-g-ifHifTJtTTTU I I I '/['"■ ' | r.»«ii««««.i«ii. ^ i.a ri M . I ll D I L I iP iJ.M.nj. i iui |--j J.-JJiLj ^-^^^-..i JU^.^,^^.i«l^^^*k^^r.»f n^ni iirffWrrrrrt ; ■ '''" ' OT*it i aiitHi i i^w:< i sigin TtiSiSMr ■t-' l T i rir 1 11 ' W ll f l ' l " • '-"-'^ "• r r r -rr ari.^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION ON CHINA AND THE CHINESE Cornell University Library BV 3415.S93 3 1924 023 067 964 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023067964 THE OVERCOMING OF THE DRAGON r'*^ tt^ *> f <■ 'i § o o o a: THE OVERCOMI OF THE DRAGO L. C. StuTpqia . **THIME O LORD IS THE ■ RUSSIA ORtAT aRITAIN mfiMA ^.M^DM. fn.H«,a« THC DRAGOM CH008C t The Height of the Men Represents the Comparative Popu- lation OF Their Countries. Chinese women to every American woman, five Chinese children to every American boy or girl. They are fine, strong people for the most part, these Chinese, and in some ways their country has helped to make them so. Look again at the map and see why. Do you see those two lines stretching across from side to side? The space between them has been called the "Power Belt of the World." Can you think why? What coun- tries lie within it? Nearly all of the really great 22 The Overcoming of the Dragon. ones, are they not? Now can you think what kind of a climate all these countries have and what sort of people live in them ? If you can, you will understand why that particular strip of the world is called the "Power Belt." If you could choose in all the continent of Asia the spot on which you would like to live, where would you put your house? To the north of China? Why not? Too cold. To the south? Too hot. To the west? Too barren and rocky. Where then? Would you put it near the sea? Look at the long uneven coast-line and just think what it ought to mean to the Chinese to have all those harhors where ships can readily come and go. The ships that come to China do not have to stop at the harbors; there are broad rivers up which they can sail, the greatest of which are the Huang Ho or Yellow River in the north, and the Yang-tse in the centre. These two rivers rise quite near one another far up in the mountains of Thibet, but they flow in different directions, and their characters are as different as those of the Good and Bad Boy in the old Sunday School story. The Yang-tse, which means "Son of Ocean," has been called "The Girdle of China" because of its great reach. It is sixty miles wide at its mouth, and so deep that big ocean steamers can go up it six hundred miles. It is, or may be. THE RIVERS AND STREETS ARE CROWDED The Battle Field. 23 to China very much what the Mississippi is to the United States. The Huang Ho, on the contrary, has fairly earned for itself its name of "China's Sorrow." Passing through great regions of clay and sand, it sweeps the foundations of its bed along in its yellow, muddy flood, and often over- flows its banks and changes its course, not only making itself nearly useless as a highway for ships, but carrying away crops and villages, and leaving sorrow and destruction in its wake. It seems as though this river must be a sort of special ally to the dragon. He has made use of its evil behavior so often in holding the Chinese people captive, that its great yellow length seems almost like a part of himself as it spreads across the rich fields and swallows up the food upon which thousands depend for their very lives. But for this river's waste, that part of the country through which it flows ought to be the richest and most useful in all China, for the ground is covered with a particularly fine sort of soil called loess which yields wonderful crops, two or three in one season. Even as it is, in spite of floods and droughts, the Chinese are lucky in being able to get a great deal out of their farms. All sorts of grain flourish there, especially rice, upon which the people practically live; cotton grows well too, and every foot of land is made of use, for the farmers are the most industrious men 1 t <^ k-^i i i c 1 i i < fl^"'''""' "'^'h'^ sr ^^ ^ 1 :i J^ 1 The Battle Field. 25 in the world. Not only the top of the earth is rich in this wonderful country; down under the ground, too, there are things of which the Chin- ese have not begun to make use as yet, but which ought to mean a great deal to them one of these days — great beds of iron and coal. These are the things which every nation needs in order to do big things in these busy days — iron out of which powerful machinery is made ; coal by which steam is set at work turning the wheels of the machin- ery. In addition to these treasures, the Chinese earth is rich in salt beds, and down in the dark ground where no man has ever dug are hidden quantities of gold and precious stone of untold value. From all this it would seem as though China were a very rich and comfortable country and her people most fortunate and happy, and so they ought to be, and probably would be but for the dragon. You remem'ber the people of our alle- gory were healthy and prosperous and all their surroundings were beautiful, and yet the city was filled with sore distress. Just so in the land of this story, in spite of their healthy bodies, in spite of their fair climate and wonderful country, in spite of broad rivers and great crops and rich mines, the Chinese are to be greatly pitied, for they are held in bondage by a power which brings disease among them, which lets their rivers over- 26 The Overcoming of the Dragon. flow and starves thousands in time of drought, and which makes the wealth beneath their feet useless to them — the power of ignorance and superstition. Do you know what these things mean? Ignorance — you know what that is of course; but superstition — what is that? We call it being superstitious when we take care not to walk under a ladder or start on a journey on Friday or sit down thirteen at table, but we don't really believe any harm would come to us if we did do these things. Our superstition does not really hurt us, it is simply silly. But now suppose it meant that our sick people had to be put out of doors to get well (or die) because we believed that some harm would come to our house if someone were to die there ; suppose instead of building up the banks of dangerous rivers, we tried to stop them from overflowing in flood- time by throwing things into them ; suppose we were afraid to dig down into the earth for fear that evil spirits living there would be set free to do us harm — that would be something like the superstition of China. It is hard for us, living in this free, wide-a-wake land, to understand what a strong hold a power like this can get over a great nation like China. It is an old, old power which you will realize the strength of better as we go on in the next chapter to see how long it has been growing ; how it has bound the Chinese peo- The Battle Field. 27 pie down and taken their freedom from them, and how it has cut them off from one another and from the great world outside the Chinese walls. Later on again, we will take a look into a Chin- ese home, and see if we can imagine what it would feel like to belong to a Captive People. The thing we want to realize just now is what a wonderful place China could be if only she were free; how strong and rich and powerful among the nations of the earth. Her freedom is coming to her; St. George is in China and the warfare has begun which is bound to end, as you shall see, in the overcoming of the old dragon. And then, when the Chinese have their freedom, the question comes — ^what will they do with it ; what will they do with their great power and wealth? What place will they take in God's great world? What is there which St. George can give them beyond their freedom, which will make them take the place for which they were meant? This last question brings us to a sad fact, a fact which I would gladly leave out if I could. You must know that in one point the story of China differs from our allegory. There is another knight in the Chinese warfare — a knight who is attacking the dragon, it is true, but who is seeking to set the people free not in order that they may become a great nation to honor God, but so that his own evil ends may be won through their riches. We 28 The Overcoming of the Dragon. The Black Knight. will call him the Black Knight, and he stands for those people who are in China to-day, not for the benefit of the Chinese, but for what they can get out of them for their own selfish purposes. He The Battle Field. 29 is no help to St. George, for although he may seem to assist with the overcoming of the dragon, he in turn must be overcome lest he harm the Captive People. So you see St. George is in China to do three things : First — to set the people free. Second — to protect them from the Black Knight. Third — to teach them to worship and honor God. There are two big questions which come out of all this, and which are worth thinking about. If you can not answer them for yourself, ask some- one who can, and see if you do not think St. George is worth helping. First. What does God give people great pow- er and wealth for? Second. Why is Christian warfare needed now in China? THE LONG RULE OF THE DRAGON. II. THE LONG RULE OF THE DRAGON. YOU must know, to begin with, that the Chinese dragon is (speaking generally) about four thousand years old. No one knows ex- actly when he was born, but looking back as far as we can into the history of the people over whom he rules, he seems always to have been among them ; and, queerly enough, until quite lately they seem to have been glad to have him there and rath- er proud of his power, not at all understanding that they were his captives. Let me try to explain how this came about: At the very beginning, the Chinese people drifted over from somewhere, nobody knows exactly where, though it was prob- ably Babylon, and settled along the banks of the Yellow River, up in the north. They were a peaceful people, tending their flocks and farming the rich land, and they must have been a clever people too, for though we do not know very much about them in those early days, this much is sure — that ever and ever so long before any of the great nations we know of to-day were even heard of, a hundred years or more before Abra- ham was born, the Chinese had made homes for themselves in what is now the province of Shan- hsi and were living under wise rulers and fair laws, with a religion of their own and a pretty 34 The Overcoming of the Dragon. good knowledge of writing and of the arts and sciences. Their rehgion was a very odd one and did not amount to much beyond the story of how the world had been created by a great giant, P'an Ku, who was the first living 'being. He was sup- posed to have lived for eighteen hundred years, and to have carved the earth and the sun, moon, and stars out of granite, being helped in his task by the three sacred ibeasts, the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise. P'an Ku finally died and entered the earth, and the three beasts were supposed to live from that time on in the earth and air and water of China,' and to control them. This story may have had something to do with the dragon on the flag, I am not sure about that ; but whether this dragon has anything to do with the one of our story, I leave you to find out as we go on. That peaceful time, away back there in the past before Abraham, was the time of which the Chinese still speak as the "Golden Age" — the time when much that was wise in the laws and cus- toms of the empire was started, and of which the people are most proud. Yet it was probably just about this time, when everything seemed so pros- perous, that the dragon was born. It is wonder- ful, when you stop to think of it, isn't it? that among all the great nations that were in power in Old Testament times — Chaldea, Assyria, The Long Rule of the Dragon. 35 Egypt, Israel — only the Jews and the Chin- ese are left. The Jews, to-day, are scattered far and wide over the face of the earth, having no government or home of their own, while the Chinese have gone steadily on through all the ages, living on their own land, ruled over by their own emperors, carrying on just about the same customs and governed by the same laws which were theirs when Moses led the Children of Is- rael out of Egypt. Can you imagine at all what it would feel like to belong to such an old, old nation? to be able to trace your fathers and grandfathers straight back to a time five or six hundred years before Christ was born, as some Chinese boys and girls can now ? If you could do that, don't you think you would feel as though most of the other nations of the world were very young? As for Aanerica — why we must seem like a sort of a baby nation, hardly old enough to know our own minds. About the time America was discovered, the Manchu kings whose descen- dants still sit upon the throne at Peking, began to rule over China, and the Chinese speak of that time in much the same way that our fathers and mothers speak of what happened "before the war," as of something quite recent. Instead of studying in the history of their country about what people said and did two or three hundred years ago, as we do about the early settlers and 36 The Overcoming of the Dragon. General Washington, for instance, the boys and girls of China study about what their great coun- trymen said and did two or three thousand years ago, and commit to memory things which were The History of Three Nations if Each Volume Tells of Three Hundred Years. written by their own wise men ages and ages be- fore Caesar was born. Do you wonder that they are proud of their great history and inclined to look down upon other nations ? It is only natural that they should feel so, and yet the very pride of The Long Rule of the Dragon. 37 these people is one of the chief things that has made the dragon strong. You see at the start, when the Chinese were just a simple people, living on what they could raise out of the soil, the dragon was just a little, gentle 'beast, doing no real harm. Then, as the years went on and China grew into a great em- pire, her people 'began to discover that the nations around about them were not as strong, nor as clever, nor as successful as they themselves. This was the time when they made a big blunder and helped the dragon to grow strong, for instead of going out, as they should have done, to help these other people and to teach them the things they had learned, the Chinese went to work and built great walls around their land to keep the other nations out. They called their country the "Middle King- dom" 'because they thought it was the centre of all that was best in the world; they spoke of themselves as the one "Great Family" and wrote histories about their ancestors and sang songs to themselves aibout how great they were. They let the other families of the world shift for them- selves, and the dragon grew fast in boldness and in power, for this was just what he wanted. After this, for several hundred years or so, the "Great Family" kept getting greater. Great rul- ■ers and statesmen and sages were added to the proud list of their family names. Up at the top 38 The Overcoming of the Dragon. of the list were the mighty rulers Yao and Shun ; Yao, who was so good that under his rule noth- ing ever was stolen and no one ever told a lie; Shun who was so much beloved that the wild beasts used to come out of the forest and drag his plough for him, at least, so the historians said. Then there was Shi Huang-ti, the first Emperor, he who has been called the Napoleon of China, and who built the great wall; and T'ai-Tsung, the "Father of Learning," whom all the scholars honor. There was Kublai Khan, the warrior-em- peror, about whom Coleridge has written, and greatest of all there were the sages. You shall hear more about them later on — China's "Mighty Men of Knowledge" — Lao-Tzii and Confucius — who might perhaps haye set the people free ever so long ago if the dragon had not 'been too strong for them. Truly, it was a mighty family, and there is no telling what a power it might not have been in the world to-day but for the dragon. You know one of the worst thing's about being a captive is that you are shut up by yourself and have no chance to find out what other people are doing. When the dragon persuaded the Chinese people to shut themselves up inside the walls, it seemed to make no special difference to them for a while. Everything went on quite as it had done ; they had no desire to leave their land and they did not care in the least to know what was The Long Rule of the Dragon. 39 going on outside among the people they scorned. After several hundred years had gone by, how- ever, it seemed as though they reached a place where they stuck. Nothing new seemed to hap- pen in China, and shut up by themselves, they had no way of knowing that great changes were taking place out in the world. The mighty Em- pire of Rome rose into power and overthrew all its enemies, taking command over the nations, and in one of its dependencies, among the subject people of Israel, a little King was born Who was to change the history of the whole world. This was the beginning of the year one — that great year around which all time has swung since then — ^but China knew nothing of it. Again hundreds of years rolled by, Rome fell, and the great na- tionis of the world as we know them now, rose slowly into power. Great Britain sent her armies down and took control over India to the south of China, Russia stretched her rule across Siberia to the north, strange ships began to sail along her coast; but China simply closed her harbors and shut her gates more firmly and paid no attention to what other nations were doing. • Why should she ? What difference could these upstart nations maike to her? What did they know that the "Great Family" of "The Middle Kingdom" had not known for hundreds of years? Could they trace their histories back four thousand years and 40 The Overcoming of the Dragon. The Nations Passing the Chinese Walls. show a list of family names like China's? No, let them keep away ! You see it was just as though some great pow- er had taken possession of China away back there The Long Rule of the Dragon. 41 in the days of her glory, and put a stop to all progress. Until very lately her people were liv- ing just atxjut in the same way they lived five hundred years before the year one; and looking always back to the good old times, they had come to feel that everything old was of great value and nothing new was of any use. The greatest things in all the world, as it seemed to them, were their own great ancestors, so they studied their words and deeds and worshipped them — yes, actually came to 'believe that some of them were gods — and made idols to represent them, which they worshipped. And then, because they knew no better, and because the dragon had come to have pretty much his own way with them, they made other idols to stand for gods who ruled, as they imagined, over the earth and the air and the riv- ers, who rattled the thunder and kindled the fires, and shook the ground. They made ever so many laws aibout how they must behave so as to keep oflf the anger of evil spirits, and what sacrifices they must offer to the gods ; and so they bound themselves down more firmly than ever. This was not because they were a stupid peo- ple ; they were anything but stupid ; but they had ibeen shut up for so many years that they had had no chance to find out what was true. The great- est men among them were those who knew most about the past. If a man understood all about 42 The Overcoming of the Dragon. the Golden Age of China's glory, had the history of all the emperors in his head, and could repeat page after page of Confucius's laws and writings, he was the man whom the people wanted to have govern them. It made no difference whether he knew anything about geography or the sciences or of the laws and histories of other nations ; these things might be good for other people, but not, so the Chinese thought, for them. For this reason, the boys who were lucky enough to be able to go to school, spent their time there learn- ing book after book of the old sages' writings by heart; and girls never went at all because it was not thought worth while to teach them. Later on you will see why. You must not think these people were entirely wrong in their ways and ideas. Some things they gained from their great history and their interest in the past which were very good indeed; and some of the best of these were a fondness for law and order, obedience, and great respect for old people. I suppose the Chinese boys and girls are the most oibedient in all the world to-day, and the respect they feel for their fathers and grandfath- ers and for all older people is a thing which Americans could have more of without hurting them. Then, their memories are wonderful. You think you do pretty well if you can recite a long poem by heart ; how would you feel if you could reel off two or three whole books of prose say- The Long Rule of the Dragon. 43 ings without a mistake, as some Chinese boys can ? Finally, the fact that they have had to sup- port themselves for so many hundreds of years within their walls has made of them a splendidly busy and industrious people, as we saw in the last chapter, and their industry has given them strong bodies to work with. And now, at last we seem to have come to the time when the long rule of the dragon must be broken through, and the walls beaten down, and China tajke her place among the nations. Her people alonie cannot do it, for the old coils of their enemy are too strong for them; but they have begun to realize their plight and to call for help, and the nations of the world have heard it and are rallying to the fight, and among them are St. George and the Black Knight. The battle is on and the world is filled with the clamor of it. Shall we take a hand in it too, for the sake of the Captive People about whom the next chapter will tell, and in the name of the Lord God of Hosts ? We can, if we will, even here; as you will see later. 'Bi ^ s %^- ^ ^ •'^^'^-■' " — — -c^S^^s^ ^- THE CAPTIVE PEOPLE. D-4 The Captive People. III. THE CAPTIVE PEOPLE, EVERY boy and girl in America knows that this land is a free land and that Americans are a free people, but did you ever stop to think just what this means? First, we are free to choose our own rulers and make our own laws ; free to go where we like and do as we like as long as we do not do wrong; we are free to choose what work we will do, what master we will serve, and what church we will go to. Suppose we were not a free people, what difference would it make? Suppose, instead of being able to elect our own rulers, they had been set over us hundreds of years back in the past, and the only way we could change them if we wanted to, was by going to war about it? Suppose, instead of being able to make our own laws in a way that is fair for everybody, they were all made for us in a way that made every- thing easy for a few lucky people and dreadfully hard for everyone else? Suppose every boy had to follow a trade chosen for him by his father, and stick to it all his life whether he liked it or not? Suppose we had to spend all our lives in one place and serve one master, without regard to whether we were well treated or not ? Finally, suppose we had to believe all sorts of things the priests taught us, pay money and offer sacrifices 48 The Overcoming of the Dragon. > to the gods for fear they would be angry with us, and be very careful all the time lest the evil spirits in the air and earth and water should harm us; how free do you think we would be then? This is very much the way things are among the Cap- tive People of China. You see the dragon has made a great many fixed laws as to the dress, customs and manners of the Chinese which they do not dare to disobey. What was, three thousand years ago, is now, and must always be, so far as they can see. Suppose, once more, that you had to live exactly as your great-grandfather did, and were afraid to change any of your ways of living because his spirit might be offended and come back to punish you. Would you be a captive, then ? Let us see what some of these rules of the dragon are, and how they keep the people from being free. Come with me first into a Chinese house. On the way we pass through Dragon Street. It has a very rough pavement with great gaps between the stones, because if they fitted tight it might disttirb the dragon underneath ; he would not be able to stretch himself. It is all crooked too, all the streets and roads must be so in order that the evil spirits will have to fly slowly around the corners and the people they follow may have time to get away. Such narrow streets and so crowd- The Captive People. 49 ed ! If we reach out our hands on both sides we can almost touch the shops — silk shops, tea shops, shops full of images and idols, only we do not want to touch them because everywhere it is so dirty that the one thing we want to do is to get through the street as fast as we can. Unfortunately, it is not possible to go very fast for the street is so crowded that one has to keep stepping aside into doorways to let other people by. Such a babble of noise, too, coolies yelling so that everyone will get out of their way as they pass with their bamboo poles over their shoulders, and every imaginable kind of freight fastened at the ends, sometimes a big piece of furniture, sometimes a baby in a basket. Here comes a man- darin in his sedan chair, with his two outriders in front to clear the street, his red umbrella carried behind by a retainer. Finally we get through and turn a corner into a quieter street, a street of houses though it is hard to fcelieve it at first for it looks like a long line of blank walls with doors here and there. There are no windows on the street because the people do not want to leave any way by which the evil spirits can enter. In front of every dobr is a blank wall, so that in case a spirit started in that way it would bump into the wall and go out again. Inside there are a number of rooms, built around a courtyard from which they get their 50 The Overcoming of the Dragon. light. In the house we are visiting lives a grand- father, his wife and sons, and their wives and children. It makes a big family, and maybe you think all those boys and girls living together have a good time of it. You would not like it very well if you had to try it yourself. There is hard- ly ever a time in a Chinese boy's life when he can do exactly as he chooses. Suppose they are busy playing "whipping the top," which is one of their favorite games, and some of their elders come into the courtyard. Instantly they have to stop and become very quiet, for they stand in awe of their parents and have to be very careful not to do anything that might disturib them. A boy must always walk behind his superiors, rise from his seat when they come near, and only speak when spoken to. These things are not so bad, but when it comes to never being able to tell your father or mother when things go wrong and trouble you ; when it means that you must not try to explain when they punish you for something you have not done ; when it means that you have a perfect right to deceive them if you can do it without being found out ; that is a different mat- ter. A Chinese boy hardly ever expects his fath- er to sympathize with him, and as to doing such a thing as kissing one's parents, it would be most unseemly ! Chinese boys go to school every day, Saturday The Captive People. 51 and Sunday too. If you were to go into one of their school-rooms, you would probably feel as Alice did when she went through the Looking Glass and found everything turned the wrong way. In the first place, a tremendous noise is going on, every boy studying his lesson out loud at the top of his voice so that the teacher may be sure that he is at it. When a boy gets up to re- cite, he stands with his back to the teacher so that there may be no possibility of his seeing the 'book. Their books read from back to front, and from right to left. Let us peep over a boy's shoulder and see what he is learning! A quotation from one of the sages, "To educate without severity shows a teacher's indolence." Though he doesn't understand what he studies, just has to learn it by heart like a parrot, he studies hard for he knows that if he misses, his teacher will prove his own lack of "indolence" by a generous use of the rod. "Filial Piety," or duty to one's parents, is another of the things which the books of the sages teach, and the moral is pointed by stories like the following: "Once there was a man who was so poor that he could no longer find food for his aged mother, wife and baby boy. Rather than let his mother starve, he decided to bury his child alive. As be was digging the grave, he found a pot of gold, so heaven rewarded his filial piety and his baby was saved." 52 The Overcoming of the Dragon. Boys learn that there are three great lights, the sun, moon, and stars, but know nothing more about them. They think that the tides of the ocean are forced to come and go by a great sea- turtle turning over, and that when an eclipse of the sun or moon occurs, a monster called "the Heavenly Dog" is trying to eat up that luminary and must be driven away by the making of a great noise, beating of gongs, drums, and fire- crackers. St. George is beginning to help them learn the truth about all these things, and is giv- ing them Sunday too, so it looks as though there were better times ahead for the Chinese boys. All this time, and not a word aJbout the girls ; but you see boys are so much more important in China than girls, or at least the Chinese think they are. They even try to cheat the spirits sometimes by dressing .boys up in girls' clothes so that they will not seem of enough account to bother about. You see, boys are valuable, partly because they carry on the family name, which counts for a lot in China, and partly because only 'boys can right- ly worship the family ancestors and see to it that they have what they need to keep them contented in the spirit world. Every Chinaman believes that he has three souls and that at his death one is buried with his body, another enters the spirit world, and the third goes into the ancestral tablet which hangs on the wall in the family home and ^iiJILii- -ini-^ iri'WWTi US ?s!^i III .^--■^^^^ -■■-■"^^^^^ m. ANCESTRAL TABLET By pt'i-uiissiou of the Young- People^ s Missionary i^foi'einenf. The Captive People. 53 upon which are written the names of his father and grandfathers. Every day this tablet has to be worshipped and gifts have to be placed before it by the oldest son of the family. Then, in the spring there is a great festival, when every Chinaman, with all his family goes out to the graves of his ancestors carrying food which is to be put near the grave for the spirits to eat. Other things, too, they take with them — quantities of paper money and paper clothes which they burn at the graves, thinking that in this way it will be turned into spirit clothes and money for the use of the dead. The boys look forward to this day for it is a holiday, so you see it is not all work and no play for them, and then again at New Year there comes a grand time which is known as the "Boy's Month," when the fun and feasting nearly make up for all the hard work of the rest of the year. It is far better to be a boy than a girl in China ; there is a Chinese proverb which says that "It takes ten girls to equal one 'boy." When a girl is ■born, if her family is poor, she will very likely be sold as a slave, in which case she is apt to be treated most cruelly, or she may be killed at once to save the trouble of bringing her up. Even in wealthy homes, there is little rejoicing over the birth of a girl. She is not sent to school for they do not think it is worth while to teach girls any- 54 The Overcoming of the Dragon. thing except how to keep house, to embroider and weave, but she is liept very busy with these things and has little time for play. Even if she had she would not want to, for when she is six years old FOOTBINDING. an end is put to all running and skipping about by the binding of her poor little feet. They say that "for every pair of Golden Lily Feet a kong of tears is shed," and what wonder ! A long strip of cotton is passed under the instep, carried over the four small toes drawing them in beneath the A CHINESE BRIDE The Captive People. 55 foot; another twist draws the heel and the big toe together, and then the end is sewed firmly down. Think how it must hurt to have this changed every few weeks and made tighter all the time ! For a year or so she suffers dreadfully. Through the summer she lies restless with fever, and in winter pushes her aching feet outside the bedclothes so that they may become numb with cold and she may get a few minutes free from pain. She must smother her crying or her moth- er will whip her. She grows thin and spiritless and dull, but what does that matter if only she can have the tiniest feet in China. At her wed- ding the guests will not ask, and her husband will not care, whether she is good or beautiful or gift- ed. The only question that counts is "What is the size of her feet"? Poor little Chinese bride, no happy wedding day is hers. It comes when she is very young, fourteen or fifteen it may be, and the chances are that she has never seen her future husband, as the marriage- has been entirely arranged for by the parents. A Chinaman never leaves his father's house; the bride comes to live there and from that time on she must obey her husband's parents in all things. She is dressed in bright red (white is the color for mourning) and her face is hidden by a red veil that hangs from a heavy head-dress. She is shut into a red sedan chair and carried to 56 The Overcoming of the Dragon. her new home, and after the wedding feast her husband leads her into the bridal chamber, lifts her veil and for the first time, sees her face. Of course he does not love her, why should he ? His family do not welcome her, for unless they hap- pen to be well off, she counts only as one more burden, one more to feed. She must now obey _ her mother-in-law in everything and if she is un- kindly treated she cannot complain to her hus- band for he must always side with his mother. He has the right to beat her, sell her, treat her just as he likes, and if she dies it makes little dif- ference to him for he can easily get another. Her best chance of happiness is to have a little son, for then everyone will honor her. It is very sad indeed for her if she has no children, for then truly she has nothing to look forward to. It is the usual thing in China for a bride to weep on her wedding day ; would not you do it if you were she? Chinese men have an easier time than the wom- en, but there is not much fun in life even for them. The special things which most Americans value when they come to be men — their little homes, their friends, the well-being of their coun- try — ^these are all things Chinese men know very little about. They do not have homes of their own ; every man lives with his parents until they die and all he does is arranged by them. Often The Captive People. 57 it happens that a Chinaman is very old and a grandfather before he has any right to say what shall be done in his own house, and even then he must be very careful to do nothing that might offend the spirits of his dead parents. It is no wonder that few of them ever think of doing any- thing different from what their fathers have done before them, and that they have not much of that thing we call ambition. They have not many friends ; for the most part, each man is so busy working to keep his own big family supplied with rice that he has not time to see much of his neigh- bors, and as he never travels he has no chance to make friends away from home. As for patriot- ism, he does not even know what it means.. The affairs of his country are run by the officials, and it is none of his business what they do so long as they let him alone. If China goes to war with another nation, that again is none of his affair, let the soldiers attend to that, it is their business and they are fit for nothing else ! He, himself, is far too busy to bother about his country ! If he can keep his family fed and worship his ancestors and out-wit the evil spirits that are supposed to be ever trying to get the better of him, that is the best he can do. Of course the great thing that has kept the Chinese back so long has been their determina- tion to keep everything just as it has always been. 58 The Overcoming of the Dragon. They must even be dressed exactly as their great- grandfathers were, and many of their customs seem to us very queer. Chinese gentlemen must let their nails grow long, sometimes far out be- yond their fingers so that they have to wear long gold shields to protect them from being broken. If we saw them, we should probably think of "Slovenly Peter," but they do it because for hun- dreds of years long nails have been a sign of superiority in China, and a proof that those who wear them have never done anything so mean as to work with their hands. When a Chinaman greets a friend, he shakes his own instead of his friend's hand. If he speaks of the death of a relative he laughs in order to prove his self-con- trol. These things, and many others which seem odd to us, they do 'because so it has been for years and years. To them our ways seem quite as queer; indeed they seem very dreadful. They call us "foreign devils," as alas! the Black Knight has often given them good reason to do. They think our women's big feet and small waists are every bit as ugly as their women's deformed feet seem to us. The way our men and women walk and eat and dance together seems to them dreadfully improper, and the thoughtless and dis- respectful way our children appear to treat their parents fills them with horror. Truly, many of our customs are enough, as the Chinaman has no The Captive People. 59 hair on the top of his head, to make his redoubt- able pigtail rise in amazement and disgust. He thinks us extravagant, and no wonder when you know that two or three cents a day is all he needs, as a rule, to live on. He thinks us lazy, and it is true that few men in other lands know how to work as he does. He thinks us greedy and irrev- erent and is ready to do anything to prevent the "foreign devil" from running the "fire-wagon rails" across his country and disturbing the graves of his ancestors. Not only is he afraid that, under such treatment, the spirits of the dead will rise in wrath, but there are all those evil spirits of the air and the earth to be guarded against, and the stupid foreigner pays no atten- tion to these things. If the Chinese do not look out their family graves will be moved, the earth- spirits disturbed by the digging of mines, and the air-spirits offended by the building of tall spires and chimneys ; then woe betide the Chinese ! Of course they hate us and despise us and think their own old ways are best. The first sight of a for- eign man often scares the children so that they run and hide, for their mothers have taught them that some great evil is sure to come to them if he should turn his eyes their way. Should he chance to have a red beard, why then he is exactly like the pictures of their bogey-man, only he is real, so of course he is far more terrible. 6o The Overcoming of the Dragon. Not only has the dragon made use of all these things — pride, superstition, fear, contempt for other people's ways, hatred of all change, unfair treatment of women and children ; but he has tied the Chinese down by giving them laws which are unfair and officials whom for the most part they cannot trust. If a farmer quarrels with his neighbor over a piece of land which they both claim, it is no use to go to law albout it for the official is sure to decide in favor of the man who can pay him most. If an official wants something which belongs to another man, he takes it in the name of the law, and nothing can be done because the officials are all powerful. Perhaps you think these men are free to do as they will, but it is not so, nobody is free in China, not even the Em- peror. The officials dare not go too far for fear of the anger of the gods and the evil spirits. Most of them hate the foreigners for they fear the power of the nations that are back of them. Some few are beginning to see that the old cus- toms and laws of China are a drag upon her peo- ple, but they do not dare to make great changes for fear — yes — for fear of the dragon. They are beginning to see how strong he is and to realize that they have not the right kind of weapons to fight him with. Not very many years ago, the Emperor him- self tried a tilt against him, tried to free the peo- The Captive People. 6i pk from some of his coils, but he went at him from the wrong side and the result was that not only was he put down from his throne, where the Empress Dowager now sits instead, but he anger- ed the dragon so that a number of the members of St. George's army were killed. No, nobody is free in China, and no one has the power to free them truly except St. George "by the help of Jesus Christ." He alone can give them the armor and the weapons which will make it safe for them to go out to war against the dragon which holds them captive. Some of their best men have tried it in the past in their own strength and have been overcome, and before we go on to hear about how St. George first came to China, you shall hear about three of these great men and what the dragon did with them, so we will call the next chapter the "Would-be Rescuers." THE WOULD-BE RESCUERS. IV. THE WOULD-BE RESCUERS. A WAY back in the past when the dragon first ■^ *■ began to show his strength, there lived two men in China who were very wise. Both saw that unless something were done about it, the dragon would grow so powerful that he would be able to do just as he pleased with the Chinese people. Each of them decided to attack the monster and try to deliver the people frotn his power. They were quite unlike, these two men, and they each went at the dragon in his own way, but in certain things they were alike — they both were confident that they could win by their own power and both made the mistake of undervaluing the strength of their enemy. The oldest of the two is always spoken of by the Chinese as "Lao Tzfi," or "Old Master." He lived albout six hundred years before Christ. When he was still a boy he began to dream about how he would go out to fight the dragon, and as he grew older he set about trying to find the right armor to use. The more he studied, however, the more he saw that the monster was very strong and his heart began to fail him. At last he decided to make the attempt, but in the very 66 The Overcoming of the Dragon. first encounter his courage gave out and he ran away instead of keeping up the fight. He fled to the hills and made up his mind to live all by him- self, where he could not hear the quarreling and cries of the Captive People. Some of them knew that he was a wise man and had trusted him to free them from their enemy, so when they found that he was going away they asked him to write out his wise ideas for them. When he was alone in the country, he thought it all over, and wrote a 'book about a great many beautiful things which, it seemed to him, would help the people to drive away the dragon. It would have been better if he had stayed with them and helped them fight, but he had had enough of that, so he tried to show them by his writings what kind of armor to wear. He saw that in order to be a strong soldier a man must be pure-hearted, caring most of all to be a good man; humble, not praising himself; self-sacrific- ing or willing to give up everything, even life it- self, to save his people. All this was good armor, but there was not enough of it. There were no weapons, and as Lao Tzji knew nothing of God, he could not tell his people where to go for strength with which to fight. Now you may be sure the dragon was wise enough to find out where the trouble with Lao Tzfi's armor was, and to persuade the people to The Would-Be Rescuers. 67 lay it aside piece by piece. Since their Old Mast- er died, they have been forgetting many of the wise things he taught them and the dragon has twisted some of his sayings round so that they mean just the opposite of what they were meant to mean. He taught them that heaven and earth were perfect and should be admired; the dragon persuaded them that the meaning of this was that these things must be worshipped, and that they must make idols and build temples in their honor. Lao Tzfi taught them that life was a wonderful thing and that back of it there was a great mys- tery which they could not expect to understand; the dragon made them believe this meant that they should fear every thing mysterious so they began to be afraid of all that they did not under- stand and they covered themselves with charms to keep off the power of bad spirits. They made a religion for themselves called Taoism, and be- gan to believe in a great many gods. To the gods of the Heaven and Earth, they added another — the god of the Waters — and they called him the "Dragon King." These three together are known as "The Three Rulers" and ever so many temples have been built in their honor where the Captive People go to worship. Besides these there are quantities of lesser gods, every village has its own particular one, and over all is "The Supreme Ruler," whose chief temple is up on top 68 The Overcoming of the Dragon. of a high mountain where the priest in charge sells charms to the pilgrims who have strength enough for the climb. If Lao Tzii were alive, he would be sad to see how these people who pretend to be doing what he taught them, have just about given up fighting the dragon. They have not meant to stop, but just as their enemy was too strong for the "Old Master," so he has been too clever for them and has turned the very things they were given to fight with, back upon themselves. Instead of believing what Lao Titi taught them and honoring that which is beautiful and pure, they have followed the teaching of the dragon and come to worship idols and fierce gods, and even to bow down to animals ; just think of praying to a rat ! Worst of all, he has taught them that everywhere there are evil spirits which must be avoided. These poor people think that all the sorrow and pain in the world is caused by such spirits, so they repeat prayers, burn incense and make offerings to pacify them. If Lao Tzii had only been able to give them the right weapons to use with the ar- mor they had, and had stayed and fought with them instead of running away, they would not have been so easily captured by their enemy. One day while Lao Tz^ was writing, off in the country, he had a visitor who was also eager to overcome the dragon. He was a good deal k'ung fu-tzu From a Rubbing Representing Confucius, on a Slab near His Grave By permission of the \ oung People's Rdssionary Movement. The Would-Be Rescuers. 69 younger than Lao Tzfi, and like him, he had not been able to find the right weapons for the fight, so he came to the "Old Master" for advice. This visitor was named Confucius, and he was one of the greatest teachers this world has ever known. Alas ! Lao Tzii couldn't help him, because his ideas of the best way to fight the dragon were quite different from Confucius'. From the time he was fifteen years old Con- fucius had "bent his mind to learning" and he was very wise. Being a great teacher he had many disciples and scholars gathered about him in groups, to whom he taught his rules for life; these were the weapons with which he hoped they would ibe able to overcome the dragon. His dis- ciples wrote down all these wise rules and say- ings, and you remember this is what we said ev- ery Chinese boy has to learn pages and pages of by heart in order to become a fine scholar, a man of influence or an official. Let us see what some of these rules or weapons of Confucius were, so that we can decide whether we think they would enable the Captive People to overcome the dragon. First he taught them that the most important thing of all was obedience to superiors ; a son must respect and obey his parents, a wife her hus- band, a brother his elder brother, and a man could have no friends except those who were his JO The Overcoming of the Dragon. equal in all things. You see it was an uphill sort of duty. He never gave them any idea that a parent should love his child, that a husband should love and protect his wife, and that a boy or girl should love and try to help others even if some were not quite his equals. Some of the best things he taught them were that they must forgive others, be pure, truthful and just, but he told them that the only way they would be able to do all this was by looking back and learn- ing aJbout the Golden Age of Yao and Shun, and copying what was best in the lives of all the Em- perors. He told them also that they must "find help in themselves," and this made a very weak spot in the armor. A golden rule he gave them for their treatment of one another^" Do not do to others what you would not have others do to you." Very much like our own golden rule, only, like most things Chinese, it is backwards. Confucius was very wise and a wonderful teacher, but there were many things he did not understand and did not even pretend to. When his disciples asked him what he thought became of people when they die, he said: "I know how birds can fly, fishes can swim, and beasts can run, yet I do not understand this life, so how can I know about a future life." As for Heaven, as he knew little about it, he did not care to talk of it, but he taught that only one person, the Emperor, ^ ^ 8 a ^5- The Would-Be Rescuers. 71 was worthy to worship the great spirit of Shang- Ti or Heaven, and so twice a year, to this day, after a night of fasting and much ceremony, the Emperor bows down and offers sacrifices and prays to Heaven in the beautiful "Temple of Heaven" in Peking. Of course the Emperor as head of all must be honored by all, and for this reason Confucius taught that if the Emperor was all he ought to be, his people could do no wrong. This is rather hard on the emperors of China. Confucius was buried in Ku-fu, in the province of Shantung, and on his tombstone is written, not his name, but "The Most Illustrious Sage and Princely Teacher." The road to his grave is call- ed the "Spirit Road" because his spirit is suppos- ed to walk back and forth upon it at night. Now the dragon is very cunning and clever, so what do you suppose he decided to do with Con- fucius' rules ? To twist them and turn them as he had treated Lao Tzti's writings, and use them so as to make the Captive People even worse off than they were before. First of all, because Con- fucius had never known how to tell them about God, the dragon persuaded them that their great teacher was a god himself and that they ought to worship him. So all over China, in every city, temples were built in his honor and all the people began to pray to him. His grave has become the most sacred place in all the empire, and every 72 The Overcoming of the Dragon. year thousands of pilgrims go there to worship him. Then his tablet was placed in every school- room, and all the boys have to bow down to it when they come in and go out. But cleverer even than this was the way the dragon took Con- fucius' rule of respect for parents and changed it into the worship of their spirits after death. This worship of ancestors before their tablets and at their graves, became after awhile, and still is, the real religion of China, and is one of the chief things that has helped to hold the people captive. About the time of Confucius, there lived over in India another would-be rescuer whose name was Gautama or, as his disciples called him, Bud- dha. He was the son of a great king, and as his father was anxious to keep him from knowing that there were such things as pain and sorrow in the world, he never let him go outside of the beautiful garden which surrounded the palace. Buddha was a very thoughtful boy and he was filled with the longing to know what lay outside the walls of the garden, so finally when he was fifteen, his father let him drive out in the neigh- borhood, and there for the first time he saw peo- ple in trouble. When he returned to the palace he was no longer content to spend his days for his own pleasure, and he told his father that he must go out and help the poor and the suffering in the world. The Would-Be Rescuers. 73 Leaving the palace by night he became a wan- derer. His hope was that by asking questions and thinking hard he might be able to find some truth which would help people do away with all the sorrow and bondage from which he saw them suffering. At last he had a dream which he thought showed hitn the truth. He decided that the way people could escape from all misery was by 'knowledge. This did not include any knowl- edge of God for Buddha had never heard of Him. The knowledge which he taught was a kind of unselfishness which would grow out of being able to believe that everything you cared about, even life itself, was a bad thing. You could only ar- rive at real happiness by giving up all which made you want to live. In order to reach this state of "no desire" he believed it was necessary to go oflf by oneself, away from other people, and dream and dream and dream about the happiness of other people until you forgot to desire any for yourself and at last would reach a state of per- fect bliss which would be heaven. You see the chief trouble with this was that he taught people that unselfishness lay in dreaming rather than in doing. It was a missionary truth, in a way, for he really wanted to help people and gave up his whole life trying to do it, but we know that it was rather flimsy armor against such an enemy as a dragon, for instance. 74 The Overcoming of the Dragon. Some time after Confucius' death, Emperor Ming who was then on the Chinese throne had a dream in which he saw a golden figure which told him that if he sent someone to the West, he could there secure the armor which would help him conquer the dragon. Accordingly he sent some of his courtiers over to India to see what they could find. They found many Buddhists, or the followers of Buddha, and some of these were glad of the chance to go back with the courtiers and tell the people of China what they believed to be the way to win the victory. As you know, Confucius had not been able to tell the Chinese anything about a future life or heaven, so they were glad to welcome the Buddhists who could answer their questions, or thought they could. The dragon was a bit nervous when he heard that something was being brought to China which might help his captives to fight him so he knew he must be up and doing and poison any good ideas which might be used as weapons against him. First he persuaded them to worship Bud- dha and have many priests to teach them how to do it. Next he taught them that besides the great Buddha they ought to have many lesser gods, so quantities of temples were built and lots and lots of idols were placed in them where the priests took charge of the people's offerings. Finally he led them to think that the belief of forgetting BUDDHIST PRIEST The Would-Be Rescuers. 75 yourself and so being able to reach higher and higher stages on the road to heaven, really meant that you had to be reborn many times into lots of animals; from being a fly you might become a cow, and then perhaps turn into a girl, and if you were a good enough girl and woman, why then in your next life you might be luCky enough to be born as a boy. The great trouble with all these would-be res- cuers was that they tried to fight in their own strength, and without the right kind of armor. They were sorry for the Captive People and real- ly wanted to help them, but they failed to under- stand the power of the dragon, and to find the only weapons which could hurt him. All they could do was to attack their enemy and worry him into a fury which finally made it all the hard- er for the Captive People. Down he swooped upon them one by one, goibbled them up, and then turned the very weapons with which they had thought to overcome him, against the people they had tried to rescue. As for the poor captives, many gave up hope and gradually they all settled down to their fate and forgot that they had ever been anything but captives. As the years went by they even began to be rather proud of the strength of their captor and to think they were fortunate in having him to guard them, but this was simply because they knew no better. 76 The Overcoming of the Dragon. Now, at last the time has come when they are beginning to have good hope of release, and in the next chapter you shall hear how this came about and what happened when St. George first met the dragon. THE COMING OF ST. GEORGE. !llll»SssSik^*>;^SS^»!K'55S!> A Coat of Arms for Morrison. V. THE COMING OF ST. GEORGE. A LITTLE over a hundred years ago there liv- ■^ ^ ed, over in England, a boy who, from the time he was big enough to do anything at all, liked nothing so well as to hunt out some difficult task for himself and overcome it. If a thing was easy to do, it did not interest him much, but as soon as something turned up which looked as though it would be too hard for him, he was always ready to attack it and he usually won out. When he was still quite young he began to dream about fighting some of the dragons that hold men cap- tive in the world and keep them from being what God wants them to be, and fortunately for the Captive People, he knew how and where to get the right weapons. He was a "brave young Christian, strong in courage and tender in heart" like the knight in our allegory ; and I think when you hear what he did and how he did it, you will not wonder that he was successful where the "Would-ibe Rescuers" had failed. His name was Robert Morrison. The first thing for him to do was to secure the armor that would be needed for such a fight, and also go into training so as to grow 8o The Overcoming of the Dragon. strong to endure all the hardships that were sure to stand in the way between battles as well as the actual fighting, for it was clear that the sort of dragon he was expecting to meet was too strong to be overcome in one fight. The first piece of his armour was given to him by his father and moth- er when they taught him to believe and trust in Jesus Christ, in Whose Name it was, you remem- ber, that St. George rode out to meet the Dragon, and by Whose help it was that he conquered. He gained some more armor at school. When he first went there he was not much interested in the things they gave him to do ; in fact he was so slow that he was almost given up as a dunce, but after a little he began to take hold of his studies and it was not long ibefore he was surprising his schoolmaster by his good work and his wonder- ful memory. He learned to repeat a great deal of the Bible by heart, and when he was twelve years old, could go through the whole of the 119th Psalm without a pause or a mistake. He was the oldest of a family of eight children and, as his parents were not very well off he had to leave school when he was fourteen and go to work with his father who was a bootmaker. By this time, however, he had become so much inter- ested in his studies that he made up his mind to go on with them alone. Day after day he worked in the shop and night after night, when work was The Coming of St. George. 8i done, he dug away at his books and made such good headway that when, later on, the chance came for him to go to college, he was ready. At college he studied harder than ever, and the more he learned, the more eager he became to make the best use he could of his life in the hard- est place he could find. He began to look about eagerly to find a task which seemed hard enough and worth while enough to take as his life work, and it was not long (before he fixed his gaze upon the great dragon in China. Unlike the "Would- be Rescuers" who had attacked this monster be- fore him, he saw from the start' that the battle would be long and tremendous and that he never could expect to win in his own strength alone, and he turned to the only place from which true help could come to him and asked God to show him where to find the right armor and weapons and to teach him how to use them. From college he went to a theological school, a place where men are especially trained to fight God's battles in the world, and after that he spent a year in London studying medicine and the Chinese lan- guage, before he was finally ordained in the Pres- byterian church and was ready to go out to the battle field. Right away, his difficulties began. It seems almost as though the dragon must have known he was coming and have made it as hard for him 82 The Overcoming of the Dragon. as possible. The first difficulty was in finding a ship upon which he could sail. Only one line of ships ran from England to China in those days and the company which owned them re- fused to carry a missionary. Finally he decided to go to America and try to find a ship by which he could reach China from there. It was a long journey out of his way, for it took him eighty days to cross the ocean and nearly four months more to get out to China when he finally found his ship. He made a few good friends here in America, but for the most part, people seemed to think he was .setting out upon rather a foolish adventure, and the ship owner upon one of whose vessels he sailed, said to him with a sneer, "So, Mr. Morrison, you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese Empire?" Nothing could discourage Morrison, and he knew very well what he was talking about when he answered, "No, sir, but I expect that God will." When, at last, he succeeded in reaching China, he found another difficulty, there was no place for him to live. You see the Chinese thought they had everything they needed in their own country and wanted to have nothing to do with outsiders. They were obliged at that time, to let the English and American merchants come into Canton to trade, but even these were The Coming of St. George. 83 only allowed to live in a little settlement near the river; they could not go into the city at all for fear of being hissed at and stoned by the Chinese people. No one who was not directly connected with trade was allowed to live there at all, and the merchants were very much afraid of having Morrison among them. Some of them, however, were eager to see what he could do against the dragon, and they finally helped him to fit up a little basement under one of the warehouses where he could live and work. For a time, in order to avoid being noticed by the Chinese, he dressed like them, wore a pig-tail, took to Chinese food and eat with chop-sticks; but he found it was not much use as he could in no case go among the people as he had hoped to do, and the poor food made him ill, so he gave it up and afterward lived and dressed like the merchants. The London Missionary Society, which sent him to China, had asked him to make a Chinese dictionary, and, if possible, a translation of the Bible ; and this he tried hard to do as soon as he had a place in which to work, but at the very start he met two difficulties. In the first place, it was against the law for a Chinaman to teach the language to a foreigner, and the punishment for breaking this law was death. It was some time before Mr. Morrison could find any one with whom he could study, but at last one of his 84 The Overcoming of the Dragon. friends among the merchants helped him by per- suading a Chinaman named Abel Yim to teach him secretly. It was dangerous work, for if the officials had found out what was going on in the little basement room, Abel Yun's head would have had to come off and Morrison, if he were lucky enough to keep his on, would have had to leave the country at once. As soon as he was fairly started in the study of Chinese, he met the other difficulty, the desperate difficulty of the lan- guage itself. The little that he had been able to learn in England had given him a start. But now he was face to face with a language which is hard enough to discourage most people even in these days when there are dictionaries and gram- mars to help them. Instead of an alphabet of twenty-six letters like ours, there are twenty-five hundred signs in Chinese, each one standing for a word. Think of Morrison learning these- signs one by one from Abel Yun, working hour after hour over his dictionary by the dim light of an earthen-ware lamp, in a damp basement where he was in danger all the time of being routed out and killed toy the Chinese, and you will agree that he had found a task which was hard enough to suit even him. Perhaps the hardest thing to bear was the dreadful loneliness of his life all this time. No- body wanted him in China. The English and The Coming of St. George. 85 American merchants were afraid the Chinese would not trade with them if they knew he was with them, and, although a few were really in- terested in the way he was beginning to dig into the lair of the old dragon, they did not dare to help him or to see much of him. For the most ■part they were not wise enough to understand how his success would benefit either themselves or the Chinese. As for the Captive People, they had become, as we have seen, so used to their captivity and were actually so proud of their powerful captor that they resented any attempt at rescue and would have driven him away at once if they had known what he was about. Hidden away with his great dictionary he had to work month after month all alone, and it must have seemed dreary enough and very discouraging, a far more difficult sort of a fight than a quick charge would have been right into the face of the enemy. You see, the sort of a fight Morrison had to face was just the kind that St. Paul wrote about in his letter to the Ephesians when he told them that in the battle for the Lord of Hosts they would have to struggle "not against flesh and blood," but against the power of evil in the world, against the darkness of ignorance and cruelty, against the great spirit of wickedness that so often seems to have control of things 86 The Overcoming of the Dragon. here. This was the time when that armor of his was to be tested. In the face of all the discour- agements and difficulties it must have been hard indeed to keep his shield of faith bright, and really believe that the great "sword of the Spirit" which he held would be able to cut its way through all the ignorance and superstition with which the Dragon had tied up the Captive People. It must have been hard to keep on patiently pray- ing and working year after year, in poverty and hardship and loneliness, surrounded by cruelty and wickedness which he could not openly attack, and ibe certain all the time that the great Lord of Hosts was surely with him and would cover him in the thick of the fight, with that "helmet of sal- vation" which would make it possible for him to save the Chinese from their enemy and prepare the way for the "Gospel of Peace." It was about as hard a test as any soldier in St. George's army has ever had to go through, and the fact that he stood firm and proved the strength of his armor has made it easier ever since for other soldiers in the same fight. Morrison had been in China several years be- fore there seemed to be any chance to work out- side his dark little basement, and then, just when it all began to look most hopeless, an unexpected thing happened. The British East India Com- pany, which had refused in the first place to bring THE REV. DR. IIORRISON AND HIS ASSIST.^NTS TRANSLATING THE BIBLE INTO THE CHINESE LANGUAGE. By permission of the American Bible Society. The Coming of St. George. 87 him out to China in one of its ships, suddenly asked him to come into its office as translator. He accepted most gladly, for his new position would give him a perfectly good excuse to offer to the Chinese for living in their land and he would no longer have to work in secret. He went ahead at once with his dictionary and finished it ; six great volumes which were so complete that they were really almost more like an encyclopedia than a dictionary. The Company published it for it was as useful to them as it would be to the missionaries. Next he began on what was to be the great work of his life — the translation of the Bible, and in this he was helped by a splendid man named Milne who came out to China on purpose to be with him. Unfortunately, the Chinese would not let Milne stay in Canton. It was more than they quite liked to have one sus- picious person like Morrison about; two they would not have, so he went to Malacca and started a school where Chinese children could be taught such things as would fit them, by and by, to join St. George's army and help to set their own people free. Morrison and Milne's transla- tion of the Bible was the very first in Chinese, and although others have been made since then which are better, it is theirs which made these possible, and the first bit of real encouragement which came to Morrison in his work was the news that a Chinaman in America, into whose hands a copy 88 The Overcoming of the Dragon. of the Chinese Testament had fallen, had become a Christian. Another sort of work which he started about this time helped to break down the Chinese sus- picion of him. He began to do what he could in a small way for the sick people who lived near him, and opened a little dispensary where they could come to him for medicine. All this time he was teaching the people whenever he got a chance and living a fine, brave Christian life among them which was bound to tell against the power of the Dragon before long. What do you suppose that old Dragon was thinking about all this? If he bestirred himself when he first saw the messengers of Buddha coming out to fight him, he had need to call all his energy and wiles into play now. Here was a warrior who not only did not seem to be dis- mayed by the sight of his power and ugliness, but was covered with armor which had no open- ings in it, and carried a sword sharp enough to wound and weaken his enemy. Moreover, he came with a battle cry on his lips which made the Dragon tremble when he heard it — the Name of the Lord Christ. There is no question but what he did his best during all those early years of Morrison's life in China to stop his progress and hurt him, and undoubtedly there were wounds on both sides, but the moment when the Dragon must have received his first real stab was when The Coming of St. George. 89 he saw his enemy baptize his first Chinese con- vert. This was seven years after Morrison went to China, and the man was Tsae-Ako, one of his early teachers; seven weary years of work and waiting and even then the baptism could not be given openly ; but there can be little doubt of the happiness it must have brought to our faithful knight when, as he wrote in his journal, "At a spring of water issuing from the foot of a hill by the seaside, away from all human o'bservation, I baptized him in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . . May he be the first fruits of a great harvest ; one of millions who shall come and be saved." Gradually, as the Chinese began to understand more of what Morrison had come to teach them and he saw them, a few at a time, awakening to the danger of the Dragon's power over them and wanting to escape from it, he began to call for others to come out and join him in the fight. After sixteen years in China he went tack to England to arrange about the publishing of some of his books and try to rouse people to the need and the chance to set the Chinese free. To his surprise he was greeted as a great personage and presented to the king, who "graciously accepted" from him a copy of his Chinese Bible. He was loaded with honors, given a Doctor's degree in the University of Glasgow, and made a member of several big societies, but all the time the thing he 90 The Overcoming of the Dragon. wanted most was to get back to China and go on with the fight. Shortly after his return, three men came out from America to help him, and during the nine years that we worked on in China before he died, he had the satisfaction of seeing a few others answer his appeal, and St. George's army begin to grow. For twenty-six years he fought valiantly and victoriously, and yet when he left it, the battle was but just begun ; in fact it is still going on, so strong was the power of the old Dragon. Had Morrison not had in him the spirit of St. George, which nothing could discourage, he might have felt that his work all those years had done little to break down the gates of that great wall with which the Dragon had surrounded the people of China. Fortunately for him, he had gauged the power of his enemy from the start and confidently believed that, although he himself could do little against him, the army which would follow in his lead would carry his work to a triumphant end to the honor and glory of God. Could he have looked ahead a short one hundred years — ^but that is another story, and must wait. THE ARMY OF ST. GEORGE. 94 The Overcoming of the Dragon. for reinforcements and the army grew more rap- idly. All sorts of men were needed, great gen- erals who were skillful in planning the siege, great fighters who could batter down the walls, great surgeons who couM keep the army in con- dition and attend to the wounds of the Captive People. They all came as time went on and added to them, constantly increasing the ranks, came those among the captives who had begun to realize China's plight and wanted not only to be free themselves but to join in liberating their countrymen. It was not easy fighting ! Sometimes it seemed as though the more wounds the Dragon received, the more fierce and determined he became, the more guileful and tricky. Then too, there were men outside China, who saw in the disturbed state of things, the chance to go in and despoil the Captive People of their possessions, and they joined themselves together under the leadership of the Black Knight, and began to work against the Army of St. George for their own evil ends. There came a time about the beginning of this century, when some of the Captive People, an- gered by the unfair deeds of these men and goad- ed into action by the Dragon, rose up to drive out all foreigners from their land. They be- longed to a great secret society — China is full of secret societies — and were known as the Boxers, The Army of St. George. 95 They did not know enough to understand the difference between the followers of the Black Knight and the soldiers of St. George, and in the dreadful war that took place hundreds of that great army were killed, among whom were ever so many Chinese who had joined the ranks for the sake of their own people. It seemed for a time as though the old Dragon had gained a vic- tory over St. George ; but it was not so, for now a very wonderful thing happened. True, the army was driven away from its outposts and its ranks were sadly thin, but on the other hand those among the Captive People who had chosen to fight for the Lord of Hosts under St. George had given the greatest possible proof of their faith in God and of their devotion to His cause, by being willing to die rather than leave the ranks. Never, in all their long history, had a Chinese seen anything like the loyalty and cour- age of these Christian countrymen of theirs, and filled with wonder over it, it is said that the Box- ers cut out the hearts of some of the brave mar- tyrs to find out what they could be made of to fill their owners with a bravery so different from common men. Such was the power of their ex- ample, that for every one that fell in the ranks, two or three came forward to take their places and new officers volunteered to drill them. The Boxer war, insteaid of being a defeat for St. 96 The Overcoming of the Dragon. George, was turned into a glorious victory, and to-day soldiers from all over the world — Ameri- cans and English, Germans and Scandinavians, French and Italians — are taking part in the war- fare which by and by will surely give all the Cap- tive People a chance to be free. The Chinese recruits are being trained as fast as possible, in order that they may become cap- tains and lieutenants in the army. Presently some of these will rise to be generals, which will be a great advantage for they know the ways of the Dragon better than any foreigner can. For the present, however, foreigners must be the leaders, for you see the newly-made Christians in China are much like young cadets, full of life and loyalty and zeal for the battle, but so little trained in the tactics of war that if a regiment were put into their charge they might quite likely lead it into an ambush where the enemy could destroy it. For this reason, wise officers who have been in the army longer than they, must patiently drill and teach them until they are able to take safe command. Although all the soldiers of St. George in China are united in their fight against the Drag- on and in their desire to set the Captive People free, you must know that the army is divided up into a number of different corps. Unfortunately, the commanders of these corps — Presbyterian, The Army of St. George. 97 Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Roman Cath- olic, Episcopal and so on, sometimes disagree as to the best way of fighting and training the sol- diers. Therefore it has been found best so far to let each division work out its own special plan, only being very careful not to interfere with the others, for if the Dragon should see any ill feeling among the members of St. George's army, it would give him a chance to put forth all his strength and perhaps conquer that weakened part. The Church of England has an army-corps in China, too, commanded by six generals (bish- ops) and as their plan of fighting is almost ex- actly like that of our own church, we move along with them, and their generals and ours often hold councils of war together. Some day let us hope the whole army will be one, for then indeed the old Dragon would have reason to tremble ! Now, before we go on to see how the actual fighting is done let us find out what part our own dear church has taken in the building up of St. George's army, who are the soldiers of whom we have a special right to be proud both in the past and present in our own division, and where the battle is in progress now under our own generals. If you will find, on the map, the Yang-tse River, that great "Girdle of China" which flows through the middle of the country from west to east, draw a line parallel to it aibout one-third of 98 The Overcoming of the Dragon. the way from it to the northern boundary of China, and another the same distance from the river on its southern side, you will have, between these lines, a broad plain which is very fertile and very thickly settled. Cut this plain off one thousand miles from the ocean, at the city of Ichang, and you will have the territory in which our own army-corps fights. Some of the other corps are fighting there too, but there is small reason to fear that the soldiers will ever get in one another's way, for there are more people in this district than there are in the whole of the United States. It is divided, under our generals, into two parts which are named after the chief city in each, the District of Shanghai, and the District of Hankow. Hankow is much the larger of the two, but in Shanghai the people live very close together and speak a different dialect from the Chinese up the river, so it was best to let them fight by themselves. About the time that Robert Morrison was end- ing his long years of work in China, two young men had a talk one day in their room at the Vir- ginia Theological School in which was sounded the first battle cry of an American general in our division of St. George's Army. One of them was walking up and down the room, speaking of his desire to go to China to work, when his room- mate said to him, "But you can not go. China is The Army of St. George, 99 not open. It is not possible." Quickly came the answer, as the future general turned and faced his friend, "If by going to China and staying there the whole term of my natural life I could but oil the hinges of the door so that the next man who comes would be able to go in, I would be glad to go!" This man was William Jones Boone, first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church in China. No amount of discourage- ment could stop such a man, and although it seemed quite likely that his life would have to be spent "oiling the hinges" of the Chinese doors from the outside, the Board of Missions sent him out in 1837, and he settled on an island off the coast to study the language and plan his cam- paign against the Dragon. In 1842, when a treaty was signed between England and China, making it possible for foreigners to live in several of the cities on the Chinese coast, you can easily under- stand that it did not take him long to go in through this little crack in the dcwrs. He set- tled at Shanghai, where, as soon as he had gath- ered a little handful of soldiers aJbout him, the Church put him in command and he was made their bishop. There is not time to tell of all that he did, how he built up the army and opened training schools for the recruits, how he cared for the wounded and always led the way himself into the thick of the fight, how he met and over- loo The Overcoming of the Dragon. came the followers of the Black Knight who tried to work against him ; all these things would need a whole book, and all we need to know now is that he was a general of whom our Church has every reason to be justly proud. He fought in the strength of Jesus Christ; he girded himself with God's whole armor, and he finally laid down his life for China having fought a good fight, and having kept the faith. Just one other thing about Bishop Boone's life it is good to know. At one time, when he was feeling very strongly the need of more officers in his regiment, he came back to America to call for volunteers, and with him came a Chinese boy named Wong Kong-chai. Wong was very much impressed by everything he saw in America, and on the return trip, he went to the bishop and told him he would like to be baptized. When he reached home, however, his family took him away from the missionaries and as the months went iby they began to fear that they would never see him again. Just as they had about given him up, he appeared again among them saying that nothing would satisfy him but to be a Christian. He studied hard and was so earnest that on Easter day, 1846, the bishop baptized him, the first Chinese recruit for the Episcopal army in China. Five years later, he was ordained as a deacon and so became an officer in the ranks. All The Army of St. George. loi his Hfe through from that time on, Wong gave proof by his life of the fine sort of soldiers the Chinese can make when they are rightly enlisted into St. George's army. He was not unusual in any way, not a gifted scholar, just a fair sample of the average Chinese boy; but he was loyal and active and true to the end, and as the first of many of his countrymen who were to join our division of the army, he proved the worth of the faith he had found and set a noble example for those who followed after. His life was not an easy one. He fought through times when lack of help from America and riots in China reduced the ranks to their lowest ebb ; he was mobbed by his own countrymen when, at one time, the bish- op sent him to an outpost ninety miles up the river ; and he lived to see his beloved general lay down his life in the thick of the fight. Wong was not only the first convert to Christianity un- der our Mission, and the first Chinese clergyman to be ordained, but he married the first Chinese girl to be baptized, and the story is told of her that on her wedding day when she did not cry as Chinese brides usually do, and her friends ac- cused her of not doing the correct thing, she an- swered: "What have I to cry for? Am I not marrying a young man who is liked by everyone, and a clergyman too? I shall certainly be very happy ; I have nothing to cry for." It was true. 102 The Overcoming of the Dragon. They spent many happy years fighting side by side for the God they had chosen to serve, and their children followed them into the ranks of the army and are fighting there to this day among the bravest. It would take too long to tell of all those of whom we have a right to be proud in our divi- sion of the army, but two more you must know of before we go on : the hero who fought with a typewriter, and the general who stormed the walls of the great cities six hundred miles up the Yang-tse and winning by the great love that was in him, broke his heart for the Chinese because the Church at home would not let him do for them all that he would. The first was Bishop Schereschewsky, a mem- ber of that great race whose history dates back nearly as far as the Chinese, and among whom Christ was born. Fighting for the glory of that Christ at the head of our army in China, he was one day stricken down by the terrible heat of the sun and paralyzed so that he could only move one hand a little. You might have expected him to give up the fight, but this was the very last thing he ever dreamed of doing. He turned over his command of the army into the hands of the son of the first Bishop Boone, and then went to work with the one hand that was left to him, to do what he could in the war. For twenty-five K "0 en n K M < o ■n o y. a; Z H H ^) E ?o > n Z X y) r z ^' 'fi ^ w ^ z The Army of St. George. 103 years he fought on using one finger on a type- writer, and before he died he translated the Prayer-book and the whole of the Bible into Wenli, the common language of the people, and wrote a reference book to explain it. He was a very brilliant man with a wonderful brain, but the thing that stamped him as a hero was his splendid courage and patience in the face of dif- ficulty and suffering. The other was Bishop Ingle. Others before him had led an attack against the up-river strong- holds and been more or less successful. Bishop Graves, who followed the second Bishop Boone as general, had done much ibut his headquarters were at Shanghai, and in 1901 he decided that the siege would be more successful if his army were divided into two regiments and another general put in charge of the fighting up the river. Mr. Ingle had already made his mark as a brave fighter and a wise commander, so he was picked out to be the general of this new regiment and was consecrated as the- Bishop of the District of Hankow. It was a very large district and the regiment under the new general was small for the work they had to do, but Bishop Ingle went into the fight with a faith which nothing could break down and with a love for the Captive People which was invincible. He laid his plans well, so well that he won for himself honor 104 The Overcoming of the Dragon. throughout the whole army of St. George. He trained the officers and drilled the Chinese re- cruits who made up the greater part of his regi- ment until they were able to march ahead confi- dent of victory. All would have gone well for him if people at home in America had been able to see the things he saw in China, and had sent him the reinforcements and the support he need- ed to carry his plans through. Bishop Roots, the general who followed him and who is now in charge, tells a story which helps us understand why his great heart broke at the end of his sec- ond year of command. Passing one day before Bishop Ingle's house, he saw a sight which sur- prised him because it was so uncommon. The bishop, usually so hopeful and busy, was sitting on the step with his head bowed in his hands. Mr. Roots went to him and asked what could be the matter. "Nothing, now," was the answer; "I thought when I sat down here that there was d great deal the matter because people at home cannot seem to understand how much there is to do out here; then I remember how many there were who are praying, very likely at this minute, that these difficulties which trouble us may be overcome for the honor and glory of God, and I was ashamed that I had ever been faithless enough to doubt that the help would come." Do not forget that story, for by and by we will THE RIGHT REV. JAMES ADDISON INGLE, M.A. First Bishop of Hankow, igo2-jgoj. Died December 7, /poj. The Army of St. George. 105 come back to it and it teaches us something which we need to know. Bishop Ingle fought on confi- dently, but he was not strong, physically, and be- tween the straining of his desire to give the Chi- nese the things they most needed and the lack of help which was given him in supplying that need, his heart was broken and he died, as truly a mar- tyr for China as though he had suffered perse- cution. There is ever so much more that might be told about the members of our regiments in China, but this much must do for the present and you can learn more from other books and the papers. We will go on, in the next chapter, to see just how the fighting is done and what it means to the Captive People to be set free. At the end of this book you will find a list of the people who are fighting, now at the beginning of 1908, under our generals, the Bishop of Shanghai and the Bishop of Hankow. You must remember that, just as regular soldiers are often moved from one place to another where they are more needed, so it is with the missionaries ; and in order to know just where they are and what they are doing, keep an eye on the missionary papers and re- ports. THE WARFARE. w > •z o o n K pa VII. THE WARFARE. "^^OW, at last, we come to the warfare as it is ■^ ^ going on today, and will see how the army- is trained, how the fighting is done, and what hope there is of victory ahead. First of all, of course each officer and soldier must take his strong armor just as Morrison did, or he will be wounded or killed, and so become useless to St. George. Besides this, now that the army is large and the Dragon has grown more cunning, there must be careful discipline of the troops, modern weapons, and wise rules of battle which those in charge can oppose to each new attack of the enemy. When a regular army is in the midst of war one of the most im- portant things to do is to keep a very close con- nection between headquarters and the actual battle-field. The supplies are stored at head- quarters, and the reserve forces are kept in con- stant training there so as to be ready to go out at any moment to the front. Here, too, recruits are trained as soon as they come in, and here is the hospital corps, busy looking after those who are ill or wounded. Messengers are always com- ing and going between headquarters and the out- D-S no The Overcoming of the Dragon. posts so that no possible chance is given for the enemy to get in and cut off the fighters from their supplies. Just in this same way the mis- sion army in China carries on the fighting. It places a strong force to occupy the most import- ant points, and then sends out its troops from these into the country round about. By and by some of the out-posts grow strong enough in their turn to send men to other more distant points, and in this way the enemy is driven fur- ther and further back and the strong camps help the weak ones. Each of the districts in which our army fights has one main camp in which are placed the training schools and hospitals. The Shanghai district has St. John's University for boys and men, St. Mary's School for girls, St. Mary's Orphanage for babies, a school for train- ing Bible-women (teachers of the Bible) and an- other for catechists (men). From these, by and by, will come the clergymen, teachers, doctors and other helpers who may ibe officers in the army, and who will go out into the battle well trained to meet all difficulties. All these schools are near the city of Shanghai, and here too, there are two hospitals, St. Luke's for men, and St. Elizabeth's for women. In the district of Han- kow there are Boone College for boys and men and St. Hilda's school for girls in the city of Wuchang, and across the river in Hankow, other The Warfare. iii schools for catechists and Bible-women. There are two hospitals in this district too, one at Wu- chang and another down the river at Anking. The army has gone ahead so fast lately that it is very necessary to start new training schools and open new hospitals in each big camp; but to do this the Church at home must send out more men and supplies. Now, before we go on to find out just what our part is in this war, I want to tell you a story about a Chinese family who were once slaves of the Dragon, but who, having been rescued by St. George, are now fighting in the ranks of his army. It is a true story and per- haps you can understand better from it than in any other way just what it means to the Captive People to be set free. Four people belong to this family, De-tsen, a Chinese girl; Hai-ch'in, her brother; their mo- ther who was an Amah, or child's nurse, and their baby brother. De-tsen was betrothed as a baby and sent to live in the family of her future mother-in-law because her own mother was too poor to bring her up. Here, as soon as she was old enough, she was made to work in the house as a servant and was often so cruelly beaten that at last a neighbor took pity on her and carried word to her mother. Amah went to the rescue, brought her away, and then was at a loss where to put her 112 The Overcoming of the Dragon. in safety, for her betrothed might at any time come and try to recapture her. Hearing of her difficulty, Amah's mistress, an American, offered to put the little girl into one of the Mission boarding schools. So it came about that into this strange new world, so clean and orderly and so peaceful, lucky little De-tsen went. At first she found it hard to study; she had never had a chance to use her mind and did not know how. She was awkward and slow and afraid of offend- ing her teachers. Soon she discovered that these same teachers were very different from the peo- ple she was used to. Most of them had been Chinese girls themselves and so understood her difficulties, and when she found that they had learned to control their tempers, to be clean and capable, truthful and kind, and that they believed the power to do these things had come from their trust in a God who loved everyone, yellow girls as well as white, she decided to trust Him too, and ask Him to help her. After that, she began to learn faster and, though she sometimes did wrong, she improved every day and gradually became the happy healthy girl she was meant to be. She is still in that school and the chance is that in time, her betrothed will grow tired of waiting and will set her free. Then she hopes to enter the training school for nurses and get The Warfare. 113 ready to take her place in the Red Cross division of St. George's army. When Amah saw the change that had come over De-tsen, she made up her mind that Chris- tian schools were very good places, so she saved up her wages until she was able to send Hai-ch'in to the boys' school. Like most Chinese iboys, he had been learning nothing except the names of the Chinese written words, and was growing de- ceitful, selfish and dull witted. In the new school it did not take him long to find out that there was no need for deceit, no pleasure in selfishness, and no use for dull wits. The outdoor games fresh- ened up his body and the new study freshened up his mind, and he soon began to turn over a new leaf as his sister had done. Amah's friends tried to frighten her by telling her all sorts of dreadful things that would happen to the boy if she let him go on "eating the foreign doctrine" every day, but she had seen how useful and hap- py it was making both her children and was be- ginning to wonder if it might not even be good for her. "The Chinese gods have never done me any good," she reasoned, "it was plainly the Christian's God who saved my daughter from that cruel home, for my mistress had been pray- ing to Him only the evening before for all our families. She says He would be pleased to have me learn about Him, so I will try though I am 114 The Overcoming of the Dragon. so old that it will be slow work." Then she be- gan to go to the Mission Guest Hall where other Chinese women went to be taught, and to the church services, and patiently did all the teach- ers asked her to do although she did not under- stand everything. One day sad news came from the village where her baby boy was living in the care of an aunt. A disease of the eyes had suddenly fallen upon him, and his aunt sent word that he was nearly blind already. Poor Amah! she was dreadfully unhappy and frightened. Could it be that the gods of her country were punishing her in this way for deserting them and learning about the Christian's God? Her mistress said, "Bring the baby to the Mission hospital," and in spite of warnings from her heathen friends she decided to try it. The baby's aunt came with him and the two wondering women looked on while the foreign doctor bathed and bandaged the poor little eyes as carefully and lovingly as though the baby had been his own child. There were days at first, when the bandages had to be changed every hour or so, yet the nurse never complained of the trouble, and when Amah thanked her she said that Christ had done so much for her that she was glad of the chance to help His other children. "What other children does she mean?" asked the aunt. "She means The Warfare. 115 you and me and the bahy," answered Amah, who rememibered now some of the Guest Hall teach- ing. The baby's eyes got well. "Christ gave me the power to do it," said the doctor, and would not let them kneel to thank him. While the happy mother puzzled over it all, a wonderful feeling of love took possession of her for this Christ to Whom she seemed to owe so much. She made up her mind to study about Him more dili- gently than ever, so that by and by she might be baptized and join the ranks of the great army which is fighting against all those things which keep people from knowing and loving Him as she bad learned to do. Now do you see what some of St. George's methods are? There are others for different cases. The literati, or scholars, of China, who will not come to chapel or guest hall, may be persuaded to read 'books, so the army is supplied with this sort of ammunition. The young men want to learn about all sorts of western things, so the Y. M. C. A. and other societies get up classes for them in history or English or "cur- rent events," and after a little while, invite them to study the Bible too. The rich and noble wo- men cannot leave their homes to go to classes, but they can be visited and taught and comforted there by Christian women. Besides all this the army itself must be kept in good condition, the ii6 The Overcoming of the Dragon. weapons ready for use, the armor bright and sure, and this is done by just the same methods we use at home — Bible study, prayer and wor- ship. Are these methods successful? Does the old Dragon begin to show signs of giving in? To begin with, you must not expect too much right away. Remember how old he is, and how strong, and that St. George has only been fighting him for what, in his long life, is a very short time. Some wounds he undoubtedly has, and there can be small question that his power is not as great as it was, but there is still lots of fight in him. One of the strong walls he built up around the Captive People, you remember, was the idea that everything worth knowing was way back in the past history of their country, the sayings and do- ings of men who lived more than a thousand years ago. Now, at last, some of the Chinese are beginning to find out that this wall is full of holes. In 1870, a boy named Yung Wing, who had been in a mission school for a few years left China, and coming to the United States, went through Yale College. On his return, he per- suaded the Chinese government to send out one hundred young men to be educated in American schools and colleges. Unfortunately, when they had been here but a little while, some one re- ported to the Empress that these young men were The Warfare. 117 learning dreadful things in this country, that they were going to American temples and learn- ing to pray to the foreigner's God, that they were wasting time training their bodies to play useless games, and filling their minds with foreign ideas which would make them dangerous to China when they came home. They were called back at once, but not before the ignorance of China had received a .wound, for these men never for- got what they had seen, and some of them later on got into positions where their American train- ing could be made to count. In 1896 China was beaten in war by Japan, upon whom she had looked down ibefore that, so that her pride got a stab. Then, in 1900, came the dreadful Boxer war when the Empress made a great effort to drive out all the foreigners and once more shut China up inside the walls. She failed, and her country came very near being divided up among the great nations she had insulted. After these defeats, China learned that "the Barbarians," as she called all outside nations, had a power which she lacked, and her great men finally decided that this power was education. Young men were consequently sent to Japan to study, and there they learned that China's laws were less just, her taxes were more heavy, and her people less free than those of Japan. When they came home they talked and wrote so much about these things ii8 The Overcoming of the Dragon. that the Empress became afraid of a revolution, and promised all sorts of reforms which would make things easier for the Chinese. That must have been an uncomfortable moment for the Dragon! One promise was that government schools should be opened for all Chinese boys and girls, where the new teaching would be given; another that prisoners should be better treated than they had been; another that^ before very long the people should be allowed to vote and make their own laws. No wonder the Drag- on began to pull himself together for the great- est fight of all his long life. What came of it all? The new education has become popular. When missionaries first began to open schools in China, it was necessary to pay parents to allow their boys to come to them, and it was almost impossible to get any girls at all. Now there is hardly a Christian school in China that is not crowded by children whose pa- rents are glad to pay well for the chance of hav- ing them learn the new teaching. The govern- ment has opened schools as the Empress prom- ised, and thousands of boys and girls are study- ing at last, things that will really be af use to them. Now when ignorance is wounded, superstition, too, must always grow weaker. Do you see how that is ? De-tsen and Hai-ch'in and their mother The Warfare. 119 know now that the foreigner has no power to hurt them by a glance of his eye ; that it is not neces- sary to make offerings to the dead in order to be safe from injury by their spirits; and that the wind and the thunder and the rivers are all gov- erned by the great God Who made them and means them to be of use to men. The children in the schools have learned that the world was not carved out of granite by P'an Ku, and that the sun is really in no danger of being swallowed by the "Heavenly Dog" at times of eclipse. Chi- nese men are learning that women were not made by the "dark" or evil part of nature, and should consequently be looked down upon, but that in countries where they have been honored and edu- cated they have become men's best helpers. Deep, however, as are the wounds which the Dragon has received, he is not dead yet as we have seen, and his angry head lifts itself now and again with threat and defiance just where St. George least expects to see it. Government edu- cation is not yet thorough. Prisoners still are tortured to make them confess what they have done, and officials are often so ignorant and weak and wicked that promised reforms have come to nothing. Even the boys and girls in Christian schools sometimes think that if they learn a little about American law and ways of living, they must be quite able to make laws for themselves 120 The Overcoming of the Dragon. and turn the customs of China upside down in a few years. Sadder still, even men and women who really have learned of the love of God for them and have been set free and trained to serve Him, are sometimes tempted to think too much of making money out of the very things the Mis- sion schools and colleges have taught them, and forget to help their countrymen to gain their freedom. You see the battle has reached a very critical point. If the Dragon is allowed to have time to rest he will gain strength and be ready for a new attack, and so much of the ground already gained may be lost. China is open to the army now in every part ; the old superstitions and the distrust of foreign ways are pretty well done away with \ the old pride which tied up the people for so many hundreds, of years has been torn away and some of them, at least, see themselves to be poor and weak in the world's eyes. Here is the chance for St. George. Here also, alas ! is the chance for the Black Knight, and his followers are taking it, turning the newly awakened independence of the Chinese to serve their own purposes, laughing at their attempts toward good government, and using their ignorance as an excuse for cheating them of what is justly theirs. The most cruel thing about all this is, too, that these followers of the Black Knight come from the countries of The Warfare. 121 the Christian's God, and, as it was at the time of the Boxer war, the Chinese do not always under- stand the difference between them and the army of St. George. In a worldly battle this would be the time for a call for reinforcements, and that is just what is sounding now from every mission station in China — reinforcements of men and women, reinforcements of prayer and interest and money to carry on the fight. Ministers, doc- tors, nurses, teachers, women to visit in Chinese homes and teach the Bible-women, business men and women who can take care of money matters or help in office work, in building, in planning — all these are needed, and they must be, each in his way, the very ibest that can be had. The United States army will not accept as officers any but those who are perfect in body and trained in mind. The army of St. George which is part of the army of the Lord of Hosts, must demand no less. The fight is fierce, the enemy is clever and tireless and the battlefield is far away. Money is needed to build schools and hospitals and churches and houses for the workers, to pay for their support, to buy books and medicines and supplies of all kinds. The Chinese give money themselves, but those who can help are ks yet poor and 'few and we must help them, even as the churches of the old world helped our fore- fathers in their fight. Do not let us forget that 122 The Overcoming of the Dragon. we belong to the Church which has sent this army out to the battle and that it is our part to see that it has the supplies which will make vic- tory possible. Men and money, yes, and prayers. Do not let us forget that story of Bishop Ingle, who when he was on the point of being discour- aged because the men and money were not at hand to do the things which he saw ought to be done remembered the prayers of the people whose hearts were with him, and took courage to carry on the fight alone. Yes, most of all the need is for the hearty, intelligent support of every Christian at home — man or woman, boy or girl — the kind of support that will make them glad and proud when a good stroke is made, sorry when there is defeat, ashamed if a soldier or an officer prove cowardly in the face of the en- emy, and always and everywhere sure of victory. If the army has this support, which is bound to find voice in prayer to the Lord of Battles, it will not lack for recruits, nor for money to support them. The battle is ours as well as theirs, and the glory and joy of the victory will be ours, too, as well as theirs, in the day when the Father shall proclaim China the Kingdom of His Christ. "And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Then," said I, "Here am I ; send me !" — Isa. vi. 8. The End. A FUTURE GENERAL APPENDIX. APPENDIX. The American Episcopal Army in China in 1908* Psalm LXVIII: 2. DISTRICT OF SHANGHAI. Bishop — The Right Reverend Frederick R. Graves, D.D. jESSriELD. Church— St. John's Pro-Cathedral, Bishop Graves. „ , . „ The Rev. Dr. Pott. Schools — St. John's University. President, Rev. F. L. H. Pott. D.D. Arts Faculty, Dr. Pott, Dean. The Rev. R. E. Browning. F. C. Cooper. Dr. C. S. F. Lincoln. M. P. Walker. G. W. Steiger. H. M. Throop. W. O. B. Harding. J. N. Major. Theological Faculty. The Rt. Rev. F. R. Graves, D.D., Dean. The Rev. F. L. H. Pott, D.D. The Rev. J. W. Nichols. The Rev. R. E. Browning. Medical Faculty. H. W. Boone, M.D., Dean. W. H. Jefferys, M.D. C. F. S. Lincoln. M.D. A. M. Myers, M.D. G. W. Tucker, M. D. F. C. Cooper. Training School for Women — Mrs. L. P. Fredericks. St. Mary's Hall, Miss S. L. Dodson, Principal. Miss L. Crummer. Miss E. W. Graves. Miss M. S. Mitchell. Miss C. M. Palmer Miss L. J. Graves. Miss V. Judy. St. Mary's Orphanage — Miss R. M. Elwin. Medical Work — St. John's Dispensary — Dr. C. F. S. Lincoln. HONGKEW. Church of Our Saviour, Archdeacon Thomson. Medical Work — St. Luke's Hospital, Dr. H. W. Boone. Dr. W. H. Jefferys. Dr. A. W. Tucker. Miss M. E. Bender, Nurse. *For u^mea of ChineEe w«rkers and for efaanges iee Annual Report of Domestic and Foreien HisHionary Society, 281 Ith Are., New York City. 126 Appendix. DISTRICT OF SHANGHAI (Continued). SiNZA. Church — St. Peter's. The Rev. J. W. Nichols. Day Schools — Miss A. B. Richmond, Superintendent. Medical Work — St. Elizabeth's Hospital for Women, Dr. A. M. Myers. Dr. E. C. Fullerton. Miss M. A. Hill, Nurse. Native City. Grace Church — The Rev. C. F. MacRae. SOOCHOW. Chapel and Boys' School, Rev. R. C. Wilson. Rev. W. H. Standring. Woman's Work — ^Girls' School, Deaconess Paine. TSING-POO. C/iMfc/i— Rev. C. F. Mac Rae. Woman's Work — Miss A. R. Torrance. Girls' School — Miss I. M. Porter. WusiH. Church and Schdol — The Rev. G. F. Mosher. St. Andrew's Dispensary, Dr. C. M. Lee. Yangchow. Rev. B. L. Ancell. Rev. T. L. Sinclair. DISTRICT OF HANKOW. Bishop — The Right Reverend Logan H. Roots, D.D. Hankow. Churches — St. Paul's Cathedral, Bishop Roots. The Rev. S. H. Littell. St. John's, St. Peter's and St. John the Evangelist (English Church), Rev. A. M. Sherman. School — Rev. Messrs. Littell, Sherman. Choir School— The Rev. S. H. Littell, Priest-in-Charge. Training School for Bible Women. Miss M. E. Wood. Wuchang. Woman's Work — Deaconess Hart. Girls' Day Schools — Deaconess Hart, Superintendent, Churches — Church of the Nativity, The Rev. L. B. Ridgely. St. Jitark's Chapel, The Rev. R. E. Wood, Rev. A. S. Cooper. St. Andrew's Chapel. St. Saviour's. Appendix. 127 DISTRICT OF HANKOW (Continued). Boone College — Faculty, The Rev. James Jackson, Principal. Rev. E. H. Fitzgerald. Mr. Howard Richards. Mr. P. Bannister. Mr. R. A. Kemp. Mr. J. A. Wilson, Jr. Mr. W. C. Martin. Mr. T. J. Hollander. Bishop's Secretary, Miss L. L. Phelps. Boone Medical School — Dr. J. MacWillie, Dean. St. Hilda's ^c/joo^— Deaconess Phelps, Principal. Miss G. Stewart. Miss S. Wood. St. Peter's Hospital— Dr. J. MacWillie. Miss A. S. Tattershall, Nurse. Elizabeth Bunn Memorial Hospital — ^Dr. M. V. Glenton. Miss S. H. Higgins, Nurse. Woman's Work — Miss A. E. Byerly. KitJKIANG. Rev. C. F. Lindstrom. Edward M. Merrins, M.D. WUHU. St. James' Church— Rev. F. E. Lund. Rev. T. P. Maslin. Changsha. Rev. A. A. Oilman. ICHANG. Church — Rev. D. T. Huntington. Rev. P. R. Stockman. American Church School Trades School for Destitute Boys. Shasi. Chapel — Rev. A. Goddard. Anking. Church— Rev. E. J. Lee. St. Paul's School— Mr. W. McCarthy. Mr. E. P. Miller, Jr. St. James" Hospital— E. L. Woodward, M. D. H. B. Taylor, M. D. Miss M. R. Ogden. Miss E. P. Barber. Miss S. Tomlinson. New Workers. Mr. J. C. Dean, unassigned. Miss R. R. Halsey, unassigned. Business Manager for Both Districts in China: Mr. E. S. Smalley, Shanghai.