all Protestant

denominations, but they work in harmony and build up a

Chinese church by recognizing the right of brethren to differ

in the same organization.

Doubtless isolated cases of embarrassment would occur, but

they would be insignificant in comparison with the embarrassments

inherent in sectarian divisions. Denominational uniformity

is bought at bitter cost when it separates Christians

into rival camps. Unity in essentials and liberty in non-essentials

are far better than a slavery to non-essentials which

destroys that oneness of believers for which our Lord prayed.

In the presence of a vast heathen population, let Christians at

least remember that their points of disagreement are less vital

than their points of agreement, that Christianity should, as far

as possible, present a solid front, and let them devoutly join

the Conference of Protestant missionaries in Japan in the ringing

proclamation:--``That all those who are one with Christ by

faith are one body, and that all who love the Lord Jesus and

His Church in sincerity and truth should pray and labour for

the full realization of such a corporate oneness as the Master

Himself prayed for in the night in which He was betrayed.''

It is true that an advanced position on comity sometimes

operates to the disadvantage of the denomination that espouses

it. But let us be true to our ideals even if some whom we might

have reached do go to heaven by another route. Other

churches are preaching the gospel and those who accept it

at their hands will be saved. We are in Asia to preach

Christ, to preach Him as we understand Him, but if any

one else insists on preaching Him in a given place and

will do so with equal fidelity to His divinity and atone-

ment, let us cooperate with them, or federate with them, or

combine with them, or give up the field to them, as the

circumstances may require. The problem before us is not simply

where we can do good, but where we can do the most good,

how use to the best advantage the limited resources at our

command. Givers at home have a right to demand this.

Many of their gifts involve self-sacrifice, and they should be

used where a real need exists. ``There remains yet very much

land to be possessed.'' I have seen enough of it to burden my

heart as long as I live, toiling, sorrowing, sin-laden multitudes,

who might be better Christians than we are if they had our

chance, but who are scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.

And shall we multiply missionaries in places already

occupied and dispute as to who shall preach in a given fields

when these millions are dying without the gospel?