UC-NRLF *B Eb3 mi THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EA< ADDRESSES ON THE SUBJECT DELIVERED BY THE RIGHT REV. H. H. /MONTGOMERY, D.D., EUGENE STOCK, ESQ. LONDON: IETV FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. 1905, CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. ADDRESSES ON THE SUBJECT DELIVERED BY THE RIGHT REV. H. H./MONTGOMERY, D.D, AND EUGENE STOCK, ESQ. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C. BRIGHTON : 129, north street. New York : E. S. GORHAM, 1905. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. PREFACE. These lectures were given in the Hoare Memorial Hall, at the Church House, on November 29, December 6, and December 13, 1904, to members of the London Diocesan Church Reading Union, The Women's and Girls' Diocesan Association, and the Association for Missionary Study. The Bishop of London presided on December 6, and the Archdeacon of London on the 13th. We trust that in these lectures on the people of two great and independent empires there is nothing that savours of patronage. No one should be so respectful, so courteous to all, of whatever faith or colour, as the English gentleman. The more convinced he is of the truth as revealed in the Bible, the more tender he should be towards the real belief of any one whatsoever, whether barbarous or civilised ; and the more willing he will be to look for graces in others which we by nature lack. May the day come speedily when all races shall have begun to bring to the Body of Christ their special con- tribution. East, West, North, and South, each having its place under the One Lord. H. H. M. CONTENTS. LECTURE. l>Ac E I. THE FAR EAST 5 By Bishop Montgomery. II. CHINA 22 By Eugene Stock. Ill JAPAN 58 By Eugene Stock. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. LECTURE I. THE FAR EAST. By Bishop Montgomery. WE stand almost upon what we call the dividing line of two centuries. No one who looks backwards as well as forwards from such a position can fail to be struck by the manner in which the interest of the world has suddenly shifted from one continent to another. Look backwards, and it is Africa which looms large for the last sixty years. It was practically discovered in those years, then gradually par- titioned among three or four white races, who imagine, more or less unconsciously, that Africa never can stand by itself or be aught but the ap- panage of an European empire. And certainly that mysterious continent does contain one race which has no intention of dying out, and yet remains a race of children, giving scarcely a sign of their /7 STLTmciHi err* 6 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. coming of age. My own belief is, that for a century at least, Africa will sleep, silently imbibing everywhere European influences. After that, our descendants may be met with surprises almost as great as those which meet us to-day in Asia, and they will reap what we have sown. The twentieth century sees the general interest shift from Africa to Asia. The East awakes. For the first time in modern history the nations of the West have discovered that there is to be a limit to their conquests in Asia. Many are vexed, as though it were an unwarrantable impertinence upon the part of any race that is not white to have an independent existence. I have already indi- cated that I believe further surprises are in store for white races, even in connection with those whose colour is of the darkest ; but the time has not yet arrived for that. Meanwhile, it is the West, of course, which has been educating the East. Perhaps we thought that the East was for ever to be pondering, whilst we utilized them for our purposes. But at length she has lifted up her head, having learnt much from us — without question she has utilized the West. But it is not only science and trade and modern civilization which has effected, and is still to effect, such striking results in the Far East. I believe that the wave of spiritual progress, which has ever moved westward, is about to reach the shores of Japan in our own time. If Mesopotamia is the cradle (so far as we know anything about THE FAR EAST. 7 it) of civilized man, you can trace from Abraham's day the whole course of that wave up to the present moment. The growth of historic mono- theism was the fruit of Abraham's journey west- ward. The knowledge of the fulness of God's nature, of the Trinity in Unity, was the next step marked by the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem westward. Then Greece, Rome, Western Europe, America — all were touched by that force. In America the wave was stayed for a while, till Africa felt it southward. Now, once more, I verily believe we are to witness the next step in this westward movement, and one as momentous as any of which we have had any experience as yet. It will touch Japan first, then China : after that I can see no further. And this is why Christian men look with such intensity towards the Far East to-day. We are dealing with a sensitive nation, and have no desire to patronize it. Rather, we turn to God and ask Him, " Is it indeed to be so, O Lord ? Is it that Thou art about to teach us that Thou art not dead ? Just when some in these lands had begun again to laugh at the idea that the Gospel still had power as of old, wert Thou preparing for Thy resistless march in the same direction as of old, the sun in the heavens guiding Thine host on earth in Thy march." At all events, the statement of such a possibility arrests the attention of every believer, and the first effect is one of humbling upon our own part. Are we worthy, are we deep enough, believing 8 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. enough, to aid in God's great works on earth ? Just when all the world and its races have been discovered, and we begin to range the enormous masses of humanity on different sides by colour lines, as though they must ever have antagonistic interests, are we also to be shown the Divine means whereby all nations are to be at peace if they choose, without peril to each other? At all events, if only a part of what I have indicated is proved to be true during the next twenty years, it will be difficult to say that the last twenty years have been more wonderful than those which are to come. If, slowly, in the Far East, there rises up before us a confederation of Mongolian races, bent upon their own freedom in their own immemorial lands, and with their own legitimate ambitions therein, there ought to be nothing in such a prospect but intense satisfaction for the Christian. Nay, as we think we can watch the approach of that Divine wave to Japan, the wave to which we owe all that is best in us, we look on with a deep sense of awe, trying to think the thoughts of God humbly after Him. And it is no wonder we believe that the centre of intensest interest for the Christian has shifted from Africa to Asia. For if it be so, the wave approaches races who are not children, and who are to hold their own against all the conquering peoples of the earth. It will not surprise any one, then, that we put in the fore- front of missionary effort to-day the great missions of Asia, stating the problem as broadly as possible. THE FAR EAST. 9 And in doing so we ignore no work or problem elsewhere. We know how great these are also ; but events move with startling rapidity in these days, and the thoughts I have expressed are offered to those who must judge for themselves how far they are worthy of consideration. Let us look again at this engrossing problem. There are two continents inhabited by white races which are most in touch geographically with the Far East — America and Australia. Each of these has a special reason for facing the possi- bilities of the next twenty years in the Far East of Asia with the utmost wisdom. The United States of America are rapidly becoming the most gigantic power in the world, with some eighty or ninety millions of inhabitants. It is not fear that can move them in their relations with Japan and China. They, indeed, were the people who opened Japan to the world after 250 years of seclusion. They took the lead in the education of Japan on modern lines. Mr. Lewis tells us that, in 1866, the first group of Japanese students went to America ; 500 in the next few years sought train- ing in the Dutch Reformed Church alone in the States. In 1887, there were 686 Japanese students in the States. The States claim even Verbeck, who, in 1869, became the founder of the system of national education on modern lines in Japan, and the first president of the Imperial University of Japan. They claim too J. H. Neesima. His record, as given by Mr. Lewis is worth quotation : IO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. "A scholarly Samurai, educated at Phillips An- dover, Amherst College, and Andover Seminary. In 1871-72, he served the world's embassy as inter- preter, on the condition that he should be per- mitted to teach English and Christianity on his return to Japan. He was brought up a Shintoist, became an atheist, was converted to Christianity, graduated with honours, became a clergyman, and returning to Japan, figured as one of its greatest educators and reformers." This is a great record for the United States, and to them is due in large measure the enormous advance in education, one result being the creation, in 1901, of an independent Women's University in Japan. Australia is in an entirely different position from that of the United States in regard to Japan. She has an enormous continent, very sparsely inhabited, and she fears immigration from Japan and China, more especially as she is in such close proximity to those lands. A circle which has its centre at Thursday Island and its circumference on New Zealand will include the Philippines, Borneo, Singa- pore, and Canton. Let it be at once conceded that Australia's position is one of extreme difficulty, for it is impossible to have a large population of civilized persons in a country who are not per- mitted the vote. Our own recent history in South Africa has proved this up to the hilt. Imagine, then, a couple of million of Japanese in Northern Australia, to put an extreme case. On the other hand, what is the duty of a Christian country ? THE FAR EAST. II Can she permit vast tracts to be unoccupied in the hope that some day in the distant future they may be inhabited by white men ? At the present moment the attitude both of America and Australia look like one of fear. They aim at the exclusion of civilized races of other colours, while they themselves claim the right to trade with and to reside in the very lands against which their own laws of exclusion operate. It is a position which will become intolerable ere long. And the Christian Church finds herself called upon to demand a solution of a state of affairs contrary to the whole trend of modern pro- gress, and therefore a hindrance to her own work and life. It is, indeed, one of the serious factors of the problems of the present time that we are called upon to revise the cherished opinions of centuries, and we are hardly prepared to do it as a race. Colour has been the dividing line — not civilization, not character. Probably the first step to be taken is to recognize frankly the changed position, and to confess that we have been mistaken, and that we are prepared to make true civilization and true character the test of intercourse on equal terms between nations — general intercourse be it re- membered, not intermarriage. This does not do away with the difficulties of America and Australia, chiefly, of course, of the latter. Australia aspires to be a white man's country, and who shall gain- say her ? Certainly not the present speaker. But 12 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. experience teaches us that it is not the opinions we hold which are offensive to others, but the manner in which we hold them. Is it merely a dream that the day is at hand when peoples, acknowledging each other as civilized and possess- ing high character, though differing in colour, will approach one another respectfully, and ask for a conference to discuss a difficult question on an equal footing ? Japan would not approve of a colony of two million Englishmen with full rights in her own land. What, then, shall be the position of Australia, who feels the same objections to an immense foreign population ? The next twenty years may see great advances in the growth of a world brotherhood, of a paternal relationship between races varying in colour but not in real civilization. It will have been the work of the Far East in her awakening in these last days ; and the Christian Church must be awake also, and keen to note the first sign of the coming dawn. We have already arbitration between nations to settle disagreements relating to boundaries, ancient rights, and accidental collisions. The day must soon come when the Christian spirit will demand that trade disputes and tariff questions between nations shall be referred to international tribunals. May I take one step further and plead that the day is soon coming when the relations between races of different colours and their presence in each other's territories might also be referred to THE FAR EAST. 1 3 great tribunals ? We cannot force these questions nor settle them by enactment till the consciences of nations are educated about them. But it is a fair prospect which opens before us of settling questions peacefully and beneficently in fraternal counsel, all races being represented, rather than to speak and think of " perils " and of shores denied altogether to civilized human beings. It is the Far East which to-day challenges us to face these problems, and shall the Church of God, the Church of Him Who calls us His own Body, be slow to take up the challenge ? It will be a great day when the nations of Western Europe who rule races of dark colour — England, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland — will fall into line and submit their errors and ideals among such races to a tribunal representing the noblest statesmanship of the world. America and Australia may be glad, too, to get problems solved which will banish for ever the phantoms which take the form of Japanese, Chinese, and negro peoples. Russia also must be taken into account ; Anglo- Saxon, Celt, Slav, Mongolian — why cannot they meet on common ground since the Far East has awakened us to the danger of meeting only upon selfish and antagonistic lines ? These are some of the [questions, it seems to me, which should be brought into prominence by the dioceses and missions of the Anglican Communion when they set themselves to send answers in preparation for the Pan- Anglican Congress of 1908. They are 14 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. missionary questions, indeed, because they include in their sweep the greatest perplexities of all the statesmen of to-day ; and it is our duty to claim them as the special interest of the Church of God, and surely, above all, of the Church of England, since she is the Church of the nation that rules over the greatest number of races on the earth's surface, and does so ostensibly in the name of Christ. For example, we are asked as Church- men, in all regions, to declare what is the most important thing to do or get done in our own regions, in any other region, and lastly, to try and get done as one body acting as one. It is a far cry to-day to suggest that under the last head we demand a council of the wisest men of every civilized and independent race, acting together, to solve difficulties between races now that we touch each other's boundaries everywhere. Some will smile at the suggestion, for it seems to be outside the bounds of possibility ; at all events, let the suggestion come from the Church of God, which, by its constitution, has a place in it for every race of man, and a welcome for all such races, and is not complete without them. If it is said that these thoughts are scarcely in line with the subject of this lecture, I can only answer that it is the effect of pondering the Far Eastern problems which is responsible for these thoughts. You cannot have new groupings of nations, or watch the rise of unexpected modern empires, without revising a great many ideas, and THE FAR EAST. I 5 suggesting new lines of action. The spectacle before us to-day is that of a race now becoming civilized in a modern sense, calmly criticizing the whole history of Europe and the whole course of Christianity, and weighing it in the scales. We, members of the Church of God, await the issue with anxiety and with hope. With anxiety, because there are so many tares in the Christian fields ; with hope, because God reigns, and will get His work done in His own time in spite of the many follies of His people. One fact may be mentioned here, especially in regard to the future of the Christian Church in Japan, and with thankfulness. God has led us to put men who must be called great to guide the early days of the Christians there who belong to our communion, men who possessed that percep- tion which St. Paul prays we may have, to " distin- guish things that differ." It was a great act, for example, on the part of our own first Japanese bishop to determine at once that the Church in Japan must be national if it was to flourish long. It was a singularly bold step to take, but he took it, and we are thanking God for his act to-day. God has also given us, since his time, a true succession of wise men, gifted with imagination and sympathy and appreciation of the race whom they serve. I do not like to think what might have happened or what might hereafter happen had we not had leaders there with vision. We rejoice to know that in the place above all others, 1 6 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. where the greatest interests are at stake, and the most important movements possible, we can trust the men at the helm, and that these leaders of ours are respected where they work. Nor will any one suppose that in saying this I ignore the work of many Christians not in communion with us. The wise advice and noble attitude of many not in communion with us is one of the striking facts of the history of Christianity in Japan, whether they are Russians, American, or English. Perhaps, too, I may be permitted to emphasize one lesson for the whole world, taught us in the last two years by the Far East. The bishops, the governors of the Church, men who have an influ- ence of necessity in the Church far beyond their own dioceses, should all be the best men we have. If young, then, with the power of growth and of an open mind : never say that so and so is too good a man to be a bishop in such and such a diocese. There is really no such diocese as that which is pictured, nor is it possible to predict where the next great world crisis will arise. Who would have supposed forty years ago that the interest would [move away so completely to the Far East as it has done ? The only system we dare adopt is to look upon every see to be filled as for the time being the most important. It is far too late to wait till the crisis is upon us. Ask yourselves — which are the dioceses you thought stood forty years ago in the first, second, and third classes ? Write them down thus if you can, then arrange THE FA& EAST. 17 them as you fancy they may be placed to-day. Try to do it as they may be put twenty years hence. Even the thoughtless would be arrested, and I think they would add, " It is impossible to be too careful in regard to the appointment of the leaders of the Church. Our children may find that West Africa, or the West Indies, or South Africa once more may then depend upon its welfare in almost every sense, spiritual and political, upon the wisdom and foresight and sympathetic imagi- nation of the master builders of the Church." Let us be prepared at all points, that the flood may not sweep us away, whatever course it may take. Could Patteson have done a greater work for the whole Church than he did in his so-called Cannibal Diocese ? Was G. A. Selwyn thrown away on a new colony in the Antipodes with its 30,000 or 40,000 people in those days ? Let the Far East press home the same lesson upon us to-day. I append here a few of the most striking re- flections made by Mr. Gulick and others upon the Japanese race. Compare the recent history of Japan with thatof India, andhow marked are the contrasts! In India, the enormous changes in civilization are due wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race ; in this sense it is an artificial evolution, and no man can tell what the final effect will be. In Japan it is a natural growth. No man can call it a compulsion. Japan has haidly heard the boom of cannon in all her history, and has never had any but Japanese rulers. And all Japanese reforms B 1 8 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. are due to inherited mental characteristics. She has not jumped out of her skin, but has herself given her skin a new colour. Her people possess that great gift, sensitiveness to environment, so much so that a Japanese changes in Europe, a Chinese does not. It is an interesting question whether a Japanese baby brought up wholly in England would not, as a man, display English characteristics more than if the positions were reversed, and the English child were reared in Japan. No one considers that this race yet possesses a wide appreciation for many- sided art or poetry. At present they are absorbed in the science of the West, soaking themselves in its potent qualities, whether as an acid or as a tonic. There are no epics, no war songs yet. They have great capacity for reverence, and it is remarkable that, at the present time, the two nations that are at war have each surrounded their emperor with almost divine attributes. Whatever their faith may be, it would seem that no dissent is permitted from the belief that the history of the emperor is divine. According to European ideals, it is not a cheerful race except in childhood. Indeed, we hear of no military bands at the front. It is a silent, dutiful race, taught to repress facial expression and to hold that it is not good manners to show feeling. They differ from the Chinese in that China lays stress on filial piety, but Japan upon loyalty. Whatever may be the element of race among the Japanese which differentiates them THE FAR EAST. 1 9 from the Chinese, it almost seems as though it had the effect that Celtic blood has upon the Anglo- Saxon — more alert, more receptive, more prepared for onset, more difficult to control. Probably the quality of reverence is the one which we should pick out as that which gives us most hope. It seems to have in some way etherialized what is simply ancestor worship among the Chinese — a prosaic remembrance of the departed. But this in Shintoism has been transfigured into a vast cloud of spiritual witnesses, ever brooding over the living, a sympathetic force which nerves a race much more electric than the Chinese are to noble exer- tions for their country. Loyalty and patriotism, and a purer view of the unseen are for us wel- come notes in a great race which seems to have adopted one clause, at least, of the Christian Creed, "I believe in the communion of saints." It ought to be possible to give it its due place in the Japanese national faith of the future, when all that comes before it in the Nicene Creed has been accepted. Then, too, will come the respect for life alongside of the absence of fear of death. We hope that the dream of the Emperor of Japan may come true speedily — a glorious aspira- tion indeed in the East — when he says, " It is intended that henceforth education shall be so diffused that there may not be a village with an ignorant family, or a family with an ignorant member." Among such a race the Church of the living God ought to find a welcome. 20 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. Here I would fain end my lecture, for it is hard to speak of China ; and as the days pass, we do not find it more easy to understand her. I am persuaded that her schoolmaster will be the great island empire on her Eastern shores. Nor should we be aught but satisfied that it should be so. They are, after all, bone of her bone, although the flesh and spirit have taken a different character. And if ever there was a race that does not desire aggression, but yearns to be left at peace in its own land, it is the Chinese. They dream no dreams and see no distant visions, nor do they ever desire to discover what is upon the other side of the hill. They dwell at home, endowed with enormous physical vitality, full of patience and perseverance, a most inoffensive race when rightly governed. Ignorant, and therefore prone to suspicion ; they love simple pleasures, such as chatting together, and possess imperturbable tempers at work ; their governing class were, if they are not now, the worst, and not the best. It is surprising that our own race, with its difficulty in moving quickly in thought, should express wonder at the spectacle of an unconverted China after one hundred years only of English Christian Missions. For here is a race amazingly like our own in its soberer qualities, but living much more in the past, looking backward, not forward, not blessed with imagina- tion and by education — at all events, left without exercise of spiritual qualities. Dr. A. H. Smith puts it epigrammat'cally thus : " The Chinese THE FAR EAST. 21 accepts body without soul, soul without spirit, spirit without life, cosmos without a cause, and an universe without a God." Yet is the soul of every race naturally Christian, and the sturdiest Christians in the world to-day are some of the Chinese ; and God reigns in China as elsewhere, and there in the Far East He is at work visibly. There the work proceeds far faster than the general public in England supposes. Must we say also that the last place in the world to help a non-Christian to become a convert is England itself? Parents of Indians, Mohammedans, and Japanese, who send their sons here for law and medicine, have no fears for their conversion. Partly, I suppose, it is due to the reticence of our race, which hates to exhibit signs of faith, for fear of being found to be inconsistent ; and partly, too, because it is almost impossible for a foreigner of a different colour ever to see the deep inner Christian life of English men and women. They can only watch the tares growing in the streets of our cities, and touch the business life of our race with its own standards of morals. We do not invite members of such races here, but if we can send our best to them, the sun of righteousness will rise in His power in the Far East. 22 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. LECTURE II. CHINA. By Eugene Stock. "'T^HIS mysterious race " — the Chinese — "with JL the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians, will divide the earth a hundred years hence." So says an eminent Anglo-Indian, Sir Lepel Griffin ; and an American writer, identifying the "Anglo- Saxons " with his own great Republic, and drop- ping Britain altogether, puts the same anticipation thus : " Three empires fill the vision of the future, China, Russia, and the United States." Whatever we may think of these prophetic forecasts, they at least suggest to us the real greatness of China. Certainly a nation whose solidarity seems to have been uninterrupted while empire after empire in Western Asia and in Europe has risen and flourished, and decayed and fallen, whose authentic history goes back to a period when Athens and Rome were still in the far future, and whose blind minstrels — as another American author says — were, in the days of Homer, singing the exploits of heroes whose tombs then were over a thousand CHINA. 23 years old, is a nation worthy of respect and honour, and which deserves to have a share in those inestimable blessings which have come to us through the knowledge of the true God and His Son Jesus Christ. In the face of such a people and such a history it would be absurd for me in the brief hour of this lecture to dwell upon any subject other than the particular one allotted to me. I shall not attempt to say anything of China materially, commercially, politically, socially, and scarcely anything of China religiously, so far as the non-Christian systems are concerned. I am to tell the story of Christian Missions in China, and to that I shall confine myself. Parenthetically, however, let me correct two or three 'common mistakes about the religions of China. (1) It is usually said that there are three — Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It would be nearer the truth to say that there are in a sense five. For, first, there is the solemn worship of "Heaven/' offered by the Emperor alone, but in behalf of the nation, in the splendid Temple of Heaven at Peking. That is the State religion. Above all her ancient sages, her demi-gods, and her idols, China believes in the supremacy of Heaven — not a personal God, but an abstraction, though a Chinese poet three thousand years ago wrote, " O vast and distant Heaven, who art called our Father." We instinctively think of the use of 24 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. the word by our Lord in His parable — " Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before Thee ;" and we see how, in the Lord's Prayer, too, the Father and Heaven are not identified, but dis- tinguished — " Our Father which art in Heaven." Then there are the three religions usually mentioned — Confucianism, providing the moral code ; Taoism, the communication with the spirit-world ; and Buddhism (as seen in China), the ritual of idolatry. And behind all these is ancestral worship, which, more than anything else, is the real religion of China. (2) The statistics of comparative religion often give Buddhism a larger number of votaries than any other faith in the world. But this assumes that all Chinamen are Buddhists. On the contrary, they are a sect in China much despised by the educated classes, who are all Confucianists. Pro- fessor Sir M. Monier- Williams, with greater reason, put Buddhism fifth of the world-religions, after Christianity, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Moham- medanism. (3) On the other hand, Professor Douglas doubts whether there are any pure Confucianists or Buddhists or Taoists in China. A man may be one or the other in the main, and yet have more or less association with the two other systems — may, in fact, be all three at once. I have sometimes thought that this might be illustrated in Christian England. Take the typical John Bull. First he has a code of morals — more or le5s Christian — CHINA. 25 which he conscientiously observes. That is his Confucianism. Secondly, he goes to church more or less regularly — certainly he will be married in church, and be buried with church rites. That is his Buddhism. Thirdly, he has his superstitions : he believes in that great god, Luck ; he is — or was until quite lately — afraid of a dinner-party of thirteen. That is his Taoism. So the Chinese mandarin or scholar, revering the memory of Confucius, proud of his ethical system, and despising Buddhist ritual and Taoist magic, sends for the yellow-robed Buddhist priest to chant prayers over his father's grave, and for the grey- robed Taoist priest to exorcise the demon that has struck his child with sickness. One is not surprised, therefore, to find colossal images of Confucius, Laotse, and Buddha, side by side in 'some of the temples. But this equality is re- sented by the more zealous followers of the great sage ; and the excellent Governor-General of the Lower Yangtse, Chang Chih-tung, the author of " China's Only Hope," proposes the confiscation of the Buddhist and Taoist temples, and the renaissance of Confucianism as a moral basis upon which to raise the superstructure of Western civilization. We see, therefore, that the religions of China are a complicated subject. They undoubtedly deserve study ; and yet I think that sometimes too much is made of the importance of a thorough know- ledge of non- Christian systems, Suppose that a 26 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. Buddhist or a Moslem believed he had a Divine message, fraught with blessing, to communicate to nations sunk in the darkness of Christianity, and came to England for that purpose. The really important thing, surely, would be that he should know his own message, and know it to be true. His knowledge of Christianity, however useful, would surely be a secondary thing. Is not this hint needed, if not by missionaries, yet by critics who go about to instruct them ? But let us concentrate our attention on our immediate subject. When and how did the Christian message first reach China ? So far as we have any record, not until some five hundred years after Christ. Then appeared the Nestorians, the evangelists of Asia ; and of their work in China one decisive evidence remains, in the famous tablet at Si-Ngan-Fu, com- memorating the spread of what it calls "the illustrious religion " in every direction, with its Christian temples in a hundred cities. From the date of that tablet, A.D. 781, we pass over another five hundred years, and towards the close of the thirteenth century, when Edward I. reigned in England, we find the enlightened Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, established at his great capital, Cambaluc, the modern Peking ; Marco Polo, the Venetian, visiting far Cathay, and writing his in- comparable book of travels ; and Friar John, of Monte Corvino, the Franciscan, going forth as the pioneer Roman missionary to China. Of his CHINA. 27 labours and those of his brethren an extremely interesting account was given by Bishop Collins, of Gibraltar, in The East and the West of April last (1904), gathered chiefly from the works of Sir Henry Yule. In that article we have, accessible to us all, Friar John's own letters from Cambaluc, describing his presentation of letters from the Lord Pope to the Great Khan, who was too old in idolatry to embrace the Catholic faith ; the per- secutions he had to endure from the Nestorians, who, he says, " deviated sadly from the Christian religion ; " his six thousand baptisms in eleven years ; his purchase of pagan boys to train up for his choir ; his church with its campanile and three bells ; his translation of the New Testament and the Psalter ; and his appeal for comrades who would " givQ a good example, and not make broad their phylacteries." His reports excited enthusiasm at Rome. Pope Clement V. consecrated seven Francisan bishops and sent them forth. Only two of them reached Peking, but they, by the Pope's order, consecrated Friar John Archbishop of Cambaluc. He died about 1330, and seems to have had no successor. Within a few years the mission was extinct, and the last fact known of the Franciscan enterprise is that a bishop and many followers were martyred in 1362. All over Eastern and Central Asia, indeed, the Turks and Tartars destroyed the churches and put the Christians to death with horrible tortures, and Islam and Buddhism divided the land. 28 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. Again we pass over nearly two centuries. Vasco da Gama has found the way to the East round the Cape of Good Hope ; Portugese ships are already sailing backwards and forwards, engaged in active trade ; and Erasmus, in his treatise on the Art of Preaching, appeals to the "heroic and illustrious leaders of the army of Christ " — particularly to the Franciscan and Dominican Orders — to bestir themselves, to send forth missionaries to Asia, to give the Gospels and St. Paul's Epistles, which he himself had just brought out in their original Greek, to " Turks and Saracens." " It is a hard work I call you to," he writes, "but it is the noblest and highest of all." It was the epoch of the Reformation in Europe, and the Roman Church, having lost the nations which were by-and-by to be in the van of pro- gressive civilization, " called " — if we may adapt Canning's famous phrase — "a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old." The question has been asked why it was that the reformed Churches did next to nothing for the evangelization of the non-Christian world, while the unreformed Church burst forth into such active missionary enterprises. The answer seems a simple one. The great navigating and exploring and colonizing nations were Spain and Portugal. Holland had not yet shaken off the yoke of Philip, and in England the days of Drake and Raleigh were yet to come. But it was by no official action as a great Church that Rome now set such an CHINA. 29 example of missionary fervour. It was an in- dividual man that arose, or, 'rather, two men, two of the seven men who, in the very year in which Erasmus published his appeal, and in which the Act of Supremacy separated England from the Papacy, 1534, banded themselves together, in the crypt of St. Denis, on the heights of Mont- martre, to form the Order of the Jesuits — Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier. Archbishop Benson once pointed out a resemblance between the Society of Jesus and the Church Missionary Society, in that both were the outcome of un- official zeal, seeking to combine liberty of action with due loyalty to Church authority. Which of them has done so the more successfully, it is not for me to say. Certainly no Bull from Lambeth has, even temporarily, decreed the suppression of the later organization ! With Xavier's work in India and Japan, and with his character as the one Roman missionary whom all Christendom honours, we are not con- cerned to-day. He tried to enter China, but died in the attempt in 1552. Lying in his rude hut on a little barren island, he gazed across the narrow strait at the long-closed mainland. It was not he, but his comrade Valignani, who uttered the memorable words, " O Rock, Rock, when wilt thou open ? " But it was Xavier who, with his last breath, expressed his undying faith in the closing words of the Te Deum, " O Lord, in Thee have I trusted : let me never be confounded ; " 30 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. and the Lord has not allowed the trustful hope of the Church of God to be confounded, as she has knocked at the gate of China. Just thirty years later, in 1582, the most brilliant of Italian missionaries, Matthew Ricci, succeeded in entering the closed land disguised as a Buddhist priest. His great scientific attainments made him a power in the Celestial Empire. Full accounts of his work, and that of his comrades and successors, are given by the Abbe Hue in his " History of Christianity in China." It seems quite clear, however, that their success owed not a little to their virtual sanction of ancestral worship in the form of masses for the dead, and to the close re- semblance of the externals of their worship to those of Buddhism. For the Popes themselves were shocked by the reports sent to Rome by the Dominicans and Franciscans who followed in the seventeenth century ; and papal censures were again and again launched against the superstitions and idolatrous ceremonies stated by them to have been introduced. Pope Clement XI. sent a legate, Cardinal Tournon, to inquire, but he was excom- municated by the Portugese Bishop at Macao, and thrown into prison, where he died of his suffer- ings. Meanwhile, terrible persecutions repeatedly fell upon the Church, and in the eighteenth century Christianity became a prohibited religion. But although the hereditary Christians descended from the earlier converts were scarcely distinguish- able from the heathen, thousands of them did, in CHINA. 31 fact, retain at least their profession down to modern times. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, an English dissenting minister, Mr. Mosely, discovered in the British Museum a Chinese manuscript which had been brought to England in 1738 by Sir Hans Sloane. It was a version of parts of the New Testament, by an unknown hand, but no doubt by one of the Roman missionaries. Mr. Mosely published a pamphlet describing it, with a sketch of the history of the Roman Missions in China. This pamphlet, in 1801, came under the notice of a small newly-formed association, afterwards called the Church Missionary Society. The committee, desiring to see the Chinese manuscript printed, drew the attention of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to it, " being confident," they said, that " the superior funds of that society, and the rank, talents, and influence of its members" would enable it to carry out this design more successfully than an obscure and struggling organi- zation not yet two years old. The S.P.C.K., how- ever, found itself unable to do anything, but three or four years later, when the Bible Society came into existence, passed on the project to the new organization. It was the interest aroused by that manuscript which led to the London Missionary Society, the principal Nonconformist missionary association, sending Robert Morrison to China in 1807, the first Englishman to carry the Gospel message 32 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. thither. He was a self-educated Northumbrian lad, who, having read the African travels of Mungo Park, wanted to go out to Timbuctoo. Thirty-four years later, David Livingstone, who wanted to go to China, was sent by the same .society to Africa. In both cases we may see the Divine purpose overruling human wishes and plans. It was one thing to be appointed to China, and quite another thing to get there. The English trade was in the hands of the East India Company, and no passage for a missionary could be obtained in their ships. So Morrison crossed the Atlantic to New York, and thence sailed in an American vessel round Cape Horn and across the Pacific, with letters to the American consul at Canton. There he landed on September 7, 1808, eight months after leaving England — a quick voyage considering the route and the period. Again, it was one thing to reach China, and another thing to live and work there as a mission- ary. How Morrison lived in an American house in the foreign settlement at Canton ; how he was unable to walk the streets ; how he presently donned Chinese dress, grew long finger-nails, and cultivated a queue ; how he afterwards abandoned this plan, as useless in the circumstances ; how he hired a single room to live in, and was cheated and ill-treated by his Chinese landlord ; how he tried in vain to tame and teach three wild Chinese lads ; how he laboured and laboured at the language ; how after two years he was engaged by the East CHINA. 33 India Company as their translator ; how, after infinite toil, he produced a Chinese grammar and dictionary, the latter of which cost the company ;£i2,ooo to print and publish in six quarto volumes with 4600 pages ; how he also produced the whole Bible in Chinese, within ten years of his arrival ; how he eventually baptized ten Chinese converts ; how he visited England in 1824 ; and how he went back again, and died in 1834; all this has often been told. So also have the labours of his chief comrades, Milne and Medhurst, the former of whom was the author of the saying that " to acquire Chinese is a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angles, and lives of Methuselah ! " America was not content with having helped Morrison to get to China. In 1829 began the noble succession of American missionaries who have done so much work there of the highest kind. The earliest, among whom was S. Wells Williams, author of one of the best books on China, " The Middle Kingdom/' were sent out by the American Board, an organization founded, like the London Missionary Society, on non-denominational lines, but, like it also, virtually the society of the Con- gregationalists. The American Episcopal Church followed a little later, and in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession, sent W. J. Boone, who afterwards became the first Anglican Bishop in China. C 34 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. But all these were for some years as closely confined to the foreign trading factories at Canton as Morrison had been. The only man who con- trived to do more at that time was Gutzlaff, a Prussian agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society, a doctor, a scholar, and a man of extra- ordinary enterprise. As surgeon or interpreter, he managed to make several voyages in trading vessels up and down the coast ; landing and giving away tracts and portions of Scripture, but harassed by the police, haled before the magistrates, stoned by the mob. Long before that time, in 1813, an Imperial Edict from Peking had ordered that any Europeans printing books or preaching in Chinese were to be imprisoned or exiled, and their " chiefs" executed ; and now another Edict appeared, stating, "The Christian religion is the ruin of morals and of the human heart ; therefore it is prohibited." But the hour of the opening of China was now at hand. In 1840 came the first Opium War. The Chinese Government, alarmed at the increasing importation of opium from British India, seized and destroyed whole cargoes of the drug. British troops captured some of the great cities on the coast, and threatened Peking ; and China only obtained peace by ceding the island of Hong Kong to England altogether, and opening to foreign residence five ports — Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai. The gates into various mission-fields have been unlocked in different ways CHINA. 35 Sometimes, as in New Zealand and in Uganda, the missionary has opened the way for the merchant, the soldier, and the civil officer. In China, the soldier opened the way for the merchant and the missionary. But it is a humbling reflection that the chief motive of the war was to promote the opium trade. When, after that first war, Lord Ashley (afterwards the great Lord Shaftesbury) moved a resolution in the House of Commons condemning the traffic, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, admitted the strength of his case, and promised that the moral influence of the debate should guide further negotiations with China ; and the Times next day held up to scorn the chief argument on the other side as being in essence this — "That morality and religion, and the happiness of mankind were very fine things in their way, but that we could not afford to purchase them at so dear a price as the millions which opium brought to the Indian revenue. ,, The national conscience has become deadened since then, and none deplored this more than Archbishops Benson and Temple. Lord Brassey's Commission in 1892 was supposed to have vindicated the traffic ; but its attention was absorbed by India, where little harm is done, and not a single commissioner went to China at all. But into this subject we cannot enter fully to-day. To return to the now partially opened empire. Several missionary societies prepared at once to go forward. The London Society was again to the front, and among its agents were Dr. Legge, 36 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. afterwards Professor of Chinese at Oxford, and Dr. Lockhart, the first English medical missionary in China. The English Presbyterians sent par- ticularly good and able men, one of whom, W. C. Burns, has never been surpassed for devotion and self-denial. The American missions, Presbyterian, Methodist, and others, were equally active, and their medical work was started by Dr. Peter Parker. All the treaty ports were quickly occu- pied, and at Hong Kong twelve missionaries, representing different organizations, met to arrange for a revision of Morrison's Chinese Bible. The Church of England was scarcely ready. The S.P.G. had not yet arrived at the conclusion that its charter allowed of its going outside the British dominions, and the C.M.S. had but just emerged from the gravest financial crisis in its history. But one clergyman, who had tried to get into China alone during the war, and had been captured and confined in chains for four months, went out as Consular Chaplain at Hong Kong, where he sub- sequently founded St. Paul's College. This was Vincent Stanton, afterwards a munificent benefactor of the C.M.S., and father of the present Divinity Professor of that name at Cambridge. Presently an anonymous friend, who felt himself "less than the least," and therefore, like St. Paul, called himself 'EXa^/aroTfjOoc, started a special China Fund for the C.M.S. with a gift of ^6000; and in 1844 two clergymen — an Oxford man, George Smith, and a Dublin man, Thomas McClatchie — sailed for China. CHINA. 37 In the next five years they were followed by three other Dublin men and three Cambridge men ; the C. M.S. enterprise thus starting as a purely University Mission. On May 29, 1849, a consecration of bishops took place in Canterbury Cathedral for the first time since the Reformation. Two excellent men were admitted to the episcopate, both for new sees, one in the Far West and one in the Far East : the one Rupertsland, now an archbishopric over a province of twelve dioceses ; and the other Victoria, Hong Kong. Of the latter see, George Smith, the pioneer missionary just mentioned, became the first bishop. His diocese was only the little island of Hong Kong, being a British possession under the Treaty. The Church had not yet dared to send a bishop beyond the limits of the empire, save in the one peculiar case of Jerusalem. But Bishop Smith did presently exercise his episcopal ministry on the mainland of China, performing, in the words of the C.M.S. Committee many years before, when appealing in vain for a bishop for New Zealand, " the functions inherent in the Episcopal Office, independently of the prerogatives attached to it by the laws of England." The American Church, with its freer life, and not being afraid of the lawyers, had planted Bishop Boone at Shanghai three years before. Very slow was the progress of the Gospel in those early years, and in the fifties all the work was seriously interrupted bytheTaiping Rebellion, 38 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. a strange movement which at first appeared to be a hopeful one. Its leader, years before, had come under the influence of Morrison and his comrades, and, though never baptized, he formed a " Society of Worshippers of God," who took the Ten Com- mandments as the basis of their religion, and denounced three things: (i) the idols and idol worship, (2) opium, (3) the government of the " imps/' that is, the Manchu dynasty that reigned and still reigns in China. They called the Christian God the Heavenly Father, and Christ the Celestial Elder Brother. A British envoy who steamed up the Yangtse found hundreds of colossal images of Buddha and various gods and goddesses, broken and defaced, floating down the river. " Not to the moles and the bats," exclaimed a speaker at a May meeting, "are the idols of China being cast, but to the gulls and to the fishes." But the iconcoclasts were a mixed multitude. The rebellion became a great civil war, carried on for ten years with every conceivable barbarity ; and peace was only restored when the genius of Gordon crushed the revolt. In the meanwhile, another Opium War with England ensued. Despite the protests of both Disraeli and Gladstone, Lord Palmerston and the French Emperor, Napoleon III., sent a joint expedition to China, which resulted in important concessions to foreign powers. The Treaty of 1858, and the Convention of i860, opened nine other ports to foreign trade, and secured, on paper, "the protection of the Chinese authorities," for %i persons teaching CHINA. 39 or professing" Christianity, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. Great was the opportunity for Christendom. Archdeacon Moule, brother of the present Bishops of Mid-China and Durham, travelling over the Che-Kiang Province, saw, with his own eyes, the temples burnt and thrown down ; not an image to be found in hundreds of miles ; and a general conviction among the people that gods that could not protect themselves could do nothing for their worshippers. And the country at least partially open. Yes, great was the opportunity, and miserably was it availed of. The great civil war in the United States crippled even the vigorous American missions ; while the English societies were in the sixties passing through a period of depression, recognized and deplored both by Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, for the Nonconformists, and by Henry Venn, the veteran chief secretary of the CM.S. It was at this time that the S.P.G. made its first attempt, and the C.M.S., welcoming its sister Society, invited it to occupy the im- portant inland city of Hang-chow. Peking, how- ever, was chosen, but the two men sent only stayed a few months, and nothing more was done for ten years. Peking and Hankow, far inland on the Yangtse, were occupied by other missions. George Moule (now Bishop of Mid-China) settled with his family at Hang-chow — the first definite case of inland residence in a city not included in the Treaties ; and the first-fruits of the coming harvest 40 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. in the Fuh-kien Province, to the south, were reaped by the C.M.S. and the Americans. There, and in other C.M.S. districts, there were now some hundreds of converts, and three Chinese clergymen. But, treaties notwithstanding, opposition and persecution were continually met with. One out- rage led to a hot debate in the House of Lords, in the course of which Bishop Magee of Peterborough spoke there for the first time, and, by his brilliant defence of the missions against the attacks of the Duke of Somerset, established once for all his fame as a great Parliamentary orator. In 1870, several Roman missionaries, including nine sisters and some fifty Roman converts, and also the French consul, were cruelly massacred at Tien- tsin. France, as the official protector of the Roman Church in China, demanded reparation, but when the Chinese envoy arrived in Europe, he found France prostrate at the feet of Germany, and the Emperor Napoleon gone into captivity. A few years later the C.M.S. college at Fuh-chow was destroyed, and the missionaries ejected from the native city, after residing there nearly thirty years ; and when the Chinese authorities offered complete restitution, the British consul persuaded them to give the mercantile community a racecourse instead. Let me add that the Society never mentioned this, and nothing was publicly known of the transaction until Miss Gordon Cumming, in her important and interesting book, %i Wanderings in China/' told the whole story. CHINA. 41 Notwithstanding this and other trials and dif- ficulties, the seventies were a period of advance. After the first Day of Intercession, December, 1872 — a great missionary epoch in my judgment, — a gentleman belonging to St Peter's, Eaton Square, who was already giving the C.M.S., through Mr. Wilkinson (the present Primus of Scotland), £500 a year for India, offered the S.P.G, £S°° a year to support two missionaries in China; and two Cambridge men, Greenwood and Scott, were sent to Chefoo, where, after residing some time with an accomplished American Presbyterian, Dr. Nevius, to learn the language, they set vigorously to work. Anglican missions were still far behind others ; and when the first general con- ference of Protestant missionaries was held at Shanghai, in 1877, out of 126 missionaries present, one was S.P.G., twelve C.H.S., six of the American Episcopal Church, and all the rest of the various nonconforming societies. There were now two English bishops in China, Dr. Burdon of Hong Kong, and Dr. Russell, of what was then called North China, both of them C.M.S. missionaries. By this time it had come to be generally recognized that the Church was not limited to the British Empire, and that her episco- pate might be extended to foreign kingdoms without undermining their independence or de- stroying the foundations of civil society. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, being a great State officer, could not consecrate without the royal 42 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. mandate, and the C.M.S. had great trouble in obtaining the sanction of the Foreign Office to this being granted. On the death of Bishop Russell, a further extension was arranged. The North China jurisdiction was divided into two ; the central provinces, in which the older C.M.S. missions were, being allotted to the new see of Mid-China ; and the northern provinces, in which the S.P.G. had begun, retaining the original title. Mr. George Moule, then a missionary of twenty-three years' standing, was consecrated to Mid-China, and Mr. Scott to North China, on St. Simon and St. Jude's Day, 1880 ; and both these honoured bishops have continued to this day. At the same time the C.M.S. mission at Peking, then of eighteen years' standing, was handed over in a cordial spirit to the S.P.G.,and became the nucleus of the present North China Mission. Let me add that since then the sees of Western China and Shantung have been established, while the American Church has two, at Shanghai and Hankow, making seven Anglican bishops working in China. Some ques- tions of jurisdiction have yet to be settled, but with these we are not now concerned. I must now introduce a man who may truly be said to have done more than any one else for the evangelization of China — Hudson Taylor. He was a medical missionary sent out by a small association long since defunct, as far back as 1853. Twelve years later, while in England, he was suddenly overwhelmed, on a certain Sunday CHINA. 43 at Brighton, with a sense of the wrong done by the thousands that day attending church and chapel in neglecting the millions of China. There were at that time eleven great provinces of the eighteen in China without a single missionary ; and Taylor there and then prayed for twenty-two men for those eleven provinces, going two and two. This was the origin of the China Inland Mission, which was organized in the following year, 1866, when Taylor sailed with fifteen comrades. That little mission, initiated by a single man, and backed by no Church or denomination, stands to-day second of all societies (other than Roman) in the number of its agents. The scheme of sending two men to each of eleven provinces, some of them remote, was strongly condemned by the older missions, especially as the men themselves were not regarded as qualified for such a work. The C.M.S. editor of that period, a very able man, father of the present Bishop of Kensington and Prebendary Ridgeway, wrote, " The conception is grand ; the execution impracticable, and if attempted, dis- astrous." Like the Balaklava Charge, it might be "magnificent," but it was "not war." That mis- takes were made in the early days of the enterprise is frankly acknowledged by Taylor himself and the present leaders. In ten years, only two of the eleven provinces were entered. But after the Chefoo Convention of 1876, and the Imperial proclamation definitely informing the people that foreigners might travel anywhere, extensive 44 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. itinerations were begun, and in the next two years Taylor's men travelled 30,000 miles, and visited every one of the remaining provinces. Again the other missions criticized. What object would be gained by such aimless wanderings ? Where was the " precept upon precept," the "line upon line " ? How much better the regular station, with its proper staff and its systematic work ! The reply was that the people must be accustomed to the foreign barbarian gradually ; that a passing visitor was welcomed where a settler would have been expelled ; that pioneer journeys are a branch of real missionary work, otherwise what claim had Livingstone to be called a missionary ? The event, certainly, has proved the justice of the reply. All those provinces are now occupied by other missions, most of them by several missions ; but it was the China inland men that led the way. In 1884, a remarkable event occurred in con- nection with this mission. It was suddenly an- nounced that two distinguished Cambridge " blues," the captain of the Eleven and the stroke-oar of the Boat, Mr. C. T. Studd and Mr. Stanley Smith, were going to China as missionaries. And not alone ; it was to be a party of seven, six Cambridge men and an officer in the Army. One was a curate in South London ; the rest were laymen (but one has been ordained since). One, at least, was a^wealthy man, and most of the others well- to-do. The majority were members of the Church of England ; not one was a regular Nonconformist, CHINA. 45 but one or two might be called unattached Christians, the fruits of Mr. Moody's mission. I do not myself doubt that the going forth of this band has done more than any other event of the century to arouse public interest in missions and to inspire offers of service. The meetings held by the men before they sailed were quite different from the ordinary missionary meeting. Their addresses were personal appeals for entire dedica- tion to the service of Christ, anywhere, at home or abroad. There were no dialectics, no statistics, no votes of thanks, and no collections. A new spirit was evoked, which has gradually spread to the meet- ings of other missions and societies, to their great advantages in my judgment. Certainly from that time the number of true-hearted missionaries sail- ing from British shores has immensely increased. I do not think the Student Volunteer Movement, which began in England seven years later, could possibly have sent forth so many zealous men if there had not been the preparatory influence of the going forth of the Cambridge Seven. I hold, therefore, that the China Inland Mission has done very great service in England, inde- pendently of its pioneer journeys in China. As regards its direct missionary work, it is right to say that it has gradually adopted most of the methods of the regular and settled societies. One might criticize some of its proceedings and some of its workers ; they have been and are criticized. But there is no mission, Anglican or Nonconformist, 46 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. Protestant or Roman, which has not had its share of criticism, and which has not deserved it — for none of us are perfect. But upon the whole, no impartial judge can fail to admire the spirit of Mr. Hudson Taylor's Mission, or to thank God for his personal influence. He has now retired from the leadership, and his successor in China is the military officer who was one of the Cambridge Seven. The mission, of course, has been a non- denominational one, comprising members of most of the Christian communions in England, as well as German and Scandinavian Lutherans. The weakness of this system is not felt in the earliest stages of a mission. If a Cowley Father and a Plymouth Brother were addressing a crowd of pagans, there would not be much difference in their primary messages. But when they gathered converts, differences would at once appear. The China Inland Mission had the good sense to per- ceive this, and when converts began to come in, different districts were allotted to different sections. In particular, the Church of England members were given one half of a great western province, and the clerical member of the Cambridge band was put in charge of the mission there, with entire freedom to work on definite Church lines. Although nominally in the Mid-China jurisdiction, this Church mission was too remote for Bishop Moule's personal visitation ; and Archbishop Benson, who took a generous and sympathetic in- terest in the enterprise, consecrated, in 1895, that CHINA. 47 same clerical leader, Mr. Cassels, Bishop of the new see of Western China. Bishop Cassels is now head of quite a numerous band of missionaries, partly China Inland and partly C.M.S. In recent years all the missions have made great progress. This is more especially seen in the de- velopments of the particular departments of the work ; and of these developments the most remark- able is the multiplication of women missionaries. We have advanced very far from the position of a former Bishop of Calcutta, who declined to welcome three ladies to India, saying that Tryphena and Tryphosa, and the beloved Persis, stayed at home — forgetting Phebe the deaconess, who certainly did not. But although from the beginning some half- dozen schoolmistresses were employed in girls' schools, the idea of women engaging in direct missionary work, and particularly in itinerating, is of comparatively recent adoption. While the Americans were ahead of the English in this, as in other respects, at the chief stations, the China Inland Mission led the way in sending them into the far interior. This, in fact, was one of the grounds of criticism of that mission, and dreadful pictures were drawn, particularly from the armchairs of London journalists, of both the impropriety and the danger of young women travelling in China — the impropriety if with men, even with married couples, and the danger if alone. Precisely the same objections were made to Miss Nightingale and her comrades going out to the Crimea just 48 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. fifty years ago, and thus initiating the immense and blessed work of modern nurses. It is worth noting that the first woman to go far inland in China was a wife with her husband — Mrs. Hudson Taylor herself, — and that her work was the relief of the famine-stricken — a work less objectionable to the critic than the teaching of Christianity ; and that the first unmarried woman to follow was a middle-aged lady of education, who went of her own accord at her own charges. Since then hun- dreds of younger women have gone — not without experiences trying to flesh and blood, borne for Christ's sake — but at least without offending Chinese modesty by wearing the close-fitting dresses common among the wives and daughters of consuls and merchants at the treaty ports. All the missions in China now find the untold value of the services of women, of whom there are nearly a thousand. In the C.M.S. districts alone there are about 140, besides the wives (including those sent by the Zenana Society). The other Anglican missions have not developed their female branches so largely. Another development has been that of Medical Missions, and in no country have they proved more useful. More than 250 qualified medical men and women are engaged in this work, and are carrying on about the same number of hospitals and dis- pensaries. Some of the hospitals have attached to them leper asylums, opium refuges, and other auxiliary institutions for the blind, the deaf, the CHINA, 49 insane, and for those strange victims in China of some mysterious malady which has all the features of demoniacal possession. In nothing is the Celes- tial Empire more lacking in even the elements of civilization than in its medicine and surgery. The treatment of patients by native doctors frequently involves horrible and quite needless torture. The Medical Mission, therefore, is valuable, not only for its- influence in bringing crowds of people under the sound of the Gospel, but for its direct work of mercy among some of the most suffering of mankind. Especially important are the services of qualified women doctors, of whom there are now about one hundred in China ; and still more interesting is the fact that a few Chinese ladies themselves have received full medical training in America, and are now in charge of large women's hospitals. One of these — Miss Hii King Eng, M.D. — is treating 15,000 patients a year. Just two years ago a Women's Medical College, the gift of one American donor, was opened at Canton, the Chinese Viceroy and high officials being present, and a guard of five hundred Chinese soldiers lining the streets in honour of the occasion. Two American lady mis- sionaries of some years' standing are at the head of this college. Higher Education is another department which is now receiving more attention. It has hitherto not been a prominent feature of missions in China, as it has been in India and Japan ; and I for one Jhink this may partly account for the comparative 50 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. dearth of upper-class converts. In India and Japan they have been numerous ; in China very few. The fault scarcely lies with the missions. There has been, until lately, no demand for Western education among the Chinese. Their conservative instincts have made them quite satisfied with their own. But their eyes are opening now ; in some provinces students are being examined, not merely in the writings of Confucius, but in the fiscal question of free trade or protection, and in the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, while they are enjoined also to study the sacred books of Chris- tianity ; and if the missions are able to supply what they have so well supplied in India, great results, by the blessing of God, may follow. Once more, vernacular Christian literature is being vigorously developed. When mandarins ask for a Chinese translation of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica" — the Times supplement included! — and for lack of such a version buy the thirty great volumes of the English edition, it is clear that a revolution is coming. Happily, there is an excellent agency — the Christian Literature Society for China — which is working energetically, not, indeed, to translate the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " ! but to supply humbler yet not less useful books — historical, biographical, educational, scientific, religious ; and last year this society printed and published 90,000 copies of reprints of works previously issued, and 194,000 copies of new publications. Literature is at present the only way in which the ears and the CHINA. 51 minds of the educated official class can be reached. It is good to know that the enlightened provincial viceroys, to whom China in the last few years has owed so much, are warm and liberal supporters of this society. Not less active are the Bible Societies, and very large is the sale of Scriptures, particularly of the Gospels. So much for the past history of missions in China and the methods of their work. I might be expected to deal with the objections and criticisms often urged, whether against missions in general or against China Missions in particular. Were I to do this, I should take as a text the chapter on the subject in Lord Curzon's valuable book — " Problems of the Far East." He there, to use his own words, " states the case pro and con with as much fulness as space permits, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions." An excellent design : how is it carried out ? The pro side occupies one page and six lines ; the con side thirty pages. The "objections and drawbacks" are arranged in three divisions : (1) religious and doctrinal ; (2) political ; (3) practical ; and under each head there is a long string of them. Now, to quote these "objections and drawbacks," and to answer them, would require another lecture as long as this one. As a matter of fact, I did deal with every one of them in a long magazine article at the time, and my answers are condensed into the briefest words in my " Short Handbook of Missions," re- cently published by Longmans. If, therefore, I 52 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. pass the whole subject by on this occasion, it is not because I could not deal with it. Again, I may be asked, What are the results of missions in China, particularly of Anglican mis- sions ? First, observe that some of the most important results of missions are indirect and collateral, and cannot be estimated by statistics. Secondly, observe that statistics, even within their own range, are necessarily imperfect, because they only profess to state the number of converts at a particular date, and therefore omit the dead, who, after all, are the most complete results, so far as individual conversion is concerned. For instance, the Chinese martyrs in the Boxer massacres four years ago, many hundreds in number, some say thousands, have ceased to swell our earthly num- bers, for they are already gathered into the Lord's garner. Still, taking statistics for what they are worth, what is their evidence ? One fact is quite clear from them, that in China Anglican missions have but a small minority both of missionaries and of converts. Taking as a basis the figures compiled in America two years ago, which do not include Roman missions, we may roughly reckon the S.P.G., C.M.S., and American Church together as having 220 missionaries out of 2500, and 22,000 converts out of 250,000, or less than one-tenth in each case. In regard to institutions, the same dis- proportion is seen. Of colleges and high schools, the Anglican missions are credited with 20 out of 170 ; and of hospitals and dispensaries, with 35 out of CHINA. Si 260. Of all the great mission fields, China is the one where they compare least favourably with other missions, as far as statistics are concerned ; but, of course, statistics are not everything. The Roman Missions are carried on by ten societies and religious orders. The latest figures from a Roman source which I have seen give 39 bishops and 790 European priests, 600 of these being French, and 661,000 native Christians. I have honestly desired to find evidences of good work in the reports, but I confess that they are not pleasant reading. The popular French magazine, U Annie de VEglise, avows that the most prominent feature of the work is the large number of baptisms of the children of pagans. In the province of Si-chuan alone, 85,000 children of heathen parents were baptized in 1899, a large proportion of them being baby girls thrown away by their parents. To rescue these is, in itself, truly a work of mercy, and no doubt the good nuns stand to them in loco parentis ; but the baptism of 41,000 pagan children at the point of death, reported by the Jesuit Mission at Shanghai alone in 1898, is not the highest kind of mission- ary service. There have been just protests lately in the Church Times against " indiscriminate baptism " in England. What would the pro- testors say to facts like these? However, such baptisms only affect our estimate of Roman missionary methods. They hurt no one else. It is otherwise with the constant interference of 54 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. the French missionaries, backed by the French consular officials, in local quarrels and law-suits — a practice most carefully avoided by English missionaries generally. Our bishops forbid even our Chinese clergy to interfere in such matters in the interest of the Christians, except in ex- treme cases of obvious injustice. The Franco- Roman system is a fruitful cause of difficulty with the Chinese authorities, and tends greatly to in- crease their natural dislike to Christian propa- gandism. There should be no interposition that would remove converts out of the sphere of their own nationality and its responsibilities. Very ob- jectionable, too, is the acceptance by the Roman bishops and priests of the official rank and secular power obtained for them by the French Minister at Peking, but refused by the Anglican bishops and other leaders of the Protestant Missions when also offered to them. It has been freely said that the Boxer move- ment was, in fact, a revolt against these very pro- ceedings ; but let us not be hasty to reproach those who, after all, are courageously labouring accord- ing to their light to spread the knowledge of Christ, when we have no conclusive evidence. If they had erred, they suffered for it by the massacre of thirty-five priests and nine sisters by the hands of either the Boxers or the hostile viceroys acting under the Empress Dowager. Greater, however, were the losses of the Protestant Missions. No less than 135 missionaries and 53 CHINA. 55 children suffered death, in some cases with horrible barbarities, and of these 78 belonged to the China Inland Mission. The S.P.G. lost three valuable men. The C.M.S. did not suffer, not having missions in the northern provinces where the massacres took place ; but, five years before, the Ku-cheng outbreak deprived it of one noble missionary and several ladies. In the later and more terrible massacres the native Christians also, both Roman and Protestant, were tortured and murdered without mercy. They were roasted to death with kerosene, hacked into small pieces with swords, buried alive by degrees, with opportunity given to recant, burned to ashes, and the ashes ground down under heavy rollers to prevent a rising from the dead on the third day. But in all these cases the absolute truth of Tertullian's famous maxim is illustrated. The blood of the martyrs proves in actual fact to be the seed of the Church. All the missions thankfully report the blessing that has ensued. Closed doors have opened ; inquirers have multiplied ; the steadfast- ness of the Christians has won for them the re- spect even of the pagans ; and most touching has been the repentance of some whose faith failed at the crisis. As for the world at large, it is, for a wonder, at last convinced that there really are genuine Chinese Christians. As Archdeacon Moule says, in the preface to a new edition of his u New China and Old," there has passed "suddenly across the stage, for the wonder of 56 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. all thinking Europe, and for a testimony to awakening China, the solemn spectacle of the Supernatural : the stupendous wonder of men, women, and children, belonging to a race pre- eminently materialistic, highly valuing money and gain, counting long life one of the highest bless- ings, . . . yet calmly laying down life rather than recant, amidst torture and nameless horrors, from faith in the unseen but most present Divine Redeemer." The outlook, indeed, never was so hopeful. So far as the Anglican Missions are concerned, they have not yet developed, as in Japan, into a united Church with its Constitutions and its Synods. The problem of Church organization is more difficult in a vast country in which the bands of Christians are separated by hundreds and thousands of miles. But there are already nearly fifty Chinese clergymen, and good progress is being made in leading the local Christian com- munities on to self-administration, self-support, and self-extension. The annual conference of clergy and lay delegates from the numerous con- gregations in the province of Fuh-Kien alone is a scene of deepest interest, and astonishes the casual visitor. The bishops are fully alive to the im- portance of extension, and lately resolved to take early steps towards planting Anglican Missions in the nine or ten provinces not yet reached by them. But how is this to be done ? The real need is at home. The Church of England wants two CHINA. 57- things. First, to realize her responsibility : to understand that missions mean, not the mere substitution of one religious system for another, but the declaration of a tremendous fact — if it be a fact, — namely, that a Divine Person came into the world to bless mankind — a fact which those who know it are bound by every motive of honesty and benevolence to tell to those who know it not Secondly, to be ready to fulfil that responsibility, and to give her men and her money without stint for the purpose of proclaiming that stupendous fact — if it be a fact — throughout China and the world. 58 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. LECTURE III. JAPAN. By Eugene Stock. SOME five and twenty years ago, an able and accomplished missionary in Japan, held in the highest respect by the leaders of the nation — as we shall see by-and-by — was trying to address a large Japanese meeting. For some reason this remarkable man, Guido Verbeck, could not obtain a hearing. The audience hooted and howled, and he was compelled to desist. Suddenly a young missionary, unknown to the populace, rose and shouted " Yamato damashii ! " Instantly there was silence, then loud applause, and the men who would not hear the honoured veteran listened for half an hour to the young recruit. " Yamato damashii ! " — the spirit of Japan ; " Yamato," once the name of a certain district, having become a kind of poetical name for the empire, used as we use the word " Albion " for England. " Yamato damashii ! " — a kind of national cry, like " Britannia rules the waves ! " among ourselves ; an exclamation which at any JAPAN. 59 time can arouse a Japanese gathering to en- thusiasm. In response to this cry would arise the shouts of " Banzai ! w with which the armies of Japan have been marching lately to victory or death : " Banzai ! " — that is !< Ten thousand genera- tions ! " equivalent to " Live for ever ! " — u Let the 1 spirit of Japan ' live for ever ! " What is " the spirit of Japan " ? The Japanese themselves would reply, " Bushi-do." This word corresponds fairly with our "chivalry," and, literally translated, it is " The Knightly Way." It provided what we may almost call a moral code for the Samurai, the knights of old Japan ; it still does so for the corresponding class now, and its influence can perhaps best be indi- cated by our familiar French phrase, "Noblesse oblige" It is fully expounded in a remarkable little book entitled " Bushido, the Soul of Japan," by Dr. Inazo Nitobe, a Japanese Professor of Agriculture, apparently a Christian of the Quaker sect, and evidently a man of rare culture, who writes perfect English and shows familiar ac- quaintance with Western thought and literature, both classical and modern. That he overstates the influence of Bushido is probable. For instance, the high morality it inculcates is certainly not ob- served in at least two most important departments of life. Dr. Griffis, the brilliant American author of several books on Japan, who knows the people intimately and admires them greatly, gives sad pictures of their social life as it was forty years 60 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. ago, and as it is even now under a veil of out- ward refinement. Nevertheless he speaks of "the superb system of chivalry, manners, self-mastery of the body, and culture of the spirit, called Bushido, or the Knightly Way," and of the Samurai, " at once soldier and scholar, warrior and gentleman," as u the consummate white flower of Japanese civilization." Certainly the system goes far to explain the astonishing patriotism, courage, and self-sacrifice at which the world has been wondering, and which marks, not only the army, but the whole nation, especially the combination of these characteristics with the humanity and self-restraint which distinguished the Japanese contingent in the joint expedition of the Great Powers to Peking four years ago. And the fact that nearly all the earlier Christian converts of the modern missions, and the leaders of Japanese Christendom to-day, belong to the Samurai class, encourages us to hope that Bushido, sanctified by Christianity, will inspire a Church of exceptionally high character and influence. When we are asked what are the religions of Japan, we are wont to reply, Shintoism and Buddhism. We might add Confucianism, for the Confucian philosophy is widely accepted among the educated classes, along with the old national Shinto, or Way of the Gods, "Shin-to" being the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese phrase. Buddhism, as in China, is in the main the religion of the masses. But, like the Chinese, the Japanese JAPAN. 6l can take three religions at once, and combine them in actual life. As Dr. Griffis puts it, they take their patriotism from Shinto, their morals from Confucianism, and their hopes and fears from Buddhism. And yet Bushido is more powerful than all three. Many leading Japanese repudiate all religion ; but they do not repudiate Bushido. It retains its influence even in Christian men. Indeed, it is only the Christian who can exhibit Bushido in its highest and purest aspect. But we must not linger on the tempting subject. We must proceed to review the history of Christian missions in Japan. How it came to pass that the Reformation epoch witnessed a remarkable missionary movement in the Church of Rome, and how the extension of Spanish and Portugese trade with the Far East facilitated Jesuit enterprise, we saw in the preced- ing lecture. We also saw that the greatest of Roman missionaries, Francis Xavier, failed to enter China. But Japan did have the honour of receiving him, and he had the honour of first carrying the Christian message to the Land of the Rising Sun. Mendez Pinto, the Portugese, was the first European to reach Japan, his ship being driven thither by stress of weather in 1542. Seven years later came Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima, the southernmost port of the southern island of Kiu-shiu, in August, 1549 — a year memor- able in English Church history for the issue of the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. 62 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. Xavier had gone out to India nine years before in the utmost state and luxury ; but great was the contrast of his heroic life in Japan, journeying on foot in all weathers, carrying his vestments and his sacred vessels on his back. His reception, how- ever, was not encouraging, and after two years of seemingly ineffectual labour he left the country, and then died off the coast of China, repeating with his last breath (as we saw in the previous lecture) the closing words of the Te Deum, "O Lord, in Thee have I trusted ; let me never be confounded ! " But his successors reaped an extra- ordinary harvest. Of the Roman mission as a whole it may be said, in the words of the Roman general, that they came, they saw, they conquered. In a few years, probably half a million of Japanese were baptized. This is a very unusual experience in missionary history : can we suggest any special reasons for it ? I think there were two. First, Shinto, which in later years became a power, was then a myth unknown to the people ; and Buddhism, with all its external splendour, had lost what little life it had once possessed. The Jesuit fathers gave the Japanese all that the Buddhist priests had given them in the way of gorgeous ritual, but gave it with a freshness and a fervour that captivated their imaginative and impressionable minds. The Buddhist promised " Nirvana " after many trans- migrations ; the Jesuit promised Paradise in the very next life. And the transformation of the JAPAN. 63 images was an easy process. With a slight applica- tion of the chisel, figures of Buddha became figures of Christ ; and K wan-on, the goddess of mercy, with a child in her arms, became the Madonna. Then, secondly, there was a political cause. The Shogun, or Prime Minister, of that day, Nobunaga, hated the Buddhists, and openly favoured the foreign missionaries, thinking to make them a tool for his own designs. The spirit of the Inquisition was introduced into Japan. Buddhist priests were tortured to death, and their monasteries burnt to the ground. Terrible details are given, with full approval, by the Jesuit historian Charlevoix. Presently, however, under a new Shogun, all was changed. The Spanish Franciscans and the Portugese Jesuits brought accusations against each other, and the Dutch traders charged both with the design of overthrowing the empire and securing its annexation by their European masters. The Buddhists now got the upper hand, and avenged themselves upon their previous persecutors. Edicts of expulsion were issued against all foreigners, and fire and sword were used to extirpate the foreign religion. The crucifixion of six Franciscans, three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen other converts, in 1597, is commemorated in the Roman calendar on the 5th of February; and Pope Pius IX., only forty years ago, canonized these proto-martyrs of Japan. Hundreds of Christians suffered unspeak- able torments, and historians on both sides agree that but few apostatized. One Spanish Jesuit did. 6\ CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. After enduring horrible tortures, he was at last hung by his feet in such a way that his head was in a hole in the ground, while his right hand was left free, that he might make the prescribed sign of recantation. He hung for four hours, and then, in the extremity of agony, made the sign. He was at once released, and, alas ! became a Japanese inquisitor to consign other Christians to torture and death. Who are we, that we should cast a stone at him ? But the moral of the whole history is suggested by the words of the Master — " They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." And when we find that the Roman mission ordained no native clergy, and made no attempt to translate the Bible, we see that it lacked two of the most essential features of stability and progress. Not content with the suppression of Christianity, Japan now determined to exclude foreigners altogether, and for 230 years — from 1624 (just before Charles I. ascended the throne of England) to 1854 (when Queen Victoria was in the seven- teenth year of her reign) — all gates into the empire were closed and locked against the European nations, except one, the Dutch. Why were they excepted ? Because they had revealed the sup- posed Jesuit plots, and because, to the shame of reformed Christendom, they had denied their Christianity. " Are you a Christian ? " one was asked. " No," was the reply, " I am a Dutch- man." In a sense the reply was true, for in Japan JAPAN. 6$ Christianity was identical with Romanism ; but none the less was it an intentional lie, and it repre- sented the general attitude of the traders from Holland — an attitude surprising and regrettable in a people whose heroic struggle against the tyranny of Philip of Spain we have all admired as we read the inspiring pages of Motley. But even the Dutch had to submit to humiliating terms. They were confined to a little artificial islet in the harbour of Nagasaki, called Deshima {lit. " exit island "). One ship was allowed to enter once in six months, and once in four years the Dutch Commissioner had to be taken to the capital, with the costly gifts demanded as tribute. But for this exception, Japan was locked up, and for nearly two centuries and a half this inscription was to be seen on the notice-boards throughout the empire : — " So long as the sun shall warm the earth, let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan, and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or the Christians' God, or the Great God of all, if he violate this command, shall pay for it with his head." It was American enterprise that at last unlocked the gate. In 1853, Commodore Perry, with his squadron, steamed up the Bay of Yedo, and delivered a letter from the President of the United States to the Shogun ; and in the following year he came again for an answer. The result was the opening of two ports to foreign trade ; and in E 66 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. 1858 Lord Elgin, fresh from China, where he had obtained the Treaty of Tientsin, which we noticed last week, came to Japan and extorted a fresh treaty there, opening more ports and securing further concessions. These dealings with foreigners aroused much political agitation in Japan, and the next few years were a period of controversy and confusion. But the forces had long been at work which led to the great Revolution of 1868, and the eventual issues were the overthrow of the Shogun's power, which had lasted 700 years ; the recognition of the Mikado, the real Emperor, as the de facto as well as dejure ruler of Japan ; the abolition of the feudal system, with its proud and almost indepen- dent clans ; and, by a strange reversal of purpose, the eager adoption of Western civilization, which was the very thing the originators of the Revolu- tion had desired to prevent. Although it had been as illegal, and as practically impossible, for a Japanese to leave his country as for an European ' to enter it, some of the ablest young men — all of them, let us remember, Samurai, and influenced by the principles of Bushido — had, during the period of confusion, contrived to get away, and had visited Europe and America. The Marquis Ito, for ex- ample, got on board an English ship and worked as a common sailor before the mast. Reports of what they saw inspired the leaders of the Revolu- tion with new ideas and new aims. The result was that the four years from December, 1868, when the Mikado, coming forth from behind the JAPAN. 67 veil which had hidden his predecessors for centuries at Kioto, set up his throne at the new capital, Tokio, to December, 1872, when Queen Victoria received the Japanese Embassy at Windsor Castle, saw the most extraordinarily rapid development in the history of the world. This was largely due to the Englishmen, Americans, and Germans, who were engaged as professors, inspectors, engineers, and the like. Dr. Griffis, the able author of some of the best books on Japan, was the very first, and his experiences are of the deepest interest. It seems to me a striking illustration of the providential government of the world, that several of the Americans led to accept these engagements were earnest Christian men, who did not shrink from avowing their faith in Christ. For example, one teacher of science, Mr. E. W. Clark, on arriving in Japan, found that the agreement he was to sign bound him to silence on religious questions for three years. Although not only the Japanese, but his fellow-professors, urged him to sign, he posi- tively refused, and prepared to leave. "It is impossible," he said, "for a Christian to dwell three years in the midst of a pagan people, and yet keep silence on the subject nearest his heart" The Japanese gave way, and the very first Sunday he invited his students to come and read the Bible with him. Despite this, his services proved so valuable that he was transferred from a provincial city to the Imperial College at Tokio, and there he held three Bible classes every Sunday for different 68 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. classes of students. It was by influences of this kind that so many men of position in the land eventually became Christians. What might not have been the result in India of similar devotion on the part of Englishmen there ! Meanwhile, what were the Churches doing? They had not, one is glad to think, waited for the Revolution. Nine years before, in 1859, imme- diately after Lord Elgin's Treaty, the first modern missionaries landed in Japan. To us it is a satis- faction also that the first two, Williams and Liggins, were sent by our Sister Church in America — the Church which owes its existence to the S.P.G. and its Missionary Society to the C.M.S.* They were immediately followed by Hepburn and Brown of the American Presby- terian Church, and Verbeck of the Reformed Church of the American Dutch. They all landed at Nagasaki, and were there for some time to- gether ; and their mutual relations may be illus- trated by the fact that Verbeck played the harmonium and led the singing at the Episcopal church. All these were men of high character * This is a fact not generally known. In 1816, Josiah Pratt, Clerical Secretary of the C.M.S., wrote to the American bishops, urging the claims of the heathen and offering help in forming an American society. The bishops, in reply, doubted whether their Church was strong enough, and asked leave rather to send their candidates to the C.M.S. Pratt again urged them to undertake their own missions, and the result was the formation of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Its constitution, settled in 1821, was first published in England in the C.M.S. Report of 1822. JAPAN. 69 and great ability. Williams afterwards became bishop ; Hepburn, the compiler of the Japanese dictionary and the chief translator of the Bible ; Brown, the leader in educational work ; and Ver- beck, the guide and counsellor of the young statesmen who brought in the new civilization. The Life of Verbeck, by the brilliant American already mentioned, Dr. Griffis, is a wonderful record of wise influence quietly exerted for the development of the national life of Japan. Most of the famous men who have brought the empire to its present astonishing position were pupils of Verbeck, among them Prince Iwakura, Marquis Ito, and Count Okuma. It was he who, by express request of the Mikado, moved to Tokio and established the university there, which very soon had a thousand students and twelve foreign professors. It was he who both proposed and planned the great embassy sent round the world to the principal courts in 1872. To him con- stantly resorted the Ministers of State, who had been his pupils, for private advice on the grave problems they had continually to face ; and it was he who sent their^ sons to America for education. Yes, and their daughters too. The wife of the present head of the Japanese army, Marshal Oyama, was one of them. It was he who advised Prince Iwakura to organize a national army and navy, in view of the possible future aggressions of European Powers ; and the marvellous result we are seeing to-day, No wonder Verbeck was the 70 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. one missionary on whom the Mikado conferred the Order of the Rising Sun. The French Roman mission and the Russo- Greek mission quickly followed the first American missionaries. The Russian Church sent out Bishop Nicolai as chaplain to the embassy in i860, and he has long been highly respected as a most able and successful missionary. Two French priests built a church for Europeans at Yokohama about the same time ; but their missionary work began later, when discovery was suddenly made of a remnant still existing of the flourishing Church of the sixteenth century. In a remote part of the southern island of Kiu-Shiu there proved to be some thousands of people descended from the Christians of the Jesuit period, who, though naturally in much ignorance, still retained their old faith. It further appeared that during the interval of over two centuries persecution against stray Christians in other places had been revived. Every now and then the police discovered people who refused to trample on a picture or image of Christ, which was the official test of orthodoxy ; and it is said that so late as 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation in England, six men and an old woman were crucified at Osaka. The men of the Revolution, not yet imbued with the principles of religious liberty, revived the persecu- tion in 1869, and deported 3000 of the poor people discovered to be professing Christians to some small islands. JAPAN. 71 During the nine years of confusion between Lord Elgin's Treaty and the Revolution, and during the first four years of the new regime, regular and open missionary work was not possible. The old proclamation against Christianity and foreigners was still conspicuous on every notice- board ; and after the Revolution the following notice was added : " With respect to the Christian sect, the existing prohibition must be strictly observed." The American missionaries, like their lay countrymen, took engagements as teachers in the new schools and colleges, and waited for better times. The first convert was the language teacher of one of them, who was baptized in his own house in 1864, but died shortly after. The next two were brothers holding an official position under a great Daimio or noble, one of whom bought a strange-looking book which a fisherman had found floating in the harbour. It was an English Prayer-book dropped overboard by a midshipman. The buyer, learning that it was a book of which there was a Chinese translation, obtained a copy of that version and read it, which issued in both being privately baptized in 1866. Then there was the famous Joseph Niisima, who, having been struck by the opening words of a book of geography in Chinese, compiled by an American missionary — which were, in fact, the first words of the Book of Genesis — contrived to slip out of Japan and went to China, and then to America, to find the God that " made heaven and 72 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. earth," and who in Boston did find Him in very truth, and in after years became the head of a Christian college at Kioto. By the end of 1868, the year of the Revolution, seven Japanese had been baptized. So far, no attempt had been made from England to send the Gospel to Japan. When the Civil War in America, of 1861-64, checked both men and money for foreign missions, the bishops of the American Church wrote to the C.M.S., appeal- ing to it to send a mission, but it was not then possible. In the year of the Revolution, however, an anonymous gifc of ^4000 having been made to the society for the purpose, the first English missionary was on his way out, and on January 23, 1869, a few days after the young Mikado had for the first time accorded a public audience to the foreign embassies, the Rev. George Ensor landed at Nagasaki. But he found any open work of evangelization impossible. He could but sit in his house and await callers. They did call, however — curious visitors by day, and serious inquirers by night. He has often in England told the story of one man who came secretly, who swore upon his long sword his purpose of being faithful to Christ, and who eventually was baptized by the name of Titus, " for God," said Mr. Ensor, " who comforteth those that are cast down, com- forted me by the coming of Titus." Suddenly, in February, 1873 — the year which had opened with the adoption of the Calendar of JAPAN. 73 the civilized world — an outward and visible sign was given that religious liberty was at hand, and that the door was opening for active missionary enterprise. " On February 19," says Dr. Griffis, who was in Japan at the time, "some of the missionaries, as they took their morning walks, noticed that the boards containing the anti- Christian edicts, which had hung for centuries in their frames on roofed platforms, had been removed. Indeed, they positively glared by their absence." The Government declared that this did not mean toleration ; but it did mean that they were ashamed of such prohibitions, and Christendom at once took heart and determined to go forward. In that year and the two following, the S.P.G. sent out its first four men, and the C.M.S. six more, four of whom had already had missionary experience in other fields. Of the S.P.G. men, one, Mr. Foss, is now bishop ; and another,;Mr. Shaw, afterwards became archdeacon, and is now reckoned by the Japanese as one of the Three Great Friends of Japan, the other two being Hepburn and Verbeck. Of the C.M.S. men, two, Warren and Maundrell, became archdeacons, and two, Evington and Fyson, are now bishops. The American Church also rein- forced its little band, and the other American missions largely extended their agency and their work. For some years, however, notwithstanding en- couraging signs like the official adoption in 1876 of Sunday as the weekly rest-day, superseding the 74 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. old fifth day holiday, missionary work was still carried on with some difficulty. Only the treaty ports could be occupied ; that is to say, in the main island of Hondo, the two great cities of Tokio and Osaka and the commercial ports, Yokohama, Kobe, and Niigata ; with Nagasaki in the southern island of Kiu-Shiu, and Hakodate in the northern island of Yezo. For travelling in the interior, or temporary residence in other places, a passport was necessary, stating the object of the holder's journey or visit ; and among permitted objects, the preaching or teaching of Christianity was not one. A missionary had to declare that he was travelling for health or for study ; and many hesitated to say this, however true in itself, when another and higher purpose was really in the mind. A great deal of travelling, however, was thus effected ; and again and again a missionary stopping in a Japanese inn would be spontaneously asked by the landlord to tell some- thing of the foreign religion to a party of his friends — sometimes a large crowd — gathered for the purpose. In this and similar ways much evangelistic work was done in the interior ; while in the treaty ports preaching and teaching went on in mission-halls, and sometimes in theatres and other hired buildings. But the most effective method of making Christ known has been personal intercourse with individuals, or with a few in class ; and women missionaries, who in later years have gone out in considerable numbers, have been singularly successful in conducting classes for JAPAN. 75 college students and the like, and for particular sections of the community, such as policemen. Japan differs from almost all other mission fields in this respect, that ladies can with perfect pro- priety teach men as well as women. There are also differences of other kinds. The ordinary elementary mission school is scarcely required, as ample educational facilities are provided by the Government ; nor are medical missions, with the Fovernment hospitals and dispensaries in full work ; while industrial missions, so valuable in Africa, are, of course, superfluous among a people like the Japanese. But what is perhaps the most important of all mission agencies everywhere is equally essential in Japan — the training of native teachers, evangelists, and pastors ; for the principle that Africa must be evangelized by Africans, and Asia by Asiatics, applies emphatically to so independent a nation. Accordingly, the Divinity schools of the S.P.G. at Tokio and of the C.M.S. at Osaka, have been practically the centre and heart of the work, and have turned out excellent men both for holy orders and for various branches of lay agency. Another essential department of labour has been that of the missionary scholar, linguist, and translator. So far back as 1872, after various small attempts, a systematic effort was initiated to prepare a Japanese version of the Bible. In this work the largest share was taken by Dr. Hepburn, assisted in the Old Testament by Verbeck, and by a C.M.S. missionary 76 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE FAR EAST. who had taken a first class in both classics and theology at Cambridge, Mr. Fyson, now one of the bishops. Another C.M.S. man, Mr. Piper, prepared an edition of the New Testament with 12,000 references. The translation and revision of the whole Bible took sixteen years, and on February 3, 1888, the complete work was, at a great public meeting, solemnly presented u from the whole Church of Christ in America and England to the Japanese nation. " In 1898, the Japanese Christians united to present a splendidly bound copy to the Emperor. The Prayer-book was translated by a committee of five, chosen from the S.P.G., the C.M.S., and the American Church Missions. Many valuable books also have been translated, such as "Trench on the Parables and Miracles," "Dale on the Atonement," "Gore on the Incarna- tion," the " Imitation of Christ," and of course the " Pilgrim's Progress." The Japanese hymn-book prepared for the Anglican Missions by Mr. Foss of the S.P.G. (now bishop) has been adopted widely by other missions. As years went by, residence in the interior towns and cities, though still requiring special passports, became quite possible ; and then the work rapidly extended ; especially that of the C.M.S., which alone among the Anglican Missions has had stations in all the four great islands that form Japan proper ; the S.P.G. and the American Church working only in the main island of Hondo. The American non- episcopal missions also developed their still more JAPAN. 77 extensive work. The Roman mission threw its energies chiefly into its philanthropic institutions in the treaty ports, such as orphanages, dispen- saries, leper-homes, and the like, which are univer- sally acknowledged to be conducted with great ability and devotion. The Russo-Greek mission was, 2i|4K BflECTD l~D HEG29TO ttioia rn™ Qica General Library \S$*Mt& 58 Univenhy of CaU fo rni a VA 03838 153051 SO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY