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 -JOHN -FRYER- 
 CHINESE- LIBRAP.Y 
 
EX ORIENTE 
 
 Studies of Oriental Life and Thought. 
 
 EDWARD P. THWING, M.D., PH.D. 
 
 HEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, VICTORIA INSTITUTE, SOCIETY OF SCIENCE, LETTERS 
 
 AND ART, LONDON : BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, N. Y ACADEMY OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 
 
 MEDICO-LEGAL SOCIETY . AUTHOR OF " OUTDOOR LIFE IN THE ORIENT," 
 
 "outdoor LIFE IN EUROPE," "tHE PERSIAN gUEEN," "thF KING 
 
 IN HIS BEAUTY," "WINDOWS OF CHARACTER," ETC. 
 
 S. W^ Partridge & Co., 
 
C /i 2 6-/ 
 
 MAIN LIBRARY 
 JOhi^ t^HYER 
 CHINESE LIBRARY 
 
This edition is limited to Three Hundred 
 copies. 
 
 No. ./J^.L. Cs--<^^<^^^^ (y, (^y/Lc^rv-u, . 
 
 I: — Asiatic Thought, a Historic Evohitioii . 7 
 
 II. — Anatomy of National Life ... 12 
 
 III. — Oriental Characteristics . , . .19 
 
 IV.— " " ... 31 
 
 Y.— Eeligion in the East 37 
 
 YI. — Language, Literature and Art . , 49 
 
 YII.— " " " " . . . 57 
 
 YIII. — Rejuvenescence of the East . . » 70 
 
 IX. — Supernatural Factors . . . .79 
 
 X. — Practical Problems . . , . 94 
 
 751616 
 
MAIN LIBRARY 
 CHINESE LIBRARY 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — Asiatic Thought, a Historic Evohition . 7 
 
 II. — Anatomy of National Life ... VI 
 
 III. — Oriental Characteristics . . . .11) 
 
 IV.— " " ... 31 
 
 Y. — Religion in the East . . . . .37 
 
 YI. — Language, Literature and Art . . 49 
 
 YIL— " " ''"... 57 
 
 YIII. — Rejuvenescence of the East . . « 70 
 
 IX. — Supernatural Factors . . . .79 
 
 X.— Practical Problems . . , . 91 
 
 751618 
 
EX ORIENTE LUX. 
 
 During a recent tour in India, China and Japan, the 
 study of Asiatic Thought as reflected in hmguage, 
 monumental art and social life has occupied much of 
 my attention. Acquaintance with the work of Oriental 
 scholars in the Far East has revealed the opulence of 
 resources now available. There is an imperative need 
 of a more general knowledge of the East in its relation 
 to the religious, scientific and commercial enterprise of 
 the West. We are rapidly extending the material 
 domination of the Anglo-Saxon race. Its moral su- 
 premacy should keep pace with its material conquests. 
 
 The teachers, preachers and physicians whom we 
 are sending to the Orient as pioneers of a Christian 
 civilization, will welcome any brief, comprehensive 
 plan of study which wiU prepare them for their work. 
 If this volume proves to be, in any degree, suggestive 
 and helpful the aim of the author will be attained. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ASIATIC Tiro U GUT AS A HISTORIC EV<. 
 LXJTION. 
 
 AN .YLLUKING THE.AIE. 
 
 Tlie first sight of the shores of Asia awakens in a 
 schokir profound emotion. Sir William Jones has re- 
 corded the thoughts that thrilled him when he beheld 
 for the first time this " nurse of sciences, the inven- 
 tress of delightful and useful arts, the scenes of glori- 
 ous actions, fertile in the productions of human genius, 
 and infinitely diversified in the forms of religion and 
 government, in the laws, manners, customs and lan- 
 guages, as well as in the features and complexions of 
 men." The breezes of Arabia were blowing astern as 
 this historic dreamer, at the close of a long, wear}' 
 voyage around the Cape, saw the continent of Asia 
 rise on the horizon. He says it gave him " inexpres- 
 sible pleasure " to gaze for the first time on shores so 
 illustrious in the history of human thought. But more 
 than a century has passed since the vision of that 
 August morning, 1783. It has been a most enriching 
 portion of history. It has seen an awakening of the 
 East under the extending influence of commercial in- 
 tercourse and scientific inquiry. Never had the Latin 
 phrase Ex. Onente Lux, the plenary significance it now 
 has. Light, indeed, is streaming from Sunrise Lands. 
 
8 ASIATIC THOUGHT AS A HISTORIC EVOLUTION. 
 
 Long closed doors are now open, and entombed treas- 
 ures are revealed. The records and ruins of the past 
 and the social life of to-day are accessible. The stag- 
 nation of centuries is stirred, the petrifaction of na- 
 tional life is breaking up, and historic processes are 
 receiving a mighty acceleration. 
 
 There is a prescient fear that heathenism is doomed, 
 and that fi-om the West a conquering power will come. 
 " Intelligent Mussulmen themselves admit that the 
 proper symbol of the present prospects of their faith 
 is a waning crescent." 
 
 " The moon of Mahomet 
 Arose, aud it shall set; 
 While, blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon, 
 The Cross leads generations on! " 
 
 Said Daniel Webster, "Whoever would see the 
 Eastern World before it turns into a Western World 
 must make his visit soon." " There is nothing left of 
 Japan but its scenery," says an educated Japanese 
 now in this country. 
 
 AWAKENED ATTENTION. 
 
 The last hundred years have not only seen the dawn- 
 ing of a new day in Asia, but witnessed an awakening 
 of interest on our part in Oriental Studies. 
 
 The first meeting of the Koyal Asiatic Society was 
 held in London, March 15th, 1823. Its aim was dis- 
 tinctly declared to be the investigation of subjects re- 
 lating to Asia. The Duke of Somerset, the Earl of 
 Aberdeen and three hundred others were enrolled 
 fi'om among the nobility, army officers and others 
 whose wealth and culture and opportunity were de- 
 voted to this end. Four guineas admission fee and 
 
AWAKENED ATTENTION. 9 
 
 three guineas annual snbsen[)tion, in addition to other 
 income, enabled tlieiu, through their Translation Com- 
 mittee, organized under King Leopold's patronage in 
 1828, to offer four gold medals of lifteen guineas each, 
 and prizes as high as XlOO, to stimulate Oriental 
 scholars to make available Chinese, Indian, Persian 
 and Arabic manuscripts through carefully edited trans- 
 lations. A museum was also founded and branches 
 formed, each declared to be " an integral part " of the 
 London Society, and its members considered non- 
 resident members of the parent society. 
 
 English and Continental universities and other bodies 
 have also contributed to the awakening of popular in- 
 terest in the study of Asiatic Life. Private wealth has 
 been put at the service of exploring enterprises. Pro- 
 fessor Max Muller, in his monograph, " What can 
 India teach us ? " appeals to young men who are go- 
 ing there to occupy civil and military posts to pre- 
 pare themselves l)y the study of the people and their 
 national characteristics. "With much more empha- 
 sis does this appeal come home to those Avho go to 
 the East for educational and religious purposes, to 
 mould the moral and religious life of the Eastern races. 
 Materials for study abound. Every year witnesses an 
 increase. An English publisher has said that the 
 literary world is divided into two classes : those who 
 have written books on Egypt and those who have not ! 
 This pleasantry indicates the opulent stores open to 
 those who wish to study the development of Eastern 
 thought. 
 
 This process is, as Professor Max MuUer observes, 
 a historic development from the first beginnings of 
 intellectual life up to the highest stages, through 
 various combinations and differentiations. The very 
 
10 ASIATIC THOUGHT AS A HlSTOllIC EVOLUITON. 
 
 essence of history, is the history of the human niiiKl. 
 The true historian is not a mere chronicler, but a 
 philosopher. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THOUGHT. 
 
 We come, therefore, at the outset, to study the gene- 
 sis and characteristics of Oriental Thought. There 
 are two ever present factors in the evolution of human 
 thought. Their unity is constant. Their mutual in- 
 teraction is inevitable. They form, therefore, a ground 
 of differentiation. These structural forces, these or- 
 ganizing elements are physical and psychic. They are 
 best studied by historic methods. The metaphysician 
 says, for example, that thought is " cognitive energy," 
 and analyzes it into concepts, precepts and other facts 
 of consciousness. He assumes, as did Adam Smith, 
 certain ineradicable principles like human selfishness, 
 and then by deductive processes from cause to effect, 
 comes down to facts and opinions about men, instead 
 of ascending from facts to laws, from aspects to es- 
 sence. So Cullen in pathology, and Hunter and Bell 
 in physiology, have reasoned from the abstract to the 
 concrete. This a priori reasoning Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh made to be a distinguishing feature of the Scotch 
 of his day. John Stuart Mill thinks it is the tnie path 
 in political economy, which hi3 regards as an abstract 
 science. 
 
 The two poles of philosophy are thought and ex- 
 istence. From Aristotle till nov/, tliinkers divide in 
 their study of thought and natiiie, of the subjective 
 and the objective. Into the conflict of nominalism 
 and realism it is useless for us to enter. It is enough 
 to assume that the genesis of Oriental Thought is its 
 ethnic history. If ethnology, as Mill affirms, is the 
 
THE GENESIS OF THOUGHT. 11 
 
 science of character, character is embodied thought. 
 Its lexical iiieauiug suggests a combination of inscrip- 
 tions, a record of physical, mental and moral develop- 
 ment. By a careful collection and analysis of facts 
 the basis of a true synthesis, and so of a rational sci- 
 ence of civilization, is laid. 
 
 The thorough interweaving of its roots with the his- 
 tory of the race on which it has sprung, is the source 
 of the power of Christianity, according to James Mar- 
 tineau. So we are to study the life of the East as a 
 concrete symbol, revealed to observation ; not in arid 
 and recondite speculations, but in actual visibilities 
 under recognized laws and historic periods of growth. 
 
 This historic method of study is followed by the 
 wisest teachers in other lines. Taine teaches the 
 growth and decline of art by presenting Titian and 
 Augelo, and then the features of a degenerate age that 
 followed. In literature he exhibits the same chang- 
 ing epochs in their salient features, disengaging from 
 their complexity the fundamental principles on which 
 they work. He, preeminently, had the instincts of 
 a historian, and his literary culture rested on the 
 solid basis of the natural sciences, mathematics and 
 medicine. 
 
 Enough has been said to indicate the purpose and 
 method of our research, and now we turn to the study 
 of this fruitful and inviting theme, the nativity of 
 thought in the Orient. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. 
 
 This felicitous phrase is used by Buckle in his His- 
 tory of Civilization to express some of the material 
 factors which go to form the articulated skeleton of a 
 nation in its physical existence. These are the funda- 
 mental conditions of material and moral progress, the 
 modifying influences that mould its life and growth. 
 
 Some of these are location, geographical boundaries, 
 soil and climate. To illustrate, it is claimed that " the 
 civilization of Asia has always been confined to tho 
 vast tract where a rich alluvial soil has secured to man 
 that wealth, without some portion of which no in- 
 tellectual progress can begin." As the gulf stream has 
 given Europe its civilization, so the occlusion of Arctic 
 seas from the Pacific, by the peciiliar conformation of 
 its northern boundary, and the juxtaposition of Ameri- 
 can and Asiatic shores, have made Polynesian life 
 what it is. 
 
 SCOTLAND AND SPAIN. 
 
 The paradoxes of Scotch liistor}^ the contradictions 
 and discrepancies of its national life are phenomena 
 which find at least a partial solution in the facts of its 
 physical geography and its relations to adjoining 
 countries. The causes which hindered the accumula- 
 tion of wealth, which discouraged the municipal spirit, 
 
SCOTLAND AND SPAIN. 13 
 
 and so changed the life and temper of the people 
 through several generations, are ingeniously traced out 
 by Buckle, and his conclusions are fortified by copious 
 citations from contemporary writers. 
 
 The civilization of a semi-tropical country like Spain 
 is also another illustration of the modifying influence 
 of physical factors in the evolution of national life. 
 As the temperament of man is his fate, so the climate 
 of a country is justly called its fate. The slant of in- 
 tellectual light and of solar rays change the destiny of 
 men and races. The Iberian peninsular is exposed to 
 peculiar vicissitudes of climate. The infrequency of 
 rain and difficulty of irrigation combine with the heat 
 to produce drought, famine and pestilence. During 
 two centuries there have been more earthquakes in 
 Spain than in all Europe combined, Italy excepted. 
 " No other part of Europe is so clealy designated by 
 nature as the seat and refuge of superstition. Aspects 
 of nature, by inflaming the imagination, encouraged 
 superstition and prevented men from daring to analyze 
 such threatening physical phenomena, in other words, 
 prevented the creation of the physical sciences. We 
 may form some idea of the insecurity of life and of the 
 ease with which an artful and ambitious priesthood 
 could turn such insecurity into an engine for their own 
 power." * " So," says Buckle, " Spain sleeps on, a 
 huge and torpid mass of medisevalism, the most back- 
 ward country in Europe, impassive amid the stir of 
 intellectual life about her, and bound by a superstition 
 that centuries have graven on the minds and eaten 
 into the hearts of her people." 
 
 Moreover, in Spain and in isothermal zones of the 
 
 * History of Civilization, vol. ii., p. 5. 
 
1-4 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. 
 
 East, the intense heat of a part of the year interrupts 
 ordinary outdoor vocations. AVork, of necessity, is 
 suspended. There is a loss of impulse, momentum, 
 continuity ; and so there is, in time, engendered an 
 instability of character, more or less marked, as a re- 
 sult of enforced idleness, where there are no equalizing 
 moral forces. Alike under the skies of India and amid 
 the August heats of Central Spain and Italy I have 
 seen abundant evidence of this impairment of charac- 
 ter and resolution through the deteriorating influence 
 of physical environment. 
 
 Pritchard, Key and Eitter have collected materials 
 on this point and on the influence on character of a 
 wandering, pastoral life. Barbaric tribes which have 
 left regions of sterility and emigrated to a more genial 
 and uniform chmate have developed a comparatively 
 high civilization. 
 
 ASPECTS OF NATURE. 
 
 Lyell, in his Geology, has referred to the influence 
 of volcanic disturbances on the imagination ; so also 
 Darwin, Word, Beale and Tschudi. They state the 
 curious fact that, instead of becoming indifierent to 
 them through their repetition, people become more 
 troubled by each recurrence of seismic phenomenao 
 Nor are these apprehensions confined to the credulous 
 and ignorant. The educated clergyman and the phy- 
 sician in the East have told me that they gi-ew more 
 nervously apprehensive with each new earthquake. 
 
 In Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, there is 
 a striking instance of theological fiction given which 
 was founded on such occurrences. Among primitive, 
 unphilosophic peoples the portents of the heavens, 
 visual phenomena, such as are caused in paludal dis- 
 
THANATOPHIDIA OF THE EAST. 15 
 
 tricts by emis8ion of gases, I)}' mirage, fog-, or by elec- 
 tric disturbances, startling apparitions and auditory 
 impressions, explicable to us, but baffling to their 
 thought, contribute to develope the imagination wholly 
 out of proportion to the reasoning faculties. The 
 journals of the Royal Asiatic Society are rich in data 
 bearing upon this point. Sir Thomas Brown's In- 
 quiries into Vulgtir Errors, IGiG, William's Expedi- 
 tion on the Niger, and Forry's Influence of Climate, 
 also illuminate the subject. - 
 
 THANATOPHIDIA OF THE EAST. 
 
 The presence of deadly reptiles and wild beasts, and 
 the terror awaked by them, as related to demonology, 
 is another branch of the subject which can only be 
 alluded to here. Bruce, in his travels through Abys- 
 sinia, found that hyenas were regarded as enchanters, 
 and the skin of the dead beast, even, was not touched 
 till a priest's incantations had exorcised the demon. 
 Marsdeu in Sumatra found the people unwilling to 
 take the life of a tiger, although the number of lives 
 destroyed was frightful. The same fact is observed 
 in India. So of snakes. A deadly cobra was caught 
 on the grounds of a friend with whom I afterwards 
 tarried several days. The charmer who had caught 
 it refused to kill it, for " a god is in it," he said. 
 The worship of the serpent and other reptiles, and 
 the charms used as prophylaxis are referred to by 
 Coleman in his Hindu Mythology and in Mather's 
 History of Gnosticism. A tiger's nose, for example, 
 
 Beausobre Histoire Critique de Manichee, vol. i., p. 243 ; Bombay 
 Society Translations, vol. iii., pp, 98-105; JoTirnal Asiatic Society, 
 vol. ii., p. 337 ; Nineteenth Century, Dec. Lii',). 
 
1(3 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. 
 
 is generally supposed to bring good Inck if hung about 
 the neck of a woman in childl)irth. 
 
 Burne, in his Bohara, records the curious super- 
 stitious prevalent among the Seiks respecting wounds 
 inflicted by tigers. In the Japan Mail, June 13th 
 and 11th, 1890, I have considered tliis matter at some 
 length, under the head of " Snakes in India." 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 Climate determines the food of the people. Whether 
 it is abundant or scanty, spontaneously produced or 
 with great labor ; whether it is favorable to the de- 
 velopment of vigorous life, or the contrary, are facts 
 related to the question of population, employment, 
 wages, distribution of wealth, and thus of intelligence 
 and character. Here is a wide field of research in 
 social economics, as well as physiological science. 
 Yegetable food, according to some, increases the fe- 
 cundity of people. High living retards and poor Uving 
 seems to increase population. There is, however, a 
 compensative element found in the fact that, though 
 the birth rate of poverty is large, its mortality rate is 
 larger than it is among the higher classes. 
 
 Food affects disposition. " Knock him down ! He 
 is only tea and rice," said one foreigner to another in 
 the streets of Canton, referring to a troublesome China- 
 man. When roused, " the Chinese fight like tigers 
 and elephants," but ordinarily they are very patient, 
 yielding and self-contained. Some animal food is used 
 by the poor, but, as a nation, the Chinese do not eat 
 it as we do. No one can doubt that a large amount 
 of animal food strengthens animal passions. " Jeshu- 
 run waxed fat and kicked," w^hile Squeers' boys, of 
 Dotheboys Hall, fed on milk and water, grew both 
 
INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 17 
 
 lean and tame. " Conquer your passions, and don't 
 be eager after vittles," was the master's advice. 
 
 Sir "William Hunter says that there are forty millions 
 underfed in India, and that the struggle for life is 
 harder throughout a large portion of the land than it 
 was when it passed under British rule. He does not 
 wonder that writers have spoken of it as " bleeding to 
 death." Ninety per cent, of the rural population are 
 tillers of the earth. The heat is intense. Drought is 
 common. Irrigation is inadequate. The sweeping off 
 of vast jungles has dried up countless reservoirs of 
 moisture. Cattle degenerate from deficiency of pasture, 
 and pasture lands die from lack of moisture and man- 
 ure. Its waters have been nearly exhausted of tish, 
 practically the only form of animal food allowed by 
 the caste rules of eighty per cent, of the people. 
 Famines have been accepted as inevitable concomi- 
 tants of the climate. '•' It is not surprising that from 
 the earliest period to which our knowledge of India 
 extends, an immense majority of the people, pinched 
 by the most galling poverty, and just living from hand 
 to mouth, should always have remained in a state of 
 stupid debasement broken by incessant misfortune, 
 crouching before their superiors in abject submission, 
 and only lit either to be slaves themselves or to be led 
 to battle to make slaves of others." "" 
 
 The relation of climate to the clothing, dwellings 
 and the health of a people invites study. Dr. Coan, 
 of the Hawaiian Islands, has referred to the incidental 
 evils introduced by a Christian civilization. Natives 
 who had lived out doors all their life, and wearing 
 little if any clothing, subsisting on simple food, and 
 
 * Buckle, vol. i. p. 53. 
 
18 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. 
 
 kiiowiug little of mental activity, found their liealtli 
 suffered as they adopted the methods of life, dress, 
 in-door activities and daily study, introduced by for- 
 eign missionaries. Dr. Clarence Thwing, in charge of 
 a hospital at Sitka, connected with a large Training 
 School of young Alaskan Indians, has noticed the 
 same impairment of health in the case of not a few 
 whose whole mode of living is revolutionized by be- 
 coming students. It is obvious that the physical 
 geography of a continent to a gi-eat degi'ee determines 
 its civilization through the operation of meteorological 
 laws. An insular climate has increased moisture. A 
 tropical country has heat. It has also a third factor, 
 the trade winds, with those modifications noticed by 
 Humboldt and others, called monsoons. 
 
 The striking contrast which Egyptian civilization 
 presents to that of Arabia, and of other similarly con- 
 ditioned countries, illustrates the influence of phy- 
 sical factors on the gi'owth, wealth and character of 
 a people. From the days of Herodotus till now this 
 thought has attracted the attention of all geographers 
 of the East. But Buckle himself, Avho presses this 
 point, also admits that, although priority in the march 
 of civilization belongs to the fertile zones of the East, 
 a better, more permanent progress was made in the 
 West. This came, not from the bounty of nature, but 
 from the energy of man. The former is limited and 
 stationary ; the latter almost boundless. As the re- 
 sources of mind increase, there is a dominion estab- 
 lished over external nature by man himself, who Avas, 
 in a sense, the product of its material forces. There 
 are other influences, natural and supernaWral, to 
 which we may now turn. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ORIENTAL CllARA CTKIHSTICS. 
 
 Potential increments of a still higher type renin in to 
 be examined. Important as is the accumnlation of 
 data in phjsical geography, vital statistics and similar 
 material conditions, there are modifying influe::ces to 
 be studied, which are represented in lineage, language, 
 literature, legislation, religion and social usages. It 
 has been said that the progress of humanity is not an ' 
 advance in natural capacity, but simply in opportim- 
 ity ; not of internal growth, but of external advantage ; 
 that one born in a civilized community is not likely to 
 be, as such, superior to one born among barbarians, 
 but that the character of each is solely the product of 
 the mental atmosphere about him. Such a theory is 
 contradicted by the facts of anthropological science. 
 Heredity is one. We are a part of all that has pre- 
 ceded us. An umbilical cord binds us to generations 
 gone, hence it is hardly a hyperbole to say that a 
 child's education should begin a hundred years before 
 his birth. Heredity is understood by all who have to 
 do with penology, and it no more needs defence than 
 the system of modern astronomy. "Without going to 
 the extreme of Ferri, Lombroso and other physiolo- 
 gists in circumscribing human freedom, we must trace 
 alike the perfection or defacement of cerebral struc- 
 ture largely to atavistic influences. " 
 
 *Shidy of Brains, Charles K. Mills, M. D., 1886, Moritz Bene- 
 dikt, 1881. 
 
-'0 ORIENTAL CHAEACTEiaSTICS. 
 
 The Oriental and Occidental races present to-dav 
 salient points of divergence which reflect the growth 
 of centuries. There is a solidarity which we cannot 
 ignore, a homogenesis in mind as in matter. As phy- 
 sical forces have carved the mountains and channeled 
 the rivers of a continent, spread out field, forest, des- 
 ert and ice plain, so in the historic evolution of a 
 nation's life we trace the recurrent and progressive 
 mental influences which mould it generation after gen- 
 eration into an individuality all its own. 
 
 NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes utters a profound truth 
 when he says : " There is no use of trying to graft the 
 tropic palm upon the northern pine. The same divine 
 forces underlie the gi-owth of both, but leaf, and flower 
 and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of cli- 
 mate." 
 
 Dr. John W. Draper reasons on this subject clearly 
 in the interests of naturalism along physiological lines. 
 In his Philosophy of Civilization he draws a parallel 
 between the infancy, childhood, youth, maturity and 
 age of individual life and the corresponding stages of 
 credulity, inquiry, faith, reason and decrepitude in 
 national gr-owth. From legend and miracle the mind 
 passes on to investigation and science, as society ad- 
 vances from rudeness to culture, from poverty to 
 wealth. The same inexorable laws, he believes, will 
 end in national decay and ruin, as Gibbon has shown 
 in his Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire. On 
 the other hand, Mr. Herbert Spencer founds his spec- 
 ulations in Evolution, and postulates an inevitable ad- 
 vance in culture and refinement. Altruistic considera- 
 tions will come to be a natural and spontaneous fruit, 
 
NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY. 21 
 
 by a necessity of our being. These theories are in 
 collision. The tendency to advancement, and also the 
 fact of recession must be admitted. Only in the super- 
 natural, however, can we find adequate forces to resist 
 and overcome the gravitating tendency revealed in 
 human history. Christianity alone gives dignity to 
 man, value to life and permanency to civilization. As 
 the late Professor B. N. Martin has remarked : "It 
 alone can supply the force which can raise man so 
 above himself as to curb these mighty tendencies to 
 evil, and secure the steady progress of society toward 
 its destined end of blessedness and glory. These anti- 
 nomies of the scientific reason find their harmony, 
 these insoluble problems shall reach their solution 
 in the predicted daj'S of love and purity when 'they 
 shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, 
 saith the Lord.' Under all the simply natural condi- 
 tions observed hitherto, the tendency to social im- 
 provement has been by far too weak to contend suc- 
 cessfully with the accumulating tendencies in a wealthy 
 society to corruption and decay. This is incontest- 
 ably the verdict of history, and as an absolute fact, 
 philosophy must accept it as the basis of her reason- 
 ing-" * 
 
 The East has an individuality. Thought and life 
 have strongly marked characteristics. Whatever may 
 be our theory of the genetic influences that shaped 
 them, they present distinct features as a historic study. 
 There is a mental as well as a physical anatomy clearly 
 revealed. " As far as the East is from the West " has 
 more than a geogi-aphical meaning. Sir Edwin Ar- 
 nold, in his Light of the World, says that in East- 
 
 Journal of Christian Philosophy, April, 1883. 
 
22 0IIIENT.\L CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 ern lauds, " light and life are larger " than with us, 
 passions are stronger and heart-storms are like their 
 earthquakes and floods. 
 
 " Withering simoons and winds that tear the seas 
 To milky madness, find their counterparts 
 In those own children of the Light, who live 
 And love and hate with pulse at quicker beat. " 
 
 The aim of this manual is simply to give suggestions 
 of practical points of study, rather than to elaborate 
 them. So, perhaps, by naming a few features in which 
 race, language and religion have stamped themselves 
 on Asiatic Thought we may be better able to detect 
 the higher organizing elements. 
 
 SELF-ABASEMENT. 
 
 Oriental manhood is said to rest in self-abasement, 
 as Occidental manhood is founded in self-respect. 
 The American is audacious, assertive ; the Briton is 
 brave and bold ; both showing it in facial signs, in 
 vocal tones, in the contour and movement of the body, 
 hand, foot, eye, every way. The Asiatic is ordinarily 
 supple, servile, often timid. Some one has said that 
 the Bengali is born with an essay in his hand and a 
 speech in his mouth ; a good writer and speaker, but 
 physically a poltroon, particularly averse to physical 
 contests. Bishop Thorburn, of Calcutta, speaks of the 
 sternness with which he has been obliged to rebuke 
 personal worship and kissing of his feet. 
 
 In a Japanese restaurant you are welcomed by the 
 lady in charge, who not only falls on her knees before 
 you, but brings her forehead and lips to the floor. 
 The physician in China and elsewhere is viewed with 
 special reverence, and his photograph is sometimes 
 secured and worshipped with the respect paid to the 
 
SELF-ABASEMENT. 23 
 
 ancestral tablet. The Japanese who was wont to call 
 me to breakfast bowed low before the closed door as 
 obsequiously as if it were open and he were person- 
 ally saluting me. Standing before cages filled with 
 crazy creatures, I have noticed the supremest form of 
 reverence paid, the kowtow, a knocking of the head 
 on the floor with repeated blows. The navigator, 
 Cook, suffered himself to be taken into a Hawaiian 
 temple and worshipped as the god Lono, wearing a 
 scarlet necklace. Prayers, incantations and offerings 
 were made before him. Infatuated like Herod, he 
 " died by visitation of God " in a quarrel with the 
 natives soon after. ^ 
 
 Dutch envoys in 1655 stooped to the most servile 
 humiliation at Peking to secure pecuniary advantage, 
 making the kowtow to the throne and to the mere 
 name of the emperor. AVilliams tells us, however, that 
 the mercantile speculation they represented proved 
 nearly a total loss. The audience question has always 
 been a crucial point. It was not enough to say, as 
 did Kweiliang, thirty years ago, " I will willingly burn 
 incense before the President of the United States if 
 asked to do so." The point was, how far shall Occi- 
 dental manhood bend to degrading forms of Oriental 
 self-abasement. The details of the triumph of the 
 West in this matter, 1873, and those of the audience 
 with foreigners had by the Emperor March 5th, 1891, 
 form very instructive data on the point in hand. 
 
 Physiological facts doubtless lie at the bottom, and 
 partly account for these mental characteristics. Peo- 
 ple of tropical climes cannot be expected to possess 
 the push, pluck and power of those in colder zones. 
 
 * Sandwich Islands (Hiram Bingham), p. 35. 
 
24 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Passions are hot, but there is not that uniform reso- 
 luteness and resiliency of spirit which forms so large 
 a segment of our mental sphere. ^ The influence of a 
 rice diet has already been alluded to. Famine, pov- 
 erty, over-breeding, incontinence and social oppres- 
 sion, particularly caste, also combine to narrow, dwarf 
 and degTade manhood. Says a Hindu pundit : " Caste 
 has suppressed the development of individuality and 
 independence of character. It has made the country 
 fit for foreign slavery by previously enslaving the peo- 
 ple in the most abject spiritual tyranny. It has 
 brought on physical degeneracy by confining marriage 
 within narrow circles, and developing other injurious 
 customs like early marriage." The latter " is the 
 greatest evil of our country," says an educated native 
 physician ; " among the principal causes of our phy- 
 sical degeneration as a race," says another. Half the 
 mothers of India die prematurely or are invalids in 
 consequence, and the vast majority of the other half 
 suffer in health from it, says Dr. Lai Sii'car, after 
 thirty years observation among his people. Aristotle 
 in his day spoke of the weak and puny offspring pro- 
 duced by premature wedlock. That this physical de- 
 terioration is related to the condition of abject mental 
 subserviency cannot be questioned. 
 
 A government inspector of schools in India says 
 that many of these boy-husbands " are exhausted and 
 spent by the time they reach seventeen, their for- 
 mer energy and brightness all gone." " The masses 
 midtiply without any more thought of the future than 
 rabbits," says Sir Henry Maine. Ten has been the age 
 for marriage to be consummated. Dr. Mansell, a lady 
 
 * Windows of Character (Dr. E. P. Thwing), pp. 109-128. 
 
SELF-ABASEMENT. 25 
 
 physician, reports four cases of fearful, hopeless muti- 
 latioD which she had tried to treat. One of these little 
 girl-wives appeared to be no more than seven years of 
 age. The man who had summoned the surgeon, " said 
 in plain English, without the slightest appearance of 
 shame or pity, that this was his last wife ! " Well 
 does pundit Vidyasagara exclaim, " In siich a coun- 
 try, where men are void of compassion, would that 
 women never were born ! " 
 
 Professor Chamberlain, of the Imperial University 
 of Japan, remarks : " we may sometimes regret the 
 substitution of common-place European ways for the 
 glitter and glamor of picturesque Orientalism ; but 
 can it be doubtful which of the two civilizations is the 
 higher, both materially and intellectually ? Does not 
 the experience of the last three hundred years go to 
 prove that no Oriental state which retains distinctive 
 Oriental institutions can hope to keep its territory free 
 fi'om Western aggi-ession ? " He points to India. He 
 also says of Japan that it was a question of life or 
 death with her. She must cease to be Oriental or 
 cease to be her own mistress. Hence " history has 
 never witnessed a more sudden volte- face'' The Occi- 
 dental is full of virile energy and self-assertion. Be- 
 cause of this audacity and independence he aims to 
 extend his dominion from sea to sea and from the 
 river to the ends of the earth. He is doing it, too. 
 
 But the repressive influence of Buddhism is another 
 factor not to be overlooked. The pitiful self-abase- 
 ment and annihilation of individuality, this extinction 
 of all the hopes and aspirations of a true manhood is 
 enough to belittle and abase, apart fi-om all these other 
 coVisiderations. Nobility of character is impossible. 
 St. Hilaire says that this ancient system has never 
 
26 ORIENTAL CHAllACTEllISTICS. 
 
 been able to found a single government, nor a toler- 
 able social state. How could it ? Among ethnic re- 
 ligions this is conspicuously sterilizing, for it teaches 
 men, as Professor Monier Williams observes, to " be- 
 ware of action and aim at inaction, indifference and 
 apathy, as the highest of all states." 
 
 OKIENTAL IMMOBILITY. 
 
 As a sequence we find, as a second feature, quies- 
 cence, stagnation, petrifaction of life, in sharp and 
 striking contrast to the eager, alert and j^rogressive 
 temper of the West. To illustrate : China is fitly com- 
 pared to Lot's wife, a stony column, a stiffened figure, 
 with its rigid face looking backward on the past. The 
 dominant thought of Confucianism is man's duty to 
 conserve, not to create. To create implies improve- 
 ment, advance, discovery and, therefore, a leaving of 
 the things which are behind. This would be treason 
 to Confucian formalism, which doctrine is rather a 
 body of ceremonies than a religious system. It merges 
 individuaUty into the rank and file of uniformity, while 
 it deadens the sensibilities of the heart. . Its watch- 
 word is Return ! Its perfect manhood is found in the 
 long gone past. Antiquity is its changeless theme. 
 This is China's lamp and guide ; this her pattern and 
 her goal, Confucius disclaimed all originality. He 
 was not, he said, an author, but an editor. His aim 
 was simply to transmit. He was anchored, and an- 
 chylosis seems to some the empire's beauty and de- 
 fence.* 
 
 Corea, the Land of the Morning Calm, just twenty 
 years ago warned off from her coast the American 
 
 Dragnn, Image and Demon (Dr. DuBose), pp. 102-107. 
 
ORIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. 27 
 
 Admiral Rogers with the proud taunt, " Corea boasts 
 four thousand years of history. She is satisfied with 
 it and wants no other ! " She had been for ages a 
 Hermit Nation, not only passively but actively. It 
 was death to any Corean to cross the river Tumen, 
 which for two hundred miles forms its northern bound- 
 ary. Three centuries ago a belt of desolation, seventy 
 miles wide, was made by destroying towns and vil- 
 lages. Pickets guarded the frontier. 
 
 At about the same time an imperial edict of the 
 Mikado made it a crime, punishable with death, for a 
 Japanese to leave the country or to return to Japan 
 again. Christians were to be seized and imprisoned 
 as felons. Thus has the East isolated herself, de- 
 clared her unwillingness to change, and proved the 
 immobility of her civilization. No Hindu can cross 
 the black water without losing caste. If he returns, 
 he must humble himself and eat penitential pills made 
 of bovine excrements. 
 
 ORIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. 
 
 Causes already signalized combine to make Asiatics 
 imperturbable, stoical, and apathetic. Nervousness is 
 called the barometer of civilization. It marks the tu- 
 multuous vitality of the West, which is fitly compared 
 to an Atlantic that knows no repose. " We buy, we 
 sell, we tear down, we build up. We put girdles round 
 the globe as if time were but an hour, and eternal des- 
 tiny hung on these material issues. Every day of the 
 year somebody's brain reels. Insanity is a part of the 
 price we pay for our Western civilization." * As Dr. 
 Talmage says, " We are born in a hurry, we live in a 
 
 * Dr. J. O. Putnam, Buffalo Btato Asylum. 
 
28 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 hurry, we die in a hurry, aucl are di'iven to Greenwood 
 on a trot ! " 
 
 The magnetic intensities of our latitudes and the 
 feverish rush of hfe develop an abnormal nerve sensi- 
 bility in vivid contrast to the dull unconcern of the 
 average Asiatic. In no particular does race reveal 
 itself more clearly. The medical man sees it in the 
 comparative indifference to pain in surgical operations. 
 An old woman at Canton, from whose eye Dr. Parker 
 was about to remove a cataract, declined to take chlo- 
 roform. He expressed doubt as to her ability to bear 
 the knife, when she declared that he might take both 
 eyes out and put them back again if he chose, which 
 showed her confidence in him and in her own stoical 
 fortitude. A cancerous breast was removed from a 
 woman at Tokyo, sixty years of age. No anaesthetic 
 was used, and not a groan or movement made.* In 
 that same city, a foreigner who spent a night with a 
 native, noticed about midnight a slight movement and 
 a few words spoken in the adjoining room, separated 
 by a thin paper partition. He soon dropped asleep 
 again. His host in the morning told the visitor that a 
 son had been born. The next day the guest saw the 
 mother, and expressed his surprise at the stillness 
 which attended the event. She replied, " O, we call a 
 woman stupid who cries out at such a time ! " 
 
 Men can be found at a criminal court ready, for 
 money, to bear the beating and torture. Even if de- 
 capitation is the penalty, heads are sometimes offered 
 as substitutes, so that the doomed man, unless his 
 crime be specially heinous, may buy his life and liberty. 
 But for this lessened nerve sensitiveness deaths under 
 
 * British Medical Journal, 1888, p. 1-165. 
 
OEIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. 2'J 
 
 terrific Chinese torture would be more common. Un- 
 til one has seen and handled the instruments by which 
 the body is sometimes crushed and mutilated, no con- 
 ception can be had of the brutality suffered. As a 
 remedy for sickness in a parent, a Chinaman some- 
 times slices off flesh from his own body. Dr. Dudgeon 
 has had cases to treat where serious results followed 
 self-mutilation. 
 
 The austerities of mendicants in the East illustrate 
 the same dulled nature. Shanghai once had four men 
 who played the part of Simon Stylites. One crawled 
 into a cage about three feet square, and was hoisted 
 forty feet into the air, where he remained with neither 
 food nor drink for seven days. He hoped to get money 
 for a temple. Some lie on spikes. The gift of a cer- 
 tain sum will pull out one spike. A man at Allahabad 
 endured fifty years of this self-crucifixion. Fihal self- 
 sacrifice illustrates the same stoicism. At Ningpo the 
 spirit of a dead daughter is still worshipped. She saw 
 her father baffled as to the working of a boiler furnace. 
 Inspired with the idea of sacrifice indigenous in the 
 Asiatic mind, she leaped into the fiery depths and was 
 consumed. The iron moulder ever afterward had great 
 success and wealth. A moral and physical insensi- 
 bility unite even in young children. Miss Gumming 
 saw some Ningpo boys greatly enjoying one day the 
 torture of rats, which they had dipped in oil and set 
 on fire. The boys I met while examining the crosses 
 and severed heads on the Execution Ground, Canton, 
 showed the same brutal instincts. These are a physi- 
 cal inheritance. A miniature city was once built at 
 the Summer Palace, Peking, a mile square, where the 
 Emperor might see on a small scale what his seclusion 
 from the real world did not allow him to see. Trades 
 
30 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 were carried on by imj)erial attendants, goods hawked 
 about, arrests made and real Hoggings intiicted, to the 
 anguish of the innocent actors, but to the amusement 
 of the Son of Heaven. The readiness with which an 
 Asiatic commits suicide is still another illustration of 
 moral obtuseness. So, too, the indifference shown in 
 taking another's life. The passengers on the East 
 Bengal Railway are warned by the poHce against tak- 
 ing anything from unknown persons, to eat or drink. 
 Water is poisoned as it is drawn from the well, and 
 sweetmeats as they are brought from the bazar. When 
 unconscious the victim is robbed. The history of 
 the Thugs may be read in this connection. 
 
 The use of opium is related to Oriental impassi- 
 bility. The habit is an expression of inborn tastes. 
 It also contributes to the perpetuation of deadened 
 sensibilities quite in harmony with the features of 
 self-abasement and immobility already noticed. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 ORIENTAL CIIARACTEEISTICS. 
 
 ORIENTAL MYSTICISM. 
 
 Western minds are analytic, philosophical, disputa- 
 tious, while Eastern thought is intuitive, nebulous and 
 transcendental. We make but little of inward voices, 
 vigils and self-illuminations, but the East is full of 
 dreamers, " ten thousand Emersons," idealists who 
 leave, as Carlyle says, the anchorage of an actual uni- 
 verse and soar away into the perilous altitudes of be- 
 liefs and revelations. Averse to logical reasoning and 
 mathematical consistency, they trust to impressions 
 and yield to the touch of a god within them. When 
 Mr. Joseph Cook asked one of the coadjutors of 
 Keshub Chunder Sen how the Brahmo Somaj dis- 
 tinguished between what it calls inspiration from above 
 and one's own individual thought, the evasive reply 
 was given, " That's one of the secrets of religious 
 genius." Reason is to be silenced as well as sense. 
 Personality is lost in an introspective vision. A di- 
 vine union is accomplished in a celestial ecstacy and 
 divine afflatus. Helpful to this process certain ob- 
 jects are used, with which occult meanings are asso- 
 ciated. These are made known, step by step, to the 
 initiated. Mr. Sen used various theistic symbols, bor- 
 rowed from heathenism, in the worship of his church ; 
 for example, lighting a basin of oil and burning sandal 
 sticks, one by one, saying, " Thus perish our lust and 
 pride." He also had Hindu dances and spectacular 
 
32 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 performances, which remiud an Orientalist of the rites 
 of Egyptian and Hellenic mystics. The criticism of 
 discerning men then Avas that "this composite set of 
 ceremonies and religious doctrines has in it so many 
 appeals to ancient Hindu prejudices, that it can never 
 lead the mass of the Hindu populations out of their 
 attachments and hereditary misbeliefs.* So it has 
 proved since his death in 1884. 
 
 Emerson himself admits the superiority of Western 
 over Eastern thought when he says that the former is 
 active and creative ; its philosophy is a discipline, and 
 it promotes art, commerce and freedom ; while " Asia 
 is the country of immovable institutions, the seat of a 
 philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful 
 in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, un- 
 implorable, immense fate." As Dr. Holmes has said, 
 " The Oriental side of Emerson's nature delighted it- 
 self in these narcotic dreams, born in the land of the 
 poppy and of hashish," and that his poem, Brahma, 
 was " a vacuum of intelligibility." " The geography 
 of an undiscovered country, and the soundings of an 
 ocean that has never been sailed over, may belong to 
 the realm of knowledge." t 
 
 There is no lack of literature on the subject, and he 
 who would understand the Oriental of to-day must 
 know the mystic of the past. Not that his knowledge 
 is transmissible, for " it begins and ends Avith the soli- 
 tary dreamer. The next Avho follows him has to build 
 his own cloud-castle, as if it Avere the first serial edifice 
 that a human soul had ever constructed." But the 
 causes that gave rise to mysticism, the methods by 
 
 * Orient (Joseph Cook, 1886), p. 121. 
 •f- Life of Emerson, (Holmes) p. 391. 
 
THE ORIENTAL HOME. 33 
 
 which it has so loug been fostered, and the practical 
 iutiiience it still has on Asiatic thought, demand pa- 
 tient and thorough investigation. It is not an unrea- 
 sonable demand made by Eastern Christians that some- 
 thing of the color and flavor of Oriental life should 
 mark the nascent thought of to-day. Each land has 
 its own mental atmosphere and perspective. New 
 comers must adapt themselves to it. Wisdom was not 
 born in the West. It will not die there. Light still 
 streams from the East. 
 
 THE OEIENTAL HOME. 
 
 An important ground of differentiation, not yet no- 
 ticed, is that which is furnished by the domestic life of 
 the Oriental. Mr. Seward once exclaimed, " There 
 are no homes in Asia ! " Only where Christianity pre- 
 vails is the conception of Home realized. Professor 
 Monier Williams finds in no Indian tongue " any equiv- 
 alent to that grand old Saxon monosyllable, Home, 
 that little word which is the key to our national great- 
 ness and prosperity." The word Zenana simply means 
 the place of women, a designation of apartments, where 
 females are kept as toys or drudges. " Home," he 
 says, " is the hallowed place of rest and of trustful in- 
 tercourse, where husbands and wives, brothers and 
 sisters, male and female relatives and friends, gather 
 together round the same hearth, in loving confidence 
 and mutual dependence, each and all working together 
 like the differently formed limbs of one body, for the 
 general good and for the glory of the great Creator." 
 According to Mr. Gladstone, the position of woman is 
 the one effective test of civilization. Her position in 
 India, he says, is midway between the extremes of 
 barbarism and Christianity. Japan is in advance of 
 
34 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 all Asiatic people iu the education of womau. In 1886 
 about one female out of eighteen in Japan was at 
 school, while in India there was hardly one in sixty 
 under instruction. There is a Brahminic saying, " To 
 educate a woman is to put a knife in the hand of a 
 monkey." The Indian wife of ancient times, it is true, 
 was spoken of in the Mahabharata as " half of man, 
 his truest fi-iend ; " but we also read iu Manu's code 
 that " she should be kept in a state of dependence, and 
 should be beaten with a bamboo cane if she commit 
 faults" (ix., 2, 3; viii., 299). Professor Wilson quotes 
 from Hindu tales which dwell on the depravity of wo- 
 men, making " their appetites two fold, their intellect 
 four, their lust eight fold." Pundit Sastri writes, " the 
 mean jealousies of our women have ruined the peace 
 of many a household, and caused the disruption in 
 many cases of once united, happy families." He at- 
 tributes tills to their ignorance and seclusion. The 
 Indian Mirror, when edited by Keshub Chunder Sen, 
 remarked that a home in Bengal was " a whited sepul- 
 chre ! There may be exceptions, but this is the rule. 
 The horrors of the Zenana are multiplied tenfold by 
 the misery of the joint family, and the degradation 
 which domestic ill-will produces." 
 
 THE JOINT FAMILY SYSTEM. 
 
 Western life makes the man a unit ; Eastern life 
 makes the family the social unit. We believe that 
 personal responsibility is quickened, industry fostered, 
 wealth, public spirit and patriotism developed b}^ dis- 
 tinct, individual family life, in place of the patriarchal 
 and joint household system. In the beginning of 
 society, when life and property were insecure, and food 
 difficult to obtain, this clannish feeling served a good 
 
THE JOINT FAMILY SYSTEM. 35 
 
 purpose. Self-preservation, clieap living and brother- 
 ly feeling were secured. But as society advances from 
 the archaic stage, this copartnership breeds evils. In 
 an economic view, indolence is one result of having all 
 things in common. There is little to encourage self- 
 exertion. One of the Hindu judges says that the idle 
 fatten on the industrious, seniors defraud the juniors, 
 and unpleasant friction is unavoidable. Fresh groups 
 of svibordinate families, with separate interests and 
 affections, make the jDartnership burdensome. Litiga- 
 tion is common where there is property, and this is 
 most demorahzing. The joint system in India, accord- 
 ing to Judge MuUick of Calcutta, " is destined to die a 
 sure death, and nothing on earth can save it." Re- 
 strictive legislation is needless. 
 
 In China the joint family system is a vital factor. 
 The economical support of households, the claims of 
 kinship, the proper cultivation of the soil and, above 
 all, the ancestral dignity of the family name, make it a 
 necessity, in their view. After the death of a father, 
 the eldest son is the representative head. He acts as 
 high priest of the families of the male children, when 
 sacrifices are offered to the ancestral manes. He is 
 the chief at bridal and burial. At his death his eldest 
 son, though an infant, succeeds to the rights of primo- 
 geniture. If there be no heir, a nephew or cousin is 
 adopted, so that some one in a direct hue may burn 
 incense to the spirits of the dead. There may be dif- 
 ferent heads of families, but only one head of the clan. 
 In Japan the idea of clan is feudal, and does not in- 
 volve the use of the same surname, as in China or in 
 Scotland. 
 
 There is a nearer approach to our home life among 
 the Japanese than among other Asiatics, but the status 
 
30 ORIENTAL CHAKACTERISTICS. 
 
 of woman is low. Professor Cliamborlaiii remarks : 
 " The greatest diicliess in the laud is still her husband's 
 drudge. She fetches and carries for him, bows down 
 humbly in the hall, waits upon him at meals, and may 
 be divorced at his good pleasure. In 1888, one mar- 
 riage in three ended in a divorce." * The seven 
 gi'ounds for separation are disobedience, dishonest}', 
 jealousy, loquacity, sterility, leprosy and lewdness. 
 The great moralist, Kaibara, ^VTitiug on the Whole 
 Duty of Woman, Onna Blagaku, says that seven- 
 tenths of his countrywomen are afflicted with " the five 
 worst maladies : indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy 
 and silliness. From these arises her inferiority to men. 
 Such is the stupidity of her character, that it is incum- 
 bent on her, in every particular, to distrust herself and 
 obey her husband." Miss Bacon says : " She must 
 bear all things from him with a smiling face, even to 
 the recei\ang with open arms into the household some 
 other woman whom she knows to bear the relation of 
 concubine to her own husband. As long as the wife 
 has no rights which the husband is l)ouud to respect, 
 no great advance can be made. European practice 
 cannot be grafted upon the Asiatic theory, but the 
 change in the home must be a radical one to secure 
 permanent good results." t If this be true in en- 
 lightened Japan, it is a more imperative need in other 
 parts of the Eastern world. 
 
 * Things Japanese (Kelly k Walsh, Yokohama), pp. 92-3r)G. 
 t Japanese Girls and Women (Boston, 1891), pp. 85-llC). 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 RELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 We are studying Asiatic Thought as a historic devel- 
 opment. The organizing forces have been found to be 
 physical, at the start, such as climate, soil, food and 
 material environments. These fundamental conditions 
 of civilization form the anatomy of national life. The 
 location of a continent, the configuration of its surface 
 and boundaries, its atmospheric vicissitudes, its scenic 
 aspects, its physical disturbances, the presence of wild 
 beasts and reptiles, with other physical factors, deter- 
 mine the character of its primitive population. These 
 genetic influences steadily mould its aboriginal life. 
 Not in saltatory or zigzag steps, but by a natural, pro- 
 gressive growth there is developed a national indi- 
 viduality. We have glanced at a few of the features 
 of Asiatic character, results of this historic evolution. 
 Repressive influences have tended to dwarf manhood 
 and quench self-respect. There is petrifaction and 
 immobility of life. Asiatics generally are imperturba- 
 ble and apathetic. Though passionate at times, they 
 ordinarily show languor and iudifi^erence. The aver- 
 age Oriental thinker is mystical, introspective, tran- 
 s^cendental. The domestic life of the East has fur- 
 nished still further data, and we now naturally come to 
 the more vital elements of Eastern Thought, expressed 
 in its religious life. Here are concrete results of forces 
 already studied. They are also causes. Historically 
 
38 llELIGION IX THE EAST. 
 
 they appear both as antecedents and products. Tlieir 
 corelation and interaction arc apparent. 
 
 It is well to consider the generic idea of religion 
 in the East. All men worship. We may traverse the 
 world, as Plntarch has remarked, and find cities with- 
 out walls and without wealth, without kings and with- 
 out coins, but never without prayer and worship. The 
 Ashantee rain-maker and the Arcadian shepherd, the 
 Parsee and Moslem alike feel " the broodings of some 
 Over-soul." Professor Tyndall truly says, " No athe- 
 istic reasoning can dislodge religion from the heart of 
 man. As an experience of the consciousness it is per- 
 fectly beyond the assaults of logic." Of newly-dis- 
 covered tribes in the heart of the Dark Continent, Dr. 
 Livingstone says, " They have clear ideas of the Su- 
 preme God." 
 
 The Eastern races specially show how universal and 
 ineradicable is this religious conviction. Primitive, 
 unphilosophical people seem to be more responsive in 
 spiritual instincts than we, whose visional grasp of the 
 unseen is hampered by our education. Their languages 
 are freighted with figures which show how warm and 
 luxuriant their imagination is. Natu.re to them is vital, 
 vivid, inspiring. Fancy, though rude, is creative and 
 picturesque. The transition to the supernatural is easy 
 where the imagination is alert, clairvoyant and un- 
 fettered by reason. 
 
 PKIMITIVE MONOTHEISM. 
 
 The learned Schlegel remarked that his studies of 
 ancient religion convinced him that men started with 
 the worship of the Supreme Being, but that the power 
 of nature over the imagination introduced polytheism 
 and obscured the more spiritual ideas, which were pre- 
 
PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM. 39 
 
 served a secret by tlie wise alone. Popular thought 
 flowed in this channel, while the few thinkers saw a 
 unity in natural phenomena, and recognized a center 
 and source of aU things. Semitic races held to the 
 one invisible God, while the Aryan deified second 
 causes, and the Turanian trembled before the Un- 
 known. " The watersheds of language have been the 
 great watersheds of thought. In the search for the 
 ideal these great races have taken different directions. 
 The Turanian, impressed with a vague and childish 
 sense of the mysterious, has not yet advanced into the 
 idealizing stage. To the nomads of Northern Asia 
 God is awful, undefined. The ideal of the Chinese is 
 a perfectly organized government." * A panoramic 
 view of ethnic religions, like that which Humboldt's 
 Cosmos gives of men's conceptions of nature in suc- 
 cessive historic epochs, would here be inviting, but 
 delay us from the more practical ends in view. 
 
 The monotheism of the Jew became the deism of 
 the Moslem. It is declared in the Zendavesta that 
 Abraham taught the religion it records. Leading 
 Arabian writers claim this to be true of Brahminism, 
 equally with Persian Magianism, as shown by Hyde 
 in his elaborate work a century ago. t It is said that 
 to-day the Brahmins of the Coromandel Coast hold to 
 the idea of one, independent, perfect, Supreme Being ; 
 and when a young Brahmin receives his sacred cord, 
 his father says to him privately, " Kemember, my son, 
 there is but one God, and every Brahmin is bound to 
 worship Him in secret." X This is, however, a theoretic 
 
 * Origin and Development of Religious Belief (S. Baring Gouldj, 
 vol. i., p. 69. 
 
 t Historia Religionis Veterum Parsarum . 
 X Moeurs des Indes (Du Bose), tome i., 225. 
 
40 KELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 and not a practical principle. Nature is made the 
 inactive, inferior part of the great Invisible. This 
 Being has no interest in human affairs. Orientals re- 
 gard any form of labor on the part of their sovereign 
 as derogatory to imperial dignity. Furthermore, evil 
 is regarded as inherent in matter. But the idea of 
 God will focus itself on single objects as centers of a 
 spu-itual essence. However ludicrous the expression 
 of this natural impulse, the principle is legitimate. 
 We are wont to make one place, one person, one ob- 
 ject more significant than another in our worship, in 
 our social, commercial and political life. A cheque is 
 but a bit of paper and ink, yet it is more. A national 
 banner is but a bit of bunting, yet it is more. So corn, 
 wine and oil, the dog and cow have played a part in 
 worship for ages. Comte traces the domestication of 
 animals and plants, the basis of agriculture and indus- 
 try, to this universal adoration in primitive religion. 
 To the natural expression of ideas in symbols we owe 
 the arts of writing, painting and sculpture. But when 
 the spiritual significance is lost and the worship of the 
 symbol remains, idolatry is the result, 
 
 IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The immortaUty of the soul has been another article 
 in ethnic rehgion. The deification of dead ancestors 
 proves it. The methods of interment and monumental 
 inscriptions show it. The Book of the Dead records 
 the belief of the ancient Egyptians in future felicity 
 and woe, rewards and punishments. The mysteries of 
 Isis, Mithras, Cybele and Eleusis appealed to the im- 
 agination of the initiated by scenic representations 
 which contrasted the states of the good and the bad in 
 the other world. 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 41 
 
 Referring to this belief, the Greek poet Pindar 
 says: 
 
 " The righteous pass a tearless age, 
 The wicked are in frightful pain. " 
 
 The Tartarus and Elysium pictured by Yirgil, Bishop 
 Warburton believes to be an implicit copy of what 
 these esoteric teachings exhibited. Dodona's oracle, 
 the Babylonian, Hellespontic and Erythrean shrines 
 were centers of illumination, in some sense divine. 
 Here men, like Balaam fourteen centuries before 
 Christ, sought God, if haply they might feel after Him 
 and find Him, who has promised to every nation that 
 he w^ho feareth God and worketh righteousness is ac- 
 cepted of Him. 
 
 Turn to India. Her monumental records are said to 
 make the pyramids seem young. Bailly makes their 
 astronomy five thousand years old. Vernon Harcourt 
 finds their ancient traditions supported by strongest 
 linguistic proofs, and in their mythologic characters 
 and historic remains, the solution of problems involved 
 in the history of Indo-Germanic nations in general. 
 The Upanishads, or mystic portion of the Vedas, re- 
 veal a heavenly city, palace, throne, river and gardens. 
 The city of Indra is forty miles high. Buildings of 
 gold and precious stones are there ; fruits and fiowers, 
 perfume and beauty by the banks of the ageless stream 
 and the tree of Ilya, where the crown of eternal youth 
 is given. But this is but a beginning. Another city, 
 Vishnu's home, is a hundred times larger than Indra. 
 Ascending and descending souls may spend uncounted 
 years in their migrations. One theory makes a man 
 pass through eight million births. Ample accommo- 
 dations for sinners of high and low degree are found 
 
42 RELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 in twenty-one hells. Not only books, but plastic and 
 pictorial art present terrific conceptions of physical 
 torment in the endless life beyond. 
 
 HEATHEN SACRIFICES. 
 
 Human sacrifices prevailed in India for more than 
 two thousand years. The suttee was abolished in 
 1830, after not a little debate, for England had prom- 
 ised not to interfere with Hindu religion. While the 
 discussion went on, for a long time there were from 
 three hundred to eight hundred widows burned alive 
 each year.'^ In the temple of Heliopolis three men 
 were daily slain, until King Amasis ordered the burn- 
 ing of tapers instead. Standing at the shrine of Karli 
 at Calcutta, looking at the bloody floor where a goat 
 had been offered to a god, I recalled the fact of human 
 sacrifices, and saw in this substitution one proof of the 
 dominance of English ci\dlization. 
 
 Voluntary as well as compulsory oft'erings — not of 
 life only, but what the giver esteems dearer than life, 
 virginity — is another revolting feature of ethnic re- 
 ligion. Ai-abian maidens once were wedded to a god 
 by a death in the flames; but in the worship of My- 
 htta candidates for defloration crowded the avenue to 
 the temple so closely that it was difficult for one to 
 select in turn his partner. Some waited for years. t I 
 saw a Hindu at Jeypore, now an elder in a Christian 
 church, who once was a participant in heathen orgies. 
 His testimony is such that it cannot be put into print. 
 It justifies the language of Bishop Heber as to India : 
 
 " Where every prospect pleases, 
 And only man is vile." 
 
 * Hindu Literature (E. A. Reed, 1891, S. C. Griggs & Co.), p. 66. 
 f Herodotus, i., 193. De Syria Dca (Lucian) chap. vi. 
 
RELIGION A REGNANT POWER. 48 
 
 Quoting these words iu au address in New York, a 
 theosophist once exclaimed, " What a. lie / " His im- 
 pudence was only equalled by his ignorance. People 
 who have never been in a heathen community, and 
 have never known the " depths of Satan," by per- 
 sonal inspection, as medical men may, can sneer at 
 facts, but the sad truth remains, for all that. 
 
 RELIGION A EEGNANT POWER. 
 
 Eeligion enters into everything. The Hindus, for 
 example, eat, drink, toil, siri, religiously. Their gods 
 are vile. The book which two-thirds of the Hindus 
 call their bible is untranslateable in its vileness. The 
 word priest is used as a climax, when other words of 
 abuse have been exhausted. With such gods and 
 guides what can be expected of the people ? Religion 
 controls all their activities. It is not, as with many of 
 us, a Sunday matter, but an all-pervasive, ul^iquitous 
 and imperious power. It is a mighty historic force, 
 the growth of centuries, gigantic yet flexible, and ac- 
 commodating itself to varying conditions. It has been 
 compared to an immense glacier, slowly moving down 
 from a mountain, gathering up stones and debris, yet 
 adapting itself to the configuration of the mountain. 
 This flexibility characterizes the religious system of 
 China, and so unites the ethical, physical and meta- 
 physical ; morality, idolatry and superstition in one 
 mighty controlling power. Strict Confucianism op- 
 poses idolatry and inculcates a splendid morality. So 
 the pure, exalted Vedic teachings deserve all praise. 
 But neither are a practical, redeeming force. The 
 Chinaman recognizes a triple compound of idolatry. 
 He makes a friendly alliance of various systems, to 
 suit his social or political surroundings. 
 
44 RELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 He dovetails, as Dr. Du Bose expresses it, Confucian- 
 ism, Buddhism and Taoism, using temple, image and 
 ritual, priest, slirine and song, as convenience or policy 
 may suggest. Theoretically, the first is the State re- 
 ligion, and its temples are maintained by imperial 
 revenues. But Buddhist monasteries are also endowed 
 by government, and deceased dignitaries of state be- 
 come gods in Taoist temples. A hundred priests of 
 one class and a hundred of the other, with the man- 
 darins between them, have been seen at one time and 
 in one temple engaged in worship, just as in Kome 
 worshipping senators surrounded Elagabalus as he 
 celebrated the Syrian worship of the sun, side by side, 
 perhaps, with the devotees of the Babylonian Mylitta, 
 or those of Isaic and Scrapie worship from the Nile. 
 
 Gibbon was not mistaken in his conception of the 
 policy of paganism. It was not aggressive and pre- 
 scriptive, but it utilized superstition as a power more 
 serviceable than armies. The gods and worship of 
 every nation had a place in the Pantheon. " All were 
 considered by the people as equally true ; by the phil- 
 osophers as equally false, and by the magistrate as 
 equally useful." 
 
 Look at Japan. Is its heathenism prescriptive? 
 No ; it is tolerant and inclusive, as in China. Ancient 
 Shinto, without sacred books, dogmas and moral code, 
 a worship of deified rulers of heroes, was a political 
 ceremonial. In the sixth century after Christ its de- 
 crepitude began, as Buddhism introduced its ritualistic 
 attractions and ethical features. Shinto temples then 
 came to be served by the priests of Buddha, who add- 
 ed the forms of their own worship. Eecently a tem- 
 porary revival of Shinto took place, but " It had no 
 root in itself, being too empty and jejune to influence 
 
RELIGION A REGNANT TOWER. 45 
 
 tlie heart of men. Buddhism soon rallied. Though 
 Shinto is still the official cult — in so far that certain 
 temples are maintained out of public moneys, and at- 
 tendance of certain officials is required from time to 
 time at ceremonies of a half religious, half courtly 
 nature — the whole thing is now a mere shadow." * 
 The literary classes are largely indifferent or agnostic, 
 but the common people remain practically idolators. 
 Social life, business and pleasure are all tinctured with 
 heathenism. The Japanese drama, for instance, is 
 traced to the religious dances of antiquity, attended 
 with recitations, comic and historic, and choric songs. 
 Japanese literature, rich in romances in which court- 
 esans play their part — not all debased by sinful pas- 
 sion, but in many cases in obedience to the strange 
 demands of filial piety — the prevalence of concubinage 
 throughout the Empire, the worship of the seven gods 
 of luck, visits to the graves of the dead, and a multi- 
 tude of other customs show how thoroughly idolatrous 
 the Japanese are to-day. So simple an act as tea- 
 drinking has a heathen history. Seven centuries ago 
 a Buddhist abbot wrote a tract on the subject, intro- 
 duced a sacred ceremonial, told how to make and 
 drink the infusion amid the smoke of incense and beat 
 of drum in honor of the dead. Ever since, it is said, 
 a flavor of this superstition has clung to tea-drinking, 
 particularly in the Zen sect. Action and gesture, the 
 washing of hands, the ringing of a bell, the touching of 
 the canister, handling flower and scroll, with other 
 formalities, have been fixed by priestly ritualism. 
 
 I remember how pathetic an appeal to their gods 
 was made by some sailors at Canton, who were trying 
 
 * Things Japanese (Professor B. H. Chamberlain), p. 311. 
 
46 RELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 to raise from the deck a new mast into position. There 
 were a dozen of them. They had raised it by means 
 of spiked poles to a perilous angle. It halted and 
 hung in air, as did the red monolith at Rome, three 
 hundred years ago, when Bresca shouted, " Wet the 
 ropes ! " but for which it would have fallen. At this 
 juncture one of the men took a bunch of fire-crackers, 
 apparently at hand for the occasion, and exploded 
 them. It was an invocation, or recognition of a power 
 beyond their own. The mast slowly rose to its place. 
 So I have seen my boatwoman, or her child, light the 
 incense before the miniature shrine as we started on a 
 river trip, and have felt again how all-pervasive is the 
 religious element in Eastern life. 
 
 One who comes within the sphere of Asian thought 
 will soon learn lo appreciate this feeling in dealing, 
 not only with idolators, but with native converts. 
 Social usages, business relations, political life, lan- 
 guage itself, nay, the very air, earth and sky are vehi- 
 cles of this sentiment. Nothing is too high or too low 
 to be reached by it. The imaginative faculty, as we 
 have seen, is very active from earliest infancy. Hel- 
 lenic children at their sports cried out when the sun- 
 shine was obscured by a passing cloud, " Come forth, 
 beloved Sun ! " as if it were a playmate hidden.* So 
 the Oriental to-day lives his out-door life in closer 
 contact with nature than we. Over land and sea, field 
 and forest, gi-ove and garden, uncounted deities are 
 brooding. The movements of the wind and water, of 
 bird, insect or reptile are auguries or omens. The 
 drought that withers, the flood that overwhelms, the 
 mildew and murrain that destroy, are expressions of a 
 
 Hellenes (St. John), vol. i., p. 149. 
 
RELIGION A REGNANT POWER. 47 
 
 power that must be propitiated. In every hamlet in 
 China, during the first moon, the god of agriculture is 
 worshipped with offerings of food, fruit and flowers. 
 Processions are formed and theatrical exhibitions are 
 ordered in his honor. The building of a house, the 
 forming of a business partnership, the date of a mar- 
 riage, bridal and burial, the location of a tomb, feasts, 
 games, the handicrafts of men, domestic employments 
 and affairs of state are all governed by some reference 
 to the Unseen. What Ingraham Kip said of the speech 
 of primitive Christians, in his Early Conflicts of Chris- 
 tianity, is substantially true now : " The phrases of 
 common life were filled with allusions to their popular 
 religion ; words of affection and worship were so en- 
 twined that it seemed impossible to banish the one and 
 retain the other. Good wishes became chilled and un- 
 meaning, when they dropped the customary allusions 
 to the gods of their faith. The adoption of Christian- 
 ity, therefore, alienated them and severed the dearest 
 bonds of life." As then, so now, language in the East 
 is everywhere so saturated wdth pagan thought, it has 
 to be remodelled. It is a cheering fact that in India 
 and elsewhere the Enghsh tongue has ennobled, where 
 it has not wholly superseded, the vernacular of hea- 
 thenism. 
 
 This brief survey points to a practical suggestion. 
 We are not to approach the Oriental in an intolerant 
 or disputations temper, as too many have done, in- 
 sensitive to influences which for ages have moulded 
 his thought and life. We are not to be so impressed 
 with the authority of our belief as to show disdain for 
 his. Paul, at Athens, began with a compliment rather 
 than a taunt : " I perceive that in all things you are 
 very devout." We may recognize this worshipful 
 
48 RELIGION IN THE EAST. 
 
 spirit without at all compromising the truth. We can 
 adapt our thought to his mental horizon, awaken his 
 interest, equalize his sensibilities, and so disarm his 
 opposition, when we may not secure his acquiescence. 
 An educated Japanese who has spent several years in 
 America, whom I met at Tokyo, looking at the matter 
 from the position of an influential gentleman, writes : 
 " Japan is already tired of soothsayers, theorists, ser- 
 mon-makers. I believe that I am speaking the senti- 
 ments of my nation when I tell you that we care at 
 present more for earnestness and conviction than for 
 views. We would see men who love us and give them- 
 selves for our sakes, as the Saviour of mankind did ; 
 those who have had spiritual experiences as practical 
 realities, and who can treat of the things of the Spirit 
 just as definitely as that which they have seen, touched 
 and felt. Let each be thoroughly convinced of what 
 he believes, else the sharp-witted heathen will not 
 hearken to him. We need here only men of moral 
 earnestness, who can give fruits of their own experi- 
 ence, taught through discipline and mental struggles 
 of many years." 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 " The Past shall always wear 
 A glory from being far." 
 
 Tennyson is riglit. There is no lens like distance. 
 It magnifies and gives enchantment to the view. The 
 antiquity of Eastern lore invites attention. But the 
 opulence of these treasures is more than their age. 
 Let us glance at a few items of this wealth. The 
 author of What can India teach us? has well said 
 that no "Western thinker can there be an intellectual 
 exile, for in India the human mind has busied itself 
 with hfe's greatest problems, and found solutions that 
 deserve our consideration. There, an intellectual world 
 can be studied from the beginning of national thought, 
 along its historic development up to the highest stages. 
 There, the most subtle philosophies, the most elaborate 
 laws and the most primitive religions have had their 
 home for ages. The study of ancient Yedic verse has 
 laid the basis of a science of mythology. It has cleared 
 up questions of philology, such as the growth and de- 
 cay of dialects and the mixture of languages. It has 
 shown us legends older than the time of Solomon. 
 
 THE SANSCRIT. 
 
 Through the whole history of this part of the Ori- 
 ent, says Max Muller, there runs a highway of litera- 
 ture for thousands of years, in which are found the 
 
50 THE SANSCRIT. 
 
 true representatives of the people from age to age. 
 The record of their uoble thought is instructive, so are 
 their puerihties and monstrosities. The ten thousand 
 MSS. of the Sanscrit now in existence have a human 
 interest. Though for more than twenty centuries it 
 has been what we call a dead language, it has given 
 life and soul to all the living tongues of that wide em- 
 pire, both Aryan and Dra vidian. " Such is the mar- 
 velous continuity of the past and present, Sanscrit 
 may be said to be still the only language that is 
 spoken over the whole extent of that vast country ; 
 more widely understood in India than Latin was in 
 Europe at the time of Dante. Whenever I receive a 
 letter from a learned man in India, it is written in 
 Sanscrit. Whenever there is a controversy on ques- 
 tions of law and religion, the pamphlets in India are 
 written in Sanscrit." Thousands of Brahmins, adds 
 Max Muller, can repeat from memory the entire Big- 
 veda and other books. Recitations of these ancient 
 epic poems are given to crowds in viUage temples, 
 continuing weeks or even months. Journals are pub- 
 hshed in this tongue, commentaries and treatises on 
 philosophy. 
 
 Moreover, ease, purity and elegance in the use of 
 the dialects in common use come from acquaintance 
 with this parent tongue. This is the most perfect ever 
 known, according to Bosworth, and ver}^ nearly a 
 primitive language, inasmuch as all its words are com- 
 posed of its own elements, free from exotic terms. It 
 is the polished tongue, as the name indicates. It em- 
 balms not only epic, lyric, didactic and dramatic poe- 
 try, but philosophic criticism, the germs of jurispru- 
 dence, of dramatical science, linguistic analysis, lexi- 
 cogi-aphy, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy 
 
LANGUAGE, LITERATUKE AND ART. 51 
 
 and medicine. It has been called the mediator and 
 interpreter of the differences which divided Greek, 
 Latin, Slavonic and Teutonic tongues. As soon as 
 " the eldest sister of them all stepped in, there came 
 light, warmth and mutual recognition. They all ceased 
 to be strangers, and each fell of its own accord into its 
 right place." 
 
 Oriental literature, read in the Orient, has a plenary 
 significance and beauty in keeping with the brilliancy 
 and tropical luxuriance about you. Last year I sailed 
 from Hong Kong to Bombay and back, day after day, 
 for six thousand miles, floating over Indian seas that 
 seemed charmed into stillness, where the weaves slept 
 and the heavens were bright, surrounded by luxurious 
 comfort, ^Ndth ample opportunity for reading and study. 
 I remember how impressively the fact came home to 
 me one day that seventeen centuries before Christ and 
 seventeen centuries after Christ, the god of thunder 
 was invoked by the same name, by Hindus of the In- 
 dus and peasants on the borders of Prussia. This bit 
 of linguistic unity taught me the continuity of life and 
 language through all time. It acted like a mystic word 
 to introduce me into the hidden past and to show 
 prostrate worshippers on the plains of India before 
 Moses was born, recognizing the same deity that men 
 in modern times have ignorantly adored. It is " as if 
 we saw the blood suddenly beginning to flow again 
 through the veins of old mummies, or as if Egyptian 
 statues were to speak again. All that is old becomes 
 new, all that is new becomes old, and that one word, 
 Parganya, seems, like a charm, to open before our eyes 
 the cave or cottage in which the fathers of the Aryan 
 race — our own fathers, whether we live on the Baltic 
 or the Indian ocean — are seen gathered together tak- 
 
52 THE SEMITIC TONGUES. 
 
 iiig refuge from the buckets of Pargaiiya." But we 
 are only on the threshold of this department. Other 
 landmarks of study may be rapidly noted. 
 
 THE SEMITIC TONGUES. 
 
 Professor Noldeke of Strasburg sees a closer kinship 
 between these than exists between Indo-European 
 languages. The Hebrew, Phoenician, Assyrian, Ara- 
 maic, Arabic and Etliiopic sIioav common characteris- 
 tics in the order and form of sentences, in vowel 
 changes, consonant roots and verbal stems. The first 
 two are dialects of one language. The Aramaic, as a 
 cultivated language, became dominant before Christ, 
 and was used by Arabs before theirs had been reduced 
 to writing ; but after ten centuries it was supplanted 
 by the Arabic. Islam raised this to the dignity of a 
 sacred tongue when Bedouins brought half the world 
 under their sway. It became the vehicle of poetry, 
 law, religion, business and science, while Assyrian — of 
 close kin to Hebrew — survived the destruction of Nin- 
 eveh as a sacerdotal speech, the vernacular of the 
 official and scholar. 
 
 Continuous immigration into Africa by various Se- 
 mitic people with diverse dialects, introduced heter- 
 ogeneous elements and linguistic corruptions into the 
 languages of that region. The roots of the Coptic in 
 Egypt, and its grammatic structure, bear the impress 
 of the Semitic, while comparative philologists, pointing 
 out its monosyllabism, see a similarity to the Syriac. 
 Stuart Poole of the British Museum says that Egyp- 
 tian literature is disappointing. " So imsystematic is 
 it that it has not given to us the connected history of 
 a single reign, or a really intelligible account of a 
 single campaign. The religious documents are still 
 
LAInGUAGE, LITEltAlUKE AND AKT. 53 
 
 less orderly than the historical. It is only by the 
 severe work of some of the ablest critics during the 
 last fifty years, that from these disjointed materials a 
 consistent whole has been constructed. The Book of 
 the Dead must remain a marvel of confusion and pov- 
 erty of thought. The temple inscriptions are singu- 
 larly stilted and wanting in variety, but the papyri 
 contain some hymns which are of a finer style." 
 
 EGYPTIAN AET. 
 
 The country and climate afforded the best means of 
 symbolizing the leading idea of Egyptian religion in 
 material forms of life. Life after death was that idea, 
 and it found expression in the construction of tombs 
 as lasting as the rocks on which they rested. He 
 sees the double origin of the race in the contradic- 
 tions of their character, the bright elements of Ni- 
 gi"itian temperament shadowed by Semitic solemnity, 
 and the generous cpialities of Semites perverted by the 
 lower impulses of Nigritiaus. Plain in dress and sim- 
 ple in food, they were luxurious in ornaments and 
 given to excess in wine ; scrupulous as to family ties, 
 careless as to morals. While making the construction 
 of a tomb the chief object in life, and the funeral the 
 most costly personal event, the Egyptians delighted in 
 music, dancing and caricature, even in the scenes of 
 a burial. Their art is not florid and glaring, but in 
 keeping with its serious aim, which is religious and 
 historic. The stately shaft may be reeded, fluted or 
 embellished with grouped clusters of the lotus, but its 
 massive grandeur remains. While Arabic art did not 
 allow animal figures, Egyptian lions of Gebol Barkal, 
 now in the British Museum, are regarded the finest 
 idealization of animal forms that any age has pro- 
 
54 EGYPTIAN ART. 
 
 diiced. Professor Hayter Lewis of London University 
 admires the early Assyrian art, and notes the dehcacy 
 and truthfulness of treatment, especially in the ani- 
 mals. He differs from that hater, Euskin, who says 
 " mud-bred onion-eating creatures built Nineveh after 
 a monarch's design." But then, he thought the orna- 
 mentation of the Alhambra was detestable. Tastes 
 differ. 
 
 Oriental languages and art are chiefly instructive as 
 records of history and mirrors of thought, apart from 
 intrinsic excellencies or defects. The civil, mortuary 
 and domestic architecture of the East reflect the life of 
 the people, indicate climatic influences and mark so- 
 cial, religious and political epochs. As Buddhism 
 modified Indian art, epitomizing in metal, wood and 
 stone the degrading conceptions of its cult, so Ionian 
 art left its refining influence on sculpture long after 
 the Greek invasion, 327 B. C. Hellenic ideas of beauty 
 are embodied in the statuary of the Punjab and the 
 sun temple of the Orissa shore. Then the invasions of 
 Mahometanism, from A. D. 664 onward, have left their 
 mark on Hindu art, down to the end of the Mogul 
 dynasty. As I looked on the Pearl Mosque and the 
 Taj at Agra, or the superb beauty of buildings at Del- 
 hi, studying each fanciful foliation, curious wreath, 
 scroll and fiet, with spandrils inlaid with jasper, 
 sapphire, amethyst and other precious stones, I was 
 reading human history more than merely analyzing 
 architecture. 
 
 We of the West are restless and capricious, governed 
 by mercantile considerations and by fashion plates in 
 our aesthetic temper. We lack the finer instincts of 
 less cultivated people. Jarves says that " A Polyne- 
 sian, Hindu or native of Japan sucks in with his 
 
1:8 ^iiolei^v 
 
LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. 5;) 
 
 mother's milk a sense so keeu and clairvoyant in re- 
 spect to ornament, that he appears as if endowed with 
 a special faculty for it of an almost spiritual apprehen- 
 sion. Textile fabrics made by Oriental fingers and 
 toes surpass those of Europe made with the best scien- 
 tific machinery. The subtlest laws of design and col- 
 oring are shown in their construction, as also in the 
 enamels, porcelains and lacquer work, which as far 
 surpass the dainty prettiuess of Sevres and Dresden as 
 their porcelain is finer than ordinary- crockery. Their 
 fancy in design and color is based on a closer insight 
 into nature than Europeans display in their decorative 
 art. It seems equally founded in realism and mysti- 
 cism. While nothing can be more accurate than their 
 observation and comprehension of the forms of life, 
 they baptize facts in the waters of an imagination that 
 has no counterpart in the European mind for versatil- 
 ity of invention and strangeness of types." 
 
 THE VALUE OF MUSEUMS. 
 
 The suggestion of Jarves as to the value of ethno- 
 logical museums as moral teachers is timely. The 
 museum is a vivid, tangible revelation, a truthful ex- 
 position of the character of a people, and so an inter- 
 preter of enigmas of history. It levels vanity and 
 supplants pride ; shows the good and evil without dis- 
 guise, and dispels misconceptions. India itself has 
 been called a living ethnological museum. So is 
 Egypt and Asia Minor, as well as the Far East. The 
 gift of Mr. Schiff of New York, a large-hearted Semite 
 and promoter of Semitic study, lays the foundation of 
 a Semitic Museum at Harvard University. The recent 
 opening of such a treasure-house of Oriental literature 
 and art is an evidence of the awakened interest in 
 
56 THE VALUE OF MUSEUMS. 
 
 Eastern Life already referred to. Here are rare He- 
 brew, Arabic and Syriac MSS., probably the best col- 
 lection of photographs, finely inscribed Babylonish 
 cylinders of clay, Assyrian tablets recording the story 
 of creation and the flood, books of Nebnchaduezzar 
 and the stone monument of Shalmaneser II., with the 
 pictured eftigies of the captive Israelites bringing him 
 tribute. 
 
 Wealth expended in creating and endowing such an 
 institution is a princely ofiering to sound learning, and 
 directly promotive of the highest culture of a Christian 
 community. Professor Rawlinson has noted the health- 
 ful reaction in sentiment since 1863, when one of the 
 oldest English reviews expressed a scornful indifl^er- 
 ence to Oriental studies, and attempted to belittle the 
 work of ChampoUion and Sir Henry Rawlinson. He 
 would have these studies a part of the university 
 course, and especially urges the English-speaking peo- 
 ple, who pride themselves upon an open bible, to be- 
 come more thoroughly acquainted with the Land that 
 gave us the Book. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 LANGUAGE, LITFAIATURK AND ART. 
 
 It was at Macao, that picturesque city bj the sea — 
 the Gem of the Orient, as this delightful sanitarium is 
 called by Sir John Bowring — that some of the choicest 
 Avorks of modern sinalogues first came in my way. 
 For half a century this quaint, drowsy old Portuguese 
 town has been the retreat of scholars and missionary 
 workers from time to time, driven by summer heat or 
 political disturbances in Canton and elsewhere to seek 
 a refuge in its quiet and salubrious quarters. I well 
 remember with what pleasure I found in one of the 
 rooms of the large, lordly house which was my abode — 
 built and once occupied by a foreign nobleman — a 
 library of volumes illustrative of Chinese life and liter- 
 ature. This was an attraction that rivalled the gar- 
 dens of Camoens. The brilliant Praya and the pano- 
 rama from the loft}^ fort and lighthouse were not so 
 enticing as these well-worn books whose contents cov- 
 ered centuries of Oriental life. 
 
 The language and literature of China have l)een so 
 fully treated by those early pioneers, Gutzlatf, Morri- 
 son, Marshman, Medhurst, Milne, Bridgeman and 
 Williams, not to speak of Edkins, Faber and others 
 still living, and other Oriental scholars here and in Eu- 
 rope, that the student of Eastern life will not lack for 
 materials. Only a few suggestions will be offered. The 
 antiquity, the fecundit}' and the unique features of 
 
58 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AM) ART. 
 
 Chinese thought and expression arrest attention. Here 
 is the most archaic form of hinguage ; first hiero- 
 glyphic, but now ideophonetic, every word a root and 
 each root a word. It is monosylhibic, without an 
 alphabet, devoid of inflexion or even agglutination, 
 having nouns without gender or declension, and verbs 
 without conjugation. The thirty or forty thousancT 
 characters are represented to the ear by about five 
 hundred syllabic sounds. To meet this exigency, six, 
 eight or ten tones are used. Thus confusion grows 
 confounded. The bewildered student is ready to adopt 
 the belief of some that this language is the work of the 
 devil. It certainly is not wanting in diabolical feat- 
 ures. Some saintliness of temper is needed for its 
 study and a great deal of heroism for its mastery. 
 
 THE GREAT CHINESE WALL. 
 
 This perplexing tongue is the real barrier which 
 encircles the whole empire, in comparison with which 
 the massive masonry built B. C. 204, by the Napoleon 
 of China, for fifteen hundred miles along its northern 
 boundary, is but a trivial aflair. " Its history has al- 
 ways been so completely isolated from the rest of the 
 world it did not enter into the study of those civiliza- 
 tions which have entered into our own." So wrote 
 LeNormant to justify his omission of China in his 
 Ilistorie Aiicienne de V Orient. 
 
 The vertical position of the characters is one sign of 
 the great antiquity of the tongue. Like the Chaldean, 
 the Chinese used some long leaf, like the papyrus, or 
 stalks, for writing purposes. This was befora clay tab- 
 lets came into use, and more enduring materials for 
 cuneiform inscriptions. A knowledge of the antique 
 style of writing is needed to understand ancient clas- 
 
BURNING OF BOOKS. 59 
 
 sics. Between that and the colloquial is the academic, 
 which is less concise than the former and less diffuse 
 than the latter. The training of youth in the study 
 of arbitrary characters and memorizing unmeaning 
 sounds hi'.s a dwarfing and sterilizing influence, fltly 
 compared to the trees which are stunted and put into 
 jars. Their deformity of appearance is in keeping 
 with the insipidity of their fruit. Still, we must ad- 
 mire the patient industry that produced a mass of 
 literature amazing in extent. Think, for example, of a 
 single treatise on therapeutics in forty volumes, with 
 references to over seven hundred other medical works ! 
 In the Imperial palace there is a manuscript encyclo- 
 pedia in 22,937 volumes, the result of eight thousand 
 years' toil. Two thousand men wrote on it for four 
 years. Three centuries later, in 1726, The Cream of 
 Chinese Literature, so called, was published in five 
 thousand volumes. It can be seen in the British Mu- 
 
 BURNING OF BOOKS. 
 
 But for the memorizing power of native scholars 
 much of China's literature would not now be in ex- 
 istence, for the same emperor who made himself fam- 
 ous by building the Great Wall made himself infamous 
 by a wholesale burning of books throughout the em- 
 pire. Science, art, history and records of early ages 
 were destroyed. Four hundred and sixty scholars 
 were detected in trying to secrete and save their liter- 
 ary treasures. They were put to death by burial 
 alive. Yet there were others who kneAV the Confucian 
 classics so thoroughly that " the whole w^ere soon 
 faultlessly reproduced." The successor of this vandal 
 was a friend of learning, and did much to repair the 
 
GO LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. 
 
 mischief of the Son of H — (not Heaven) who called 
 himself the first emperor of united China. A revival 
 of letters followed. From hollow trees, caverns of the 
 earth and beds of rivers, even, and from the lips of 
 aged men and women came contributions, verbal, in- 
 scribed and printed. One blind man knew by heart 
 a good portion of the Book of History. Tablets of 
 wood, engraved bamboo sticks and priceless books, 
 concealed at risk of life, were brought forth. After 
 two centuries, eleven thousand volumes were repro- 
 duced. 
 
 " All China is an immense library," said the great 
 traveler, Hue. Maxims and sentences are inscribed 
 on shops, houses, pagodas, tribunals and monuments. 
 Not only in the homes of the rich, in corridor and 
 apartment, on teacup, plate, vase and fan do you see 
 quotations from various classics, but in the hovels of 
 the poor you find the cheap scroll of red paper on the 
 wall, with large characters to catch the eye and im- 
 press the mind. There is a great bronze bell at Pe- 
 king, forty-five feet in circumference, cast five hundred 
 years ago. There is inscribed on the surface, inside 
 and out, an entire classic, containing eighty-four thou- 
 sand characters. The eye is everywhere appealed to. 
 He who runs may read. The directions given to the 
 Jews seem to have been, in substance, given to the 
 Chinese by their early sages, to teach their precepts 
 sitting in the house, walking by the way, lying down, 
 rising up ; by inscribing them on their door-posts and 
 gates, and binding as a sign upon the hand and front- 
 lets between the eyes. 
 
 Any analysis of the Nine Classics or of poetic and 
 dramatic literature in China is not expected in this 
 brief manual, the simple aim of which is to point out 
 
CHINESE AKCHITECTUKE. 61 
 
 lines of study. But it may be said, in passing, that 
 the seed thoughts of all that is revered by Chinese in 
 their religion, history and government will be found 
 in the /S/ioo Jk'nuj or Book of History. It is also the 
 foundation of their tactics, music and astronomy. It 
 covers a period from about 2350 B. C. to 721 B. C. 
 In its restoration after the Burning of the Books, 
 twenty-eight of the one hundred sections were taken 
 from the lips of a blind man. Fortunately a complete 
 copy was found secreted in the wall of Confucius' 
 house when it was demolished, 140 B. C* 
 
 It was during the revival of learning, 200 B. C. to 
 200 A. D. that changes in writing were introduced. 
 Silk was used for valuable records, and paper, made 
 from bark and hemp, also manufactured. Ink was in- 
 vented to take the place of brick dust and water. The 
 bamboo tablet and stylus gave place to the hair pencil 
 and paper page. In 593 A. D. Wanti decreed the en- 
 graving on wood and printing of certain documents. 
 Moveable tyj^es were made by Pe Ching about live 
 hundred years later. He engraved each character in 
 fine clay, made in plates, the thickness of money. 
 These were hardened by fire and cemented to an iron 
 frame when used for printing. 
 
 CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 There is little to be said on this point. China, Fer- 
 gusson suggests, has no hereditary nobility and no 
 dominant priesthood, such as in Italy and elsewhere 
 
 Death is threatened any family who takes the patronymic, "Koong." 
 (Koonj,' Fntze, master Koong). So the name Confucius is sacred in 
 its isolation, not nominis umbra, during twenty-two centuries. It is 
 the oldest family on the globe. Some of the sixty-third generation 
 were recently baptized by Presbyterian missionaries. 
 
62 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. 
 
 have given inspiration to artistic creations. Power 
 she has, ability as well. Massive walls, bridges and 
 engineering works are seen everywhere. With her re- 
 dundant population China might have reared many 
 monumental works like those of Egjpt, which she so 
 much resembles in age, in history, customs and re- 
 ligious ideas, such as reverence for the dead. Senti- 
 ment and imagination are wanting, however, which lie 
 at the source of this art. The materials of the Great 
 Wall would build a wall tAvice round the globe, six feet 
 high and two feet thick. Williams says that this mon- 
 ument of human toil and unproductiveness, with its 
 cloud-capped towers standing in solemn stillness where 
 they were stationed two thousand years ago, as if or- 
 dered to await the return of their builders, and its dike 
 below, leaping gorges and scaling cliffs in exuberance 
 of power till it vanishes at the horizon, cannot but in- 
 spire respect for a people who could build it. 
 
 Gwilt thinks that the tent gave them, as all Tartar 
 tribes, the original idea of their pyramidal roof, which 
 is high-pitched, timber-framed, with concave slopes 
 and projecting eaves. But it is objected that the 
 Chinese are the furthest removed from nomadic, tent 
 life than any race on the earth. The great rain fall at 
 times, and the glare of the sun at other times, will ex- 
 plain the features of the roof without the above h}'- 
 pothesis. The arch was known and used in bridges, 
 it is believed, even before Pelasgian builders made 
 their rude attempts in the same direction. 
 
 The pagoda is sometimes a family memorial, and 
 sometimes a pillar of victory, commemorating a his- 
 toric event. It may be reared for the use of the geo- 
 mancer. I spent some months not far from one which 
 was built by Moslems. It is about as high as Bunker 
 
corEa and japan. Oo 
 
 Hill Monument. Twice ;i yvnv worship at dawn was 
 had with loud invocations. There are about two 
 thousand pagodas in the Empire, from live to thirteen 
 stories in height. The oldest was put up seventeen 
 centuries ago. Most of them are in a ruined condition. 
 The promises of the diviner that these towers draw 
 luck do not draw funds for their repair. 
 
 The pavilion, with its pillared veranda, and the 
 gateway are suggestive of Chinese thought. Form, 
 color and ornamentation show rude tastes. Some de- 
 tails are meritorious, but as works of art, these, as well 
 as domestic and temple decorations, are inferior in 
 style. Proportion, perspective, naturalness and ele- 
 gance are disregarded. The natives themselves admit 
 a decline in painting and sculpture the last fifteen cen- 
 turies. Their devotion to material concerns has made 
 them increasingly indifferent to higher interests. 
 
 In this connection it is Avorthy of note to compare 
 the opposite influence of Confucianism and Buddhism 
 on industrial life in the East. The former has fos- 
 tered feudalism, caste and ancestor worship ; the latter 
 has moulded the working classes, softening their man- 
 ners, as Rein suggests, training up quiet, patient toil- 
 ers in field and workshop. Both now feel the new 
 breath of a Christian civilization, which fact recalls 
 the lines of Schiller : 
 
 ' ' Das Alte sturzt es andert sich die Zeit, 
 Und neues Leben blubt aus den ruinen. " 
 
 COREA AND JAPAN. 
 
 Twenty years ago the Hermit Nation warned out of 
 her waters the American admiral with these words : 
 " Corea boasts four thousand years of history and is 
 satisfied with it, wishing no other." To-day an Ameri- 
 
04 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART, 
 
 cau, Colonel Greatliouse, is sumiiioiied to her court as 
 an adviser of government. On her soil may be settled 
 the problem of supremacy between the triple powers 
 of Japan, China and Eussia. The Dragon and the 
 Bear especially have their eye on Corea. It is a 
 pleasant land, the Italy of the Far East, the north- 
 eastern monsoon region and the kingdom of the mag- 
 nolia and camellia. The straits are but fourteen fath- 
 oms deep which separate it from the Sunrise Land, 
 and Japan looks upon the twelve or fifteen millions of 
 Corea as naturally related to her own forty millions. 
 The glimpse I had of these shores, and some facts of 
 her history are referred to elsewhere.* The Land of 
 the Morning Calm has already begun to feel the throb 
 of the outer world. 
 
 Philologists assume a kinship between the Japanese 
 language and the Ural-Altaic tongues. They have not 
 proved their postulate. The agglutinative structure of 
 the Japanese links it with the Corean, but it has no 
 clear relationship with any Asiatic tongue. As English 
 embodies a vast number of Greek and Latin Avords, so 
 the Japanese has adopted uncounted Chinese words. 
 Chinese classics have been studied there for seven- 
 teen centuries, so historians of Japan affirm, and they 
 still have a prominence in academic studies. There is 
 no such marked difference in provincial dialects as in 
 China. One with the Tokyo tongue will have little 
 difficulty anywhere. The gutteral patois of the Aino 
 tribes is, however, intelligible to themselves alone. 
 The story of these fifteen thousand hairy aborigines is 
 well told by Miss Bird in her Unbeaten Tracks in 
 Japan. Japanese honorifics are of prime importance 
 
 * Out-door Life in the Orient. Dr. E. P. Thwiug. Hurst & Co. 
 
LITERATURE IN JAPAN. 65 
 
 if one would stand well in tlie people's esteem. Yonr 
 verbal and grammatical attitude is a matter of equal 
 concern with your bodily bearing, voice and gesture. 
 Your style of speech is three-fold, suited to j-our su- 
 periors, inferiors and equals. The use of the personal 
 pronoun and the verb varies according to the rank of 
 the person addressed. The honorific San is used even 
 by children at play. The military, as well as the liter- 
 ary class, employ not a few verbal embellishments. 
 Eecent acquaintance with Western languages has had, 
 of course, its influence on Japanese. Many new words 
 are coined. 
 
 LITERATUKE IN JAPAN. 
 
 Heathen legends and cosmogonies make up the 
 earliest works extant. The date of the oldest history 
 is 711 A. D. The Lord of Mito (1622-1700) was a 
 patron of learning, and directed the preparation of the 
 History of Japan, a w^ork published in tAvo and forty 
 volumes. The place of women in the literature of this 
 land is a significant fact. " A very large proportion of 
 the best writings of the best age of Japanese literature 
 was the work of women ; and the names of numerous 
 female poets and authors are quoted with admiration 
 even at the present time," says M'Clatchie. But under 
 the new regime the higher Western education does not 
 fit a young woman for her position as wife and mother 
 in a Japanese home. It only makes her restless and 
 unhappy. Legislation as to marriage and divorce 
 needs revision. Methods of self-support are to be 
 found. Christianity must reconstruct the home. The 
 number of female teachers who prefer an independent 
 single life to the servitude of marriage is increasing. 
 There were, two years ago, in the elementary schools 
 
66 LANGUAGE, LITEliATURE AND AllT. 
 
 alone, eight hundred and fifty lady teachers. Miss 
 Bacon has found among this class some of the most 
 respected of Japanese women. In the growth of this 
 body of teachers she sees the surest sign that the law 
 will eventually emancipate woman from her present 
 fetters, and make marriage a less repugnant restraint 
 to those whose sense of self-respect has been quick- 
 ened by Christian culture. Educational statistics and 
 incidents of student life as seen in different parts of 
 the empire are given in detail in my Out-door Life in 
 the Orient. 
 
 Japanese verse is freer from Chinese flavor than 
 prose, and is more attractive. For centuries it was 
 the custom of Japanese gentlemen to write poetry, 
 generally lyric, and sometimes humorous. Suicides 
 were often preceded by an afflatus in this line. Inten- 
 tion and motive were stated. Paragrams and other 
 pleasant forms of ambiloquy, acrostics and palin- 
 dromes were popular. Poetic contests were in vogue 
 a thousand years ago. The odes were brief, and con- 
 sisted of alternate lines of five and seven syllables. 
 The love of nature led the poet to choose his theme 
 from the natural world about him. Japan still has 
 also her fairy tales, borrowed from India and China, 
 illustrated with odd designs in wood engravings. His- 
 torical plays are common, for the people are fond of 
 theatrical amusements, although players were ostra- 
 cised until 1868. The Kalniki actors were despised ; 
 indeed, the very theatres in which they appeared, says 
 Professor Chamberlain, were looked down on as places 
 too vile for any gentleman to enter. Such outcasts 
 were actors at the time, that, when a census was taken, 
 they were spoken of with the numerals used in count- 
 ing animals. Those to whom Japanese is familiar will 
 
LlTEllATUKE IN JAPAN. 67 
 
 appreciate the stiug of the iusult." The attempt to 
 reform the theatre is not a success, though in some 
 centers certain nameless appendages may have been 
 suppressed."* 
 
 Journahstic Uterature, scientitic and Hnguistic learn- 
 ing are of modern growth, and will be referred to later 
 on when we look at the rejuvenescence of the East. 
 
 INDUSTKIAL AKTS. 
 
 Industrial arts, coarse and line, architecture and kin- 
 di-ed themes are treated fully by Professor Rein of the 
 University of Bonn, by Mr. Swatow and other con- 
 tributors to the Asiatic Society. The latter tells us 
 that the primeval palace was a wooden hut. The 
 frame was tied together with fibrous tendrils of climb- 
 ing vines. Mats were laid on the mud floor, where 
 venomous snakes were not strangers to prince or ple- 
 beian. The Shinto temple took its stylo fi-om the 
 same original. The roof, first thatched, then shingled, 
 was afterward covered with tile or copper. The pro- 
 jecting rafters w^ere lengthened and elaborately carved. 
 The inner shrine was raised from the floor, and a bal- 
 cony and steps added. So domestic architecture grew 
 from the simple shelter of trees, whose branches were 
 bent and bound with rush, then covered with grass. 
 Such extemporaneous abodes needed no tools in their 
 construction. The people early got used to the drafts 
 of air Avhich to Europeans, domiciled in a native 
 house, are so uncomfortable. As a foreign diplomat, 
 
 " When you caft make an oak out of a mushroom, then, and not till 
 then, you may hojoe to make a living tree out of that poisonous toad- 
 stool, the theatre. Even among heathen nations it M-as considered a 
 disgrace to be connected with one. Down through all the thousands 
 of years which it has lived since then, it has come with perpetual dis- 
 honor on its head." — Hej!EY Wakp Beechek, 
 
68 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. 
 
 between his sneezes, used to say, " Le^ Juponais 
 adorent hs courants (Vair!"" His greatest fear, evi- 
 dently, was the atmosphere ! 
 
 The Ku))st Lehen or art life of Japan has so large a 
 literature, we need not dwell on it longer than to note 
 a few general facts. Indian taste is declining, we are 
 told, on account of the importation of coarse, cheap, 
 foreign wares." Wood carving, the preparation of 
 textile fabrics, fine pith work and damascening with 
 gold have all suffered. The introduction of piece goods 
 free of duty has driven the weavers into other em- 
 ployments. Copper and brass vessels supplant the 
 pottery which was the product of Saracenic taste, and 
 the finest in the world. A tinsel style of jewelry, 
 foreign designs in carpets, with poor colors in place of 
 ilie vivid blue and red of Persia, and other substitu- 
 tions show the detrusion of artistic taste through the 
 mercantile and mercenary spirit of the age. 
 
 Japan and other parts of the East feel the same de- 
 pressing influences. The inspiration of the old regime 
 is gone forever in the Sunrise Land. " Nothing is left 
 but the scenery," says one of her sons, now in Ameri- 
 ca. The conditions no longer exist under which were 
 developed and perfected those ideals that once made 
 decorative art what it was. Towards mere handicraft 
 the Japanese have little leaning. They despise trade 
 and barter. Excepting, perhaps, the vocation of ar- 
 morer, they look down on manual labor. Business 
 contracts clash with their inherited ideas. They are 
 unpractical, and have less tenacity of purpose than 
 we. They have more alulity than stability. Toil is 
 not regarded the end of life. As was said by Mr. 
 
 * Nineteenth Century, February, 1891. 
 
INDUSTKIAL. ARTS. G9 
 
 Dcning, juldressing the Asiatic Society at Tokyo, No- 
 vember 12, 1890 : " The lack of interest in industry, 
 agriculture and commerce, so apparent among Japan- 
 ese young men, is the outcome of the training which 
 they have received. The books held in high esteem 
 treat of subjects far removed from the every-day life 
 of men of business. The life of bread-earning seems 
 to be a gloomy existence. Occidentals, in their opin- 
 ion, are nothing the better for their big machines and 
 appliances ; on the contrary, they render themselves, 
 by perpetual toil and worry, unlit to enjoy the pleas- 
 ures which nature places within their reach." An 
 educated native, speaking before the same learned 
 body, affirmed that it would take generations to eradi- 
 cate from Japanese thought the evil effects of that 
 grinding despotism which in earlier days repressed 
 individuality and independence. Everything of origi- 
 nal thought was suppressed by the Shoguns as sedi- 
 tious. The lack of enterprise shown by the farmer 
 and mechanic, the fatalistic manner in which they 
 cling to their environment, as though it were unalter- 
 able, are fruits of feudalism. These are also shown in 
 the thoughts of the learned classes. " Learning is no 
 more than a pastime, with the majority. It is pursued 
 with no practical end in view. It is valued more as a 
 polite accomplishment than as an organ of enlightening 
 and ameliorating the condition of suffering humanity." 
 Thus briefly, but broadly, have we reviewed some 
 features of Oriental thought and life in the past, with 
 the conditions out of Avhich they grew. Naturally we 
 now turn to examine the present, and to forecast the 
 future. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE REJUVENESCENCE OF THE EAST. 
 
 " There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, . . . 
 The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands 
 That once Ht all the East. " 
 
 Professor J. R. Lowell. 
 
 Percival Lowell says that race-life in Japan is com- 
 pleted, and the vital force of Corea and China was 
 spent a thousand years ago. The Jordan that was fed 
 from far-oft' mountains has reached its Dead Sea. The 
 Nirvana is now being realized in the Far East, It 
 is already wrapped in its winding sheet and destined 
 to disappear before the advancing nations of the West . 
 The apparent life is but superficial — that of sprouts on 
 a stunted tree. Civilization has been a mechanical 
 compound without affinit}' of elements and without the 
 coherence that comes from thorough fusion. 
 
 VARIOUS OUTLOOKS. 
 
 It is amusing to note the positiveness of somo views 
 formed after brief acquaintance and narrow generali- 
 zations. One recently deceased author, Giffoid Pal- 
 grave, fixed eight weeks as the proper period to qual- 
 ify an intelligent visitor to write about Japan. A 
 shorter time he fancied Avould produce superficial 
 ideas, while a longer stay would bring about a wrong 
 mental focus. He governed himself accordingly. Henry 
 Finck spent eight weeks in the Iberian peninsular, 
 and presents in his new volume, Spain and Morocco, 
 
DECREPITUDE DENIED. 71 
 
 cliarmiug samples of local color, for the transfer of 
 which he claims, perhaps justl}^, that he is " better 
 qualitieil after a visit of two mouths, than after a 
 sojourn of two years ; for what is most novel, charac- 
 teristic and romantic in a foreign country strikes us 
 most vividly at the beginning. It gradually loses its 
 fascination as daily repetition makes it seem normal." 
 
 Something more, however, is needed than residence 
 in a country. Something more, even, than acute pow- 
 ers of observation. Max Muller writes understand- 
 ingly about India without having seen its shores. To 
 be a wise traveler one must have been a wide reader. 
 A year abroad is but a brief period to gain just meas- 
 urements of life and thought, unless one has a well- 
 stored mind to begin with. Then, with philosophical 
 instincts to guide research, a short sojourn serves to 
 fertilize the studies of previous years, to illuminate 
 earl}' impressions, and to correct false ones. Much 
 which is latent comes to view, and a wonderful stimu- 
 lus to fresh investigation is received. 
 
 Is the rejuvenation of the East possible ? Is it need- 
 ed ? If so, on what conditions, and by whom, will 
 the resuscitation be accomplished ? It is a profound 
 problem. The writer feels like addressing the reader 
 in the Avords of the governor of Formosa, not long ago 
 addressed to the Emperor — a Chinese meiosis, thor- 
 oughly Oriental — " On my narrow views and meager 
 opinions, I beg your sacri'd glance ! " 
 
 DECREPITUDE DENIED. 
 
 The English race is apt to look on Asian life as 
 doomed. Western life alone has promise of eternal 
 youth. Manifest destiny has given us the earth and 
 the fullness thereof. Fourth of July orators put the 
 
72 THE UEJUVENESCENCE OP THE EAST. 
 
 poles as the proper limits of Auieiietiii power north- 
 ward aud southward, and the day of judgment the only 
 limit westward ! The same imperious spirit of i)ro- 
 prietorship led Beaconstield uniformly to speak of 
 England as essentially an Asiatic power. The assump- 
 tion is that Eastern life, as a whole, is senile, if not 
 moribund ; that its physical forces are degenerating, 
 and its mental activity feeble. What are the facts ? 
 
 Since beginning this chapter, a letter from my friend 
 Dr. Ashmore of Swatow informs me of the amazing 
 vitality of the oldest race now living on the earth. 
 He says : " We dwell on the growth of our own popu- 
 lation at home, but China is advancing nearly three 
 times as fast — forty millions in ten years ! Enough to 
 start and stock a new nation." This, it must be re- 
 membered, is not by immigration, as here, but by 
 natural increase. Japan, too, has steadily increased 
 to upwards of forty millions. Indeed, the vernacular 
 press has been discussing the inadequate food supply 
 for the rapid groAvth of po})ulation. Malthusian ap- 
 prehensions trouble them, and various plans are sug- 
 gested.* In five years fourteen thousand thrifty 
 Japanese in Hawaii sent home two million dollars. 
 This is but one hint of the exjjanding material pros- 
 perity of that part of the East. The fifteen millions 
 increase in India since its last census is another proof 
 that Oriental races are not dying out. They seem to 
 be, some of them, at least, " as full-blooded, as virile 
 in their physical make, and as likely to endure for 
 thirty generations as they did a thousand years ago. 
 They seem to be waiting in grand reserve as the beds 
 of anthracite have waited with latent fires for future 
 
 * Japan Mail, August 9th and 3UtL, 1890. 
 
DECREPITUDE DENIED. 78 
 
 use. That aucieut developmeut of man which began 
 on the plains of Shinar, bids fair to live by the side of 
 its Occidental rival, even if it does not outlive this by 
 reason of its calmer How of life. If it does thus live, 
 all analogy would lead us to l)elieve that there is some- 
 thing in it which deserves to live, which Providence 
 has a use for in the future, something or other, which, 
 under divine regeneration, will be a cause of groAvth, 
 if infused into the life-blood of the Western races. 
 The circle of Occidental development may be en- 
 larged by it. The channel in which our civilization is 
 moving may be widened and deepened." ^■ 
 
 Are there signs of mental decrepitude ? Certainly 
 not in Japan, China and India, which represent half 
 the human race. I found a vigorous intellectual fer- 
 ment in all these empires. Decomposition and re- 
 composition are going on. The thousands of new 
 books by Indian scholars issued yearly, and the pub- 
 lished proceedings of the National Congress — two 
 portly folios sent to me by the presidents of the Bom- 
 bay and Allahabad bodies — are significant signs of a 
 fruitful and aggressive mental activity. So, also, are 
 their schools and universities. The great arsenals of 
 China, like Foochow and Kiangnan, with their schools 
 for interpreters, translating departments, libraries and 
 printing establishments, are unique and commanding 
 witnesses to a nascent intellectual life, which must 
 bring about great changes in the ruling classes of the 
 Empire. In eight jears 83,454 scientific volumes were 
 translated from the English and other foreign tongues, 
 and sold to eager and appreciative readers. The first 
 four volumes were on geometry, algebra, military 
 
 * Men and Books (Professor Phelps), p. 233. 
 
74 THT UE.JUVENESCEXCE OF THE EAST. 
 
 engineering and cliti'i rontial calculus. Books on the 
 physical sciences, law, medicine, pliilosoplij and re- 
 ligion have followed. Some have been adopted as 
 text-books of mission schools and in the Peking Uni- 
 versit}'. Professor Fryer and his staff have overcome 
 the difficulty of nomenclature and other obstacles 
 which confront pioneers of modern sciences. The 
 Emperor can, indeed, decide the exact manner in 
 which characters shall be written. He has forbidden 
 certain forms, but he cannot check the growth of 
 ideas, or of the expression of those ideas in the ver- 
 nacular. 
 
 The venerable Oriental scholar, Dr. Edkins of Shan- 
 gai, says that the temper of the literati is not as in- 
 tolerant as formerly, and so the acceptance of the 
 gospel by the younger generation is not as hopeless as 
 it once was. China may become like Japan in this 
 respect. He quotes one scholar who urges govern- 
 ment to use foreign methods in cultivating land, and 
 boldly proclaims the folly of Feng-Shui, the wind and 
 Avater delusion. " No one engaged in public affairs 
 should give it any attention. It is dreamy talk with- 
 out a basis." Another high Confucian scholar, land- 
 holder and owner of European machinery asked Dr. 
 Edkins if Christian converts could be secured on his 
 estates as settlers. He would gladly put in their hands 
 modern appliances, and would aid in erecting a Chris- 
 tian chapel for their use. From time to time the liter- 
 ati have borrowed from the West. The Manchu alpha- 
 bet is the result of Christian missions in Central Asia 
 in the middle ages. Fung Yee, late Secretary of the 
 Legation at London, recently replied to the remark 
 that the news w^ere too good to be true that China was 
 now really in favor of the immediate construction of 
 
DECREPITUDK DKNIKD. 75 
 
 railways, bj saying that goveriiiuent has been ready, 
 ever since treaty ports were opened, to adopt all for- 
 eign ideas " that were iinmistakably calculated to en- 
 rich and strengthen her," China has adapted her 
 ]>olicy to the exigencies of the time and circumstances 
 of the people. There had been no real retrogression. 
 The ill-advised and abortive Woosung railway was no 
 exception. 
 
 Sir Frederic Bruce's remark to Charles Sumner may 
 be repeated here, in support of the fact that there is 
 no mental decrepitude to be found in the statesmanship 
 of the Far East. He said to Sumner that the officials 
 he had met were " unequalled for character and abili- 
 ty." Being pressed, he repeated the remark, and said 
 that he would not except even Palmerstou in making 
 his comparison. These astute diplomats of the Flow- 
 ery Kingdom very soon take the measure of their 
 Western peers, and also know how to handle their in- 
 feriors. A recent author, speaking of the disgraceful 
 and cruel treatment of Chinese by America, warns us 
 that these statesmen have quietly made note of it and 
 patiently bide their time. " Their memories are long. 
 Some day they will collect their bill, and it will be 
 made up with compound interest." ^ 
 
 What has been said of the mental awakening in 
 India and China can be said with special emphasis of 
 Japan. Nothing, perhaps, in history equals it. To-day 
 Japan is spending proportionably more for schools 
 than the United States. Its ratio of attendance is 
 larger than here. Does this look as if the Land of 
 the Morning Avere " wrapped in its wdnding sheet," 
 destined to disappear in its own Nirvana ? Not much. 
 
 * A. A. Hayes in Atlantic Monthly, :May, 1887. 
 
76 THE ]:i:.TTVF.NKS('ENrK OF THE EAST. 
 
 Mr. Lowell " reads liis own ideas iuto facts and draws 
 out undreamed inferences," remarks a keen Japanese 
 critic, who advises him to di"op his evolutionary the- 
 ories and make " a more impartial and thorough ex- 
 amination of Oriental life." * 
 
 No, Nippon is not " a clock riin down." This state- 
 ment of Mr. Lowell is as far from the truth as his 
 other, that Christianity is a failure in the Orient. The 
 wish is sometimes father to the thought. One proof 
 of national life is the patriotism of the people. The 
 Yaiaato Daiiiasli'd — the Spirit of Unconquerable 
 Japan — is vigorous still. Nations that show this tem- 
 per are not lapsing into senility. Personal and family 
 pride in Japan are inseparable from a chivah'ic love of 
 country. It has always been the chief object of edu- 
 cation, observes Nakashima, to intensify and develop 
 this sense of honor. All actions are tested by it. 
 
 A MOEAL EEJU\^NATION. 
 
 Circumstances threw me into somewhat intimate re- 
 lations for several days during the summer of 1890, 
 "vvith a gentleman now in the House of Peers. An in- 
 tense patriotism seemed to be the guiding impulse of 
 his life. He appreciated what he had seen in America 
 and Europe, and earnestly desired, he told me, to 
 have all the best elements of Western thought incor- 
 porated into the nascent civilization of his native land. 
 He would not admit a physical or mental decay in the 
 Far East ; but he did see the need of a moral reju- 
 venation. Though not a convert to Christianity, he 
 declared himself favorably inclined to it fi'om what he 
 had read and heard, also from his relations to a Chris- 
 
 * Rikizo Naka-sbiuia, New Engluudcr, February, 1889. 
 
A MORAL KE.TUVENATION. 77 
 
 tiau teacher iu liis Uuiversity course. This is a typical 
 case. 
 
 Intelligent men in the East feel that moral ele- 
 ments are indispensible to lift the Oriental mind to 
 its truest altitude. The recent deliverance of the 
 Mikado declares this, in substance, in reference to 
 education. It follows a similar iitterance of the Vice- 
 roy of India. The material forces of commerce, sci- 
 ence, arts and philosophy cannot generate the new 
 life needed, valuable though they are. Professor 
 Phelps says it is useless to " look for a rejuvenes- 
 cence of ■ Asia in coming ages from any internal 
 forces now acting there, independently of the Scrip- 
 tures. The East is the land of pyramids and sphinxes. 
 Whatever that immense territory has to contribute to 
 the civilization of the future must come from the ger- 
 mination of biblical thought. It must be the working 
 of bibUcal inspiration in the spiritual rencAval of Ori- 
 ental character, which nothing but the religion of the 
 Scriptures can produce. Why should it be deemed 
 visionary to look for this as one of the results of the 
 infusion of European mind now going on in Western 
 and Central Asia ? Already the germs of Christian 
 universities and libraries exist there, which may one 
 day aUure literary travel from the West, as those of 
 England and Germany do to-day. Inspired prophecy 
 aside, it is no more visionary to predict the recreation 
 of the Oriental mind in forms of new literature su- 
 perior to any the world has yet known, through the 
 plastic influences of the Scriptures, than it was to an- 
 anticipate the bii'th of the three great literatures of 
 Europe, as the fruit of the modern revival of the liter- 
 tures of Greece and Rome. The minds of nations 
 move in just such immense waves of revolution. Rea- 
 
78 THE REJUVENESCENCE OP THE EAST. 
 
 soiling a i)oderiori tliej are only the natm-al eftect of a 
 great force generating great forces. The Asiatic races, 
 indeed, liave a fairer intellectnal prospect than Europe 
 had at the time of the revival of letters, for they are to 
 receive their higher education in Christian instead of 
 Pagan forms. Conceive what difference would have 
 been created in the destinies of Europe, what centuries 
 of conflict with barbarism would, to human view, have 
 been saved, if the Greek and Komaii literatures could 
 have come into the possession of the modern European 
 mind, freighted with Christian, instead of Pagan 
 thought, and if, thus Christianized, they could have 
 been wrought into European culture ! " " 
 
 This acute thinker saw a providence in the fact that 
 the divine Word was forever stereotyped in an Ori- 
 ental mould, as if the Oriental type of the race was yet 
 to be not only a power in the world's history, but the 
 vital bond between its future and its past. Napoleon 
 called Europe provincial and contracted. The East 
 was the only fit theater for great exploits, where are 
 great races and ancient seats of empire. " There may 
 be more of truth in this than he meant to utter. The 
 grandest intellectual and moral conquests of the world 
 may yet follow the track of Alexander." 
 
 This rapid review^ of the need and possibiHty of a 
 moral resuscitation of the East has brought us to the 
 consideration of matters of practical concern to those 
 who desire, in one way or another, to aid in so great 
 and grand a work. By what methods may the vivify- 
 ing influence of Protestant Christianity be brought to 
 bear upon Asiatic thought? How may w^e best im- 
 prove this pivotal period and hasten the occupanc}' of 
 the Oriental world for Christ ? 
 
 * Men and Books, p. 234. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 SUPERIiATUBAL FACTOBS. 
 
 " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth ; thekkfore 
 go j'e and teach all nations." — Jesus. 
 
 Will the moon of Mahomet wane, and the cry of the 
 muezzin be heard no more ? Will Brahniinic wisdom 
 and Confucian scholarship ever be humbled before the 
 Crucilied, and the wealth of the Orient be laid at His 
 feet ? A wild dream indeed it is to those who ignore 
 the supernatural in human affairs ; but to those who 
 see God's hand in history it is a sober verity. Christ 
 has a kingdom. The uttermost parts of the earth are 
 His possession. " This gospel of the kingdom shall 
 be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all 
 nations, and then shall the end come." Matt, xxiv : 14. 
 Because God our Saviour has all power, because there 
 is " given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, 
 that all people, nations and languages should serve 
 Him," we go forth with His truth, which is the power 
 of God and therefore omnipotent. 
 
 The success of missions during the past century can 
 only be interpreted by conceding this superhuman ele- 
 ment. Their final triumph can be hoped for on no 
 other ground. Material factors are not forgotten. 
 War has played its part, commerce, politics, science, 
 human skill and learning ; these all are allies in pre- 
 paring the way of the Lord, but with nothing more, we 
 should be impotent to contend with the great historic 
 forces of heathenism. 
 
80 SUrERNATUnAL FACTORS, 
 
 Sydney Smitli and other English reviewers eighty 
 odd years ago ignored the supernatural factors of the 
 missionary work, and therefore sneered at it. Carey 
 and his associates were called " didactic artisans, 
 whose proper talk is of bullocks and not the gospel ; 
 delirious mechanics; the lowest of the people; detach- 
 ments of hmatics." The profound ignorance of these 
 clerical railers was shown by their estimate of the hea- 
 then to whom the missionaries went. They extolled 
 the pagan at the expense of the Christian, saying, 
 " We believe a Hindu is more mild and sober than 
 most Europeans, and as honest and chaste." There 
 are scholarly men to-day who show as little knowledge 
 of the field and the work. 
 
 IGNORANT CEITICS. 
 
 A public man in England, an Oxford graduate and 
 doctor of laws, Avas conversing with a lady. She ex- 
 cused herself, saying that she had an engagement at 
 the Zenana mission. He innocently replied that he had 
 heard of that place, Zenana, but where in the world it 
 was located he did not know ! In Ferguson's History 
 of Ceylon, reference is made to a member of the Brit- 
 ish Parliament who protested against stationing troops 
 in " this deadly climate of West Africa," Ceylon, evi- 
 dently, being in his thought a shortened form of Sierra 
 Leone. 
 
 An English sportsman, W. S. Percival, admits that 
 there have been a few great missionaries, but he jeers 
 at the bulk of them as " poor enthusiasts . , . with 
 the average education of the class to which they be- 
 long." He is particularly bitter against unmarried 
 ladies, and says, " Respectable Chinese do not admit 
 missionary visitors ; what can they think of these girl 
 
THREE AGENCIES. 8l 
 
 WMiiderers ? " The author of A Girdle, Round the 
 Earth adds falsehood to scorn, saying, " Missionaries 
 in China live in luxury. No foreign class do so little 
 work. There are more pagans born here every minute 
 than are converted in a century." Thus are the Mas- 
 ter's words fulfilled. He was called Beelzebub by 
 those whose lives were reproved by His presence. 
 " Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world 
 hateth you." Sir Eichard Temple indignantly met 
 similar calumnies aimed at the self-denying and hard 
 worked missionaries among the Hindus, by saying, " I 
 assure you, as a man who has himself actually gov- 
 erned one hundred and five millions of these natives of 
 India, that nothing can be a greater caricature and 
 travesty." 
 
 Those who look upon missions as a human enter- 
 prise, and ignore the supernatural factors concerned in 
 it, apply simplj' mercantile and mercenary tests. Men 
 and methods, aims and results, are viewed from a low 
 and narrow outlook. The means employed are likely 
 to be of a secular and worldly character. The temper 
 in which they would carry on the work is also worldly, 
 and they demand immediate and palpable results. We 
 cannot wonder so much at the shallow criticisms which 
 are passed upon it when the supernatural element that 
 inspires and directs it is lost sight of. Those who 
 come to the missionary field must expect to encounter 
 them continually. 
 
 THKEE AGENCIES. 
 
 " Go, teach all nations." First and foremost is the 
 proclamation of God's Word. As the power of the 
 gospel has been demonstrated in the triumphs it has 
 won among Western nations, the past nineteen cen- 
 
82 SUPEPvNATUIJAL FACTOKS. 
 
 turies, we iire sure that it has an equally glorious mis- 
 sion to accomplish for the Orient. Said Jonathan Ed- 
 wards : " America has received the true religion of the 
 old continent. The church of ancient times has been 
 there, and Christ is from thence. But that there may 
 be an equality — and inasmuch as that continent has 
 crucified Christ — they shall not have the honor of com- 
 municating religion in its most glorious state to us, but 
 we, to them." He beHeved that the heathen needed 
 the gospel, and that they needed it this side of the 
 grave. This Pauline idea was not then regarded " an 
 exploded theory," nor was Christianity to him a spent 
 force. Yet he died, in 1758, before the first modern 
 missionary society was formed. William Carey at Ket- 
 tering, in 1795, organized this pioneer of the two hun- 
 dred and fifty formed since. It is estimated that these 
 Boards have sent twenty-five thousand laborers into 
 the foreign field. If President Edwards has in heaven, 
 seen the " Miracles of Missions " on earth of the past 
 half century — and why should we doubt the fact of his 
 knowledge and continued sympathy? — his reminis- 
 cences must be full of joy. Because it was God's 
 planting, the fir-tree has displaced the thorn, and the 
 myrtle, the brier. Because God gave the increase, the 
 earth has brought forth in a day, and a nation has 
 been born at once. Because the Lord gave the word, 
 great was the company of men and women that wil- 
 lingly proclaimed it. "Nations have been transformed, 
 Christianity has become the law of the land, and idols, 
 once in every house, have not been found, even as 
 curios and relics ! The adamantine wall of caste, the 
 iron wheel of transmigration, the brazen fetters of 
 Moslem bigotry, the hopeless thraldom of fetichism 
 have alike proved powerless to oppose the simple gos- 
 
EDUCATIONAL METHODS. S:} 
 
 pel of Christ," * Methods of evangelistic labor vary 
 with country and clime, but they all involve the train- 
 ing up of a native force of preachers and teachers, 
 hence a second agency, the Educational. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 
 
 The discipling of all nations is done by the school 
 as truly as by the sermon, by the printed page as well 
 as b}^ the living voice. There should be no friction. 
 Yet in some lields, a disproportionate attention has 
 been given to teaching and to branches of purely secu- 
 lar learning. It is easy to yield to the eager demand 
 in Eastern communities for instruction in secular sci- 
 ence, made by those who are moved by mercenary 
 motives alone, and who care nothing for Christianity. 
 Again, when governmental patronage and aid are 
 promised to schools whose pupils reach a certain per- 
 centage in studies required by government, a strong 
 pressure is brought to bear on the missionary. A 
 laudable desire to conciliate local prejudices also 
 tempts him to keep the distinctive religious character 
 of education out of sight, when surrounded by un- 
 friendly influences. A desire to stand well before 
 those at home, who watch with admiring interest the 
 numijrical growth of school as well as church, and a 
 desire to compare favorably with competing societies 
 in the field, also affect educational methods. 
 
 Rev. Charles R. Hager, in a recent article on Suc- 
 cess in Missionary Life, gives a timely caution on this 
 point, drawn from his experience in China. " Seem- 
 ing success is based chiefly on outward appearance. 
 One exhibits quantity, the other quality, irrespective 
 
 Review of the World, vol. iii., p. 660. 
 
84 SUrEllNATUllAL FACTORS. 
 
 of imiii])ors. Missious are in the same danger as home 
 churches of becoming outwardly prosperous, while the 
 real spiritual life remains dormant." He shows, more- 
 over, that districts differ in fruitfulness to as marked a 
 degree as the soil of farms ; that local characteristics, 
 political history and social conditions combine to make 
 the people of one district responsive to preacher and 
 teacher, while with people under opposite conditions, 
 effort seems utterly hopeless; and, finally, that the 
 supernatural element must be a constant factor, pre- 
 paring alike the one to teach and the other to learn. 
 The Word of God as a divine instrument must be 
 made central in education, and never made to take a 
 subordinate place. This gives dignity and power to 
 all the instruction. " Without it the school is useless ; 
 therefore no pains should be spared to secure this pre- 
 dominant religious influence, and no conditions slioidd 
 be imposed or allowed, which will interfere with it." 
 So said one at the Shanghai Conference, speaking 
 from twenty-five years experience in the school at 
 Tungchow, Rev. C. W. Mateer, D.D., LL.D., a man 
 second to none in ability in that large and memorable 
 assembly. 
 
 Heathen classics are studied in mission schools, for 
 they represent more to native students than Greek or 
 Latin to ours. Pupils would be illiterate who knew 
 not the books of their sages. These in China are not 
 antagonistic to Christianity, and are as clean as those 
 we teach in our colleges. A wise, adroit teacher need 
 not be embarrassed. The regnant power of the Word 
 of God will be felt as a constant corrective. 
 
 This matter will be referred to again in connection 
 with certain practical problems related to the work 
 of the preacher, teacher and physician. 
 
MEDK'AT. MISSIONS. 85 
 
 In no biiinch of the work has God's blessing been 
 more conspicuously shown than in this. No method 
 of labor brings us into closer contact with Eastern life. 
 No service so sharply contrasts Western science and 
 Oriental superstition, the unselfishness of Christianity 
 with the cruelty and ignorance of heathenism. Nothing 
 is so directly antidotal to the dislike of foreigners 
 which has been often awakened by unscrupuloiis deal- 
 ings with the people of the East. In no part of the 
 work has the romance of modern missions been more 
 graphically exhibited. Again and again surgical skill 
 has succeeded in removing obstacles where diplomacy 
 and military force have failed. Dr. Parker is said to 
 have opened China with a lancet. So Dr. Allen opened 
 Corea with his forceps. A nephew of the king was 
 among the wounded, at the time of a civil outbreak. 
 Native physicians were about to pour melted wax on 
 severed arteries. Dr. Allen took charge of the royal 
 patient, picked up the bleeding vessels with his for- 
 ceps, tied them and treated the wound with antiseptic 
 appliances. Excellent results followed, and the grate- 
 ful King founded the Il(^yal Hospital and put Dr. 
 Allen in charge. The preacher followed in the steps 
 of the physician. Dr. Peck of China has in nine years 
 treated seventy thousand cases, through which forty- 
 five thousand different persons have been brought 
 under his Christian influence. Dr. Kerr has treated a 
 half a million patients, educated a himdred medical 
 students, and prepared thirty medical works. During 
 the Shanghai Conference, when called upon to bear 
 witness as to w^hat I had seen in the East of Medical 
 Missions, I spoke as follows : 
 
 It is a privilege for one whose work, to some ex- 
 tent, lies in the medical as well as clerical profession. 
 
S/n SUPERNATURAL FACTORS, 
 
 and whose opportunities for obstuvation are not limited 
 to one continent, to pay his tribute to the toilful ser- 
 vice of missionary physicians in the East. This service 
 is threefold. 
 
 1. In maintaining the moral tone and professional 
 ability of this sacred vocation. There are influences at 
 work which tend to lower the standard, not only of 
 scientilic attainment, but of personal character. It 
 is hard at home to withstand the debasing influences 
 of the venal, sordid, increasingly sensuous civilization 
 of the age, but harder still Avhen the tonic impulses 
 of a strong Christian sentiment, such as dominate 
 England and America, are wanting. If they have 
 done nothing else, medical missionaries of the East 
 have done this — all praise to them for their grit and 
 grace — they have kept their Hippocratean oath, taken 
 at graduation, and maintained the purity, probity and 
 honor of a profession which is regarded at home as 
 second to none in the lustre of its fame, in the honor 
 of its name. 
 
 2. They have broadened the field of investigation 
 and enriched the accumulations of science. The eti- 
 ology and natural history of diseases peculiar to the 
 East have competent observers and careful statisticians 
 among our medical missionaries. The eulogiums of 
 Carl Hitter and Agassiz as to the services of mission- 
 aries, though emphatic, are deserved. The reports of 
 resident physicians connected with the Customs, made 
 to the Inspector-General, are hints as to what may be 
 done in future years in the enrichment of medical 
 literature, by men whose opportunities are rare for the 
 study of disease in its endemic seat, as leprosy, for 
 example, or mental diseases in tropical climes. 
 
 3. Their direct ministry to the body and soul. I 
 
THE ACCELERATION OF GOD's MOVEMENTS. 87 
 
 could speak for hours upon this pohit, for several 
 mouths' residence in Canton Hospital has taught me, 
 what nothing else could so vividly and pathetically 
 illustrate, the urgency and promise of medical mis- 
 sions. Here, as in India and Japan, the successful 
 work of female physicians has been conspicuously 
 shown. Here, too, the disinterested nature of the 
 medical service; has been daily observed. Here, also, 
 the mighty power it wields as an evangelizing agency. 
 On each of these points and others I might enlarge, 
 but only respond to the call you have made on me to 
 accentuate the three points named, the noble influence 
 your physicians exert in preserving untainted that 
 social purity which dominates the Christian homes 
 and countries we represent, which has made marriage 
 honorable, womanhood sacred and continence indis- 
 pensible ; their services as contributors to professional 
 and scientific research, and their crowning work as 
 priests and priestesses of Him who came to seek and 
 to save the lost, and whose benediction is their choicest 
 recompense: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto them ye did 
 it unto Me ! " 
 
 At the same convention, which continued about two 
 weeks, the following address was given by the writer. 
 It is copied from the Volume of Transactions recently 
 published by the Presbyterian Press, Shanghai. 
 
 THE ACCELEKATION OF GOD'S MOVEMENTS. 
 
 The altitude and proportions of an edifice may be 
 sometimes better estimated by one who stands a little 
 removed from it, rather than within its walls. The 
 magnitude, significance and promise of modern mis- 
 sions may be better appreciated by one who inspects 
 
88 SUPEltNATUHAL FACTORS. 
 
 tlieiu ill both hemispheres, not as a mission a ly, n(jt as 
 a hnrrying tourist, but as a patient, candid, serious 
 student of God's movements in human history. 
 
 Returning home from this eighth foreign tour, whicli 
 represents nearly a year's absence and thirty thousand 
 miles' travel, an unexpected summons meets me to ad- 
 dress this Conference on the first day of its delibera- 
 tions. No theme has been assigned ; but a few thoughts 
 occur to me on a subject on which I have often re- 
 flected, but never before spoken, The inherent mo- 
 mentum of ideas and the special acceleration of that 
 momentiim which God is to give in these latter days. 
 
 Yon Herder, when dying said, " Give me a gi-eat 
 thought that I may be refreshed." We want great 
 thoughts to live hy, to refresh us in the strenuous ac- 
 tivities of a service in whicli the most devoted are 
 sometimes weary and depressed. Have we not here 
 an exhilarating truth, the mighty vigor, velocity and 
 vitahty of ideas, when once started on their endless 
 career ? 
 
 When railways were first opened in Spain we are 
 told that the simple-minded peasants, supposing that 
 the trains could stop any Avhere, any time, as easily as 
 a mule or ox team, stood on the track and were fre- 
 quently run over. They had no conception of speed 
 and momentum. Herbert Spencer uses the incident 
 to characterize the mental incapacity of those who 
 cannot comprehend the ever-increasing momentum of 
 ideas in the world. " An idea is mightier than a 
 million men," said Dr. Edward Beecher, the pastor of 
 my boyhood. It is true. Men are circumscribed by 
 physical limitations to whicli spiritual forces are 
 strangers. A man can be in but one place at a time ; 
 he comes and he goes ; he lives and dies ; but these 
 
THE ACCELERATION OF GOD's MOVEMENTS. 89 
 
 unseen increments which we call ideas, travel as the 
 light by which we see, abide with us ;is the air by 
 which we breathe, brood over us as do these star-lit 
 heavens to-night, all-encompassing, pervasive, eternal ! 
 Embodied, the}' become laws, literatures, civilizations. 
 Institutions are called the lengthened shadows of sin- 
 gle lives. Luther gave the world Lutheranisni, and 
 Calvin, Calvinism ; so all history is but the biography 
 of a few sturdy souls, as Emerson has said, and these 
 souls are the incarnation of ideas, the onward march of 
 which nothing can obstruct. It is a perilous thing to 
 antagonize ideas which express essential truth. It is 
 to commit the folly of those who have put out a foot to 
 stop what was thought to be a spent cannon ball, and 
 have thereby lost a leg. There is nothing so revolu- 
 tionary and convulsive to society, Dr. Thomas Arnold 
 has said, " as the strain to keep things fixed, when all 
 the world, by the law of its being, is in eternal pro- 
 gi-ess." 
 
 Confucius attempted this when he taught that China's 
 work was not to create, but to conserve and transmit. 
 Hence (he usages of centtiries crystalize into unvary- 
 ing forms. Her people have been content to follow 
 ancestral traditions ; to think, live and act as those 
 before them, indifferent to new conditions, possibili- 
 ties and responsibilities. The nation is fitly com- 
 l)ared to Lot's wife, looking backward, wedded to the 
 past, vainly hoping to resist the influences which im- 
 pel the human race onward. 
 
 It was observed at one of the North fi< Id meetings 
 that " the Lord himself cannot switch a motionless 
 engine." There can be no guidance of stationary ob- 
 jects. To go right we must move. God said to Moses, 
 " Speak to the children of Israel that they go for- 
 
90 SUrEKNATUKAL FAdOllS. 
 
 ward!" Jesus said to his disciples, " Laundi fortli 
 into .the deep ! " When the genuiiial impulse of an 
 idea is divine, its mission is world-wide and its power 
 deific. Inspired of God and guided by Him, it is not 
 a transient, purposeless thing, but a gigantic moral 
 force, a strange, intrusive, resistless energy, ubiquitous 
 and immortal ! It will not die with the life iirst in- 
 spired bv it, but live in other lives, and so wields a 
 power richer in quality, vaster in limit and more com- 
 manding in influence as the years go on. This is 
 spiritual momentum. 
 
 The possessor and herald of such eternal verities is 
 not to timidly stand, as did the propounder of a new 
 law in olden time in England, who placed himself 
 meekly in the market-place with a halter about his 
 neck, with which the populace might hang him if 
 displeased with the innovation ; but he is to enunciate 
 them with the imperative emphasis of authority. 
 Nothing in the world is so intolerant as truth. It 
 brooks no rival and stoops to no compromise. Truth 
 is the reality of things, and therefore is unchangeable 
 in every age and every clime ; therefore is mandatory, 
 unconquerable and eternal. There is unspeakable com- 
 fort in this thought for the weary worker, oppressed 
 by the burden, depressed by the obstacles in his work. 
 But there is another quickening thought. 
 
 In latter days we may expect an acceleration of 
 God's movements in human historj-. He is not slack 
 concerning His promises, though their fulfillment may 
 seem to us very slow. The martyred saints above are 
 crying, " How long, O Lord ? " and the tired earth 
 below, with its old headache and heartache, repeats 
 the same appealing prayer, "How long?" This 
 Gibraltar of heathenism before us here stands firm in 
 
THE ACCELERATION OF GOD's MOVEMENTS. 91 
 
 its stony strength, lioary with age, apparently invul- 
 nerable. Sixty generations of missionaries, resolute, 
 robust, consecrated men and women, have passed by, 
 each smiting heavy blows. Fragments have fallen, 
 but the mountain stands. Scoffers sneer. It is not 
 easy to answer the scorn of the godless, " who find 
 the salt of their wit in the brine of our tears." It is not 
 easy to hush our own doubts and fears. But we do know 
 that " God's chronometer never loses time." Ideas 
 are imperishable. The mind is a palimpsest. What 
 appears to have been lost will surely reappear. The 
 on-going of truth is irresistable. Now, to its intrinsic 
 momentum we believe that God's outstretched arm will 
 give, as it were, an added push, to make what He calls 
 " a short work " of it as the end of all things hastens. 
 Has He not promised that the plowman shall overtake 
 the reaper, the treader of grapes the sower of seed, 
 and that a nation shall be born at once ? This con- 
 ception rebukes the pessimistic philosophy of those 
 who see the world going to the bad, and fancy that 
 their duty is but to save here and there a few from the 
 wreck, Macaulay says that in his day he saw nothing 
 but progress, yet he heard only of decay ; the birds of 
 ill omen chanting their saddest notes when the future 
 was brightest. No, no ! we are in no sinking ship ; 
 we are following no failing cause ! God's word returns 
 not void. His trutli is omnipotent, and its onward 
 velocity increases every decade. We may expect a 
 more rapid evangelization of the world as a result. 
 The branch of the Lord grows more beautiful and 
 comely, the fruit of the earth more excellent. The 
 light of the moon is to change to the splendor of the 
 sun, and the light of the sun is to be sevenfold, as the 
 light of seven days. 
 
92 .SUPEKNATUKAL FACTOIIS. 
 
 The splendid leaps of scieuce in the discovery and 
 application of physical forces are a type and promise of 
 the augmentation of personal power and holiness in 
 the Church of Christ. There is coming a manlier life, 
 more healthful and aggressive. The feeble knees are 
 to be strengthened, the lame man is to leap as the 
 hart, the tongue of the dvimb is to sing. One will 
 chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. 
 Those who have been weak in the church are to be- 
 come as David, and the house of David as God. 
 
 Years of preparation seem slow and fruitless ; but 
 enterprises move with increased celerity when the pre- 
 paratory work is done. Standing in St. Isaac's Church, 
 St. Petersburg, I thought of the many millions spent 
 in its erection, largely on the foundations. A Russian 
 forest was sunk in the form of piles. After this long, 
 tedious work was done, the massive monoliths, the 
 marble and malachite, the jasper and the gold, went 
 readily to their places. Fitly framed together, the 
 building stood complete, " frozen music, an anthem in 
 stone." So men and millions were sacrificed in exca- 
 vations at Hell Gate, in East River, New York. The 
 years went on and we saw no fruits. But the tiny 
 finger of Mary Newton on an electric button exploded 
 the powder and dynamite, and in an instant removed 
 a formidable barrier to navigation. One day a hea- 
 then in India ran after a missionary and bade him not 
 be discouraged, for there is, he said, a silent, secret 
 work going on among his people. The whole fabric 
 of heathenism is honeycombed, and some day \vill 
 suddenly disintegrate. Prophetic signs multiply. When 
 Neesima of Japan was buried, Buddhist priests sent 
 memorial banners as a tribute of respect to the herald 
 of a gospel they did not accept, but the conquering 
 
THE ACOELEIIATION OF GOD's MOVEMENTS. 93 
 
 power of which thej acknowledged. No arithmetic of 
 ours can calcuhite the movements of Immanuel, but we 
 do know that " His going forth is as the morning," 
 brighter and swifter, till the noontide splendor of His 
 reign is reached. 
 
 Coming ont of St. Peter's one day, wearied with the 
 caricatures of Christian worship, my delighted eyes 
 read on the Egyptian obelisk that graces the square, 
 Christus Regnat ! Not " Christ ivill reign," a prom- 
 ise and a hope ; not has reigned, a memory and re- 
 gret; a Troja fait, something that was and is no more; 
 but Christ Reigns ! in Rome, in China, in all the 
 world ! The government is on His shoulders. The 
 scepter is in His hands. He is the center of truth, the 
 summit of history, the goal of human hope ! Halle- 
 lujah ! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ! Come, 
 Lord Jesus, come quickly ! 
 
 There are two audiences I behold before me. Be- 
 yond and above this eager, listening congregation I 
 see a larger throng, I hear a sweeter choir. There is 
 an innumerable assembly of redeemed ones gathered 
 from every land and language ; apostles, saints and 
 martyrs ; a white-robed company. There are converts 
 from every clime. There are faces that are familiar ; 
 feet that will soon fly to meet us ; lips that wait to 
 greet us ; but best of all, there is Jesus, the Captain of 
 our salvation, under whose illustrious leadership we 
 are marching, and at whose pierced feet it will soon be 
 our joy to cast our crowns ! Let us ever walk under 
 the shadow of these august realities, feeling the in- 
 spiration of His presence, the thril'ing impulse of His 
 truth, day by day, till we are summoned one by one to 
 meet Him face to face, when our joy shall be supernal 
 and eternal, in the presence of the King ! 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 First, What should be our attitude towards the peo- 
 ple of the Orient ? How shall the Anglo-Saxon ap- 
 proach the Asiatic in the intercourse which modern 
 civilization has established throughout the earth ? 
 Can we of the West come to an agreement as to the 
 true temper in which we are to meet them ? As a 
 whole, Asiatic people are not friendly to foreign ideas. 
 They have looked upon those of other nations among 
 them as intruders ; their aim as either mercenary or 
 political ; their ideas revolutionary, and their presence 
 a menace to their civilization. Can we wonder at this 
 distrust, when we see the prejudice here towards the 
 very people of the East whom we once invited to our 
 shores ? Can pagans be blamed for expressing their 
 antipathy by as active measures of expulsion as we 
 ourselves have adopted towards them ? 
 
 In general, it may be said that Christian nations 
 must divest themselves of the pride and prejudice of 
 race if they would hope, under God, to secure the 
 moral conquest of the earth. The teacher, preacher 
 or the merchant, going to the East, must carry broad 
 sympathies, founded not only on moral considerations, 
 but on an intellectual appreciation of what these na- 
 tions are to-day as historic factors in the world's de- 
 velopment. We have briefly indicated the genesis and 
 growth of Asiatic thought, the outlines of character, 
 art, industry, literature and social life. Enough has 
 
MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE. Oi*) 
 
 been adduced as evidence to validate the statement of 
 Sir William Jones with which we began. Yet there 
 are few who reall}' appreciate what the East is, and 
 what it has done for the West. The lack of informa- 
 tion on the part of intelligent people is amazing, when 
 the literature of the subject is so opulent, attractive 
 and cheap.* 
 
 MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 The scorn of the Oriental for the European comes 
 from ignorance. He looks down from his position as 
 inheritor of ancient religions, philosophies and social 
 customs upon the new comer as a mere upstart, a 
 parvenu, if not a barbarian or demon. Coming to In- 
 dia full of conceit, the Englishman has shown similar 
 scorn, and has been heard to say of the Hindu, " He 
 is only a nigger ! " For the proud-spirited Japanese, 
 strangers have sometimes shown no more regard. 
 " Natives may apply for admission at the back door," 
 Avas the notice posted by one family at their front en- 
 trance. Another case I heard of, where a man who 
 taught a school of three hundred boj^s, in ignorance or 
 in defiance of the old samurai spirit that still survives 
 there, gave one of them a caning, as he would had he 
 had a Yorkshire school and Smike for a pupil. For- 
 tunately, there was no Nicholas Nickleby to return 
 blow for blow, and the foreigner escaped from the 
 place unharmed, but more than three-quarters of the 
 
 * Dr. Pierson says that lint one out of forty, of the 720,01)0 com- 
 niTinicants of his branch of the church, takes the only missionary 
 magazine of the denomination. He says that ignorance is the great 
 obstacle, and information the foremost need. He cites incidents of 
 astounding ignorance of missions on the part of Christians, and also 
 in the case of journalists and public men. — Missionary Review, July, 
 1890. 
 
IM) PnAC'JU'AL PIJOIUXMS. 
 
 students at once left. The iujuiv to tlic sc-hool provi>.1 
 ii-reparable. 
 
 A meeting of women in Washington recently ex- 
 pressed their approval of the exclusion of Chinese in 
 a resolution wliieli stigmatized that imperial race as 
 " hordes of leprous Mongolians." There are lepers in 
 the East, and there are thousands of imbeciles here. 
 Is it any more fair to call one people leprous, than to 
 call the other idiotic ? A little more knowledge and 
 candor will wonderfully help in the solution of some 
 of these international problems.* What is needed, is 
 not " a race sentiment," as a New York daily urges, 
 a recrudescence of K i.)\v-nothing-ism, or any such 
 spirit of exclusiveness and hate, but, rather, a revival 
 of magnanimity, of Christian brotherhood and unself- 
 ish interest in all men as our kin, whatever be their 
 color or their clime. A wealthy, powerful nation can 
 aftbrd to be both just and generous. Nohlesse oblige. 
 
 ETHNIC KELIGIOXS. 
 
 A second problem concerns our attitude towards 
 Oriental religions and the customs which they make 
 obligatory upon the people. We may take the ex- 
 treme of those who are disputatious, antagonistic, 
 belligerent ; cut do\STi, root and branch, everything 
 distincth' heathen. Or we may be temporizing, sub- 
 servient, concurrent. The former demand the aban- 
 
 * Koyse in his Studj- of Geniiis says, "If we catechize human his- 
 tory, we shall find that all the great achievements of the past, whether 
 material or intellectual, social or political, have i^roceeded from but 
 two of the five generally recognized races— the Caucasian and the 
 Mongolian. All the extraordinary individuals, the geniiises, known to 
 us have emerged from one or the other of the branches of these most 
 influential races." Mongols ("brave") form nearly one-half the 
 human familv, according to Pi'ofessor Dieterici. 
 
ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 97 
 
 donmeiit of all social usages tinctured with super- 
 stition. They are stringent, coercive, uncompromising. 
 Others come, as did a recent embassy from Boston to 
 Japan, " to confer " with Confucianist, Buddhist and 
 Shinto as to some common ground of humanitarian 
 work, ignoring as dead issues the beliefs on which 
 idolaters and Christians differ, and making personal 
 sympathy the simple bond between them. This em- 
 bassy had much in common with Japanese, they said, 
 and sought to supplement, not to overthrow, existing 
 religions. 
 
 Between these antipodal positions stands the intelli- 
 gent missionary. He has made himself acquainted 
 with the fact that religion in the East is a regnant 
 power, ubiquitous and authoritative, entering into the 
 personal and social life, into history, art, law and 
 language. He appreciates what is really excellent in 
 Asian thought, as the wisdom of Yedic verse and all 
 that is beautiful and dutiful in Confucian morality. 
 He realizes the vitality of hereditary instincts, and he 
 respects the rights of conscience everywhere. He aims 
 to Christianize, but not to Anglicize. Confident in the 
 power of the gospel to reconstruct society, observant 
 of the changes in Eastern life already accomplished by 
 contact with Western thought — partly compulsory 
 through military force or international treaty, and 
 partly spontaneous, through conviction — he waits with 
 patience and courage for providential developments in 
 the near future still greater than those in the past. 
 He is loyal to the truth as it is in Jesiis. Toleration of 
 idolatry is treason to Christianity. But a precipitate 
 assault on time-honored customs, such as the seclusion 
 of women, the betrothal of infants, the adoration of the 
 departed, foot binding, clan tax, burning of lettered 
 
98 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 paper, or decoration of graves, he sees may at once 
 create such a revulsion of feeling as will be likely 
 to prevent any further intercourse with those whom 
 he would benefit. 
 
 The true philosophy of reform is that of substitution 
 and exchange, of transfer and recompense. Light dis- 
 places darkness, and the love of Christ secures the ex- 
 pulsion of all His foes. It is better to draw than 
 drive ; to gain by gentle indirection what we cannot 
 get by abrupt assault. 
 
 NATIVE CUSTOMS. 
 
 Ancestor worship is universal in the East. It is 
 " The keystone of China's social fabric," and for more 
 than four thousand years has been the most august 
 ceremonial of their ancient faith. The adoption of an 
 heir to the throne, or the succession of a son, in order, 
 is signalized by this solemn homage. The ancestral 
 temple is the rallying point for each family clan, and 
 the humblest home has its little shrine, its lettered 
 tablets and its daily incense burning before the spirits 
 of the dead. It is claimed that filial piety is its es- 
 sence, and that its observance has consolidated and 
 perpetuated the empire for ages ; that to oppose it is 
 to do violence to the best feelings of the heart and 
 needlessly to engender among the common people, as 
 well as among the learned or ruling class, hatred to- 
 wards Christianity. 
 
 It was my privilege to hear the long and animated 
 discussion of the subject at the Shanghai Conference. 
 In no debate was there more warmth of feeling shown. 
 Learned scholars gave us a history of the cult, and our 
 oldest missionaries rehearsed their experience; but 
 the most effective reply to the appeal for toleration, 
 
NATIVE CUSTOMS. 1)9 
 
 or the laistier fa ire method, was by a highly educated 
 native pastor. He was specially qualified as a con- 
 verted heathen to reflect the real feelings of his peo- 
 ple, both pagan and Christian. Mr. Yen affirms that, 
 with rare exceptions, the divine honor and human rev- 
 erence are inseparable in ancestor worship. " If they 
 do the one, the other is involved in it. The associa- 
 tion has become so hereditary among the Chinese, 
 that to prostrate and to make offerings, bring up in 
 their minds the feeling that the spirits are present, 
 hear their jnayers, accept their gifts, and in return 
 will care for them ; in short, will do for them what 
 Christians believe that God can do." He approves 
 the method adopted by his Christian countrymen of 
 rearing over a grave a monumental cross, inscribed 
 with verses from the Scriptures, and the planting of 
 flowers ; also, in place of the domestic tablet, hanging 
 up a framed iihotograph, with the phrase appended, 
 " In Paradise." This will illustrate the way in which 
 a wise man will avoid needless collisions, while main- 
 taining his fealty to truth. 
 
 At another time the objector was silenced by this 
 reply : " It is you, not we, who dishonor the dead, 
 for you assume that their hungry ghosts will come and 
 plague you unless you appease them with ofierings. 
 They treated you kindly here, and you degrade them 
 and do their character injustice by attributing to them 
 such a disposition now. Confucius has said that you 
 should treat them as you did on earth." A foreigner 
 on entering a Chinese town was assailed by a shower 
 of missiles. He calmly faced the crowd and quoted 
 the memorable precept of Confucius, " Not to do to 
 another what we should not wish him to do to us." 
 At once opposition ceased, and the ringleaders, im- 
 
100 PRACTICAL PHOBLEMB. 
 
 pressed with liis adroitness, came forward and apolo- 
 gized to the stranger. 
 
 The Oriental carries a heavy jiecuniary burden in 
 maintaining ancestral worship. Dr. Yates estimates 
 the annual expense to China, alone, of this adoration 
 of the dead to be 1151,752,000 — more than ten times 
 the expense of Buddhism and Confucianism combined. 
 In India the Shradda is a service to provide the de- 
 parted spirit with a body. A man without a son to 
 make offerings falls into hell. Enormous sums are 
 paid to get a soul out of this purgatorial disquiet. 
 High families, as well as low, impoverish themselves 
 for the remainder of their lives by burial, as in bridal, 
 expenses. One funeral and Shradda cost $600,000, 
 " the greater part of that amount being squandered on 
 worthless Brahmins, indolent pundits, hypocritical 
 devotees and vagabond religious mendicants." In 
 both China and India infanticide and suicide have 
 often been connected with the idolatrous customs re- 
 ferred to. The attitude of the missionary should be, 
 of course, that of uncompromising opposition. 
 
 The barbarous mutilation of the female foot began 
 A. D. 600, introduced by Mauchu Tartars. It prevails 
 among the poor. No small footed women are allowed 
 in the palace or grounds of the Emperor. At first, 
 missionaries tolerated the inhuman practice, though 
 one of them writes, " I have heard cries of anguish 
 that might have moved the very rocks to pity." In 
 1875, the Foochow M. E. Mission resolved to forbid it 
 among their churches. Other bodies have taken simi- 
 lar action. To avoid the suspicion of being a lewd 
 character, " a Christian shoe, similar to that of the 
 Empress, a Tartar, was made and worn." The Chinese 
 Recorder, June, 1878, mentions a number of cases 
 
ASCETICISM IN MISSIONS. . >' i()l '. 
 
 where unboiiud feet have recovered so much of iiheir 
 former motion, that girls not only walked and carried 
 burdens, but ran once more. Miss Noyes last year 
 had but five out of nine-two girls in her school in 
 Canton, with deformed feet, and thinks that the cruel 
 custom will, in time, be abandoned. 
 
 ASCETICISM IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Speaking in reference to celibacy, Mr. Yen remarked 
 that " There is no rule. In some places married 
 people are better ; in others, single people. So in 
 dress, each man must judge for himself, in the place 
 where he moves. There is no cast iron rule to 
 suit all cases. Where foreigners are better known, 
 and where they would look strange if wearing Chinese 
 dress, let them wear the foreign ; but in places 
 where Chinese dress is more convenient, and the 
 foreign would be novel to the Chinese, let them wear 
 the Chinese." 
 
 Every plant has its habitat. Monastic brotherhoods 
 and sisterhoods are exotics on Protestant soil. I called 
 on one community of celibates in India and, from what 
 was seen and learned, the work impressed me favor- 
 abl}'. Still, the query put by the Indian Witness 
 comes to mind : " Why should the absence of the 
 family, God's unit of human society, be so highly es- 
 teemed ? " To begin by presenting the heathen with 
 a false ideal of Christianity is to prejudice the work 
 from the start. " One might suppose," says Dr. Ellin- 
 wood, " that asceticism had been tried long enough in 
 India and throughout the East. The moral and re- 
 ligious life has gone to corruption and decay in spite 
 of hordes of beggars and fakirs. What have the mon- 
 asteries of Sinai and Lebanon done for the regenera- 
 
102 niACTICAL rilOBLEMS. 
 
 tioii of the Holy Land ? AMiat did a celibate and 
 cloistered priesthood accomplish for Mexico through 
 three hundred years of undisputed sway ? The Greek 
 and Latiu churches of the Levant, lacking the domestic 
 element, have scarcely held their ground ; they have 
 received from Islam a deeper impress than tht^y have 
 given. Why, then, should Protestant Christendom 
 yield to the cry of those who, in the very midst of in- 
 creasing success, would turn to the effete agencies of 
 the past ? " Why should our exiled missionaries and 
 their wives, he says, be asked to add to the dreary 
 and depressing influence of a life among idolaters the 
 misery of a beggar's bowl, while Christians at home 
 are surfeited in their self-indulgence ? * Is this the 
 time to turn the last screw of impoverishment on their 
 kindred and brethren abroad ? Is this the way to im- 
 press heathen with the divinity of our religion and the 
 honesty of our purpose ? The suggestion is simply 
 monstrous ! The system of asceticism, Pr. Cyrus 
 Hamlin justly observes, " Protestantism has rejected 
 with overwhelming abhorence and scorn." 
 
 Dr. EUinwood once visited a missionary whose field 
 of labor was amid equatorial heats, and Avhose miser- 
 able abode was directly under the tiled roof of a ware- 
 house. His income was near the starvation point. 
 The scant dress of wife and child revealed numerous 
 boils, of which they had had ninety, the result, in part, 
 of defective nutrition and poverty of blood. He notes 
 the incident " for the benefit of those well-to-do Chris- 
 tians who think that self-immolation is the duty of 
 
 * Dr. Gracey says, "After Protestant Christianity has used all it 
 needed, given all it would, and wasted most wantonly, it yet has a 
 reserve of unspent fortune, reaching the enormous sum of five hun- 
 dred MILLION DOLLARS annually ! " 
 
QUALIFICATIONS. 103 
 
 the foreign missionary." If asceticism be tried, let it 
 begin at liome.t 
 
 Having surveyed some of the unique features of tlie 
 liekl, we are ready to consider a third problem, the 
 selection of the missionary force. 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 Mr. Meredith Townsend, in The Contemporary 
 Review, has lately discussed the proposition of send- 
 ing out " Cheap Missionaries," whatever that phrase 
 may mean. He would, however, substitute this plan : 
 Let each ordained minister from these shores fill his 
 place abroad as a true bishop, taking that word, he 
 says, in its accurate sense. Each bishop is to train 
 and use native evangelists, thousands of whom there 
 are on the ground already. They are fully acclimat- 
 ized ; they have no languages to learn, and no preju- 
 dices to unlearn. They understand the thought of 
 their countrymen, and can rouse that enthusiasm 
 which the European sighs for in vain. A hundred of 
 them might be had in India for seventy-five dollars 
 each per annum. Put under the seven hundred Prot- 
 estant missionaries there, they would form a force of 
 seventy thousand native preachers, who would " do 
 the work infinitely better than that which is sought to 
 be done through cheap missionaries." 
 
 That Orientals are to be brought to Christ by Ori- 
 entals is a truism, but it needs repetition. How far 
 the native church is to be relieved of the responsibil- 
 ity of supporting its own evangelists is a delicate ques- 
 tion. Some missionaries say, with Mr. Cardwell of 
 Shanghai, " No native helper should be paid out of 
 
 t Missionary Eeview of the World, Sep. 1889, pp. G85, (]'J8 ; Jan. 
 H90, Dec, p. 947; Feb. 1891, p. 135, April, p. 251. 
 
104 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 mission funds, but by the native church. If paid 
 agency had never been adopted, we should have had 
 a far more spiritual and earnest Chinese church than 
 we have to-da3^" On the other hand. Dr. Corbett of 
 Chefoo says that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and 
 foreign money should be used when the native church 
 is not self-supporting, on the same ground that aid is 
 furnished to destitute communities at home. It was 
 said at the Shanghai Conference that five hundred 
 native evangelists would be a far greater power than 
 five thousand foreigners, and that this number would 
 soon be spread over China, if her forty thousand con- 
 verts realized the privilege they now have of evan- 
 gelizing their own country. 
 
 Dr. Edkins urged that Christian laymen come to 
 the East and introduce Western arts and industries. 
 Those who are skilled in trade and manufactures will 
 aid in developing the commercial products of the coun- 
 try. They will be allies to the missions, and also make 
 themselves valuable to the government. 
 
 Who can estimate the value of the services of such a 
 man as Hon. S. Welles Williams, who acted as inter- 
 preter and Secretary of the U. S. Legation in the 
 negotiation of treaties and in other diplomatic rela- 
 tions ? Our Consuls and Ministers abroad occupy 
 posts of high influence and broad observation. They 
 may, and some of them do, render efficient aid to mis- 
 sions. Addressing the merchants of Philadelphia on 
 his return from the Orient, U. S. Minister Eeed re- 
 marked, " I went to the East with no enthusiasm as 
 to missionary enterprise. I come back with the fixed 
 conviction that it is, under Providence, the great agent 
 of civilization. I feel it my duty to add, that every- 
 where in Asia and Africa, among the Kaffirs in Natal, 
 
QUALIFICATIONS. 105 
 
 on the continent of India, among the forests of Ce}'- 
 lon, and over the vast expanse of China, the testimony 
 to the success and zeal of our countrymen, as mission- 
 aries of truth, is earnest and concurrent. I heard it 
 everywhere and from high authority." 
 
 As to health qualitications, it should be said that 
 the climate of the East, is specially trying to those of 
 weak nerves and prone to extremes of excitabilty and 
 depression. The process of acclimatization brings a 
 mental and physical strain. If this and the added 
 burden of acquiring the language be successfully un- 
 dergone by ladies before marriage, it will be a great 
 gain. So says Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, after many 
 years' residence in China. 
 
 Personal presence is a factor of influence, even more 
 noticeable than at home. The leading journal of Cal- 
 cutta ascribes much of the success of Dr. Pentecost to 
 " his striking personality and manner." It would be 
 easy to name others whose capacity, natural leader- 
 ship, manliness and self-control make them masters in 
 every emergency ; Avhose eye, voice, hand and step 
 create a magnetic sphere, into which to enter is to 
 capitulate to a psychic force which is as hard to de- 
 scribe, as it is to resist. I once was led about an 
 ancient Chinese city by such a Greatheart. His genial 
 smile disarmed the opposition which his audacity 
 would have otherwise created. The fluency of his 
 speech and his wdt charmed those who were attracted 
 by his fine physique ; then, above all, his moral ear- 
 nestness gave him a ready mastery of men. We went 
 into two great opium dens, where a thousand natives 
 in each congregate to smoke •' foreign dirt " daily. 
 He boldly reproved the men and their female com- 
 panions for their immoralities,- but in such a way that 
 
lUG PRACTICAL I'llOiJLEMH. 
 
 he commanded tlieir respect. During the recent riots 
 he saved vahiable property by his fearless and heroic 
 conduct, at one time holding a murderous crowd at 
 bay with his revolver, for half an hour, until the 
 magistrate arrived. In Japan and India I met others 
 of this knightly, chivalric spirit, which has, to a great 
 extent, a physical basis, but which is ennobled by 
 culture and grace. 
 
 Versatility, tact, common sense, are all-important. 
 There was a medical student who always stood first in 
 college examinations. At graduation, his book knowl- 
 edge amazed his examiners, who tried in vain to cor- 
 ner him. But in actual practice he was so lacking in 
 judgment, that he could not be trusted with the sim- 
 plest case of childhood's ailments. 
 
 Dr. Cyrus Hamlin knew a scholarly young mis- 
 sionary, who was a good sermonizer, but did not 
 know how to drive a board nail. This veteran mis- 
 sionary pleads for men who have a concern for the 
 earthly life ; who can not only feel for the ignorant 
 and thriftless, but can instruct and stimulate them ; 
 who can show them the use of tools and how to mas- 
 ter the forces of nature. His own splendid career at 
 Constantinople illustrates the versatility of a man who 
 made a steam engine and built a college, who taught 
 in five languages and ran a bakery. 
 
 One of the oldest and most gifted missionaries in 
 China has done incalculable service in teaching natives 
 of his district the culture of small fruits. The Zulu 
 missionary, Dr. Wilder, who introduced the sorghum 
 or sugar plant, opened a yearly revenue to us of 
 millions of money. Missionaries should be many- 
 sided men. Our seminaries should provide a definite 
 missionarv curriculum. How to secure it is another of 
 
SPECIAL TRAINING. 107 
 
 those practical problems pressing upon us. Could not 
 the Latin thesis, medieval scholasticism and other an- 
 tiquated lore give way to something better ? 
 
 SPECIAL TRAINING. 
 
 All-round men are in demand everywhere, but 
 abroad particularly. When Dr. Pentecost says that it 
 is useless to send to India any but "first-class men," 
 he means more than men of piety and education. To 
 natural abilities special training should be added, just 
 as with candidates for the army or navy. This is an 
 age of specialists in every branch of science. The 
 work of missions needs men who, as Professor Hul- 
 bert of Corea says, are selected for definite fields, and 
 have made the topography, history, literature and 
 social customs of the country they go to, the theme of 
 special study, just as each student of the science of 
 war is drilled in the technics of his chosen branch 
 of the service. West Point educates the soldier, but 
 Annapolis, the sailor and naval ofiicer. There is much 
 in common, but there is much that is distinctive and 
 peculiar to each. So in theological education. The 
 same gospel is needed in the East that is preached in 
 the W^est ; but there is an Oriental perspective to truth 
 Avhich cannot be ignored. No one can appreciate its 
 importance till he himself has secured it. Some of 
 these peculiarities of Asiatic life and thoiight have 
 been alluded to, but it would take a volume to go into 
 details. What the author of Things Japanese has 
 said of one Oriental nation, under the title of Topsy- 
 turveydom, illustrates the contrarieties of life every- 
 where met with in the East. One meets with jihysical 
 opposites that are suggestive of moral contrasts. Our 
 ideas appear as absurd to Asiatics as theirs do to us. 
 
108 PRACTICAL rriOBLEMS. 
 
 It is well to bo reminded of these social antitheses be. 
 fore one goes abroad. It will soften the shock which 
 his sensibilities are likely to receive, teach him con- 
 sideration for other people's views, and save him some 
 moi-tifying experiences which otherwise his awkward- 
 ness and ignorance will be likely to bring to him. 
 This part of special training is important to all who 
 would appear well in the eyes of those whom they 
 seek to benefit. Our most successful diplomats, teach- 
 ers and preachers have been those who have mastered 
 the details of Oriental etiquette, and have made them- 
 selves at home amid circumstances strangely unlike 
 those in which they have been educated. A few 
 amusing illustrations will suffice out of hundreds that 
 might be cited. 
 
 AMUSING ANTITHESES. 
 
 In the Far East, a book is begun where we end, the 
 line running to the left of each page, and the finis is 
 found where we should expect the title page. Foot- 
 notes are placed at the top. We put the name on the 
 back of the book and set it up on end ; but there the 
 volumes lie flat, with edges stamped. We use small, 
 stiff, printed visiting cards ; the Chinaman uses sheets 
 of thin, folded, Vermillion paper, inscribed with brush. 
 The Japanese reverse our method in directing a letter 
 and places the general before the particular, thus: 
 New York, Brooklyn, St. Mark's Avenue 15G, E. P. 
 Thwing. He beaches his boat stern first, instead of 
 prow on ; he pulls the saw and plane towards him, 
 instead of pushing them from him ; turns a lock in an 
 opposite direction to what we should expect, and in 
 needlework reverses the stich. A foreign lady has 
 sometimes found her cuffs and frills sewed on inside 
 
AMUSING ANTITHESES. 100 
 
 out and upside dowu, as she thought. A horse is 
 mounted on his right side, which is the wrong side to 
 us ; his harness, also, is fastened on that side, while 
 his mane is made to hang the wrong way — we are 
 tempted to say — to the left hand rather than to the 
 right. In the stall his head is put where his tail 
 ought to be ! 
 
 The figures of an item are written down first and 
 the designation follows. The roof of a house is the 
 first thing made by the builders ; then, numbering the 
 pieces, they take them apart and wait till the building 
 is ready for the reunited roof. The wearing of rings, 
 bangles, brooches and other baubles is scorned as 
 barbarous by Japanese ladies, whose glory is in their 
 hair and oVi ; but the Chinese women look with won- 
 der on a sensible European lady whose ear has never 
 been mutilated for ornaments, and ask her as to her 
 sex, for to them the earring is a distinguishing sign of 
 a female, the other articles of whose attire are much 
 like those of men. Cold weather is indicated by two, 
 three or more " coats cold," instead of degrees Fahren- 
 heit. Perfect health and complete success are called 
 " ten parts," from which the scale is graduated down- 
 ward. The compass needle points to the South, in- 
 stead of North. The rower is wont to face the prow 
 of his boat and push with his oars, instead of pull. 
 The scull-post is on the side, instead of the center of 
 the stern. I have seen the tow-line fastened to the 
 top of a foremast instead of being kept at the level of 
 the deck. The Chinaman shakes his own hand instead 
 of yours. He takes off his foot-gear, perhaps, but 
 keeps his head covered. We wear our hair and shave 
 ourselves. A Chinaman would feel belittled to do his 
 own shaving, and still more degraded without his 
 
110 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 queue. Like the ancient Greeks, we regard tlie walk- 
 ing-stick as a sign of ease and social comfort, but lie, 
 of infirmity. A thousand years ago, the laws pro- 
 hibited this luxury to all under fifty years of age. At 
 that time of life one could use the staff in his own 
 compound, the next decade in his own village, and at 
 eighty, anywhere. 
 
 Instead of a dog, a singing bird is taken for a com- 
 panion. We play battledoor with the hands, but boys 
 in the East use their feet, and sometimes catch the 
 shuttlecock on the forehead. Instead of the punish- 
 ment of stocks, there is a huge wooden collar, called 
 the cangue, which encloses the neck, and sometimes 
 the wrists. Somebody has said that the Chinamen 
 every other day put clean clothes on unwashed bodies, 
 while the Japanese put unwashed clothes on a clean 
 skin. Professor Dixon says that, with many, " Summer 
 clothes are mostly made of fresh air." 
 
 ORIENTAL MODESTY. 
 
 Miss Bacon, long intimate with Japanese women, 
 defends them from the charge of immodesty, and 
 shows how delicate their instincts really are, even in 
 matters where their actions shock our ideas of de- 
 cency. She says, " Any exposure of the person that 
 is merely incidental to health, cleanliness, or conveni- 
 ence in doing necessary work, is perfectly modest and 
 allowable ; but an exposure, no matter how slight, 
 that is simply for show, is in the highest degree in- 
 delicate." She goes on to note the horror they feel at 
 the indecency of our ball room attire, or a street dress 
 made so tight as to purposely display outlines that 
 clothing professes to conceal. It would cause " an 
 agony of shame " thus to appear in public, though 
 
ORIENTAL MODESTY. Ill 
 
 tliey would uot hesitate to bathe, unclad, at the beach 
 or bath house, iu company with men and women, 
 without thought of evil. So, too, in regard to the 
 sacrifice which a loving daughter makes to support an 
 aged father or mother, or meet a husband's pecuniary 
 misfortune, we are told that " Conscience seems as 
 active, though often in a different manner, as the 
 old-fashioned New England conscience, transmitted 
 through the bluest of Puritan blood. And when a 
 duty has once been recognized as such, no timidity or 
 mortification will prevent the performance of it." 
 Miss B. does uot, of course, justify the sacrifice of 
 chastity, but simply explains the act from the Japan- 
 ese point of view. With them the philosophy of virtue 
 is inherently opposed to ours. We make purity the 
 queen of vii-tues, but they put filial obedience above 
 it and say, " even if the body be defilecl, there is no 
 defilement of the soul, for the woman is fulfilling her 
 highest duty in sacrificing all, even her dearest pos- 
 session. It is a climax of self-abnegation that brings 
 nothing but honor to the soul. Consider the moral 
 training of the Japanese maiden. From earliest youth 
 she is taught that obedience and loyalty are the su- 
 preme virtues ; for good of father or husband she 
 must be willing to meet any danger, endure any dis- 
 honor, perpetrate any crime. Place this thought of 
 self-abnegation in the foreground and your perspec- 
 tive is altered, the other virtues occupying places of 
 varying importance. Does it follow that all Japanese 
 women are unchaste ? Let us rather seek the causes 
 that underlie the actions, than pass judgment upon the 
 actions themselves. From a close study of the char- 
 acters of many Japanese women and girls, I am quite 
 convinced that few women in any country do their 
 
112 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 duty, as tliej see it, more uobly, more single-mindedlj 
 aud more satisfactorily to tlios(>. about tliem, than the 
 womeu of Japan." 
 
 Illustrations of the opposite conceptions of life and 
 duty entertained by the Oriental might be multiplied. 
 These few, however, show the importance of a more 
 thorough and special instruction in these matters. 
 Oriental studies cover a larger field than many sup- 
 pose. They deserve more attention than they receive. 
 Special institutions for training medical and mission- 
 ary candidates for foreign work are multiplying. They 
 suggest a lack in the curriculum of our older and well 
 endowed professional schools. 
 
 Text-books, also, are needed. He would do help- 
 ful service who compiled a manual on the topics 
 briefly alhided to in these pages. A careful and co- 
 pious Index of Missionary Data, issued yearly, would 
 serve an excellent purpose in awakening general inter- 
 est, and in guiding the studies of students of the for- 
 eign field. It would furnish writers and speakers with 
 opulent materials, and — possibly — it might be of serv- 
 ice to certain journalists, naval officers and travelers 
 who are just now making themselves ridiculous by 
 their wild statements in reference to missionary work 
 abroad. 
 
 The reports to the Inspector-General of Customs, 
 China, on sanitary and medical topics, lunacy, leprosy, 
 climatic and endemic diseases, with numberless sug- 
 gestions as to food, domestic life, susceptibility to, or 
 exemption from, certain maladies, have grown richer 
 year by year in suggestiveness. They show what men 
 of scientific instincts on the ground may do towards 
 the solution of biological and sociological, forensic and 
 economic problems of Eastern life. International 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY. 113 
 
 Congresses in New York, London and continental 
 cities gladly avail tliemselves of such contributions. 
 No class of observers are more competent than our 
 resident missionaries. Said the late Louis Agassiz : 
 " Few are aware how much we owe to the missionaries 
 for their intelligent observation of facts. . . . We 
 must look to them not a little for aid in our effort to 
 advance future science." That prince of geographers, 
 Carl Hitter, confesses that, but for what they had ac- 
 complished, he would not have been able to write his 
 Erdkunde and similar works. He says : " Their com- 
 munications have become a part of the world's knowl- 
 edge." The Royal Commission under Lord Amherst 
 regarded Morrison and Gutslaff as indispensible to 
 their plan of international amity, for they understood 
 the language and the people, their modes of thought 
 and social customs. So Judge Goddard, late Consul- 
 General at Constantinople, said: " The missionaries in 
 Turkey have added to the respect with which our 
 nation is regarded in that country. Without them it 
 would not have been so easy for our Government to 
 manage its affairs in that Empire as it now is." 
 
 There are many practical methods by which the 
 accumulated data, now in the hands of educated for- 
 eigners abroad, might be utilized in the illumination of 
 international questions of the highest importance, per- 
 taining alike to the material and moral interests of the 
 race. Leaving this line of thought, however, there is 
 a final problem of deeper moment. 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY. 
 
 How shall a more vital and visible unity among 
 Christians be secured ? The need is imperative at 
 home, but more so abroad in the presence of pagan- 
 
114 PKACTICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 ism. Professor Druinmond may have spoken too 
 hastily about the "guerilla warfare, and rival sects,"— 
 forty of them in China, it is said — for the grand work 
 done at the recent Conference in regard to versions of 
 the Scriptures is a monumental evidence of practical 
 cooperation ; but still there is too much of self-will, 
 dogmatism and indocility shown in denominationalism 
 on both sides of the sea. In his essay at Shanghai, 
 on Cooperation, Rev. John McCarthy made a strong 
 point when he said that it seemed out of place to dis- 
 cuss such a theme, in face of the foe, when the battle 
 is on ! But," he added, " as a matter of fact, if all 
 the missionaries in China were fully convinced of the 
 value and importance of united action, their connec- 
 tion with home churches, for the most part, altogether 
 prevent any practical step towards closer union. One 
 fails to see how it can be otherwise, while missionaries 
 represent denominational and even political dijffer- 
 ences to the Chinese, instead of only representing the 
 Christ of God." These geographical as well as sec- 
 tarian issues cannot be denied, though each tries to 
 defend his own. 
 
 " If they would let us alone at home, we should 
 have united here in Japan," said a veteran Methodist 
 leader to me. So said the oldest and most experi- 
 enced of other communions. They feel that their 
 efficiency as working boards is weakened by division, 
 and that they are ill prepared to meet the soul-hunger 
 of many in the East, coming out of the darkness of 
 idolatry, or out of the apathy of agnosticism, who cry 
 out, as did the Japanese noticed already on page 
 48, for the moral earnestness of conviction rather 
 than for theories and forms. " O for men of God ! " 
 writes a burning soul at Nanking, " students from the 
 
CHIUSTIAN UNITY. 115 
 
 university of experience, able to teach the Bible, not 
 as a theology, but as a regenerative power in the con- 
 version of souls and the upbuilding of the Kingdom of 
 Christ ! Send us men who will preach the essence 
 of Christianity, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God." 
 
 The question, then, is one which the home churches 
 are to decide, both as to the fact and methods of a 
 closer visible union of working forces. When the tide 
 is low, says Dr. James Hamilton, then every tiny 
 shrimp thinks its little pool to be the ocean. When 
 the great sea comes surging in, it finds a larger ocean 
 with which its little pool mingles. So when spiritual 
 life is low, one sect or another assumes to be The 
 Church, and rears its barriers about itself. " But 
 Avhen the flood of God's reviving grace flows in, and 
 brings its members into fellowship with others of the 
 Lord's people, they find that there is a church, worthy 
 of God, far more extensive than their own sect. Let 
 the Spirit of God work mightily, as of old, and there 
 will never be any difiiculty about true cooperation." 
 Things are tending to this end. The unity of the 
 church, the parity of her clergy, the privilege of her 
 sacraments, the glory of her unbroken fellowship, the 
 dignity of her mission, and the power of her diversi- 
 fied, but concurrent, life are coming to be more heart- 
 ily accepted as the years go on. 
 
 STAR OF THE EAST. 
 
 Ex Oriente Lux. The Light of the World came 
 from the East. For nineteen centuries its glory has 
 brightened the West, while the Orient has again groAvn 
 dark, where degenerate Christianit}', or absolute pa- 
 ganism has prevailed. The Star of the East in its 
 
IK) EX ORIENTAL LUX. 
 
 westward way lias not only nuirked the course of em- 
 pire, biit the triumphs of Immaiiuel's Kingdom. 
 
 Ethnic migrations have their limits ; biit not so with 
 Messiah's march. " The great westward movements 
 of history," says Professor Dennis of Beirut, " have 
 reached at least a geographical limit on our Pacific 
 shores ; but the star of the world's destiny, which 
 first arose in the East, has held to its westward pro- 
 gress until it shapes its course once more to the Ori- 
 ent. It only remains that fully developed and per- 
 fected republican institutions should bring in the 
 Golden Age of political and civil empire, to give its 
 brightest radiance to this westward-moving Star." 
 
 We cannot doubt that the Oriental is yet to be a 
 power in the world's histor}-, and the East is to be a 
 theatre of some of the sublimest scenes of the future. 
 "Who is there that does not desire to contribute to the 
 consummation of events so vast and momentous ? 
 
 £4 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ability of ^Missionaries, 8(1, 104, 
 113. Abraham, 39. Acceleration 
 of events, 87. Actors despised, 
 G6. Agassiz, 86, 113. Alaskan 
 youth, 18. Alexander, 78. Allen, 
 85. American brag, 71. Amherst, 
 Lord, 113. Anatomy of national 
 life, 12. Ancestor worship, 98. 
 Angelo, 11. Animal food, 16. An- 
 titheses of life, 108. Arabic, 52. 
 Aramaic, 52. Architecture of Chi- 
 na, 61. Aristotle, 10 Armorer 
 esteemed, 68. Arnold, 21, 89. Art 
 of Egypt, 53 ; of India, 54 ; of 
 Greece, 54. Aryan, 50, 51. As- 
 ceticism in missions, 101. Ash- 
 more, 72. Asia, first sight, 7 ; its 
 thought, 78. Aspects of nature, 
 13, 14. Assyria, 52. Atavism, 19. 
 Atlantic Monthly, 75. 
 
 Bacon, Miss. 36, 66, 110. Bail- 
 lj% 41. Balaam, 41. Baths, pro- 
 miscuous, 31. Battledoor, 110. 
 Beaconstield, 72. Beale, 14. Bean- 
 sobre, 15. Bedoiiin, 52. Beecher, 
 67, 88. Bell, 10. Benedikt, 19. 
 Bengalese, 22. Bible to be cen- 
 tral,' 84. Bird, Miss, 64. Birds in- 
 stead of dogs, 110. Book of the 
 dead, 40, 53 ; bixrning of, 59; of 
 history, 61. Bosworth, 50. Bow- 
 ring, 57. Brahma Somaj, 31. 
 Bri'dgeman, 57. British Medical 
 Journal, 28. Brown, 15. Bruce, 
 15, 75. Buckle, 12, 13, 17, 18. 
 Buddhism, 25. Burne, 16. 
 
 Calvin, 89. Camoens, 57. Can- 
 ton, 57, 87. Cardwell, 103. Caste, 
 24, 82. Cataract of eye, 28. Cey- 
 lon, 80, 105. Chamberlain, 25, 36, 
 66. Champollion, 56. China, a 
 library, 60 ; language, 58 ; archi- 
 
 tecture, 61; arsenals, 73; fecundi- 
 ty, 72; statesmen, 75; wall, .58, 62. 
 Chefoo, 104. Christianize, not 
 Anglicize, 97. Church, unity, 113. 
 Clergy, parity, 115; each a bish- 
 op, 103. Climate, 13, 16, 105. 
 Clothing, 17, 110. Coan, 17. Coats 
 cold, 109. Cobra, 15. Coleman, 
 14, 15. Conceit, European, 95. 
 C inferring with heathen. 97. Con- 
 ference at Shanghai, 85, 98, 104. 
 Confucianism, 26, 43, 61, 63, 81), 
 97, 99. Congress, Indian, 73; In- 
 ternational, 113. Continence need- 
 ful, 87. Cook, Captain, 23 ; Jo- 
 seph, 31. Copper vessels, 68. Cor- 
 bett, 104. Corea, 63, 70, 85. Cul- 
 len, 10. Customs, report, 8(5, 112. 
 Customs, strange, 108. 
 
 Dante, 50. Darwin, 14. De- 
 crepitude denied, 71. Degeneracy 
 by caste, 24. Dening, 69. Den- 
 nis, 116. Despotism and art, 69. 
 Dieterici, 96. Dixon, 110. Domes- 
 tication of animals, 40. Drama in 
 Japan, 45. Draper, 20. Dress, 
 immodest, 110. Drummond, 114. 
 DuBose, 26, 39, 44. 
 
 Earthquakes. 13, 14, 22. Ed- 
 kins, 57, 74, 104. Edwards, 82. 
 Egypt, many books on, 9; people, 
 53; art, 53. Eight weeks enough, 
 70. Ellinwood, 101, 102. Emer- 
 son, 31, 32, 89. Emperor's recep- 
 tion, 23. Encyclopedia, Chinese, 
 59. Ethioiua,"52. Ethnology de- 
 fined, 10. 
 
 Faber, 57. Fairy tales, 66. Fam- 
 ily, joint, 34. Famine, causes, 17. 
 Fear of heathen, 8, 92. Ferguson, 
 80. Ferri, 19. Feudalism, fruits 
 
118 
 
 of, 09. Finck, 70. Floggings, oO. 
 Foocliow, lUU. Food, 16. Foot- 
 binding, 100. Forry, 15. Fryer 74. 
 
 Genesis of thonght, 10. Gib- 
 bon, 20, 24. Gladstone, 33. God- 
 dard, 113. Gospel, needed now, 
 82; will reconstruct, 1)7. Gould, 
 
 39. Gracey, 102. Greathouse, 04. 
 Gutzlaff, 57, 113. Gwilt, 62. 
 
 Hager,82. Hamilton, 115. Ham- 
 lin, 102, 106. Harcourt, 41. Hayes, 
 75. Heat, 14. Heathen classics, 
 84. Heaven, Hindu, 41. Heredity, 
 19. Hilaire, St., 25. Historic evo- 
 lution, 9. Hoai-ded wealth, 102. 
 Holmes, 20, 32. Home, Oriental, 
 33. Honorifics. 65, 71. Hulbert, 
 107. Humboldt, 18, 39. Hunter, 
 10, 17. 
 
 Ideas, mighty, 90. Idolatry, a 
 compound, 43. Ignorance of the 
 East, 80, 95, 108, 112. Imagina- 
 tion developed, 13, 46. Immobil- 
 ity, 26. Immortahty of the soul, 
 
 40. Imperturbability, 27. India, 
 astudj', 49; a museum, 55. In- 
 dian Congresses, 73. Individual- 
 ity, national, 21. Industrial Arts, 
 67. Ink made, 61. Insanity of 
 the West, 27. Insensibility to 
 pain, 28. 
 
 Japaneee schools, 75; language, 
 64; not unchaste. 111; at Hawaii, 
 72. Jarves, 54, 55. Jeypore, 42. 
 Jones, 7, 95. 
 
 Kaffirs, 104. Kerr, 85. Keshi^b 
 Chunder Sen, 31, 34. Kip, 47. 
 Kissing feet, 22. Kiangnan ar- 
 senal, 73. 
 
 Labor despised, 68. Learning a 
 pastime, 69. Le Normant, 58. 
 Lewis, 54. Literature of China, 
 57; Egypt, 52; Japan, 65; Hindu, 
 42. Lions, Egyptian, 53. Lom- 
 broso, 19. Lowell, J. It., 70. Low- 
 ell, Percival, 70, 70. Luther, 89. 
 Lyell, 14. 
 
 Macao, 57. Macaulev, 91. Mack- 
 intosh, 10. Maine, Sir H., 24. 
 M'Clatchie, 65. McCarthy, 114. 
 Magnetism, personal, 105. Man- 
 sel, 24. Manuals needed, 112. 
 jMarriage, j^remature, 24. Mars- 
 den, 15. Marshman, 57. Martin, 
 21. Martineau, 11. Mateer, 84. 
 Medhurst, 57. Mendicants, 29. 
 Mill, J. S., 10. Mills, 19. Milne, 
 57. Mirage, 15. Missionaries, de- 
 spised, 80, 114; fettered, 114; suc- 
 cessful, 79, 82 ; praised, 80, 104, 
 113; medical, 85; self-supporting, 
 104; asceticism, 101 ; lay helpers, 
 104; qualifications, 48. Mobs con- 
 trolled, 99, 106. Modesty, Japan- 
 ese, 110. Mohametanism, 54. 
 Mongolians, 96. Morrison, 57, 
 113. Muller, Max, 9, 49, 50, 71. 
 Museums, 55. Mutilated child- 
 wives, 25. Mysticism, 31, 
 
 Nakashima, 76. Napoleon, 78. 
 Nature worship, 38, 40, Neesima, 
 92. Nineveh, 52, 54. Noj^es, 101. 
 Noldeke, 52. 
 
 Occidental worry, 27, 69. Orien- 
 tal characteristics, 19, 107 ; taste, 
 55 ; studies, 8 ; broad, 112 ; atti- 
 tude towards, 94, 96 ; Out-door 
 life in Europe, 24. 
 
 Pagodas, 62. Palgrave, 70. Pa- 
 pyrus, 58. Parganya, 51. Par- 
 ker, 85. Passions in Asiatics, 22, 
 24. Patriotism in Japan, 70. Paul, 
 47. Peck, 85. Penitential pills, 
 27. Pentecost, 105, 107. Perci- 
 val, 80. Phelps, 73, 77. Physical 
 factors, 10, Pierson, 95. Poetry 
 in Japan, 00. Poole, 52. Poly- 
 nesia, 12. Printing invented, 61. 
 Pritchard, 14. Problems, practi- 
 cal, 94. Putnam, 27. 
 
 Race hatred, 95. Railways in 
 China, 74. Eawlinson, 56. Re- 
 form, its philosophy, 98. Reed, 
 42, 104. Rein, e3,'^67. Rejuve- 
 nation of the East, 70. Religion 
 in the East, 37. Rey, 14. Rice 
 
Ill) 
 
 diet, IG, 24. iiittor, 14. Wii, 11;!. 
 lloyal Asiatic Society, 8, 15. 
 lioyse, DG. Ruskin, 54." Eoof, G2. 
 
 Sacrifices, 42. Sailors and fire- 
 crackers, 4G. Sanscrit, 49. Scen- 
 ery alone left, 8, G8. Schiff 55. 
 Scotland and Spain, 12. Sectari- 
 anism, 114. Self-abasement, 22; 
 immolation, 2U, 42. Seminary 
 studies, 107. Semitic tongues, -52. 
 Seward, 33. Shanghai, 85, 98. 
 Shinar, 73. Shintoism, 44. Simon 
 Stvlites, 29. Sircar, 24. Smith, 
 A.^ 10. Smith, S., 80. Sorghum, 
 106. Special training, 107. Spen- 
 cer, 20. Stagnation stirred, 8. 
 Substitutes, 28. Sumner, 75. Su- 
 pernaturalism, 79. Swatow, Mr., 
 67. Sympathy craved, 48. 
 
 Taj, 54. Talmage, 27. Taine, 
 11. Taylor, 105. Tea drinking, 
 45. Temple, Sir E., 81. Tenny- 
 son, 49. Textile fabrics, 55. Than- 
 atophidia, 15. Theaters, 6G. The- 
 osophy, 43, Thwing, 18, 24. 
 
 Thorburn, 22. Tiger's nose a 
 charm, 15. Titian, 11. Topsj'- 
 turvydom, 109. Tortures, 28. 
 Trade des23ised, G8. Translation 
 of books, 73. Trinkets despised, 
 109. Truth ever intolerant, 90. 
 Tschuui, 14. Tyndall, 38. 
 
 Underfed in India, 17. Unity, 
 Christian, 113. Upanishads, 41. 
 
 Vedas, 41, 43, 49, 97. Yidyas- 
 agara, 25. Virgil, 41. Virginity 
 sacrificed, 42. Vishnu, 41. Von 
 Herder, 88. 
 
 "Washing of body, 110. "Water- 
 sheds of thought, 39. AVebster, 
 8. Wilder, 106. "Williams, 15, 
 2G, 33, 57, 104. "Woman m Japan, 
 36, 65. 
 
 Yates, 100. Yenn, Eev. Y. K., 
 99, 101. 
 
 Zenana, 34, 80. 
 
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