^ • » • • > J U Frontispiece' % Z I* i / .'"•.' = • , # ; •« « „• ROBERT fao"RRISON (A little known portrait, from an oil painting in the Board Room of the London Missionary Society) THE REGENERATION OF NEW CHINA BY NELSON BITTON i\ FORMERLY ASSOCIATE-EDITOR OK " THE CHINESE RECORDER," SHANGHAI WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. LORD WILLIAM GASCOYNE-CECIL) > 9 \ •* t ! »V« LONDON UNITED COUNCIL FOR MISSIONARY EDUCATION CATHEDRAL HOUSE, 8 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. JJS7' 3 * » > « ♦ • . < * ' ' ' * * . • • » » « TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH INTRODUCTION By the Rev. Lord William Gascoyne- Cecil This book scarcely needs a word of mine to recommend it. The intense interest that the recent develop- ments in China have aroused in those who have the cause of the Redeemer near at heart makes any book giving reliable information on the happenings in China of great value. Even among those who have not had much faith in Foreign Missions, this book will be read with great interest, and must have a con- siderable effect in convincing such of the vital importance of this question. They will find set out herein facts to convince them that the cause of Christianity is essentially one ; that the banner of Christ must either go on to victory, bringing other lands within its gentle servitude, or it must retire before the forces of materialism, which, if they ever establish themselves in the Far East, will surely from that vantage point injure the West seriously. 331522 in iv Regeneration of New China The false conception that we can be safe while others are in danger is as untrue as it is immoral. The growing unity in commer- cial, financial, political and scientific matters renders a divergence in religion more and more impossible ; as the British colony cannot receive the Asiatic emigrant, so Christendom will not be able to suffer a non-Christian China. The distance which has separated us has disappeared ; China must become a sharer of our industrial life, and it would be as idle to suppose that we can be indifferent to her conditions as it would be for Manchester to ignore the social and moral conditions of London. In this book the victory of Christ in China is related ; it is not complete, but there is every reason for hope, though none for slack- ness. The battle is won if we all fight hard, it is only lost if we are indifferent. The Author deals very fully with the ques- tion of Union. Perhaps there I may differ a little from his view, not because I do not value any effort towards re-union, but because I am sufficiently optimistic to believe that the conquest of the East for Christ will so alter men's perspective in religious matters that they will view the words Protestant and Catholic as we view the armour nailed upon Introduction v the wall of the old Hall : we consider it in- teresting because it was used in a fight that was once fought, but the interest is of an historic nature. With this one exception I commend the book unreservedly to the reader, asking him to pray that the time may be soon when the Christian spirit may animate China, and that she in return may contribute to the West an interpretation of the truth which may make all believers, Catholic or Protestant, essentially one. CONTENTS PAGES Introduction by the Kev. Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil . . , iii List op Illustrations . . . . xv Editor's Preface . . . . . . xvii Author's Preface . . . . . xx CHAP. I. New and Old in China To-day Power of the Past in China .... 1-8 Her Great History . . . . 1 Influence of Ancestor- Worship . . 3 Resurgence of the Old amidst the New . 6 Permanence oj the Change in China . 8-17 Stirrings of Reform Spirit under Kwang Hsu ..... 9 Reform strengthened by Opposition . 12 Revolution really Mental and Moral . 15 Return to Obscurantism impossible . 16 The Problem oj the Chinese Youth . 17-27 His Changed Environment . . .18 His Unchanged Ambitions . . .23 His Call to Leadership . . . .25 A Personal and Religious Problem . 26 vii viii Regeneration of New China CHAP. PAGES II. Religion and the Character of the Race Religious Nature of the Chinese . 29-35 Theories of Origin of Chinese Religions . . . . .30 Belief in a Supreme Being and in Intermediary Spirits . . .32 Religious Immobility . . . .34 The " Three Religions " oj China . 35-46 Mutual Toleration of Chinese Religions . . . . .35 Characteristics of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism . . .36 Mohammedanism in China , . .40 Shortcomings of Confucianism and Buddhist attempts to meet them . . . . . .41 Buddhist Influence on Taoism and Confucianism . . . .42 The Religious Upbringing oj the Chinese Youth 46-49 Relationship to Ancestral Spirits . . 47 Practical Effect of Spiritism . . .48 Outcome oj the " Three Religions " in Chinese Characteristics . . 49-56 Taoism and Superstition . . .49 Confucianism and Agnosticism . . 50 Confucianism and Prayer . . .51 The Confucian " Superior Man " . .52 Buddhism and the Devotional Life . 54 Christianity confronting not only Chinese Religions, but Western Materialism . and Rationalism . . . 56-58 Contents IX CHAP. PAGES III. Christianity and the Great Awakening Awakening distinguished from Revolution . 59 Continuity of Christian Influence . . 60-71 Nestorian Missions . . . .62 Early Roman Missions . . .65 Ricci and the Second Period of Roman Missions . ... .66 Aims and Failure of Policy . . 68 The Greek Church in China . . .70 Channels oj Modern Missionary In- fluence ..... Morrison and translation work . The Malacca Institution and its Educational Outlook Early Medical Missions in China . Social and Political Influence of Missionaries . Interpretation of China to the West 71-33 71 74 76 78 81 Roots oj Reform in China . . 83-90 Western and Christian Literature . . 83 Public Preaching of the Gospel . . 86 Individual Relationships of Mission- aries with Chinese . . . .87 The Resultant Task .... 90 IV. Christianity and the New Order Reality oj the New Order . . . 92-96 Sceptical Observers and the Reply to them . . . . . ^ 92 Moral Forces behind the Revolution . 95 x Regeneration of New China CHAP. PAGES IV (continued) — \ Patriotism and Social Reform Stimu- \ lated by Christianity . . . 97-105 Growth of the Sense of Patriotism . . 98 Remedial Movements — (i) Anti-footbinding . . . 100 (ii) Anti-Opium .... 101 (iii) Famine and Plague Relief . . 102 7 Educational Developments [due to Missions .... 105-110 Change in Attitude of Chinese . . 106 The Church and the Training of Educational Pioneers . . . 108 Greatness of the Opportunity . .110 Literature and Christian Influence . . 111-117 Reverence for Literature and for the Scholar * 111 Difficulties Bridged by the Foreigner . 113 Literary Achievements of Mission- aries . . . . . . 114 Formation oj Public Opinion . . 117-118 Power of the Preacher . . . .117 Need of the New Order for the Prophet . . . . . 118 V. The Christian Church and the Heritage op the Past in China Traits oj Character . . . . 120-128 Utilitarianism and Practical Test in Religion . . . . .120 Lack of Spirituality : Danger of Formalism ..... 122 Credulity : Danger of Superstition . 125 Lack of Public Spirit : Danger of Selfishness and Indifference . . 127 Contents XI CHAP. V (continued) — Social and Religious Custom Gambling ..... Concubinage and Polygamy . Official Peculation Ancestor- Worship : Varying Inter- pretations Worship at the Graves : Valuable Elements .... The Moon Festival Inheritances helpful to the Church Family Unity and Sense of Re- sponsibility .... Reasoned Reverence for Literature Complexity of the Problem . VI. The Christian Church in China and Development Necessity oj Indigenous Christianity Limitations of the Foreign Mis- sionary Notable Chinese Christians Weakness of Westernising Ten dencies Christian Leadership . Examples in Public Life Need of similar Development in the Church Chinese Students and the Ministry Place of Women . Reaching the People The Chinese Church . Preachers and Pastors Worship Movement towards Unity The Task of the Missionary l'AGES 128-138 . 129 . 129 . 130 . 133 . 135 . 137 139-144 . 140 . 143 144-145 ITS 147-155 . 148 . 150 . 152 156-168 . 156 . 160 . 162 . 165 . 167 16&-180 . 169 . 171 . 173 . 179 xii Regeneration of New China CHAP. PAGES VII. The Christian Church and the Problems of the Nation The New Leaven .182 Christianity and Chinese Communism 183-192 The Family and the Clan . 184 The Guild . 187 Resultant Problems of Conduct . 187 Christianity and Social Reform in China ..... 192-210 Domestic Slavery and Vice . . 193 Marriage Customs . 195 Poverty ..... . 197 Status of Women . 198 " Face " and Suicide . . 201 Infanticide ..... . 203 Gambling ..... . 206 The Movement towards Social Service .... . 207 The Use of Sunday . 210 The Church and Political Advance. 210-216 Christian Leaders and Danger of Party Influence . 211 Need of Regeneration in Official Life ..... . 212 Strength and Weakness of Con- fucianism .... . 213 China's Last Hope . 216 VIII. The Christian Church in China and its Claim upon the West Magnitude oj the Task . . . 218-223 Population compared with Chris- tian Community . . . . 220 Extent of Christian Occupation . .221 Contents Xlll CHAP. VIII (continued) — Nature of the Service Required Essentially Co-operative Christian Evangelisation Christian Strategy A Plan of Campaign Christian Unity Christian Humility Motives for Response . . Contribution of China to Christian Character . . - . The Inevitable Effects of Refusing the Call . The Heart of the Enterprise PAGES 223-239 . 224 . 224 . 226 . 231 . 235 . 237 239-251 . 240 . 242 . 246 APPENDICES I. Historical Notes on British Missionary Societies in China .... 253 II. Power of the Press in China . . 258 III. Statistical Tables .... 260 A. Missions in China, not including Roman Catholic (i) General ..... 260 (ii) Medical ..... 261 (iii) Educational .... 262 B. Roman Catholic Missions . . . 263 IV. Work among Chinese in Great Britain . 265 V. Significant Dates in the History of Christian Missions in China . . 267 SELECT LIST OF BOOKS .... 269 Index 280 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Robert Morrison . Frontispiece FACING PAGE The Wonder of China's Waterways . . 2 A Confucian Temple The First Chinese Parliament ERRATUM Illustration facing Page 83 For "The Anglo-Chinese College" read " Municipal Buildings " 7 14 The " Willow-Pattern " Tea-House A Gift to those that have Gone A Haunt of Ancient Peace Pastor Ding Li Mei Mr C. T. Wang . A Temple Courtyard . The Blind Leading the Blind The Importunate Widow With Heart and Voice A Chinese Evangelist . The Rev. Cheng Ching-Yi . 123 130 138 147 155 170 187 202 219 234 243 XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Robert Morrison . Frontispiece A Confucian Temple .... The First Chinese Parliament A Reconstructed Portrait of Confucius From a Buddhist Temple A Buddhist Priest .... The Infallible .... Departed Glory ..... The Anglo-Chinese College, Tien-Tsin A Reaping Song One of the Possibilities of Modern China The Good Shepherd .... The " Willow-Pattern " Tea-House A Gift to those that have Gone A Haunt of Ancient Peace Pastor Ding Li Mei Mr C. T. Wang . A Temple Courtyard . The Blind Leading the Blind The Importunate Widow With Heart and Voice A Chinese Evangelist . The Rev. Cheng Ching-Yi . XV EDITOR'S PREFACE After fifteen years of varied service as a missionary in China, the author of this book was under appointment as a Secretary to the Christian Literature Society of China in as- sociation with Dr Timothy Richard. Ill- health, however, necessitated his return to England; but happily he has been able for the past two years to devote himself to the work of a Mission Board Secretary at home. He is thus doubly qualified to write on the vital matters with which the book deals. The illness and death of the Rev. A. N. Johnson, M.A., deprived the United Council for Missionary Education of a Chairman whose grace, tactful wisdom and spirit of Christian fellowship it greatly prized. Upon Mr Bitton as his Mission House colleague there devolved a double burden of work just when, in addition, this book was being written. For the cheer- ful strenuousness with which, under these circumstances, the Author so well fulfilled his task, the Editor and his Committee wish to express their thanks. No effort has been spared to render these xvii xviii Editor's Preface chapters strong and adequate as a basis of discussion and a call to action. They are designed primarily to present the salient facts of the situation and not to set forth personal or sectional opinions. In addition to the ungrudging help of the members of the Council forming the Editorial Committee, the Editor would gratefully acknowledge the most valuable assistance of the following among many authorities who, having read the proofs, have furnished comments and suggestions : — J. Dyer Ball, Esq., I.S.O., late of Hong- Kong ; the Rev. F. Bay lis, M.A., Secretary to the C.M.S. ; Marshall Broomhall, Esq., B.A., of the C.I.M. ; the Rev. Canon Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil, author of Changing China, etc. ; K. L. Chau, Esq., B.A., Secre- tary to the Chinese Students' Christian Union ; the Rev. Henry Haigh, D.D., Secretary to the W.M.M.S. ; H. T. Hodgkin, Esq., M.A., M.B., Secretary to the F.F.M.A. ; Miss E. G. Kemp, Author of The Face of China, etc. ; Mrs A. E. Little, Author of Intimate China, The Land of the Blue Gown, etc. ; the Rev. Evan Morgan, of the Christian Literature Society, Shanghai ; the Ven. A. E. Moule, D.D., sometime Archdeacon in Mid-China; the Rev. J. H. Ritson, M.A., Secretary to Regeneration of New China xix the British and Foreign Bible Society ; the Rev. W. E. Soothill, M.A., late Principal of Shansi University and Principal- elect of the Central China University ; the Rev. John Steele, M.A., D.Lit., late of Swatow, Secre- tary to the British Board of Study for the Preparation of Missionaries; Miss M. Synge, of the S.P.G. ; the Rev. S. G. Tope, of the W.M.M.S., Fatshan; and the Rev. H. G. Whitcher, B.Sc, of the B.M.S., Weihsien. For photographs the Editor is indebted to the Author, the Rev. J. H. Ritson, M.A., the Rev. C. E. Darwent, M.A., the Missionary Education Movement of America, and the London Missionary Society. Basil A. Yeaxlee AUTHOR'S PREFACE In the preparation of this book the author was guided by the request of his friends and advisers, the members of the United Council for Missionary Education, that he should take an elementary knowledge of the missionary situation for granted on the part of his readers. It was felt that the times called for a study of outstanding problems now facing the Christian propaganda and the Christian Church in China. The author would seek to disarm in advance an obvious measure of criticism by referring for information upon points of history, geography, missionary occupation and so on, to the other books on China published by the Council, namely, The Uplift of China and The New Life in China. The author is conscious that many aspects of the missionary problem in China are hinted at rather than expounded, but in palliation he would plead the limitations of space, and also the deliberate desire to provoke thought and discussion on the part of the readers of this volume rather than to get them to accept cut and dried conclusions. XX Author's Preface xxi To those who have carefully followed the course of recent events in China, and have noted the striking vicissitudes of the past three years, the reasons which have led to emphasis being laid in this book upon the foundation principles of progress in Chinese life, and not upon the more obvious, but external, facts of change, will be clear. The endeavour has been to pierce the changing exterior of political conditions and prospects, and to reach the more solid basis of national life and character, and to realise the progress there revealed. The student of missionary affairs will be specially careful not to allow himself to be led astray by too great an immersion in the consideration of the changes which mark China's recent political history, forgetful of the change which is symptomatic of the nation's underlying life, and which the missionary enterprise, during the past two generations has done so much to bring about. This book is not intended as an exposition of the current political facts in relation to the missionary task, but an attempt to deal with those more constant factors with which the missionary worker has finally to deal. The author trusts that the study of his work may be made, under God, the occasion xxii Author's Preface of a considerable advance in the study of the problems awaiting solution in China at the hands of the Christian Gospel, and that there may ensue a deepened desire on the part of the members of our Churches in the homeland to serve in the spirit of the Master this most worthy people whose present need is so urgent, and whose future importance for the history of the world is so incalculably great. NELSON BITTON London, May 1914- ; . ••■•>• *•■«:•« >.• J »• * ' » » ••'"••It • • • \ ••**•' • CHAPTER I ■ w- -«-^ y-».t vi r t t \t a npr^v 1A A "V7 TA ^ '• CHAPTER I NEW AND OLD IN CHINA TO-DAY If for no other reason than that of extreme antiquity China is deserving of the serious attention of all those who have any interest power of THE PAST in the progress of the world and the welfare in china. of men. A nation which has recorded its history, faithfully and fairly, through nearly 3000 years, and which has a legendary his- tory of more or less historic value reaching Her Great back 2000 years beyond that, is in a posi- 1S ory * tion to teach the modern world lessons of the very highest order. When all the present disruptive chaDges through which the nation is passing, and under which her people are suffering, have had their day, and China has arrived at a point of assured social and political stability (as yet by no means in prospect), the eyes of her statesmen and leaders will assuredly turn again to the teach- ing and experience of the past ; they will have in view these as well as the discoveries and exigencies of the present, as they frame the policy and express the life of the nation. 2 Regeneration of New China In face of ;the present conditions of Chinese national life, the tremendous influences of Western thought and civilization upon the whole of the life and outlook of the people, the unrest which has permeated every class and condition, and the resultant confusion in every sphere of national activity, it would be easy to exaggerate the bearing of our modern civilization upon the future of China. We must remember the inevitable tendency of long experience to assert itself when the novelties of change have lost much of their force, and are viewed comparatively. No historic nation can shed its past as if it were a mere superfluity, and less than most nations is China likely so to do. The present obses- sion in favour of change all round, and the self-deprecatory attitude of many of China's advanced young men, are bound to suffer modification. The voice of the countless generations of the nation's age-long past will then be heard speaking more clearly than now, while the spirit of revolt is still in the air, and that moderation which is one of the features of the normal life of the Chinese is certain then (at least so far as the educated classes are concerned) to make itself felt. At the present time national ideals are in a state of flux ; the old have gone, and no go > a w 5 u b o - w Q z o w ac • •• ,« • New and Old in China To-day 3 one knows to-day what the new really are. China's advisers have a myriad voices and few are in agreement. It behoves the student of Chinese affairs to enquire carefully and with humility into facts and tendencies, and above all things to avoid dogmatism, In every discussion of the situation as it appears to-day, the consideration of the natural force which drives the nation back upon its past must be set side by side with the more apparent and aggressive power which presses the nation along the road of progress by the agency of change. The worship of ancestors, which is, as we shall see later, the foundation of much of influence of China's religious and social life, exercises worship." its influence in a greater or less degree over every Chinese individual. It will prob- ably prove the last of the moral forces of China to come under the sway of the Christian Gospel. That it is being modified is an acknowledged fact ; the abolition of the monarchy necessitates some revision of the national attitude towards it in that the wor- ship of the spirits of the deceased emperors was one of the acts performed by the " Son of Heaven " as representing the dynasty and the nation. 1 That it will disappear from the religious life of the Chinese is unlikely ; 1 cj\ p. 37. 4 Regeneration of New China whether it ought to disappear is a moot point, even amongst Christian missionaries, who are far from unanimous in their opinion concerning its interpretation. The hold that it has upon the Chinese mind was strongly revealed in the act of Dr Sun Yat-sen, a professed Christian, who, as Provisional Presi- dent of China immediately after the abdica- tion of the Manchu dynasty, took part in an act of homage at the tomb of the first Ming Emperor outside Nanking, and informed the august spirit of that great ruler con- cerning the overthrow of the Manchu usurper and the establishment of the Republic. We are told by an eye-witness of the scene f that a large tablet was erected before the tomb of the Emperor Hung-wu, and that before it candles were burned and incense offered. " The President (Sun Yat-sen) made three profound bows before the tablet. Then a secretary read the President's announcement to the spirit of the great Chinese hero." The following are some extracts from that announcement, characteristically Chinese in their reference and their hyperbole : — " Of old the Sung dynasty became effete. Liao Tartars and Yuan Mongols seized the occasion to throw this domain of China 1 Dr Lim Boom-keng in Federation Journal, March 1912. New and Old in China To-day 5 into confusion, to the fierce indignation of spirits and men. It was then that your Majesty, our founder, arose in your wrath from obscurity (Chu Hung-wu had been in youth a Buddhist monk) and destroyed those monsters of iniquity, so that the ancient glory was won again." Then followed a description of the Manchu despotism and the rise of the revolutionary spirit. " An earthquake shook the barbarian court of Peking and it was smitten with paralysis. To-day it has at last restored the government to the Chinese people, and the five races of China may dwell together in peace and mutual trust. Let us joyfully give thanks. How could we have attained this measure of victory had not your Majesty's soul in heaven bestowed upon us your protecting influence ? " * The idea of the martial influence of the founder of the Ming monarchy guiding to victory a host destined to establish a republic is one somewhat difficult for the logical mind of the West to appreciate. The point to be noted is that the Chinese mind did appreciate it because the reference to the greatest ruler of the last purely Chinese dynasty made, as it were, the needed point of contact with the past, and gave the required semblance of 1 From The Times, April 3, 1912. 6 Regeneration of New China justification and approval from history to an unprecedented act. It " saved the face " of the Republic in the eyes of the nation and of the exalted dead. Thus the leaders of the Revolution look with one consent to the ancient history of China and the teaching of the sages for a moral justification (however far-fetched it may prove to be) of the new form of government. This ingrained custom of the worship of ancestral spirits is a force which unites the dead with the living, and the living with the unborn. The pressure of the past is upon China in a sense which is scarcely true of any other land, and becomes, therefore, a force which must be reckoned with in every consideration of the future of the nation. Resurgence & i s n °t? therefore, a thing to be wondered ° f tidtot: a * ^ a ^ °^ f orces are continually making their the New. way to the surface of new China. It was under the Republican Government that an official of the old school, on December 14, 1912, in the Kwangsi province, cruelly massacred thirty-nine lepers because he wished to relieve the community of the " rejected of heaven." Such irruptions of the past are bound to be in every sphere of national life, and even within the Church. There is a vast and half- conscious conflict proceeding in China in ♦ » J • • a '. ta - S P M a * a ^> an y re turn to the old and si Me. stupid obscurantism of China's nineteenth- century life. The new outlook makes that impossible. A modification of over-zealous re- forming enthusiasm there may be aud is, but there will be no more plucking up of railways in the name of the disturbed spirits of the dead ; no more official refusals to open mines lest the earth dragon should be disturbed ; no more official opposition to the erection of mill chimneys lest the demoniac influence of New and Old in China To-day 17 the air should be offended and destroy the populace. Nor will Western books be burned and their users boycotted, schools and churches destroyed, and converts massacred because of their Western connections. Other difficulties will doubtless arise to take the place of those gone by, bat the old spirit is a thing of the past. Between the youth of China to-day and his grandparents there lies an intellectual gulf as wide as that which divides the twentieth century from the sixteenth in Europe, and the problem of China in the immediate future is very largely the problem of that youth. To him Taoism is but a medley of superstitions, fit only for clowns and ignorant old women • of the finer shades of Buddhism he has no appreciation, and he condemns in good set terms its idolatry ; whilst of Confucianism he has more than a trembling and fearful sus- picion that it has been one of the con- tributing causes of China's retrogression. With a view to the clearer understanding the of the task which awaits Christianity in China, of°the M and which is to-day before China herself, it $outh SE is worth while to pay more than passing attention to the representative Chinese youth. 1 1 It must be remembered that change has been most rapid and most marked in the coastal provinces and along the great rivers. 1 8 Regeneration of New China His world is everywhere telling the story of change. His whole environment reveals it, He will remember the time, not so long ago. His changed when his queue was a matter of daily diffi- ment. culty, and when its condition reflected alike his own habits and the social position of his family. That queue is with him no longer, nor does his father pay a daily visit to the barber. He, too, is so far in the ranks of the moderns. His mother's feet are bound. She had in days gone by a certain hard I ride in the smallness of her " lily " feet, and our youth remembers that an attempt was made to bind his elder sister's feet. The attempt was given up, and, though slightly crippled, she walks with feet unbound. Younger sister's were never bound. The status and treatment of the girls of the family have changed considerably from that laid down for the guidance of Chinese in the Book of Rites. 1 Our youth is, moreover, betrothed. His betrothal ceremony was celebrated when he was twelve years of age, before the new leaven had entered the family life, and that betrothal is causing him no little vexation and his parents some anxiety. He is striv- ing to summon sufficient courage to take the fearsome step of breaking the betrothal, 1 Cf. Gilbert Walshe, Ways that are Dark, »» * s 5 i 3 s • »• > o j 3 J* . • ' • • * , » ' J ■> > j j » A RECONSTRUCTED PORTRAIT OF CONFUCIUS By permission of The Chinese Recorder New and Old in China To-day 19 to which he was not a consenting party, in favour of one in which he shall have a word to say. At this point he knows that he will part company altogether with the older genera- tion, and this he scarcely dares, and certainly does not desire, to do outright. The gulf is widening betwixt him and his parents, and each is conscious of the fact ; yet the family bond still holds and will be one of the last things to break, for filial piety is one of the forces that count when many others have gone. A few shelves of books are a cherished possession of our semi - Western - educated youth. The old love of literature is in his bones, and will be part of the life fibre of his children's children. He has the Chinese classics ; these he treasures, although he knows them less well than his father, who knows of literature little else. Side by side with them there are some modern essays by Chang Chih-tung, Kang Yu-wei, Liang Chi-chao and others, and not a few translations of Western books such as Mill on " Liberty " ; Mazzini's " Duties of Man " ; Carlyle's " French Revolution " ; Mackenzie's " History of the Nineteenth Century " ; possibly some Darwin, Hseckel, and Spencer (hashed up by Japanese and translated), and a number of B 20 Regeneration of New China Chinese biographies of Western statesmen and men of action. Here we find lives of Washing- ton, Napoleon and Cromwell, Luther, Pitt, and others. On another shelf the English books stand ; the school text-books, the Encyclo- paedia and Anglo-Chinese Dictionary, pub- lished by the Chinese Commercial Press, an English Bible, and a number of shilling editions of English classics. Upon these and upon the conversation of his associates in the club, the Y.M.C.A., the Church, the School, or the Tea House, and upon the newspaper — moderate or revolutionary — to which he may be partial, he feeds his fast developing mind. Such are the influences that shape and guide his mental and moral life. Being by nature, when under right discipline, a keen student with a phenomenally tenacious memory, and a remarkable appreciation of the things of practical value in education, as a student both of books and of life he is in the world's front rank. On the external side also things have changed not a little, A few years ago our typical youth cast away his Chinese garments, as a man puts away childish things, and he begins now to take a pride in the cut of his foreign clothes, the lustre of his foreign linen, and the colour of his ties. His grandfather deemed New and Old in China To-day 21 a moustache unseemly in a man under fifty years of age ; our friend is striving gallantly to attain to one, and he is barely twenty. The foreign cigarette, made in Shanghai or Japan, has given him a distaste for the water pipe and the innocuous Chinese tobacco which his father enjoys. The city in which he lives had known no serious change for a thousand years. As things had been, they remained. The Manchus brought a few changes of little moment ; otherwise generation had succeeded generation in an unbroken monotony of life and circumstance. Last year in this city an electric lighting plant was installed, and there is now no longer the old difficulty of picking one's steps through the streets at night with a hand-lantern ; that is the lot of his unfortunate country cousin in town and village, where the blessed word of material progress has not yet been sounded. In the streets are shops filled with foreign goods — watches, pocket handkerchiefs, clothes, and knick-knacks unknown in Chinese cities not so many years ago. There is even talk of pulling down the walls to make a public boulevard. Does he not ride a bicycle, wash with scented soap, use a patent safety razor, play base-ball, tennis, and " soccer " football, and train for sports meetings in connection 22 Regeneration of New China with the local Government and Mission schools, or the Chinese Y.M.C.A. ? Let it not be concluded, however, that our youth is bent upon religious development or convinced of the truth of Christian teaching because he is in touch with Christian move- ments. He has been duly impressed by the practical attainments of the Christian mission- ary teachers he has met, and he is quite con- vinced of the disinterested zeal for the welfare of China which Christianity has displayed. Among his friends there are some whose whole outlook is coloured by Christian ideals, and whose exemplary conduct compels attention. He is sure there is something in Christianity as a character-forming force which is worth attention, and it is the one outstanding factor in Chinese life whereby the gulf between East and West is bridged. Intellectually he is convinced of the superior nature of the Christian message and the value of its ideals for industrial and national life, and to that extent he is ready to come under its helpful influence. The Y.M.C.A., in particular, offers him a scope for intellectual, moral and physical, as well as religious, activity that no other organization approaches, and to this he re- sponds with all the eagerness of a discoverer. It is a new world into which his genera- New and Old in China To-day 23 tion has emerged. The very old shake their heads at the exceeding folly of youth, and prognosticate an evil which events seem about to be justifying, while middle age puts up with the awkwardness of change, tak- ing some pride in the successes of its own youngsters. But youth is sincerely, thought- lessly and extravagantly in love with change, and at the same time held by no sure convictions. One essential change, however, has not yet His un- taken place in the ideals which our youth Ambitions. holds before his mind. An official post, in some form or another, is the lodestar of his life, as it has been that of the countless educated generations before him. Therein he desires to serve his own country, it is true — and let it be counted to him for righteousness — but the hope of gain is there also, and illicit gain at that. He is for the reform of the Civil Service, but, unreformed, it successfully dangles its prizes before his desiring eyes. In his dreams he grows wealthy and fat as he climbs the ladder of fame, and in his moral outlook upon worldly success it is to be feared that, in general, new official is but old peculator writ large. Of the moral changes that are indispensable to good government and clean public life in China he is practically 24 Regeneration of New China unconvinced. Bribery and corruption are in theory, and according to the books, the enemies of righteousness ; that he knows. In the world of fact, however, it is by these that men live, and — in the end — the path of moral revolution is infinitely harder than its political counterpart ; therefore, the wise man will learn to accommodate his zeal to the exigencies of his pocket. For the present our aspiring youth will content himself by rendering to the cause of public and official incorruption a worthy and enthusiastic lip service. No disappointment has been so keenly felt by the disinterested friends of Reform in China as the failure of Young China to deal with the open sore of official peculation. A writer in one of the leading Chinese news- papers, the Min-li-pao, thus addressed himself to his fellow-reformers in November 1912 x : " When I returned to my country last year I purposed establishing an ethical, not a religious, society, but soon found it im- possible to do so. Before the Revolution I imagined that you were all public-spirited. I have been deceived. All you who are revolutionists have your thoughts turned to honour and wealth." Here are found the feet of clay. Here, too, lie the peril 1 Cf. Chinese Recorder, December 1912. New and Old in China To-day 25 and the problem : " Who shall command the heart ? " The real and abiding difficulties of China are not, therefore, those political and financial crises through which she is now passing ; these are of small moment in comparison with the intensely human problems of which political upheaval is but the external sign. Questions of modes of government (Republic, Limited Monarchy, Dictatorship, Parliament- ary representation, Local Self-government, the Autonomy of the Provinces), foreign loans, the foreign supervision of sources of revenue, and the like, all serve to hide from the eyes of men the real task and the vital question which China presents. It is so easy to look upon the outward appearance and therefrom to form false judgments. If the young educated men of China as a class are made neither worthy nor fit for the responsibility that His Call to confronts them, disaster must await the ea ers ip * nation ; for it is leaders that China seeks. All who have to do with the Chinese coolie, even those who know best his many weaknesses, vices and failings, respect the human material he reveals to those who are just in their dealings with him and prove themselves his friends. The heart of her people, the founda- tion material of a nation, is wonderfully 26 Regeneration of New China A Personal and Re- ligious Problem. sound. Ages of misgovern ment, periodic famines, life lived continuously on the border line of want, an entire absence of home com- fort, repeated rebellions with their consequent devastations, gross superstition, an utter ignorance of hygienic laws, have all failed to destroy the steady, persistent dependableness of the working classes of China. These, however, have always looked, and will still continue to look, to the cultured of the nation, some of whom are always rising from the ranks of labour, for guidance and for government. 1 Can young China be taught to lead China aright ? That is the question, not merely of the hour, but of the distant future ; not only for China or for the Church, but for the world of coming days. Who shall make the middle pathway between the revolutionary extrava- gance of the newly-formed China Socialist Party, with its programme of free money, free love, and freedom from law, and the bad old reactionary policy of ignorance, pride and peculation ? Is there in Christianity the genius which can lay hold of that innate conservatism which is the essential heritage of the Chinese mind, and which can also guide and restrain the ebullient forces of reckless 1 CJ. Chapter IV New and Old in China To-day 27 revolution that have for the time being possessed so many of her people, and fuse these elements into a mighty power making for that righteousness which is at once China's historic ideal and her outstanding present need ? Out of the inheritance of the past, first in the individual and then in the nation, that which is base and vicious has to be divided from that which is good and useful, and the reckless selfishness of untrammelled ambition now so evident has to be separated from the high and noble zeal for a new earth wherein dwells righteousness which is arising in many Chinese hearts. The whole problem is in the end religious, and one to the solution of which the contribution of the Gospel, as the one message of salvation to men, is vital. Surely Christianity has that needed genius, and, in so far as China to-day possesses any hope of attaining to that ideal, or is show- ing signs of grasping it, it is given to her only in the person and message of Jesus Christ, and in the service rendered to the nation by His disciples and His Church. Supplementary Reading The author has assumed in his readers familiarity with such facts about China as are contained in The Uplift of China (new and revised edition, 1914), by Dr Arthur B* 28 Regeneration of New China H. Smith. As a general book of reference Things Chinese, by J. Dyer Ball, is invaluable : the articles are arranged alphabetically, after the fashion of an encyclopaedia. For a description of the Chinese temperament, Dr Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics retains its pre- eminence. Chaps. IX., XIV., and XXVII. are particu- larly valuable in view of the above chapter. Changing China, by the Rev. Lord William Gascoyne Cecil, is an excellent, if impressionist, sketch of a current phase. Part I., " China in Transition," bears upon our subject here. The Changing Chinese, by Prof. E. A. Ross, deals with the same topic from the point of view of a professor of sociology. See especially Chaps. II., III., and IV. Of Prof. Giles' Civilisation of China, Chaps. I. (concerning Feudal China), VI., and X. to XII. (touching upon the modern outlook) should be read. A very illuminating study of recent events in China from the Christian point of view is The Emergency in China, byDr Hawks Pott. The chapters (II., III., and IV.) on " Results of the Recent Revolution/' " Industrial and Commercial Development," and " Social Trans formation " are specially relevant here. CHAPTER II RELIGION AND THE CHARACTER OF THE RACE The conception of the Chinese as a race altogether materialistic in outlook, having both eyes wholly fixed upon the main chance, is one which will not bear the test of close examination, and can scarcely be held by religious ii • . • v -l i i. NATURE any who have come into immediate contact of the with the daily life of the people, or who CHINESE - know their history. Passages from the Con- fucian classics have, without doubt, given an agnostic tendency to the intellectual life of the Confucian scholars ; but as even these latter are to be found participating, in one way or another, in many religious acts that reveal a belief in the supernatural and the life of the soul after death, too much stress ought not to be placed on such passages. The daily life of the Chinese produces sufficient evidence of religious beliefs. The altars and ancestral tablets, the lares et penates of even • the humblest householder or shopkeeper, the charms to avert evil, and the lucky 29 30 Regeneration of New China " characters " found over almost every door- way, the images in banks, warehouses and other centres of business activity, the myriads of temples and the hordes of priests, all testify to the strong hold of religious ideas upon the Chinese mind. " I perceive," the obser- vant student of the actualities of Chinese life might say, " that in all things you are very religious." Theories of From its very beginning the history of ofChinlse China has recorded the religious ideals, Religions, scruples and observances of rulers and people. Whatsoever theory of the origin of religion in China students of the subject may hold, they at least agree concerning the proof afforded of the interweaving of religious ideas and observances with the earliest known life of the race. And this knowledge covers at least four thousand years. Concerning the origins of religion within the Chinese nation, authorities are very much at variance. On the one hand, Dr John Ross, 1 following Dr James Legge, 2 affirms that a modified Theism appears at the very dawn of Chinese history, and that all available evidence points to a high stage of religious knowledge at the beginning of national life. "It is obvious 1 The Original Religion of China. 2 Religions of China. Religion and Character of Race 31 that the belief in the existence of one Supreme Ruler is among the earliest beliefs of the Chinese known to us. Of an earlier stage, when no such belief existed, or when the belief in Polytheism did exist, we find no trace. Nowhere is there a hint to confirm the materialistic theory that the idea of God is the evolutionary product of a precedent belief in ghosts or departed ancestors, or that the belief had arisen indirectly from any other source." x At the other extreme stands the well-known scholar, Dr De Groot, whose studies of Chinese folk-lore and superstition are among the most thorough and illuminating of recent researches into the popular religion of the Chinese. His point of view is that Universism has always been what he maintains that it is to-day, the one religion of China upon which the three religions of the land have been grafted. Universism may be defined as the theory which looks upon the Universe and all created things as animate. Under it man is subject to influences emanating from " things." The spirit of life is ascribed to all, manifesting itself in the seasons, the weather, hills, trees, the earth, rivers, all of which are supposed to exert their sway over the life and 1 Dr John Ross. 32 Regeneration of New China Belief in a Supreme Being and in Inter- mediary Spirits. destiny of mankind. This theory, says De Groot, is common ground to the three religions of China and makes them, in effect, one. " Universism is, of course, much older than the classical writings, by means of which it has been preserved. As is the case with many origins, that of China's Universism is lost in the darkness of antiquity." The first school of enquirers rest themselves on the ancient books of China and the accepted legends of earliest days ; the second group strive to get behind the legends and the books, and to formulate a theory in accordance with the principles of evolutionary thought. Each school finds its material in the Chinese classics. The suggestion of Universism, as well as of Theism, is there. " If we penetrate as far as we can into Chinese antiquity we find the earliest rulers attempting to conciliate, by sacrifice or by offerings of foods, the spirits of the mountains and rivers." x Side by side with this there certainly also existed a belief in a Supreme Power, ruling over all men and things, an omnipresent Deity, called by a sacred name, " Shang Ti," whose vicegerent on earth was the Emperor of the nation, the Son of Heaven. The very earliest record of a religious act found in Chinese history 1 China and Religion. E. H. Parker. Religion and Character of Race 33 refers to the great " Shun," of whom it is said " he sacrificed specially, but with the ordinary forms, to the Supreme Being ; sacrificed with reverent purity to the six Honoured Ones ; offered appropriate sacrifices to the hills and the rivers ; and extended his wor- ship to the host of spirits." Further light upon the religious practice and conception of State Confucianism is given in the act recorded by the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who ruled in 1538, on the occasion of making an alteration in the wording of the ceremony used in the sacrifice offered at the solstice by the " Son of Heaven ' on behalf of the people. He thus addressed the spirits con- cerned : " Beforehand we inform you, all ye celestial and terrestrial spirits, and will trouble you, on our behalf, to exert your spiritual influences and display your vigorous efficacy, communicating our poor desire to the Supreme Being (God) and praying Him mercifully to grant us His acceptance and regard, and to be pleased with the title we shall reverently present (to Him)." Here is the conception of intermediary spirits through whom man reaches the Most High. The point to bear in mind in all this is the significant fact that a strongly marked religious life has been one of the outstanding 34 Regeneration of TSfew China characteristics of the Chinese throughout their racial history, whether we are considering the scholar or the man in the street. It is there when we first meet them in their ancient records, and it has persisted in various forms, degenerate or progressive, though chiefly de- generate, right down to the present generation. In one shape or another it is a determining factor in the national character of the Chinese people in our own time. The religious life that a Chinese to-day inherits, therefore, is much more than " natural religion " modified by the material and some- what agnostic trend of practical Confucianism. Confucianism has, indeed, been the medium Religious in which the most exalted of all the religious immobility. conce pt s G f the Chinese mind have been preserved. In all lands the tendencies of the soul are in very large measure a heritage from the past, and an unseen, intangible, but real bias of spirit pertains to all members of civil- ized races. We may therefore fairly expect to find in the case of peoples with the weight of multitudinous generations pressing upon them from behind an immobility of spirit expressed in religious prejudice to a marked degree. We find it so in China, with the added force of anti-foreign feeling. It is an illustration of the old adage that it is an easier matter to convert a, S w h H ►■* Q Q D S3 s o as fa. I • Religion and Character of Race 35 the untutored man than to reach the civilized. " The common people heard Him gladly." Pride of race has its spiritual as well as its intellectual bearings. Little wonder, then, that it has taken a century to break down some of the outstanding barriers of the soul in China. That soul was shaped in a mould as stiff as the years which went to its making were many. Yet the spiritual tendencies of Chinese life the "THREE were not altogether intolerant, though rigid, religions Confucianism has been in general content to 0F CHINA - " live and let live " so long as its special political prerogatives were not threatened and its cere- monial was observed. Taoism, Confucianism Mutual and Buddhism have lived together in moderate f Chinese comfort, though persecutions have not been Rell & lons - so infrequent or so light as many deem, 1 just because Taoism and Confucianism are apt at compromise, and because Buddhism in China has hauled down the flag and per- mitted the incorporation of the other systems into itself. So we see over the land " Halls of the Three Religions," in which Confucius and the " Four Companions," 2 the gods of 1 Cf. De Groot, Religious Persecution in China. 2 These are the philosopher Yen, the continuer ; the phil- osopher Tseng, the exhibitor ; the philosopher Tsze, the transmitter (grandson of the sage) ; and the philosopher Meng (Mencius), the seconder. 36 Regeneration of New China Taoism, and the trinity of Buddhas are indiscriminately and collectively worshipped. If Christianity had also been marked by this compromising spirit of inclusiveness it might have won its place, side by side with the rest, long ago. We might then have seen " Halls of the Four Religions." The exclusive rigidity of the Christian claim, its refusal to be incorporated as well as to incorporate, has been one of its difficulties to the Chinese mind all through the history of the Christian enterprise in China. Character- Taking the three religions of China as they fucian^sm ° n stand in the order of importance we may state their claims in general thus — Confucian- ism represents the very spirit of China as the Chinese themselves would like to have it portrayed. It comprises in its code and in its classics the customs and the teachings of the best of ancient China. Confucius him- self claimed to be no teacher of new things, but a transmitter of the gloriously old. It has always been recognized as the ruling religious force, the power behind the throne, the ex- ponent of the moral and social system by which the nation has been kept together in order and propriety. Behind it, in turn, lie the worship of " Heaven," the regular worship of the Supreme Being by the Emperor as Religion and Character of Race 37 the "Son of Heaven," 1 the worship of the ancestral spirits, the teaching of filial piety, and the recognition of the powers of the spirits of Nature, of the hills and the rivers. It has incorporated the worship of national heroes, whom it has deified — sages, statesmen, warriors and emperors ; and of all these Confucius is to-day the head, " one of a trinity with Heaven and Earth." The acceptance of the Confucian system and the worship of the Sage has been enforced, if needs be by persecution, upon all those who came under the notice or sway of the State. Confucianism is the most deeply ingrained of the three systems of religion acknowledged by the Chinese as national. It has become an integral part of the national life. Taoism, the second indigenous religion, character- although antedating Confucianism, as a^a^sm. system makes little or no historic appeal to the Chinese mind. Tao is variously trans- lated " reason," " doctrine," " nature," " the way," or even " logos." 2 The philosophy of the system is enshrined in the Tao-teh-king — the classic of reason and virtue — and beyond 1 Now undertaken by the President, as ruler. 2 The Greek term, translated ' ' Word " in the Gospel according to S. John, chap, i, 3& Regeneration of New China its moral precepts no Taoist teaching has ever gone. Its apprehension of spiritual life, orig- inally almost transcendental, soon became materialistic, and its conception of the needs of the soul after death those of the body during life. Teaching that every form of matter has soul life, it has adopted " gods " of everything — the Planets, the Elements, Rain, Thunder, Fire, and so on, until it has found and even produced pictures of gods of malaria and dysentery, not hesitating to come down to the gambler's dice. The household gods of the door and the kitchen are Taoist deities. All these are to be propitiated and provided for as those who love the good things of life. The great search of the Taoist devotees of old was for the " pill of immortality " and the " water of life." Out of this search sprang the Alchemy of China and, incidentally, most of the early knowledge of chemistry acquired by the Chinese. The Taoist system has, in the popular mind, secured influence over the powers of the universe, and to it has therefore been committed the duty of freeing people and places from the influences of evil spirits, and protection from the malignities of the demoniac world. Sheer superstition is now the domain of Taoism. The fact is the more melancholy inasmuch as the author had un- Religion and Character of Race 39 doubtedly a noble, if too abstruse, conception, and high, if too ill-defined, ideals. Buddhism, which dates its spread in China Character- from the first century, though it arose in Buddhism India six centuries before, has a very per- vasive influence in Chinese life. As a religious system it has lost in its Chinese form much of its original teaching. It is not entirely atheistic, nor has it maintained the teaching of Nirvana and the renunciation of the world. " Whilst the Buddhist philosopher ... correctly unfolded Buddhism as a system of cold atheism and barren nihilism, the common people of all Buddhistic countries instinctively drifted into a form of worship essentially polytheistic." x Buddhist gods were intro- duced, Sakyamuni, Amidhabha and Kwan Yin being the best-known and most popular, and the Western Paradise of the blessed was set over against the metempsychosis of the more orthodox system. The doctrine of Nirvana disappeared. The Northern Buddhists (the Mahay ana School) took possession of the religion in China, and with them came philosophic ignorance and a spirit of absorption and compromise. Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, captured the hearts of the women of China, the populace accepted the 1 Eitel's Three Lectures on Buddhism. < l 40 Regeneration of New China claims of the Buddhist priests as having power to say masses and prayers over the dead, while saving virtue was found in pilgrimages to sacred shrines and in the incantation of holy names. Buddhism has joined hands with Taoism as a minister of superstition, credulity, and fear. It ministers to the in- stinct for devotion, in many instances, truly enough, but as a system it has neither the force nor the grip of Confucianism. Mohammed- Mohammedanism needs a passing word. 1 china." 1 Although this religious system has a long history in China, being reputed (though on no sufficient grounds) to have reached the Empire during the lifetime of the prophet himself, it may be neglected in any discussion of the formative influences exerted by the historic religions of China. In spite of the many millions of its converts it has exercised no marked measure of formative force upon Chinese life. On the one hand, it has re- mained distinct, in no way fusing with the " three religions " ; on the other, its followers have not manifested an aggressive policy in ways that count for moral or religious influ- ence, although their revolutionary and martial conduct has been repeatedly in evidence. Neither the spiritual nor the intellectual life 1 Cf. Marshall Broomhall, Islam in China. Religion and Character of Race 41 of Mohammedanism has been much in evi- dence in China, and without these, propagand- ism of any kind carries no weight in that land. Nothing has more effectually served to Short- demonstrate the shortcomings of Confucianism confudan- as a faith for common life than the wonderful B^dSst success of the Buddhist propaganda in ancient atte J a 5! :s to China and its hold upon the devotional life of the Chinese down to the present day, despite its degeneracy and the ignorant viciousness of many of its priests. It came to hungry hearts with a word of comfort and even of hope, which the austerity and definiteness of the Confucian code couid not offer, and which the blend of abstract thought and superstition constituting Taoism did nothing to relieve. The Buddhist teaching of divine mercy opened to the mass of the people a new soul-world. Little wonder that Buddhism won its way amongst the common people, or that its teachings have entered into the daily life of this eclectic nation. Scholars have scorned it, for its priesthood is ignorant ; rarely does a Buddhist priest know anything of the Chinese Classics ; its teachings and its monks have been lampooned and ridiculed ever since it laid hold of China ; the Buddhist monk is to-day the stock buffoon of the caricaturist and the jester of the Chinese 42 Regeneration of New China Press on account of both his ignorance and his vicious tendencies ; yet, degenerate in teaching and degrading in practice as it almost invariably is, it has kept alive the spirit of worship in many humble souls. Not a few of the most devout disciples of the Christian Church in China, especially the women, are those whose spiritual aspirations found their earlier expression in Buddhist rites. It has done little to elevate and en- noble the life of its people ; it has, however, given to them a " method of devotion " and a measure of spiritual contentment which neither of the indigenous religions could offer. As it breaks up in the China of to-morrow, Chinese Buddhism may bequeath to the Christian life of the Chinese people a heritage of no little value. Buddhist in- So quietly and surely has Buddhist influ- Taoism ence permeated Chinese life that few Chinese fudanlsm. are really aware of the extent over which it ranges. Taoism, which is one of the saddest examples in all human history of the utter degradation of noble aim and high thought to the very basest of uses, 1 has given to and taken from Buddhism in most conscienceless 1 The writer once saw a party of Taoist priests conducting a religious service in a house of ill-fame for the betterment of the business of the establishment. ) Religion and Character of Race 43 fashion. Paper money is burned for the benefit of the dead in Buddhist temples, and there are few Taoist temples where Buddhist images are not worshipped. Nor has Confucianism remained unaffected. "It is difficult to imagine the life of the ordinary man deprived of Buddhist monks and monasteries. The very outward aspect of the country bears unmistakable signs of Buddhism. The pagodas, for instance, have spread outside the narrow borders of Budd- hist sanctuaries in China. They have as- sumed a totally different significance from their original one, that of monuments to the memory of a saint or in honour of the Buddha. They have been incorporated into the so- called doctrine of ' Feng ShuiS " Feng Shui is the " Wind -Water " theory which has done so much to bring modern China into ridicule by its use in opposition to the building of railways and the opening of mines, and it is a survival of one of the most ancient forms of Nature-worship and interpretation in China. There are pagodas in China which have special association with Chinese scholar- ship, 1 and hence with Confucianism, whilst Buddhist influence upon the literature of China has been considerable and upon its 1 E.g., the " pen " and o • • 4 * . J •> J 3 J J THE INFALLIBLE A famous teacher of the Mandarin language, never known to fail to find a rendering for any phrase or character CHAPTER III CHRISTIANITY AND THE GREAT AWAKENING The awakening of China must be distin- guished from the Chinese revolution, which resulted in the overthrow of the Manchus. The awakening was inevitable ; it was as- Awakening: sured from the very moment when Western firauRerota- knowledge and Western civilisation made tlon * an effective impact upon old China. The revolution was not inevitable, being the result of political conditions which drove the forces of reform into an anti-Imperial channel. China was in truth awakened when the lessons of the Boxer rebellion had been brought home to her, and when, in con- sequence, the Empress-Dowager Tsu Hsi was forced to the adoption of a reform policy, endeavouring, curiously enough, to make terms with the new power that had arisen in the nation by adopting the new system of civil examinations and by pro- mising to the reformers constitutional govern- ment and a parliament. If we would arrive at a due appreciation of the part which the 59 60 Regeneration of New China missionary enterprise took in that great event, the bearing of Christianity in China upon the awakening of the nation must be considered historically, and apart from the problems which have arisen as the result of the revolution and of the con- sequently changed political and social situa- tion. As far back as 1907 it was possible and fitting to entitle a very serious dis- cussion of the situation as it was then The Awakening of China. 1 Dealing first with the forces within Christianity that made the " awakening ' possible and sure in their his- torical aspect, we shall be in a better position to review the Christian task in the light of the experience of the past century. contin- A great unity is discernible in the influence christian which the Christian propaganda has exer- influence. c i se a m china. The introduction of Chris- tianity as a missionary faith, viewed as a matter of ancient history, reveals lines of direct and vital connection with the modern missionary propaganda of the Reformed Churches in that land. The links He in policy rather than in action. Robert Mor- rison connects directly with the Roman Catholic missions which long preceded his arrival at Canton in 1807, and although 1 By Dr W. A. P. Martin. Christianity and Great Awakening 61 those missions were actively opposed to his great enterprise, his indebtedness to a member of their order in an earlier day was consider- able. The greatest of the heroic labours of Morrison, and that for which the Church in China to-day is most grateful to him, was the translation of the Scriptures and the preparation of the Anglo-Chinese Dic- tionary. Morrison's introduction to the Chinese language, in its written form, was through a Chinese manuscript that he found in the British Museum. This he transcribed with infinite pains in order to acquaint himself with the written forms of the Chinese language. This manuscript comprised a harmony of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and most of the Epistles. Another manuscript (a Latin- Chinese Dictionary) was in the possession of the Royal Society. Morrison said, " The dictionary and the harmony of the Gospels were most useful. They were originally the work of some of the Romish missionaries in China. By what individuals or at what time these works were compiled has not been ascertained, but Providence had pre- served them to be useful, and the just merits of their authors will doubtless one day be reckoned to them." 62 Regeneration of New China There can be no doubt that in a similar way the Nestorian missions to China during the seventh century were a very special challenge to Christendom, and the means of quickening in the mediaeval Church a desire to claim the great Empire of Tartary for Christ. Prester John, 1 the half-mythical, reputed Priest-King of a Tartar state, " after the order of Melchizedek," touched the im- agination and fired the zeal of devoted monks in the early middle ages, so that in many differing but real ways a continuity is trace- able in the apparently sporadic missionary efforts of Christian men to convert China during the past thousand years. 2 Putting aside the theory, which is both attractive and not improbable, that some knowledge of Christianity entered China Nestorian during the first Christian century in con- junction with the introduction of Buddhism, 3 the first trace of missionary Christianity in China of which we have direct evidence is that of the Nestorian missionaries who arrived at Hsi-an, the then capital of China, in a.d. 6S5. 4 The recovery of the know- 1 Cf. Wylie's Researches. 2 Cf. The Chinese People, A. E. Moule, ch. viii. 3 Cf. The Creed of Half Japan. Lloyd. 4 Cf. Studies in Chinese Religions. Parker. Missions. Christianity and Great Awakening 63 ledge of this early missionary enterprise was due to the accidental unearthing, in the year 1625, of a stone inscription known as the "Nestorian tablet," while some Chinese were digging for foundations in a township near Hsi-an. The work of the Nestorian mis- sionaries attained to considerable propor- tions during the centuries immediately following, and then disappeared entirely in its organised form from the stage of Chinese religious life. We cannot overlook the fact that Nes- torianism was in the exact sense heretical. It did not give to our Lord that place which has always been accorded Him by a truly Apostolic Church. The conclusion that is to be drawn regarding Nestorian Christianity in China is that whilst it was widespread it was not deep rooted, that it flourished largely because, during some Imperial reigns, it was tolerated and even favoured, and that it vanished as remark- ably as it did because it " had not root," and could not stand the fiery test of per- secution. A-lo-pen, the priest who arrived first at the Chinese capital city, won the interest of the tolerant and cultured Emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Tai Tsung. These early 64 Regeneration of New China monks came into contact with Buddhist inquirers then resident at the Royal Court, and it has been urged with some force, and a good deal of sound argument, that not a few of the definitely Christian elements to be found in the newer Buddhism had been acquired during the inter-relations of Nes- torianism and Buddhism in the early days of Christian missionary effort in Hsi-an. 1 Certain it is that a Nestorian priest (the author of the inscription upon the Nestorian tablet) helped a Buddhist monk to trans- late one of the Sutras into Chinese. It may be that this fact is indicative of undue will- ingness on the part of the Nestorians to compromise their already weakened evangel upon points generally accepted as essential, and that it was through this absence of a rock foundation of needful doctrine that Nestorianism, as a Christian organization, fell as did the house which was " built upon the sand." It would appear, moreover, that the Nes- torian missionaries gave little attention to the use of literature in the land in which literature counts for more than any other intellectual attainment. There must cer- tainly have been found in China some traces 1 Cf. The Greed of Half Japan. Lloyd. Christianity and Great Awakening 65 of their literary activities had they pro- duced a worthy evangelistic literature. How- soever that may be, the contribution of Nestorianism to the Christianization of China was indirect rather than direct, and in the Christian Church of China to-day no trace of Nestorian influence is to be found. The Roman Catholic missions in China Early date back to the days of the Mongol con- Missions, quest of that country under Kublai Khan, and entered Peking from Tartary with the conquering invaders. The zeal of the Chris- tian brothers of the Order of St Francis, who laboured under the Khans of Tartary, was of a high and self-sacrificing order, but the identification of their work with foreign conquest was unfortunate and disastrous. John de Monte Corvino, a truly great and wise missionary, 1 was sent to Peking by Pope Nicholas IV. , in 1289, and later consecrated as Archbishop of Peking by Clement V., being given jurisdiction over all Christians throughout China. 1 This intrepid missionary speaks of having baptised nearly 6000 persons in the church that he built in Khanbalik (Peking), and of having won the favour and regard of the Emperor. Marco Polo was in China, a valued official 1 Cf. Hue, Christianity in China and Tartary. 66 Regeneration of New China Ricci and the Second Period of Roman Missions. of the Mongol Emperor, from 1275 to 1293, and in his day both Nestorian and Fran- ciscan Churches were in evidence. 1 With the overthrow of the Mongol Dynasty in 1369 and the rise to supreme power of a Chinese who in early life had been a Bud- dhist monk, Christianity seems to have perished. There ensued what has been de- scribed as " a desolate silence of 200 years, till the arrival of the Jesuit Mission, at first under Valignani in 1547 in Macao, and then moving northward under Mathew Ricci and his illustrious companions." 2 The Jesuit missions entered China, under Portuguese influence, from the centres of Malacca and Macao. It was from Malacca that the great Xavier, passing between India and Japan, attempted to realise his holy ambition to enter China. He reached the island of Shang-chuen, not many miles from the southern coast of China, and there died. With Mathew Ricci begins the second occupation of China by Roman Catholic missionaries. Their first residence in China was in a Buddhist temple at Chao-ching, near Canton, which place was assigned to them by the Viceroy of that time, who was 1 CY. The Travels of Marco Polo. 2 Moule, The Chinese People. Christianity and Great Awakening 67 interested in the Western inventions that they introduced to his notice in the year 1552. Ricci was well versed in mathe- matics and in the natural science of his day : these he began to turn to account in the service of his mission. As the medical attendant of a high military official he was given the opportunity of travelling to Peking. There he settled, after many wanderings and vicissitudes, as a trusted scientific adviser of the Chinese Emperor, attached to the Board of Astronomy, and recognised as the head of the Jesuit Mission in China. " It was in the character of apostles of science that Roman Catholic missionaries obtained a footing in Peking three centuries ago, and were enabled to plant their faith throughout the provinces. Armed with telescope and sextant they effected the reform of the Chinese Calendar, and secured for their religion the respect and adherence of some of the highest minds in the Empire." In 1610 Ricci died, having by his attainments and devotion accom- plished a marvellous work for his Church and his Master. On his deathbed he was asked by one of his associates, " Do you know, my father, in what position you are leaving us ? " " Yes," he replied, " I leave 68 Regeneration of New China before you a door which may be opened to great merits, but not without much trouble and danger " — a statement as true in this twentieth century as it was in the seven- teenth. Aims and Some criticism of Ricci's methods has Policy. been offered on the ground that he was over-ready to meet the Chinese point of view in matters of faith, that he accepted Ancestor worship and the Confucian system as consistent with Christian principles, and that he used an unexpurgated Chinese phraseology in Christian teaching. It is obvious from the many changes of attitude which marked Ricci's career that he was set upon one thing, namely to secure a foot- hold for missionary enterprise in China, and to this end was ready to stretch to its utmost limit the Pauline example of becoming " all things to all men, that he might by all means save some." Yet Ricci remains one of the great figures in the Christian missionary history of China. Under Ricci's successors, Schall, Verbiest, Pereira and others, the Roman Catholic Church in China survived the change of dynasty that marked the conquest of China by the Manchus, and succeeded in making some notable converts. The mis- Christianity and Great Awakening 69 sionaries in Peking were assured of pro- tection by the enlightened Manchu ruler, Kang Hsi. Their brethren in the provinces were less fortunate, but were nevertheless enabled to carry on their work, so that in the early years of the seventeenth century three hundred Catholic churches and three hundred thousand converts were reported. Then occurred that significant event, so well known, of the breach between the Dominicans and Jesuits in China regarding the term for God in Chinese and the right attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards the ceremonies of ancestral worship, with the consequent appeal to the Pope. Unwisdom could scarcely have gone further than to make an appeal to a ruler in Rome, ignorant of Chinese, to pronounce, ex cathedra, regarding the right Chinese characters to be used to express the idea of God. The thought of an appeal to a foreign juris- diction upon any subject in which China was concerned was one which the strong Emperor Kang Hsi was bound to resent, An appeal on a point involving Chinese history and language stung the literary monarch to the quick. Politically, the fate of the Roman Catholics in China was there- by sealed. The suggestion that in Chris- 7° Regeneration of New China tianity there lay for China the threat of an imperium in imperio was then, as ib is now, the signal for bitter hatred and persecution. Priests were exiled or martyred, many hun- dreds of converts were put to death, and although the Roman Church survived the days of heavy trial, it was in comparative secrecy and under peril of extinction, until, more than a century later, the first political treaties were made between China and the powers of the West, and France took under her political protection the Roman Catholic Church in China. The Greek Passing reference should be made to the China. m establishment of an Orthodox Church of Russia for Chinese converts in Peking in the year 1865, as the result of a treaty between Russia and China. 1 That Church has never proved itself aggressively mis- sionary in China, although it gathered a certain number of converts together in Peking. Its outstanding claim to the con- sideration of students of missionary history in China is in the person of the head of the mission in the last generation, the Archi- mandrite Palladius, who became a noted 1 In 1685 an Orthodox Church was secured for the use of Russians resident in Peking who had been brought into that c.ty as captives. Christianity and Great Awakening 71 Chinese scholar and historian, and who has laid many under debt to his researches. Tins Orthodox Church also contributed in- directly to the modern evangelistic move- ment by the translation of portions of the Scriptures into Manchu. The translation of the New Testament in that version which George Borrow saw through the press at St Petersburg for the British and Foreign Bible Societv was the work of a member of the Russian Foreign Office in Peking. This version has recently been reprinted. By a somewhat tortuous road we have followed the progress of Christianity in China down to the great revival of mission- ary effort in that land a century ago. Though sometimes almost lost to sight the road is there, and we must give full credit to the roadmakers. Into a resume of the modern era of mis- channels m . ., . i -1- ■, . , OF MODERN sions m China it is scarcely needtul to enter mission- here at any length. We are more concerned ence INFLU with the bearing upon the present and the future of the forces which that movement has brought into being in China than with its external history. When Robert Mor- Morrison rison landed at Canton in 1807 there were ^"ion Work, none who even dreamed of the wonderful effects that were to follow the activities of 72 Regeneration of New China that gifted and consecrated life. Difficulties far greater than had confronted either the Nestorian or the Roman Catholic pioneers were before him, but his singleness of faith and purpose carried him through them all. It has been said by a Chinese of high position that the Revolution in China began on the day when Morrison started to translate the Bible. If that be so, then all those who contributed to the work of translation, which was the supreme gift of that saintly pioneer, must be brought under review for their meed of praise. The Roman Catholic translator, the American merchants who were Morrison's first friends in Canton, Sir George Staunton and the East India Company, and, chief of all, the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who by a grant of £10,000 for the cost of translation and printing, made the early years of work possible, — all these were fellow-workers, sharing in a labour greater than they could realise, or even foresee. Morrison and Milne were the representa- tives in China of a religious age which has been reputed narrow in thought, though zealous, and limited in outlook, though devoted. Either that reputation is a slander upon the past, or the men were greater far than their age. It has been suggested that Christianity and Great Awakening 73 China takes men of average ability and makes them great. It certainly provides scope for greatness. These two were the fruits of the Evangelical Revival in England, which drove men out into the service of the world for Christ's sake and brought men into close touch with each other under the conviction of a common grace. In these facts were surely enshrined the potential greatness that was afterwards revealed in the ideals and the schemes which marked their labours and their hopes. It is only in the more recent years of mis- sionary enterprise in China that Christian Missions are beginning to realise the statesman- like anticipation of Christian service that Morrison and Milne held in view. In 1812 Morrison thus expressed his sense of the needs of missionary enterprise in China — " I wish that we had an institution in Malacca for the training of missionaries — European and native. . . . There, also, let there be that powerful engine, the Press. The final triumphs of the Gospel will, I think, be by means of native missionaries and the Bible. We want a central point for our Asiatic missions, we want organised co-operation, we want a Press, we want a committee of mis- sionaries. . . . Such a Committee, being 74 Regeneration of New China engaged in missionary work in heathen lands, would have means of judging which a person in England, who had never removed from his study or desk, could not have. They would know the heart of missionaries." Missions are still striving to accomplish the ideals of Morrison. TheMaiacca The Malacca Missionary Institution repre- andits sented the embodiment of the hopes of these Out U iook° nal first workers. It was founded in 1818, and, although in many senses a disappointment to its founders, remains so much of a revelation of the wide outlook of the great Protestant pioneer that its stated object and methods of work are worth recording. The object of this college is " The reciprocal cultivation of Chinese and European Literature. On the one hand the Chinese language and literature will be made accessible to Europeans, and on the other hand, the English language, with European literature and science, will be made accessible to the ultra- Ganges nations who read Chinese ... it is hoped that this course of proceeding will ultimately have a favourable influence on the peaceable diffusion of Christian principles and the general civilization of the Eastern Hemisphere." Those admissible to the Institution were to be " persons of any nation of Europe and of the Continent of DEPARTED GLORY An old Examination Hall, now overgrown with weeds < < < o • « Christianity and Great Awakening 75 America, belonging to any Christian Com- munion, bringing with them respectable re- commendation as to their moral habits and the objects they have in view — native youths of any of the above-named countries (China, Cochin China, Chinese Colonies, Loochow, Korea and Japan)." No religious test was to be applied to students, but the whole instruc- tion was to be of a Christian nature, and Christian worship to be a part of the order of the College. There is no doubt that although the Malacca Anglo -Chinese College failed to do all that its originators intended, it gave a trend to the modern missionary enterprise in China, especially with regard to literary activity, which has been one of the chief factors contributory to its success. There is still another feature of the labours of these pioneers which has had a striking influence upon the progress of Christian Missions in China, and which the Chinese Church is likely to embody even more than Foreign Missions have done. It is their catholicity of spirit and outlook. Referring to the task that he had accomplished in translating into Chinese the morning and evening services of the Church of England Prayer Book, Morrison goes on to say, " The Church of Scotland supplied us with a Cate- j6 Regeneration of New China chism, the Congregational Churches afforded us a form for a Christian assembly, and the Church of England has supplied us with a manual of devotion. . . . We are of no party. We recognize but two divisions of our fellow- „ creatures — the righteous and the wicked ; those who fear God and those who do not, those who love the Lord Jesus Christ and those who do not. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." If the spirit of union and co-operation has been most fully in evidence in the mission field of China, as is claimed, and the ideal of a united Christian Church in China one which the Chinese of all missions are united in emphasizing, we may remember that the lead was definitely given by the founders of the modern missionary campaign in that land. Early With the evangelistic, 1 educational and Missions in literary enterprises of the pioneers there was China. linked up that form of missionary effort which has been the peculiar glory of our missionary era, namely Medical Missions. The London Missionary Society followed up its early ap- pointment of Morrison, Milne, Legge and 1 It must not be forgotten that although preaching, in the ordinary sense of the term, was rendered difficult, if not impossible, for those pioneers by the intolerance of the Chinese, the passion to proclaim the Gospel far and wide was the impelling motive in all they did. Christianity and Great Awakening jj others by sending out Dr William Lockhart in 1838. Dr Peter Parker of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the man who " opened China at the point of the lancet," was already in the field. Lockhart founded hospitals at Canton, Shanghai, and Peking, 1 and left his name and influence writ large on the missionary history of modern China. " In their attitude towards Missions as first pre- sented to them the Chinese were far more antagonistic than the Western atheist. He, at worst, is but scornfully sceptical ; they were bitterly aggressive. Yet as soon as the doctor arrived on the scene all was changed. No Chinese who knew Dr Lockhart for what he was ever threw a stone or hurled an epithet at him. The early story of the experience of such men as he, Dr Peter Parker, and others, is as full of romantic interest as the adventures of a Mungo Park or a Captain Cook. Of their work it was no exaggeration to say that ' the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.' " 2 From the days of Morrison and Lockhart the campaign of the Christian Church in China 1 The Union Medical College of Peking bears the memorial name of Loekhart. 2 Old Forces in New China. Lanning. 78 Regeneration of New China Social and Political Influence of Mis- sionaries. has never halted. Its progress has been varying, but the story of its growth is one of consistent advance. Neither political hostility nor religious opposition has served to check it, and it has leavened the life of every place in China wherein it has been set. Nor is its influence to be measured by its statistical tables and its direct conquests. Had there been no Christian influence in China during the stormy years of the nineteenth century to temper the estimation of the forces of the West in Chinese minds, the difficulties dividing East and West in that country must have proved insoluble. So far from the work of missions proving in the end an added difficulty to diplomacy, it is becoming clear in retro- spect that apart from the presence and in- fluence of the Christian missionary, and his work as teacher, healer and friend of the Chinese people, the gulf between China and the Western world could not have been bridged at all. Missions have presented the West to China in a light quite other than that which the display of material force has shed, and taught the lesson of another life than that of militarism or gain. In literature missionaries have shown the culture of Western lands, in education they have exhibited the Western esteem of learning, and in practical philan- Christianity and Great Awakening 79 thropy they have impressed China with the force of a " religion in action " such as the Chinese, more than any other race, are fitted by constitution and history to appreciate. " Agencies such as these have opened the eyes of the Chinese to the true colour of Christianity and justified its claim to a large place in their lives." * It has been pointed out that in hundreds of Chinese cities the only possible corrective to the wicke(J stories passed from mouth to mouth, and printed, concerning the vicious manners and uncultured methods of the Western barbarians has been the life of the missionaries settled in inland China. Al- though on more than one occasion the religious teaching of the missionary has provoked opposition and difficulty, matters sometimes inevitable in the nature of the case, it has invariably happened that the upright conduct and the unfailing helpfulness of the foreign Christian teacher have brought a new concep- tion of the best life of the West. A leading British statesman in China has remarked that it is difficult to estimate how much Britain owes to the fact that over so large a part of China the missionary has been the first Briton to come into contact with the 1 M. T. Z. Tyau, in Men and the World Enterprise. 8o Regeneration of New China people. It took the average Chinese some time to lose his natural suspicion of ulterior motive, and to convince himself that the missionary in his midst was a disinterested friend, but he learned the fact at last and has since proceeded to act upon it. How much of the desire of the Chinese leaders to follow, in their reform programme, the methods of certain Western lands may be set down to the influence of Christian missions, and how much to the pressure of the purely material civilization of the West, it is difficult to estimate. Western civilization is, in a sense, a missionary agency, and, at its best, a pioneer of the Gospel which has given it greatness. " We are sure that commercial and political contact with Western nations eventually would have proved sufficient to cause the renaissance of Chinese civilization. Nevertheless, both observation and history show that the prime cause of the awakening of China was the missionary and not the merchant." 1 It was to the missionary that the Chinese turned for instruction in the ideas which underlay the material might which the West displayed. The maps and the mathe- matical treatises of Ricci, the astronomical instruments and researches of Verbiest and 1 Bishop Bash ford, China Mission Year- Book, 1912. Christianity and Great Awakening 81 Schall, the geographies and natural science papers of the early Protestant missionaries, the general informative literature which pro- ceeded from the mission presses in the Treaty Ports of China } — all these paved the way and kindled the desire for the more recent attain- ments and incentive of the foreign- educated student and the Chinese daily press. Another of the very considerable contribu- interpreta- ,• p sxi * ■ • •• iii i i , tion of China tions of Christian missions to the development to the West, of modern China is that which was made by the part played by some leading missionaries in the interpretation of the thought and history of China to the West. China certainly knew much less of the West than the West of China in that disturbed and mutually antagon- istic half century which closed the eighteenth and ushered in the nineteenth century, but the knowledge that Europe had of China was little enough. It is said that at the time when Morrison began his study of the language there was but one living Englishman who could speak the Chinese tongue. 2 It was left largely to the Protestant missionaries to unveil to Europe the wealth of Chinese literature and civilization. Dr James Legge, who 1 The best-known and largest of these are the Presbyterian Mission Press and the Methodist Publishing House, both of Shanghai. 2 Sir George Staunton, Bart. 82 Regeneration of New China succeeded to the Principalship of the Morrison Anglo-Chinese College, 1 and who was later the first Professor of Chinese in Oxford, was the greatest of a great band of scholarly men, the work of whose lives it was to make it possible for Europe and America to appreciate the best of China's past, and the wonderful possibilities of her present and future. 2 Doctors Wells Williams, Bridgeman and Martin of the American Missionary Societies, with Doctors Medhurst, Wylie, Edkins, Timothy Richard, and a host of others representing Great Britain, opened to their countrymen, by their trans- lations from the Chinese, a new view of China and her people. The knowledge so given was of the utmost service to the Chinese nation in succeeding years, gaining for her a considera- tion on the score of her civilized history that was lacking in the earlier and more ignorant years of international conflict. The Western intellectual world has been tardy in its acknow- ledgments of all that it owes to the scholarly missionaries who became the interpreters of China to the occidental mind, and it is even yet early for China to appreciate fully how 1 Then (1843) transferred to Hong-Kong. 2 Many of the Consuls of Great Britain have also been considerable contributors to the success of this same enter- prise. u } • 1 . • » a" » • * • J J » J * ■» > ■» ) J J • » > > -> CO w o w p u w CO u z a u I c CD a h Christianity and Great Awakening 83 much was done for her cause in the West by the labours of such men. The roots of modern reform in China were Roots of two-fold. On the one hand the revelation of china. China's inherent weakness by the easy con- quests of the West in China, and, above all, the sweeping victories of the despised Japanese, first over the armies and navy of the " Middle Kingdom," and later over Russia, opened the eyes of a few of China's leaders to the facts of the situation. On the other hand, the missionary literature, covering the full range of modern education and knowledge, had been circulating quietly but steadily over the whole land. Here was a sound basis upon which the work of reform might be built Western and — real knowledge. The first reformers of Literature. modern China prepared their programme upon the educative ground- work done by the Chris- tian missionary. This real knowledge, an inherent part of the Christian propaganda in an uninformed nation, was at first destructive in its influence; then in the hands of the Chinese reformers it became the great con- structive force for the renewal of Chinese life. " These (missionary educational) books are not confined to converts or inquirers. They have found their way into the homes of the literati, into the offices of the industrial and D 84 Regeneration of New China commercial classes, and into the yamens of the officials. More than that, they are used as text books for official examinations. Every one of them is an instrument in the enlighten- ment which it is one of the objects of missions to bring about." 1 Viceroys, Governors, and highly placed officials throughout the land have in not a few instances been subscribers to the publications of the Christian Literature Society of China (an organization founded and sustained by missionaries and their supporters), not because these officials were interested in Christianity as such, but because they were sincere inquirers into the origin of those attainments which they saw to be fruits of Christian civilization and Christian teach- ing. The reform spirit in China was energized by the informative literature of the Christian missionary enterprise, and through it the intellectual leaders of the land were brought into contact with the message of the Gospel. The example of the printing press and publication work of Christian Missions in China has led also to the building up of great educational, printing and publishing establish- ments by the Chinese themselves. This branch of missionary enterprise owes very 1 Old Forces in New China. Christianity and Great Awakening 85 much to the labours of Tract Societies, headed by the Religious Tract Society of London, which began its great work in China more than a century ago. 1 " It was reserved for Christian missions to confer on China the peerless boon of metallic types and the power press. " The most notable of these native presses is the Chinese Commercial Press of Shanghai, founded in 1895 in a small way by a Chinese named How, 2 a Christian attached to the American Presbyterian Mission. 3 Mr How gradually extended his business, giving special attention to the preparation of school text-books, both Chinese and English, building up a series of Anglo-Chinese readers, national readers, and other modern text-books (both original and translated works) with such ability as to capture the bulk of the school trade of China by publications which are decidedly Christian and of high moral value. In the end the printing works of the Commercial Press, now a limited Company, managed entirely by 1 William Milne, the second Protestant missionary to China, was the first agent of the Religious Tract ^Society of London in that land. 2 Mr. Z. F. How, the managing director of the Commercial Press, was the victim of a political murder in Shanghai on January 12th, 1914. 3 This mission possesses, in the Presbyterian Mission Press of Shanghai, the largest Christian press in China. 86 Regeneration of New China Public Preaching of the Gospel. Chinese, have become " the largest and most up-to-date in Asia." x Thus the biggest and possibly the most influential printing business in the whole of the Far East is a derivative of the Christian missionary campaign. There has been also a steady influence upon the mind of the common people in the land created indirectly, but surely, by the public preaching of the Gospel of Christ. The publi- cation of the message of the New Testament is always an incentive to independent thought, and provocative of discussion, not merely of the topics with which it deals, but of cognate subjects. From the insistence of the New Testament upon the great themes of righteous- ness, sin and redemption, and the personal responsibility of the individual to God, thought is necessarily carried to existing conditions of life, social and political as well as religious. The declaration of divine justice, that God is no respecter of persons ; the teaching of the value of the individual life to the Creator ; the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood with its necessary corollary of the brotherhood of man ; those and very many others of the fundamental assertions of the New Testament lead very directly to a standard of life and conduct in political and public 1 Cf. North China Herald. January 17th, 1914. Christianity and Great Awakening 87 affairs by which men are judged. Such a standard of judgment has come once again into the public life of China after centuries of comparative desuetude. The Christian preachers in China have done a work compar- able to that of the Wycliffe friars in England, and history will not fail to accord them due credit. Chinese public opinion, save in rela- tion to local topics and events, is a growth of this last generation, and no single force has done so much to provide an illustration of the means for cultivating and expressing public opinion as the declaration of the Gospel by the preachers of the Christian Church. The public meeting has become one of the significant features of the life of Chinese cities to-day. The relationships and influence of the individual missionaries with individual Chinese have also ships of " been a strong, though frequently indirect, ^•2f lonanes agency of reform and enlightenment. In Chinese, days not long gone by, many missionaries could tell of visits paid to them in the quiet of the evening by leaders of Chinese life who came inquiring, after the fashion of Nicodemus, concerning the secret springs of knowledge and power. Boys have come into educational and personal relationship with the foreign missionary, and have thence drawn inspiration SS Regeneration of New China which has nerved them in later years to acts that mark them out as leaders in the new China. Few more striking incidents are recorded in the whole history of missions than that given in the life story of Dr Yung Wing, who was the leader of the first Chinese educational mission abroad, and under whose guidance a number of young Chinese (amongst whom was Tang Shao-yi * ) were settled for study in the universities of America. Dr S. R. Brown, a missionary in charge of the Morrison School in Canton, took pity upon the small son of a Cantonese peasant woman, educated him, and had him sent abroad with three other lads for university ^education. The three proceeded to Scotland, the fourth, Yung Wing, went to America, and was the first Chinese to graduate at an American University (Yale). He later attained to considerable distinction in Chinese affairs, and became the agent through whom the Chinese Government inaugurated its policy of sending picked students abroad for courses of study. 2 Thus does the philanthropic act of a comparatively unknown missionary link itself to the policy which has been so potent in the awakening of China. 1 The first Premier under Yuan Shih-k'ai's Government. 2 A detailed account of Dr Yung Wing's life is given in the World's Chinese Student Journal, September 1912. Christianity and Great Awakening 89 There is abundant proof for the state- ment that the Reform Movement in China is more indebted to the work of Christian Missions than to any other of the forces which have contributed to the internal awakening of the nation. So far as the Chinese them- selves are concerned there is no need to press the claim ; they are eager to acknowledge it. H. E. Tuan Fang, one of the most enlightened Manchus who has ever held office in China, said in 1906, " Missionaries have borne the light of Western civilization into every nook and corner of the Empire. They have rendered inestimable service to China by the laborious task of translating into the Chinese language the religious and scientific books of the West. They help us to bring happiness and comfort to the poor and the suffering by the establishment of hospitals and schools. The awakening of China which now seems to be at hand may be traced in no small measure to the hand of the missionary." And if it is asserted that political reform and national revolution are not necessarily the allies of Christian progress, that in them- selves they are no evidence of Christian advance, then let it be remembered that under the old circumstances of Chinese life reform was bound to follow in the wake of Christian 90 Regeneration of New China teaching, and that the forces which are in- evitably awakened by the Christian Gospel were bound to prove revolutionary in old China. The governing conditions of social and political (and to a great extent of religious) life in China were so largely anti-Christian, that the overthrow of much that had held sway was a necessary prelude to regeneration. The old China had lost the genius for reform ; it was renewed through the influence of Christianity. The The re- establishment of Chinese public life Task. ant upon a settled and satisfactory basis of reasonable progress will be sure just so far as the Christian forces that have helped to overthrow what was wrong in the old order of the nation are allowed to play their part in the work of reconstruction. For only half the task which awaits China has been accom- plished, and that the easier half ; it is easier to demolish than to build ; for building, the architect is needed, the man of vision and of sure knowledge. China calls for that. Vision and sure knowledge are the gifts of the Holy Spirit of God. The Christian Church has done much for China in the task already accomplished. She is called to a harder and yet more glorious task in the China of to-day and to-morrow. Christianity and Great Awakening 91 Supplementary Keading For a brief and discriminating study of Nestorian and early Roman Missions to China, Archdeacon A. E. Moule's chapter (Chap. VIII.) in The Chinese People is best. See also the article on " The Nestorian Mission in China," by the Rev. W. G. Walshe, in The East and the West for April 1909. The essential facts in the history of modern missions are concisely stated in the introduction to The Chinese Empire, edited by Marshall Broomhall. An article on Modern Roman Catholic Missions to China will be found in The China Mission Year Booh for 1913, while the Rev. Lord William Gascoyne Cecil has a chapter on them in Changing China. The best history is A Century oj Missions in China, edited by M'Gillivray, published in Shanghai in 1907, and now not to be had in England except at a very high figure ; but it can be borrowed from Mission House libraries. Attention is directed to the historical appendix at the end of the present volume. The Histories of the great Societies, and biographies, especially of Morrison and Legge, will be found useful. The Emergency in China, Chap. VII., summarises well the influence of Christianity in recent events in China. Valuable material will be found in three addresses to the Laymen's Missionary Movement in England, given by Dr S. Lavington Hart, Dr W. H. G. Aspland, and Mr M. T. Z. Tyau respectively, and recorded in Men and the World Enterprise. CHAPTER IV CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW ORDER What is the new order in China ? Is it an " order " at all, or simply a pose and a veneer ? reality of After what has been said in previous chapters order. concerning the root conservatism of the Chinese character it may be concluded by some that the changes which are certainly passing over the face of China are such as typify not so much a new condition as a new phase ; and that they do not touch the heart at all. Some of those who are close observers of Chinese political life are emphatic enough upon this very point. " The assumption that runs through most of the books and articles written about China since the professed con- version of the Empress Dowager to the idea of Constitutional Government in 1902 . . . postulates belief in a sudden and radical transformation of all the social and political institutions of the Chinese people. In the twinkling of an eye, it seems, fchey have been changed. ... To accept such an interpreta- tion of the present situation it is necessary to Sceptical Observers and the Reply to them, 92 Christianity and the New Order 93 assume for the Chinese people as a whole definite aspirations and fixed goals, an all- pervading instinct of patriotism, subordination of individual to national interests, and authori- tative leaders. Of these there has been no evidence." x If, however, it is indeed true that ideals and patriotic instincts are generally lack- ing in the new movements in China, very much in the recent developments of Chinese lif e must remain utterly inexplicable. Mere material conditions, although undoubtedly contribu- ting factors, do not of themselves entirely account for the successful risings of 1911-13. Such wholesale criticisms of the new move- ments in China go invariably hand in hand with cynical comments upon such moral re- form movements as the anti-opium crusade, anti-gambling, and so on. The conclusion of the whole matter from the critic's point of view is that out of new China can come no good thing. If the failure of individuals to maintain in practical life the high standard of their spoken profession be accounted suffi- cient to condemn utterly a whole movement, what movement in history could ever survive the test ? Without doubt, and in spite of manifest 1 Recent Events and Present Policies in China, J. O. P. Bland. 94 Regeneration of New China failures, a great reform has been accomplished in the life and outlook of China, and a judg- ment based mainly upon the observation of its negative forces is superficial and misleading. For the same reason it is unfair and misleading to institute a comparison with the revolutions and conquests which have been the occasion of past changes of dynastic rule in China. This is the first time in the history of China that successful revolution has owed its leader- ship and aim to forces emanating from a civilization outside Chinese influence, and largely subversive of Chinese methods. In spite of the emergence of certain forms of re-action, and of the disappointment of those whose ideals were set higher than their powers of attainment, it will not do to forget that the revolution owed its incentive to the desire for reform on the part of a leading few, more than to a mere love of rebellion on the part of the many, though the forces of rebellion were not lacking. These reforming ideals will persist, even though reaction has its passing hour of triumph. The Presidential Mandates of Yuan Shih-k'ai in 1914 can no more suppress the spirit of reform than did the Imperial Edicts of the Empress Dowager in 1899 and 1900. For these ideals are essen- tially moral in aim, and they are bound in » J • a 3 j ) j • • J i , > j o ° 3'* J % o g < o o ,4 o <72 1=1 o • — s o «} >>> o PQ t3 d I < v « < Christianity and the New Order 95 the end to assert and vindicate themselves. It was the non-moral element in the recent revolution that led to its eclipse. Without the TUT | moral forces which lay behind the revolution, Fo ° r r c * s be _ and which have been too much obscured by hind the the subsequent errors into which many of the original leaders have fallen or been betrayed, success in any large measure could not have been possible. When liberty has been purged of the taint of crimes committed in its name, reform will rise again in triumph. It is easy enough to gibe at the exaggerated language in which the hopes and ideals of the reformers have been declared to the world, easy enough to point to the undoubted moral delinquencies of many of the men who have been in the van of reform, to cry" Physician, heal thyself," and to become eloquently scornful of the whole anti-opium propaganda because certain officials and even leaders of reform have not been free from the suspicion of making money over illicit opium dealing, and are otherwise corrupt. There are many black spots on the face of the sun of reform in China, but the sun is there. It is not so many genera- tions since that the public life of England was thoroughly corrupt, offices as well as votes being bought and sold and bribery running through much of our system, while there are 96 Regeneration of New China to-day countries in Christendom where the public life is notoriously venial. A generation is surely not too long to ask for the effective application of moral reform to Chinese official life. In spite of all, the ideals of reform have found acceptance, and that fact has to be explained when the last word of the modern critics of China has been spoken. In a country which has always been practically democratic, democracy has found a new voice, evils which have vexed the land for centuries past are being publicly attacked, a modern press has arisen, for good and for ill, and the methods and ideals of government are the subject of comment and discussion on a scale such as the past has never known. A leading newspaper in Central China has recently been suppressed by official orders on account of its outspoken denunciation of the habitual corrup- tion of officials, and the failures of the Central Government to mend public evils. The new Press laws of China are designed to " muzzle the Press," and are in themselves a tribute to its far-reaching power. A sentence in the Confucian Analects reads thus : " The Master said, ' He who is not in office has no concern with plans for the admini- stration of its duties.' " An illustration of the practical application of this principle is Christianity and the New Order 97 given in an incident recorded by the Abbe Hue, 1 patriot- when on their journey to Peking in 1851 cer- social re- tain foreign travellers endeavoured to get into j^Ju. political discussion with Chinese companions iSjK? BY at an inn. " We put forward all sorts of tianity. hypotheses in order to stimulate these good citizens to make some observations . . . but to all our piquant suggestions they replied by shaking their heads, puffing out whiffs of smoke and taking great gulps of tea. This apathy was really beginning to provoke us, when one of these worthy Chinese, getting up from his seat, came and laid his two hands on our shoulders, in a manner quite paternal, and said, smiling rather ironically, ' Listen to me, my friend ! why should you trouble your heart and fatigue your head by all these vain surmises ? The Mandarins have to attend to affairs of state ; they are paid for it. Let them earn their money, then, but don't let us concern ourselves about what does not concern us. We should be great fools to want to do political business for nothing.' " It is no exaggeration to say that there is scarcely a tea shop in the cities of China where that same thing would not have happened fifty years ago, and scarcely one where it could happen to-day. An awakening of interest in 1 Cf. Chinese Characteristics, ch. 13. A. H. Smith. 9& Regeneration of New China national affairs is one of the significant facts of the life of intelligent China of the present. Growth of The growth of the love of country is one PatrioSsm° f °^ the features of modern Chinese develop- ment, and in no section of Chinese life has this been so apparent as amongst the Christian community. The teaching of the New Testament concerning the duty of the Christian to pray for those in authority has led to intercessory prayer on behalf of the Government and all in authority in China, such as had never been known in other religious spheres of Chinese life. The injunction to " bear one another's burdens " brought the Christian Church into a touch with the con- ditions of social life that could not fail to have a profound effect upon knowledge and interest; and the ideals of righteousness which Christi- anity engenders force the Christian com- munity into the path of national reform for the sake of the redemption of society. The reputation of the members of the Christian Church for zealous and disinterested patriot- ism grew very rapidly during the years of reform after the Boxer outburst, and had a very considerable bearing upon the develop- ment of the patriotic spirit. It had been one of the disheartening features of Chinese national life during years not long Christianity and the New Order 99 gone by that Chinese were found in consider- able numbers ready to assist the army of a foreign invader in time of war. The work of the Commissariat in the Japanese Army during the Chino- Japanese war in 1895 was made easy by the eagerness of the Chinese to sell their produce to the foes of their native land. That condition of things is not likely to recur. The recent revolution was largely inspired by a patriotic zeal. " We firmly believe that the fundamental idea of the revolution was patriotic, that its object was the rehabilitation of China, and not the enrichment of certain of China's sons. It is well to feel confident on this point, since on it, and on it alone, can be based that larger hope for the future which all patriotic Chinese should have, and which all their foreign friends share." x The mere fact that from the ranks of men educated under Christian influence came much of the leadership of the recent revolution has helped to create the conviction that Christianity produces Chinese patriots. The official Chinese mind no longer concludes that a Chinese Christian is a " secondary foreign devil," and an enemy of his country. It has taken more than half a century to demonstrate the essential patriotism of the 1 Old Forces in New China. ioo Regeneration of New China Chinese Christians, but at last it has been done. Christianity, then, stands before the Chinese national life, as at present expressed, generally freed from the taint of suspicion, and loosed from the old shackles of official hostility and constraint. Not alone by the gift of Remedial outstanding Chinese leaders to the cause of n°Anti entS R e f° rm nas this been accomplished ; it is Footbinding. also the result of the philanthropic and self- denying service of many of Christ's men and women for China and the Chinese in their hours of need. The modern remedial (as well as reform) movements noticeable in the life of the nation had their rise almost without exception in the example and activity of Christians. The anti-footbinding movement first found expression within the Chinese Church, where from the beginning it was generally recognized as wrong for Christian parents to bind the feet of their little chil- dren, howsoever deeply they might have to suffer socially in consequence of their refusal to comply with accepted custom. It was a Christian lady 1 resident in China who became the apostle of the " Natural Foot " Movement, and from whom this benefi- cent reform was handed on to Chinese re- 1 Mrs Archibald Little. Christianity and the New Order 101 formers. " Probably f ootbinding will 'go* r ori, : locally and fitfully for another hundred years, but it is broken for ever, and will go out of fashion." * In like manner that outstanding and most (jj) . Anti - wonderful movement against opium which has rightly laid such strong hold upon the popular imagination was both in China and abroad born of Christianity. Probably no one cause made the Christian missionary from China so unpopular at home as his insistence that the connection of the British Government with the opium traffic in China was anti- Christian, whilst at the same time this very connection aroused against him intense hostility in China itself. " Take away your opium and your missionaries," said old Prince Kung, " and all will be well." Yet it was directly from the Christian Church in China that the anti- opium movement sprang. Before officialdom had been brought even to the point of asserting that an opium smoker was unfit to hold his appointment, certainly before such an assertion was definitely acted upon, it was the unvarying rule of the Christian Church that no opium smoker could be accepted as a member, and it was within the Church that the attempts towards the moral 1 Studies in Chinese Religions. E. H. Parker. 102 Regeneration of New China and physical reformation of the opium victim were first made. A great work was done under missionary auspices in Soochow and in other centres, by the establishment of " opium refuges " a generation before the Chinese government or gentry thought of the task. The thousands of opium refuges now opened over the whole of China are the com- ment of the new order upon this exemplary work of Christianity. (iii) Famine Great catastrophes in China have in ages Relief. agUe gone by slain their millions. Flood and drought, alike the harbingers of famine, have swept over whole provinces of the old Empire and left them almost desolate. Gifts of money for the afflicted have not been want- ing in any case on the part of the wealthy Chinese, from the Emperor downward ; what has been wanting is personal relief service of an honest kind. Chinese officials have been known to make wealth out of the handling of relief funds intended for their fellow-country- men dying of starvation. Modern Christianity in China could not remain inactive in such hours of need. The work of missionaries and their fellow Christians in China, foreign and native, in collecting and distributing alms and food, and in the establishment and super- vision of relief works, has not only made a r — PC u c w c o fa. o CO fcu H J 5 CO o C- W X H fa O - O Christianity and the New Order 103 profound impression upon China, but has spurred the Chinese themselves on to works of relief and prevention. There has recently been signed an agreement between the Chinese Government and the American National Red Cross Society, whereby the latter is to act for China in arranging a loan of £4,000,000 in order to carry out, under foreign supervision, a conservancy scheme in the area which has seen in the past six years successive famines through periodic floods. This act is an entirely new humanitarian and economic departure on the part of the Chinese Govern- ment. Similarly the growth of a humane senti- ment in war, expressed in the Red Cross Society, which has done so much for the wounded in the recent revolutionary conflicts and has met with such high commendation from both sides, may be traced to definitely Christian service. From the* Christian hospitals and schools of China went forth the majority of those men who volunteered for this self- sacrificing work, now for the first time in its history an integral part of the Chinese military organization. The recent plague in North China, and the impression made upon the Chinese Govern- ment by the preventive action of the medical 104 Regeneration of New China missionary enterprise in Peking, under the staff of the Union Medical College, is well known, and the example of devotion to duty revealed in the life of Dr Arthur Jackson *• of Mukden, touched the hearts of many Chinese, notably that of the late Viceroy of Manchuria. Such striving after more sanitary conditions of life, attempts to instruct the Chinese populace in the rudiments of hygiene, and efforts for the effective amelioration of the lot of the afflicted, the leper, the blind, and the insane, as are in evidence in China to-day under the new order, have received their impulse from the example which Christianity has set in the midst of the people. It was in summing up the contribution of Christianity in China to the new life of the land that a Chinese newspaper (The Peking Daily News), at the conclusion of an English editorial which discussed the appeal of China for the prayers of the Christian Church on April 12th, 1913, wrote :— " The request for special intercessory services must, therefore, be regarded as the triumphant and final vindi- cation of missionary effort in China. Merely to thank the thousands of devoted men and women who have sacrificed homes and comfort, and too often life itself, to bring enlightenment 1 The Life of Arthur Jackson, by A. J. Costain. Christianity and the New Order 105 to China would be no adequate recognition of their services. Their blameless lives have introduced a new standard of ethics into China. Their schools and colleges have done more than anything else to pave the way for the adoption of Western methods of effici- ency and honesty in official and commercial life. Their hospitals have relieved widespread misery, and saved thousands of valuable lives. Their religion has created new ideals." Turning to another side of the relationship educa- of Christianity in China to the new order, it is develop- necessary to remember that the recognition duetto of the Christian Church as a teaching organiza- missj ons. tion is a matter of very recent years. It is true that from the beginning of the years of reform certain individuals realized that there was but one source to which they could turn with assurance for efficient instruction in Western learning, and that was the Christian educational movement. Not until 1905, when the old Empress Dowager finally abolished the ancient examination system and set up new educational conditions, was the mind of China really turned towards the study of universal knowledge. As recently as 1901 it was possible for Sir Robert Hart to say, 1 speaking of the Chinese attitude towards the missionary 1 These from the Land of Sinim. io6 Regeneration of New China change in enterprise, " The Missionaries, it is granted, Attitude of , , t i • t -i • Chinese. exert themselves to do good in various ways, and their medical benevolence is acknow- ledged with grateful appreciation, but the very fact of their presuming to teach at all is itself irritating." Ten years later, when seeking a school for the education of some of the members of his own family, President Yuan chooses a Christian educational institution, 1 and later still selects, as private tutor to his younger children, a Christian missionary. In 1912 there were gathered in the 760 Colleges and High Schools of the various missions in China 31,465 Chinese students. Many of these were members of families which a few years ago were critical and hostile in relation to Christianity. With the consent of their people, and under the expressed approval of many in high authority, they are working under a school curriculum which is thoroughly Christian and which includes Bible study. The educational influence of Christianity in China is at once a proof of the existence of a " new order " and of the position which the Christian Church occupies in relation thereto. All this does not mean, however, that the educational task which confronts China has been handed over to the Christian Church for 1 The Anglo-Chinese College, Tientsin. Christianity and the New Order 107 fulfilment. Such a condition of things could not be expected, nor might it be desirable. There are problems enough awaiting the atten- tion of Christianity in China without that of the secular education of its youth being added to them. Education is not the prime task of Christians in any land. In every non- Christian land, and particularly in China, evangelization is the supreme duty, for it alone meets the deepest need. The Chinese scholar, moreover, cannot be expected to con- fess himself unequal to the task of dealing with the educational need of his country, given sufficient time ; it is essentially his business. At the present moment China is experimenting, often rashly and sometimes disastrously, with educational methods. There are hundreds of schools and colleges existing on paper in the Government Offices in Peking which have no existence elsewhere. It will be some time before authority in China ceases to deceive herself in the matter of issuing instructions to unresponsive officials and others to do certain things which cannot yet be accomplished. Only by " line upon line and precept upon precept," can the root faults of the old China be eradi- cated and the new order find its best self. In the opening of elementary schools China has already made remarkable advance, but 108 Regeneration of New China education will continue to suffer until honesty and practical effort take the place of corruption and make-believe. Neverthe- less the new day in education has dawned, if somewhat cloudily, and in the light of it some of the contributions which Christianity ought to make to national efficiency and well-being in the new China stand clearly revealed. The Church While, then, it cannot be the task of Christen- Training: of ^ om ^° undertake the educational work which is Educational the duty of the Chinese Government, it is the Pioneers. privilege and opportunity of Christian missions to provide the men and women who are to be the first agents of the Government in that enormous enterprise. The demand for a national system of education from the primary department to the university makes upon educated China a call for teachers which it is even now almost impossible to meet. Western and Japanese teachers may be employed in collegiate and university work. They are for the most part a temporary though necessary expedient. But they can touch only the fringe of even that problem, whilst old China was utterly unable to cope in any measure at all with the demand for teachers for elementary and middle schools. It is at this point that the mission school has stood ready to save the situation. Christianity has provided by means Christianity and the New Order 109 of its educational work in China a certain, though inadequate, number of efficient and available teachers, and in the hands of these a large measure of educational responsibility has been placed. The enforcement of Con- fucian worship * in Government schools under the old regime kept many of the best of the Christian men from accepting Government appointments. With the advent of religious toleration, however, the door was opened wide for one of the biggest contributions that Christianity can at present make to the real progress of China, namely, the training of the character of hundreds of thousands of young Chinese upon a basis of Christian example. Had the number of such men and women available been ten times what it is to-day, the influence of Christianity upon the China of to-morrow might have been increased a hundred-fold. How great is the opportunity may be gathered from a review of the statistics of Government 1 It should be noted that the adoption by the Government of China of the Confucian System as a basis for education is not necessarily intolerant, since there is no inherent anta- gonism to Christianity in the Confucian Classics, although their trend is somewhat anti-religious. The moral system of Confucius is fully acceptable to Christianity. Intolerance is chiefly associated with the enforced worship of the Confucian Tablet in the schools. no Regeneration of New China Greatness of education given (in the China Mission Year £ni£ PP ° r " Book of 1912), for the Province of Chihli, a province which has been in the forefront of education in both Government and missionary policy. " There were 214,367 students of all grades, not including an additional 17,000 in Peking. The Schools, etc., numbered 1 Uni- versity, 1 Provincial College, 10 Industrial Schools, 3 Higher Normal Schools, 49 Ele- mentary Normal Schools, 2 Medical Colleges, 3 Foreign Language Schools, 4 Law Schools, 1 Physical Culture and Music School, 1 Tele- graph School, 8 Commercial Schools, 5 Agri- cultural Schools, 30 Middle Schools, 174 Upper Primary Schools, 101 Mixed Grade Primary Schools, 8534 Lower Primary Schools, 101 Girls' Schools and 179 Half -day and Night Schools." All this was the growth of merely six years' organized effort. The total popula- tion of the Chihli Province is computed at more than twenty millions of people. There is an enormous work waiting to be done, and it is the urgent business of Christianity in China to assist the Government in doing it effectively and along right lines. Of no nation is it more true than of China that its life is both revealed and determined by its literature. Literature has been the sole basis of its intellectual attainments, and intellectual Christianity and the New Order m attainments have always been the most ad- litera- mired of those possible to men. Neither christian wealth, nor sanctity, nor exalted position is JJJSb?" worthy of esteem apart from scholarship and the culture associated with book learning. The accepted division of the people into classes in China is expressive of their sense of relative values ; that division is, 1, Scholars ; 2, Farmers ; 3, Artisans ; and 4, Merchants. No force unallied to literary enterprise has Reverence ever held sway over the Chinese mind or kept [uTe^ndfor the nation in subjection. That " knowledge the Scholar, is the road to power " has long enough been recognized by the Chinese, and abundantly proved in their history. When letters were invented by a mythical Chinese Emperor " Heaven rejoiced and hell trembled." Again and again the outer barbarian has made his martial conquest of Chinese territory and people, and China has (< Bowed low beneath the blast In patient deep disdain." But thereafter, sure as the sunrise, has the old culture of the land quietly and com- pletely vanquished the barbarian in its turn. Mongol and Manchu alike have had to accept the yoke of Chinese letters and civilization. Force has never of itself conquered the life of the Chinese and never will. ii2 Regeneration of New China It is perfectly true that this reverence for scholarship and literature is not altogether removed from mundane considerations of " bread and butter." The civil examination system of China has been the great binding factor in public life through more than a thousand years of Chinese history, and the doors of official life have, in general, opened only to the key of scholarship. Every gradu- ate in the Chinese examination system is a potential official, and the whole gamut of official life, from the petty magistracy of a local court with its tawdry show and mean profits to the high posts of Peking with their gilded honours and recognised peculations, is before him. " Endless examples are available to shew that from the humblest circumstances . . . men might rise to the highest posts in the Empire, short of such as were reserved for the members of the Imperial House." The civil examinations of China exert an influence over the popular as well as the scholarly mind which it is difficult to ex- aggerate. The power of letters is a super- stition. To tread under foot or otherwise demean a written or printed character was sacrilege. 1 How could it be otherwise, when proficiency in the " Four Books and Five 1 Cf. Giles, The Civilization of China, pp. 229, ff. Christianity and the New Order 113 Classics," proven knowledge of the accepted annotations and commentaries upon the same, and skill in the writing of elegant essays and examples of poetry in the classical style were the acknowledged test of the scholar's ability to preside over a law court, administer a county, or repair the ravages wrought by famine and flood ? In the result it has to be acknowledged that the unnatural burden of intellectual toil which the scholar of China has borne has by no means destroyed the wonderful faculties of the Chinese brain, and that the apparently futile system has been, on the whole, valuable for its purpose. " The immemorial traditions of the Empire are all in favour of the man who is willing to submit to the toils, that he may reap the reward, of the scholar." 1 In a word, although the method has changed, the scholar still reigns, and the literati of the new order have replaced the literati of the old. Scholarship will remain at the top ; technical attainment has gained for itself a place, but the laurel is still reserved for literary genius. No force in modern China has made any Difficulties literary contribution to the life of to-day Sl^Sf* comparable with that provided by Christianity. Foreigner. This is the more remarkable when it is re- 1 Arthur H. Smith, Village Life in China. ii4 Regeneration of New China membered under what disabilities the foreigner in China labours in the matter of the written language and classical style of the Chinese. The old Chinese scholar was produced only by long years of absorption in the study of Chinese style, undisturbed by excursions into other fields of learning. How could a foreign student, whose early life had been spent in other objects of intellectual pursuit, hope to attain efficiency and skill in Chinese literature ? The gulf between the Western scholar, the exponent of technical, scientific and modern knowledge, and the Chinese scholar, pedant, stylist, litterateur and obscurantist, seemed at first unbridgeable. Yet to a very large extent it has been bridged, and as the result shows to-day, the contact is made, and the interchange of intellectual commodities has begun. Literary An enormous debt is owing to the labours mentsof °^ some of the missionaries of an earlier day Mission- ^q h av e been adjudged by the Chinese them- selves as eminent in Chinese literary attain- ments. " A glorious band, that chosen few." Medhurst, Bridgeman, Wylie, Faber, Edkins, Schereschewsky, G. E. Moule, Chalmers, Young J. Allen, Mateer, Griffith John, Timothy Richard, and the rest ; the memory of their work is golden. Most noticeable anes. Q w eu w SB - O o w h »>,•>,-> j j , j > j j • o ° ; ' • » V • •••%« < - Christianity and the New Order 1 1 5 of all their labours, in point of Chinese scholarship, is, perhaps, that of Medhurst in the translation of the Bible into Classical Chinese in the version known as the " delegates'." It was the work of the delegates under the British and Foreign Bible Society, but the lion's share of the work was Medhurst's. Few pieces of literary missionary work approach its level of classical attain- ment. Yet Medhurst and all that fine band who followed in his train would own that all their efforts would have been vain apart from the able Chinese who were their fellow labourers. The Confucian scholar who held the pen and clothed the thought of the Western translator with fitting Chinese garb — his is the glory, too. So it happened in those earlier years, as it is happening to-day, that Christian thought was given to the Chinese world by the missionary through a deputy who himself was often a non- Christian. The Bible, the tract, the educational treatise, the magazine article, the school text-book have been given by the Christian missionary to his Chinese constituency in the majority of instances by means of faithful, efficient, non- Christian Chinese helpers. In the end the literature of the Christian author, at first despised for its E n6 Regeneration of New China occasional lapses into " bad form " (colloquial- isms), often condemned because of the nature of its subject matter, still pressing forward, crude and aggressive but vital, has come to its own. To the literature of Christianity in China and its determination to make a con- quest of the Chinese intellect, many of the features of the new order are due. The Christianization of the literature of China is yet, however, far from being accom- plished. Christianity and the old learning do not consort well together ; for with the widen- ing of the basis of knowledge, and the study by the Chinese of other branches of education beside the Classical Books, there has been an unavoidable lessening of the range of purely Chinese knowledge. The Chinese mind, under the old system, was burdened to the utmost limit, and the study of new themes neces- sarily involves the throwing over of at least some of the purely Chinese attainments. The Chinese who to-day are eminent in both Western and Chinese scholarship may be counted upon the fingers. There are not wanting Christian Chinese who are capable scholars and efficient in the writing of classical Chinese, but one of the outstanding needs of the Christian Church in its intellectual cam- paign in China to-day is the raising up of a Christianity and the New Order 117 body of Christian experts in the Chinese language, who shall be fitted to capture and lead the scholarly thought of the land. This is especially true in the consideration of journalism and the need for a Press inspired by Christian knowledge and impulse. One other feature of the new order in China forma- in relation to Christianity needs attention, public Public opinion upon matters of national OPINION - moment has been noted as of recent growth, and in the previous chapter, the bearing of the public preaching of the Gospel upon its formation was pointed out. The training of. leaders of public opinion is not merely a task for which the Christian Church is fitted, but one to which she is manifestly called. The masses of the Chinese, half-informed, restive, and expectant of change, are as dry stubble to the brand of the demagogue. And the greedy, reckless demagogue is having his day in China, alike in the press and on the platform. The Chinese Christian preacher, trained to the art of public speaking, informed with real knowledge of affairs, steadied by a sense of responsibility to God, and fired by a love for men in the spirit of Jesus Christ Power of the and zeal for their salvation, is the man above Preacher * all others to whom is committed to-day a great and far-reaching task. For the time Need of the New Order for the i Prophet. 118 Regeneration of New China being, other and less worthy elements in Chinese life are coming to the front, other gods will have their day of dominion over the hearts and minds of the Chinese people ; it is still, however, the supreme duty and opportunity of the Chinese Church, through the work of public preaching, to lead the body of Chinese opinion into the way of true life. The old order in China would not open its ears to the word of God ; the new order has its ears open, but is assailed by a thousand voices ; it needs the speech of the prophet, the man God-sent and God-inspired, who shall say in the tones of authority and love, " Thus saiih the Lord." Supplementary Reading Dr Hawks Pott lias three useful chapters on " Social Transformation," " The New Education," and " The Influence of Christianity " respectively in The Emer- gency in China, and Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil's section on " The New and the Old Learning " in Changing China puts the case for Christian universities. The Educational Conquest oj the Far East, though written before the recent drastic changes in China, will repay reading from the point of view of the history of educational missions and the ideals before them. Vol. III. of the Edinburgh Conference Report — Christian Educa- tion — is most useful, and Mr Eddy's chapters on China in The New Era in Asia are valuable here. Christianity and the New Order 119 In The China Mission Year Booh for 1912 there is an illuminating article on " The Secular Chinese Press," and the Reports of the Christian Literature Society for China will be found full of fact and suggestion concerning the books, periodicals, and newspapers of the New China. Chaps. IX. to XII. of Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom should not be overlooked. The article on "China and Medical Missions," by W. H. G. Aspland, M.D., in The East and the West for April 1913 should be read. CHAPTER V THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE HERITAGE OF THE PAST IN CHINA CHAR- ACTER. traits of It has always been said of the Chinese (and with considerable truth) that they have a " keen eye for a good bargain." In the earlier days of international relationships, the cold contempt in which the foreigner was held by the Chinese did not prevent the Chinese merchant from doing very profitable business with him. A leading British merchant once expressed his commercial ex- perience in China thus : — " In business, the Chinaman has absolutely no prejudice : the only question for him is, does the business pay ? " It is not only upon the consideration of commercial matters that the Chinese brings to bear the test of use and profit. He comes to the question of religion with the same utilitarian enquiry in his mind. Nor can the enquiry be resented. Even though it is not the highest form of religious research, it is legitimate in its sphere, and one of the tasks of Christianity in China has been to prove that Utilitarian- ism and Practical Test in Religion. 120 Church and China's Past Heritage 121 profit of the highest kind* attaches to the practice of faith in Christ Jesus. The mag- nificent success of medical work in China as an agency of Christian missions has been largely due to the special appeal its form of service makes to the practical Chinese mind. Christianity has emerged with triumph from the utilitarian enquiry to which the Chinese have submitted it because it has produced the incontrovertible proofs of godly living and good works, and presented an apologetic not of argument but of fact. That Christi- anity helps men and women to make the best of both worlds is conceded generally by the Chinese, even by those who deny its claim to be the universal religion. The basis upon which the Chinese, in ac- cordance with their inherited temperament and intellectual habit, form their religious judgments is not one with which problems of doctrine, or philosophy, or relationship to truth in the abstract have any deep concern. Not that philosophers or ethical teachers have been wanting in China, but rather have they been treated seriously only in so far as they have dealt with problems of common life and conduct. Comparative study on the basis of the material already in possession has been the method of enquiry, and the conclusions have 122 Regeneration of New China been drawn in accordance with the result of it. It is for this reason that there are tens of thousands of educated Chinese who are ready to commend the faith of Christianity though they have no thought of practising the same. A general intellectual approval of practical Christianity has been secured, as contempt has given way to suspicion, suspicion to enquiry, and enquiry to goodwill. At the outset, therefore, the Christian Church has before it in the very attitude of the Chinese mind to religion a tremendous problem and task. What is to be done for people whose inherited tendency is to mistake approval for faith, and patronage or support for discipleship — men and women in whose religious life the instinct for the divine and for the cultivation of the spirit has in the course of the ages been overlaid by considera- tions of worldly good and problems of daily living ? " We do not know life, how then can we know death ? " Here is found that vein of materialism which is so strongly marked Lack of in the Chinese character, due to the effects Danger o/ of Confucian teaching through the centuries, Formalism. anc j wn i cn is in deed and truth the real " yellow peril." If Christianity had been only a matter of conduct and moral precept the task were simple enough. It is the spiritual aspect of the • * > »• I J»1 « 3* J . » J > t » THE "WILLOW-PATTERN" TEA-HOUSE Church and China's Past Heritage 123 Christian propaganda that creates at once the difficulty and the opportunity. It is the task of the Christian Gospel to revive in China the true soul-life of her spiritually slumbering people. The ideal man of Confucius is not necessarily a religious man, the perfecting of the life of the soul was outside the Confucian view, and to the Christian Church has been committed the great work of filling out the Sage's ideal of the " proper man " by the teaching of the life of the spirit, " till we all come to the perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Within the Christian Church of China it has been only exceptionally the case that a spiritual conversion has preceded the attach- ment of the Chinese to the Gospel. There are not many instances on record, in com- parison with the whole number of Christian converts, in which a deep sense of sin or a longing for God has been awakened by the first hearing of the Gospel message so that the hearer has been " compelled to come in." x Yet there are such cases, and it would seem as if now, with the growth of a general knowledge of Christianity among the people, the number of converts who really have " experienced 1 Cf. Mission Problems and Mission Methods in S. China. J. Campbell Gibson, chap. vii. E* 124 Regeneration of New China conversion ' is increasing. The accounts of recent revival movements in China, whilst they need careful enquiry and cautious use in illustration of the point, do certainly shew that in instances where a body of Christian people has been manifestly moved by spiritual feeling, heathen in the congregation also have been led to conviction, repentance and faith. It is not mainly under the stress of such spiritual conviction, however, that members have hitherto come into the Chinese Christian Churches. On the one hand there has been the in- tellectual conviction to which reference has already been made. The logic of the case for such a God as Christians worship, the reason- ableness of the revelation in Jesus Christ, and the acknowledged failure of idolatry to heal the wounds of the heart or to succour in time of need, bring very many to a belief in the Christian message and to an association with the Christian Church. To these, later, as they follow on in the steps of the Christian life, come the inner conviction and the sense of personal communion, and definite religious ex- perience is made their own. Yet still there are many who do not pass very far beyond the stage of intellectual acceptance, to whom the New Testament is the record simply of Church and China's Past Heritage 125 a fact in history, and, as it were, a moral textbook, who do not, in a word, escape the shackles of the old formal life, though they have turned it into a new road. Because Confucianism is a system which can be externally accepted and lived, and because Buddhism and Taoism in China receive their adherents without making claims upon them for spiritual experience, formalism is one of the dangers attendant upon Christianity in China, as a heritage of the past influencing the Christian present. On the other hand, that credulity which Credulity : is the child of superstition has been the superstition, occasion of bringing numbers of Chinese of the simpler type into the realm of Christian Church life in the first instance. To these in their pre-Christian days religion has been chiefly spiritism, and their worship largely a propitiation of the dread forces of potential evil in nature or of the spirits of the dead. Through fear of death they have been all their lifetime subject to bondage, and they have become the easy victims of those quack doctors of the spirit in China, the Taoist priests. Incantations, charms, works of merit, offerings of paper money, incense-burning, pilgrimages, fortune -telling, wizardry, and so on, have been their means of religious ex- 126 Regeneration of New China pression. Through the cruder life of China's millions this credulity has run far enough ; few are really free from it ; even the late Empress Dowager Tsu-Hsi found it easy to credit the story that the initiatory rites and magic swords of the Boxers gave them im- munity from foreign bullets. Set free from the baser forms of superstition by faith in the Gospel it is not all at once that such as these lose the idea of Christianity as a kind of greater magic, and find the true life of the Spirit which Christ bestows. Stories of the use of the Bible, Prayer Book, or Christian tracts as spiritual weapons of offence and defence are common to every missionary. They are credited with the magical properties which it is the province of religion to bestow. Thus the danger of superstition inside the Church is a real one. It has, indeed, within it an element which is of true service in the Christian life, deepening, at times, the living faith in prayer, and the sense of assurance in dealing with problems of demon-possession such as the average Chinese thoroughly believes in, and such as Christian preachers are fre- quently enough called upon to deal with. Nevertheless its nature is derogatory to the steady growth of Christian life and the progres- sive development of the Christian community. Church and China's Past Heritage 127 From what may be termed the communal Lack of side of Chinese life there are also heritages D^ng-ef of of character, some of which are a source of Selfishness and Indiner- danger to the life of the Christian Church, ence. One such is the lack of public spirit on the part of the individual, and the relegation of all public duties to the officials who are paid to look after them. In the course of history this has resulted in the development of a character-trait which makes men indifferent to the common weal. The regular upkeep of roads, repair of bridges, removal of public nuisances, combination of effort in checking infectious diseases, provision of asylums for the infirm and insane, these and all the other duties which in modern civilized communities fall upon the voluntary public bodies are in China conspicuous by their absence. It has been literally true that " what is everybody's business is nobody's concern," and although at the present time the growth of the spirit of local and national patriotism is having its favourable effect upon this side of Chinese life, there is an enormous amount of leeway to make up ere the Christian injunction " bear ye one another's burdens " is accepted and fulfilled. Within the Christian Church this trait of character frequently reveals itself in a lack of 128 Regeneration of New China earnest interest in the conversion of others. A surprising proportion of the membership of the Christian Church of China is made up of men ; there has been a tendency on the part of husbands, sons, and brothers to leave the women out of account. A man may be deeply interested in the conversion of his father or brother, and forget the claims of his wife. A characteristic weakness is revealed in the disposition to leave the aggressive side of evangelistic work to those who are paid to look after it, namely the pastors and evangel- ists in the employ of the Church. The accept- ance of personal and direct responsibility for evangelistic service will only accompany the eradication of the old attitude of "it is not my concern " taken by the Christian con- stituency in China towards all affairs of common interest. social and In addition to the reforming influence RELIGIOUS . custom. ~ that the Gospel of Christ must exert upon the inherited characteristics which hinder the due attainment of Christian character in the Church and in the individual believer, there are aspects of Chinese life as a heritage from the past which Christianity has to fight uncompromisingly. The conflict of Chris- tianity with such admitted national evils as opium-smoking and footbinding has already Church and China's Past Heritage T29 been referred to. Another such evil is that of gambling, which, in one form or other, has an extraordinary hold upon the Chinese. Lotteries and Gaming Clubs (not infrequently Gambling, established for charitable purposes, and, in consequence, presenting special temptations to Chinese Christians) have to be kept outside the sphere of organized Christian life. If they are not, the spiritual life of the Church must be imperilled. The evil system of concubinage and poly- Concubinage gamy, the former recognized by both custom gamy . y and law, the second illegal but only too common, especially in the case of the childless and well-to-do, is another of the vicious inheritances of Chinese life with which Christi- anity can make no terms. The assumption of ancestor-worship, that only sons have power to carry on the needful care of the spirits of the dead, has led to the conclusion on the part of parents that they are disgraced and their future imperilled by failure to secure male offspring. Between this un- natural conclusion and the inferior position of women in general in China, as well as the evil of early marriage, there is a direct con- nection. As a result, the lack of sons on the part of a wife is one of the recognized reasons for divorce in China, and the practice of 130 Regeneration of New China concubinage is often enough excused on the ground of a legitimate desire to secure beyond a doubt the worship of the grand-parental spirits by numerous male offspring. For this vicious and unjust practice the Imperial Courts of China have conspicuously paved the way. Occasionally cases which are extremely difficult to settle, and which seem to involve considerable hardship, are met with in the Church. It sometimes happens that a man has more than one wife, or a " secondary " wife is converted, and has to face the ques- tion with the Church concerned as to the moral and truly Christian line of conduct 1 But whatever decision is reached in such cases they can never be allowed to obscure the judgment or to compromise the position of Christianity in relation to the moral prin- ciples involved. W ithin the Christian Church in China there can be no departure from the standard of the Christian doctrine, backed as it is by the highest Chinese ethical standards, namely, that concubinage is immoral, and polygamy both immoral and illegal. Yet one more of the gigantic evils handed down from the past in China, which that 1 The writer has met with one such case in which as a result of the study of the Old Testament the man quoted Abraham in defence of his position. P' :.\ [Bew.CE. A GIFT TO THOSE THAT HAVE GONE Taking paper money to the Temple to bom ' ' e • •• Church and China's Past Heritage 131 nation has so far shewn very little ability or even desire to combat, and which in certain striking instances is bound to affect Christi- anity, is that of official peculation. That it is almost impossible for the majority of Chinese officials to make ends meet, or even to attempt to do so on the basis of the salaries attached to their posts, is well known. Certain " pickings," generally considered legitimate are used, in order to make good the inevitable deficiency, and the probity of Chinese official- dom is judged not by the use of such sources of income, but by their abuse. If the pecula- tion of the official is according to " propriety," he is honest ; if it goes beyond the bounds, as it is certain to do if an official begins to amass wealth, then he is otherwise, propor- tionately to his excesses. Honesty is there- fore made relative, not absolute. It depends upon circumstances. It is obvious into what a moral difficulty Chinese Christians of ability who are fit candidates for official employment, or others, who, already holding such appointments, come under the conviction of the truth of the New Testament, are brought in consequence of this state of affairs. Although, under the new regime, there are a few departments of the Government Service in China where an 132 Regeneration of New China adequate salary is the rule, yet the bulk of official appointments, indeed, almost the whole of the " home " civil and military posts, are still under the old degrading system. Many honourable, efficient men, Christians whom China can ill spare from her direct service, turn from official life for this cause ; others struggle awhile, against temptation only to fall at last. Can the Christian standard of honesty and truth be lowered in China to meet the needs of the existing situation, in the hope of changing the system in the course of time? Few Christians can think so. All allowances must be made for those who fail in the endeavour to follow the highest, and, remembering the unfavourable environment, and the failure of the West with its long Christian history to attain the ideal, charity will always temper judgment ; but the absolute standard must be maintained if the Christian cause is to conquer, and the Christian youth of China for some time to come must suffer disability and loss until the public life of the land has come into line with the demand of Christian morality as expressed in the attitude and decision of corporate Christianity. The purity and moral quality of the Christian Church in China are of more moment than either its popularity or its numerical success. Church and China's Past Heritage 133 There is another considerable series of Ancestor- inherited forces in China which constitutes varying in- for Christianity one of its most fascinating ^P^ 1 *" and yet most difficult problems. They are those connected more especially with the religious aspects of domestic life and the customs of the family. Chief of these, because set in the forefront of Chinese history as well as of daily life, is the worship of ancestors. As that custom has been generally practised in China it doubtless constitutes one of the chief difficulties confronting the Christian Gospel, and however much we may deprecate the untimely nature of many of the Christian attacks upon the practice, the fact remains that in a vast majority of instances the convert to Christianity is even more drastic in his judgment against ancestor- worship than is the foreign missionary. A leading missionary statesman in China, reviewing the whole position, has said, " when we come to deal with the worship of the dead, it behoves us to make a clean sweep at the outset." 1 Educated and sympathetic Chinese have urged, however, that the custom is not one of worship at all, but simply an act of dutiful reverence accompanied by offerings of food and drink to demonstrate sincerity. The Chinese word 1 Problems of Practical Christianity. Faber. (Out of print). i34 Regeneration of New China pai is alternately translated " worship or " revere," or sometimes simply " respect." On New Year's Day, every Chinese above the ranks of beggar dom goes out to pai (pay respects to) his friends. If a religiously- minded heathen, he will also pai the gods. If a Christian, he will pai (worship) Jehovah. Certain it is, however, that the worship of ancestors is a " cult," and is in its accepted form subversive of the spirit of the Christian religion in that it offers to spirits of men that form of service which is demanded for God alone. This does not end the matter, however. Is there no fit place in Christian worship for the reverent regard for ancestors, and is it not possible that here the regard of the Chinese for their departed ancestry may even teach the Christian Church of the West a needed lesson ? The ancestral tablet, as the supposed residence of one of the three or five spirits * of the deceased, must go, of course, but why should not a more fitting memorial, an inscribed portrait or a memorial brass, preserve the memory of the departed, and conserve that sense of family unity between living and dead which — though extravagantly abused — is one of the most admirable features of Chinese social life ? It ill becomes Christian 1 Chinese psychology is undecided upon this point. Church and China's Past Heritage 135 teachers to take from the people they convert to the Christian Gospel everything which pertains to the old life just because the old life was non-Christian. That is the tendency of the first and most iconoclastic generation of converted men in every land, but Christ came " not to destroy but to fulfil," and in China fulfilment is one of our high Christian duties. So, too, in those matters related to this Worship at vital subject of ancestor-worship, filial piety, valuable * and the worship at the graves in the Ching Elements « Ming ("clear brightness," Spring, or Easter) festival season, the wise and truly Christian policy is that which conserves the undoubted good in such age-long customs while exclud- ing all that is unworthy, anti-Christian, and idolatrous. There is no doubt that in the system of " filial piety ' as handed down in China there is much that is altogether anti- social, degrading, and even vicious. The duties of children to parents have been taught and enforced until it would seem impossible to add to the burdens laid by law and custom upon sons and daughters whatever their age may be. Even the right to take the life of undutiful children has been given into the hands of parents, rarely exercised although it has been. But of the duties of parents 136 Regeneration of New China to children little is said ; parental piety is untaught. The puerile stories told to chil- dren in the spurious Confucian ; book of filial piety," whereby it was supposed that children might be educated to regard the doctrine aright, has failed to produce in China a race of obedient children. Yet it has served to give to old age an honour and a protection which would be welcome in the family life of Western lands. The Fifth Commandment still stands as one of the foundation-stones of Christian law, more truly observed in non- Christian China than in Europe or America. It must not be allowed to slip or to deteriorate in meaning and force through an unthinking opposition to all that belongs to the non-Christian customs of that land. Worship at the graves serves two pur- poses in non-Christian Chinese life. In the first place there is the wholly superstitious element of providing things considered needful for the deceased spirit by offerings of food and drink, and by burning paper tokens of money, bamboo and paper furniture, and other utensils, thus securing the goodwill of the spirit, who might otherwise be harmfully disposed toward the family of the living. At the same time is fulfilled the purpose of Church and China's Past Heritage 137 cleaning up the grave mound, and putting it into good repair, in order that the care of the living members of the family for the departed ones may be manifested to both the living and the dead. Unhappy and fearful is the family unable, by stress of financial or other deplorable circumstances, to pay this annual token of remembrance and reverent care. Here also, by precept and example, Christi- anity should separate the false from the true, and gather the good to itself for the further equipment of the spiritual life of the Church. Memorial services for the blessed dead are coming into the life of the Christian Church in China, and in entirely Christian ways the Chinese are finding that there is scope within the sphere of Christian life for their natural and inherited feelings and traditions. A careful study of the history and inner The Moon meaning of some of the outstanding religious es lva ' feasts of the Chinese world discovers to the Christian enquirer whole realms of religious teaching which ought to be, and one day doubtless will be, brought into the service of Christianity. As, in the case of Christmas and Easter, pagan festivals were taken captive by Christian practice, and given a Christian meaning in the development of Christianity in the West, so " Ching Ming " and many i $S Regeneration of New China another feast are bound to survive in China, transformed and transfigured by the touch of Christ and His Gospel. One of the more popular feasts of the Chinese year is that of the Moon Festival, which occurs on the 15th day of the 8th Chinese month. Special cakes are prepared and eaten, houses are decorated, and incense burned in the door- ways. " Once a farmer, when asked for an explanation of the festival, was so surprised that anyone should be so ignorant of it as to put the question to him that he almost lost his temper, and with heightened' voice replied curtly that it was for Heaven, a thankoffering for the produce of the land." * Here is the " Harvest Thanksgiving " awaiting its conver- sion to Christ. Such a conversion is infinitely better and more effective than abolition can ever be, since it conserves the religious instinct in the minds of the people and gives it true force and meaning. To break the continuity of religious life is rarely helpful, and only in- creases the difficulty of the task before the Christian evangelist. Much of the heritage of the past in China is awaiting the cleansing and transforming power of the Christian Gospel. Natural religion, in its turn, may be made " the schoolmaster, to bring men to Christ." 1 Chinas Young Men, October 1913. o ^» -♦^ Hi 2 "3 *■— •* rt • r- « -^ w a a u •■H < a w < T3 d -^ ce «- «t-l -1-3 cS 0) b -4-i O « r * l <• • < *e i B m i Church and China's Past Heritage 139 This chapter must not close without some inherit- • ANCES reference to the gifts from the past in China helpful which are not only useful in their possibilities Jhuroh. when cleansed from pagan and superstitious practice, but definitely helpful to the fuller life and purpose of the Christian Church. Consideration has already been given to the practical care of the Chinese for the aged of their own family, and to the provision which every dutiful Chinese son makes against his parents' decease. The gift of a handsome coffin comforts the heart of those who are growing old, and the provision of a silk " longevity " robe * for " granny " is the most appreciated gift that can be made ! Sons delight in the preparation, of these offerings for their aged parents, and if it be thought that coffins and burial robes are gruesome in their suggestiveness, may it not be that we of the West are too given to blindness and self-deceit in this very matter of avoiding needful preparation for death ? After all, it remains the abiding commendation of one who made an offering of her best to our Lord Himself that ' she hath anointed me against my burial." . Another of the contributions which the 1 A red silk robe with the Chinese character for " long life" embroidered upon it. 140 Regeneration of New China Family Unity and Sense of Responsi- bility. old life of China may well make to the development of Christian life is that sense of family unity which is the most con- spicuous feature of China's domestic and social life. In very few families does it happen that wealth falls to the lot of all, or even many, of the members. Yet pride of wealth is conspicuous by its absence. No man in China is prejudged because of the circumstances of his birth, but he would be condemned by general consent if, in his day of prosperity, he forgot the needs of the poorer members of his family group. Around the majority of the great men of China there have been gathered hosts of poor relations who have been fed by the bounty of the fortunate one. Many of the servants in a wealthy Chinese household are frequently enough the poorer relatives of the head of the establish- ment. The sense of human equality has been wonderfully persistent in all the life of the Chinese, and there are few nations so fitted by experience and practice to appreciate the New Testament saying, " whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it." Education has proved a dividing line, but not material possessions, and the poor relation has never been made Church and China's Past Heritage 141 a source of shamefacedness to the well-to-do, or a sufferer at their hands. Here, surely, is a human asset of no mean order for the growing Church of Christ in China. The whole sense of unity in family life in China should serve to develop a conspicuously Christian life within the family circle, and a sense of religious responsibility for all its members equal to that now expressed in material things should arise, as the sense of religious value of Christianity makes itself duly felt. This sense of unity in China does not stop at family life. Strangely enough, side by side with an obvious lack of patriotism there has been evidenced in the national life of the Chinese people a practical unity which marks them more than most races. This unity is social and religious in origin and scope rather than political ; hence the apparent contradic- tion of a strong racial solidarity existing to- gether with inter -provincial jealousy and suspicion and an unpatriotic spirit. The Confucian ethics, the state observance of Confucian ceremonies (obligatory through the centuries upon the whole official class), the rigid standard and narrow range of education, all have their part in this. The acknowledge- ment of religious . responsibility regarding matters affecting the well-being of the nation 142 Regeneration of New China extends to all in authority, from the small official to the Emperor or President. In times of drought, flood or other widespread calamity, or on the occasion of rebellion or invasion, all these official persons are called upon to act as the religious representatives of the nation, offering prayers and sacrifices on behalf of all, to the offended deities and to great Heaven. The representative religious functions of the Imperial Ruler are of national importance, and are not likely to pass out of Chinese life with the change of Government. Indeed they have been transferred, with general approval, from the Emperor to the recently installed President. The Chinese nation realises its unity on a basis which is deeper than politics. It is very much nearer the realm of religion. The ideals and service of the Christian Church are bound to touch the life of the Chinese people at this point of real unity, and the Church will be increasingly affected there- by. There are opportunities and also perils arising from the position which the Church of Christ may be expected to occupy as a possible religious agency of a semi-official kind. It is possible that the church may be commanded to pray on behalf of the nation on unworthy grounds or for superstitious motives. Yet Church and China's Past Heritage 143 there is great gain possible to Christianity in China by the attraction of the common senti- ment of the people towards it as an agent of the common good, and as an authorized avenue of approach to those spiritual forces which, in the last resort, all Chinese unite in acknowledging. The underlying unity of Chinese life may be the means of a great turning of opinion, as apart from a change of faith, to the Christian Church. So, too, the strong racial solidarity of the Chinese people brings its influence to bear upon the call of the Christian community for a religious unity in ecclesiastical diversity, and the demand for one Christian Church of China. The Chinese reverence for literature, al- Reasoned though it has by its narrow application fo^Litera* been a source of difficulty to the evangelistic ture - work of Christian missions, brings into Chris- tianity a contribution of abiding value. This reverence for the accepted classical literature is not unreasoning. The educated Chinese have a due sense of the place and value of literary and historic criticism, and it has been exercised more than once by leading commentators on the Confucian books. It is true enough that logic in criticism has not been an outstanding feature of Chinese scholar- ship, and that much remains to be done in 144 Regeneration of New China applying the results of the criticism already made by the Chinese themselves. The point to note is that whilst the legitimacy and value of criticism is allowed, the reverence for the historic books is unlimited. The practical nature of the Chinese mind is conspicuous in this respect : it has a just regard for proven values in books as in everything else, and it will follow that the Chinese estimate of the Sacred Scriptures is likely to be undisturbed by extremes in criticism of either history or text when the Chinese regard as proved the practical value of the Bible as a living book. Once given the conviction that the sacred deposit of truth is enshrined in the Christian Bible, the whole of the subsidiary questions aroused by critical enquiry are likely to take their rightful secondary place in the Chinese mind. What a great and good book can do for a people the Chinese know full well. With Christ enthroned in the hearts of the Chinese, the literature associated with His Gospel is assured of its place in their reverent regard. complex- This general survey of the position in which problem! E Christianity stands with relation to the present Chinese inheritance of character, outlook, and prejudice, should serve to give at least some realization of the complexity as well as the Church and China's Past Heritage 145 magnitude of the missionary task. And the problem is involved far beyond what can be told in such a chapter as this ; ramifications of social and religious inheritance touch the old life at every conceivable point. Not all of these, however, are at enmity with faith. Many are, and it is the task of Christianity to overthrow the power of such and expel them from the life of the people. Others have in them elements which Christianity may and surely will use in its Chinese develop- ment ; these are awaiting the converting and regenerating power of the Christian message of redemption. In other instances, again, the long discipline of the ages has produced in China some striking characteristics which are the natural allies of the Gospel in its prac- tical application to life, and which will add distinction to the faith and practice of the universal Church as they receive from Christ that crown of divine truth which they lack to-day. The task before Christianity to make of the good the best. From China also it shall be true of the Kingdom that " The Kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it." 146 Regeneration of New China Supplementary Beading For frankness and insight, the Kev. Campbell N. Moody's book The Heathen Heart is unsurpassed. The Chinese of whom he tells are dwellers in Formosa, but are typical ; Chaps. II., III., IV. are relevant to our subject. Chap. III. of Vol. 4 in the Edinburgh Conference Report (" The Missionary Message ") has much testimony as to the point of contact between Chinese and Christianity, the influence of Chinese religions on Chinese Christians, the influence of the Higher Criticism in China, etc. In A Mission in China, Chaps. VI. and VII. (" Baptism," " Discipline ") will be found illuminating, and in Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China the latter part of Chap. IX. and the first part of Chap. X. deal similarly with the factors most common in turning non-Christian Chinese to Christ, as well as the characteristics of Chinese Christians traceable to their previous environment and practice. ■ . PASTOR DING LI MEI See p. 151. By the kindness of the Missionary Education Movement, U.S.A. CHAPTER VI THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN CHINA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT " Independence of foreign control is the inherent right of the Chinese Church. . . . The Chinese Church will make short work of necessity OF IN- many of our Western scruples and difficulties, digenous Taught by the Spirit of God dwelling in it, as tian?ty. a true member of Christ's body, it will solve in its own way questions of organization and forms of worship, and it will build up its own theology." 1 At the outset of any consideration of the development of the Christian Church in China we must rigidly set ourselves to realize that such development is bound to be along lines of life and thought characteristically Chinese if it is to be truly successful, and that the conquest of China for Christ can never be accomplished by the imposition of Western forms of religious life upon that Eastern people. A great gift is 1 Quoted from Records of Centenary Missionary Conference, Shanghai, 1907. Cf. Ephes., iv. 1-16 : I Cor., xii. 3-12, for the sense in which the words are intended. F 147 148 Regeneration of New China in the hands of the Christian disciples of Western lands for the help of men, but it is a gift to be bestowed, and not a trust deed to be administered. The seed of the Kingdom has to be sown in all soils and " God gives the increase." It is one seed, the Word of the Gospel of Universal Redemption, but its development varies with its location and its fruitage is manifold. The product of the Gospel seed must be revealed in China in a Church essentially catholic but characteristic- ally Chinese, if it is to be fully Christian. The care of the development of the Church in China is the duty of Chinese Christians ; it is the more elementary work of seed sowing and foundation laying that rests with the foreign missionary. Limitations There is a true sense in which no foreign Foreign Christian missionary can ever be completely Missionary, f^ted to express in its fulness, for men of another country than his own, the meaning of the Gospel of Christ. His life may be a perfect revelation of "sweetness and light," and his service wholly consecrated ; his command of the language may be wonderfully great ; his knowledge of the history and thought of the people he would serve may be equally remark- able ; yet he lacks an indefinable something which would make him the perfect conductor Development of Christian Church 149 of the power he desires to convey. He is of another race. The nature of the differences dividing East and West is persistently over- stated, and harm is done to all the uplifting causes of our world as a result, but there is a danger of supposing that because differences are not fundamental, therefore they do not count. Such differences handicap efficient service, although they need not, and in the sphere of true Christianity do not, divide the servants. A consideration of the difficulties that often arise in our own land through the tempera- mental differences between Celt and Saxon will help us to realize how easy it is in a land like China for even the best intentioned and best informed of Anglo-Saxons to misunder- stand Chinese sentiment, and in turn to be misunderstood. This becomes most apparent when the time to consider methods of service is reached. Chinese ways of accomplishing a given task will vary much from those which a Western worker would adopt, but are none the less sure and no less worthy. As in the physical tasks of the commercial life of the world the Chinese relies upon human labour where the Anglo-Saxon would look to a machine, so in religious enter- prises a like difference appears. Generally 150 Regeneration of New China they seem less logical, far less direct and insistent ; but their plans are even more surely adapted to the task, more considerate of the tools available for use, and of the human element involved. The Chinese possess a knowledge of men and affairs beyond that of the West. In the successful study of mankind the Chinese are probably without equal, and this accomplishment will profoundly affect their methods of Christian service. Here the foreign worker is a learner and not a teacher. As a wise master builder he will lay a good foundation, and the Chinese will build thereon. The " diligent fostering of the right spirit and the right standard is the great task of the foreign worker in the Chinese Church." Notable The full interpretation of Christian thought Christians, to China, therefore, must be through the medium of Chinese thought and life, and it is not to be expected that either the interpre- tation or the resultant expression will be in detail on the lines of Western Christian develop- ment. Already it is becoming clear that Chinese who have received such an equip- ment as makes them capable of independent thought and judgment are looking ahead to a revelation of Christian life in China differing in many ways from that of Europe, though derived from the same Divine source. No Development of Christian Church 1 5 1 one type of Christian man, and no body of Christian men, whether in Europe, or America, or China, has any claim to a monopoly of Divine truth, or to the sole guidance of the. Holy Spirit of God. The great Chinese Christians, whose names are on record, or who are now doing significant work for Christ, give promise of a day when the leader- ship of aggressive Christianity in China shall have passed altogether from the hands of foreign workers (who will then become simple fellow-labourers) into those of the Chinese themselves. Men of the type of Pastor Hsi, or Pastor Li of Soochow, 1 or Pastor Ding, 2 or the Rev. Cheng Ching-yi, 3 are not so much exceptional Chinese leaders as outstanding representatives of a growing and capable body of Christian workers. The capacity for leadership is there. It will inevitably force itself to the front. The problem of to-day is that of training and equipping it for the task of development. Referring to the Student Conferences which have become a regular feature of Christian 1 One of the most forceful Chinese Evangelists of our time. 2 A preacher with a very wide and deep influence among students in China to-day. 3 Elected by the Edinburgh Conference as a member of the Continuation Committee. Now Chinese Secretary of the China Continuation Committee. Is a Manchu. 152 Regeneration of New China Weakness of Western- ising Ten- dencies. work in China, a recent writer says, " There is now not one of these gatherings that could not have been held in the absence of foreigners. Furthermore, it has been deemed advisable each year to use a larger proportion of the Chinese as speakers. Five years ago perhaps two-thirds of the speakers were foreigners ; to-day the percentage of foreign speakers is small. This is not on account of any anti- foreign feeling, but rather because it is felt that a Chinese who has a vital message for men has many advantages in giving it to the students in his own language backed up by his own life." * Much of the tendency of the past has been for the Christian missionary to reproduce, for service within the Church, men who have been allowed to model themselves, mentally and spiritually, upon the lives of their teachers. In some way or other very many Chinese Christian workers have borne the mark of the foreigner. It was far from being of service to them or to their cause, and although in our day the opposition to the external signs of Western civilization has almost entirely disappeared, Christians and non - Christians vying with each other in their desire to secure the efficient tools and proven comforts of our 1 W. W. Lockwood in Chinese Recorder. Development of Christian Church 153 Western life, yet the Western habit of mind and expression rightly marks a Chinese possessor of it as an imitator rather than a leader. The use of the phrase " secondary foreign devils," a common designation for Chinese Christians on the part of many until very recent years, was illustrative of the thought that took hold of the Chinese mind concerning the adoption of Christianity. It meant selling oneself to the foreigner. The Christian church building was an aggressively foreign erection, its very outline bidding defiance to the national style of architecture. It might be, and was, a better type of build- ing than China had known, and later it might, and did, become the model for Chinese builders to follow. Yet it was foreign — unmistakably, blatantly zm-Chinese, and its very obvious superiority as a building to all that China had accomplished in similar ways was an additional offence in those days. 1 One of the most experienced missionaries in China of recent years 2 was wont to observe that could Christianity have been introduced to China entirely by Chinese, and have shown no trace of a foreign agency in its propaga- 1 See Changing China (chapter on Architecture) by Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil. 2 The Rev. Calvin W. Mateer, D.D. 154 Regeneration of New China tion, it would probably have conquered China by sheer merit in a few generations. This, perhaps, was taking too easy a view of the anti-Christian tendency of much of Chinese life, but it enshrines a great truth. An out- standing criticism of the Christian Gospel in China has been its non-Chinese origin and its foreign associations, and this criticism naturally deepened into opposition as inter- national politics increased the difficulties and the distresses of China. The dissociation of Christianity in China from the politics of the West would have been a conspicuous blessing to missionary enterprise, if Christianity could have made an entrance apart from them — a very big "if." That the same treaties which exacted penalties from the Chinese Govern- ment for its ignorant obstinacy and folly in international dealings, and which contained the obnoxious clauses concerning opium, should also have forced the missionary upon it, nolens volens, was a disability to Christi- anity from which we are not yet free. It is by clothing the essential doctrines of the Christian faith in Chinese garb that China will most readily be led to sympathy and understanding. As in evangelization and purely Church activities, so in Chinese literature. So long ^ •» O J -> > «-> :•. * » MR C. T. WANG See p. 157 Development of Christian Church 155 as the labour of translation has to be largely under the influence of the foreign mind, it will inevitably happen that the translation, whether of the Bible or of other books, will bear in some way or other the marks of its origin in the turn of its literary expressions. The alembic of the Chinese brain is more essential to the production of convincing Christian literature than perhaps to any form of Christian effort. Such outstanding missionary writers as Dr W. A. P. Martin of Peking may prepare and publish works on Christian Apologetics, which are exceedingly helpful, and, at the present stage of Christian development, indispensable, but the book upon such a subject for which the Christian Church in China is waiting must be the work of a Chinese. All our Christian literary work calls for what the Chinese describe as " flavour," that essence and mastery of style which denotes the assured scholar, if it is to tell to the utmost. One of the great tasks of Christianity is the training for literary and journalistic work of men able to express the Christian view of things in convincing and acceptable Chinese language. A Christian Chinese newspaper edited by Chinese is an outstanding need of the day. One of the most notable accomplishments 156 Regeneration of New China christian of Christianity in China daring the past few LEADER- 01 ship. years has been the breaking down, in its cruder forms, of this prejudice against the Christian converts because of their supposed loss of nationality through conversion. Attention has already been drawn to the fact ; it will be worth our while to consider more closely the manner of its accomplishment. It has not been the work of a moment ; it is the fruit of a generation of steady toil and wise fore- sight on the part of many missionary teachers. The fact of leadership within the Christian Church, on the part not so much of pastors as of educated laymen and especially men en- gaged in the work of teaching, has come about through the steady development of self-reliant character in missionary schools and colleges, whereby men have been trained to habits of independent thought and responsible action. Examples in Such a career as that of Dr W. W. Yen, the present Chinese Minister to Berlin, is a case in point ; many others might be cited. Dr Yen was the son of a pastor of the American Episcopal Church in China, connected with the well-known St John's College, Shanghai, which, under Dr Hawks Pott, 1 has rendered such splendid service to the cause of Christi- anity and progress in China. He proceeded 1 Author of The Emergency in China. Development of Christian Church 157 to America, and after a distinguished career at Columbia University returned to become a master at his old school. From thence he was appointed to a secretaryship of Legation in Washington ; thereafter he became a secretary of one of the Government Boards in Peking ; from that post, under the Republic, he became one of President Yuan's secretaries, and so passed on to the ambassadorship in Berlin. Dr Yen was one of the first, and per- haps the most conspicuous, of the students educated abroad to receive his doctorate from the reformed Manchu Government, under the old Empress Dowager. Other well-known instances of a similar kind are found in the cases of the sons of Pastor Wang, of the London Mission Inde- pendent Church of Hong Kong, the oldest of the Chinese self-governing Churches and one which has a magnificent human record. The eldest of these, Mr K. S. Wang, is President of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. Of another family is Mr C. T. Wang, one of the most ardent and able of the advanced Christian leaders in China, whose political zeal and honesty of speech and conduct have brought him into political difficulties in recent days. Mr C. T. Wang is the son of a C.M.S. pastor, well known in Ning-po in the last generation, 158 Regeneration of New China and after his mission school education, he became a master in the Anglo-Chinese College of the L.M.S. in Tientsin under Dr Lavington Hart. Proceeding later to Tokyo, he de- veloped gifts of leadership in the Christian work carried on amongst the 18,000 Chinese students then studying in Japan which marked him as one of the Christian leaders of the future in China. He passed on to America, and there, while pursuing his own educational career, established the Chinese Students' Christian Association in the United States. Returning to China he was appointed to a general secretaryship of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. in Shanghai. In the turmoil of the revolu- tion he felt the call to political life to be irresistible, and was successively a member of the first Republican Cabinet in China under the Sun Yat Sen regime, and later, until the recent rise of the forces of reaction in Peking, as one of the heads of the strongest political party in the Republic, the Deputy Speaker of the Chinese Senate. In these cases the deep Christian convictions of the individuals concerned have never been hidden, and all that has come to them has followed their public profession of Christian discipleship ; in the case of the last named his advance is, in reality, directly attributable Development of Christian Church 1 59 to it. Theirs has been the triumph of Christian character and culture. The line of develop- ment is significant and striking — Christian parentage, Christian education of the highest grade, world experience, personal Christian conviction, the acknowledged leadership of men. More of the change of opinion on the part of the Chinese in general is due to the life and attainments of men like these (and there are many hundreds of them to-day) than to anything else that Christianity has done for China. It is the crowning work of missions. As a foreign doctrine Christianity was at first despised ; as an educational force it was tolerated, or perhaps esteemed; as a philanthropic agency it was praised ; as a maker of men of the first order it triumphed. The Christians of the second generation in China, and especially the " sons of the manse," although there have been many disappoint- ments among them, have been the most significant features of Chinese Christianity in its human activities. The lesson is plainly writ. The force that will move and convince China in the highest measure must be that exercised through China's own children. Indeed, it may be safely asserted that until Chinese Christians have given adequate expression to it the right 160 Regeneration of New China presentation of Christianity for China, and that which will lay hold of the national heart and life, will not be forthcoming. China is beginning to appreciate the value of Chris- tianity for China, as distinct from its fitness for other nations, because of what Christianity has demonstrably accomplished in and through leading Chinese. Need of How then, we may ask, has this principle, veiopmentin s0 d ear f° r all to see, been applied to the the Church. p li C y adopted within the Christian Church in China ? The instances to which attention has been called are those of men who have served China and Christianity as lay members of that Church. Has Christianity developed within the Church that sense of native leader- ship which it has contributed to the life of the nation outside the Church ? The answer is not so convincingly affirmative as we could wish. Christianity, in one form or another, has been in China for many centuries ; the Roman Catholic Church has now a full three centuries of almost continuous history in the land, and the Protestant a full century. Both have contributed to the government of China — the Reformed Churches in a marked degree, as we have seen. But there is on record only one case of the appointment of a Chinese as bishop, and that is under the Development of Christian Church 1 6 1 Roman Church in the age of persecution, when a Chinese named A-lou, who had been baptized as Gregory Lopez, was consecrated Bishop of Basilea. He died in Nanking in 1687, and has had no successor. It is to be feared that, notwithstanding the opposition that the nation has offered to Christianity, there has been on the whole a wider scope presented to leading Christians in certain fields of effort outside the Church than inside it, with the result that agencies other than the distinctively Church organization have attracted the ablest men into their service. Not that great men have been wanting. Every Mission with any length of history in China can multiply instances of men whose gifts would adorn any Christian Church ; nevertheless, until very recent years few of these have had an adequate field for their labours. The Chinese Y.M.C.A., it must in fairness be said, has presented a worthy example to the Christian Church in its alloca- tion to posts of authority and influence of capable and educated Chinese Christians. That organization has taken of the best of the men trained by the Missions and given to them the place and power justified by their character and attainments. To-day we are recognizing that the problem of Chinese 1 62 Regeneration of New China leadership is vital to the whole Christian task, and the matter is receiving the gravest attention. 1 Chinese The Chinese within the Church, as well as and the tS the foreign missionary, are realizing the weak- Ministry. ness f a situation which leads men to turn from the service of the Church at a time when it is vital that the ministry should attract the best of the lives produced by the Gospel. The Student Volunteer Movement for the Chinese ministry has been actively engaged upon this question, and a recent article in China's Young Men 2 recounts the hindrances stated by Chinese students to stand in the way of offers of service for the Christian ministry. This list of hindrances reveals how many of the difficulties of the spiritual life are common to students in all lands. Beyond that, however, there is a general consensus of opinion that in many instances the relationship between the foreign missionary and the Chinese minister needs revision, and that the present undue promin- ence of the former, as the personal authority in the Church, must be modified if things 1 See The Continuation Committee Conferences in Asia, 1912- 1913. J. R. Mott. 2 The organ of the Chinese Y.M.C.A., English edition, edited by Chinese, Development of Christian Church 163 are to alter for the better. " The more the Church becomes a Chinese institution, founded and propagated without reference to foreign treaties, the more shall we find college men giving their lives to its service." Another outstanding difficulty mentioned by these young men in reply to questions upon the subject is the comparatively low standard of theological education, and the resultant effect upon both the type of candidate and the estimation in which the work of the ministry is held amongst the educated classes within and without the Church. The com- ment of the Editor of China's Young Men upon the results of the whole inquiry is that " the article calls for a radical reform in the principles and practice of many Churches in regard to the securing, training and treatment of Chinese workers. . . . Educated Christian young men must feel that the pressing need of the present is a call for them to consider seriously the duty of dedicating their talents and powers to God's service in the ministry. If they do not so con- sider, not only will the grandest opportunity of Christianizing the nation be lost, but also the solution of the ministerial problem of the Chinese Church will be delayed for another generation." At the same time attention is 164 Regeneration of New China drawn to the danger of dwelling so much upon the claim for leadership as to cause men and women to forget that the ministry is a position of service, and that the call to sacrifice is still the call of Christianity to men. " If any would become chief among you, let him be- come your minister." The call to sacrifice is not without its appeal to Chinese. Of the graduates from fourteen Christian colleges in China giving a really collegiate training to men, it is reported that eighteen per cent, of the total number have devoted themselves to the Chris- tian ministry. But from the colleges outside Christian influence, and from Japan, America and Europe, many thousands of students are now returning to take part in the active life of China every year. " In these days of awakening there is urgent need of a type of leader, and especially of a type of clergy, who shall be able to appeal to the larger number of scholars and officials, as well as to the other classes, who are open as never before to the message of the Christian Churches." x The spiritual needs of the Chinese, whether scholar, tradesman, or coolie, have to be met by men of their own race on their own 1 Findings of the National China Conference, Shanghai, 1913, Development of Christian Church 165 ground and level, if the self -propagation of the Christian Gospel and the worthy self- government of the Christian Church in China are to be secured. The progress of indigenous Christianity in China must not lag behind the progress of the nation in the intellectual and material realms of life, if the problem of Christianity is to be duly solved. If in diplomacy, finance, and education China is proving herself the equal of the West, why not so within the Church ? It is largely a question of opportunity ; the human material is already there, and the right training and use of it is the one sure way of removing the stigma of foreign interference and control from the reputation of Christianity in China. There are, however, very many millions of Place of men and women in China who are not of omen ' the educated class. And, moreover, the problem of Christian leadership is not one that concerns men alone. The emancipation of women on general lines has begun in China for the first time in the history of the nation, and women leaders are likewise demanded by the new conditions of the age. The problem presented by young womanhood to-day is as serious as could well be imagined. Such ebullitions of feeling as were evinced in the enrolment of a regiment of Chinese Amazons 1 66 Regeneration of New China in the recent revolution, not merely to succour the wounded and sick, but to fight the Im- perial troops with bomb and musket, and also shewn in the momentary outburst of militant suffrage in the first days of the Republic, are significant in the extreme. The change they represent in a few short years is greater than other lands can show in a whole century. The picture they present is that of mediaeval women in the most advanced ranks of the twentieth century. Upon the Christian woman missionary in China, as the chief instrument of the education and guidance of the new woman of China, a tremendous re- sponsibility rests to-day ; her pupils are bound to be the leaders of the moral movements for women in the present and succeeding years. The " feminist " movement in China, delayed for centuries, began in the education of girls in the mission schools. The education of women, unaccompanied by the guiding and controlling principles of religion, might possibly exert a greater influence for harm in China than even the materialistic tendencies of a rigidly secular education among the men. For in the old system of Chinese education and ethics woman is concerned but incident- ally. She does not reap from China's past the benefit of the long discipline through which Development of Christian Church 167 the People. the men have come, and in consequence, has neither the responsibility nor the sedateness of the Confucian trained scholar. Her spiritual and moral danger, and her menace as the agent of " unchartered freedom ' to the life of China to-morrow, are by so much the greater. Chinese mothers rock the cradles of one-fourth of the children of the world. How great an influence may be created by a Chinese woman the life of the old Empress Dowager Tsu-Hsi suffices to shew. There is, then, the great mass of men and Reaching women who in the very nature of the case are outside the schools and colleges, and untouched (save indirectly) by the intellectual movements of the race. The struggling shopkeeper and his family — who form possibly half the popu- lation of the cities of China — the harassed farmer, that backbone of China's prosperity and good name ; the fisherman, the artisan, the coolie, on whose willing and able shoulders the wealth of China is carried — who shall reach these with the message that lifts the poor and brings joy to the distressed ? Out of this class has come the majority of those preachers whose children or grandchildren are amongst China's Reform Leaders to-day. For every scholar within the Church there are a score, perchance a hundred, of such as these, 1 68 Regeneration of New China and their claim is great. The concentration of effort upon the educated in order to secure statesmanship and efficiency, self-government and self -propagation, is primarily a matter of missionary strategy. It cannot be pursued to the point of neglecting the great masses of the nation, unless the Gospel is to be dis- owned. Leaders must be found for the army. But the army is a greater consideration than even its officers and commanders, and to the Kingdom of God the Chinese coolie is as essential as the minister graduate. The high- ways and hedges are full of common men and women waiting to be brought in. The question we have been considering is one of spiritual expediency and claim in view of the whole work to be done for Christ in China, and the share of the foreign missionary in it. the . As preachers of the Gospel story Chinese have had wonderful success in bringing home to men and women of their own class the truths of Christian doctrine. Their remarkable gift of illustration, the conveyance of truth by parallel and parable, their shrewd common sense in debate, fit them in a remarkable degree for the task of evangelisation. 1 To hear an evangelistic address from an able Chinese preacher is an education in the art 1 Cf. Soothill : A Mission in China } ch. ix. CHINESE CHURCH Development of Christian Church 169 of pointed sermon illustration. Here is a man preaching to a congregation of country people on the true meaning of life. Opposite the preaching hall — a commodious shop with the front taken out — is a large tannery yard. " If the soul is dead," says the preacher, " the body is of no value, indeed of less than none. Preachers If a bullock dies, its hide is valued for leather, its body for food ; so also with a pig ; indeed dead dogs and cats are not without value to the tanner and the furrier; but a dead man has no worth — in fact he is an expense to the living, for he has to be buried. If it were not for the soul, which is the real life of man, he would be of smaller value than the perishing beasts. The real question that men ought to put to each other is not ; Have you eaten rice ? ' l but ' Have you cared for your soul ? ' From our Lord on the hill-side, watching the Jewish farmer at work, and saying, ' Behold a sower went forth," to Mr Sung in the province of Kiangsu, preaching opposite a tannery, is a far cry, but the method of enforcing doctrine by living illustration, the Oriental equivalent for Wes- tern logic, is the same. As an evangelist the true Chinese Christian is fine material and capable of great things. 1 The usual form of Chinese salutatiou. tyo Regeneration of New China When, however, that same material is brought into the pastoral service of the Church, weakness is revealed. At this point Chinese Christianity has urgent need of the help and training that the foreign worker can give, not indeed by way of doing the work instead of the Chinese, but by example and personal stimulus. The personal interest of the minister in the spiritual life and progress of the in- dividuals and families in the Church brings a new feature into the religious life of China, and the spirit and method of it have not yet been laid hold of by the leaders of Chinese Christian life. The love of man as man, the desire to convert, as well as to convince, the teaching of the doctrine of sacrifice by love and through Jesus Christ, the sense of the illimitable value of the human soul to God, are the new forces working from within Christianity outward. Here the foreign missionary as an exemplary pastor of the flock of Christ has, for the time being, a great work to do for the leaders of Christianity in China. How successful that service may be is revealed in many instances. The manner in which the Chinese Christian student associa- tions in the United States and in Great Britain have arranged for their own organizing secretaries, men whose one work it is to watch .- - » V Development of Christian Church 1 7 1 for the spiritual life of the whole Chinese student body abroad, is a proof of the possi- bility of such pastoral and personal service as makes Church life real and effective. The development of Church life has not a Worship, few difficulties to overcome, some of them obvious to the most casual observer. The lack of a due sense of reverence in worship strikes the Westerner most forcibly as he comes into contact with very many of the Church services in China. In connection with the old religious order there existed no general sense of the holiness of a place set apart for religious service. The acceptance of a personal ritual in the worship of idols went hand in hand with an utter disregard for anything like corporate reverence. In the temples of the cities, where men and women went to consult the gods as oracles, or to offer them worship for favours bestowed or ex- pected, with prostrations of the body and knockings of the head, the lighting of candles and the burning of incense, there went on within the courts of the same temple gambling and fortune-telling, conjuring and play-acting, stalls and side-shows. From these the priests made money. All were accepted as a matter of course. No one ceased talking or quarrel- ling or chaffering in order that the worshippers 172 Regeneration of New China might realize in silence something of that communion of soul which is the essence of true worship. Orderly and reverent worship in the Christian Church, the creation of the atmosphere in which quiet, reverence and communion are the natural expression of the worshipful soul, needs to be won for the Chinese by example and teaching. Those Churches of the West which have developed in their own life a special regard for reverence and orderliness in Christian service have a great work to do for the Chinese Church. In no land anywhere, possibly, have the bare bones of ritualism been so uncovered of the flesh of reverence as in China, and the experience of the West has much to offer in this respect. This does not mean that the West is to impose upon China a ready-made form of Christian worship, or to endeavour to trans- plant continually varying modes of Church life. We return at this point to the position taken up at the opening of the chapter, and repeat that all the gifts that the West has to offer to Christianity in China must be subject to the medium of Chinese personality and to lines of Chinese development if they are to be of effective service. Reverence, for example, will be attained within the Chinese Church in ways quite diverse from those which have Development of Christian Church 173 been effectual in Britain and America. What the Christian teacher from the West has to tell his Chinese brother is that, apart from reverence in worship, no Christian life has touched the highest points of spiritual experi- ence. He states the principle, that which has been received from history through experi- ence ; the mode of expressing that principle in China is a matter for the Chinese to whom the knowledge is conveyed. All the develop- ments of Christian life in China must be along Chinese lines ; in many instances these will differ little from what the West knows ; in some, there will be considerable divergence ; the vital matter is that they should embody the Faith once delivered to the saints, and . should spring from true and personal con- viction. What is without doubt the most significant Movement and far-reaching of all the recent develop- unity dS ments of Christianity in China, and one which cannot fail to exercise a reflex influence upon the West, is that of the union of Christian Churches. Whilst it is easy to exaggerate the harm done to the whole cause of Christian progress in China by the " unhappy divisions " of Christendom, it would be hard to over- state the eagerness of almost every thought- ful Chinese to proceed to the formation of a 174 Regeneration of New China Chinese National Christian Church on a basis of comprehension. The Chinese know well enough that phase of human nature which results in sectarian religious grouping. They have it in Buddhism. What they cannot understand, and are unwilling to consent to, is the exclusive and divisive consequences of the same. It is where the sectarian spirit provokes conflict and develops proselytism and confusion that Christianity stands dis- credited. The following expression of educated Christian Chinese opinion upon the subject x is worth careful consideration : — " What we aim at is to make the Church indigenous, that is, to make it distinctly Chinese when it is in China, to be manned with Chinese ministers and deacons, and sup- ported with Chinese money. Form of organ- ization or of baptism, presence or absence of ritual in church services, whether each church should be a unit by itself or rather a com- ponent part of a larger whole, are all secondary questions. They could be what men wish them to be. Inasmuch as God has made us divergent in temperament and conviction, let us enjoy the liberty of maintaining this or that form of Church government, this or that form of baptism and ritual, according to 1 Chinas Young Men, October, 1912. Development of Christian Church 175 our sweet pleasure. The fundamental point to which we must rigidly adhere is : Are we Christian ; are we living as Christ would have us live ? " That Christianity is historically one, and effectively multitudinous, is an anomaly which has arrested the attention of the Chinese, and, as a result, the opinion is freely and frequently expressed that there is no sufficient reason why the Christian Church in China should be bronght into bondage to those results of the ecclesiasti- cal conflicts of the West which we generally deplore. " Speaking generally, denomination- alism has never interested the Chinese mind. He finds no delight in it, but sometimes he suffers for it," x said one leading Chinese Christian. Another declares that " China has no use for your Western ecclesiastical differ- ences." At a recent Federation conference yet another leading Chinese pastor 2 remarked, " We have in China a missionary society from the United States 'North,' another Society of the same denomination from the United States ' South.' We had no Civil War between North and South in China." Scarcely ever is a conference of Chinese Christians held but the problem of abolishing the apparently 1 The Rev. Cheng Ching Yi, at the Edinburgh Conference, 2 PastorLi, of Soochow, 176 Regeneration of New China unnecessary denominational differences of Christian Missions is brought up for discus- sion. One such conference in 1912, 1 at which seven separate societies and five distinct de- nominations were represented, concluded that if the Mission Boards could not see their way to helping forward effective unity by mutual recognition, then it would be the duty of the Chinese Christians to go forward without them. For some years the danger of a breaking away from connection with the Missionary Societies on the part of numbers of leading Christians and their Churches has been apparent. Such a parting is altogether dis- tinct from the natural growth of the move- ment for self-government and self-support. It would be one of protest, if not of antagonism, on the part of some of the finest Christians, who had lost patience with the slow-moving and apparently obstructive policy of some Foreign Boards of Christian Missions. The effect of such a breach would be disastrous not only to the growing Church in China, which will need for generations all the help and stimulus that the experience of the West can offer, but also to the Churches of the West, for China has unique contributions to offer to the great harvest of Christian thought and practice 1 Held in Hangchow, Development of Christian Church 1 7? which the Universal Church should gather. To the Chinese Christian to-day it appears, rightly or wrongly, that the vested interests of the Christian Missions of the West are standing in the way of the accomplishment of Christian Unity in China along lines of com- prehension such as a majority of the leaders of the Christian community connected with the non-Roman Churches in China are pre- pared for and earnestly desire. The National Conference of the Continua- tion Committee, held in Shanghai, 1913, and composed of Chinese and foreign representa- tives of Missions, adopted, as a common name for all Christian organizations, " The Christian Church in China." 1 Plans for the furtherance of schemes of union in the development of organized Christianity in China were adopted, and action contemplated, of a much stronger kind than the West is ready for, having in view the ideal of a United Church of Christ in China. Between the pressure of personal and inherited convictions, the policy of his Mission Board, and the Christian desire for unity, which beset the Christian missionary, the difficulty of 1 The Anglican Missions had already become federated under the title of < * The Holy Catholic Church of China. " It should be observed that the Roman Catholic Church was not represented at this Conference, and that some Anglican representatives demurred to the name, 178 Regeneration of New China wise counsel and right action is very great. The Christian representative of the Western Church has to set himself in the position of a first century Christian leader in China, and to give to the Chinese Church with which he is connected just as much as is essential to its spiritual need as a Christian Church, and as it is his faithful duty to give as a repre- sentative of the Missionary Board or Com- mittee which sends him forth, not neglectful of the lessons of Christian history in the West and yet mindful of the fine " liberty of the Gospel." Given freedom to shape its growth in accordance with the conditions of time and place, however, the Church will not fail of the power to fulfil its task in the national life. How far, then, ought the Christian mission- ary to China to permit that form of Christian discipline and organization for which he stands as a Churchman, be he Anglican, Presby- terian, Congregational, or any other, to prove a hindrance to plans for the anticipated unity of the Church in China ? Is not the problem one which the Christian Church in China ought to be allowed to settle for itself ? On the basis of a sufficient knowledge of the New Testa- ment and its teaching, and the records of Christian ecclesiastical history, may not the Chinese be left to settle problems of Church- Development of Christian Church 179 manship for themselves ? Is not the guidance of the Holy Ghost, as promised to faithful believers, operative in the Christian com- munity in China, as here, or is that guidance so geographically or historically conditioned as to leave the unfettered Chinese Churches in a position of doubt and possible disaster ? These are the questions which inevitably arise from the development of the Chinese Church in the direction of union. To bring the men and women who are to The Task guide the life of the Church in China into Missionary, touch with the history of Christian ex- perience in the corporate life of the Universal Church and in the individual Christian life, is one of the supreme tasks of the foreign missionary in China. Christian knowledge is in the hands of the Western missionary teacher in order that he may pass it on to those by whom it must be applied to the problems of China and the needs of Chinese Christians. In the class-room, in personal contact, and by social intercourse, in the organization and ceremonies of the Church, and by the force of daily example, the leader from the West opens the springs of Christian life that these may flow through Chinese channels for the enrichment of the land, and the satisfying of G 180 Regeneration of New China * the needs of its people. The whole process of education, religious and secular, has as its aim in the missionary programme in China the establishment of the forces which alone can touch the life of all the people of the land for Christ. It is established upon the basis of a true evangelism — a desire to reach all with the message of Life. The equipment, spiritual and intellectual, of fit men and women for the work of Christian interpre- tation along natural lines of development is the task of missionary education in China to - day. The institutional work of Christian Missions in China is not the result of mere desire for place and authority in Chinese life, nor a perversion of the evangel- istic principle ; it is the form of service which the opportunities of the present and the needs of the future demand. It is one of the quickest and surest ways of accomplishing the task of making Christianity indigenous in China and of sending forth the Chinese messengers of the Cross to China's millions. When a sufficient number of such Chinese have been thoroughly trained for this out- standing service, the end of the Christian task in China, so far as the Western Church is concerned, will be in sight. Development of Christian Church 181 Bibliographical Note In Pastor Esi, by Mrs Howard Taylor, and A Chinese St Francis, or the Story oj Brother Mao, by the Kev. C. Campbell Brown, will be found sketches of Chinese Christian pastors which may be supplemented by the pamphlets describing the life and work of Chinese Christian leaders published by the various Mission Houses. In Dr John Ross' Mission Methods in Manchuria, chapters v., vi., vii. should be read. See also Some Typical Christians of South China, by W. S. Pakenham Walsh. The Revival in Manchuria, by the Rev. James Webster, gives a brief account of a typical experience among Chinese Christians to-day. Volume II of the Edinburgh Conference Report (" The Church in the Mission Field") is important. The Education oj Women in China and Notable Women in Modern China, both by Miss Margaret Burton, will help to an understanding of the problems confronting the Christian women of China. The section on "Woman's Work" in The China Mission Year Booh for 1913 is illuminating. u The Responsibility of the Chinese Church towards the New China," an article by the author of the present volume in The East and the West for October 1912, should be consulted. CHAPTER VII THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS OF THE NATION The New With the advent of Christianity to China, a new note was sounded in the religions of the land and one which necessarily affected the whole life and activity of those who came within its range of influence. A religion of personal redemption and individual responsi- bility to the one personal God has brought with it an altogether new sense of human value and duty. The convinced, earnest Christian, under the constraint of an evangel which makes him perforce a messenger of re- demption to men, finds himself at variance with much of the life around him, and he enters into fresh and profoundly disturbing relations with his fellows. He now possesses not simply a new faith and mode of worship, but a new point of view and one which does not permit him to acquiesce in the old order just because it is old, or to rest content with things as they are. Because he is a convert he is also a crusader. He is now concerned, 182 Church and Problems of Nation 183 not merely with the welfare of his own soul, but with the salvation of his brother. Hence it is that the inherently aggressive nature of the Christian faith has everywhere begun to affect extensively, and to disturb not a little, the old order of Chinese life. It has thrown into clear light the failure, both in ideals and in practice, of the moral and religious codes of China either to uplift the nation or to redeem the souls of men. The problem of the indi- vidual has acquired a prominence that it has never had apart from JChristianity. In the light of the Gospel of Christ there has been a re -discovery of the soul of the individual Chinese. The theory of social responsibility upon which the laws and customs of China have been reared must be kept in mind in consider- ing the relationship of the Gospel to the Chinese people. Christianity in China has christian- never been able to isolate itself from the Chinese common life of the people, or to withdraw its adherents from their old surroundings and make of them separate and self-contained communities. The social life of the nation is too complex and inter-related to permit this to be done by Chinese as such, whilst the genius of Christianity, with its keen sense of public duty, makes it impossible for the COMMUN- ISM. 184 Regeneration of New China Christian disciple to hold aloof from the life around him, even if social conditions allowed him to do so. The outlook of the Chinese upon life is not individualistic but com- munistic, and the fact that the race-unit is found in the family has created at once a great opportunity and a special difficulty for the Christian appeal. Moreover, in so far as the Gospel was declared to China by the lips and lives of men and women of Anglo- Saxon culture, the conflict of ideals was in- evitably deepened. The aggressive and con- vinced individualism of our race was added to the individualism proceeding from the Gospel, and an undue emphasis given to an inherent truth. All Chinese law and custom combine to visit the sins of children upon their parents, as well as those of parents upon their children, and to fasten upon the whole family connection responsibility for all the acts of wrong-doers. The Family Family relationship does not end in China Qan he where it ends with us. The family proper consists of all the direct relations linked with the oldest surviving male member of it. If he should be a great-grand-parent, then he and the three succeeding generations make one family, while behind the family stands the clan, composed of all those who look back Church and Problems of Nation 185 to a common ancestry and are bound together by the ancestral hall. Frequently enough, a whole village is entirely in the possession of one clan, with common property and common interests, and howsoever they may disagree internally, when the occasion demands it they are united as one, in defence or in de- fiance. The heads of the clan are responsible for the self-government of it under the law of the land, and both their power and their responsibilities are great. The village or clan " elders," heads of families, graduates and some others whose force or character or wealth demands it, are the members of an ill- defined " Council " whose duties and powers are un- recorded, but are nevertheless real and far- reaching. 1 To act in defiance of the clan leaders requires very considerable force of conviction on the part of the individual, who, in the event of being expelled from the clan, loses all the material interests as well as the moral and real support which the clan can give. In many thousands of individual in- stances Christianity has come into conflict with the clan system and its ancestral claims. Nevertheless, when once Christianity becomes paramount within the clan its good influence 1 See Village Life in China. A. H. Smith. Chap. 21. 1 86 Regeneration of New China proves more effectual than can be the case in the West. The clan system conserves very much that is of real value, much that is at the heart of the national polity. At the same time it provides a system of local self-govern- ment with which every Chinese is intimately acquainted, and which is likely to have con- siderable influence on the organization of the Church of Christ in China. So far, however, as it stands in the way of the acknowledg- ment of the value of the individual soul, and hinders individual redemption or submerges the individual conscience, the family and clan system must be modified and reconstructed. The development of a sense of human duty towards God and man, and the stirring of the individual conscience in China, can only follow such a spiritual conception of human life and its values as the Gospel of Christ gives. From lack of this the moral life of the nation is decaying and the most serious national dangers are threatening. Human life is not sacred in China because the ideal relationship of man with God is unknown. When that knowledge has been woven into the closely-knit threads of the family and clan life of the Chinese people, a marvellously perfect texture will be produced. In commercial and provincial life a ■ • >• - ffl M X h g 5 w J Q g EQ W X H Church and Problems of Nation 187 democratic system of co-operative guilds or The Guild, clubs has long been in vogue in China. Merchants and men of a similar trade are gathered together into trade guilds, by which the conditions of commerce and labour are determined, and in which every Chinese trader of any weight is enrolled. The Club, or Hwei-Kwan, serves the purpose of uniting the men of any one province who are living in another district than their own into a league of defence and benevolence, by which common interests are served. One of the principal duties of these clubs is the provision for the care and burial of the dead. Conspicuous among these provincial clubs are the Shensi, Hunan, Ning-po and Canton Club Houses. These are found in almost every considerable city, their provincials or citizens being commercially aggressive beyond the rest of their compatriots. With both guilds and clubs are connected certain religious cere- monials which affect the lives of Christians in membership with them. 1 In the course of the growth of the Christian Resultant Church there is bound to come a point at which conduct 5 the Christian organization enters into cor- . porate contact with some part of the political and social systems of Chinese life, and 1 Cf. The Guilds of China. Morse. G* 1 88 Regeneration of New China questions involving conflict of interest inevit- ably arise. With the clan, the first to occur is the regular worship of ancestors and the services of the ancestral hall. But even should this difficulty be successfully overcome, others must follow. The arrangement of local feasts, frequently connected with a heathen temple and accompanied by theat- rical representations, are in the hands of the clan council, or occasionally, in large townships or cities, under a kind of " ward ' committee. These decide to levy a rate for the purpose desired. What is the earnest Christian to do ? Or yet again, in a certain district a bridge requires rebuilding, a road falls out of repair, a canal has to be dug, or a stream deepened, and the inhabitants are assessed for the purpose. Part of the whole pro- gramme includes an idolatrous ceremony and feasting at a temple ; Taoist priests must appease the spirits of the earth and the water, and payment must bemade for these things also. Again, what is the Christian to do in such case ? If he does not pay, he is marked as anti- social, or even is an enemy of the public good — the last thing in the world of which a good Christian anywhere should be suspected. That the hostility, of the Taoist or Buddhist priest is incurred is a slight thing and an in- Church and Problems of Nation 189 evitable, but that the disapproval of the whole community should be incurred, when the Christian even more than his neighbour desires the welfare of all, is a tragedy indeed. Through it, however, in thousands of instances, the Chinese Christian has had to go, and be content to regain confidence slowly by an exhi- bition of neighbourliness and good-will through channels consistent with a good conscience. In a non-Christian community, working along co-operative and democratic lines, as in the public life of China, the stirring of conscience, such as must follow the accept- ance of Christian teaching, is bound to pro- mote the individualistic temper and result in temporary conflict. Man}' serious quarrels between Christians and their neighbours have arisen from this cause. Forty years ago, a young scholar living near Shanghai was brought to the knowledge of Christ, Being a young man of great intel- lectual promise, the hopes of his family were centred upon him, and their disappointment at his conversion ,soon kindled a flame of hatred in their hearts. He was cut off from the family, then from the clan, and went into social exile. By faithful Christian service as a teacher, in course of years he gained within the circle of Shanghai Christianity a reputation 190 Regeneration of New China for sincerity and scholarship which was not unnoticed by the clan that had expelled him. Towards the close of his life his was easily the most distinguished name connected with the whole clan roll, and his had been erased ! He was therefore invited to allow himself to be given a post of honour in the clan life. His reply was that he would gladly do so if the elders would make it a rule for future guidance that no member should ever thereafter be expelled on the score of religious belief. The request was granted, the rule made, and re- ligious toleration prevails within that clan. The incident is illustrative of the working out of the Christian principle in relation to the social difficulties that invariably arise at the first clash of old customs with new conviction. The serious trouble that threatened the very existence of the Christian Church in China ten years or more ago through the con- flicts in the Law Courts between Christians and non- Christians, Protestant converts and Roman Catholics, had much of its rise in the application of the clan principle to a recognized weakness of Christianity in China as a foreign religion acting in dependence upon foreign treaties. Whilst the freedom given to the Christian missionary under the treaties made aggressive evangelisa- Church and Problems of Nation 191 tion possible, the protection from political and social persecution afforded by these treaties to the Chinese converts opened a way for all manner of unanticipated abuses of power. The clause in the Treaty that gave to foreign consuls the protection of Christian converts from persecution is thus worded : ' All persons shall be free to preach and practise these religions (Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity) without molesta- tion or interference." Many a missionary fell victim to designing Chinese who simulated conversion in order to gain admission to the Church, and thereafter brought personal or family quarrels into the range of " molesta- tion or interference," in order to seek the aid of the foreign religion and to be avenged of their adversaries. Missionaries found their names used in Chinese courts of law in cases of which they had no knowledge, the magis- trate being threatened with an appeal to the foreign consul. Whole clans identified them- selves with a Protestant Church in order to seek protection from the designs of other clans with whom they were at loggerheads, and who had in turn put themselves under the protection of the Roman Catholics. It was only by cutting free in almost every case, genuine or otherwise, from the Chinese 192 Regeneration of New China Law Courts and the protection of consular authority for Chinese converts, that the Reformed Churches were at last able to con- vince Chinese officialdom that they did not seek secular authority or wish to override Chinese law by making Christianity an iyrvperium in imperio, destructive of the national interest. 1 It has been amply proved that the way of missionary success does not lie along the line of interference with the administration of Chinese justice, however imperfect as justice it may appear to be. Effective religious toleration in China has made such non-interference generally possible, and the difficulty of " missionary lawsuits " has disappeared. 2 christian- While it became the obvious duty of the ITY AND . social Christian Church in China to avoid all appear- ance of conflict with the law of the land, and all suggestion of enmity towards those who exercise authority, with many of the customs of the people it has been increasingly needful for Christianity to wage an unmitigated conflict. Moreover, the standards of life which the Christian Gospel has introduced to 1 Official judicial status was gained by Mons. Favier for Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests, and offered by the Chinese Government to Protestant missionaries in 1898, but refused. 2 Cf. Ross : Mission Methods in Manchuria. Chap. 11. REFORM IN CHINA Church and Problems of Nation 193 China have rallied the progressive life of China around them ; Christianity is looked to as giving a strong lead to the forces in China that are pressing for social reform. Certain evils, recognized as such but yet tolerated, have been allowed to grow up under the shelter of law. Not only is Con- fucianism powerless to deal with these ; one of the chief indictments against Confucianism is that it has been powerless to prevent the rise and growth of acknowledged vices ; nor, in general, have its exponents lifted up their voice against them. Such an evil as the sale of children by their Domestic own parents for domestic slavery and for worse advice, purposes is a case in point. Girl children have of course been the chief sufferers in such cases. The perversion of the doctrine of filial piety has been a definitely contributing cause in the development of this evil. The periodic famines and kindred disasters to which parts of China have been subject, and the chronic poverty of a large proportion of its people, have provided incentives to it. A traffic in children between parts of the land of China, carried on by Chinese, is one of the outstand- ing social evils of to-day. A Chinese writes in the World's Chinese Students' Journal^ 1 1 March issue, 1912. 194 Regeneration of New China dealing with this subject : "I know of no nation but China which has, up to this day, recognized the sale of its own native-born children as within the legal powers of parents. The invariable excuse for the act ... is the poverty of the parents. . . . This very excuse is a serious reflection on the philanthropic arrangements of the Chinese nation and on the duties of a State to its citizens. There is a yet sadder and more serious consideration, and that is, that ... in consequence of the legality of the sale of children there exists a numerous class whose sole livelihood is the traffic in children for immoral purposes, and of kidnappers who steal away the hope and joy of honest parents and plunge the kindest hearts into the bitterest depths of unavailing sorrow." Con- cluding his appeal the writer urges his fellows, in high flown terms, to "arise in the wrath of human indignation, and, hurling these things from their power, cry with one trium- phant shout : ; Free China can tolerate no slavery.' ' The editorial comment upon this article notes that domestic slavery in China has not been altogether immoral, nor invari- ably cruel (a statement undeniably true), but goes on to remark : " The worst of the evils arising therefrom is the drafting of young girls into houses of ill fame, in many cases brutally, Church and Problems of Nation 195 to live a life of degradation and shame. If such a practice was tolerated in days gone by, it is no longer in accordance with the ideals and principles of a now free nation, and it is therefore the primary duty of our authorities to take steps against the existence of this evil." Here is public opinion taking note of the fact of new standards of social life. The moral ideal which it has in mind is that of Christianity. There is a work in Shanghai, carried on to- day by a handful of noble Christian women, which has received from Chinese sources constant assistance and support, and which deals especially with the case of the girl sold into immoral life in the many Chinese brothels of that port. It is known as the "Door of Hope," and it has been to many hundreds of Chinese girls the means of escape from a life of slavery and vice. " Two things are remarkable in this work of almost divine com- passion — a relapse is practically unknown, and it is the Chinese who are most helpful in encouraging it." To the Chinese who have eyes to see, the outstanding significance of such an enterprise must be its Christian origin. The kindred question of polygamy has Marriage -ij-i » 1 . i • • • * •• Customs. already been reterred to, and it is a question that goes right to the heart of Chinese 196 Regeneration of New China social and family life. Although monogamy is the strict law of China, it is not so to the exclusion of concubinage, and the custom of " secondary wives," which probably originated from the supposed essential requirement of sons for ancestor worship, is very common. Confucius himself was the son of a secondary wife. The custom of early betrothal, and the treatment of it by the parents as a business transaction of a family nature which concerned the elders, but not the children who were being betrothed, has also encouraged young men to follow their parents' wish in the official marriage, and at the same time to contract another in accordance with their own desires. Where there is no choice given, no sense of moral responsibility may be expected. The sanctity of marriage must be enforced if the evil of polygamy is to be overcome, and the present system of betrothals and early marriage must certainly be modified. A deeper regard for the natural rights of the individual must be secured. This the Christian Gospel gives, and in giving it enforces also a moral claim. Opinion in China is steadily falling into line with Christian teaching in this matter, and although it is not likely, nor indeed neces- sarily requisite, that the oriental system of betrothals arranged in family council should Church and Problems of Nation 197 be overthrown (since Chinese life requires Christianizing, not Anglicizing), a greater regard for the tastes of the young people of the family is certain to obtain as the years go by. Within the Church this is already apparent, and the age of marriage on the part of young Christians is higher by years than in the community outside, while, of course, the abuses of marriage can never be tolerated within the Christian Church of China as they are in Chinese life outside the Church. Closely knit with this question are two Poverty, great problems of Chinese public life — poverty and the status of woman. Attention has again and again been drawn to the excessive population of China, and the bearing of this upon the terrible problem of poverty. While it is true that poverty in China is, in normal periods, not so fearful an evil as in the West, owing to tjtie fact of acknowledged family ties, and also to the closer touch of the Chinese people with the land, yet, when a natural calamity, flood or drought, touches China, the results are more dire and more wide- spread than in any Western land. An enormous proportion of the whole popula- tion of China lives just above the border line of want, and generation by generation 198 Regeneration of New China the population increases exorbitantly. Large families are the rule, and the larger the family the worse, proportionately, is the condition of its womanhood. Mothers and daughters suffer alike, and suffer severely. The present conception of marriage, family life and duty is economically and morally degrading to womanhood, status of Into this set of social and moral relation- ships Christianity comes, and whilst it deals uncompromisingly with polygamy and every form of social and individual vice, it is bound to realize the danger attending iconoclastic treatment of matters concerning betrothal, marriage, and the relationship of the sexes, all of which are involved in the consideration of public morality in China. Dealing with this aspect of the case the recent Shanghai National Conference 1 agreed that : "In view of the misconceptions which prevail as to woman's freedom and power, it seems well, whilst we encourage China in the many reforms advocated, to take a conservative view as to the position and privilege of 1 That held (1913) at the instance of the Edinburgh Con- tinuation Committee under the Chairmanship of Dr Mott, and composed of representatives elected by a series of provincial Conferences covering the whole field of Chinese Missions and including all the non- Roman and non-Greek Communions. Church and Problems of Nation 199 women, and to impress upon her that the elevation of the home is the true goal of all social service." So also Mr Ho Heng-hwa, a leading Chinese publicist, treating of the relationship of the sexes, says : — " The social upheaval must naturally shake the very foundations of our family life and society . . . While we believe that women should not be regarded as the slaves of men, but rather their companions and helpmates, with certain liberty of action and freedom of will, we do not advocate that they should be put on the same footing as men. . . . The woman should co-operate to secure comfort and happiness by making the home the sanctuary of love, trust, and fellow- ship, by the proper bringing up of the children, and by careful attention to the household duties. . . . Education will one day teach every man and every woman to keep his and her place, and until this is reached there is danger in too much freedom of intercourse between the sexes. . . . It is a mistaken chivalry to give too ready an ear to the clamouring of women for equality. It is unmanly to treat them as lower beings, and equally unmanly to permit them to do all that men by nature should do. Women must be the companions of men, their helpmates in the hours of joy 200 Regeneration of New China and sorrow, the builders of the family, the solace of the home, and the emblems of purity and chastity." All this exhortation, addressed to a Chinese public, is the teaching of Christianity, not of Confucianism. Among other findings recorded by the National Conference in Shanghai the follow- ing is particularly noteworthy. " In view of the fact that women will have a large share in the new national life, and that they must meet false views as to the most fundamental relationships of life, as well as new temptations and responsibilities, the importance of character-training cannot be over-estimated. The walls which guarded the young girl are being demolished rapidly, and the spiritual walls which can protect her purity and peace are rising only slowly. The girls who leave Christian homes and schools to enter these new conditions must know more of the world than their mothers did, must have more poise and self-control, and above all they must have the spiritual power of the indwelling Christ and the sense of a divine call to service. . . ." " The changing customs and the coming into public life of Chinese women challenge Christian women, both Chinese and foreign, to wider work in the field of service, and this Church and Problems of Nation 201 service will form a point of contact between Christians and non-Christians." The ideals of New China respecting the position of women are rapidly approximating to those of Christianity. Woman in China already owes much to the Christian teaching, and will in coming years find her indebtedness increasingly deepened. An aspect of Chinese life which conditions "Face" and the very atmosphere of China is the cl e ' question of " face." This is an entirely in- definable thing, being in part " reputation," in part " self-respect " or even " pride." To lose " face " is to suffer a loss which is unfor- gettable, though often enough inexplicable to the untutored foreigner. Public reproof for faults, even of a heinous kind, is the occasion of loss of face, far more than is the committal of the said faults. Shame follows not so much the doing of wrong as the making public of it on the part of others. Contemptuous treatment and the use of certain opprobrious names are also contributory causes, and " loss of face " is a very real thing to a Chinese, leading him in certain cases to commit suicide. In other cases men and women smarting under deadly insult have been known to take to their beds and resolutely die, from sheer distaste for a life in which they have lost 202 Regeneration of New China their sense of self - respect. Men of high official and social standing who are under the authority of Government are invited, as a mark of clemency, to commit suicide, in order to " cheat the gallows " and to "save their face." It is easy to laugh and easy to be angry at the Chinese standpoint in this connection; the new relationships in the life of China, and also the influence of Christianity upon it, are bound to alter considerably the attitude now invariably maintained. All the tendencies in China to- day are towards plainer speaking, though much still remains to be accomplished. But at the heart of the theory of " face ' there seems to lie a great truth, and one with which real Christianity has much in common. It is that there is a point beyond which it is not right for judgment and reproof to go, lest it should shut the door to repentance and return. The public upbraiding of the sinner means " loss of face," and the very road of repent- ance is sometimes closed thereby. " If thy brother sin against thee go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone ; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." 1 Suicide is a problem with which this theory 1 Cp. MacGowan : Men and Manners in Modern China. Ch. 23. o Q w H < S5 5 H O - — X H C O i < t. 1 Church and Problems of Nation 203 of " face " is intimately connected. The new spirit manifesting itself in China is taking note of this matter also. Protests made by Chinese against the custom of suicide are appearing in the Chinese Press, and the matter has been the subject of con- siderable discussion. The right of a man to end his life, if he so wills, has been claimed and denied. It is pointed out that to take from womanhood in China the right of self-destruc- tion would be to deny to women the one great weapon they hold for their defence. For in very many instances threatened or attempted suicide, as the last resort of the weak and ill-used, has been their one refuge from injustice, since to have the cause of suicide at their door is unbearable to all Chinese, and accounted next to murder. Out of a desire to be revenged of their enemies, countless Chinese, when every other means of offence has failed them, have taken their own lives. The whole campaign of Christianity, however, brings into being a new sense of the inherent value of human life. With it this great evil of suicide must first be modified, and in the end cease to be a feature of the national life. Along similar lines the movement that is infanticide, bringing to an end the curse of infanticide is 204 Regeneration of New China also working. The new sense of the value of womanhood joins hands with the teaching concerning the sacredness of life to protect girl infants from the selfish wickedness of depraved parents. It has been asserted that the extent to which the crime of killing girl babies prevails has been overstated in mis- sionary literature. Possibly so. But it still remains true" that almost every Christian Church in China finds among the women who are connected with it those who know of, or have shared, in tins evil. There is the further proof that the " benevolent homes ' which are found all over China, opened by Chinese who desire to practise benevolence, and to " ac- quire merit " are invariably Girl Foundling Homes, and their declared intention is to care for those female infants whose parents wish to desert them or to put them out of the way. Mothers who give birth to several girl children and no boys are condemned and abused until they are glad enough to get their offspring, or even themselves, finally disposed of. Christi- anity is set, as with a face of flint, for the saving of womanhood from birth to death, and against the destruction of life, whether by suicide or by infanticide, and China is responding. It is not by negative virtues or by the Church and Problems of Nation 205 reproof of its presence alone that the Christian Gospel is uplifting the life of China. By the side of the anti- opium movement stands the Red Cross movement ; the overthrow of old evil and the establishment of new good go hand in hand. The Christian Church is not content merely to pull down. The study of the life of our Lords in the Gospel, which has been an outstanding element in missionary success in China, has without doubt had an enormous influence upon all those who have seriously considered the claim of the Gospel. That " the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many " has impressed China in a marked degree, and thousands of those who have withstood the claim of Christ to a personal surrender of their lives are striving to follow His example of service. " Benevolence " is one of the prescribed virtues of the Confucian Code and in many ways the Chinese have tried to give effect to it. Christ is showing them the true way. The effect of the philanthropy of Christian missions has been profound and far- reaching in China, and it is now being realized that this is no mere advertisi'ng agency of the missionary enterprise, but an essential " fruit of the Gospel." Social service is appearing within the ranks of the Chinese Christians, 206 Regeneration of New China who are to-day banding themselves together to uplift the social order of their land. Gambling. It has been observed that gambling in all its forms is a vice to which the Chinese are peculiarly addicted, and that its hold upon the masses is greater than that of any other social evil. The campaign against it is thoroughly under way, and although, like other movements, it will have its relapses, the public conscience has been awakened. The Chinese paper, The Republican Advocate, thus commented upon the Gambling Reform Move- ment : — " Foreign critics and observers of the Chinese say that gambling is second nature with the people of this country, and cannot be eradicated. . . . There are people who said that opium smoking could not be abolished; who says so now ? . . . Foreign-educated Chinese at least should show by example that they can be freed from the mania. If they get into the old rut, and do not show a better example to their people after their return from abroad, what difference is there between the returned student and the conservative scholar, except the foreign clothes, and the* long robe and girdle ? " Here the obvious comparison is between the Christian code and the Confucian in practice. No body of workers in China so accurately Church and Problems of Nation 207 focusses the ideals of educated Chinese Chris- The Move- tianity as does the Chinese Y.M.C.A. In wards Social January 1914, at the national headquarters of Servlce - this organization, a conference on " The Social Application of Christianity ' ' was held. The fol- lowing subjects figured in its programme : — " The Opportunity for Social Service in China," " The Status of Christian Philanthropy," " The Social Message of Christianity," " The Place of Woman in Social Service," " The Health Department Survey of Shanghai," " Social Service in an interior City," " Lessons from the Social Experiences of the Y.M.C.A.," and so on. The following extracts are from the report of the Committee to the Conference under the heading " The Relation of the Church in China to Social Service " — * It would seem obvious that since modern social service is so largely Christian in its origin and purpose, the relation should be most close. This is now fully recognized in the West, where the Churches are bringing a belated enthusiasm to the reinforcement of the social movement. The opportunity of leadership, there so nearly lost by the Church, is now before Christianity in China. ' The Church should be the guide, coun- sellor and friend of all efforts for social 208 Regeneration of New China progress. This it cannot effectively be until it has come to have an intelligent sympathy with, and a clearly defined attitude toward, the social problems of our time. 6 The Church should furnish inspiration for social service. In adopting the social point of view, the Church does not in the least abrogate its spiritual function. On the con- trary, it broadens its scope. * It should assist in the formation of a new social conscience, and in the beginning of new lines of effort. What influence it may have over the great mass of Chinese charity remains to be seen, but it is destined to play no small part. 6 It should furnish an object lesson to Chinese charity. This the Church in China is already doing abundantly — witness schools, famine relief, translation agencies, lecture bureaux, industrial, normal, technical and medical education. This should even- tually include examples of most forms of the social institutions of the West. 'The Church should develop leaders for all lines of social effort in China. The . Christian schools are turning out such men year by year. It should be a definite part of their task to see that every graduate, Church and Problems of Nation 209 no matter what calling he may enter, is intelligent concerning the social problems of the day, and enrols himself as a servant of the common good in some definite cause. Here is to be found the meeting-point between Christian service and patriotism. 6 Social service should utilize the rank and file of the membership of the Church, and would thus not only develop character, but emphasize the vital relation between the Church and the Community.' The Conference referred to is not the be- ginning of this enterprise ; it is the result of work already attempted. Twenty-five mem- bers of the Association have been engaged upon a canvass of the Chinese shops and traders in Shanghai, in an endeavour to find out the number of idle or unemployed youths, so that they may get these into an institution for the education of young Chinese which the members of the Y.M.C.A. have recently built and opened. Six hundred such boys are to be accommodated, and the work then extended to other centres. It is the beginning of a great work which " may yield results of real value apart from the object immediately in view." 1 From this to the problems of labour, hours and 1 North China Herald. Feb. 7 , 1914. 2io Regeneration of New China The Use of Sunday. conditions, wages and safety, the step is obvious. Already the influence of Christianity is marked in the public life of China by the observance of Sunday as an official holiday. Not that this in itself tends to the furtherance of religion ; indeed, there is a sense in which the closing of public offices, government schools and so forth, has made the spiritual task of the Church the more difficult. Sunday, which was a day of work, is fast becoming, for the educated and leisured Chinese, the day of pleasure. Yet the coming of the Christian Sunday brought to the Chinese a sense of what they were lacking in the absence of a recog- nized day of rest, and, howsoever it be observed, Sunday is proving itself one of the gifts of Christianity to the Chinese nation. It is for the Christian Church to take all possible advantage of the Sabbath freedom its own example and influence have brought about. The relation of the Christian Church to political advance in China has been of the political greatest moment in the history of recent years. No single impulse towards reform in Govern- ment and administration was so great as that originating in Christianity and working through its Church life and educational activities. This relationship held no menace THE CHURCH AND Church and Problems of Nation 2 1 1 so long as the progressive spirit was animated by national ideals and followed lines of righteous activity. When, however, after the Revolution of 1911, politics took on a party form, the danger to which the Christian Church was subjected of becoming the tool or agent of one party in the State was at once revealed. The fact that many of the chief leaders of revolution had been Christian Christian students, and that Dr Sun Yat-sen Danger of was a confessed Christian, gave to the f n a fl r uence. Revolution an identification with Chris- tianity which was over-rated and a little fictitious, and the inclusion of Christian men in the first Cabinets, both that of the Pro- visional Republic and that of Yuan Shih-k'ai, brought the Church into undue prominence in this connection. The division of the Radical party (the Kuo Ming Tang), which had a majority in the Republican Parliament, into advanced revolutionaries and moderate re- publicans brought about its dissolution at the hands of the President, who accused its leaders of fomenting rebellion. Certain of these leaders were Christian men. The Church suffered somewhat in consequence, not justly, but rather in reaction from the previous over-estimate of its political influence. From the party politics of the day in China the H 212 Regeneration of New China Church, as such, has wisely held aloof. Nothing would be so destructive of the policy of tolera- tion to which the Chinese Government still stands fully committed as a suspicion of general complicity with rebels on the part of organised Christianity. On the other hand it is easy to see how, under certain conditions, Christian Chinese might be driven with one consent into opposi- tion to the policy of Government. Had the President given way to the suggestion that Confucian worship should be made obligatory upon every official and all teachers, then the thousands of educated Christians who are con- nected with, or looking to, Government Service would at once have become the victims of intolerance. Religious toleration is the one assurance in China of non-interference in political matters by the Christian Church. Beyond this, all the ideals of Christianity will make in China, as elsewhere, for purity of public life and honesty of administration. Need of Honesty of administration ! It has been 5** enera- pointed out that new China, in spite of many Official Life, protestations and loud-voiced sentiments of virtue, seems in many respects as far as ever from regeneration, especially in its official life. From top to bottom, from the highest official to the smallest house-coolie, the bad Church and Problems of Nation 213 old system of peculation (" squeeze ") runs its vicious and destructive course. Public officials and private servants are underpaid on the assumption that they will find other means of meeting the demands of life and making their labour worth while. Christianity cannot fail to come into conflict with the system, and cannot rest until the moral forces it sets in motion under the impulse of its spiritual teaching reform the methods of that system throughout. It must convert both the individual and the system. The task is not hopeless. Under Con- strength fucianism there is a knowledge of the cardinal ness^ofXon- virtues of honesty and sincerity which lacks fucianism. chiefly the dynamic that Christianity, and only Christianity, gives. The teaching of righteousness contained in the Confucian system is one on which the Christian can surely build. It is essentially, though incom- pletely, at one with the great commandments of the Christian Bible. " The fundamental idea of righteousness is thus the same, whether it be Chinese or of any other nationality, and this is proved by the fact that whenever it is allowed utterance its declaration is identical. . . . What they really differ on is not the idea of righteousness, but the interpretation of the law of righteousness, and the method of 214 Regeneration of New China attaining it." 1 « < The Doctrine of the Mean ' places an admirable moral standard before the man who would lead a pure moral life. . . . We find (in the Analects 2 ) excellent moral teaching ... we have the five virtues fre- quently mentioned, namely, kindness, justice, reverence, wisdom and good faith." 3 The weakness of the whole position has been manifest from the days of Confucius himself, in his own acknowledgment of personal failure to attain to the morality he taught. He lamented that he had never met the per- fectly virtuous man, and at the end of his career bemoaned the failure of his life-teaching. The acknowledgment of sin and the hope of redemption which come from contact with Christ and His Gospel are entirely wanting in Confucianism, and without them it must for ever fail to uplift those whom it instructs. The history of Confucianism is one of the outstanding proofs of the radical failure of even the finest moral system to save men unless it comes armed with the power of salvation. That moral teaching fails without a Saviour is the great lesson of Confucianism 1 Lee Tong Hwe, quoted from World Chinese Students' Journal. 2 Confucian Classics. 3 Cf, Soothill, The Three Religions of China, chap. ix. Church and Problems of Nation 215 for the Christian enquirer, and it is the supreme message of the Christian missionary to the leaders as well as to the rank and file of China to-day. The task of giving reality to the professed virtues of Chinese morality is made harder by the moral perversion which exists so generally in China, and which alienates doctrine from practice, and speech from act, to the detriment of the highest character ; yet the fact that the cardinal virtues of Chinese teaching and Christian ideal are in general accord gives to the Christian Church a great position of vantage. When the Vice-President, Li Yuan- hung, recently asked for Christian men for positions of trust as being the more reliable, he was presaging the prestige which the Church will yet win for China in the sphere of public life. Give a Christian motive to the formal system of Confucianism and the assurance of public morality is at hand. Apart from this it seems as if purity of public life is hopelessly impossible in China. To clothe the bare bones of high Confucian precept with the body of Christian truth, and to energize the whole with the Holy Spirit of the in- carnate Christ, is the consummate task of the Christian Evangel in China. The Christian knows the power of Christ's 216 Regeneration of New China China's Last Gospel to transform all that it touches, and ope ' he is assured that only Christ is sufficient to solve the root problems of China's public life. At the close of her millenniums of history, in the face of her modern problems and her uttermost need, the position of China is an unconscious confession of human failure. Systems of religion, codes of morals, and leaders of men alike are broken and dis- credited. " What shall she do to be saved ? " Is there any other answer possible to-day than the old one — " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ"? The Christian Evangel is China's last hope. Bibliographical Note Collateral reading in connection with this chapter lies chiefly in recent magazine articles. The volume on " Co-operation and Unity " (vol. viii.) in the Edin- burgh Conference Report, and the findings of the China Conferences recorded in The Continuation Committee Conferences in Asia will be found useful. Three very important articles by Chinese Christian leaders are those entitled "The Chinese Church in Kelation to its immediate Task" (Internat. Review of Missions, July 1912), ! A Chinese view of the Confer- ences ' (ibid. July 1913), both by the Kev. Cheng Ching- yi; and "A Chinese Viewpoint on the Evangelisation Church and Problems of Nation 217 of China" (The East and the West, July 1910), by Chengting Wang. " China and the Missions of To-morrow " (The East and the West, January 1914) is an article dealing with some aspects of co-operation; written by the Bishop in North China (the Kt. Eev. Frank Norris). Further reference may be made to Miss Burton's book, The Education of Women in China : The Christian Education oj Women in the East contains some relevant addresses. 11 China as contemplated from Tokyo," by the Kev. W. H. Elwin, B.A. (Church Missionary Review, March 1914), gives a useful account of work among Chinese students there. CHAPTER VIII THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN CHINA AND ITS CLAIM UPON THE WEST In studying the task of Christian evangeliza- tion in China we have given a great deal of consideration to the problems of the magni- Church in her . relationship with* the inherent the task, characteristics of the Chinese people, and with the phases of development through which the nation must pass in its progress towards those higher standards of civilization, intel- lectual, industrial, and political, that are now in its view. We have been attempting to survey the task from within, and to put ourselves as far as may be into touch with the difficulties and opportunities with which the intelligent, devoted Chinese disciple of Christ is confronted. Let us proceed to step outside the range of these inner problems and consider, from without, the great task before Christianity in China. By the act of with- drawal we shall gain the mental perspective in which we may realize the stupendous nature and magnitude of the Christian missionary 218 J g o - H < © © es to 3 O s .2 CO ~c3 ^> o © © © © G es 3 © to © m © -4-S © o • »-< O 55 Claim upon the West 219 enterprise in the midst of the largest nation the world has ever known. We must also face the personal claims upon our Christian discipleship which the situation engenders. It is highly necessary that this should be done, and done in the spirit of obedient service that asks, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? ' Otherwise, being too immersed in the complexity of the task before the Church of Christ in China, we may over- look both its magnitude and its personal bear- ings, and consider it more a work for students and professors than for Christian evangelists, a subject for the class-room rather than an enter- prise for the Church militant. We need to have driven into our own minds the conviction that apart from simple Christian obedience on the part of the individual members of Christ's Church there can be no Christian conquest in China, and that no amount of understanding or appreciation of the situa- tion and its problems can help forward the Kingdom of God where personal service is lacking. The Christian Church has always gloried in tasks apparently beyond her powers. To the human mind there has never been any parity between the forces which the Gospel has brought to bear upon the condition of H* 2 2o Regeneration of New China life in every land it has entered, and those which have been arrayed against it. Never, even in the days of the Roman Empire, was this more apparent than when Morrison essayed to win, to all appearances single- handed, the unknown and seemingly impreg- nable Empire of China for his Master. With " I cannot, but God can," on his lips as his one answer to the laughter and scorn of men, he took up the task, in the full know- Popuiation ledge of its human impossibility. Later, he ^ith pare and his colleague, Milne, concluded that if Community. * n a nun dred years a thousand Chinese were converted to the truths of the Gospel it would be all that might be expected. 1 Yet they pressed forward. When the tale of a hundred years was told, more than 150,000 baptized Christians were enrolled with the Reformed Missions in China, and the story of that single century became one of the marvels of history. So true is it that one man with God is an army. As Christians we have no need to view the present position in China with any feelings of dismay. Faith still "laughs at impossibilities." Neverthe- less we must face the facts. To-day it may be that the Protestant and Roman Catholic Christian communities number two millions 1 Milne, Ten Years' Retrospect. Claim upon the West 221 or even more, and the fact is wonderful indeed; but the Chinese people are about four hundred millions in number, and that, too, is a fact the Christian Church is bound to have constantly in mind. Against the work done we must ever set the work to be done. In a hundred and seven years the foreign missionary staff has grown from one to some three thousand five hundred, but in the period between 1741 and now the Chinese people are said to have increased by more than two hundred millions. 1 Despite all its miracu- lous accomplishments, the task before the Christian Church in China is, in view of the population, staggeringly great. When consideration is given, also, to the Extent of problem of the occupation of China by the occupation. messengers of Christ, the enormous disparity between the task accomplished and that yet to be done is still further strikingly revealed. Recent returns show that all over China, the Provinces and Dependencies, there are but 552 occupied centres of missionary work, that is, centres from which work over a district is organized ; 2 but there are in China proper certainly 1300 counties, each one having an important city as its centre, and in numer- 1 Cf. China, E. H. Parker, chap. ix. 2 Survey of the Missionary Occupation of China, Cochrane. 222 Regeneration of New China ous instances having other cities within its boundaries, also with populous villages and crowded townships innumerable. Yet there are but 5348 outstations held for Christ all over China. And these are not distributed evenly over the whole land ; far from it. " The Provinces of Yunnan, Kwangsi, Kwei- chow and Kansuh — stated in the order of their need — are largely unoccupied, and offer extensive spheres for missions wishing to undertake work in a new field in China. The neglected condition of these vast regions is indeed deplorable." x The population of these almost untouched and outlying pro- vinces amounts to forty millions. Beyond these there lie the great fields of Mongolia, Turkestan and Tibet. And all these, except the last-named, stand open to the labours of the servants of Christ, and could be occupied at once if the members of the Church of Christ were alive to the situation and respon- sive to the call of God. It is true enough that the diffusive influence of Christianity has spread far beyond the range of mere missionary occupation ; true also that the printed messengers of Christian truth have passed into every township and numberless villages of the land ; but with 1 Findings of the National Conference, Shanghai, 1913. Claim upon the West 223 the mere extension of influence and the spread of more or less knowledge no true Christian can rest content. The task of the Christian Church is not merely to spread ideas or to awaken interest ; these are contributory and incidental to its whole work for men. That work is to bring home the fact of personal re- demption. The disciple of Jesus Christ, so far as he is true to his Master, is " straitened until it be accomplished." As the call of Christ is to something infinitely deeper than the sym- pathetic understanding of problems, so the task in China is far more than that of bringing the Chinese into the comity of nations, or of educating them to be the peers of the civilized peoples of the world. They are to be made one in the great brotherhood which, out of a changed heart and with personal conviction, calls Jesus Lord. In relating this task to present conditions nature • • OF" THE and needs we must avoid thinking of it as service one which applies solely to the emissaries RE Q UIRED of the Western Church. It applies primarily there, since to this Church has been given knowledge and position and power for the first steps of the enterprise, and to us the command to " evangelize the nations ' has first come. Moreover those first steps have by no means all been taken. The work to 224 Regeneration of New China Essentially which China calls must be considered in its Co-opera- tive. corporate aspect, that is, in view of all the forces available for service, beginning with ourselves and having as the chief regard the most effectual application of all these to the required end. The greater share of the burden must eventually be borne by the Chinese themselves ; but in the first considera- tion of the work, in the laying down of general principles, and especially in the incentive to service by personal example, the great respon- sibility is to-day upon those who are the heirs of centuries of Christian thought and experi- ence. Only the note of that service must be brotherhood in Jesus Christ, and not over- lordship, if it is to be truly worthy and finally successful. " Come over and help us," was the cry from Macedonia, not " Come over and do it for us," and that is the cry of the Christian Church in China to-day. The foreign missionary is the link of brotherhood in Christ between China and the West, and that link sorely needs strengthening. Christian For what service then does China to-day tion. ngehsa " particularly claim the foreign missionary, and what are the enterprises to which we are called to offer our thought, our prayer, our gifts, or perchance our lives ? Tt was never truer of any time than of the present, that the first Claim upon the West 225 need of China is the need of Christian evangelism tion. This is the fountain of all the good works which follow in the train of the missionary enterprise. Evangelisationis not simply preach- ing of a special kind. Few misapprehensions have wrought more harm to the missionary cause in China than the very widespread idea that Christian missions are a magnified form of slum work and that missionary evangelisation is a kind of outdoor preaching to the ignorant. We must remind ourselves and others that evangelistic work is primarily the declaration of good news to all classes of men. For the public form of evangelisation we have seen that the Chinese have a special aptitude, as well as the final responsibility. But the spirit of evangelism must run through every branch of Christian service that is well and truly done, whether it be in the class-room, in the laboratory, in the hospital ward, or by means of the pen. The gift which the Chinese seek from the example of the Western Church is a consuming zeal for the welfare, body and soul, of the brother "for whom Christ died." The constraint laid upon the foreign missionary to " love his brother also " is no whit diminished because in our day the call for service in China appears to be for the consecration of the head and hand as much as 226 Regeneration of New China of the heart. For the Chinese have an eerie faculty of " finding the Westerner out." They have read, thought, and judged motive through act and not through speech in one another, throughout the ages of their history, and the unsophisticated Anglo-Saxon stands readily revealed to their trained glance. If the zeal for the good of men for Christ's sake is there, they know it, and it tells its own story and does its own work with far greater effect than in the West. Evangelism, " the selfless love of man " in the spirit of Christ Jesus, is that with which the foreign Christian worker is commissioned to the Chinese Church. If this be lacking, a fatal omis- sion is revealed and there is nothing which can take its place. True evangelistic service is the very life-spirit of Christian missions and the assurance of their final success. Christian Christian Strategy is another of the demands of the day upon the workers for Christ in China. Little enough help has been given in this way to the Chinese Church as a whole in the years gone by, either by example or by precept, and we are to-day realizing our sins of omission as we reap the results of them. In the era of direct propagation of the Gospel by the foreigner, dispersion over a wide area and the scattering widespread of the Strategy. Claim upon the West 227 seed of truth was the chief consideration, and few men and women gave themselves adequate time for needful thought upon the whole campaign. The pressure of immediate need was too heavy. Those who did were iso- lated, since China then afforded practically no means of communication, and they followed generally the lines of their own thought. In certain areas of service, defined by conditions of natural feature or language, where there were but few Societies at work on the field, plans were forthcoming and strategic under- standings arranged which have been of the most signal benefit to the Church. In the Amoy and Swatow regions of South China, in West China, and in Manchuria, this has been especially the case. But it was not until the Shanghai Centenary Conference of 1907 that any general application of the principles of strategic service was made, and its great work has still to be done. 1 Concentration and co-operation in the work of higher education is one such line of strategic service called for from the foreign missionary. It is not possible, even were it desirable, that each of the missions should undertake schemes of educational work regardless of the 1 Cf. Arthur H. Smith : The Uplift of China (new and revised edition, 1914), ch. vi. 228 Regeneration of New China needs of the whole, and also of the work which the Chinese Government is bound to do. A few Union Christian Universities in China, five or six at most, doing first class work in a thorough way, would be strategically successful far beyond the efforts of a score of smaller, less efficient institutions attempting the same work on individualistic lines. " It is alarming to find that missions through- out China propose to have a larger number of Universities than the Government." } Christian University work, concentrated and co - operative, is one phase of outstanding strategic service. The medical missions of China have given an attention to this sphere of their work which no other branch of the enterprise has yet adequately developed. The focussing of Christian enterprise upon conspicuous avenues of influence is another such line. The whole field of classical literature and of journalism requires the attention of qualified men for this very reason. It is astonishing that so much has been accomplished when* it is remembered that the number of men and women given up to the work of Christian literature, in a land where literature counts more than any- where else in the world, may almost be 1 Survey of Missionary Occupation ofChi?ia, Cochrane, 1913. Claim upon the West 229 counted on the fingers, and many of these were without previous special equipment. How is it possible in such a case to afford the needed training to the Chinese worker, to whom in later years the task should and must be committed ? Here again is a matter of strategic service which must receive atten- tion from the Churches at home as a sphere of co-operative effort. Service by all, and for the good of all, is the call of the day in China. How the focussing of service upon centres of special influence may be marvellously effective is seen in the results accomplished by co-operative work in conjunction with the Chinese Y.M.C.A. amongst the Chinese students in Tokyo. The attention of the China Missions was drawn to the needs of this work in 1907, and the China Centenary Mis- sionary Conference decided to co-operate with the Y.M.C.A. for work amongst the 18,000 Chinese students, then in Japan, by forming a Union Christian Church in the capital city, one of the largest university centres in the world. The task of supervising this work on behalf of the Conference was delegated to the Methodist Episcopal Mission of North America, and they sent their leading Chinese Pastor, the Rev. Mark Liu, from Tientsin to Tokyo, for this purpose. The C.M.S. conjointly appointed an 230 Regeneration of New China English missionary to the same service, while the W.M.M.S. and the C.I.M. also were repre- sented. Under these conditions a great work was done for Christianity amongst men who on their return to various provinces in China, some to positions of authority, gave proof of the good derived from the Christian teach- ing they had received in Tokyo. " Recently some Chinese Christians of Yunnan approached their Tutuh 1 Tsai, with reference to the scheme of starting a Y.M.C.A. in their province, and the latter at once promised his assistance because, during his student days in Japan, he had come under the influence of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. at Tokyo." 2 Between 1907 and 1913, 43 men were baptized in connection with the work of the Students' Union Church in Tokyo, and the Chinese membership of the Tokyo Y.M.C.A. was reported last year as 460 out of a total of about 3500 Chinese students in the city. No finer single piece of strategic service has been rendered to the cause of Christianity in China than this mission work in Tokyo. The whole Chinese student class, having within it those who are bound to become the leaders of the next generation in China, provides a field for strategic work of the most 1 The tutuh is the chief civil officer of a provincial centre. 2 The East in the West, January, 1914. M.T.Z. Tyau. Claim upon the West 231 influential kind. The success which attended the services held by Dr Mott and Mr Eddy in their recent tour in China, when 80,000 students attended Christian meetings and 7000 pledged themselves to study the life of Christ as recorded in the Gospels, shows the opportunity which lies before wisely directed effort on a wide scale. 1 But indi- vidual efforts can never cover the whole ground, and the work needs to be planned and attempted as a part of the campaign on behalf of the Christian Gospel by speci- ally equipped and thoroughly representative Chinese and Western speakers. Here, also, in the home lands, the many Chinese students who are attending schools and universities provide those who care to take the trouble to cultivate friendly relationships, on the basis of mutual goodwill and acknowledged equality, with an avenue of strategic service for Christ which may prove very far-reaching. 2 Another of the most pressing claims of a Plan of the situation in China to-day is for a convpre- am P ai & n - hensive plan of campaign. This involves far more than conference and co-operation ; it calls for a readiness to offer or forego on the part of missions and individuals, and on the 1 For a full account, see Eddy, The New Era in Asia. 2 Particular attention is directed to the Note in the Appendix. 232 Regeneration of New China part of the Chinese also, for the good of the whole. From the time of the 1907 Centenary Conference in Shanghai, through Edinburgh in 1910, on to the recent National China Conference of 1913, the statement of need has been built up, and is now available, cogently and comprehensively stated, for all who care to study. Beyond this lies the far more difficult task, and the one which is supremely the duty of to-day, the acknowledgment by the representatives of the Christian Church at work in China of their respective shares in the task yet to be accomplished. Missions and the Chinese Churches must come to- gether not simply to confer about the work to be done, but in the doing of it. There can be no satisfactory occupation of strategic centres, no thoroughly effective service in relation to the whole task, until the workers have drawn closer together for a common understanding of their individual and collec- tive responsibility for the work waiting to be done. This is not merely a matter for missionary representatives and statesmen ; it is a problem to be faced by every supporter of missionary enterprise in the homeland who is connected with a Church that has a sphere of service in the land of China. Relationships must be defined and responsibility allocated. Claim upon the West 233 We are now in a position to form some estimate of the task that lies ahead of the Christian forces in China, and it cannot have failed to occur to us in the course of our study that the Chinese Church is woefully inadequate in equipment for that which it is now attempting and must accomplish for the Kingdom. First of all there is the care of its own people demanding attention, the training in spiritual life and the instruction in Christian truth and doctrine so essential to the stability and progress of Church life and individual Christian development. Side by side with this there is the fight that must be waged with pagan elements within the Christian community, the zeal for the purity of Church life and the insistence upon the preservation of New Testament standards of spiritual life and daily conduct, that must be nurtured. It has to do this in so comprehensive a measure as to meet the needs of the unlettered as well as the cultured, and by such methods as shall make it fully apparent that Christianity is not in any sense a foreign but a universal Gospel. Then there is laid upon the Chinese Church that further momentous and in- spiring task of influencing by its evangel the whole life of the people, bringing them into 234 Regeneration of New China direct touch with the message of redemp- tion, and teaching thereby that fact of relationship and duty between man and God of which China stands in such supreme need. Beyond this, by a constant testimony to ideals derived from Bible teaching and Christian experience, it has to lift the whole range of national life, social and political, and by example show a new method of human service. Fellowship in service for the ultimate redemption of the Chinese race is the call of God, through the opportunities of the moment, to Western Christendom — that is, to the Christian Churches of our land, and, in the end, to us who compose them. How are we facing the call ? In recent years very much has been accom- plished by the drawing together of mission- aries on the field and of leaders of the missionary enterprise at home. The steady growth of some really great co-operative enterprises 1 in Missionary educational work in China, such as the West China Union University, the Union Medical College, the Shantung Union University, the Nanking Union University, and others, are most hopeful signs of progress in co-operative 1 Of. Arthur H. Smith, The Uplift of China, new and revised ed. , 11)14, chap. vi. A CHINESE EVANGELIST r * ' » 9 Claim upon the West 235 work. On the other hand one of the very uninspiring and significant phases of missionary policy in our Church life in Britain to - day is that revealed in the throwing over of the responsibility for facing and solving our more intimate and searching ecclesiastical difficulties to the infant Churches in mission lands. Questions of Christian brotherhood, race problems and Church ideals are to be " left for the Mission field to settle." It cannot be, unless we desire such a settlement as will alienate the growing Chinese Church from the Church of the West, and this is a possible, if not a pressing, danger. To the call of China for a united Christian Church the response of the long sundered members of the Body of Christ must be a determination to consider again and again, in the light of the new conditions and claims of the mission field, the problem of mutual relationship. It must be answered among us by a steady growth in the spirit of unity. The Western Churches give less christian than the best, less than Christ would have Umt y- them give, when they impart to the Chinese Church another spirit than that of true Christian unity. The situation will not be met, even in China, by the shutting of the ears of the Christian leaders in the West to the clear call of the Chinese Christians. 236 Regeneration of New China " They, without us, shall not be made perfect." Suspicion is an outstanding characteristic of the unregenerate Chinese mind; and an insistence on denominational division is bound to give it such scope for destructive action as must retard indefinitely the final conquest of the Cross in China. The problems of the Church of Christ are one, East and West, and the call of the hour in China for common action in accordance with a common plan, and for a united Chinese Christian Church, is a call to Christian Britain to set its divided house in order for united service. A definite understanding of the part which each division of the Church was prepared to undertake in the whole plan of Christian conquest in China, while it would not solve these final difficulties which still stand in the way of our destined unity, 1 would obviate very many of them, and prove of inestimable value to the accomplish- ment of the common task. We are bound by our Christian profession to join hands with the forces of the Gospel in China, to reinforce the heroic band of workers, Chinese and foreign, * who struggle there against such tremendous odds, and to do it effectively we must under- stand better each others' plans and make our preparations to " march forward together." 1 A Unity which must include all the Churches of Christendom, ancient as well as reformed, if it is to be real. Claim upon the West 237 * Nowhere in the world, possibly, is it more needful to approach the task of Christian service in a spirit of real humility than it is in China at this time. The manner in which the service of the Western Church is offered to the Chinese has considerable bearing upon its effect. The gift of the Gospel must not be allowed to suffer through the vain-glory or self-assurance of the human giver. In China the reputation of the foreigner, as such, has passed through several phases. He was looked upon with contempt, and in general he returned the glance with interest ; then, as his command of material resources and his scientific attainments were understood, he passed to a position of acknowledged superior- ity. That phase again is passing, or has christian passed, for has not Japan also proved herself Humlllt y- the equal of the West on these very same grounds of material and scientific attain- ment ? By the intellectual and discerning Chinese to-day the foreigner is honoured, not because he is a foreigner, but for what he proves himself to be. Missionary service which is undertaken, either at home or in China, on the ground of the superior attainments and gifts of the West, whether collectively or in the individual, is doomed to failure. " By love, serve " is an outstand- 238 Regeneration of New China ing Christian commandment, nowhere more effective than in the realm of Christian missions. Service which is conscious of race pride can never reveal the highest Christian virtues, or glorify the Christian Gospel. " Un- fortunately there are people who come to a foreign country with an inveterate view of up- lifting, nay, of civilizing, a barbarous people. They therefore come to us with the arrogant and patronising air of a superior people. They refuse to learn. . . . The result of this unwillingness to learn has been that the missionaries can hardly approach the better class, the educated class of people." 1 " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth " are words which surely had the work of Christian missions in view. The element of racial division must be moved entirely from the arena of Christian work in China, and within the Chinese Church ought never to be allowed to appear. Racial dis- tinction can never be put wholly away, but it need never count where there is the true love of the brethren and the spirit of humble service. The call of the Chinese Church to 1 Mr Suh Hu in World's Chinese Students' Journal, Sept. 1913. The statement is made in an exaggerated and sweep- ing form, as will be apparent from such facts as the personal influence of certain missionaries with Yuan Shih-k'ai and other Chinese leaders. Claim upon the West 239 Western Christendom is for brotherhood in Christian work and for the acknowledgment of equal union in Christ, not for patronage or pity, and least of all, as if the Church were the spoil of conquest, for possession. Identification of interest, of aim, and of service, in response to a Gospel message which is without distinction of person, position, or place, is what Christianity in China fairly seeks from the Christianity of the West. The Chinese Christian community is, more- over, one with which it is not only a duty, but an honour, to join hands in the great task of world evangelization. Its members are worthy companions of the very noblest disciples of Jesus in the Crusade of the Cross. They bring into that vital crusade gifts of a motives high and conspicuous order, and they offer to response the service of our Master a human contribution which is scarcely to be excelled by any other of the great nations of the world. We have recounted some of the disabilities from which they suffer and the failures which mark or threaten them, in our review of their racial characteristics ; we have striven to realize how far the gifts which God has bestowed upon us are held in trust for their help, that we may make up what they lack in respect of these things. Our task is to supplement as 240 Regeneration of New China well as to originate. Our Christian history and the wealth of Christian experience which is ours by heritage, and which we should reveal in personal life and service as disciples of Christ, are offerings which we are to-day called upon to contribute to the advance of the Kingdom of God in China. Let us realize that, in return, we gain for the service of that Kingdom at home outstanding moral excellencies which may prove of the greatest value. For in many respects wherein our religious life is confessedly weak, the life of the Chinese Christian Church is likely to be strong, and it requires the virtues of each at their best to realize the ideal whole. The perfect man in Christ Jesus will embody the highest life-expression of China and the West. Power of initiative, driving force, and a restless energy which spurs men forward in the race of life are characteristics which mark our Anglo - Saxon race, and which have made of its members great explorers, ad- venturers, colonists, Empire builders, and, under the Gospel of Christ, heroic missionaries Contribution of the Cross. " Go ye and make disciples " is Christian* a messa g e which fits supremely our national Character, character. It is right that we should be pioneers of the Cross of Christ in the great lands of the earth, since adventure and expan- Claim upon the West 241 sion are the things which mark us among men. Other peoples, other characteristics ; amongst the Chinese there is in supreme measure the patience which we so often lack, the persistence of character which refuses to be denied, and which is able to understand and to respond to the exhortation " though it tarry, wait for it." We " spoil for a fight " in the excess of our adventurous virtues ; the Chinese " seek peace and ensue it." In spite of their re- bellions and their passing savageries they are a peace-loving and a peace-seeking people. 1 Talents of organization and natural gifts of leadership, too, are theirs, waiting to be revealed in Christian service, together with an intensely practical view of the course of the world and of human duty, and a fine instinct for the things which are central and essential. Speaking of the China National Conference (1913), Dr J. Campbell Gibson said : " It was a daily delight to note the ability, the earnest- ness of conviction, the ample knowledge and alertness of mind which the Chinese delegates brought to our debates. We know now, as never before, that the Chinese Church is richly gifted in its leaders." Some of the greatest triumphs of the Kingdom are awaiting the service of Christ's missionary workers in 1 Cf. Dyer Ball's The Chinese at Home, ch. xx 242 Regeneration of New China China. A glory not surpassed by any that has ever yet dawned upon the Church of Jesus Christ lies hidden in the character of the Chinese people as it shall be revealed when they have been turned to our Lord. Without the converting force of Christ's Gospel the brightest of the virtues of the Chinese race will lie, like the precious metals of their land, obscure and unrealized. Theinevit- It is well to remember and to repeat the of Refusing fact that the demand of China upon the the Call. Christian Church of the West is one of to-day. There is pressing danger lest, in our slackness of spirit and lack of obedient faith, we may, ere long, find ourselves talking of the call of yesterday in China. To speak of such a call will be to utter a condemnation. The demand is present and pressing, and it is passing. China does not know the trend of her own desires, she has not formulated her deepest needs, though she feels them only too keenly. Yesterday Christianity may have attracted her thought and kindled her hope, to-day it may be Confucianism, to-morrow, perchance, an attenuated amalgam of religions, and later, a sheer infidelity. Meanwhile, and for how long God only knows, the doors are open wide and hearts are awaiting the preaching of Christ's Gospel. , 3 J 3 • < > c c < .. ' » .< ., * ' ' . ■ . • » THE REV. CHENG CHING-YI Seep, 151 Claim upon the West 243 Failure now through lack of response must be a disgrace to Christendom and a disaster to God's Kingdom. Materialism is ever crouching at the gate of China's heart. The tendency to interpret life in terms of bodily necessity, food and drink and clothing and wherewithal, is persistent, and only kept at bay by the sense of spiritual need which has refused to leave entirely the life of the common people. But if idolatry is abolished, Buddhism overthrown, only a form of Confucianism bereft of all spiritual sanctions left behind, then the reign of agnostic materialism will begin. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die " will be the rule of life for China's millions, and nothing will be left sufficient to hold in check the vices, the selfishness, the disregard of human life, the adoption of a gospel of force as the last word of politics, which mark so un- mistakably the Chinese who have said farewell to morality and religion. Things have reached that point in the human history of China at which it appears as if a new ideal in religion must take hold of its life, or the utter dissolution of the nation must follow in the wake of an increasing and final de- generacy. The spiritual life of the people has no other training-ground than that provided 244 Regeneration of New China by the Christian enterprises settled in their midst. " Apart from the newly imported Christianity, China is approaching the condi- tion of having no religion, no code of ethics whatever. . . . With the abolition of Emperors, China has, apart from Christianity, abolished the worship of God. ... It is everywhere admitted that there was never more need, in the ranks of Chinese officialdom for the virtues of ' goodness, justice, courtesy, wisdom and fidelity,' than at the present day. But no enforced genuflexions before the tablet of a discarded teacher, in schools and colleges, will serve to evolve any of these virtues." * Since this was written the attempt has been made to restore validity to Confucian worship, and to invest the President with some of the religious potency of the Emperor, but in effect the words remain profoundly true : it is Christianity that must give re- ligious force to the acknowledged standards of morality and virtue if these are to survive in the China of to-morrow. To-day is one of God's days in China, and like all such, it is a day of testing and of judg- ment ; of judgment for the Christian people of our lands even more than for that great nation in the East ; and the day is wearing on 1 North China Herald, 2/th Sept., 1913. Claim upon the West 245 towards its close. Life does not wait. The mighty mass of China's humanity begins to move towards a goal not yet determined, and the movement is one which the Christian discipleship of our generation must largely direct. God's doors of opportunity do not stand for ever open, and it is needful for us to say to ourselves and to others that for China pre-eminently, in the Divine Providence, now is the accepted time. The call of the Christian campaign is in- sistent and urgent ; it is also weighty — not alone for China and her hundreds of millions of unsaved men and women, but for the world in the West too. Should Christianity fail in its stupendous task in China, and the Christian Church in that land prove a dis- credited or depleted force, what then of the West in relation to China ? In the present conditions of our common human life, with commercial ties throughout the world tighten- ing and multiplying day by day, standards of life are bound by the very law of progress to approximate. It is a simple question of human necessity. A world which is in daily contact must have a common standing-ground. Either the moral standards which have been created under Christian influence through the long years, teaching the value of human 246 Regeneration of New China life, care for the weak and afflicted, chivalry towards woman and child, regard for truth, honour, righteousness, as the supreme accom- plishments of life, will make their way, and transform as they already transcend the lower standards of the Orient, or those lower standards will do their deadly work and the life of the whole world surfer in response. All this, and unspeakably much beyond, hinges upon the Christian missionary campaign in our generation. The issues of the mission- ary enterprise reach out to the ultimate things of our world- destiny as well as to the eternal life of the individual, and touch the uttermost limits of all conceived human progress. The world knows no greater service than the missionary work of the Christian Church, and in no place is that service more clearly revealed in its true proportions and its far-reaching relationships than in the China of the present. The Heart With the knowledge of this wondrous op- Enterprise, portunity before us, and the high issues of the missionary service of our Churches in constant view, what is it that holds back the flow of responsive sacrifice and service in our midst ? With such a redeeming Gospel in our hands, so great wealth in the possession of our people, such a power in prayer made possible for us, Claim upon the West 247 why are we not rising in mighty response to this undeniable claim of God to our service and to our gifts of body, and mind, and heart ? What is it that we lack ? The Church is not ignorant of the situation, for the daily papers are now the ministers of the missionary appeal ; nor are Christian people unimpressed by the statements so frequently made concerning the situation. Men are impressed, but not responsive. Is not that the sad fact ? So much of our reading, and hearing, and conversing, and even, it is to be feared, our praying, is impersonal, detached and irresponsible. We do not face the issues of our Christian service on the lines of personal duty and individual obedience. What does it all mean to me, in my daily life and in my Christian discipleship. " How much owest thou thy Lord ? " is the question that needs to be asked if the obliga- tions of the soul are to be fulfilled. It can only be as the responsibilities of our lives are set in relationship to the gift of God in Jesus Christ our Saviour that we realize the true measure of our duty to those who sit in darkness. Not by the statement alone of opportunity or need to-day in China can any of us be led to a final decision to offer our lives or our possessions to the cause 248 Regeneration of New China of Christian missions in China, but only by the crowning conviction that in Christ the Chinese are " brethren for whom Christ died," and to whom He commissions us whom He has redeemed. When Christ calls men and women into service, missionary devotion is certain and constant. Our evangelistic enterprises in China or elsewhere have their foundation in the love of Christ for us and for all men, revealed in His life of mercy and His atoning death. Starting there, we are con- strained to find in all the knowledge of op- portunity and need which comes to us, whether in the Study Circle or elsewhere, the renewal of the commandment to " evangelize the nations," and we cannot rest until by some avenue of service or other — be it prayer, or gift, or dedicated life — we are bearing our part in the campaign which has as its supreme motive the world's redemption. The issue of the Christian life is sacrificial service, and knowledge is its minister. We shall only justify our reading and our study of the mis- sionary situation in China as we make it effective in some real support for the Christian campaign in that land. A sympathy which does not realize itself in service is harmful to the very cause to which we give it. There is amongst the Chinese so Claim upon the West 249 widespread a disparity between knowledge and conduct, profession and action, that it is a positive danger to the life of the Christian Church. This disparity needs above many things for its removal the fortifying example of our Western Christian life. What deduction is the Chinese Christian to make who hears of the widespread interest in the problems of his country and in the needs of his countrymen, and who, at the same time, observes that the foreign missionary campaign in his land falters and halts for lack of adequate support in men and money ? What if, when we are proclaiming the message of healing in Christ's name, our hospitals are obviously under- manned because medical men and women are withholding their lives from their Master as He calls them to service in China ? What other conclusion can our Chinese brother draw than that with us, as with his countrymen, professed sympathy does not mean service, and that between approving and doing, here as in China, there is a gulf fixed ? As Christians we hurt rather than help China by an interest which does not mean work, and by study which does not compel sacrifice. In East and West the whole Church of Christ steps forward to conquest as one. It is in vain that British Christianity calls the leaders of the Church 250 Regeneration of New China in China to an evangelistic task from which its members are withholding themselves. We serve as we give both ourselves and our sub- stance to the great work of which we now know so well. " Love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice." We turn again to learn the secret of successful service at the Cross of our Master. One of the most influential of all the Chinese who have accepted Christ in recent years is a man who has held high office in the educa- tional life of China and who is a recognized authority upon Chinese education. He had magnificent prospects before him. Position, influence, opportunity, all were his. The study of the New Testament brought to him the con- viction that Christ was the Saviour of men, and his Saviour. After a period of struggle and of counting the cost he determined upon his con- fession before men. His dearest friend pleaded with him earnestly, agonizingly. He pleaded in vain. Then he urged him to secret disciple- ship. " Bow to the tablet of Confucius ; it is only an empty form, and you can believe what you like in your heart." It was a struggle, with friendship also wavering in the balance. But he replied : "A few days ago One came to dwell within my heart ; He has changed all life for me for ever. I dare not bow to any other, lest Claim upon the West 251 He depart." He had found a new King, one Jesus. All the service of Christian life leads to and proceeds from this, whether in China or in Britain. We must obey the King. Bibliographical Note. The Missionary Motive (edited by W. Paton, M.A.) is a symposium giving a survey of the elements that have predominated in the motives actuating the leaders of Christian missions from New Testament times till our own. Dr Garvie's The Missionary Obligation in the Light of Modern Thought is a brief and simple but most effective statement. Dr Cochrane 's Survey of the Missionary Occupation oj China and Atlas oj China in Provinces gives information up to December 1912 of the actual work now in progress in China, with statements regarding unreached fields etc. Addresses by Mr M. T. Z. Tyau, Dr Lavington Hart, and Dr Aspland, on the present situation in China; will be found in Men and the World Enterprise. Dr Cochrane's article in The International Review of Missions for April 1912 ("Needs of the New Era in China ") should be read. APPENDIX I Historical Notes on British Missionary Societies in China BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY In 1845 the Baptists began a Mission in China which was withdrawn. In 1859 the B.M.S. began its well- known work in North China. Pioneer missionaries, Messrs Kloekers and Hall. Present areas of work are in the provinces of Shantung, Shansi, and Shensi. Marshman, the Baptist missionary to India, began the translation of the Scriptures into Chinese at Serampone. The Baptist Women's work in China is under the Baptist Zenana Missionary Society. The Society has been distinguished for its philanthropic work in Famine Relief and its work for the literati. Outstanding mis- sionary names connected with the B.M.S. in China are Jones, Timothy Richard, and Moir Duncan. CHINA INLAND MISSION Area of work : Sixteen of the eighteen provinces of China, and also in Chinese Turkestan. The founder of the Mission was the well-known J. Hudson Taylor. He began work as agent for the Chinese Evangelization Society in 1853. The C.I.M. started in 1862, and in 1866 the first large party of volunteers (seventeen) sailed for China. This Mission has concentrated effort upon forward evangelistic work, and its foreign staff of workers has grown since the beginning from seventeen to a thousand and seventy- six. The evangelistic journeys of some of the C.I.M. pioneers are amongst the most striking in the missionary 253 254 Regeneration of New China history of China, and these are still being made in certain regions. The C.I.M. has a martyr-roll of victims to the Boxer outbreak and other anti-foreign outbreaks reach- ing to sixty names. Among the outstanding C.I.M. missionary names in addition to the founder are those of the Cambridge seven, also J. W. Stevenson, Durward, Hunter, Broomhall and M'Carthy. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION TO NORTH CHINA (GENERALLY KNOWN AS S.P.G.) Entered China in 1843. In 1863 the first S.P.G. missionary (Dr J. A. Stewart) entered Peking. The first missionary martyr under the Boxer outbreak was the Rev. S. M. W. Brooks of this mission. Rev. C. P. Scott was the first Bishop in 1880. The Diocese was divided in 1903, and a Bishop appointed for the work in Shantung Province. CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY Work begun in China in 1844. First missionaries to Shanghai, Rev. George Smith and T. M'Clatchie. Present fields of work, Mid-China (Chekiang), Fukien, Hong Kong, Canton and West China. The Rev. G. E. Moule went to China in 1858 and was consecrated Bishop of Mid-China in 1860. A recent advance has been made into the province of Hunan, and work is now contemplated in Yunnan Province. The first Chinese clergyman, Rev. Wong Kin-Taik, was ordained in 1871. Women's work is under the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and the first C.M.S. lady worker was appointed in 1881. The following well-known missionary names are associated with the C.M.S. in China : Burdon, Moule, Hoarc, Cassels, Duncan Main. THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MISSION IN CHINA This Mission has work only in one province with headquarters at Ichang in the Hupeh Province ; the Appendix I 255 pioneer missionary was the Rev. Geo. Cockburn. He was sent to China in 1878. The Mission has developed its work in the districts around Ichang, and has also medical work at the centre. FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION Field : Szechuen Province. The first agent of this Society in China was Miss Henrietta Green, who sailed for Hankow in 1884. Later Mr and Mrs Davidson entered West China, in 1889, with headquarters at Chung-king. The area of occupation was extended in 1900, and Chentu was occupied in 1904. This Society has accepted special responsibility for the West China Christian University, with its headquarters in Chengtu. LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY Began work in Canton, 1807. Pioneer missionary, Rev. Robert Morrison, D.D/f. The Pioneer Society "also to Shanghai and Central China. Has an outstanding evangelistic history. At work in Canton Province, Hong Kong, the Amoy region, Shanghai and district, Hankow and district, Peking, Tientsin and J district. The first Chinese convert under the Reformed [Missions was baptized by Dr Morrison in 1814. First lady missionary to China appointed 1868. The following are the outstanding names of missionaries connected with the L.M.S. : Milne, Medhurst, Lockhart (the first British medical missionary to China), Legge, Wylie, Edkins, Griffith John, and James Gilmour. Of dis- tinguished Chinese converts, Liang-Ah-fa, the first native pastor and the Chinese Apostle to Canton, and the Rev. Cheng Ching-yi are the best known. PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND Fields of Service : Amoy, Swatow, Hakka Region and Formosa. 256 Regeneration of New China The first missionary of the Presbyterian Church of England in China was that great evangelist, Kev. W. C. Burns. He was sent out in the year 1847 ; he entered the Amoy region in 1851, soon after the occupa- tion of the district by the American Dutch Reform Church and the L.M.S. Rev. J. Campbell Gibson is the senior missionary in Swatow. In the Amoy Mission a presbytery of the native church was constituted in 1863, and a Synod organized in 1894. The work of this district is amongst the best organized in China. The work in Formosa was taken up by Dr Carstairs Douglas in 1860. Dr Maxwell was the first resident missionary. He settled in Tainan in 1865. Although the work is amongst a Chinese population it is not China proper, Formosa being under the Government of Japan. The Mission also has work amongst Chinese in Singapore and in the State of Jahore. PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONS IN MANCHURIA A. United Free Church of Scotland The Mission work of this church in China is entirely in the region of Manchuria. Its work has to be con- sidered side by side with that of the Irish Presbyterian Mission, the two missions forming one Presbytery in that Mission field. The pioneer of the Free Church of Scotland Mission was Dr William Parker, who was supported in the field by this Church, though not sent out by them. Dr Alexander Williamson, who was at first connected with the L.M.S. , became a missionary of this Church in 1870. He had journeyed in Manchuria earlier, as had also Rev. W. C. Burns, the missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Church. The Rev. John Ross joined the Mission in 1872. During the Chino- Japanese War, 1894-95, the Mission suffered a good deal, again in the Boxer outbreak, and also during the period of the Russo-Japanese War. In spite of all these troubles the advance made by the work of the Mission has Appendix I 257 been very remarkable. Its organization is conspicuous for its comprehensiveness. Dr Dugald Christie of Mukden is well known for his medical work in connection with the Manchurian Mission. B. The Irish Presbyterian Mission The Irish Presbyterian Mission entered China in 1869. In 1864 the Kev. James Carson went out to Manchuria, and since that time the history of this Mission has been similar to that of the United Free Church. The Christian Church in Manchuria connected with these Missions is an extremely active one. It has felt the influence of revival movements in recent years more than perhaps any other Mission in China, and the effect of this has been to strengthen very considerably the position of the native church. The following British Colonial Churches are engaged in missionary work in China : — The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Fields — Formosa, Honan, Macao. The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. Field — Canton. The Canadian Methodist Church. Field — West China. The Church of England in Canada. Field — Honan. UNITED METHODIST MISSION (formerly Methodist New Connexion, Methodist Free Church and the Bible Christian Methodist Missions) Fields of labour : Chihli and Shantung, Yunnan and Kweichow, and Chekiang provinces. The Methodist New Connexion sent missionaries to China in 1860. Messrs Hall and Innocent were the pioneer missionaries and opened work in Tientsin. The Methodist Free Church sent its pioneer worker, Rev. W. R. Fuller, to Ningpo (Chekiang Province) in 258 Regeneration of New China 1864. The work in Wenchow was opened in 1878 by Rev. R. I. Exley. The Bible Christian Methodists sent missionaries to South -West China in 1885, and as a result of their enterprise a remarkable work has been done amongst the aboriginal tribes of the provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. Among the missionaries of the United Methodists in China the following well-known names appear : Innocent, Candlin, Swallow, Soothill, and Pollard. WESLEYAN METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY Work begun in China, at Hankow, by Rev. J. Cox, in 1862, one year after its missionary opening by Griffith John (L.M.S.). Present fields of service, Canton and Kuangsi, Hupeh and Hunan provinces. David Hill joined the mission in Hupeh in 1865, and his life of love made a great impression upon China. Through him Pastor Hsi was led to Christ. A great work for the blind was instituted in Hankow in 1886. Hunan was entered in 1900. The Rev. G. Piercy was the pioneer W.M.S. missionary to Canton province, and Kuangsi was occupied in 1899. Well-known W.M.S. missionaries to China are David Hill, T. G. Selby, Dr Hodge, and W. A. Cornaby. Rev. Chu Sao-an is one of the great names among Chinese pastors in the history of China Missions. APPENDIX II Power of the Press in China. A Valuable Ally. — To show the enormous possibilities which lie ahead in one department of effort, namely, that of school books, the following items concerning the Commercial Press, Shanghai, are instructive. They Appendix II 259 employ 1400 persons with a pay-roll of about $20,000 per month. The main building has a frontage of 450 feet and is 65 feet deep. In the letterpress department there are 53 English and American made presses, besides a few German machines. The lithographic department is equipped with 20 cylinder presses and 3 aluminium machines. In 1912 these presses used up 250,000 reams of foreign paper, 3400 reams of native paper, and nearly 50,000 pounds of ink. The total output of the type-casting department was approxi- mately 1500 pounds of type per day. The gross volume of business for last year amounted to $2,800,000. The National Readers of this Company have sold to the extent of 7,000,000 copies within nine years. To the credit of the firm, it is stated that ever since its com- mencement no anti-Christian book has been sent forth from its presses. They publish for the use of Lower Primary Schools 500 volumes Higher Primary Schools 400 Middle and Normal Schools 660 Higher and Technical Schools 100 Books for Children 60 Letter writers 60 Books on politics . . 1200 Novels . . 450 Foreign Language books 250 Miscellaneous 330 Maps and charts . 72 kinds what are these among so many f ] D. M'GILLIVRAY. 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M. 149 17 57 129 133 2 25 42 359,909 9,364 45,935 75,263 37,473 3,000 24,823 352 202 490,471 65,296 (SECOND REGION) To whom Entrusted. p< O on 5 Priests. Chris- tians. 300 5,046 4,298 44,270 112,076 Catechu- mens.. European. Chinese. Hi (Sinkiang) M. . Kansu (R. A. ) Shensi . Shansi . Shantung Belgian F. M. > > j j Franciscans & F. M. of Rome Franciscans Franciscans & German F. M. 1 3 3 3 10 4 32 44 49 120 3 48 23 42 579 3,144 19,705 79,724 249 116 165 990 103,152 (THIRD REGION) ■A Priests. To whom I-, o Chris- Catechu- Entrusted. ■ s 2 European. Chinese. tians. mens. Honan . F. M. of Parma 28 11 21,928 "' & Milan F. M. Hupeh . Franciscans 3 73 42 69,366 21,001 Hunan . S.Augustinians & Franciscans 2 44 9 13,961 17,135 Kiangsi . Lazarists 3 56 30 59,813 23,654 Chekiang 1 1 2 31 33 34,198 11,275 Kiangan Jesuits 1 128 66 208 164 110,867 13 360 191 407,430 183,932 t >> »> jj >> 2 4 1 2 1 10 52 127 10 29 25 15 107 3 15 2 30,072 112,872 4,050 13,200 3,035 30,000 33,356 1,001 14,842 650 243 142 163,229 80,349 (FIFTH REGION) Priests. To whom P. O Chris- Catechu- Entrusted, tians. mens. m European. Chinese. Foochow _ 1 31 21 49,160 8,000 ; Amoy (without Formosa) . S. Dominicans 1 17 7 4,764 2,861 Hong-Kong . Milan F. M. 1 17 12 17,359 3,000 Kwangtung (P. A.) Paris F. M. 1 70 26 60,339 — Kwangzi (P. A.) . >> >5 J 26 4 4,716 1,600 Diocese of Macao . )> >> 1 — — — — Mission Agencies . )> >) ■ — ■ 27 — — — 6 188 70 136,338 15,461 Grand Totals . 51 1392 721 1,363,458 448,190 P. A. stands for Pref ectures Apostolic. M. stands for Missioi 1. F. M. stands foi * For eign Missi< HIS, S. stands for Spanish. A r . B. — In Amoy there are a number of Philippine Christians not recorded here. In Macao there are about 60 priests and 30,000 Christians. APPENDIX IV Work among Chinese in Great Britain Few as yet have realised the changed conditions through which to-day the East is learning from the West by means of her representatives in the West. Yet year by year, in increasing numbers, Chinese are coming to England as travellers or for purposes of study or business. In the British Universities there are already more than three hundred Chinese students and it seems more than probable that during the next decade their numbers will be largely increased. A moment's consideration will show the immeasurable, but as yet unrealized importance of these men in the social, political, and spiritual develop- ment of China. Many of them are carefully selected students who by their ability have won Government scholarships and will later return to positions of leader- ship in China. They will, above all others, translate the West to the East. It is therefore necessary that during their stay in this country they should have every oppor- tunity of knowing the highest in the West. A keen spirit of inquiry holds their minds together with a genuine desire for friendly intercourse and, were the West alive to the opportunity thus presented, a body of men might return every year as fellow workers for the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, however, in a large number of cases, the converse is true. The West presents the data of science or commerce, but leaves unsatisfied man's deepest needs. The spirit of true friendship and love is rarely seen, whilst the home in which the stranger could best learn of Christ is closed. Quite naturally, therefore, he is forced to find his lodging and companionship amid conditions which show only the more sordid aspects of 265 266 Regeneration of New China Western life. In such conditions it almost inevitably follows that his standards are relaxed. First dazzled and then satiated by the new in the West, a spirit of agnosti- cism and materialism withers his ideals. Temptations prove triumphant in loneliness and he returns eastward often the worse from his contact with the West. Were we in his position and subject to the same treatment we should in all probability suffer in the same way. But his tragedy does not end with the individual, it spreads to homes, villages, towns, and provinces. It affects a nation and generations as yet unborn. There can only be one true solution in the righting of this wrong, and it will come through a closer study and practice of the friendship which Jesus taught. Chinese, like ourselves, do not appreciate friendship tinged with patronage. They rightly revolt from any form of " spiri- tual highway robbery " which with rough obtrusion handles prematurely life's most sacred things. But they respond to a comradeship which is humble, sympathetic, and genuine, and it is through such friendship that we and they learn of the highest. It i3 to make such friend- ship possible that we must labour. For some years past the Student Christian Movement has been seeking to produce happier relationships amongst the students from East and West in our universities, to help the stranger into comfortable and wholesome lodgings during term time and vacation, where possible and advisable to introduce him into English homes, to provide hostels in which a certain number of English and Chinese students may live in common fellowship, and societies in which East and West may interchange ideas. In these efforts they have worked in closest co-operation with the Chinese Students' Christian Union in Great Britain, which now, with a full-time secretary of its own, is doing work of immeasurable value. The last months have also wit- nessed the growth of the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Bureau of which Viscount Bryce is now the President and which has already rendered yeoman service. But, as yet, the idea of happier relationships between East and West is too new to have produced more than Appendices IV and V 267 a comparatively few numbers of workers. Very much more help is needed, more homes in university towns and in the country which would be suitable for the reception of a Chinese student as a paying guest. More friends are nt-eded, who would welcome a Chinese into their family circle or maybe ask him to join them in some holiday. But whilst such service may not be possible for all, there remains a task in which all can join. The two strongest forces working against Christianity in the mind of the non-Christian student are first the conditions and habits of Christian lands, and secondly, arising from this, the attitude of nominal Christians to those of either race especially to the representatives of races which in the past we have regarded as inferior. To change the conditions at home and this ingrained prejudice of cen- turies is an immense task, but it can be accomplished by the united service of men and women who find their strength and inspiration in the Divine. [Furtherfinformation respecting these efforts may be obtained from Mr M'Ewan Lawson, M.A., Foreign Students' Secretary, Student Christian Movement, Annandale, Golder's Green, N., or from Mr H. Wilson Harris, M.A., Secretary to the Anglo- Chinese Friendship Bureau, 17 Bouverie Street, E.C.] APPENDIX V Significant Dates in the History of Christian Missions in China A.D. Nestorian Missionaries entered China . . . 78 1 Francis Xavier died on the Island of Shang-chwan near Canton, while endeavouring to enter China . 1552 Matthew Ricci, a Jesuit Missionary, settled in South China. Ricci established his mission in Peking . 1583 An Edict of Toleration in favour of Roman Catholic Christians promulgated by the Emperor Kanghsi 1692 268 Regeneration of New China A.D. Roman Catholic Missionaries ordered to leave China, persecution begun . . . . .1716 Robert Morrison arrived in Canton . . . 1807 Commissioner Lin destroyed 20,283 chests of opium at Canton ....... 1839 The " Opium " War ended and five Treaty Ports opened for foreign trade and residence . . 1842 Protestant Missions established in the Five Ports 1843-45 Taiping Rebellion ..... 1850-62 The " Arrow " War. The Tientsin Treaty signed 1857-61 Protestant Missionaries enter Central and North China ....... 1862-63 First Protestant Missionary Conference in China 1877 Second Protestant Missionary Conference in China ....... 1890 War between China and Japan .... 1894 Emperor Kwang Hsu tried to introduce Reforms — Empress Dowager reassumed Imperial Power . 1898 Boxer Movement appeared supported by Chinese Government. Foreigners in Peking besieged in British Legation by Chinese troops. Chinese Christians and Missionaries massacred . . 1900 Peking Taken by troops of foreign powers . . 1901 Principles of Moderate Reform adopted by Em- press Dowager ...... 1902 Russo-Japanese War ...... 1903 Third Conference of Protestant Missions in China ........ 1907 Death of Empress Dowager and Emperor Kwang Hsu ........ 1909 Anti-Manchu Revolution begun . . . .1911 Manchu Dynasty overturned. Chinese Republic founded, and Religious Toleration granted . . 19 12 A SELECT LIST OF BOOKS Note on the Use op this List " Bibliogkaphy " would, of course, be a misnomer for so restricted a selection. The Editor's purpose is to supply particulars of books mentioned in footnotes and at the end of each chapter in the present volume, and to indicate a few accessible and authoritative ones relating to each of the principal topics with which the textbook deals. In some cases the only books available are expensive or out of print : these may generally be obtained, however, from Book-clubs or Libraries — especially the lending libraries connected with the various Mission Houses, the librarians of which welcome enquiries and requests for guidance. Few of the cheaper volumes mentioned here will not be found, by those able to purchase them, of permanent value, since most of them refer to many aspects of Chinese life and of mission work in China. This is especially true concerning those in Section E. Readers wishing to consult fuller lists of books are referred to (i) A Bibliography jor Missionary Students (Is.), edited by Canon H. U. Weitbrecht, Ph.D., D.D., and published in 1913 for the Board of Study for the Prepara- tion of Missionaries by Messrs Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier. (ii) The very full Bibliography of current missionary literature (including Continental and American works, 269 270 Regeneration of New China and magazine articles) which appears in each issue of The International Review of Missions. (iii) The Bibliography in Vol. VI. of the Edinburgh Conference Report — a general list and not one having reference to the Home Base only. It may facilitate reference to the present list if the classes into which the books have been divided are set forth here. They are, of course, not mutually exclusive, and are suggested by practical convenience alone. A. Books Costing One Shilling or Less. B. Customs, Life, and History of the Chinese. 0. Changing China. D. Chinese Literature and Religions. E. Missions : History and Methods. F Missions : Educational, Medical, and Work amongst Women. G. Missions : Biography. H. Missions : Principles and Motive. /. The Chinese Church. J. Books By Chinese Authors. K. Mission Study Text Books. L. Books of Reference. M. Periodical Literature. A.— BOOKS COSTING ONE SHILLING OR LESS. These are, of course, standard books, many of them reprints. 1. Adventures of a Bullet, The. Bernard Upward. London Missionary Society, London, 1914. Is. net. A mis- sionary's experience of Red Cross work during the siege of Hankow. 2. Beloved Physician of Tsang Ohou, The. (Dr A. W. Peill), J. Peill. Headley, London, n.d. Is. net. Experi- ences of a young doctor, taken from a series of charming letters, 1896-1906. 3. China and the Manchus. H. A. Giles, M.A., LL.D. Cam- bridge University Press, 1912. Is. net. A brief sketch of Chinese history in relation to the Manchu power, with a good account of the recent Revolution. A Select List of Books 271 4. Chinese Religion : Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. M. H. Hughes. " The Lay Reader," 7 Dean's Yard, Westminster, 1913. 2d. Succinct magazine articles. 5. Civilisation of China, The. H. A. Giles, M.A., LL.D. Williams & Norgate (Home Univ. Lib.). London, 1911. Is. net. Describes development of characteristics and customs. 6. David Hill : an apostle to the Chinese. W. T. A. Barber, D.D. Kellv, London, 1906. Is. net. A briefer sketch of David Hill "(see No. 52). 7. Edinburgh, 1910. An Account and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference. W. H. T. Gairdner, M.A. Oliphant, Edinburgh, 1913. Is. net. An ex- cellent summary of the findings of the Eight Commissions. 8. In the Land of the Blue Qown. Mrs A. E. Little. Everett, London, 1912. Is. net. A picture of China before the Great Change. First published in 1902. 9. Men and the World Enterprise. Oliphant, and the Lay- men's Missionary Movement, London, 1913. Is. net. Addresses delivered at the first national conference of the L.M.M. in England, Buxton, 1913. 10. Pastor Hsi. Mrs Howard Taylor. Morgan & Scott, London, 1913. 6d. net. The story of a Confucian scholar converted from opium and transformed into a great Chinese pastor under the influence of David Hill. 11. Religions of the World. G. M. Grant, D.D. A. & C. Black, Morton, or R. & R. Clark, London and Edinburgh, 1902. 6d. net. A Guild Text Book, full and concise. A larger volume by the same author is in the Guild Library at Is. 6d. B.-0USTOMS, LIFE AND HISTOEY OF THE CHINESE. 12. China. R. K. Douglas. Unwin, London, 1899. 5s. A good volume in the " Story of the Nations Series." Takes special account of the last three centuries. Should be supplemented by No. 3. 13. China : Her History, Diplomacy, and Commerce. C. H. Parker. Dutton, New York, 1901. $2.50. Rich in general information gathered from Chinese sources and from twenty-five years' residence in Consular Service. 14. China under the Searchlight. W. A. Cornaby. Unwin, London, n.d. 6s. Graphic account of customs, char- acteristics, etc. 15. Chinamen at Home. T. G. Selby. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1900. 3s. 6d. Simple but illuminating. Deals with social life, literature, religions, mission problems, etc. 272 Regeneration of New China 16. Chinese at Home, The. J. Dyer Ball, I. S.O. R.T.S., London, 1911. 5s. Descriptive of domestic and public life : the author has spent his life as a civil servant in South China. 17. Chinese Characteristics. Arthur H. Smith, D.D. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1894. 7s. 6d. A humorous presentation of shrewd observations by one of the fore- \most American missionaries in China. 8. Chinese People, The. Ven. Arthur Evans Moule, D.D. S.P.C.K., London, 1914. 5s. History, literature, government, the story of missions, etc., by a C.M.S. missionary of fifty years' standing. Accurate and scholarly. 19. John Chinaman. E. H. Parker. Unwin, London. 3s. 6d. Detached sketches. That of his " boy " specially read- able. Not very favourable to missions. 20. Men and Manners in Modern China. J. MacGowan. Unwin, London, 1912. 12s. 6d. net. Very readable : based on a long lifetime of missionary work in Amoy. Char- acteristics, social and religious customs sympathetically described. 21. Village Life in China. Arthur H. Smith, D.D. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1900. 7s. 6d. A valuable and racy treatment of the social system of Old China. 22. Middle Kingdom, The. S. Wells Williams. Scribner, New York, 1883. 2 vols. $9.00. An exhaustive treatise on Chinese history, life and literature. C— CHANGING CHINA. 23. Changing Chinese, The. E. A. Ross. Unwin, London, 1911. 10s. 6d. net. By an American professor of sociology. An acute analysis of China's prospects in commerce, politics, etc., based on a study of natural resources, national characteristics, etc. Extremely readable. 24. China in Transformation. A. R. Colquhoun. Harper, London, 1912. 5s. 25. China under the Empress Dowager. J. O. P. Bland and E. Backhouse. London, 1910. A well-informed and judicious estimate of forces at work in the government of China previous to the Revolution. 26. New Era in Asia, The. G. Sherwood Eddy, M.A. United Council for Missionary Education and Oliphant, London, 1914. 3s. 6d. net. Account of a tour with Dr Mott among Universities of the East.and the impressions gained. 27. Old Forces in New China. G. Lannino. Probsthain, London, 1912. 10s. 6d. net. Papers by a publicist and educationalist long resident in China. Valuable analysis, though critical in its attitude to Christianity in China. A Select List of Books 273 D.— CHINESE LITEKATUKE AND KELIGIONS. 28. Buddhism, Three Lectures on. Dr E. J. Eitel. Lane & Crawford, Hong Kong, 1884. Price in England about 5s. Popular, but thorough, treating the subject his- torically, theoretically, and practically. 29. Buddhism in China. S. Beal. S.P.C.K., London, 1884. 2s. 6d. Clear account, with a good chapter on the Chinese modification of original Buddhism. 30. China and Religion. E. H. Parker. Murray, London, 1905. 12s. A dispassionate and full account of the religions of China and of the position of Christianity and Islam there. 31. Confucianism and Taoism. R. K. Douglas. S.P.C.K., 1879. 2s. 6d. Scholarly and untechnical. Written by an official of long experience in China. 32. Creed of Half Japan, The. Arthur Lloyd. Smith Elder, London, 1911. 7s. 6d. A sympathetic account of Northern Buddhism, the thesis of the author (an Anglican missionary who became Professor of English in Tokyo) being that Christian influence early reached Buddhism through Gnosticism, Nestorianism, and Manichseism. Most interesting : to be read with discrimination. 33. History of Chinese Literature, A. H. A. Giles, M.A., LL.D. Hememann, London, 1901. 6s. By the Professor of Chinese at Cambridge. The best outline, with quotations. 34. Islam in China. Marshall Broomhall, B.A. Morgan & Scott, London, 1910. 7s. 6d. net. " A careful investi- gation of the origin, distribution, and characteristics of Chinese Moslems." 35. Mind of Mencius, The. E. Faber, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai. 10s. 6d. in England. An account of the great disciple of Confucius by the supreme authority on the subject of his teachings. 36. Original Religion of China, The. John Ross. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1909. 5s. net. Chiefly con- cerned with Confucianism. Maintains the monotheistic view. Interestingly written. 37. Religions of China, The. James Legge. Hodder, London, 1880. 5s. Out of print, but to be obtained second-hand and of libraries. Very full quotations from the Chinese Classics. Lucid and authoritative. 38. Religions of the Chinese, The. Dr J. J. M. de Groot. Macmillan, London, 1910. 6s. 6d. Takes the animistic view, but gives a full description of the practical as well as the theoretical side of the religions. 39. Three** Religions of China, The. W. E. Soothtll, M.A. Hodder, London, 1913. 6s. Lectures given at Oxford during a vacation course for missionary students. Traces 274 Regeneration of New China development of the religions, treats of their attitude to the great common needs of men, gives copious quotations from classics. Most useful for all purposes. N.B. — Small volumes of excerpts from Chinese Litera- ture have been published, but these rarely give a true impression of the works from which they are taken. Students wishing to read translations will be well advised to obtain from libraries the relevant volumes of the series published by the Clarendon Press under the general title The Sacred Books of the East. Most readers will find the books in the above list — especially Nos. 33, 35, 37, 39 — adequate in both quotation and interpretation. In addition to the books classified in this section, excellent chapters on Chinese Religions will be found in Nos. 15, 18, 20, 43, 45, 78. E.— MISSIONS : HISTOEY AND METHODS. 40. Century of Protestant Missions in China, A. Edited by D. MacGillivray. Shanghai, 1907. $3.00. The most complete summary yet produced. Available at most Mission House Libraries. See also No. 81. 41. Christianity in China. The Abb£ Htjc. New York. 2 vols. $2.00. Out of print, but available at libraries. A full account of early missions and of modern Roman Catholic ones. 42. Conquest of the Cross in China, The. Jacob Speicher. Revell, Edinburgh and London, 1907. 5s. net. 43. Mission in China, A. W. E. Soothill, M.A. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1907. 5s. net. 44. Mission Methods in Manchuria. John Ross, D.D. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1903. 3s. 6d. 45. Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China. J. Campbell Gibson, D.D. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1902. 6s. The foregoing four volumes each deals comprehensively with the organisation and problems of a mission station or district. The authors, distinguished missionaries of long experience, treat of their own respective parts of China, but take into account Chinese characteristics and religions, missionary history, the relationship of Chinese and foreign workers, and the New Testament ideal of the Church. 46. Thirty Years in Moukden. 1883-1913. Being the Experiences and Recollections of Dugald Christie, C.M.G., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P. Edin. Edited by his wife. Constable, London, 1914. 8s. 6d. net. The most recent and full account of Mission work in Manchuria. Shows the oneness of Manchuria with China. N.B. — Reference should be made to the Histories of the various Societies. A Select List of Books 275 F.-MISSIONS: EDUCATIONAL, MEDICAL, AND WOKK AMONGST WOMEN. •47. Changing China. The Rev. Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil. Nisbet, London, 1910. 3s. 6d. A review of modern tendencies in China, with an especial plea for the estab- lishment of Christian Universities. 48. Christian Education of Women in the Far East. Student Christian Movement, London, 1913. 2s.' Addresses delivered at a Conference of Women Educationalists in Oxford, Sept. 1912. 49. Dr Apricot of Heaven Below. K. de Gruche. Marshall, Edinburgh and London, 1912. 2s. 6d. net. A readable sketch of work carried on by Dr Duncan Main at Hang- chow. 50. Education of Women in China, The. Margaret E. Burton. Revell, London, 1911. 3s. 6d. net. The most illuminat- ing and accurate survey. See also No. 66. See also Nos. 2, 26, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 53, 56, 58, 75. G.— MISSIONS : BIOGRAPHY. 51. Arthur Jackson, The Story of. A. J. Costain, M.A. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1910. 2s^ 6d. The story of a young medical missionary who laid down his life after only ten weeks of foreign service in order to stem the advance of plague at Moukden. 52. David Hill, Missionary and Saint. W. T. A. Barber, D.D. Kelly, London, 1898. 3s. 6d. A man of extraordinary personal influence over the Chinese. See also No. 6. 53. Griffith John. R. Wardlaw Thompson, D.D. R.T.S. London, 1908. Popular ed., revised. 3s. 6d. Also a smaller biography by Nelson Bitton. London Mis- sionary Society, 1912. 9d. A pioneer in Central China, opening up Hunan, the province which resisted Chris tianity longest and most bitterly. 54. James Gilmour of Mongolia. Richard Lovett. R.T.S., London, 1893. Is. 6d. A story of isolated pioneering over the borders of North China. 55. James Legge. H. E. Legge. R.T.S., London, 1905. 3s. 6d. A missionary who became the greatest of Chinese scholars and translators of the Chinese Classics. 56. John Kenneth Mackenzie. M. I. Bryson. Revell. 6s. One of the greatest of medical missionaries in China. 57. Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom. Harlan P. Beach, D.D. New York. Missionary Education Movement, 1903. 35 cents. Brief studies of Robert Morrison, John Kenneth Mackenzie, James Gilmour, J. L. Nevius George L. Mackay, and the Chinese Martyrs of 1900. 276 Regeneration of New China 58. Robert Morrison. W. J. Townsend. Partridge, London, n.d. Is. 6d. A popular sketch. (The standard biography by Mrs Morrison, in two vols., has long been out of print.) H.— MISSIONS : PEINCIPLES AND MOTIVE. 59. Missionary Methods : S. Paul's or Ours. Roland Allen, M.A. R. Scott, London, 1912. 5s. The author was a missionary in China and pleads for an earlier acknow- ledgment by missions of the independence of the Chinese Church in order that the missionary force may be free for wider evangelisation. 60. Missionary Motive, The. Edited by W. Paton, M.A. Student Christian Movement, London, 1913. Is. 6d. and 2s. net. A symposium by various authors setting forth the motives that have animated Christian missions from Apostolic days through mediseval missions to the present time. 61. Missionary Obligation in the Light of Modern Thought, The. Principal A. E. Gab vie, D.D. L.M.S. and Hodder, London, 1914. 2s. net. Ancient Merchant Lectures discussing briefly and in popular style, but with great force, the effect of modern views concerning the Bible, non-Christian religions, theology, etc., upon the mis- sionary obligations. I.— THE CHINESE CHURCH. 62. China in Legend and Story. C. Campbell Brown, M.A. Oliphant, London, 1907. 3s. 6d. net. 63. Chinese St Francis, A. The story of Brother Mao. C. Campbell Brown, M.A. Oliphant, London, 1911. 2s. 6d. net. 64. Heathen Heart, The. An Account of the Reception of the Gospel among the Chinese of Formosa. Campbell N. Moody, M.A. Oliphant, London, 1907. 3s. 6d. net. 65. Saint of Formosa. Life and Worship in a Chinese Church. Campbell N. Moody, M.A. Oliphant, London, 1912. 3s. 6d. net. The above all depict the way in which Christianity appeals to the Chinese and the sort of Christian that he makes. 66. Notable Women in Modern China. Margaret E. Burton. Revell, London, 1912. 3s. 6d. net. Charming sketches of six Chinese Christian women. 67. Revival in Manchuria, The. J. Webster. Morgan & Scott, London, 1910. 6d. Letters describing the re- ligious fervour of which Chinese Christians are capable in time of revival. A Select List of Books 277 68. Some Typical Christians of South China. W. S. Pakenham Walsh. Marshall, London, 1905. 2s. 6d. "An answer to the question — Does the Gospel really change the heart and life of a Chinaman ? " J.—BOOKS BY CHINESE AUTHOKS. 69. China's Only Hope. Viceroy Chang Chih Tung. Oliphant, London, 1900. 3s. 6d. An appeal for educational advance in China. 70. Chinese Crisis from Within, The. Wei Chen. 71. My Life in China and America. Yung Wing. New York. $2.50. An autobiography by a Chinese pioneer in Education. 72. Story of a Chinese Oxford Movement, TJie. Ku Hung Ming. Shanghai, 1910. K.- MISSION STUDY TEXT-BOOKS. 73. Call of Cathay, The. W. A. Cornaby, with chapters by S. G. Tope, G. A. Clayton, and E. C. Cooper. W.M.M.S., London, 1910. Is. 6d. net. Prepared for the W.M.M.S. Centenary. The historical chapters deal with Wesleyan Missions only, but the book has much that is of general interest. 74. Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, The. J. R. Mott, LL.D. U.C.M.E., London, 1910. Based on the Report of Commission I. of the Edinburgh Conference. A general survey of the field waiting to be won. 75. Emergency in China, The. J. Hawks Pott, D.D. M.E.M., New York, 1913. In England of U.C.M.E. 2s. 6d. net. Most valuable sketch of the effect upon the prospects of Christianity in China of recent political events and the opportunity they create. 76. New Life in China, The. E. W. Wallace, B.A., B.D. U.C.M.E., London, 1914. Is. net. Sketch by a mis- sionary in W. China of the effect upon the common people of the new conditions there, and the call to the Christian Church of this situation. 77. Our Opportunity in China. J. A. S. Batty. London, S.P.G. Is. Chiefly concerned with S.P.G. work. v 78. Uplift of China, The. Arthur H. Smith, D.D. New edition, revised and rewritten. U.C.M.E., London, 1914. Is. net. General sketch of the people, their land and religions, also of missionary history and methods. Chapters summarising the events of the Revolution and the new movement towards co-operation and union. 278 Regeneration of New China L.— BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 79. China Year Booh. M'Corquodale, Glasgow. Annually, 10s. Commercial, political, and public life generally. 80. China Mission Year Book, 1910-14. Edited by D. Mac- Gillivray, M.A., D.D. Christian Literature Society for China, Shanghai. In England of R.T.S. 5s. each volume. Complete annual survey of all missions with most valuable articles on various aspects of mission work and on outstanding events or topics of the year. 81. Chinese Empire, The. Edited by Marshall Broomhall, B.A. Morgan & Scott, London, 1907. 7s. 6d. Now out of print. A missionary survey of China by provinces. No. 84 is necessarily replacing it, being more recent, but it has an exceedingly valuable historical introduction giving a succinct history of missions in China down to 1907, and a useful chronological Appendix. 82. The Continuation Committee Conferences in Asia, 1912-13. Published by the Chairman of the Committee in New York, 1913. Obtainable from the Continuation Com- mittee Offices, 1 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. 7s. 6d. A brief account of the district and national Conferences (including, of course, those in China) and a full record of their findings. 83. Imperial History of China : History of the Empire as com- piled by the Chinese Historians. J. MacGowan. Probs- thain, London, 1906. 21s. net. 84. Survey of the Missionary Occupation of China. J. Cochrane, M.B., CM. Christian Literature Society for China, Shanghai, 1913. In England of R.T.S. 3s. 6d. Invalu- able. The information is complete up to December 1912, and is arranged under provinces. An atlas of mis- sionary occupation (6s.) accompanies it, but is less im- • portant. 85. Things Chinese. J. Dyer Ball, LS.O. Murray, London, 1904. Fourth edition, 12s. Arranged alphabetically.. This is a complete dictionary of history, literature, re- ligion, customs, government, etc., most interestingly written by a close and sympathetic student of Chinese affairs, during his civil service career in Hong Kong. 86. World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. Report, in nine volumes. Oliphant, Edinburgh and London, 1910. 2s. net per volume. Each contains the report of one of the Commissions of Enquiry, with the discussion of it at the Conference. The ninth volume contains addresses delivered at the Conference. The Eight Commission Reports are under the following headings : — (1) Carrying the Gospel ; (2) The Church in the Mission Field ; (3) Christian Education ; (4) The Missionary Message ; A Select List of Books 279 (5) Preparation of Missionaries ; (6) The Home Base J" (7) Missions and Governments ; (8) Co-operation and Unity. 87. The Statistical Atlas of Christian Missions, compiled by Commission No. 1, has information to 1907, and contains a complete directory of Missionary Societies, Stations, etc., as well as the specially prepared maps. Price, 18s. net. A new edition has been issued (1912) by the American Student Christian Movement. Price, in England, £1, Is. M.-PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 88. The East and the West. Quarterly, Is., is published by the S.P.G., Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W., under the the editorship of Canon C. H. Robinson, D.D. It con- tains articles on missionary problems of general interest written by missionaries and others attached to all societies. The best general missionary magazine. 89. The International Review of Missions. Quarterly, 2s. 6d. Annual subscription, 8s. Published by the Oxford University Press, for the Edinburgh Continuation Com- mittee. Edited by J. H. Oldham, M.A., secretary to that Committee, of which it is the official organ. It is an international medium of missionary information, opinions, and policies, and should be read by every serious student of Foreign Missions. 90. The Student Movement, 3s. per annum, issued monthly in term time by the Student Christian Movement, 93 Chancery Lane, W.C., frequently contains articles by men and women working abroad (especially among students), and by leaders of missionary societies at home. 91. N.B. — The Chinese Review, Is. monthly, by post Is. 2d., obtainable only at 42 Hillfield Road, London N.W., is a magazine owned and conducted entirely by young Chinese in Britain, and contains articles by both Chinese and English writers concerning China, aiming chiefly at giving " the Chinese view on questions of moment and interest." 92. The East in the West is the organ of the Chinese Students' Christian Union in Great Britain. Published half-yearly. Subscriptions (Is. 2d., post free), to be sent to the Business Manager, the Rev. C. S. Wallis, M.A., St John's Hall, Durham. 93. The Chinese Recorder. Published monthly by the American Presbyterian Mission Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. Subscription, 7s. per annum. Very valuable as a means of keeping in touch with current movements and opinion on the field. INDEX Agnosticism, 34, 50 American National Red Cross Society, 103 American Presbyterian Mission, 85 Ancestor-worship, 3, 4, 29, 31, . 37, 47, 51, 133 and deification of national heroes, 37, 47 " tablets," 29, 47, 134 Anglo-Chinese College, 82 " Benevolent Homes," 204 British and Foreign Bible Society, the, 115 Buddhism, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42 Centenary Missionary Con- ference, China, 229 Ceremonies, betrothal, 18, 195, 196 ancestor- worship, 4 Chang Chih-tung, Viceroy, 48 Character, Chinese, 7, S, 23, 29, 33, 34, 49, 50, 120 ff., 243 "Characters," 30 Charms, 29, 44, 125 Children, selling of, 193, 194 China — intellectualism in, 124, 125 modern changes in, 17-19, 57,58 sense of national unity, 141 social conditions, 129, 140, 141, 183 ff. Ching Ming festival, 135 Christian Literature Society for China, 84 Christians, Chinese, 150-161 capability of, 168, 169 demands made by Chris- tianity on, 182, 183 280 Christ ians, Chinese (contin ued) — object to denominationalism, 174 Christianity — its appeal to China, 22, 99,100 difficulties confronting, 56, 57, 58, 122 ff. early days of, 62, 63, 64, 65-71 and education, 105 ff. evangelistic, 117, 118, 225 influence of, 78, 99, 104, 105 and social reforms, 100-102, 192 ff. Church, the — and leadership, 156, 159, 160 and politics, 210 and unity, 173, 177 attitude towards social pro- blems, 206, 207 Chinese, 174 danger of over-emphasis of Western methods, 152 ff. difficulties confronting, 122$., 171 ff., 187 ff. hindrances of denomina- tionalism, 173, 174 membership of, 127, 128 need for trained leadership, 117, 118 need for educational develop- ments, 116, 117, 163 Orthodox, 70 training of evangelists, 117 Church Missionary Society, 230 Clubs, 187 Confucianism, 35, 36, 37, 41, 122, 123, 213, 214 " book of filial pietv," 136 failure of, 193, 213, 214 the " Superior Man," 52 Confucius, 36, 47, 50, 51 Index 281 Co-operation, 227, 229, 232, 234 Continuation Committee, Na- tional Conference of, 177, 198 Corvino, John de Monte, 65, 66 Customs, 135-138, 195, 196 Demon-possession, 126 " Doctrine of the Mean," the, 214 " Door of Hope," the, 195 Education — the Church and, 156 Government Report for Chihli, 1912, 110 the masses and, 167, 168 and missions, 105 ff. present condition of, 110, 116 printing press and, 84, 85 women and, 165, 167 Eddy, Mr G. Sherwood, 231 "Face," 201 Feasts, 137, 138 Feng-Shui, 43 " Filial piety," 135 Footbinding, 18, 100 " Four Companions," the, 35 Gambling, 129, 206 Government, 131, 132 Greek Church, vide Church, Orthodox Groot, Doctor de, 31 " Hall of the Three Religions," 35 Han-Yu, 45 Hart, Sir Robert (quoted), 105, 106 Hart, Doctor Lavington, 158 Hue, Abbe (quoted), 97 Hwei-Kwan, 187 Infanticide, 203, 204 Intellectualism, 19, 121 materialistic tendencies of, 55, 122 Jackson, Doctor Arthur, 104 Jesuits, missionary work of, 66 Kang Hsi, 69 " Kitchen God," 44 Kuo Ming Tang, the, 211 Kwan-Ti, 47 Kwan Yin, 44 Kwang-Hsu, Emperor, 10, 11 Laotze, 49 Legge, Doctor James, 30, 76, 81, 82 Li- Yuan Hung, 215 Literature, 113, 116, 143 missions and, 81,82, 114, 228, 229 Lockhart, Dr William, 77 London Missionary Society, 76 London Mission Independent Church of Hong-Kong, 157 Lun-Yu, 51 Malacca Missionary Institu- tion, 74 Manchus, the, 15, 16, 68, 69 Medical Missions, vide Missions Methodist Episcopal Mission of N. America, 229 Milne, Dr, 72, 73, 220 Missions — American, 82 and difficulties caused by treaty dependence, 190, 191 educational task of, 180, 227,. 228 individual relationship with Chinese, 87, 162 limitations of, 148 medical, 76, 77, 121, 228 Nestorian, 62-65 occupied area in China, 221, 222 Roman, 65 reforms, as factor in modern, 83, 84 social influence of, 78 and unity, 175, 176 Mohammedanism, 40 282 Regeneration of New China Morrison, Robert, 71 ff., 220 Anglo-Chinese College, 82 Mott, Dr J. R, 231 National China Conference, 1913, 232 Nature-worship, 31, 37, 43 Nestorian Missions, vide Mis- sions "tablet," 63 Officials, corruption of, 130, 131, 212 Opium — anti-movement, 101 refuges, 102 Pai, 134 Palladius, Archimandrite, 70 Parker, Dr Peter, 77 Patriotism, 98, 99, 127 Philanthropy, Christian, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 195, 205 Preaching, public, 80 Presbyterian Mission Press of Shanghai, 85, vide footnotes Prester John, 62 Prayer, 51 Printing Press, Chinese, 85, 86 Religion — the Chinese view of, 120, 121 early stages of, 30 ff. lack of reverence, 171, 172 and modern intellectualism, 19 and superstition, 37, 38, 46 Republican Advocate, The (quoted), 206 Revolution, the — inner cause of, 15, 16 moral calibre of, 14, 24, 95 the past as powerful factor in, 5 previous attempts at re- form, 9 ff. its true relationship with Christianity, 211 Ricci, Matthew, 66, 67, 68 Ross, Dr John, 30 "Shang-ti," 32 Shanghai Centenary Confer- ence, 1907, 227 Social conditions, 129, 140, 192 ff. reforms, 203 ff. Students' Christian Associa- tion, Chinese, 158, 170 Student Conferences, 151 Students, 162 ff. work amongst, 158, 229, 230 Students' Union Church, To- kyo, 230 Student Volunteer Movement, 162 Suicide, 202, 203 Taoism, 37, 38, 41, 42, 125 Tao-teh-hing, 37 Theism, 30 Tokyo, 229, 230 Tradition, power of, 3 ff., 34 loosening of, 14 Translation work, 155, vide also Robert Morrison Medhurst and " delegates " Bible version, 115 Transmigration, 55 Union Medical College, 104, 234 Universism, 31, 32 Universities — Nanking Union, 234 Shantung Union, 234 West China Union, 234 Wang, Pastor, 157 Wang, C. T., 157 Wang, K. S., 157 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 230 World's Chinese Students' Jour- nal (quoted), 193 Women, position of, 129, 193- 201 Xavier, Francis, 66 Yen, Dr W. W., 156, 157 Yuan Shih-k'ai, 94, 106 Yung Wing, Dr, 88 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. 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