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 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
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 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
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 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
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 Christianity in China :a fragment. 
 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022972628 
 
CHKISTIANITY Iff CHINA; 
 
 at jjtapmtk 
 
 BY 
 
 T. W. M. MARSHALL, Esq. 
 
 AUTHOE OE 
 " NOTES ON THE CATHOLIC EPISCOPATE.*' 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS. 
 
 MDCCCLVIII. 
 

 LONDON! 
 
 PRINTED BY B.OBSQN, LEVEY, AND FR.ANKLYN, 
 
 Great New Street and Fetter Lane. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The writer desires to explain, that the following pages 
 form only the first chapter of a work in which it is 
 proposed to compare, by a similar method, the results 
 of Catholic and Protestant Missions, not in China alone, 
 but in all parts of the world. As a few months may 
 elapse before the whole mass of evidence collected with 
 this object, and scattered through many volumes, can be 
 finally classified and arranged, — and as special interest 
 attaches at this moment to China, and to the progress 
 of religion in that empire, — it has been suggested by 
 competent authority that this chapter should be printed 
 at once, in a separate form. This is the only explanation 
 which the writer has to offer of so unusual a proceeding. 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 On many accounts China claims our first attention. 
 Here more than one third of the whole human family 
 have their dwelling. Here a mixed population, of 
 Tartar and Mongolian races, more than eight times 
 greater than that of France and England combined, 
 retain the usages which their fathers followed before 
 a Roman foot had touched the soil of Britain, and 
 while all the proud thrones of Europe were still in 
 the womb of time. Here four hundred millions 1 of 
 the children of Adam reject, as their ancestors did 
 during thirty centuries, the gifts and promises of 
 God ; and cease not to say, with arrogant disdain, 
 to the rest of the human race, — Stand off; we have 
 no need of you. 2 Here is revealed to us that 
 
 1 China, Political, Commercial, and Social; by E. Mont- 
 gomery Martin, Esq.* Preface. This is his estimate for China 
 Proper and its dependencies. 
 
 2 " China never figured in the history of Western Asia or 
 Europe, and had no connection whatever with their inhabitants ; 
 
 B 
 
2 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 almost fabulous realm, planted on the confines of 
 the world, in the remotest regions of the East, 
 which perplexed the thoughts and bafHed the cu- 
 riosity of the ancients ; the mystic Cathay, which 
 Columbus fondly thought he had reached, when his 
 foot first rested on the American shore. 1 
 
 It has been reserved to us, and to our day, to 
 see the gates of this fantastic empire thrown open, 
 by unwilling hands, and every prohibition removed, 
 after so many ages of obstinate isolation, which for- 
 bade access to the detested " foreigner." Already 
 many begin to speculate on the probable issues of 
 so portentous an event, and seek to forecast the 
 designs of Providence in this the greatest fact of 
 modern history. But our business is with the past 
 rather than the future. What China may become 
 hereafter, we know not ; what she has been, we have 
 
 but this great country has ever stood apart, like a world within 
 itself, in the remote unknown Eastern Asia." The Philosophy 
 of History, F. von Schlegel, Lecture iii. 
 
 1 So little was known of China, that even Rome, in the 
 plenitude of her imperial power, " did not so much as suspect 
 that there existed in the remote regions of the mysterious East 
 a colossal empire, teeming with vast and wealthy cities, and 
 thronged with innumerable inhabitants, skilled in the arts, in 
 manufactures, in agriculture, and in commerce.'' Hue, Le 
 Christianisme en Chine, tome ii. p. 2. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 3 
 
 learned from men who did not wait for a haughty 
 and reluctant sanction to tread her forbidden soil. 
 Others, indeed, moved by the lust of gain, with in- 
 finite precautions, and often at the price of shameful 
 humiliations, had ventured to dwell in one or more 
 of her sea-port towns ; but the Missionaries of the 
 Cross alone, 1 in defiance of every menace, of torture, 
 and of death, had braved the capricious fury of 
 her rulers, penetrated her most distant provinces, 
 ascended her mightiest rivers, and traversed in their 
 apostolic course the whole extent of her vast empire, 
 from the Sea of China, across the great wall, to the 
 plains of Tartary and Thibet, and from the Gulf 
 of Siam on the south to the borders of the Sea of 
 Okhost in the north. What they did and suffered, 
 how they toiled and how they prospered, we are now 
 to relate. 2 
 
 1 " Where neither merchant nor traveller has penetrated, the 
 Eoman Catholic missionaries have found their way.'' China 
 Opened, by Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 180. 
 
 2 Even the patriarch of human science is obliged to confess 
 that Catholic missionaries have surpassed all other men in cour- 
 age. " Je rappelle ces traits historiques Spars, parce qu'ils ont 
 rapport a la partie la plus centrale de la Haute Asie, a celle que 
 depuis la courageuse expedition du jesuite portugais Benedict 
 Goes, de Kachgar a Sotcheou, en 1606, et le voyage astrono- 
 mique du jesuite allemand Hallerstein, avec ses aides les p§res 
 
4 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to the immediate 
 purpose of this book that we should trace with 
 minute detail the early history of Christianity in 
 China. 1 Whether St. Thomas the Apostle, as some 
 have deemed, passed from India into China, is a 
 question which, however full of interest on other 
 accounts, need not detain us ; nor do the early 
 Nestorian missions, once so active and energetic, but 
 of which every trace has long since been obliterated, 
 merit our attention. 2 It was the irreparable misfor- 
 tune of a large part of Asia to be visited in the early 
 ages by false apostles, deeply tainted with heresy ; 
 and to this fact is perhaps to be attributed a large 
 share of the multiplied disasters which, during many 
 ages, marked the course of religion in these remote 
 countries. But these are subjects altogether foreign 
 to the special inquiry which we are about to pursue, 
 
 Espinha et Arocha, aucun Europeen n'a pu visiter." Asie Cen- 
 tral, par A., de Humboldt,tome i. p. 27. 
 
 1 The Abb£ Hue, in his last work, entitled Le Christianisme 
 en Chine, has recorded every fact which history has preserved 
 from the apostolate of St. Thomas to the death of Cang-hi. See 
 also Du Halde, Description de V Empire de la Chine; and, for 
 Protestant testimony, Gutzlaff, History of China. 
 
 2 China ; its State and Prospects ; by W. H. Medhurst, p. 
 224. See also Henrion, Histoire des Missions Catholiques, tome i. 
 2d partie, ch. xxxvi. p. 377. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 5 
 
 and from which it would be inexpedient to turn 
 aside./ That China was evangelised before the se- 
 venth century is abundantly proved by the cele- 
 brated monumental stone, discovered in 1625 near 
 the city of Si-ngan-fou, inscribed with Syriac, Chal- 
 daic, and Chinese characters, and the authenticity 
 of which no one of repute now denies. 1 In the first 
 year of the eleventh century, a Tartar prince is said 
 to have been baptised, with 200,000 of his subjects. 2 
 In the thirteenth there was already an Archbishop 
 at Peking, who had under his jurisdiction four 
 suffragan bishops f and in the following century 
 
 1 " Ce document se range incontestablement parmi les pieces 
 les plus pr£eieuses des antiquites ecclesiastiques." Blumhardt, 
 Histoire Generals de V Etablissement da Christianisme, tome iii. 
 ch. xxxi. p. 38, ed. Bost. 1838. " The weight of evidence, 
 both internal and external, regarding its verity, leaves no doubt." 
 The Middle Empire, by S. Wells Williams, vol. ii. ch. xix. p. 
 291. See also Mr. Wright's note in his edition of Marco Polo's 
 Travels, ch. lxv. p. 309 ; and Gieseler, Ecclesiast. Hist. vol. i. 
 p. 353, ed. Cunningham. 
 
 2 Journal Asiatique, tome i. p. 125. 
 
 3 The learned Sinologue, Abel-Remusat, says : " J'ai compte" 
 neuf tentatives principales, faites par les princes chrgtiens, pour 
 se lier avec les Mongols ; et jusqu'a quinze ambassades envoyees 
 par les Tartares en Europe, et principalement aux papes et aux 
 rois de France." Journal Asiatique, tome i. p. 135. Cf. Hue, 
 L'Empire Chinois, tome i. ch. ii. p. 70. 
 
6 .CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Pope Clement V. appointed the Franciscan John de 
 Monte-Corvino as metropolitan, and by him these 
 countries were evangelised during forty-two years. 1 / 
 From this date we may advance at once to that 
 marvellous epoch with which we are more specially 
 concerned, and every incident of which has happily 
 been narrated by the illustrious band whose suffer- 
 ings and triumphs we are about to record. 
 
 In 1552, St. Francis Xavier left Goa for China, 
 his great heart filled with a burning desire to pro- 
 claim to that land the Name which he had an- 
 nounced to so many thousands in other regions. 
 But his course, as he had foretold, was run, and 
 the Master whom he had loved and served so well 
 summoned the apostle to rest from his labours. He 
 died on the shores of the island of Sancian, aban- 
 doned by the treacherous Chinese whom he had 
 hired to convey him to Canton. 
 
 Almost the very hour in which St. Francis died, 
 
 1 " A man in whom we recognise the pattern of a true mis- 
 sionary, the Franciscan, John de Monte-Corvino, who spared no 
 pains in giving the people the word of God in their own lan- 
 guage. He translated the New Testament and the Psalms into 
 the Tartar language, had these translations copied in the most 
 beautiful style, and made use of them in preaching." History of 
 the Christian Religion and Church, by Dr. Augustus Neander, 
 vol. vii. p. 76, Torrey's edition. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 7 
 
 as if to mark more clearly the designs of Providence, 
 saw the birth of one who was destined to take his 
 place, the Josue who was to enter the land from 
 which Moses had been shut out. To prepare him 
 for his future work, the richest endowments of grace 
 and nature were freely lavished upon him. No gift 
 which might qualify him for his great career seems 
 to have been denied to this eminent man. In him 
 were united prudence, constancy, and magnanimity 
 of soul ; profound genius, cultivated by the most 
 famous masters of the age ; delicacy and refinement 
 of taste, unwearied industry, exquisite patience, ha- 
 bitual mortification, and a love of God so ardent 
 as to make all labour for His sake a refreshment 
 rather than a toil, /in 1583 Father Ricci landed in 
 China ; /and in this year began that famous conflict 
 between the powers of light and darkness, in which 
 this intrepid apostle battled for twenty-seven years, 
 and then sunk exhausted by his own success. 1 But 
 years elapsed before any prospect of that great 
 success rewarded his immense labours. For a long 
 period nothing could be more precarious than his 
 position. Dependent wholly upon the caprice of 
 the viceroy of Canton, persecuted and outraged, yet 
 not cast down, his fortitude was equal to every trial. 
 1 See his Life, by the Pere d'Orleans. 
 
8 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Once he was obliged to yield to the fury of the 
 heathen, and retired to Macao ; but if he bowed 
 his head, it was only to raise it again when the 
 storm had passed ; and if he retired for a moment, 
 it was but to return with renewed strength and 
 vigour. On his first landing he had assumed the 
 habit of a Bonze, supposing, by a natural error, 
 that men who exercised priestly functions, and pro- 
 fessed an ascetic life, would be respected by their 
 own followers. But when he had ascertained that 
 these sordid impostors were objects of contempt 
 even to the Chinese, a happier inspiration led him 
 to adopt the garb of the Literates, which the mem- 
 bers of his order ever after retained during their 
 career in China. No trial was wanting to him, and 
 not the least was the loss of his two companions, 
 Fathers d'Almeyda and Petri ; but he had counted 
 the cost before he began his work, and his heart, 
 firmly united to God, could not be dismayed. His 
 first convert was a poor outcast whom he found 
 dying by the road-side ; but the day was coming 
 when nobles and princes were to seek at his hands 
 the bread of life, and the haughty chief of that wide 
 empire was to acknowledge him as his friend and 
 guide. /At length, perfectly conversant with the 
 language, — which he spoke and wrote with such 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA. 9 
 
 consummate perfection that one of his Chinese works 
 was ordered to be included in the imperial collection 
 of the classical compositions in the dialect of the 
 Literates? — he set out, alone and unprotected, on 
 his celebrated journey to Peking. On his road he 
 composed two of his incomparable Chinese treatises, 
 which excited universal admiration, /and from one 
 of which some extracts shall be cited hereafter : but 
 his heart was set upon a higher reward than barren 
 and unprofitable applause, and could only be satis- 
 fied by winning souls to Christ. This was his true 
 calling, and to this all other ends were subordinate. 
 On the approach to Nanking, he was nearly drowned 
 in crossing the Yang-tse-kiang ; but though one of 
 his companions perished, his own hour was not yet 
 come. He was now making converts rapidly, and 
 on every side ; the more learned Chinese being 
 especially attracted by his irresistible eloquence ; 
 but he had set his face towards Peking, and would 
 not be stayed. 2 When his luggage was examined 
 
 1 Bridgman, in his catalogue of the Chinese Classics, refers 
 to " the work of Eicci in the imperial library." Chinese Ghresto- 
 mathy, introd. p. xxxi. 
 
 2 "L'ap6tre, persuade que le moindre succ§s qu'il pourrait 
 obtenir a la cour profiterait plus au christianisme que des efforts 
 tentes dans les provinces, mSditait de se rendre a Peking." Hen- 
 rion, tome ii. l ere partie, p. 167. 
 
10 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 at the custom-house, a crucifix was found, which 
 the officer on duty considered "a charm to take 
 away the life of the emperor." This barrier passed, 
 he still pursued his way, gathering converts wher- 
 ever he stopped. Turned back from one city, he 
 fled to another. Months and years glided away, 
 each presenting its tribute of ransomed souls ; until 
 at length, overcoming every obstacle by prudence, 
 sagacity, and patience, and protected by the Divine 
 arm, he accomplished a journey unparalleled in the 
 annals of modern enterprise, and stood within the 
 .walls of the capital. And now, after twenty years 
 of toil and suffering, he began to reap in joy what 
 he had sown with tears. 1 
 
 It was truly a wonderful sight, this stranger from 
 a far distant land, without money and without friends, 
 except such as were not clothed in mortal shape, esta- 
 blished not only in Pekin, but within the very walls 
 of the imperial palace. His human science he will- 
 ingly applied to the service of the emperor, stipulat- 
 
 1 " Few men ever lived," says one of the most unscrupulous 
 of Protestant writers, " who did so much within a short space of 
 
 time as this Jesuit It will scarcely be credited that at his 
 
 death there existed in Keang-nan province alone thirty churches." 
 G-utzlaff, China Opened, vol. ii. ch. xv. p. 229. In the next 
 reign he admits " there were few large cities where some Chris- 
 tians might not be found," p. 230. 
 
, CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 1 1 
 
 ■ing only that it should be given without reward ; but 
 he had another and a higher work to do, and to this 
 all the energies of his soul were now devoted. /Amongst 
 other eminent converts, attracted by his holy life and 
 luminous teaching, was the mandarin Paul Seu, who 
 held one of the highest offices in the state, and of 
 whose granddaughter Candida it is recorded, that 
 " during thirty -four years of widowhood she imitated 
 perfectly those holy widows whose character St. Paul 
 has described to us, founded thirty churches in her 
 own part of the country, and caused nine others to 
 be built in different provinces of the empire." 1 The 
 emperor himself was so struck with her Christian 
 graces, that he sent her a magnificent present, and 
 conferred upon her by a special decree the title of 
 "the virtuous woman." In 1605 three princes of the 
 imperial family were baptised at Peking, on the feast 
 of the Epiphany, and received the names of Melchior, 
 Gaspard, and Balthasar/ Yet during the very hour 
 in which religion was thus winning its triumphs in 
 the capital, persecution was incessantly raging in the 
 
 1 Du Halde, tome iii. pp. 79-154. "Part of the descend- 
 ants of Seu are now Romanists." Life in China, by Rev. ~W. C. 
 Milne, ch. iv. p. 474 (1858). This Protestant missionary says, 
 that in the province of Keang-nan, evangelised by Eicci, the Ca- 
 tholics " number about seventy thousand souls," p. 485. 
 
12 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 provinces ; and the tyranny of Asiatic caprice sup- 
 plied a rigorous test of the sincerity of the converts, 
 who, as in the primitive ages, increased daily in num- 
 ber and fervour. All the neophytes were obliged by 
 Father Ricci to make " a public declaration of their 
 faith, composed by themselves," as a condition of their 
 admission into the Church ;* a rule which effectually 
 secured an adequate knowledge of the principles and 
 dogmas of the Christian faith, as the almost inevitable 
 sufferings of the converts attested the purity of their 
 motive in embracing it. And now the first apostle of 
 China had done his work. A few days before the ill- 
 ness which closed his life, he addressed his sorrowing 
 companions in these words : " My fathers, when I re- 
 flect by what means I may most efficaciously propa- 
 gate the Christian faith among the Chinese, I find 
 none better nor more persuasive than my death." 
 And, in truth, as a modern writer observes with great 
 reason, " By his public interment, with the emperor's 
 official sanction, he legalised Christianity in China." 2 
 
 Ricci was now dead ; but from that hour, during 
 two hundred and fifty years of almost unceasing per- 
 secution, there were never wanting apostles to con- 
 
 1 See the protestation of Paul Ly, one of his early converts, 
 in Henrion, tome ii. l ere partie, p. 169. 
 
 2 Hue, tome ii. p. 249, 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 13 
 
 tinue the work which he had begun, nor martyrs to 
 consecrate it with their blood. / His death occurred 
 in 1610 ; and only five years later so fierce a storm 
 broke out, that even the Fathers at Peking were 
 obliged to fly to Macao, and for a moment the pro- 
 gress of the faith seemed to be effectually stopped. 
 Yet in 1628 the illustrious Adam Schaal was once 
 more installed in the capital, as president of the 
 mathematical tribunal, the emperor finding his own 
 subjects utterly incompetent to fill the place of Ricci 
 and his companions. 1 In 1631 the Dominicans and 
 
 1 Although the pretended antiquity of Chinese science, so 
 much vaunted by Voltaire and the infidel philosophers of the 
 18th century, has lost all its importance as a subject of contro- 
 versy, the conclusive testimony of learned Protestants is not 
 without interest. " It has been proved," says Mr. Montgomery 
 Martin, " that their early astronomical observations were abso- 
 lute forgeries, as the Jesuits found no one able to calculate an 
 eclipse." China, fyc, vol. i. p. 78. "Their acquaintance with the 
 exact sciences," observes Mr. Hugh Murray, " cannot for a mo- 
 ment bear comparison with that of Europeans." Historical and 
 Descriptive Account of China, ch. iii. p. 225. Even Gutzlaff ad- 
 mits that " whatever their works contain upon the subject of 
 astronomical science is so imperfect, that it would never have 
 engaged the attention of European scholars if the Jesuits had not 
 by their own science elucidated the subject." China Opened, vol. i. 
 ch. v. p. 107. And again, "Whatever is valuable in Chinese 
 astronomical science has been borrowed from the treatises of 
 Eoman Catholic missionaries," vol. ii. ch. xiv. p. 169. I find, 
 
14 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Franciscans arrived, and now the apostolic husband- 
 men began to spread themselves on every side over 
 the land, from Canton to the great wall of China, 
 and even into Tartary and Mongolia. 1 At this time 
 also, the mother of the emperor, his principal wife, 
 and finally his eldest son, were baptised by Father 
 Koffler, and shortly after despatched to Rome, to 
 Pope Alexander VII., the celebrated letter which 
 has been so often quoted, and upon which such great 
 hopes were founded. A few years later the calendar 
 was reformed by the learned Schaal, of whom the 
 emperor was wont to say, " The mandarins ask me 
 daily for new favours ; but Ma fa, who knows that I 
 
 from a careful examination of the map of China, that the astro- 
 nomical observations of the Jesuits fix the position of innumer- 
 able places throughout the whole empire, and range through 33° 
 of latitude and 23° of longitude. The accuracy of their obser- 
 vations is attested by Sir J. Davis, Sketches of China, vol. i. ch. ix. 
 p. 264. Finally, a competent authority thus chastises the most 
 triumphant infidel argument of the last century : " The received 
 chronology of the Chinese is not only not incompatible with 
 that of the Bible, but coincident with it to the extent to which a 
 correspondence might reasonably be expected at such remote 
 periods." History of China, by Thomas Thornton, Esq., Preface, 
 p. xiii. 
 
 1 " The harvest became so plentiful that the workmen were 
 too few to gather it in." The Present State of China, by Plre le 
 Comte, Letter xi. p. 364, English edition (1737). 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 15 
 
 love him, always refuses even those which I press 
 him to accept;" and when he acted the part of St. 
 John the Baptist, and rebuked the monarch's vices, 
 the latter calmly replied, " I pardon your invectives, 
 because I know that you love me." 1 / 
 
 On the death of this emperor, Chun-tche, another 
 formidable persecution arose, during the minority of 
 his successor, Cang-hi ; and the venerable Adam 
 Schaal, at the age of seventy-four, was loaded with 
 chains and cast into prison, together with a large 
 number of converted mandarins. Schaal was con- 
 demned to be strangled, and afterward chopped in 
 pieces ; but it is said that whenever the judges as- 
 sembled to read the sentence, they were forced by 
 earthquakes to fly from the tribunal ; and the af- 
 frighted people, understanding the warning of God, 
 
 1 Du Halde. It is a custom in China that when the emperor 
 has occupied any chair or seat in the house of one of his sub- 
 jects, it is immediately covered with yellow stuff, the imperial 
 colour, and none may henceforth sit upon it. One day when 
 the emperor Chun-tche, the first of the Mantcheou dynasty, paid 
 a visit to Adam Schaal, as he sat down sometimes on the bed, 
 sometimes elsewhere, wherever he found a seat, the Father said 
 to him, laughing, " But where "does your majesty intend me 
 to sit hereafter?" "Wherever you like," replied the monarch ; 
 "you and I are not on those terms." Henrion, tome ii. 2 de partie, 
 p. 376. 
 
16 CHRISTIANITY IK CHINA. 
 
 obtained a reversal of the judgment. 1 But Schaal, 
 exhausted by infirmity and the sufferings which he 
 had no longer strength to endure, sank under the 
 outrages which he had received, and died in 1666. 
 Meanwhile the greatest cruelties were every where 
 inflicted throughout all the provinces, and twenty- 
 five Fathers, of whom twenty-one were Jesuits, were 
 banished to Canton. 3 / The successor of Adam Schaal 
 was Father Ferdinand Verbiest, who, in his turn, 
 acquired supreme influence over the mind of the em- 
 peror, and obtained once more the recall of the mis- 
 sionaries, who were restored in 1671. In that single 
 year more than twenty thousand Chinese were con- 
 verted? and in the following, an uncle of the em- 
 peror, besides many other distinguished persons, were 
 added to the number of the faithful. Father Verbiest 
 continued to enjoy the esteem and admiration of the 
 
 1 Father le Comte says, "The whole land was confounded 
 at this prodigy." Letter xi. p. 369. 
 
 2 " For all the missioners at court were in such favour with 
 the emperor, yet their religion being but barely tolerated, they 
 were always in danger of persecution." Astley's Voyages and 
 Travels, vol. iv. p. 233. 
 
 3 Medhurst, ch ix.p.232. From 1650 to 1664 one hundred 
 thousand Chinese were baptised. The Dominican Lopez, a Chi- 
 nese, afterwards Bishop of Basilea, is said to have baptised twice 
 that number with his own hand. Henrion, tome ii. p. 381. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 1 7 
 
 emperor, the celebrated Cang-hi, one of the greatest 
 men who ever occupied the throne of China ; and it 
 is interesting to learn that the monarch was not only 
 captivated by his science and learning, but deeply 
 moved by the information which he received from 
 spies, whom he had himself employed to watch him 
 in his private hours, and who described to their royal 
 master the holy and mortified lives which Verbiest 
 and his companions led. 1 / Innocent XI. wrote a 
 gracious letter to Father verbiest, in 1681, to. en- 
 courage him in his arduous life f and in 1685, fresh 
 labourers arriving at Ningpo, whose entrance was 
 violently opposed by the mandarins, the emperor 
 wrote with his own hand to tbis effect : " It is not 
 people of their character who should be driven from 
 my empire. Let them all come to my court ; such 
 as know mathematics shall stay near my person, the 
 rest may go into the provinces wherever they please." 
 
 1 A Protestant writer, angry at the success of these apostles, 
 " without whose advice," he says, " Cang-hi engaged in nothing 
 of consequence," tries to defame them, and declares that "Father 
 Verbiest was made master of the ordnance !" Memoirs on Send- 
 ing the Scriptures to China, by William Moseley. 
 
 2 " * Eeckon me, O Lord,' did he often cry out, ' among those 
 who have desired but never were permitted to shed their blood 
 for Thee. Under the veil of Thine infinite mercy, I dare offer 
 my life as a sacrifice to Thee.' " Le Comte, Letter ii. p. 47. 
 
 C 
 
18 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 They eagerly profited by the permission; but in 1688 
 Father Verbiest died, after a life of which it has been 
 said, that almost every moment had been consecrated 
 to the service of God. 1 His eulogy was pronounced 
 by Cang-hi himself, who published a solemn edict, 
 " as a public testimony of his affection towards him." 2 
 
 1 A Protestant missionary says of him ; " His character for 
 humility and modesty was only equalled by his well-known ap- 
 plication and industry. He seemed insensible to every thing but 
 the promotion of science and religion ; he abstained from idle 
 visits, the reading of curious books, and even the perusal of Eu- 
 ropean newspapers; while he incessantly employed himself either 
 in mathematical calculations, in instructing proselytes, in corre- 
 sponding with the grandees of the empire in the interests of the 
 mission, or in writing to the learned of Europe, inviting them to 
 repair to China. His private papers are indicative of the depth 
 of his devotion, the rigour of his austerities, his watchfulness 
 over his heart amid the crowd of business, and the ardour with 
 which he served religion." China, its State and Prospects, by 
 W. H. Medhurst, ch. ix. p. 234. 
 
 2 In his edict he makes the characteristic remark, that " not 
 one of his calculations as to the movements of the heavenly 
 bodies had ever been wrong." It was the science of the mis- 
 sionaries, as a celebrated traveller remarks, which secured their 
 welcome. " The fondness for literature which has actuated some 
 of the emperors is the only reason of their being tolerated." 
 Krusenstern, Voyage round the World, vol. ii. p. 319. "II est 
 demontreV' says a later writer, " que la tolerance que les mis- 
 sionaires eprouvSrent de la part du gouvernement de Peking 
 n'etait due qu'a, intercession de ceux qui 6taient en faveur a la 
 cour." La Chine, par M. G. Pauthier, p. 442. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 19 
 
 /In March of the same year, Fathers Gerbillon 
 and Bouvet were received at court, and occupied in 
 the regard of the imperial philosopher the same place 
 which had been held successively by Schaal and Ver- 
 biest. He obliged them to learn the Tartar dialect, 
 whicb he preferred to speak, and constantly examined 
 them himself to ascertain the progress which they 
 were making in this new language. Three bishops 
 were appointed at this time by Alexander VIII. for 
 Peking, Nanking, and Macao ; meanwhile the great 
 work went on, mathematics being only valued as a 
 device to catch souls ;/and what sort of converts were 
 made by these learned and saintly missionaries we 
 shall see more fully hereafter, but may judge already 
 by the example of Tchang-ta-teou, a Chinese physi- 
 cian, who was beaten almost to death for refusing to 
 abandon the faith ; and when a youth, whose godfa- 
 ther he was, requested to be allowed to take his place, 
 he said calmly, "Why, my son, would you deprive 
 me of the crown which God has prepared for me V' 1 
 
 1 Du Halde, tome iii. p. 128. Father Francois Noel men- 
 tions that many of the Christians came eight or ten leagues 
 every Sunday to hear Mass, and that they assembled in great 
 numbers every Friday to practise deyotions in honour of the 
 Passion of our Lord. "Their austerities and penances would be 
 indiscreet if we were not careful to moderate their excess.'' Let- 
 tres edifiantes etcurieuses, tome xvii. p. 187. 
 
20 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Many of the heathen bystanders, touched by his 
 heroic example, begged, like the soldiers who watched 
 St. Alban's martyrdom, to be admitted to baptism. 
 /in 1702, a noble church, built within the precincts 
 of the palace, was solemnly opened, the first Mass 
 being celebrated by Father Gerbillon. 1 / In 1722, 
 Cang-hi, whom state policy and earthly passions alone 
 kept from obedience to the faith, died at the age of 
 sixty-nine, and the missionaries lost an attached and 
 all-powerful friend. His son and successor, Yong 
 Tching, immediately issued a decree of extermination 
 against Christianity, and in that year of evil omen " all 
 the missionaries without distinction were driven from 
 their churches; more than three hundred churches 
 were either destroyed or converted to profane uses ; 
 and more than three hundred thousand Christians 
 were abandoned to the fury of the heathen." 2 
 
 Such was the closing scene of a century of apos- 
 
 1 When the mandarins remonstrated with Cang-hi about the 
 dimensions of this church, he answered, "What would you have 
 me do ? These foreigners render me every day important ser- 
 vices, for which I know not how to recompense them ; they re- 
 fuse all offices and employments, money they will not touch • 
 religion is the only thing they care for, and it is here alone that 
 I can give them any gratification. Speak to me no more about 
 it." Lettres edijiantes, tome xvii. p. 87. 
 
 2 The history of the period included in this brief sketch occu- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 21 
 
 tolic zeal and suffering. ' A day had arrived which 
 was to be " for the fall, and for the resurrection of 
 many in Israel." But the Cross had been firmly 
 planted in the soil of China, and it was not the will 
 of God that it should again be rooted up. Perhaps, 
 too, it was fitting that a nation which had so long 
 rejected the offer of salvation, should purchase it, as 
 the Christians of the first three centuries had done, 
 by the loss of all earthly goods, and often at the cost 
 of life itself. And we shall now see, that however 
 sublime may be the annals of the early martyrs, they 
 do not surpass, in the glory of heroic faith and love, 
 the more lowly records of the Church in China, nor 
 overshadow the testimony of her unnumbered con- 
 fessors, from the beginning of the eighteenth century 
 to the present hour. 
 
 Among the earliest victims of the terrible perse- 
 cution which now raged from one end of China to the 
 other, were several of the emperor's nearest relatives. 
 From the conduct of these princes, under the sharp 
 trial which now came upon them, we may learn what 
 manner of men were the Christians formed by the 
 teaching and example of Verbiest and his compan- 
 ions. The moment had arrived which was to test their 
 
 pies parts of two 4to volumes in Du Halde's account, and four- 
 teen hundred 8vo pages in that of the Abbe" Hue. 
 
22 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 work. These members of the royal house had been 
 nurtured in all the pride and pomp of the Chinese 
 court ; one of them had even been named as a pro- 
 bable successor to the throne ; the greatest officers 
 of the state had been wont to approach them only on 
 their knees. They were now summoned, not to dis- 
 avow their convictions, about which their imperial 
 kinsman was profoundly indifferent, but only to pay 
 external homage to the state religion. 1 With one 
 consent they refused to touch the unclean thing ; 
 and the whole family, including several brothers of 
 the emperor, were degraded and exiled. Let us fol- 
 low them to the scene of their long and bitter suffer- 
 ings, in which, during a series of years, they displayed 
 such saintly resignation, that by the contemplation of 
 their heroic virtues, amidst poverty, famine, and dis- 
 ease, several heathen members of the imperial family, 
 in spite of the frightful lot their conversion entailed, 
 were brought to the knowledge and love of Christ. 
 
 Prince John, the third in age, wrote thus from his 
 place of exile to his friend and director, Father Par- 
 ennin : " What we now desire, and what you must 
 
 1 " Tous les peuples d'Orient, excepte les Mahometans, croient 
 toutes les religions en elles-m6mes indifferentes. Ce n'est que 
 comme changement dans le gouvernement qu'ils craignent l'eta- 
 blissement d'une autre religion." Montesquieu, De VEsprit des 
 Lois, livre xxv. ch. xv. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IK CHINA. 23 
 
 beg of God for us is, that by the help of His grace 
 we may correct our faults, practise virtue, conform 
 ourselves to His holy will, and persevere to the end 
 in His holy service. This is the only object of our 
 desires ; the rest we count for nothing." And that 
 these were not mere empty words, uttered in the 
 rash confidence which too proudly boasts, " Though 
 all men should deny Thee, yet will not I," is suffi- 
 ciently proved by their subsequent career. " You 
 know not," said another of the princes, whose ser- 
 vant wept on seeing him loaded with heavy chains, 
 " the preciousness of sufferings ; and yet you are a 
 Christian ! Learn that they are the pledge of a 
 blessed eternity. Do not, then, be discouraged, but, 
 whatever it may cost you, continue stedfast in the 
 faith, and never abandon the service of God." An- 
 other servant, offering to cover with linen the places 
 bruised by the chains, which are -said to have weighed 
 seventy pounds, the prince repulsed him, saying, " Did 
 you ever hear that in the night of His Passion our 
 Lord endeavoured to loose the cords with which He 
 was bound, or that He placed bandages under them 
 to relieve the smart % This was the God-Man ; and 
 yet He suffered for us sinners, while we do not suffer 
 for others, but for ourselves." 1 The princesses dis- 
 1 Lettres e'difiantes, tome xx. p. 54. 
 
24 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 played equal courage and generosity in the midst of 
 want and sufferings of every kind, aggravated by the 
 memory of a former life of ease and luxury. 1 " When 
 one reflects," says their guide and counsellor, Father 
 Parennin, "what this illustrious family has suffered 
 during four years past, it is difficult to conceive a 
 more formidable trial, or one which could be endured 
 with more Christian generosity. Princesses of the 
 royal blood, who had always lived in splendour and 
 abundance, fallen to the lowest depths of indigence ; 
 without the support of their husbands, with no rela- 
 tives to succour them, nor friends to console ; having 
 only before their eyes the spectacle of their sons in 
 chains, destined to death, and their young daughters, 
 more hapless still, and whose lot is worse than death ; 
 unable to receive the sacraments, the only consolation 
 which they could taste in the sad condition to which 
 they are reduced ; to endure all these woes, and yet 
 to bear such a deluge of suffering not only without 
 diminution of faith, though so recently converted to 
 Christianity, but without uttering so much as one 
 
 1 " These illustrious persons were sent as exiles into a deso- 
 late part of Tartary ; the princesses were exposed to the hazard 
 of perishing with cold and hunger. Yet in 1736 we find the 
 members of the imperial family still adhering to the Christian 
 religion." Hugh Murray's China, vol. i. ch. viii. p. 275. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 25 
 
 accent of complaint ; must it not be confessed, that 
 even the constancy of the Christian heroes of the 
 first ages of the Church offers nothing more admir- 
 able, nothing more heroic V' 1 Well might Father 
 Parennin exclaim, in the bitterness of his heart, 
 alluding to the honours paid by the emperors to him- 
 self and his colleagues at Peking : " Oh ! for fewer 
 favours to the missionaries, and more justice to the 
 religion which they preach !" He was a competent 
 judge of Christian heroism, and himself a master of 
 the spiritual life, yet he declares that nothing could 
 surpass " the sublime virtues" displayed by these 
 admirable confessors. Promises and threats were 
 tried by turns to seduce their constancy. " You are 
 Mantcheou," said their former friends ; " you belong 
 to the royal blood, and yet you renounce the cus- 
 toms of your fathers to follow a stran'ge law I" But 
 remonstrance and sarcasm, blandishments and men- 
 aces, were equally vain. The members of the Por- 
 tuguese and Russian embassies, who visited China 
 at this period, were filled with astonishment and 
 
 1 Lettres e'difiantes, tome xx. p. 234. Father Parennin spent 
 more than forty years in China, was the intimate friend of 
 Cang-hi, whom he accompanied during eighteen years in all his 
 journeys into Tartary ; and even his brutal successor paid the 
 expenses of a public funeral for the illustrious missionary. 
 
26 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 edification by the contemplation of their virtues, and 
 returned to Europe, declaring that they had found 
 the Primitive Church in the remotest wilds of Asia. 
 But the emperor was as stedfast in his purpose to 
 conquer, as they in their resolution to endure. Furi- 
 ous at the calm patience which baflled all his efforts, 
 he now ordered them to be removed from their place 
 of exile, and shut up, one by one, in small prisons, 
 six feet by ten. Into these dens their daily allowance 
 of food, barely sufficient to maintain life, was intro- 
 duced through a small aperture, by which alone they 
 had a semblance of intercourse with the outer world. 
 Nothing but reverence for the memory of Cang-hi 
 saved them from still more atrocious treatment ; but 
 already they were beginning to sink under their pro- 
 tracted miseries, and in a few days one of the princes, 
 when visited by the guard, was found lifeless on the 
 floor of his prison. One by one they died, Jesus 
 being the last word on their lips. 1 A little while, 
 and all would have been added to the army of mar- 
 
 1 It is a lesson full of significance for persecutors, and a not- 
 able illustration of the character and success of the Catholic 
 missionaries, that during the very crisis of this merciless perse- 
 cution, eleven hundred and fifty-seven persons were baptised in 
 fhe single province of Peking, and multitudes in other parts of 
 the empire. In 1740, Father Gaubil could report that there were 
 more than fifty thousand Christians in the province of Peking. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 27 
 
 tyrs ; but at this moment the hand of God was 
 stretched forth, and in 1735 Yong-tching was called 
 to his account, and his son Kien-long reigned in his 
 stead. The first act of the new emperor was to re- 
 lease the surviving princes, who had now been, as it 
 were, buried alive for more than twelve years. The 
 people, capricious even in their crimes, and not al- 
 ways incapable of noble instincts, welcomed them 
 with acclamations, and knelt with respect, as the 
 noble band, of whom one was the tenth son of their 
 great king Cang-hi, passed on their way to the palace 
 from which they had been so long banished. But the 
 hopes which their release awakened were of short du- 
 ration. Kien-long, though naturally humane, was un- 
 willing to bring shame on his father, and once more 
 the decree went forth to persecute the Christians. 
 
 " All, except a very small number," says one who 
 stood by them in this hour of darkness, " who were 
 intimidated by the apparatus of torture, displayed 
 heroic constancy amid the most cruel torments. In 
 Vain they beat their faces with rods till they were 
 covered with blood, or stretched them on the ground 
 and lacerated them with whips and sticks ; they 
 answered constantly, " We will live and die Chris- 
 tians." 1 Their very judges were filled with involun- 
 1 Lettres e'difiantes, tome xx. p. 333. 
 
28 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 tary admiration, and suggested to them, with ignor- 
 ant kindness, to apostatise with their lips only, while 
 they preserved their religion in their hearts. Many 
 of their speeches before the tribunals equal any thing 
 in the annals of Christianity. One of them being 
 held by the head and feet before his torture, said 
 with a smile, " You need not fear that I shall move ; 
 a Christian is too happy to suffer for his faith." Then 
 his trial commenced ; but " the mandarin was weary 
 of tormenting the neophyte, before the latter was of 
 enduring the anguish." And when it was over, there 
 came to him his mother, who seeing him all muti- 
 lated and covered with blood, fondly embraced him, 
 and exclaimed with joy, " Come, let us hasten to thank 
 God for the favours which He has shown you." An- 
 other, who was a mass of wounds, and incapable of 
 movement, answered with a noble pleasantry an aged 
 heathen relative, who threatened to die at his feet if 
 he would not apostatise, " I should be very sorry for 
 your death ; but at all events, in my present state, 
 they can hardly suspect me of having caused it." 1 
 And these are only specimens of hundreds of similar 
 cases, during nearly two centuries. 
 
 But we are still only at the beginning of that 
 long history, of which every chapter is written in 
 1 Lettres kdifiantes, tome xx. p. 351. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 29 
 
 blood, and which illustrates, perhaps more vividly 
 than any other, the power and majesty of true reli- 
 gion ; a history in which even the humblest actors, 
 not princes only, but beggars, boatmen, women, 
 and even children, 1 display the calm dignity of 
 heroes, and perform deeds as lofty and sublime as 
 ever were inspired by Christian faith. Hardly had 
 one storm of persecution subsided before another 
 •burst forth. 'In 1737, fresh orders were given 
 to summon the Christians before the tribunals 
 throughout the whole breadth of the empire. It 
 would be difficult to give even the most meagre 
 summary of the events which now ensued, the de- 
 tails of which have furnished matter for many vol- 
 umes ; yet it is equally impossible to leave them 
 altogether unnoticed. In this new persecution, the 
 second of the reign of Kien-long, some Christians 
 fell into a crafty snare prepared by the mandarins, 
 by consenting to declare that they would not " again 
 enter into the Christian religion;" a promise which 
 they excused to their own conscience by the secret 
 interpretation, that they would not be baptised again. 
 Such artifices appear to have been continually in- 
 vented by their subtle enemies, when they found 
 
 1 See Eorhbacher, Histoire de VEglise Catholique, tome xxviii. 
 livre xci. p. 470. 
 
30 CHRISTIANITY IK CHINA. 
 
 that they were not to be overcome by open violence ; 
 but all who were thus compromised, being treated 
 by their brethren as apostates, confessed their fault, 
 and offered to return immediately to the tribunals 
 and retract their declaration. 1 Again, in 1746, an- 
 other persecution, more merciless than any which 
 had preceded it, was kindled in every province. 
 " On every side," writes one who bravely accepted 
 his own portion of it, " are heard the groans of the - 
 Christians ; every where they are bound in fetters or 
 put to the torture ; every where they seek to force 
 them, by every species of cruelty, to renounce Jesus 
 Christ."/ Yet the noble-hearted missionaries, who 
 were in the thick of the battle, far from shrinking 
 under a trial which they had come so great a dis- 
 tance to seek and to brave, only express their loving 
 compassion for their less fortunate brethren who 
 could not share their perils ! And even the feeblest 
 of their spiritual children generously emulated the 
 example of their apostolic guides. A girl of nine- 
 teen, when brought before the tribunal, showed such 
 unearthly joy in her countenance at the thought of 
 confessing the name of Jesus, that the enraged man- 
 darin exclaimed, " Knowest thou not that I have 
 power to condemn thee to death 1" " Here is my 
 1 Lettres edifiantes, tome xxii. p. 287. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IK CHINA. 31 
 
 head," replied the Christian maiden, " you can order 
 it to be cut off; but for me it will be unspeakable 
 happiness to lay down my life." 1 The heathen un- 
 derstood from such examples, that if they would 
 effectually scatter the flock, they must first " smite 
 the shepherds." Search was every where made for 
 the missionaries, who, though eagerly aspiring to 
 martyrdom, obeyed the injunction of their divine 
 Master, and ventured not to seize the crown till His 
 own hand offered it to them. 2 ) Father Alcober 
 was the first seized, and the first tortured. When 
 the obscene pagans addressed to him impure inter- 
 rogatories, he answered with a loud voice, " Ques- 
 tions worthy of a minister of Satan do not deserve 
 any reply." 3 Fathers Royo, Serrano, and Diaz were 
 
 1 Lettres e'dif, tome xxiii. p. 46. 
 
 2 "We know," says a Chinese bishop and confessor, Mgr. 
 Eizzolati, in 1845, "that it is not permitted to anticipate the 
 designs of Providence, without a special impulse of Divine grace, 
 nor unless one is mercifully predestined to receive the palm 
 of martyrdom.'' Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, vol. vii. 
 p. 257, English edition. 
 
 3 These questions referred to female converts who had con- 
 secrated themselves to a life of chastity. " Who advised you,'' 
 they said, on the same occasion, to a young woman, " to embrace 
 virginity 1" " Myself," she replied ; and she was immediately 
 consigned to the torturers. An incident is related of Father 
 Alcober, which reminds one of similar tales often narrated, 
 
32 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 captured in succession, and horribly tortured. I The 
 first confessed that he had been thirty years in 
 China; the two last were consigned to the execu- 
 tioners without even a question. But it was the 
 Bishop, the venerable Sanz, who was the special 
 object of their search. To save the Christians the 
 vexations and sufferings which they endured in their 
 generous attempts to conceal him, he considered it 
 his duty to give himself up ; and having addressed 
 the tribunal with the fire and zeal of an apostle, he 
 received at once twenty-five blows in the face, which 
 were afterwards increased, in spite of his venerable 
 [age, to ninety-five; 1 and finally, after an apostolate 
 of thirty years, he was martyred, on the 26th of 
 May 1747.' His last words to the executioner were, 
 " My friend, I am going to heaven ; would that I 
 could take you with me !" His blood was collected, 
 
 and always received with avidity, in our own country. They 
 found in his house a chest of bones. The heathen said, "These 
 are the bones of children whom he has killed." The mandarins 
 appointed a commission to examine them, who reported that 
 they were the bones of a man. They were, as the reader has no 
 doubt anticipated, the relics of a former missionary. Lettres 
 idifiantes, tome xxiii. p. 59. 
 
 1 In this torture the head was turned back over the shoul- 
 ders, and the face violently struck with a bamboo. It was a 
 common thing for the sufferer to faint at the first blow. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 33 
 
 according to custom, by a famous brigand and male- 
 factor, who afterwards became, no doubt through the 
 prayers of the martyr, a fervent Christian. 1 
 
 But the heathen themselves have furnished their 
 own record of this celebrated persecution. The vice- 
 roy, by whose supreme authority these deeds were 
 done, in his official report to the emperor, complains 
 of the missionaries, as an unpardonable offence, that 
 " as they were conducted in chains, thousands of 
 persons came to meet them, and to serve them as an 
 escort of honour. Many showed by their tears the 
 grief which they felt ; girls and women knelt before 
 them, and offered them all kinds of refreshments. 
 Every one wished to touch their clothes. A young 
 man named Tching-sieou had the impudence to put 
 himself at the head of this multitude, and to exhort 
 them, saying, amongst other things, — It is for God 
 that you suffer ; let not death itself overcome you." 2 
 In this terrible persecution, however, some aposta- 
 tised, as Christians did even in the first ages, unable 
 
 1 The sentence pronounced against Bishop Sanz contained 
 the following passage : " The number of those whom he has 
 already perverted is so great, that to whatever side we turn in 
 this district, there is nothing else to be seen ; and what is more, 
 the very members of the tribunals, and even the soldiers, are 
 devoted to him." Annals, vol. ix. p. 309. 
 
 2 Lettres edif., tome xxiii. p. 72. 
 
 D 
 
34 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 to bear the torment. Yet one of the missionaries 
 calls them " apostates only for a moment," and speaks 
 of their subsequent public penance as "resembling 
 that of the primitive Christians." Meanwhile their 
 guides and masters in the Way of the Cross failed 
 them not; and if they invited them to suffer for 
 Jesus, first showed them, by their own example, how 
 to do so. To Father Beuth the presiding mandarin 
 said, " What sort of a God is He whom you wish 
 people to adore V "He who created the heavens 
 and the earth." " Oh, the wretch ; as if the heavens 
 and the earth were created ! Give him ten blows." 
 Then writing the Holy Name in Chinese characters, 
 he asked the confessor whose name it was. " The 
 name of the second Person of the blessed Trinity, 
 who became Man for our salvation." " Ten blows 
 more," shouted the mandarin ; and the same punish- 
 ment was a third time repeated, when the bleeding 
 victim once more proclaimed with unfaltering lips 
 the titles of his God and Saviour. Two months after 
 he died of his wounds ; his only delight in his last 
 moments being to hear the Passion of our Lord read 
 to him by his fellow-prisoners. 
 
 From that hour the missionaries fell fast ; but as 
 each victim left a space in the ranks, another hurried 
 forward to fill it. I On the 12th of September 1748, 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 35 
 
 FF. Tristan de Attermis and Joseph Henriquez were 
 strangled in prison, after repeated tortures; and on 
 the 28th of October, four Dominican fathers joyfully 
 embraced together the same fate. Nor did the flock 
 for whom these apostolic shepherds laid down their 
 life cease to prove worthy of them, /in 1766, we 
 find a holy missionary exclaiming, with grateful ad- 
 miration, " With what courage does not God inspire 
 these Asiatics, so pusillanimous by nature, in order 
 to render them constant under a ceaseless perse- 
 cution !" and he continues to say, " What innocence 
 in the great majority ! who, without even the oppor- 
 tunity of exercising the duties of their religion, since 
 they cannot so much as see a missionary, never fall 
 into apostasy, and carefully cause their children to 
 be baptised." 1 
 
 1 Lettres, t. xxiii. p. 483. It would be easy to fill a volume 
 with examples of their constancy. An old Tartar officer told 
 Father Parennin of a company of Christians living near the 
 great wall of China, who had received baptism twenty years 
 before, and to whom he had himself acted as lay chaplain dur- 
 ing a long period. " I assemble these Christians in my house on 
 festival-days ; we pray together, and I give them notice of the 
 days of abstinence and fasting : all are eager for the happiness of 
 seeing a missionary, in order to hear Mass, and partake of the 
 sacraments. Most of them have seen none for twelve years." 
 Lettres, tome xx. p. 15. 
 
36 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 And here let us turn for a moment from China 
 Proper to the kingdom of Tong-king, in which the 
 trials of the Christians were, if possible, still heavier, 
 and their triumphs still more glorious, than those 
 which have been already noticed. 
 
 The mission of Tong-king was founded in 1627, 
 by Father Alexander de Rhodes, who spent twenty- 
 five years in incessant toil and suffering, and who 
 twice refused the dignity of the episcopate with such 
 earnest humility that the Holy See was constrained 
 to give way. Who can number the labours of this 
 great apostle 1 ? who himself baptised two hundred idol- 
 atrous priests, a sister of the king, and seventeen of 
 his near relations. In less than three years he and 
 his companion, Father Antony Marque's, had bap- 
 tised nearly six thousand persons, and amongst them 
 several bonzes of great repute with their country- 
 men, who became catechists, and "rendered incal- 
 culable services to the missionaries in the preaching 
 of the Gospel." 1 But by the influence of the king's 
 wives, wbo trembled lest the monarch should em- 
 brace a doctrine which condemned polygamy; and 
 by the arts of the heathen priests, who feared the 
 downfall of their own lucrative imposture, — they 
 were both banished from the realm. Yet in the fol- 
 1 Lettres, tome xvi. p. 3. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 37 
 
 lowing year, entering the kingdom again by stealth, 
 they found that their fervent catechists had in their 
 absence prepared four thousand neophytes for the 
 reception of the sacraments. And the work so auspi- 
 ciously begun went on and prospered. In 1639 there 
 were already 82,500 Christians, and seventy-two vil- 
 lages in which there were hardly any pagans left. 
 In the two years 1645 and 1646, twenty-four thou- 
 sand Tong-kinese were baptised ; and within half a 
 century the almost incredible number of two hundred 
 thousand converts had been won to Christ. 1 Then 
 that awful persecution arose which has never ceased 
 from that hour, and which was destined to try, but 
 not to exhaust, the faith and courage of these afflicted 
 Christians. When Father Le Royer, and his com- 
 panion Father Paregaud, secretly entered the king- 
 dom, on the 22d of June 1692, they found that 
 great numbers, by whom they were received with 
 
 1 Henrion, tome ii. 2 de partie, p. 390. When De Khodes, 
 who died in Persia on the 5th of November 1660, visited Ma- 
 lacca in 1645, it was in the power of the Dutch. "Alas ! our 
 church, dedicated to the glorious Mother of God, in which the 
 great Saint Xavier had so often preached, was now abandoned 
 to the preaching of the heretics, who vomit a thousand blas- 
 phemies against the Virgin and the saints.'' At Java, the Dutch 
 shut him up in prison for offering the Holy Sacrifice in a private 
 house. Id., tome ii. p. 394. 
 
38 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 transports of enthusiasm, had not been able to ap- 
 proach the sacraments for a long period of years. 
 " I pass whole days," says the former, in a letter to 
 his brother, M. Le Royer des Arsix, "either concealed 
 in a boat, which I only quit at night to visit the vil- 
 lages by the river -side, or hidden in some retired 
 house." He always celebrated the holy sacrifice of 
 the Mass before daybreak, and then returned to 
 spend the long hours of the coming day in his place 
 of concealment. Such a life could only have been 
 supported by the supernatural charity and patience 
 which seem to have always distinguished in a pecu- 
 liar manner the gifted but humble Fathers of the 
 Society of Jesus. And such a life they have wil- 
 lingly led, not only in China, but, as we shall see 
 hereafter, in almost every quarter of the globe, — 
 wherever souls were to be saved. 1 With this object, 
 
 1 " Peuples des extremity de POrient, votre heure est venue. 
 ... A qui doit-on cette gloire et cette benediction de nos jours 1 
 A la compagnie de Jesus. 1 ' Fenelon, Sermon pour la Fete de 
 I'JEpiphanie, 1685. " Et vous, ceUSbre compagnie, qui ne portez 
 pas en vain le nom de J&us, a qui Dieu a donne" vers la fin des 
 temps des docteurs, des ap&tres, des evangglistes, arm de faire 
 eclater par tout l'univers, et jusque dans les terres les plus incon- 
 nues, la gloire de l'Evangile; ne cessez d'y faire servir, selon 
 votre sainte institution, tous les talents de l'esprit, de l'61oquence 
 la politesse, la literature." Bossuet, 3*""' Sermon pour la Fete de 
 la Circoncision, — CEuvres, tome iii, p. 706. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 39 
 
 and to declare among the heathen the glory of that 
 Name which they adored with such ardent love, they 
 put on the crown of thorns, and went forth bearing 
 the Cross under which they lived and died. But let 
 us return to the story of their labours and triumphs. 
 
 In 1694 Father Le Royer had himself baptised 
 467 adults; in 1695, 435 ; and in 1696, in spite of 
 the horrible persecution then raging, 218 adults ; in 
 1697, 247 ; and in 1698, 310. " Many of our Fa- 
 thers," he writes, " have had a larger number of bap- 
 tisms and of confessions than myself/' 1 Let us pass 
 on at once to the persecution of 1721, still more 
 fierce and unsparing than any which had preceded 
 it, and the effects of which sufficiently revealed what 
 sort of Christians these were whom the prospect of 
 suffering and death did not deter from embracing the 
 faith, nor the dread reality persuade to abandon it. 
 
 All the tribunals throughout the land were once 
 more thronged with Christians brought up for judg- 
 ment. Luke Thu, a venerable old man, is first com- 
 manded to trample on the Cross. Lifting it up from 
 the ground, in the sight of the raging crowd, he 
 pressed it to his bosom, and exclaimed : " My Lord 
 and my God, Thou who piercest the thoughts of all 
 hearts knowest the secrets of mine : but I desire that 
 1 Lettres, tome xvi. p. 18. 
 
40 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 they should be known to these also, who think to dis- 
 may me by their threats, that they may understand 
 that neither the most cruel torments nor the most 
 appalling death can ever separate me from Thy 
 love/' 1 
 
 Let Christians say whether there is any thing 
 even in the primitive ages to surpass such a scene 
 as this ; and let them confess that the right hand of 
 the Most High was indeed guiding and upholding 
 both the apostles who could fashion such converts, 
 and the converts who could so profit by their teach- 
 ing. It is pleasant to hear that the majesty of the 
 brave old confessor overawed even the tigers who 
 had assembled to judge him ; and for that day he 
 was sent back to prison. But he had merited, and 
 was still to receive, the crown of martyrdom. 
 
 As yet, however, thanks to the diligent and loving 
 care of their neophytes, not one of the missionaries 
 had been seized ; and the tyrant Chua knew no re- 
 pose till this had been accomplished. The first vic- 
 tims were Fathers Francis Buccharelli and John Bap- 
 tist Messari, both already worn out with disease and 
 toil; for, like all their brethren,, their life was a daily 
 martyrdom. In vain some of the higher officers of 
 the king, cognisant of their pure and holy lives, 
 1 Lettres, tome xvi. p. 41. 
 
CHRISTIANITY W CHINA. 41 
 
 pleaded in their favour, declaring them " irreproach- 
 able in their conduct." Father Messari sunk to rest 
 in prison, before the knife or the brand could be ap- 
 plied ; while his noble companion, Father Buccharelli, 
 accompanied by a triumphant escort of ten of his 
 own converts, was led to martyrdom. They marched 
 together to death, gaily singing psalms and hymns, 
 and radiant with spiritual joy. The heathen, we are 
 told, remarked with astonishment that a flock of birds 
 of pure white plumage, unknown in that country, 
 hovered over their heads, often resting on that of 
 Father Buccharelli. " If the God of these Christians 
 is so powerful," they said to one another, " why does 
 He not command these birds to carry His adorers up 
 into the air V' 1 Amongst the company was the aged 
 Luke Thu ; and when the crowd, compassionating 
 his venerable years, would fain have pushed him back 
 in order to spare his life, he answered : " Not so ; 
 these are my brothers." 
 
 On the 12th of January 1737, a great spectacle 
 was exhibited to men and angels. Fathers Alvarez, 
 Cratz, D'Abreu, and Da Cunha, — three of them mem- 
 bers of noble houses, but far more noble by virtue 
 than by lineage, — suffered martyrdom at the same 
 moment. So bright with grace and unearthly joy 
 1 Lettres, tome xvi. p. 59. 
 
42 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 was the countenance of the latter as he walked to 
 the place of execution, that a mandarin, unable to 
 comprehend such unseasonable rapture, cried out with 
 angry contempt : " This foreign madman thinks they 
 are only taking him to Macao !" The heathen by- 
 standers also said amongst themselves : " It seems 
 that death is the delight of these foreigners. What 
 kind of a law is this, which teaches men to despise 
 life, and to embrace death with so much joy and 
 satisfaction V In 1750 the same scenes were re- 
 peated. The prisons were choked with confessors, 
 many of whom died of starvation. The vicar-apos- 
 tolic was for eighteen days pressed to the earth by a 
 heavy weight ; and the same torment was inflicted 
 on Father Laureygo and others. But " their hearts 
 were filled with heavenly joy, which illuminated their 
 faces, and excited the admiration even of those who 
 came to gaze upon them." Father Hoppe at the 
 same time was put to the torture, while Father Mi- 
 chael de Salamanque died of sickness and fatigue. 
 Finally, on the 26th of August, all the surviving mis- 
 sionaries were forcibly put on board a vessel, accom- 
 panied by multitudes of Christians, who, in spite of 
 the barbarity of the ruffian soldiers, filled the air 
 with their lamentations, and prostrated themselves 
 to receive the last blessing of the fathers and guides 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 43 
 
 whom they seemed once more to be losing for ever. 
 /At the time of this last outbreak, the Jesuit fathers 
 had more than one hundred and twenty thousand 
 Christians under their charge, the Lazarists eighty 
 thousand, the missionaries of Propaganda about thirty 
 thousand, and the Dominicans about twenty thousand; 
 making a total of more than two hundred and fifty 
 thousand converts in Tong-king alone./ The perse- 
 cution continued after their departure ; and never 
 were faith and love more sorely tried by the Divine 
 permission than in the kingdom" of Cochin -China. 
 But, though some fell away, the great majority 
 were able to bear it, as the event proved. " I am 
 astonished to find," is the testimony of one of the 
 missionaries who succeeded in penetrating the coun- 
 try at a later period, " that the greater part of my 
 Christians make confessions in which I can hardly 
 find matter for absolution. At first I suspected them 
 to be imperfectly instructed ; but the simple manner 
 and devout tone in which they answer my questions 
 convince me of the innocence and candour of their 
 souls. ' my father,' they say to me, ' how should I 
 dare do that against my God, who has called me to 
 His holy religion? May my Saviour Jesus Christ, who 
 died for me, never suffer me to fall into such a sin !' " l 
 
 1 Lettres, tome xvi, p. 194. 
 
44 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 We have now almost reached that memorable 
 and gloomy date, the fatal year 1773, which Chris- 
 tians will recall to the end of time with amazement 
 and grief. In this year the work of missions to the 
 heathen received a check from which it has never 
 fully recovered, and of which it would perhaps be 
 impossible to exaggerate the disastrous effects. Then 
 was suppressed, though happily to be again revived, 
 one of the noblest institutions which was ever framed 
 by human wisdom, enlightened and guided by the 
 inspirations of the Holy Spirit. What the fate of the 
 heathen world might have been if the Society of Jesus 
 had not been overthrown in the very climax of its 
 glory and usefulness, — when its members were doing 
 battle in every stronghold of Satan over the wide 
 face of the earth, and every where with success, — ■ 
 who shall venture to say % We shall see more fully in 
 the course of these pages what were the bitter fruits 
 of that great conspiracy before which the sons of St. 
 Ignatius bowed their heads in meek submission. 1 
 
 1 The last superior of the Jesuits at Peking, when the fatal 
 edict was announced, wrote thus to a friend : " Let us submit 
 and adore. I confess to you, however, that in spite of the 
 most complete resignation, my heart has received an incurable 
 wound. my God, how many souls will now be replunged 
 into the darkness of idolatry ! how many will never emerge 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 45 
 
 To speak now of China only, where, for a -time, it 
 threatened the wreck and dissolution of Christianity, 
 it is a melancholy consolation to those who venerate 
 the Society as perhaps one of the greatest works of 
 God, after the Church, with which none other can 
 even be compared, to read the following grave and 
 weighty words of a learned and distinguished person, 
 who had not himself the happiness to be a Catholic. 
 " A considerable portion," says Sir George Staun- 
 ton, " of the intercourse which actually subsists be- 
 tween China and the nations of Europe owes its 
 origin, as is well known, to the influence of religious 
 motives ; and was established by the indefatigable 
 zeal and appropriate talents of the early missionaries 
 of the Catholic Church. It is difficult to say how far 
 even the most ancient of the institutions upon which 
 
 from it !" Annals, vol. ix. p. 310. If any thing was wanting 
 to prove how perfectly these holy men were united to God, their 
 conduct at this great crisis, to which we shall refer again here- 
 after, would supply the proof. In less than a century they had 
 given four hundred martyrs to the Church, and from the date of 
 their foundation twice that number. But the immutable justice 
 of God has restored them to their place. In 1846, there were 
 once more 627 Jesuits employed in the foreign missions alone. 
 Henrion, tome ii. 2 de partie, p. 680. In the single year 1848, 
 more than 130 members of the society left Europe for various 
 parts of the world. Ibid., vol. xi. p. 317. We shall meet them 
 
46 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 the fabric of the Chinese government is founded, or 
 the most deeply rooted of the prejudices and attach- 
 ments by which it continues to be sustained, could 
 have withstood their powerful and undermining influ- 
 ence, had they not happened to have lost the support 
 and countenance both of the head of the Catholic 
 Church and of their respective temporal sovereigns." 1 
 
 1 Laws of China, pref. pp. 3, 4 ; cf. Lord Macartney's Embassy 
 to China, vol. ii. ch. ii. p. 159, 2d edit. It is well known with 
 what unavailing anguish Clement XIV. regretted his reluctant 
 condescension to the clamour and prejudice of his age, and the 
 malice of such spurious philosophers as Choiseul and Pombal. 
 Even Protestants have been more just to the society than men 
 who were nominally Catholics. " The Jesuits at one time bid 
 fair to convert both India and China ; and if their career had 
 not been stopped by political events, would ■probably have finally 
 succeeded" India as it may be, by George Campbell, Esq., ch. viii. 
 p. 397 (1853). " No men ever behaved with greater equa- 
 nimity," says another candid Protestant, " than the last of the 
 Jesuits ; and the extinction of the order was a heavy loss to 
 literature, a great evil to the Catholic world, and an unspeakable 
 injury to the tribes of South America." Howitt, Colonization 
 and Christianity, ch. x. p. 141. " Every thing was against the 
 Jesuits,'' says the most upright and illustrious of continental 
 Protestants ; " and yet nothing can be more certain than that a 
 great idea is attached to their name, their influence, and their 
 history. Why so ? It is because they knew what they were 
 doing, and what they desired to do ; because they had a full and 
 clear acquaintance with the principles upon which they acted, 
 and the aim to which they tended ; that is to say, they had great- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 47 
 
 Having reached this critical point of our narra- 
 tive, it may be convenient to suspend for a moment 
 the history of religion in China, in order to contem- 
 plate the first example of that instructive Contrast 
 which it is the main object of this work to trace, and 
 which will be proved, for every part of the earth, by 
 accumulated and superabundant evidence. We shall 
 have indeed to turn back once more to the story of 
 the decay and revival of missions in all the provinces 
 of the Chinese empire. We shall see that the Church, 
 though embarrassed for an instant by the retirement 
 of so many of her best servants, summoned by her 
 creative voice new labourers to the field, and con- 
 
 ness of thought and greatness of will." Guizot, History of Civi- 
 lization in Europe, Lecture xii. Finally, Sir Woodbine Parish 
 has the honour to pronounce one of those memorable judgments 
 which vindicate the innocent, in the esteem of wise men, from 
 the gibes and calumnies of ages. Speaking of the Order in Pa- 
 raguay and Brazil, he says, "A more inoffensive community 
 never existed. It was an experiment on a vast scale, originating 
 
 in the purest spirit of Christianity Its remarkable success 
 
 excited envy and jealousy, and caused a thousand idle stories to 
 be circulated as to the political views of the Jesuits in founding 
 such establishments, which unfortunately gained too easy cre- 
 dence at a time when the public mind was much irritated against 
 their encroachments (?) at home, and contributed, there is no 
 doubt, to hasten the downfall of their order." Buenos Ayres, 
 part iii. ch. xvii. p. 256. 
 
48 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 ceived in her ever-fruitful womb a new generation of 
 apostles, by whose fostering care the Word of Truth 
 has again been borne to the ends of the earth. We 
 shall see the noble family of St. Vincent of Paul 
 spreading themselves over the far East, and watering 
 with fresh showers of blood the parched soil of more 
 than one heathen land. /And if we may anticipate 
 the result of their holy toils, it is summed up, as far as 
 China is concerned, by this single fact ; — that whereas 
 China Proper counted in 1805 only 200,000 Chris- 
 tians, they had increased in 1840, according to a Pro- 
 testant authority, to 583,000, or, including Tong-king 
 and Corea, to nearly one minion,-f-a,nd this in spite 
 of one of the most awful and unrelenting persecutions 
 which has ever occurred in the annals of the Church 
 of Christ. 1 Such is the marvellous revival of which 
 we shall have shortly to notice some of the principal 
 features : meanwhile let us, by a painful effort, put 
 out of sight for a moment these men of God, and 
 their noble work, and turn to others whose real 
 
 1 The estimate for 1805, which is perhaps too low, is that of 
 Sir George Staunton ; Laws of China, p. 176 note. The Abbe 1 
 Hue, about thirty-five years later, calculated them at 800,000 
 and he had visited the missions throughout the empire. " It is 
 estimated that there are not less than 583,000 Catholic converts 
 in China at this time." Around the World, by Commodore 
 George C. Eead, vol. ii. p. 230 (1840). 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 49 
 
 character we shall best estimate from the considera- 
 tion of their own words and their own acts. 
 
 The history of Protestantism in China, which we 
 are now to consider, has been written by Mr. Gutz- 
 laff, himself one of its earliest and most conspicuous 
 advocates, and it is to his pages that we shall in the 
 first place have recourse. He opens his story after 
 this fashion: "Dr. Morrison was the first herald of 
 the Gospel who landed on the shores of China." 1 
 
 Without staying to notice the odiousness of this 
 empty vaunt, or its audacious inconsistency with the 
 testimony which Mr. Gutzlaff has himself unwillingly 
 borne to the success of the great apostles of China, 2 
 it may be well to hear something of the doings of a 
 " herald" so emphatically announced. We happen to 
 possess a carefully executed portrait of him by one 
 who knew the original far better than we can be ex- 
 pected to do. After a suitable eulogy of his varied 
 and eminent qualifications, in which we have reason 
 to suspect a secret irony, Mr. Ellis, a person of some 
 
 1 China Opened, vol. ii. ch. xv. p. 233. 
 
 2 Dr. White, a Protestant American bishop, in his Instruc- 
 tions for the Missionaries to China, says, "You cannot he ignorant 
 that in a former age the Christian religion was extensively pro- 
 pagated in China ; being countenanced by successive emperors, 
 and others of high rank in the empire." Cyclopaedia of American 
 Literature, by Duyckinck, vol. i. p. 301 (1855). 
 
 E 
 
50 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 notoriety amongst Protestant missionaries, proceeds 
 to depict his true character as follows. 
 
 " So strong was his sense of the necessity of cau- 
 tion, so unwilling was he to obtrude himself on the 
 notice of the people of Macao, that he never ventured 
 out of his house"! 1 The reader will observe that we 
 are already a long way from Father Ricci and his 
 companions : we have quitted the region of heroism, 
 and descended to that of comedy. But Mr. Ellis 
 continues. 
 
 " He carried this precaution farther than was 
 necessary; but it seemed better to err on the safe 
 side" ! We shall hear more of him presently ; but 
 perhaps we may already venture to suggest to Mr. 
 Gutzlaff and his confederates, that the advent of so 
 sorry a " herald" as this might at least have been 
 more modestly announced. Trumpets and cymbals 
 were altogether out of place here. Surely the very 
 smallest musical instrument, the faintest sound that 
 ever was emitted by pipe or reed, would have suf- 
 ficed to introduce such a performer as this. Let us 
 continue his history. 
 
 " The first time he ventured out into the fields 
 adjoining the town of Macao, was in a moonlight 
 
 1 Brief Notice of China and Siam, by the Kev. W. Ellis, 
 author of " Polynesian ^Researches," p, 59. 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA. 51 
 
 night, under the escort of two Chinese." 1 The whole 
 narrative, which unfortunately we must pursue to the 
 end, is so supremely ludicrous, that it almost defies 
 serious comment. Here is a man whose imprudent 
 colleagues claim for him the lofty title of " first herald 
 of the Gospel" to the Chinese empire ; yet who begins, 
 and, as we shall see, continues his career with such 
 abject cowardice, that had it been displayed by the 
 representative of a Birmingham hardware establish- 
 ment, or the travelling agent of an American clock 
 factory, he would have been ignominiously dismissed 
 from his functions. Yet this is the person selected 
 for comparison with the sublime apostles and martyrs 
 of China, and styled, by the indiscretion of his friends, 
 its first apostolic missionary. We are compelled, 
 therefore, however reluctantly, to consider with some 
 detail his claims to that character. What Bicci was, 
 and Adam Schaal, and Ferdinand Verbiest, and a 
 hundred more, and what they did, we know ; let us' 
 see how far Morrison was like them, in his character 
 and in his works. 
 
 Mr. Morrison appears to have commenced life in 
 
 1 Brief Notice of China and Siam. He confesses himself, 
 " the Portuguese Roman Catholics at Macao do not do any thing 
 violent against us.'' Memoirs of Robert Morrison, D.D., by his 
 Widow, vol. i. p. 288. The truth is, they took no notice of him. 
 
52 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 the humble guise of " apprentice to a last and boot- 
 tree maker ;" but he was a patient and industrious 
 Scotchman, of moderate talent but adequate self- 
 esteem, and resolved, with the characteristic tenacity 
 of his countrymen, to better his condition. In due 
 time he became a preacher, not a very difficult feat 
 in Scotland ; and his new office not leading to very 
 substantial results, he accepted an offer to experi- 
 mentalise at Canton. He had acquired some know- 
 ledge of the elements of the Chinese language; but his 
 widow, — he was twice married, — tells us, that on his 
 voyage out, "Dr. Morrison sat him patiently down to 
 the Jesuit Harmony of the Gospels, and copied out 
 every syllable of it for Ms own future use." 1 It was 
 impossible to acknowledge more frankly his obliga- 
 tions to the men whom he was now going to teach 
 how to convert the Chinese. His biographer adds, 
 however, the suggestion, — that perhaps " angelic eyes 
 sometimes looked over his shoulder, beholding with 
 growing admiration both the wisdom and goodness of 
 God in thus training the man," by the help of the 
 Jesuits, " who was to unbar the gates of life to the 
 millions of the Bast." As the poor man never un- 
 barred any gates whatever, not even his own, which 
 he always kept carefully locked, " the millions of the 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 134. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 53 
 
 East" were not, as we shall see, much indebted to 
 him, 
 
 Arrived at Macao, his labours appear to have 
 been confined to fugitive excursions " by moonlight f 
 but if he did nothing else there, he at all events 
 " found an object of tender esteem," 1 — that is, he fell 
 in love ; and from this time forth ardent allusions 
 to " my beloved Mary" alternate in the pages of his 
 journal with texts of Scripture dpropos of every thing, 
 and nothing. His manner of compounding the two 
 topics together is worthy of notice. If his wife, for 
 they were speedily married, has a headache, he de- 
 clares that " it pleased the Lord" to support her in 
 some unexpected way ; and if he has one himself, she 
 — not the first, but the second wife — solemnly affirms 
 that he did not "murmur," but that, on the contrary, 
 " his entire acquiescence in the arrangements of Di- 
 vine Providence sustained his mind." 3 " It would be 
 all easy," he exclaims at one moment, " if Mary were 
 well !" but the next, rebuking this momentary weak- 
 ness, he adds, " Patience, my soul !" His soul 
 seems to have been in constant need of these admo- 
 nitions. On one occasion he says, " my mind is in a 
 serious frame, a little depressed, a little melancholy; 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 245. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 294. 
 
54 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 but still holding fast." On another day the entry is, 
 " I have to-day been pretty comfortable ;" but on the 
 next there was a change for the worse in his inter- 
 mittent piety, and he was only " tolerably comfort- 
 able." 1 A little later things are decidedly bad, and 
 he is " weighed down with an accumulated load of 
 guilt." But as all these passages were destined to 
 travel sixteen thousand miles, and to be printed in 
 England, he presently throws off this light burden of 
 sin, assumes a more cheerful character, and rejoices, 
 in characteristic language, to be once more under 
 " the benignant government of Jehovah." 3 
 
 We next find him settled at Canton. " In the 
 close of the year 1818," says Ellis, "Mr. Morrison 
 received an appointment in the Honourable Com- 
 pany's factory, which he has held to the present time 
 
 1 " But for the cause I serve, I would gladly exchange my 
 present situation for any in England or Scotland of 50£. a year.'' 
 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 310. It is really marvellous that the editor 
 of his memoirs did not suppress such words as these. 
 
 2 He always seems as if he were trying to appear religious 
 and could not succeed, and goes into an attitude as if he thought 
 every one was looking at him. ' His writings, and those of most 
 Protestant missionaries, give one the idea of people using a 
 language which they do not understand ; and remind one of the 
 saying of Coleridge : " The newspaper, his closet, and his own 
 person, were alone present to the author's intention and ima- 
 gination." Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 320. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. . 55 
 
 (1834), with credit to himself and satisfaction to the 
 Company, and without neglecting the great object of 
 his mission/' 1 We can easily believe that the " great 
 object" suffered very little from his removal to the 
 factory. Mr. Ellis does not tell us whether the " her- 
 ald" retained his partiality for moonlight walks, for 
 which the suburbs of Canton were probably unsuited ; 
 but he does say that "he gave instructions on the 
 Sabbath to the few Chinese who could be induced to 
 attend;" a labour which apparently left him full lei- 
 sure for his factory work ; for, as his colleague Mr. 
 Milne observes, in his Retrospect of the Mission, " all 
 that the missionaries to China could frequently do, 
 was to address an individual or two, with fear and 
 trembling, in an inner apartment, with the doors se- 
 curely locked." Brave heralds ! none but yourselves 
 could fitly describe you. 2 
 
 And yet Mr. Ellis does not blush to add, that 
 " to persevere under such circumstances," with a wife 
 
 1 Brief Notice, fyc. p. 59. " This station had its disadvan- 
 tages," is the temperate comment of the Religious Tract Society, 
 in their Missionary Records, ch. i. p. 10. 
 
 2 A vehement Presbyterian preacher, moved, in spite of him- 
 self, to honest contempt, calls it "a skulking and precarious 
 sojourn in obscurity and disguise." China and the Chinese Mis- 
 sion, by the Rev. James Hamilton, p. 20. 
 
56 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 and an ample salary, " required no common strength 
 of principle, no faint and wavering love to Christ and 
 love to souls, and no mere transient impulse of desire 
 for their salvation." Alas, that men should so mock 
 God and their own souls ! 
 
 It appears that Morrison's salary at the factory 
 was 5001. a year, 1 which was a decided improvement 
 on " the last and boot-tree" business. 2 It was on his 
 promotion to this income, which to the poor Scotch- 
 man must have seemed almost fabulous, that his 
 judicious biographer makes the following appropriate 
 remarks. " Thus did the Supreme Disposer of all 
 events attest the fidelity of His servant, and make 
 plain his way before him !" It seems to be the fate 
 of these people to be always most amusing when they 
 intend to be most serious, and to fall into hopeless 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 245 ; " which was, after a few years, 
 increased to 1000Z." History of the Propagation of Christianity 
 among the Heathen, by the Rev. William Brown, M.D., vol. ii. 
 p. 252, 3d edit. 
 
 2 He appears to have been also a private tutor, and talks of 
 " a Dutch youth, my fifth pupil." Memoirs, vol. i. p. 293. When 
 he made out his first bill for the missionary society which em- 
 ployed him, " making a total of 920 dollars ;" he added, with 
 scrupulous attention to details, " In this statement I have not 
 included the purchase of candles, which are here very dear.'' 
 vol. i. p. 156. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 57 
 
 absurdity just when they make the greatest effort to 
 be solemn and imposing. 1 
 
 It was now necessary to the security of his posi- 
 tion that this "first herald of the gospel" should 
 acquire a competent knowledge of Chinese, to which 
 he had applied himself with eager industry, but ap- 
 parently with only moderate success. We have seen 
 that his first text-book was a Harmony of the Gos- 
 pels, composed long before he was born, by men who 
 had no leisure for moonlight strolls, seldom locked 
 their doors or had any to lock, and never accepted 
 appointments in factories. He continued, as he be- 
 gan, to profit by the labours of Catholics. " I cannot 
 refrain from inserting," he says, "that I have now 
 the assistance of Chinese Christians of the Romish 
 Church;" 2 who seem to have treated him with good- 
 humoured contempt, but always with civility, as he 
 acknowledges, sometimes even forwarding his letters 
 and parcels to Macao. Elsewhere his journal records : 
 "I read part of the Exposition of the Ten Command- 
 
 1 During Morrison's voyage out, the sailors caught a shark, 
 by the usual method adopted in such cases ; upon which he notes 
 in his journal, with due foresight of its future appearance in 
 print, " The cruelty and fraud practised in catching the shark 
 shocked my feelings." vol. ii. p. 239. One is curious to know 
 how Mr. Morrison would propose to catch a shark ? 
 
 2 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 167. 
 
58 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 ments by the Catholics." His immediate instructor 
 was Abel Yun, "a Roman Catholic Chinese from 
 Peking," and a convert of the Jesuits ; of whom he 
 says, " They have taught him the Latin language, 
 which he speaks fluently." 1 
 
 And now, having made some progress in the lan- 
 guage under his Catholic teachers, he remembers that 
 people at home consider him a "missionary," and that 
 he must do something to keep up the character ; and 
 so, in the words of Mr. Ellis, " this devoted mission- 
 ary tried the practicability of printing part of the 
 Scriptures ;" and then follows another notable confes- 
 sion : " The Acts of the Apostles, the translation of 
 which had been the work of some Roman Catholic 
 missionary, a copy of which he had obtained in Eng- 
 
 vol. i. p. 163. Elsewhere he says, "Eeceived 
 from a Chinese Roman Catholic a present of three small volumes, 
 containing an Exposition of the Decalogue. His younger brother, 
 an intelligent boy, sold me a book of Meditations." Missionary 
 Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. iii. p. 328. 
 His colleague, Mr. Milne, seems also to have greatly profited by 
 the help of Chinese Catholics ; vol. iv. p. 246. Dr. Marshman, 
 of Serampore, acknowledges, with creditable candour, that his 
 " first sight of a Latin-Chinese dictionary he owed to the polite- 
 ness of the Catholic missionary Pere Rodriguez, who had spent 
 twenty years in China." Chinese Grammar, by J. Marshman, 
 D.D., preface, p. ii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 59 
 
 land, was his first undertaking." 1 Unfortunately 
 this, as well as his later undertakings in the same 
 line, was conducted with more ambition than success. 
 What was the value of his translations of the Scrip- 
 tures, as soon as he ventured to leave his Catholic 
 guides, and trust to his own powers, we have seen f 
 while of his grammar a Protestant authority says, 
 " He has perhaps done something to help an English 
 beginner, but his work is rather a record of the im- 
 perfection than of the completeness of his own pro- 
 gress." 3 
 
 1 Brief Notice, fyc. p. 61. " It must not be forgotten that 
 the Catholics translated the major part of the New Testament 
 into Chinese." China, its State and Prospects, by "W. C. Med- 
 hurst, ch. ix, p. 248. 
 
 2 The character of the various translations published by the 
 British and Foreign Bible Society, many of which are worthless 
 and absurd, will be discussed, with ample illustrations, in the 
 preface to the complete work. 
 
 3 Monthly Review, vol. xcix. p. 469. The director of the 
 Chinese seminary at Pulo-Pinang reports, that " the Chinese 
 themselves publicly declare that even Dr. Morrison understood 
 nothing of their language." Annates de la Propagation de la Foi, 
 tome iii. p. 46. The learned Abel-Kemusat contrasts the ignor- 
 ance of modern pretenders with the accurate knowledge of the 
 Jesuits, " who composed in Chinese in a style equal to the best 
 authors of that country." IS Empire Ohinois, preface, p. xix. Of 
 Morrison's Dictionary, which, as Klaproth told him, was only 
 a feeble imitation of Father Premare, a competent judge says : 
 
60 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 But it was nothing to write books, feeble as they 
 were, and costing the well-disposed dupes in England 
 prodigious sums, unless he could contrive to get them 
 into circulation. There was, however, some danger 
 of irritating the Chinese ; and so he proceeds in a 
 manner perfectly characteristic of himself, and which 
 he avows with a simplicity which does him credit. 
 " As to circulating the books which I have printed," 
 he says, " there is nothing done in this respect but 
 with the utmost secrecy and caution, and in a way 
 that could not easily be traced to me" ! l 
 
 Thus far this valiant herald of the new gospel in 
 China does not attract our admiration, nor does one 
 see how he can reasonably be ranked with the Mis- 
 
 " It must be confessed that it has not only many faults, but 
 that it is very defective.'' Desultory Notes on the Government and 
 People of China, by Thomas Taylor Meadows, Interpreter to the 
 British Consulate, p. 24. 
 
 1 A Protestant writer, whose sympathies were all "in his 
 favour, truly observes, that " Dr. Morrison's labours were not 
 of a dazzling and heroic order." The Cross and the Dragon, 
 fyc, by John Kesson, s of the British Museum, p. 211, ch. xv. 
 Another remarks, that " the Jesuits have never found any dif- 
 culty in circulating the books which they have printed in 
 Chinese) but, on the contrary, they have been obliged, after 
 circulating a large impression, to print a second edition." Me- 
 moir on Sending the Scriptures to China, by William Moseley, 
 p. 22. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 61 
 
 sionaries of the Cross, except on the familiar prin- 
 ciple of naturalists, who class men and monkeys in- 
 differently in the order of mammalia, It is time, 
 however, before we take leave of him, to inquire what 
 success he had in inducing the refractory " millions 
 of the East" to enter " the gates of life." He will tell 
 us himself. 
 
 " On the Lord's day I have preached to the Chi- 
 nese in my own house," — they were apparently his 
 servants, 1 — " but I have not to rejoice over them as 
 converted to God." Yet in the next sentence he 
 tells of four Catholic missionaries just banished from 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 298. The devices of Protestant mission- 
 aries to obtain a congregation are sometimes ingenious. Bishop 
 Courvezy, Vicar- Apostolic of Siam, relates, in 1838, of those at 
 Bankok : " They print and distribute tracts, but do not make 
 a single proselyte. By distributing medicines they contrive to 
 collect together a certain number on Sundays. The way they 
 manage the matter is as follows : all those who come for reme- 
 dies on the Saturday are told that they shall have them if they 
 come at a certain hour on the following morning. When they 
 arrive the next day, the ministers take care to have a breakfast 
 provided for them, after which they receive instructions from a 
 catechist who is still a Pagan, say some prayers, and are then 
 invited to eat again. At length the medicines are distributed, 
 when they who came for them depart; never again, perhaps, to 
 make their appearance. I have received these details from two 
 Chinese, who once attended the meetings, but have been for the 
 last few months fervent Catholics." Annals, vol. i. p. 107. 
 
62 CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Peking, precisely because they, had enjoyed that hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Again ; while he is himself carefully shut up in 
 his house, with the doors locked, and " in fear and 
 trembling," as his colleagues say, he admits that "the 
 Christians here," i. e. the Catholics, " are discovered 
 by their refusing to subscribe to the public idolatrous 
 rites of the heathen ;" even these poor Chinese neo- 
 phytes being more courageous soldiers of the Cross 
 than this pitiful herald of Anglican Methodism. 1 
 Presently he mentions, amongst other similar cases, 
 that "at this time a French missionary, after repeated 
 orders were sent to him, was obliged to leave ; whilst 
 I remained unmolested" ! a Why should they molest 
 him 1 What was a servant in the English factory to 
 them 1 he had done nothing to provoke their anger, 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 165. In 1820, he notices that "four 
 poor men, barbers, at Peking, were seized, and would not re- 
 nounce the 'European religion;'" vol. ii. p: 35. In 1816 he 
 had recorded in his journal that there was a cruel persecution 
 of Catholics in the province of Su-tchuen. He describes the 
 conduct of some of them. " The two leaders, who would not 
 recant, Choo-yung and Tang-gaou, are ordered to be strangled 
 immediately. Thirty-eight, who also refused to recant, are ordered 
 to be sent to Tartary, to be given as slaves to the Eleuths. 
 Amongst these are several women and an old man of eighty." 
 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 435. 
 
 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 209. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 63 
 
 and he knew it : but it looked like courage to allude 
 to the possibility of perils which the true shepherds 
 calmly faced, and which he had taken such ingenious 
 precautions to avoid. 'In another place he says, 
 " there have been edicts against the Roman Catholic 
 missionaries, threatening them with severe penalties ; 
 but my name and pursuits are, I believe, wholly un- 
 known to the Chinese government." 1 No doubt they 
 were, — although he had now been there about six 
 
 years 
 
 / 
 
 The entry in his journal of March 15th, 1813, is 
 as follows : " Present at worship only A-Po, Low 
 Hee'n, A-Pan, and A-Yun. At the beginning of 
 worship they were irreverent and laughed," at which 
 he " expressed his regret," 3 — a little unfairly ; for the 
 whole proceeding must have appeared to tbem ex- 
 tremely droll. /A married gentleman, reading some- 
 thing out of a book, hardly equalled even the pagan 
 idea of worship? i On the 1 8th of April " six were 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 209. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 360. 
 
 3 The attendance of these people " at worship," — and the 
 remark applies to Protestant converts from heathenism all over 
 the world, — reminds one of the poet's " assisto divinis," an ex- 
 pression which, Mr. Tate tells us, some one translated, with 
 more piety than accuracy, " I go to church and pray ;" Horatius 
 Bestitutus. 
 
64 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 present ;" and on the 9th of May he is able to say, 
 "I was mistaken in saying that I never had more 
 than nine," including the ladies of his party, " there 
 were this morning ten persons at worship ;" but on 
 the 23d of the same month comes the sorrowful ad- 
 mission, " I am concerned that none seem to feel the 
 power of truth ;" and again, a little later, " I am con- 
 cerned that my ministrations are apparently in vain." 
 In the following year, 1814, on "February 28th, 
 Lord's day, I addressed five persons, from the 12th 
 chapter of Hebrews. I was myself deeply interested 
 in the subject." 1 It would, however, have been far 
 more to the purpose if he could have succeeded in 
 interesting others. Even twelve months later we 
 find him still " conducting worship with Mrs. Morri- 
 son and Mrs. Milne," the " millions of the East" being 
 obstinately indifferent to the feeble accents of so 
 cautious a herald. And years after, in 1820, he is 
 still saying, "all the new missionaries complain to 
 me of being dispirited." 2 In 1822, we are told once 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 401. 
 
 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 26. Yet Mr. Medkurst, speaking of this 
 very year, says : " In 1820, a French missionary was strangled 
 in the province of Hoo-pih, by order of the government ; and 
 L'Amiot, who had been twenty-seven years in Peking, was ban- 
 ished to Macao. The French monks of the order of St. Lazarus 
 have, however, continued to labour secretly for the maintenance 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 65 
 
 more, "there are few natives on whose conscience 
 divine truth has made an impression ;" though at 
 this very moment, as we shall see presently, Catholic 
 converts were showing the state of their "conscience" 
 in every province of the empire, by gladly laying 
 down their lives for the name of Jesus. /In 1832, 
 after ten years more of costly expenditure, " only 
 ten persons have been baptised ■" every one of whom, 
 it should be added, were immediately taken into 
 employment, for fear of accidents, in spite of their 
 " obscure views," and provided for by " the mission." 1 / 
 
 of the Romish religion in China. For some years they have 
 annually sent two or three young priests to that country, who 
 quietly proceed to the head-quarters of their mission in the in- 
 terior. They have now Catholic communities in all the provinces, 
 and in many there are public chapels, where service is performed 
 by native priests. The mission has two seminaries, one at 
 Macao, and the other in Tartary, beyond the wall of China. They 
 have in Peking a Catholic community, amounting to no less 
 than twenty-six thousand members?' China, its State and Prospects, 
 ch. ix. p. 243. 
 
 1 Several years later, the Eev. Howard Malcolm, who was 
 sent to visit and report on all the Protestant missions in the 
 East, says, " There is no Chinese convert at Canton, nor religious 
 services in that language, nor giving of tracts." Travels in South- 
 eastern Asia, p. 189. And Mr. Wells Williams confirms this 
 candid statement nine years later (1839), when he reports of the 
 few suspicious attendants whom Morrison collected together, " it 
 did not expand into a regular public congregation during his 
 
 F 
 
66 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 In 1834, his journal contains this extraordinary 
 passage : " It is thirty years since I was accepted 
 as a missionary in Mr. Hardcasth's counting-house" ! x 
 Who Mr. Hardcastle was, and why in his counting- 
 house they manufactured missionaries as well as bills 
 
 lifetime." The Middle Kingdom, v. ii. ch. xix. p. 327. And again, 
 " the prospect at his death was nearly as dark as when he landed ;" 
 p. 339. While another Protestant authority throws a still darker 
 shade into this gloomy picture by confessing that "in China, 
 since the death of Dr. Morrison, little has been done." The People 
 of China, by the Eeligious Tract Society, ch. xi. p. 326. In 
 truth, every thing which he or his followers attempted seems to 
 have come to naught. Thus, in the school founded by him, and 
 called by his name, I find that out of a total of twenty-nine 
 pupils, between 1839 and 1843, nine were dismissed for " bad 
 conduct" or " stupidity," three ran away, and eight were re- 
 moved by their parents. Chinese Repository, vol. xii. p. 623. If 
 he establishes a newspaper, it dies with the first, number. The 
 Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 354. The only redeeming points in 
 his history are two or three rare avowals, after he had become 
 independent of his employers, which are certainly creditable to 
 his good sense. Thus he wrote to the, celebrated Dr. Chalmers, 
 " calling his attention to the heartless, cold, and unaffectionate 
 religion of the. Scotch, especially in these parts of the world." 
 China and the Missions at Amoy, p. 11. Or again, when he 
 quarrelled with the London Missionary Society about the salaries 
 of their agents, and " did not hesitate to tell the directors that 
 they acted like unregenerate men.'' Unrefuted Charges against 
 the, Directors of the London Missionary Society, by Andrew Forbes, 
 Missionary in India, Section 1. 
 1 Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 516. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 67 
 
 of lading, is not explained. Almost the last entry 
 still deplores his "small success;" 1 and finally, in the 
 same year, he was made vice-consul, with a salary of 
 13001. a year, "rather an anomalous place for a mis- 
 sionary," as he judiciously observes, though he eheer- 
 
 1 Memoirs, p. 518. His own excuse for not attempting to 
 enter the interior was this : " I think it is utterly impracticable 
 to any but a Roman Catholic missionary, who has persons in the 
 interior already attached to his cause ;" — how were they attached 
 to it 1 — " I don't suppose that the life of a missionary entering 
 the interior would be taken." The Catholic missionary did not 
 stop to discuss that. " I think he would very soon be stopped, 
 chained, and thrown into prison, sent to Canton, and ordered 
 away." Memoirs, vol. i. p. 352. So he prudently avoided all 
 risk, and staid at home. Yet he repeatedly acknowledges how 
 different the conduct of the true missionary was. " Three Eu- 
 ropean Roman Catholic missionaries entered China about a year 
 ago .... there was a great risk of losing their lives if dis- 
 covered by the government;" ii. 431. And again; "There is a 
 native Roman Catholic at the seminary in Macao, who is pre- 
 paring for a mission to Corea. Many have lost their lives there; 
 but this person is willing to sacrifice himself. He offers himself 
 up to God;" i. 403. That is> he imitated, like all his brethren, 
 the holy courage of the first apostles.' An American Protestant 
 "bishop" notices, with extraordinary candour, the contrast be- 
 tween the true and false apostles. "Why i8 it' that we con- 
 template such an enterprise with terror, or reject the idea of 
 it as the product of a visionary zeal 1 Is it not because we 
 have lost the true original idea of the ministerial commission?" 
 Narrative of a Tour in Turkey and Persia, by the Rev. Horatio 
 Southgate, vol. i. ch. xvii. p. 293 (1840). 
 
68 CHRISTIANITY 1ST CHINA. 
 
 fully acquiesced in the anomaly, and would have 
 profited by it without scruple to the fullest extent, 
 only the poor " herald" had run his race, and in this 
 year he died. And so we have no choice but to bid 
 him farewell. 1 
 
 The second herald of Protestantism to China was 
 Mr. Milne, who was apparently both amiable and 
 sincere; but as Morrison himself reports that "Mr. 
 Milne is engaged in preaching to a few Europeans" 
 we need not stop for him. 
 
 The third was Mr. Medhurst, a far abler man 
 than either of the other two, and much too rational 
 to indulge in the vapid and unmeaning cant 
 which was poor Morrison's habitual style. From 
 Mr. Medhurst's evidence, generally given with 
 remarkable candour, some important facts' may be 
 obtained. 
 
 And first, this gentleman, who was a clerical 
 
 1 One characteristic anecdote must be added. When he visited 
 Europe he went to Paris, to the great amusement of the scien- 
 tific men there, who thus notice an incident in his visit. He 
 preached at the Oratoire, a sort of French Socinian chapel, " a 
 sermon, or rather a discourse, which would have been at least 
 as appropriate in a sitting of the Academy, or of the Asiatic 
 Society, and finished this singular homily with a prayer, which, 
 to the great satisfaction of his audience, he thought proper to 
 offer in Chinese !" Journal Asiatique, tome iv. p. 378. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 69 
 
 agent of the London Missionary Society, frankly ad- 
 mits, with a creditable contempt for the prejudices of 
 his employers, both the true character of the Catholic 
 missionaries and the results of their work. He quotes 
 with approbation the generous words of his colleague 
 Mr. Milne, who nobly confessed of Kicci and his fol- 
 lowers, " they will be equalled by few, and perhaps 
 rarely exceeded by any ;" and then he adds, with 
 a kind of involuntary enthusiasm, "they have long 
 since joined the army of martyrs, and are now wear- 
 ing the crowns of those who spared not their lives 
 unto the death, but overcame by the blood of the 
 Lamb, and the word of His testimony." 1 Let us hope 
 that the Saints whom he thus honours may intercede 
 for him, and for his companions, before the throne of 
 God. 
 
 Mr. Medhurst forcibly contrasts, though probably 
 without intending to do so, the invincible courage of 
 the Catholic missionaries with the incorrigible pusil- 
 lanimity of their Protestant contemporaries. "Dozens 
 of Catholic priests," he says, " are every year clandes- 
 tinely introduced into the country :" but " Protestant 
 missionaries limited their efforts for a quarter of a 
 century to those parts where Europeans generally 
 reside, or where the British and Dutch governments 
 
 1 China, its State and Prospects, ch. ix. p. 247. 
 
70 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 afforded protection." 1 And he utterly rejects, with a 
 manliness and honesty which it is impossible not to 
 applaud, the mean and feeble plea which was urged 
 by some, that the former had friends and disciples in 
 the interior, by whose counsels they were aided, and 
 from whom they might expect succour. "The Catho- 
 lic missionaries," he nobly answers, " had once no 
 knowledge of or adherents in China, but went forth, 
 in the first instance, unprotected." 2 
 
 He notices also, though without comment, the 
 apostolic poverty of the same courageous men. " The 
 salary of each native priest," large numbers of whom 
 now minister to their brethren, not only in China 
 Proper, but in Tong-king and Corea, <e is eighty-two 
 dollars yearly" — rather less than 1 71. ! He might 
 have added, if he had known it, that even the French 
 priests, some of whom are of noble families, only re- 
 ceive 500 francs, or 201. per annum, for their whole 
 support. 3 / The missionary vice-consul, whose his- 
 
 1 China, fyc, ch. vi. p. 135. He adds, " Protestant missionaries 
 land frequently on all parts of the coast." 
 
 2 Ibid. ch. xiv. p. 366. 
 
 3 Ibid. ch. ix. p. 245. Father Bertrand, writing from Su- 
 tchuen in 1840, says : " We have no other revenue than the ' 
 alms contributed in Europe for the Propagation of the Faith." 
 Annals, vol. ii> p. 53. And even from the scanty allowance of 
 each priest was deducted " a portion, either for the support of 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 71 
 
 tory we haTe related, would hardly have accepted 
 this as an adequate revenue. Of the Protestant con- 
 verts he prudently says but little, and that little, with 
 his usual sincerity, not much to their honour, Of 
 "one of the first baptised," he reports that, "when 
 told that money was never given, except for work 
 done or goods delivered, he became indifferent, and 
 is now, we fear, gone back." 1 Of another Chinese, 
 the father of Leang Afah, 2 he observes, that "he was 
 so far softened as to worship Jehovah, though he 
 continued to adore the idols of the country"! Of the 
 Protestant college at Malacca, at once the most costly 
 
 the college of the mission, or for providing wine for the Holy 
 Sacrifice, as well as books," &c. 
 
 1 China, fyc. ch. xi. p. 297. " A-Heen is constant in attend- 
 ance to preaching on the Lord's day, but is, I fear, in his heart 
 opposed to the Gospel." Morrison's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 409. And 
 these were the only followers they could collect ! 
 
 2 This was a convert who, as usual, was salaried as a printer, 
 not only by the London Missionary Society, but also by the 
 American Tract Society, who " employed him at Singapore in 
 Chinese printing." America, by J. S. Buckingham, Esq., vol. i. 
 ch. x. p. 196 (1841). Subsequently Morrison used him as a 
 preacher, though he says of his sermons, " some parts receive 
 a shade of colour from his recent paganism." Memoirs, vol. ii. 
 p. 357. I find this entry in Morrison's journal, — " Promised to 
 advance fifty dollars to Afah's father •" vol. ii. p. 71. It was 
 always a question of dollars. 
 
72 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 and the most impotent of Protestant efforts, he gives 
 this account: "the students of the college approved 
 of Christianity, although none of them manifested any 
 decisive evidence of conversion-" and three years later 
 he still writes, — " no instances of conversion have 
 occurred among the native students." 1 Writing from 
 Malacca, in 1819, to Morrison, he says, " Your Chinese 
 congregation is larger than ours ;" and then proceeds 
 to describe its composition. First of the number is 
 Chin, who " is a smoker of opium. He will of course 
 find eight to ten dollars per month very inadequate." 
 It appears, however, that they continued that allow- 
 ance of pocket-money to their interesting neophyte ; 
 who was no doubt very willing to smoke opium at 
 their expense, and even to let them call him a Protes- 
 tant, as long as they paid bim for the permission. 2 
 
 1 China, §c. ch. xii. p. 317. 
 
 2 It is difficult, amidst conflicting evidence, to make up 
 one's mind about the opium-trade in China, though one would 
 certainly not like to be engaged in it. Mr. Montgomery Martin 
 says, with his usual animation of style : " The records of wicked- 
 ness, since the world was created, furnish no parallel to the 
 wholesale murders which the British nation have been, and still 
 are, hourly committing in China." China, Political, Commercial, 
 and Social, vol. ii. p. 260. The question is discussed in its fiscal 
 and economical aspect in the Memorials of Indian Government, by 
 Henry St. George Tucker, p. 158. One Protestant missionary 
 says : "Some of us have experienced serious embarrassments from 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 73 
 
 " He once promised fair to be a Christian," says Mr. 
 Medhurst ; " when in affliction," that is, when out at 
 elbows, " he destroyed his idol ; when restored, gave 
 loose to evil habits." 1 Another of this edifying " con- 
 having the best teachers we can procure stupefied and disabled 
 by the influence of opium.'' Asiatic Journal, New Series, vol. 
 xxxii. p. 329. But another reports, that " the Chinese them- 
 selves affirm that the use of the drug acts as a preventive 
 against disease ; and in this opinion, when smoked in moderation, 
 I am inclined in part to agree with them." Two Tears in China, 
 by D. M'Pherson, M.D., ch. xxi. p. 247. At all events, the 
 Protestant missionaries have discovered that they must not be 
 too closely connected with opium-dealers. " One of these gentle- 
 men," says Sir J. Davis, " some years since, oddly enough dis- 
 tributed tracts from an opium ship !" Sketches in China, vol. i. 
 ch. ix. p. 278. And the intelligent Mr. Medhurst remarks, that 
 " the connection of a missionary with a regular opium ship was 
 found to be disreputable." China, its State and Prospects, ch. xiv. 
 p. 371. If, however, their " converts" use the drug, it is evident 
 that they give .them money to purchase it. 
 
 1 Morrison's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 13. "At Singapore," says 
 the Eev. Howard Malcolm, "where extraordinary efforts have 
 been made, not a single Malay has yet been converted to the 
 Protestant religion ; while the Catholic missionaries, who have 
 two churches there, have effected a great number of conversions 
 amongst the Malays, the Chinese, and others, and assemble every 
 Sunday in their churches a considerable concourse of men of all 
 religions. What can be the reason of this difference ¥' Travels 
 in South-eastern Asia. The only one he can suggest is, that 
 " the Papist missionaries are in general men of pure morals, and 
 live much more humbly." iii. 24. 
 
74 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 gregation," — who were of course all returned to the 
 admiring and agitated sympathisers in England as 
 genuine " converts," — was a certain Lee, evidently a 
 man of talent, who seems to have known perfectly well 
 what sort of people he had to deal with, and directed 
 his plans accordingly. Allowing Medhurst to suppose 
 that he was about to desert him, the latter wrote off 
 urgently to Morrison, entreating him to promise Lee 
 that he should be appointed " the first Chinese teacher 
 in the college," — which is probably just what that 
 intelligent individual aimed at. And it is the Pro- 
 testant people of England and America, the two most 
 practical nations of the world, who pay for the sup- 
 port of such colleges and such converts as these! 1 
 
 1 The history of the Malacca college, one of the most in- 
 structive in the annals of Protestant missions, deserves more 
 attention than can be given to it in these pages. Probably no 
 one knows exactly how many thousand pounds it cost the peo- 
 ple of England and America before it was finally abandoned. 
 Mr. Howard Malcolm says, with his usual truthfulness, "the 
 schools so vigorously and so long maintained, have not been 
 prolific of spiritual good. Thousands who have attended them" 
 (they were all paid for doing so) " are now heads of families ; 
 but no Malay Christian, that I could learn, is to be found in the 
 place." Travels, ch. ii. p. 114. Mr. Wells Williams relates that 
 " Protestant missions among the Chinese emigrants in Mal- 
 acca, Penang, Singapore, Ehio, Borneo, and Batavia, have never 
 taken much hold upon them, and they are at present all sus- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 75 
 
 Mr. Medhurst finishes the letter just referred to 
 with this significant question to his equally afflicted 
 colleague, " Why are we not successful in conver- 
 
 pended or abandoned." The Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. ch. xix. 
 p. 331. Dr. Brown, the historian of Protestant missions, says 
 that " these stations had been carried on for many years, and 
 though much labour and money had been expended upon them, 
 they had been attended with little success, particularly as re- 
 garded the conversion of souls;" vol. ii. p. 264. "The Anglo- 
 Chinese College," he adds, " dragged on for years a languid exist- 
 ence;" nor was it " ever in a state of much efficiency as regarded 
 either professors or students." Ibid. Once they made a desperate 
 effort to arrest its decay by announcing that they would admit 
 " persons of any Christian communion." British Settlements in 
 the Straits of Malacca, by T. J. Newbold, Esq., vol. i. ch. iv. 
 p. 182. But no one came. Finally, in 1842, it was closed, and 
 Hong-kong was chosen as the site of a new attempt. Yet as 
 early as 1824, there were three thousand Catholics in Malacca 
 alone. Annates, tome ii. p. 307 : and Commodore Wilkes notices 
 of Singapore, that although his co-religionists "have not met 
 with any success, the Catholics have already made one hundred 
 and fifty proselytes to their faith, though they had only recently 
 arrived." United States Exploring Expedition, vol. v. p. 396. 
 When M. Papin visited the college at Malacca, in 1834, though 
 the most florid accounts had been sent home of its success, one 
 of the Protestant clergy frankly confessed to him, — " that the 
 enormous expenses incurred in its construction were only so 
 much money thrown into the sea, and that all which had been 
 reported of it in Europe was pure charlatanism." Annales, tome 
 vii. p. 585. 
 
76 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 sions?" 1 to which he does not himself suggest any 
 reply, though he mutters something about " sad dis- 
 union" among the Protestant missionaries. Perhaps 
 the evidence which is still to be offered in these pages 
 may afford some explanation of the mystery which he 
 was unable to solve. 
 
 It is a matter of surprise, and even of disappoint- 
 ment, that so sensible a person as Mr. Medhurst 
 should have lent himself to the miserable delusion of 
 circulating Bibles and tracts as a means of converting 
 people who lined their slippers with the pages of the 
 one, and made a nameless use of the other. In his 
 case it was probably only an act of despair, and a 
 confession that having tried every other method in 
 vain, he had nothing left but this. Besides, the Pro- 
 testant missionaries were expected by their employers 
 to do something, or how should they compose those 
 " Annual Reports," by which alone fresh funds were 
 to be collected, and in which there was usually no- 
 thing true, except the date and the signature 1 So 
 Mr. Medhurst, who would not stoop to manufacture 
 supposititious converts, sent them other food to satisfy 
 the craving of their credulous subscribers. 2 In 1839, 
 
 1 Morrison's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 14. 
 
 2 The character of the reports published by the various socie- 
 ties will be more fully exhibited hereafter, by the aid of curious 
 
CHBISTIAN1TY IN CHIKA. 77 
 
 he says, they had already " printed thirty thousand 
 separate books of Scripture, and upwards of half a 
 
 revelations from the missionaries themselves. Messrs. Tomlin 
 and Kidd, two missionaries of the London Missionary Society, 
 wrote from Malacca, in 1830, to protest against "the numerous 
 errors and misrepresentations with which the Annual Eeports 
 abound." Having fallen out with their employers, apparently 
 about the usual topic of "dollars," they imprudently disclose the 
 whole truth. " Excitement, not principle," they say, " is the 
 leading feature of missionary zeal in England ; and, as a natural 
 consequence, pleasing statements from the missionaries rather than 
 facts are sought after to fan the flame. . . . The want of strict 
 truth in the Annual Reports, and the encouragement that is 
 given to the missionaries to send home too favourable reports of 
 their labours to the Society, — these things cause our hearts to 
 ache. The directors seem to judge of people by what they say, 
 not by what they do. Hence the inquiry is not, what are the 
 labours which a missionary is carrying on at his station ; but, 
 what sort of letters does he write to the directors." Quoted in Un- 
 refuted Charges, <J-e., by Andrew Forbes, Missionary in India. 
 Another Protestant missionary observes with equal candour : 
 " It may not be out of place to caution the reader against those 
 favourable but false conclusions which are too frequently deduced 
 from missionary journals." Journal of a Besidence in China, by 
 David Abeel, ch. x. p. 234. And Captain Parker Snow reveals 
 to us the whole operation, when he quotes a letter addressed 
 to himself by the society which employed him, in which it was 
 crudely suggested to their agents, that " the Society was at so 
 low an ebb that something must be done ; and a graphic and 
 well-written account of a visit to the natives would do more to 
 raise it up than any thing else." Two Years' Cruise off Tierra del 
 
78 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 million of tracts in the Chinese language, besides 
 four thousand Testaments, and one hundred and fifty 
 thousand tracts in the languages of the Malayan 
 Archipelago, comprising twenty miUions of printed 
 pages!" At Canton and Malacca alone, they had 
 got rid of more than 450,000 volumes; at Batavia, 
 of more than 190,000 ; at Penang, of 44,000 ; at 
 Singapore, of 66,000.* It seems that, as they could 
 not convert " the millions of the East," they consoled 
 
 Fuego, by Captain W. Parker Snow, vol. i. ch. xviii. p. 270. But 
 this gentleman had more conscience than his employers, and 
 contented himself with replying : " The whole missionary work 
 seems to me a strange compound of piety and irreldgion. . . As 
 a whole, the system seems to me to be based upon a mere desire 
 to get so many proselytes in so many years, and to fill up so 
 many pages of a book as can possibly be crammed in ; always 
 keeping to apparent truth, though not always to literal truth.'' 
 Vol. ii. p. 314. 
 
 1 China, its State and. Prospects, ch. xiv. p. 362 ; and see 
 p. 590. "In the latter half of the year 1844, the tracts printed 
 amounted to 1,128,400 I" The Tear-Booh of Missions, by Elijah 
 Hoole; p. 188. This gentleman says> that the Baptist Missionary 
 Society alone had circulated, up to 1846, 659,270 copies of the 
 Holy Scriptures, and more than " thirtyeight million printed 
 pages;" p. 16. But this is only a drop in the ocean. A single 
 American society had printed twenty-three years ago, — and they 
 have greatly enlarged their operations since, — "thirty-six miUions 
 of tracts, and nearly thirty-four millions of volumes !" Narrative 
 of a Visit to the American Churches, by Andrew Keed, D.D., vol. 
 ii. p. 161. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. *79 
 
 themselves by supplying them with waste paper. 1 
 On one occasion Mr. Medhurst describes an incident 
 which he witnessed at a place on the coast, — for 
 these " amateur apostles," as one of their own sect 
 calls them, if they put one foot on shore, always kept 
 the other in a boat, — which can only be compared to 
 a scene at Greenwich Fair, and was probably quite 
 as profitable. The people, he says, were tumbling 
 over one another in their " eagerness" to obtain books, 
 of which, in two days, he and his party distributed 
 "one thousand volumes." After a long account of 
 this ludicrous adventure, he adds, with his accustomed 
 candour, " We have been thus minute in this day's 
 work on shore, because, with little variation, it may 
 serve as a specimen of all the days which we spent 
 in visiting the villages." He might well add, con- 
 sidering what all these books cost, and who paid for 
 
 1 " They have been seen on the counters of shops in Macao, 
 cut in two for wrapping up medicines and fruit ; which the shop- 
 man would not do with the worst of his own books." The Middle 
 Kingdom, vol. ii. ch. xix. p. 343. " The cause of the eagerness 
 which has sometimes been evinced .... to obtain the sacred 
 volume cannot be traced to a thirst for the "Word of Life, but to 
 the secular purposes, the unhallowed uses, to which the holy Word 
 of God, left in their hands, has been turned^ and which are ab- 
 solutely shocking to any, Christian feeling'' Bamptsm Lectures for 
 1843, Lect. iii. p. 93. 
 
80 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 them, "the London Missionary Society have pur- 
 chased an interest in China at the expense of many 
 thousand pounds." 1 
 
 And now we must leave Mr. Medhurst, not with- 
 out thanks for his testimony ; and we cannot per- 
 haps do so more appropriately than by citing the 
 following words, in which he seems to have summed 
 up, in the bitterness of his heart, his convictions 
 of the impotence and folly of Protestant efforts 
 to convert the Chinese. " The Christian public," he 
 says, " having got the idea that China is shut, must 
 retain their opinion until we can get men of God to 
 open it." The Christian public alluded to by Mr. 
 Medhurst will have much need of patience. 2 
 
 1 China, fyc. ch. xxi. p. 533. Medhurst confesses, " they were 
 much more interested about our waistcoats, shirts, and cravats, 
 than they were with our doctrine;" ch. xv. p. 396. " They were 
 distributed," says Dr. Brown, " not only much too freely, but 
 much too indiscriminately." History of the Propagation of Chris- 
 tianity among the Heathen, vol. ii. p. 255. " Many could not 
 read," is the avowal of another ; " though they seemed willing 
 to remove their inability, since they accepted our books and our 
 exhortation to learn this useful art at the same time." The 
 Chinese as they are, by G. T. Lay, Esq., ch. xxxvi. p. 338. This 
 is almost as amusing as the Bedouin who received a Bible from 
 Dr. Wolff, and " promised to get it read whenever any one came 
 to his house who could read" ! Wolff's Journal, p. 176. 
 
 2 " China is as open now, and has been for the last twenty 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 81 
 
 /Our next witness is Mr. GutzlafF, a gentleman 
 whom we are obliged to notice, but who shall be dis- 
 missed as speedily as possible. Few men have sinned 
 more deeply, though perhaps more in speech than in 
 purpose, against truth, charity, and common sense, 
 than the Rev. Charles Grutzlaff. 1 / Some specimens of 
 his language, though not the most offensive, shall be 
 
 years, as it ever will be till we strive to enter." Narrative of a 
 Visit, fyc, by Dr. Reed, p. 76. "I am not only persuaded," says 
 the Eev. Howard Malcolm, " that, at this moment, China is not 
 open to the settlement of Christian teachers, but satisfied that 
 Protestants are far from being ready to have it open.'' Travels in 
 South-eastern Asia, vol. ii. p. 196. " When I left China," ob- 
 serves Mr. Lay, " there were at least half a million of natives 
 living within the range of our daily excursions, with whom a 
 missionary might have as many interviews as he pleased." The 
 Chinese as they are, ch. vi. p. 58. No doubt they refuse to face 
 persecution ; but they are just as unsuccessful where there is 
 liberty ; for, as Lieut. Forbes remarks, " perfect toleration is 
 granted to all sects of Christianity in the five ports." Five Years 
 in China, ch. xi. p. 185. 
 
 1 "Probably few men have excelled Dr. Gutzlaff in the capa- 
 city for rapidly inditing sentences containing a number of pro- 
 positions not one of which should be correct. In fact, all his 
 labours are characterised by superficiality and a lack of thorough 
 research." The Chinese and their Rehellion, by Thomas Taylor 
 Meadows, Chinese Interpreter to H. M. Civil Service, ch. xviii. 
 p. 376. Lord Jocelyn observes more calmly, that "his length- 
 ened labours require an appetite for the marvellous to digest." 
 Six Months in China, ch. ii. p. 43. 
 
 G 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 given : they may safely be left, without comment, 
 to the judgment of that portion of mankind in whom 
 reason is not wholly obscured by passion, nor con- 
 science converted into the submissive ally of pre- 
 judice, ignorance, and error. Of the great Ricci, this 
 unwise man ventures to say : " What might not Ricci 
 have done had he dedicated his labours to the Blessed 
 Redeemer V' 1 
 
 It is characteristic of the heedless levity and in- 
 consistency of his class, that Mr. Grutzlaff, almost in 
 the next page, quotes the letter of the Empress 
 Helena to Pope Alexander VII., in which she utters 
 the prayer of her heart, that " the emperor and all 
 his subjects might learn to know and adore the true 
 God, Jesus Christ." Who taught her that name % 
 Who gave her courage to confess it, even from the 
 steps of her imperial throne \ Shall we not say, 
 then, of his words, if not of himself, Mentiia est sibi 
 iniquitas ! 2 
 
 * History of China, by the Eev. Charles Gutzlaff, vol. ii. p. 
 121. 
 
 2 One is ashamed to plead the cause of Saints against this 
 vulgar libeller ; but at least one may quote his own confederates 
 against him. The Catholic missionaries, says Mr. Malcolm, 
 taught " the glorious doctrine of the Divine Unity. The true God 
 was set before the Chinese. Every part of the empire was per- 
 vaded by the discussion of the new faith. Prime-ministers, prin- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 83 
 
 A few pages farther on, this discreet person 
 notices a Catholic Bishop, Monseigneur de Saint- 
 Martin, who, as he says, "testified to Jesus Christ 
 before the mandarins, — a noble testimony, worthy 
 to be recorded. 1 Elsewhere, however, he describes 
 the ministry of the martyred apostles of China as 
 " propagating the legends of saints," — no evil work 
 surely, since St. Paul did exactly the same, and the 
 Bible itself may be called the history of saints,— 
 " and establishing the ceremonies of the Romish 
 Church." Yet, like all her enemies, of whom the 
 Holy Spirit declares, " No weapon that is formed 
 
 cesses, queens, and emperors, became converts and patrons. Thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands saw and acknowledged the truth. 
 True, they were Jesuits ; but that very many of them were holy 
 and devoted men is proved by their pure lives, severe labours, 
 innumerable privations, and serene martyrdom;" vol. ii. p. 225. 
 Another writer, — a Scotch Presbyterian preacher, even more vio- 
 lent and prejudiced than most of his class, and who declaims as 
 if he were supreme pontiff of this world and of several others, 
 — seems quite astonished to find that " some of their converts 
 appear to have been exemplary Christians ;" and that " on the 
 Trinity and Incarnation they are clear, while the perfections of 
 the Deity, the corruption of human nature, and redemption by 
 Christ, are fully stated." China and the Chinese Mission, by the 
 Rev. James Hamilton, p. 15. It would be well for our Pro- 
 testant friends if they knew as much about " redemption by 
 Christ" as they think they do. 
 
 1 History of China, vol. ii. p. 156. 
 
84 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 against thee shall prosper ; and every tongue that 
 resisteth thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn ;' n — 
 he is obliged to bear witness against himself. " While 
 the missionaries," he says in another place, as if some 
 angel had struck him on the mouth, and forced him 
 to devour his own blasphemy, " held assemblies, and 
 instituted congregations in honour of the Holy Virgin, 
 they had also assemblies where the most fervent 
 Christians meditated upon the death and sufferings of 
 our Saviour."* It was because they did so, that they 
 so often found grace to become His martyrs. 3 How 
 
 1 Isaias liv. 17. 
 
 2 Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China, p. 398. 
 
 3 Morrison relates in his journal, that, having gone " on Fri- 
 day evening to the Koman Catholic cathedral," he witnessed what 
 was evidently a commemoration of the Passion of our Lord. He 
 describes what he calls " a representation of Jesus," and adds : 
 " The preacher called upon the people to look at the part into 
 which the spear was thrust, and held out his finger to point to 
 it. In a corner was a figure as large as life, laid in a tomb, and 
 exhibited as the body of Jesus. The people went forward, one 
 after another, and kissed the feet of the figure." Memoirs, vol. i. 
 p. 361. One Ringeltaube, a Protestant missionary in India, nar- 
 rates a similar scene in a church in that country, in which " the 
 coronation of Christ with thorns was represented." Missionary 
 Transactions, vol. ii. p. 414. It was by such sensible and lively 
 images, which St. Gregory the Great calls " the books of the un- 
 learned," that they were assisted to familiarise their minds with 
 the Passion of their Redeemer, and to conceive the thought of 
 laying down their lives for Him. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 85 
 
 many such assemblies have Mr. Gutzlaff and his friends 
 succeeded in forming % how many such congregations 
 have they established 1 what, indeed, have they " es- 
 tablished" except themselves and their families % 
 
 But it is time to show what are Mr. Gutzlaff s 
 own feelings towards the Redeemer, of whom, and of 
 His dearest children, he talks so idly ; and what are 
 his qualifications as a judge of Christian doctrine. 
 There were once, as has been noticed in the begin- 
 ning of this chapter, Nestorians in China. Mr. Gutz- 
 laff, as might be expected, declares his sympathy 
 with these heretics, in order to exalt them above Ca- 
 tholics, whom he hates with the eager instinct of im- 
 piety. " When the Church," says this judge of saints 
 and martyrs, " was rent by the disputes oft. cold-hearted 
 orthodoxy, the Nestorians were persecuted by the 
 other parties ;" — the other parties being the Fathers 
 of the Council of Ephesus I 1 Now the Nestorians, 
 
 1 Journal, p. 389. Even the most extravagant sectaries 
 used formerly to reverence the decrees of this Council, the very 
 students in the Academy of Geneva being taught to say, — " I 
 abhor all the heresies which have been condemned by the first 
 Council of Nice, the first of Ephesus, and that of Chalcedon." 
 Euchat, Histoire de la Reformation de la Suisse, tome vii. p. 291. 
 Yet now it seems to be derided even by men professing what 
 are called "church principles." Dr. Southgate, an American 
 " bishop," who seems to have been a kind of " Puseyite," speaks 
 
86 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 as Mr. G-utzlaff must have known, asserted two Per- 
 sons in our Blessed Lord, and denied the Hypostatic 
 Union, thereby utterly destroying and making void 
 the whole doctrine of the Incarnation, upon which 
 alone Christianity rests. But this is a very small 
 
 of " the Nestorian heresy, if such it must be reputed" ! Narra- 
 tive of a Tour in TwrTeey and Persia, vol. ii. ch. xix. p. 224. Mr. 
 Badger, a clergyman of the Church of England, actually ventures 
 to say, " The Nestorian Church abounds in noble gifts and right- 
 ful titles ;" and only just glances at their "doctrine of the Two 
 Persons in our blessed Lord" ! The Nestorians and their Rituals, 
 vol. ii. ch. xlvi. p. 351. Another Anglican, after giving an ac- 
 count of Nestorian doctrine, asks, " In all this where is there 
 any heresy ?" Ainsworth's Travels in Asia Minor, vol. ii. ch. xli. 
 p. 272. Mr. Ainsworth should stick to his geology ; he is more 
 at home there than in Christianity. The Rev. Justin Perkins, 
 of whom we shall hear more hereafter, though he contradicts Mr. 
 Badger, and declares that the Nestorians " are very degraded," 
 and profess " a revolting form of Christianity," says flatly, that 
 the epithet which the Council of Ephesus gave to our Blessed 
 Lady is "idolatry." Residence in Persia among the Nestorian 
 Christians, p. 303. The Rev. Henry Townley observes of the 
 Nestorian error, " instead of rejecting this as an heretical tenet, 
 or denouncing the Syrians for holding it, we hail it as a point of 
 orthodoxy on which we are agreed" ! An Answer to the Abbe Du- 
 bois, p. 230. Lastly, even Mr. Webb Le Bas, of whom one might 
 have hoped better things, appears to regard "the appellation of 
 Mother of God" as a " blasphemy." Life of Bishop Middleton, 
 vol. i. chap. xi. p. 319. Does the Church of England also reject 
 the Council of Ephesus 1 Perhaps she does not know. 
 
CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 87 
 
 matter with Christians of the school of Mr. Gutzlaff. 
 What care they ahout the honour of Him, of whom 
 they know nothing but the Name, and of whose Na- 
 tures and Person they are so absolutely ignorant as 
 scarcely to heed whether He be called God or Man, 
 or both, or neither. It was the saying of a keen ob- 
 server, whose life was passed among Protestants, that 
 " Calvinists treat the Saviour as their inferior, Lu- 
 therans as their equal, and Catholics as their God." 1 
 Do not expect, then, from Mr. Gutzlaff that jealous 
 and holy solicitude for the honour of Jesus which is 
 born of Catholic love, and dies under the poisoned 
 breath of heresy. For him, and such as him, the 
 anguish which " the children of the kingdom" feel 
 when that sacred Name is dishonoured has simply 
 no meaning; it is but "cold-hearted orthodoxy." He 
 scoffs at the burning indignation which such words 
 as his excite ; and though he cannot even compre- 
 hend why men should be so fastidious about the 
 Person and Attributes of their God and Saviour, — 
 of whom he knows no more than we do of Nimrod, 
 Theseus, or Romulus, — be sure he will have bitter 
 words of malice and scorn for those who do. 
 
 1 Frederic II. to Cardinal Zinzendorff : Dictionnaire des Apo- 
 logistes involontaires, par M. 1'AbbS Migne, Introd. p. 31. 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 When we have heard what Mr. Gutzlaff says of 
 Protestant missionaries in China, we may part from 
 him without further delay. 1 
 
 " Protestants," he informs us, " have been anxious 
 to occupy the outposts, rather than to enter the Chi- 
 nese empire." 2 It might be indiscreet to ask Mr. 
 Gutzlaff, why they displayed an anxiety so very un- 
 usual in Christian missionaries ; nor should we obtain 
 any answer. "In the outer settlements," he con- 
 tinues, "where the missionaries were at liberty to 
 act," — why did they not imitate the Catholics, and 
 act without liberty I s — " they have established schools, 
 
 1 Of course the usual incident in the life of a Protestant mis- 
 sionary, — which, as Erasmus said long ago, " always ends, like a 
 comedy, with a marriage," — is recorded of Mr. Gutzlaff. " At 
 Singapore he formed a matrimonal connection with Miss Newell, 
 whose temper was entirely congenial to his own." Hugh Murray's 
 China, vol. ii. ch. ii. p. 158. The same writer notices that, in one 
 of his voyages, " an individual offered the captain 700?. for Gutz- 
 laff, with the view of exhibiting his person for money" ! Mr. 
 Malcolm appreciates him thus : " To pour annually millions of 
 tracts along the same line of coast ; to go in face of prohibitory 
 edicts, and only as protected by cannon ; and to be at the expense 
 of both tracts and voyage, while so many of the books are yet 
 scarcely intelligible, is at best but a very imperfect mode of con- 
 ducting a mission.'' Travels in South-eastern Asia, vol. ii. ch. ii. 
 p. 194. 
 
 2 China Opened, vol. ii. ch. xv. p. 233. 
 
 3 "Notwithstanding the persecutions that, in every reign, have 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 89 
 
 &c. ; . . . yet the grand work of evangelising China 
 can scarcely be said to have commenced in earnest." 1 
 
 been violently carried on against them by the officers of govern- 
 ment in the several provinces, numbers of missionaries have con- 
 tinued, from time to time, to steal into the country." Barrow's 
 Travels in China, ch. viii. p. 448. 2d edit. 
 
 1 He claims some converts, not in China, but in Siam ! pro- 
 bably because he thought nobody would know any thing about 
 the latter country. He forgot that Providence has its own wit- 
 nesses. " Of the various individuals mentioned as encouraging 
 in the public journals of Messrs. Gutzlaff and Tomlin, none have 
 continued so, or seem particularly friendly to the missionaries. 
 Bunty, who was baptised by Mr. Jones in 1833, and who, for a 
 while, seemed a true disciple, grew cold, and about a year ago 
 left the ministry" — they had made him a preacher ! — " to go into 
 business, not without bitter feelings against the missionaries." 
 Travels in South-eastern Asia, vol. ii. ch. ii. p. 159. A scientific 
 Protestant frankly says that his friends were " toiling in a cause 
 the success of which appears to be almost hopeless." Voyage 
 round the World, by W. S. W. Buschenberger, M.D., ch. xxxi. 
 p. 310 (1838). Another, the Bev. Adoniram Judson, abandoning 
 the scene of his mission in despair, flings to it this tragic fare- 
 well : " Bead the five hundred tracts that I have left with thee !" 
 Memoirs of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.J)., by Francis Wayland, 
 vol. i. p. 503 (1853). And then comes the contrast. " We 
 visited the priests (at Cambodea, Siam), both of them French- 
 men, who are highly respectable men. Besides the descendants 
 of Portuguese, there are fourteen hundred Cochin-Chinese Boman 
 Catholics." Journal of a Mission from the Supreme Government 
 of India to the Court of Siam, by Dr. Bichardson; published in 
 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. ix. p. 237. Again, 
 
90 CHKISTIANITY" IN CHINA. 
 
 And again, " There are ten native converts," — of 
 what sort we have seen, — -" truly a small number !" 
 
 as early as 1822, "the Catholic Christians of Siain alone amount 
 to 3000." Crawfurd's Embassy to Siam and Cochin China, ch. vi. 
 p. 162 : while of the pretended Protestant converts in that 
 country a missionary sorrowfully remarks, " there were no 
 grounds of certainty for concluding that any had been renewed 
 in the spirit of their minds.'' Jownal of a Residence in China, 
 by David Abeel, ch. x. p. 234. Another writer, — for there is no 
 lack of witnesses to show the contrast, — after observing that " it 
 is not to be wondered at, that the Siamese readily give ear to the 
 Catholic priest, bound like their own in bonds of perpetual celi- 
 bacy," thus compares the two classes. At Bangkok " were the 
 domiciles of some seven or eight American missionaries and their 
 families. Three miles down the river was another set of Ame- 
 rican missionaries. The missionaries on one side were at war- 
 fare with those on the opposite bank regarding certain points of 
 Church doctrine ; but as they were all supported by one Society, 
 they were compelled to have a board meeting once a month, to 
 draw up reports, and send in their drafts for monthly pay." 
 Neale's Residence in Siam, ch. ii. p. 34. One of them came on 
 board his ship for " some crackers for his wife •" which not being 
 produced, "I'll write to the Board, Capting, (snuffled the enraged 
 Yankee,) and it will be quite a long day before you bring any 
 more crackers, or any other cargo, for us missionaries — quite a 
 long day, I guess;" p. 26. Such are the illiterate adventurers 
 whom Protestantism sends to convert the heathen : while the 
 Catholic missionaries are described as follows ; " The Catholic 
 Missionary Society at Bangkok, when I was there, consisted of 
 one Bishop and about ten French priests, besides one or two 
 proselyte Chinese priests. Of the former I can hardly name one 
 
CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 91 
 
 Yet he has the effrontery, after these confessions, 
 and many more like them, to exclaim with mock 
 solemnity, " We sincerely hope that henceforth Roman 
 Catholic missionaries may emulate the Protestants in 
 preaching Christ crucified I" 1 — an aspiration which 
 perhaps surpasses in measureless impudence any 
 thing that ever was uttered by the children of folly. 
 But let us hear him to the end. " It is our earnest 
 wish, our constant prayer, our feeble endeavour, to 
 convince our fellow-Christians that China is not in- 
 accessible to the operations of missionaries." Catho- 
 lics, we may be allowed to observe, have been con- 
 vinced of this elementary truth for several centuries. 
 Finally, he calls upon his fellows " to strain every 
 nerve for glorifying the Redeemer ;" which is really 
 a little unreasonable in one so firmly resolved to 
 " occupy the outposts" rather than face the dangers 
 of the interior ; and concludes by saying, " China is 
 open to Christian heroes and martyrs," — as Catholics 
 have proved for three hundred years past, — " but 
 
 that was not endowed with every talent that strict collegiate edu- 
 cation could afford ; and the latter were useful, because, besides 
 being sincere Christians, they possessed the power of expounding 
 the Scriptures to their Chinese brethren;" p. 39. Mr. Gutzlaff's 
 guess about Siam was unfortunate. 
 
 o 
 
 1 History of China, vol. ii. p. 160. 
 
92 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 shut against a weak faith and wavering mind/' 1 — as 
 Mr. Gutzlaff and his companions have taken needless 
 pains to demonstrate to the world. 2 
 
 1 China Opened, p. 410. 
 
 2 Our idea of Mr. Gutzlaffs character is not complete until 
 we have learned that, after all his professions, and his modest 
 advice to the Catholic missionaries to imitate his apostolic zeal, 
 he actually abandoned, for a more lucrative calling, not only the 
 office, but even the name of a missionary. " For some years 
 before his death, Mr. Gutzlaff had ceased to call himself a mis- 
 sionary." Dr. Brown's History of the Propagation of Christianity 
 among the Heathen, vol. iii. p. 371. He found it more profitable 
 to " take the office of interpreter to the English Commission at a 
 salary of 800Z." The Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. 'ch. xix. p. 341. 
 But he seems to have fallen still lower. " Mr. Gutzlaff is at- 
 tached to the personal staff of the general as interpreter? but is, 
 in fact, under Sir Hugh, head of the police." The Last Tear in 
 China, by a Field Officer, Letter xvi. p. 103 (1843).. And even 
 in this character he failed ; for the same authority tells us, that 
 on an important occasion " Gutzlaff's information proved alto- 
 gether false." Letter xxi. p. 135. Having failed as a missionary 
 and a policeman, he tried his hand at medicine, but always with 
 the same result. " The Chinese eagerly sought his prescriptions, 
 although his skill was of the most moderate character." The 
 Fan Qui in China, by H. Downing, M.R.C.S., vol. ii. ch. vii. 
 p. 175. This competent judge adds, that many of the Catholic 
 missionaries really "understood the art," vol. iii. ch. iv. p. 61. 
 Another medical authority, worried by the meddling of the Pro- 
 testant missionaries, who, as they could not heal the souls, af- 
 fected to cure the bodies of the Chinese, says, with emphasis : 
 " Incalculable mischief may be done by those missionaries of the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 93 
 
 Perhaps enough has now been said to indicate 
 the true character of Protestant missions in China, 
 and the shameful and ludicrous contrast which they 
 present with those of the Catholic Church ; but I 
 must appeal to the patience of my readers, while I 
 set before them the testimony of one more witness, 
 a clergyman of the Church of England, who visited 
 China at a later date, " on behalf of the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society." With his evidence we will close the 
 history of Protestantism in China, from its first ap- 
 parition in the person of Morrison down to a recent 
 period. It is the Rev. George Smith who will now 
 furnish us with the results of his experience and ob- 
 
 gospel who, possessing an imperfect knowledge of the healing 
 art, attempt to make it a means of introducing themselves to the 
 confidence of the heathen." Medical Missionary Society in China, 
 p. 6. Mr. Malcolm, who always goes to the root of things, and 
 had evidently a profound contempt for such a noisy pretender as 
 Gutzlaff, adds : " It may be that a sense of failure in regard to 
 direct evangelical labours renders popular the sending out of phy- 
 sicians." Travels, fyc. vol. ii. p. 316. This is the last device of 
 Protestantism, and in itself is a good one, but as a missionary 
 project a total failure. "Dr. Parker (1844) maintains public 
 worship on Sabbath days for the foreign residents in Canton ; but 
 for the Chinese very little is done out of his own house and hos- 
 pital." Chinese Repository, vol. xiii. p. 46. See also The Cam- 
 paign in China, by Captain Granville Locke ; and Hospital Reports 
 of the Medical Missionary Society in China. 
 
9 4 CHRISTIAKITT IN CHINA. 
 
 serration in China, and to whom, before we separate, 
 we may perhaps offer something in return for his 
 valuable gift. 
 
 And first, let us do justice to the sincere but mis- 
 guided zeal of our countrymen, by recording a fact 
 with which he opens his book. " An anonymous 
 donor," he tells us, " gave 6000/. for commencing a 
 mission in China." 1 In England there are many ear- 
 nest persons capable, according to the measure of 
 their ability, of similar acts of piety : let it be per- 
 mitted to us to lament that the objects upon which 
 they commonly exercise their munificence have no 
 connection whatever either with the glory of God or 
 the true welfare of the heathen. But this is a con- 
 sideration which will be more advantageously deve- 
 loped at a later stage of this work. Meanwhile it is 
 really afflicting to think that the whole of the noble 
 gift alluded to above has perhaps long since been 
 squandered on the Malacca College ; or in pocket- 
 money to pretended converts, who worshiped " Jeho- 
 vah" while it lasted, and Buddha when it was spent ] 
 or, at best, in maintaining the wives and children 
 
 1 Visit to the Consular Cities of China, on behalf of the Church 
 Missionary Society, by the Eev. George Smith, M.A., Preface, 
 p. iii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 95 
 
 of ignorant, useless, and unprofitable missionaries. 1 
 Happily the donor is not altogether responsible for 
 this dismal result, and may still count upon his re- 
 ward. May it be repaid to him a hundredfold ; and 
 may the martyrs of China be his friends and advo- 
 cates ! 
 
 If it should be found that Mr. Smith, who cer- 
 tainly set out on his long journey with a widely dif- 
 ferent object, has been constrained to chronicle the 
 triumphs of the Catholic religion, and to disclose the 
 hopeless sterility of his own ; if he has been forced 
 to number " the tents of Israel," when he would fain 
 have counted only those of her enemies, — this is a 
 fate from which persons of his class cannot escape, 
 in spite of all their efforts, and which he shares, as 
 the productions of innumerable English travellers will 
 convince us, with a great multitude of his co-religion- 
 ists, of various orders and sects. 
 
 The first statement which we will borrow from 
 
 1 Even Morrison complained of many of his colleagues as 
 " poor and uneducated, much to the disgrace of the Protestant 
 churches." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 222. "Without recurring again 
 to the humble attainments and inexperience in general of mis- 
 sionaries, we may observe, that having no opportunity of rising 
 into notice at home, they are the more inclined to forsake a. 
 country which holds out few hopes to them." Quarterly Bevfawj, 
 no. xxv. p. 439. 
 
96 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 him has reference to the estimate which the Chinese, 
 like other heathen nations, have formed of the Eng- 
 lish character, from the specimens which they have 
 seen : if they have been unfavourable ones, this is 
 evidently not the fault of the inhabitants of China. 
 " Perhaps this English doctrine," they say, " may be 
 very good, but we wish that you would first try it 
 on the English themselves, for they are wicked men. 
 When this doctrine has made them better, then come 
 and speak to us." 1 This is exactly what is said, as 
 we shall see in due time, with a very impressive 
 unanimity, by the subtle Brahmin of Hindostan, the 
 Copt of Egypt and the Arab of Syria, the savage 
 of New Zealand and the nomade tribes of North 
 America ; and it is precisely because each of these 
 various classes of men has witnessed the supernatural 
 virtues of the Catholic missionary, that they have 
 used, with respect to him, exactly the contrary argu- 
 ment. Proofs of this interesting fact will not be 
 wanting. 2 
 
 1 Visit, fyc. p. 54. 
 
 2 The Brahmin, Jaggernaut Chutterjee, said to a Protestant 
 missionary : " Gracious Brama ! in what respect is the Christian 
 morally better than the Hindoo ? Convert us to Christianity; 
 make us as sensual as yourselves ; and who shall estimate the 
 effect of such a change on a population of forty millions of 
 people?" Letter from a Field Officer at Madras on the Conversion 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 97 
 
 Mr. Smith, who has an occasional access of sin- 
 cerity, the remembrance of which must surprise even 
 himself, but which is not uncommon with Protestants 
 in foreign lands, does not scruple to expose the real 
 character of Protestant " converts" in China. Let us 
 hasten to profit by his fragile candour. 
 
 The most notable agent of the Protestant mis- 
 sionaries in China appears to have been one Leang 
 Afah, whose services were secured by the costly 
 device of a double salary, but of whom Mr. Smith 
 merely observes, " he is supported by the Church 
 Missionary Society." He seems, however, at a later 
 period, to have been awakened to the true character 
 
 of the Hindoos, p. 35. Dr. Claudius Buchanan, writing from 
 Calcutta to a Cambridge friend, says : " The Hindoos pay as 
 little attention to their own religion, as a rule, as the English do 
 to theirs. Tour profession of the Christian religion is a proverbial 
 jest throughout the world." Pearson's Memoirs of Buchanan, vol. i. 
 p. 183, 3d edition. On the other hand, the Ottawas, in 1829, 
 dismissed the Protestant preacher whom the American Govern- 
 ment had sent to them, saying : " Keep your errors for your- 
 selves J our nation does not want missionaries with wives and 
 children, but the black robes, like those who visited our grand- 
 fathers." Annales, tome iv. p. 475. And on another occasion, 
 at Vincennes, the chiefs of another tribe said to the governor of 
 the state : " We do not want your ministers ; they resemble our- 
 selves, and would be of no use to us •" tome i. p. 33. But we 
 shall return to this subject. 
 
 H 
 
98 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 of this expensive system. / At Amoy, he says, " the 
 most regular attendants on the services/' — he does 
 not reveal their salaries, but he does confess that not 
 one of them had been baptized ! — " were, from their 
 situation or employment, in some measure dependent 
 on the missionaries, and whose sincerity might on 
 that account be exposed to suspicion." 1 / This re- 
 flection will no doubt have occurred to Mr. Smith's 
 readers, as well as to himself. But to return to 
 Leang Afah. This person had a son, A-tah, for 
 whom he contrived to get " an excellent education," 
 and of course a gratuitous one, from the American 
 missionaries. These gentlemen had shrewdly specu- 
 lated upon the future services of their accomplished 
 pupil, as some equivalent for what he had cost them. 
 But the crafty Chinese was more acute than his 
 masters; and while he allowed them to indulge in 
 harmless anticipations of his gratitude, and the pro- 
 fit which they would derive from it, he had quietly 
 formed his own plans, which, in due time, he carried 
 into execution. " A-tah has recently abandoned the 
 missionaries at Hong-kong," says Mr. Smith, " and 
 connected himself with the mercantile establishment 
 of Powtinqua;" for the duties of which, thanks to 
 his mortified patrons, he was now, no doubt, fully 
 1 Visit, §c. p. 398. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 99 
 
 qualified. " The case of A-tah," Mr. Smith sorrow- 
 fully adds, " appears to be a specimen of the diffi- 
 culty and disappointment to which our missions will, 
 for some years, be necessarily exposed." 1 
 
 At Amoy Mr. Smith seems to have made the 
 acquaintance of a certain Ban-hea, a very interest- 
 ing specimen of a Protestant unbaptized " convert," 
 and who merits particular notice. Mr. Smith calls 
 him "a constant visitor of the missionaries;" and 
 adds, that he was " an old man, who was formerly 
 inclined to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, 
 but was deterred by fear of persecution." 2 No doubt 
 
 1 Visit, fyc. p. 52. The Americans might well wish to get 
 some return for their money ; for of one of their establishments 
 in China we are told, " the annual expenses of the mission are 
 eleven thousand dollars." Colonial Church Chronicle, vol. v. p. 
 396. Seventeen years ago there were already " about one hundred 
 American missionaries in the countries east and west of the 
 Ganges ;'' and "the American missionaries in China represented 
 no less than six missionary societies, and as many of our larger 
 Christian denominations." Journal of American Oriental Society, 
 vol. i. p. 46. 
 
 2 It seems to have been a characteristic malady with the few 
 Chinese who " visited" the Protestant missionaries. Thus Mor- 
 rison says : " Several of my people would, I doubt not, under 
 other circumstances," — that is, if there were no danger, — " avow 
 their belief in the Gospel, — but they are afraid." Memoirs, vol. 
 ii. p. 369. His own example was hardly likely to give them 
 courage. 
 
100 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 a gentleman -with Ban-hea's little infirmity of cha- 
 racter would find Mr. Smith's friends far safer 
 guides : there was not the remotest probability that 
 they would lead him into persecution. This view of 
 their character had not escaped the prudent and 
 cautious Ban-hea, and lent, we may be sure, an 
 additional charm to his intercourse with them. It 
 was quite right to profess some sort of religion, and 
 Confucius was out of date ; but to suffer persecution 
 for it, perhaps death, this was an indiscretion pecu- 
 liar to " Roman Catholics." Mr. Ban-hea, and his 
 new allies, had no sympathy with such imprudent 
 and costly enthusiasm. 
 
 It was also at Amoy 1 that our traveller, "in 
 
 1 Although the Protestant missionaries swarmed in this 
 place, it does not appear that any of them could even speak the 
 language ; for Mr. Smith tells us of a Chinese who was employed 
 to " read a tract" to his countrymen, " after previous preparation 
 and instruction by a missionary at his own house ;" but who 
 unfortunately " sometimes hazarded comments of his own, which 
 were of a rather equivocal tendency ;" p. 41 6. On the other hand, 
 Mr. Smith reveals the very different character of the Catholic 
 Chinese : " The Roman Catholics are numerous in some districts 
 of the neighbouring mainland. The French ambassador and 
 suite, during their recent visit to Amoy, visited a village about 
 forty miles distant, in which nearly the whole population were 
 Roman Catholics ;" p. 485. " His excellency afterwards spoke of 
 his heart being kindled with religious enthusiasm, as he beheld 
 
CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 101 
 
 behalf of the Church Missionary Society," saw other 
 " visitors," — a term which might, perhaps, be adopted 
 with advantage in all these cases, instead of con- 
 verts, — who had " not yet shown any decided proof 
 of a change of heart." /They " had ceased to wor- 
 ship idols," at least they said so, but " they had not 
 generally adopted the decided course of expelling the 
 image from their household," which certainly left a 
 good deal to be desired. /And accordingly, when Mr. 
 Smith rashly boasted to a Chinese that one Ta-laou- 
 yay " had put away his idols," the former " called 
 him an old hypocrite, and asserted, that if we could 
 gain admission into the interior of the house, he 
 doubted not that we should find the idols in some 
 other room" I 1 The heathen seem to have considered 
 the Protestant missionaries fair game, and perhaps 
 even regretted the credulity which rendered them 
 such an easy prey, because it made such slight 
 
 the joyous spectacle of the inhabitants coming forth with crosses 
 and medals hanging on their bosoms. About five hundred per- 
 sons in this village, and the same number in some neighbouring 
 villages, professed Christianity ;'' p. 486. And it seems they 
 professed it openly, without fear of " persecution ;" for he says 
 they had nearly completed a chapel, " estimated to cost eighteen 
 hundred dollars." 
 
 1 Visit, &c. p. 399 ; cf. p. 412. 
 
102 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 demands upon their own ingenuity, and took away 
 half the pleasure of exercising it. 
 
 If, however, Mr. Smith had reason to be morti- 
 fied with the obdurate insensibility of the Chinese to. 
 the invitations and caresses of Protestantism, except 
 as an occasion of gainful traffic, he had frequent op- 
 portunities of witnessing their appreciation of teach- 
 ing of a very different order.. Wherever he directed 
 his steps, by land or water, he was met by the 
 unwelcome apparition of Catholic converts. He liter- 
 ally encountered them at every turn. Of Shanghai, 
 he says : " In the city and neighbourhood there 
 are large numbers of Roman Catholic professors of 
 Christianity. The diocese of their Bishop is com- 
 puted to contain about sixty thousand Roman Catho- 
 lics." 1 If he amuses his leisure by inquiries into 
 the system of transporting grain in China, he learns 
 that " of the 6000 junks which annually bring down 
 the grain for the emperor from Tartary, many are 
 manned by Roman Catholic sailors." 2 But the grace 
 
 1 Visit, &c. p. 140. 
 
 * Ibid. p. Ml-. Monseigneur Comte Louis de Besy, apos- 
 tolic administrator of Nankin, says, in 1843 : "The fishermen 
 direct their boats hither and thither, wherever they hope to meet 
 a minister of the true God. The simplicity and candour of their 
 souls is reflected in their countenance. They often assemble in 
 the evening, to the number of twenty barks, in the middle of the 
 
CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 103 
 
 of conversion had not been confined to men who, 
 like the first apostles, had passed their lives on the 
 water. At Ningpo, the Catholic converts, he says, 
 " principally belonged to the middle class of trades- 
 men." 1 And so he continues, obedient to a power 
 of whose influence he was unconscious, but which he 
 was not suffered to resist, his task of recording, the 
 triumphs of the Catholic religion. " In the northern 
 part of the province of Pokien," he writes, " at the 
 distance of one hundred miles from Foo-Chow, there 
 is a Popish Bishop* a Spaniard, ninety years of age, 
 who has been fifty years in the country. There is 
 
 river, and sing in choir their prayers, which always conclude 
 with an invocation to ' Mary conceived without sin.' Their 
 prayers must ascend as an agreeable incense to the throne of the 
 Lamb. Sometimes, in the midst of the consolations which they 
 afford me, I take shame to myself, when I see how great is 
 the simplicity of their faith, what a profound horror they have 
 of sin, and what purity of motive animates all their actions." 
 Annals, vol. v. p. 329. 
 
 1 Visit, fyc. p. 244. Sir John Davis says, " At Mngpo 
 there are no less than thirteen Protestant missionaries." China 
 since the Peace, vol. ii. ch. vii. p. 255. Though these gentlemen 
 had nothing to do, such was the progress of the Catholic reli- 
 gion, even in its social influence, that "the year 1848 witnessed 
 the erection of a church without difficulty in the centre of the 
 town of Ningpo ; the mandarins themselves granted the ground for 
 building.'" Annals, vol. xi. p. 15. 
 
104 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 also a Popish college ; and the Romish converts are 
 said to be more numerous than the Pagan inhabitants 
 in some of those districts,' so that they are too power- 
 ful to become the victims of persecution" I 1 They 
 were weak once, Mr. Smith; but apparently this 
 venerable patriarch had used his time to more pur- 
 pose than your English and American friends. 2 
 
 Sometimes he comes into personal contact with 
 these Catholics, and the result is generally amusing. 
 He is in a boat on the river Min, and the crew, 
 " on their first coming on board, crossed themselves 
 repeatedly on the forehead, cheeks, and breast, after 
 the most approved Roman Catholic fashion." 3 They 
 were "not ashamed of the Cross of Christ," Mr. 
 Smith, and you might have learned a lesson from 
 their simple piety and generous faith. But our tra- 
 
 1 Visit, &c. p. 352. 
 
 2 The Abbe 1 Faivre, a Lazarist missionary in China, forcibly 
 observes, that " Protestant missions will not have been alto- 
 gether without result in these countries ; for, in the first place, 
 they will have proved their own utter sterility; and in the 
 second, the Protestant missionaries will be forced to render this 
 testimony, that, wherever they have been, they have seen the 
 Catholic religion established, the faithful full of fervour, and the 
 ranks of the missionaries continually recruited." Annals, vol. i. 
 p. 321. 
 
 3 Visit, &c. p. 324. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 105 
 
 veller went to China, not to learn, — he was beyond 
 that, — but to teach. Meeting "about a hundred 
 villagers, and finding that they were principally 
 professors of the Roman Catholic religion" 1 one of 
 his companions, with the cool assurance of his class 
 whenever there is no danger, informed them, that 
 the Blessed Virgin " was only a sinful mortal like 
 ourselves" ! upon which, he naively adds, " they ap- 
 peared to be somewhat staggered, and looked in his 
 face, as if incredulous and distrustful." No doubt 
 they were ; though they probably knew not that the 
 very Turks themselves have more reverence for the 
 Mother of Jesus than these flippant tourists, whose 
 only function seems to be to try to drag others down 
 to their own level. 2 But these Chinese villagers and 
 
 1 " The padres, we were afterwards told, were accustomed 
 to travel amongst them, and were ever ready to come from any 
 distance to administer the sacraments of the Church, especially 
 Extreme Unction to the dying." Visit, fyc. p. 147. 
 
 2 For the reverence which the Turks display towards the 
 Mother of our Lord, see D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientate, art. 
 Miriam. There is a celebrated picture of our Lady at Aleppo, 
 of which Bishop Bonamie says : " I was astonished to see a great 
 many Turkish men and women, in seasons of public or private 
 calamity, come to pray before this picture of the Mother of 
 Jesus, and make offerings of oil to be burned in her honour." 
 Annates, tome viii. p. 562. Of the rival sect of Mussulmans in 
 Persia, we are told, that " their reverence for the blessed Virgin 
 
106 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 sailors were more than a match for Mr. Smith and 
 his party. " I visited: a Corean junk," he says, 
 " manned by Roman Catholic sailors, and lying in 
 the river off the custom-house." The captain of this 
 junk, — which had crossed the broad waters of the 
 Yellow Sea, not for lucre, but for an object which 
 deserves the careful attention of the reader, — had 
 lost " his own father and grandfather" 1 by martyr- 
 dom. But this had not daunted him, nor his noble 
 crew : and Mr. Smith, unable to escape his fate, is 
 obliged to tell us, — that " their only object in mak- 
 ing so long and perilous a voyage was, to obtain a 
 Bishop for Gorea, whom they would carry back in 
 their, junk." For months they had been at anchor 
 alongside that custom-house, answering the inquisi- 
 tive demands of the officials with such pretexts as 
 their ingenuity could devise, and patiently waiting, 
 at the sacrifice of time, and braving the perils of 
 
 is not much inferior to the homage of the Church of Kome,. the 
 the Kusso-Greek Church, and all the Churches of the East. The 
 tall white lily is,, in Persian, called the Goole Miriam, or Flower of 
 Mary." Life and Manners in Persia, by Lady Shiel, ch. vi. p. 87. 
 Even the most trivial and gossiping travellers seem struck with 
 the reverence displayed by the 'Mahometans towards her whom 
 " all generations," except Protestants, " shall call blessed." See 
 Mrs. Dawson Darner's Tour in Greece, fyc. vol. i. ch. xxi. p. 288. 
 1 Visit, SfC. p. 154. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 107 
 
 discovery, till God should bring their Bishop to 
 them. To these brave fellows Smith, with the cha- 
 racteristic fatuity of his order, gave a number of 
 books, of what sort it is easy to guess ; but, within 
 an hour, adds the discomfited Anglican, they came 
 " to return the whole of the books, and to decline 
 the present from me." It is satisfactory to know, 
 still on Mr. Smith's authority, that "they accom- 
 plished the object of their visit, and took back a 
 Bishop and three priests. The Bishop came from 
 Hong-kong, and had already been seven years a mis- 
 sionary in one of the interior provinces." To him it 
 does not appear that Mr. Smith offered any books. 1 
 
 But he was not yet cured of his mania, though 
 his adventures in this way continued to be dis- 
 couraging. To a Buddhist priest, he says, " I gave 
 a tract, which he was unable to read, and which I 
 received agaiu." He recounts, with real or affected 
 complacency, what he calls their " eagerness" to re- 
 
 1 A Protestant writer notices with surprise that "the- number 
 of adults baptised in.Corea during the year 183.8 was little less< 
 than two thousand." Chinese Repository, vol. viii. p. 574. Some 
 years later there was a Protestant expedition to Corea ; but, as 
 usual, the cautious missionaries did not venture to land. " The 
 only result of the mission was to send some chests of Bibles on 
 shore, and some Chinese books to the King of Corea> by whom 
 they were immediately returned," Annals, vol. i. p. 321. 
 
.108 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 ceive books, which the heathen Chinese seem to 
 have often done for the fun of the thing ; but he is 
 obliged to add, "I ascertained that not one of them 
 could read." The books must have been extremely 
 useful to them. 1 Again : " I landed on the south 
 bank of the river to distribute tracts, but found none 
 of the villagers able to read. I ascertained, how- 
 ever, that there were some Roman Catholics at the 
 distance of a le (one-third of an English mile) who 
 were able to read/' So he sent them some of his 
 tracts. 2 On another occasion, he gave to a Chinese 
 
 1 Visit, fyc. p. 234. " Would not Chinese, Indian, or 
 Persian priests draw immense audiences to hear them if they 
 should come in their national costume to preach in French or 
 English 1 Would they not have plenty of people to receive the 
 books and pamphlets which they gave away for nothing, even 
 though no one could read them V Ida Pfeiffer, Voyage round the 
 World, p. 223, English edition. " The natives will receive tracts 
 or pamphlets with thanks. So they would any other printed 
 paper ; for they are polite and inquisitive. I have seen a Hindoo 
 most devoutly listen to a discourse, beg a tract, leave it on the 
 threshold of the door of the temple, and fall down with his fore- 
 head on the floor, and worship the image of Ganesa !" The Won- 
 ders of Elora, by Captain J. B. Seely, ch. xix. p. 474. 
 
 2 A Catholic Chinese from Tze-ke, he says, " had a small 
 medal suspended from his neck, which, in reply to our questions, 
 he plainly said he worshipped ;" p. 178. As Mr. Smith's know- 
 ledge of Chinese was recent and rudimentary, we may receive 
 this tale with reserve. Did he ever read a Catholic Catechism 1 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA. 109 
 
 officer, a sort of admiral, " St. Luke's gospel and a 
 tract ;" and then he somewhat spitefully adds, " but 
 he appeared to possess very little intellectual capa- 
 
 But these gentlemen show more candour to the heathen than to 
 Christians. The learned botanist Sir William Hooker says : " To 
 the idol itself the Boodhist attaches no real importance ; ... it 
 is a symbol of the creed, and the adoration is paid to the holy 
 man 'whom it represents." Himalayan Journals, vol. i. ch. xiv. 
 p. 324. If a Catholic has an image of our Lady in his house, he 
 is straightway an " idolater." Dr. Asahel Grant says, the Nesto- 
 rians in Armenia have " a small wooden cross hanging from a 
 post, for them to kiss before prayers ; a practice which they 
 regard as a simple expression of love to Christ and faith in His 
 atonement." The Nestorians, ch. vi. p. 63. In a Catholic this 
 would be " grovelling superstition." Dr. Kerr, an Anglican chap- 
 lain, says, the Jacobites of Malabar use an image of the Blessed 
 Virgin and Child, " which is considered merely as an ornament, 
 and not a subject for idolatrous worship." Report on the State of 
 the Christians ofVochin and Travancore, p. 5. Yet a Protestant 
 missionary asserts of the same image in a Catholic church, " The 
 principal object of their reverence was a female idol with a child 
 in its arms" ! A Narrative of the Mission to Ceylon, by the Bev. 
 William Harvard, ch. viii. p. 196. And a grave book tells us of 
 the Catholic natives of Dacca, without the least hesitation or mis- 
 giving : " Their chapel exhibited many vestiges of gross idolatry.'' 
 Smith's History of the Missionary Societies, vol. i. p. 413. And, as 
 if this were not enough, the author adds, with apparent gravity, 
 that the Catholics at Sillet " were in the habit of worshipping an 
 old tattered copy of a Popish catechism" ! p. 458. This gentle- 
 man has certainly the distinction of surpassing, longo intervallo, 
 most of his fellows. Another insists that the Hindoos them- 
 
110 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 city, being a very unfavourable specimen of a Chinese 
 officer." Why should this poor old admiral be so dis- 
 courteously abused for not appreciating " the Dairy- 
 man's Daughter," or " the Pious Baker," or whatever 
 it was which Mr. Smith presented to his " intellectual 
 capacity" % A "general" in the same place, — for Mr. 
 Smith seems to have got into good company, — was so 
 puzzled with the whole proceeding, which was quite 
 out of the line of his previous experience, that he 
 spontaneously remarked, " that he had never seen 
 any Roman Catholic books, though that religious 
 sect had been a long time in the country." 1 On 
 the other hand, the worthy general had seen no 
 small number of Roman Catholic converts, which was 
 a good deal more to the purpose. 
 
 We have nearly done with Mr. Smith, but not 
 
 selves do not worship " idols," but " only numerous symbols of 
 the Almighty's power, &c." The Wonders ofElora, ch. xiv. p. 347. 
 And he quotes the Vedas to prove it. Unfortunately, Rammohun 
 Eoy scouts this charitable interpretation. Henrion, tome i. ch. iv. 
 p. 43. These contrasts are instructive. They show that even 
 educated Protestants, though eager to defend heathens or here- 
 tics, forget not only justice but common sense in dealing with 
 Catholics ; towards whom they seem to feel exactly as the pagans 
 did towards the primitive Christians, ever uttering maledictions, 
 and crying out, in imitation of Tacitus, with mingled anger and 
 fear, exitialis superstitio 1 
 1 Visit, fyc. p. 422. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. Ill 
 
 quite. He has no love, as we have seen, for Catho- 
 lics ; but then he has a considerable leaning, he tells 
 us, towards Mahometans ! " I always felt a sym- 
 pathy with the poor dispersed disciples of Islam in 
 this pagan wild, and regarded their denunciation of 
 idols, and their worship of one God, as a comparative 
 approximation to our own religion;" 1 — the compari- 
 son being with the Catholic religion ! 
 
 Here, then, is a clergyman of the Church of 
 England, the recognised agent and official emissary 
 of the "Church Missionary Society/' an institution 
 fostered by Anglican " bishops," who deliberately 
 prefers the impure followers of a lascivious and blas- 
 phemous impostor to the brethren of St. Bernard 
 and St. Francis of Sales. He confesses it ! Surely 
 nothing worse than this was ever uttered since the 
 hour when voices were heard to say, Not this Man, 
 but Barabbas ! 
 
 We have only one more anecdote to borrow 
 from Mr. Smith, and then the tale will be complete. 
 Finding his journeys along the coast a little mono- 
 tonous, and accustomed now to see Chinese faces, he 
 gathers courage, and boldly determines on a little 
 "trip into the interior." It is true that what he 
 pleasantly calls going to the " interior," was sim- 
 1 Visit, 4-c. p. 213. 
 
112 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 ply an excursion of a few miles in a boat, on a river 
 not unknown to Europeans, and that it required 
 about as much temerity as a Frenchman would dis- 
 play who should venture in a steamer from London 
 Bridge to Chelsea or Richmond. Of course the ob- 
 ject of the journey was to gratify his ruling passion 
 of distributing tracts. The expedition starts, not 
 without a quickening of the pulse at the possible 
 perils of the voyage. Both shores are carefully 
 scanned, and the rowers duly prepared for a back- 
 ward move in case of sudden emergencies. Mr. 
 Smith directs his anxious glance on every side, book 
 in hand, when at length an object strikes his e} r e. 
 " Watching my opportunity," he says, — and we 
 almost partake his breathless emotion, — " I folded 
 up the book, and .... threw it safely on the dry 
 bank!" 1 This daring feat accomplished, the bold 
 missionary and his companions, — Milvius et scurrce, 
 — smiling perhaps at their own courage, continued 
 their adventurous voyage ; that is, they hurried back 
 to their snug quarters in the neighbouring town. 
 
 The whole story, and especially the careful dis- 
 crimination of dry and humid soils, sounds more like 
 a geological than a missionary exploit ; but this was 
 Mr. Smith's idea of the way to convert China, and 
 1 Visit, be. p. 148. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 113 
 
 he had a right to his own view of the subject. One 
 thing only I will venture to suggest, that one cannot 
 even imagine St. Paul or St. Barnabas punting about 
 the shores of the iEgean or the Adriatic, looking for 
 " dry banks" on which to deposit their message to 
 the heathen. They delivered it themselves, heeding 
 neither stripes, nor imprisonment, nor death ; a mode 
 of preaching the gospel which Catholics have always 
 imitated, and which, we may assure Mr. Smith and 
 his friends, has its merits. 1 
 
 1 It is admitted on all hands that the books and tracts so 
 profusely distributed are always either returned, or applied to 
 the vilest uses. Even in Beechey's time, " several that were 
 secretly taken on shore by the lower orders were brought back 
 the next day.'' Voyage to the Pacific, vol. ii. ch. v. p. 197. But 
 experience, and the repeated protests of intelligent Protestants, 
 appear to have produced some effect. " The Methodist minis- 
 ters," says a celebrated traveller, " who remain in ambuscade in 
 the five ports open to European commerce, having perceived 
 that the prodigious quantities of Bibles which they scattered fur- 
 tively along the coast did not prove very efficacious in acting 
 upon the population of China, have renounced this system of 
 propaganda, which was indeed exempt from all danger, but was 
 also utterly unmeaning and perfectly useless. They seem to be 
 convinced, for the moment at least, that a bale of Bibles, more or 
 less accurately printed, and deposited with extreme precautions 
 on the sea-shore, are not very likely to effect the conversion of 
 the Chinese empire. They have consequently lost somewhat of 
 the vivacity of their faith in the miracles to be accomplished by 
 
 I 
 
114 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Mr. Smith takes leave of the readers of his book, 
 — which only wants a little talent, a little information, 
 a little taste, and a little charity, to make it almost 
 interesting, — with these words : "The missionary 
 work in China is not devoid of encouragement." And 
 we, in our turn, may take leave of him, under the 
 impression which such an opinion excites ; that, with 
 all his faults, he is at least of a cheerful and sanguine 
 disposition. 1 
 
 the mere distribution of books." He goes on to say, that they 
 have therefore commenced, with the help of some salaried Chi- 
 nese literates, the composition of treatises on scientific subjects ; 
 and one which fell into the hands of the AbM Hue proved to be 
 " a technical work upon electric telegraphs." This brave mis- 
 sionary, who has traversed China in every direction, adds ; " I 
 am convinced that, in the whole empire, there is not one Chinese 
 capable of understanding a single page of this book ;" of which 
 this competent judge describes even the composition as "a 
 jargon which the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire will not 
 be in a hurry to imitate." L'Empire Chinois, tome ii. ch. x. 
 pp. 431, 432. 
 
 1 It should be added, that what was only a safe amusement 
 to Mr. Smith and his companions was sometimes the occasion of 
 grave results to a different class of missionaries. " It is only a 
 few years ago," says the American Commodore Head, " since 
 our Protestant friends provoked an edict from the emperor 
 against the introduction of all foreign publications, by their too 
 rapid and open distribution of twenty thousand Bibles and tracts 
 along the coast of Fokien.'' Around the World, vol. ii. p. 2 3 1 . In 
 
CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 115 
 
 The testimony which has now been offered, by 
 the most competent witnesses, to the character of 
 Protestant efforts in China might be largely in- 
 creased ; but surely enough has been said. There 
 is not perhaps a single Protestant writer on China, 
 whether English or American, who has not furnished, 
 with more or less candour and emphasis, precisely 
 the same evidence ; for it is a common dispensation 
 of Divine Providence which compels even the most 
 unscrupulous enemies of the Church to bear witness 
 in her favour. " The activity of the missionaries of 
 the Romish Church in China," says Sir John Davis, 
 in spite of his lamentable prejudices, " has no rival, 
 as to either numbers or enterprise." 1 " Ecclesiastical 
 history," says Mr. Ellis, "preserves the record of their 
 perseverance and their triumph." 2 " The Protest- 
 ants," says Mr. Leitch Ritchie, after they had been 
 
 1836, "an emissary of the Bible Society had been scattering 
 Bibles right and left on the banks of the Canton river. The 
 Chinese government has taken alarm at this imprudent distri- 
 bution ; and we have reason to fear lest the Catholic missionaries 
 should suffer persecution on account of the inconsiderate act of 
 the Protestant emissary.'' Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, 
 tome ix. p. 464. Perhaps this would only give fresh zest to the 
 pastime of the Protestant missionaries. 
 
 1 China, vol. ii. ch. vii. p. 235. 
 
 2 Brief Notice of China and Siam, p. 53. 
 
116 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 thirty years at work, "have as yet confined their 
 efforts to the distribution of books along the sea- 
 coast, the result not being in the mean time of any 
 obvious importance." 1 The Rev. Mr. Williams, an 
 American missionary in China, says, with still greater 
 emphasis : " We have had no proofs that the thou- 
 sands of books thrown among this people have ex- 
 cited one mind to inquire concerning them, have in- 
 duced one soul to find a teacher among tbe foreigners 
 in China, or have been the means of converting one 
 individual." 2 " Perhaps there are not more than 
 twenty or thirty Christian Protestant Chinese," says 
 Mr. Montgomery Martin, "while Catholicism numbers 
 its tens and hundreds of thousands." 3 " The labours 
 of the Church of Rome," says Dr. Bogue, the founder 
 of the London Missionary Society, " have been far 
 more abundant than those of all other sects what- 
 ever."* " There is something inexplicable in the 
 
 1 The British World in the East, vol. ii. p. 230. 
 5 Quoted by Dr. Brown, History of the Propagation of Chris- 
 tianity among the Heathen, vol. ii. p. 256. 
 
 3 China, Political, Commercial, and Social, vol. ii. p. 491. 
 
 4 An earnest Appeal to Pedobaptist Christians; quoted in 
 The Fathers of the -London Missionary Society, by John Morison 
 D.D., vol. i. p 209. A writer of the same class, the famous 
 Eichard Baxter, wrote to Eliot, " The industry of the Jesuits 
 and their successes in Congo, Japan, China, &c, shame us all, 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 117 
 
 sterility of the Protestant missions," says the Rev. 
 Howard Malcolm, who was sent expressly to visit 
 them ; " for the Catholic missionaries, with very 
 limited resources, have made a great many pro- 
 selytes ; their worship has become popular, and 
 every where excites the attention of the public." 1 
 " Although the Protestant missionaries," writes the 
 American Commodore Wilkes, with the frankness 
 which so honourably distinguishes his countrymen, 
 " have not met with any success in propagating their 
 tenets, this cannot be said of the Catholics." 2 " I 
 will not say," observes Mr. Wingrove Cooke, the 
 most recent authority, " that the Protestant mission- 
 aries are making sincere Chinese Christians, — those 
 who say this must be either governed by a delusion, 
 or guilty of fraud." 5 And lastly, Dr. Grant declares, 
 before the University of Oxford : " The attempts of 
 Protestant bodies to evangelise China, and the neigh- 
 bouring kingdoms, have signally failed." 41 
 
 save you.'' Library of American Biography, by Jared Sparks, 
 vol. v. ch. xvii. p. 337. 
 
 1 Quoted in Boston Courier, 30th May 1839. 
 
 2 United States Exploring Expedition, vol. v. p. 396. 
 
 3 China, ch. xi. p. 181. 
 
 4 Bampton Lectures for 1843, Lecture vi. p. 214. Another 
 American writer, Mr. Osmund Tiffany, says, that although his 
 friends had been then at work for nearly forty years, he thinks 
 
118 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Let us turn, then, from these mere human efforts, 
 — vain, foolish, and unprofitable ; costly, yet without 
 fruit ; boastful and arrogant, yet leading to nothing ; 
 and regarded with derision or disgust by their own 
 authors, — and contemplate once more the same work 
 effected, not by earthly power nor by human agents, 
 but by the might of God and the strength of His 
 omnipotent grace. We shall see that during the 
 whole period in which the crowd of false prophets, 
 — without vocation or mission, without a creed and 
 without sacraments, but with unlimited funds and 
 constantly augmented numbers, — were only cover- 
 it superfluous " to say aught of missionary labours, simply be- 
 cause they have little or no importance." The Canton Chinese, 
 ch. x. p. 181. The truth is, that no man, whether English or 
 American, who has actually visited China, has ever formed or 
 expressed any other opinion. An illustrious missionary, Mon- 
 seigneur Comte Louis de B^sy, said lately ; " The English them- 
 selves do us justice, and offer to protect us. Last year, Mr. 
 Kobertson, second interpreter to the British plenipotentiary in 
 China, wrote to me a letter to that effect, from which I transcribe 
 literally the following words : ' As for me, sir, I want expres- 
 sions to tell you how much I am delighted to have made your 
 acquaintance. It is true, I was born a Protestant ; yet I cannot 
 refrain from admiring the heroism, the devotedness, and the 
 superiority of the Catholic missionaries in China. Yes, it is a 
 proof that your religion does not consist in vain words, but that 
 it proceeds from the depths of the heart.' " Annals, vol. v. 
 p. 328. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 119 
 
 ing themselves with ignominy and confusion ; the 
 missionaries of the Most High God, strong by His 
 blessing, though weak in all human resources, were 
 leading their tens of thousands, through fire and 
 blood, through torments and death, to the foot of the 
 eternal throne. 1 
 
 Let us begin our examination of the noble and 
 inspiring pages to which, after lingering so long over 
 the annals of folly and corruption, we are now again 
 to refer, by citing the heathen themselves as wit- 
 nesses to the character of the work which the Catho- 
 lic apostles wrought amongst them. Their testimony 
 has at least the merit of perfect sincerity. 
 
 / In 1805, Kia-King, a furious persecutor, declared 
 in an imperial edict against the Christians, " All 
 who become Christians, whether rich or poor, directly 
 
 1 "Even Gutzlaff admits, though apparently with regret, that 
 the most cruel and long-continued persecutions, and especially 
 the savage proceedings of Kia-King, who died in 1821, " could 
 not extirpate a sect which had so many ramifications, and had 
 taken root in the very heart of the empire." China Opened, vol. i. 
 ch. xi. p. 365. An abler antagonist observes, that even "the 
 revolution did not destroy Rome ; because Rome has not foun- 
 dations but roots, which ramify under all nations, and penetrate 
 every quarter of the globe, even China and Japan, at the other 
 extremity of the world." Victor Hugo, Excursions along the 
 . Banks of the Rhine, Letter xxiv. 
 
120 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 they embrace this religion, have such an affection 
 for one another, that they seem to be of one bone and 
 one flesh." I They were then of that class of converts 
 of whom the pagans were wont to say, in the first 
 ages, " See how these Christians love one another I" 1 
 
 Again, the learned Sir George Staunton informs 
 us, that, in the same year, several persons were con- 
 demned to punishment and slavery for becoming 
 Christians ; and especially one, an Italian missionary, 
 " because he has not only," says the decree, " worked 
 on the minds of the simple peasantry and women, 
 but even many of our Tartar subjects have been per- 
 suaded to believe and conform to his religion ; and 
 it appears that no less than thirty-one books upon 
 the European religion have been printed in Chi- 
 nese characters." 2 And as they thus admitted, 
 
 1 Annales, tome i. p. 153. 
 
 2 Laws of China, Appendix, p. 533. In 1826, a petition 
 was presented by the mandarins to the king of Cochin China, 
 praying him to adopt new measures " to prohibit this perverse 
 religion," on these grounds : " Since this religion has penetrated 
 into the kingdom, thousands of persons profess it in all our pro- 
 vinces ; and they who are imbued with this doctrine are animated 
 with a zeal which transports them out of themselves, and makes 
 them run about hither and thither like madmen. The followers 
 of this law multiply every day ; they are continually building 
 new churches ; their abominations are diffused in every direc- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 121 
 
 most unwillingly, the constantly increasing numbers 1 
 of the Christians, so they freely confessed their vir- 
 tues and graces. "The Christian religion," said a 
 mandarin of the district of Te-yang, speaking from 
 his tribunal, "is difficult and austere, and obliges 
 men to great sacrifices ;" — he might well say it, for 
 he was at that moment judging Christians, — " yet if 
 all men could agree to embrace this religion, and to 
 follow its laws and precepts, certainly we should have 
 no need of watch-dogs to guard our houses, or to 
 frighten away robbers ; it would not even be neces- 
 sary to shut our doors during the night as a precau- 
 tion against evil men, because all men would then be 
 upright and conscientious." 2 
 
 And now that we have heard what the heathen 
 said of the Christians, let us see what they say for 
 themselves, and how they endured the pitiless storms 
 of persecution which never ceased to rage, from the 
 beginning of this century to the present hour. 
 
 tion ; and there is no place which is not infected by them." 
 Annates, tome iii. p. 469. It is just the language of the Pagans 
 about the early Christians ! 
 
 1 " Christianity makes great progress in Tong-king. In June 
 1821, a whole district sent deputies to ask to be instructed in 
 the Christian faith." Asiatic Journal, vol. xvii. p. 298. 
 
 2 Nouvelles Lettres edifiantes, tome ii. p. 488. 
 
122 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 'On the 14th of September 1815, the illustrious 
 Bishop, Monseigneur Dufresse, after an apostolate of 
 thirty-nine years, the whole of which was one long 
 martyrdom, was led to execution, attended by a noble 
 band of thirty-two Chinese confessors. I But as these 
 Christian heroes were ever more ready to suffer than 
 the busy world to read with patience of their suffer- 
 ings, let it suffice to say, that when the saintly Pius 
 VII. read the account of this holocaust of martyrs, 
 he exclaimed, " We seem to be reading a passage 
 from the annals of the primitive Church." 1 Through- 
 out the years 1814 and 1815, and again in 1817 
 and 1818, Chinese priests and laymen were conti- 
 nually martyred, and died as St. Polycarp or St. 
 Blandina died, calm, constant, and exulting. 2 In the 
 
 1 Mr. Montgomery Martin says, with unusual generosity, of 
 Monseigneur Dufresse : " During the administration of this true 
 apostle of Christian doctrine there were frequently fifteen hun- 
 dred adult baptisms annually." China, <J-c. vol. ii. p. 485. 
 
 2 When Paul Tuy, one of these native priests, was told that 
 he was condemned to death, " he contented himself with asking, 
 with perfect composure, if it was really true ; and when assured 
 that nothing was more certain, he calmly replied, ' I should 
 never have ventured to hope for so signal a grace.' " Annates, 
 tome vii. p. 421. Many were at this time exiled to the wastes 
 of Tartary ; and when, in 1823, after many years of suffering, 
 pardon was offered to all who would renounce the Christian reli- 
 gion, only five accepted the offer, which more than two hundred 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 123 
 
 latter year, a girl of twenty, when brought before 
 the tribunal, was asked by the mandarin : " How can 
 you worship a God whom you do not see V With 
 ready wit she answered, " You yourself honour the 
 emperor almost like a god, yet you do not see him ;" 
 a reply which excited the admiration of the pagan, 
 and appears to have saved her life. 1 
 
 But wit and presence of mind were not always 
 sufficient barriers against the headlong current of 
 persecution. 'In 1816, Father John de Triora, a 
 Franciscan, was strangled on the 13th of February. 
 Four native Chinese priests were also strangled in 
 succession ; and a fifth died in prison of his tortures, 
 as well as twenty laymen, all in the one province of 
 Su-tchuen. 2 Yet a single priest, Father Masson, 
 
 stedfastly refused. On another occasion, out of a band who had 
 endured the torture of the cangue for ten years, only one accepted 
 the same condition, though more than half of the original num- 
 ber had died under the suffering. 
 
 1 She was a servant of Him who had said, " Lay it up in 
 your hearts not to meditate beforehand how you shall answer. 
 For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adver- 
 saries shall not be able to resist or gainsay.'' St. Luke xxi. 
 14, 15. 
 
 2 An aged Chinese, himself a confessor, seeing his son cruelly 
 beaten, nobly exhorted him to accept the grace of martyrdom : 
 " Let them scourge you, my son ; if they kill you, heaven will 
 presently be yours." Annates, tome iv. p. 416. Father Charrier 
 
124 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 could report, that in one year, in his own mission, 
 he had baptized one thousand and six adults, and 
 given seventy-nine thousand communions : /and the 
 same work was going on throughout the whole em- 
 pire, at the same moment. 1 
 
 Thus, in the year 1820, in Tong-king and Cochiu- 
 China alone there were 15,734 baptisms ; while in 
 the single province of Western Tong-king, in 1822, 
 there were between eight and nine thousand : 2 and 
 what sort of converts they were, is sufficiently proved 
 by the fact, that they had the courage to embrace 
 Christianity at all, at such a time, and with such 
 prospects. It is true that not all continued stedfast 
 when the storm burst upon them, and no marvel. 
 In the persecution of 1821, in the province of Su- 
 tchuen, always the most successful field of missionary 
 warfare, " Some of our Christians," we are told, " had 
 
 tells of an old man, more than eighty, who, being seized and 
 desired to recant, made this answer before the tribunal : " Before 
 I renounce my God to adore yours, I must see that they are 
 better than mine. At my age one should not do things lightly. 
 In the first place, then, what are your gods? pieces of wood 
 without life. If I cut down a tree in my field, I can, in the 
 course of a single day, make a dozen of them." Ibid. p. 482. 
 He was released. 
 
 1 Annales, tome iii. p. 443. 
 
 2 Ibid, tome i. p. 9. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 125 
 
 the cowardice to apostatise; but the great major- 
 ity have preferred to endure every kind of evil treat- 
 ment rather than renounce the faith." 1 In Tong- 
 king, where the condition of the converts was per- 
 haps more insupportable than in any other part of 
 the empire, religion continued to make such progress, 
 that, by 1825, there were eighty-three native priests, 
 and two hundred thousand Christians. And in Su- 
 tchuen, though incessantly scourged and afflicted, 
 there were nearly two thousand adult converts in the 
 single year 1824; and twenty-seven boys' and forty- 
 five girls' schools had been established in the pro- 
 
 1 Father Masson records that some who fell away for a mo- 
 ment, when they came to implore reconciliation, pleaded the 
 example of St. Peter, whom our Lord pardoned in spite of his 
 fall ! It is worthy of observation that the heathen Chinese seem 
 almost always to have manifested contempt for the apostates. 
 Monseigneur Fontana relates that the Viceroy of Su-tchuen, a 
 relation of the emperor, having threatened some recent converts 
 with death, they answered with one accord, " We will willingly 
 suffer death for our religion ;" upon which, rising up from his 
 seat, and pointing them out with his finger to the mandarins, he 
 said, " These are indeed true Christians, they profess truly the 
 religion of the Lord of Heaven." Then turning to the mandarin 
 who had arrested them, he continued, " Why have you brought 
 me these men, who are guilty of no other crime but the desire of 
 dying for their religion 1" Annates, tome x. p. 250. In spite of 
 ,hese fine words, they were all banished for life to the deserts of 
 Tartary. 
 
126 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 vince. In the following year the latter had increased 
 to sixty-two ; and there were nearly eleven thousand 
 baptisms. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, what may we suppose was the daily 
 condition of the bishops, clergy, and faithful, even 
 when they contrived to escape, for a time, torture 
 and death % This question deserves a reply, and 
 shall have one. 
 
 Monseigneur Fontana, Confessor, Bishop of Max- 
 ula, and Vicar- Apostolic of Su-tchuen, was in such 
 hopeless poverty, that he could not even afford to 
 buy the necessary vestments for his clergy, who 
 were obliged to celebrate the Divine Mysteries in 
 such robes as were never seen in Europe ; while 
 their venerable prelate, we are told, " had scarcely any 
 thing decent for his own use." 2 In 1824, his brother 
 
 1 Annates, t. x. p. 261. The son of Gia-long, king of Cochin 
 China, and predecessor of Minh-M6nh, was " a decided convert 
 to the Christian religion, and accompanied the Bishop of Adran 
 to France in 1787." Crawfurd's Embassy to Siam and Cochin 
 China, ch. xviii. p. 509. And a French traveller tells us, that 
 the mausoleum "which Gia-long built in honour of the Bishop of 
 Adran still forms the most curious monument in the city of Hue- 
 Fou." Voyage de la Favorite, tome ii. p. 318. 
 
 2 Ibid, tome ii. p. 31. And the Bishops in the far West were 
 no better provided than their noble-hearted brethren in the East. 
 Monseigneur Portier, Vicar-Apostolic of the Floridas, writes from 
 New Orleans in 1826 to a friend in France, that he possessed 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 127 
 
 bishop, in exile at Pulo Penang, was " obliged to 
 sell his pocket handkerchiefs and other little effects," 
 to obtain food I 1 The common nourishment of the 
 
 neither mitre, nor pectoral cross, nor indeed any thing to indicate 
 his office. " If you can buy these things for me without money," 
 he adds playfully, "it will be an excellent method, and very 
 much to my taste. I know, however, that it is not of easy 
 application, so I only throw out the suggestion." When a new 
 missionary arrived in Cochin China, and presented himself to 
 the Bishop, he would exclaim, "Oh, my lord, the fowls in 
 France are better lodged than you." In this, at least, they re- 
 semble their Master. 
 
 1 When Father Gleyo, another of these heroes, came out of 
 prison, after eight years of close bondage, he started immedi- 
 ately, as if he had suffered nothing, to evangelise " a part of the 
 country hitherto unknown," possessing not a farthing, and his 
 whole baggage' consisting of " a single shirt, a pair of drawers, 
 and a pair of stockings." Lettres e'difiantes, tome xxvi. p. 407. 
 Father Dollilres, who had received no tidings from home for 
 twenty years, in one letter heard of the death of all his relations ; 
 p. 487. Father Masson, writing from Tong-king to the mayor of 
 Luneville, says, " I possess nothing beyond the circumference of 
 my own body, yet it seems to me that I am as happy as it is 
 possible to be in this world." Yet he had literally not even 
 that small measure of "food and raiment" with which the great 
 Apostle exhorts us " to be content." Monseigneur Florens, 
 Bishop of Sozopolis, sold his handkerchiefs to buy rice for the 
 poor Chinese. He died, venerated even by the heathen for his 
 gentleness and charity, after an apostolate of forty-seven years. 
 His successor found amongst his effects a hair shirt and two dis- 
 ciplines. This was all his wealth. 
 
128 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 missionaries, when they could get it, seems to have 
 been vegetables boiled in water, and a sort of cheese 
 made of beans. Multitudes of Christians, driven 
 from their houses, died of starvation. " They re- 
 ceive the Sacrament of Extreme Unction," writes 
 one who shared their sufferings, "when they have 
 nothing more left to eat, and then calmly await the 
 arrival of death. I have sometimes given Extreme 
 Unction to five or six at a time. I cannot yet ha- 
 bituate myself to this terrible and heart-rending 
 spectacle." 1 About the same time, Monseigneur Ta- 
 bert, Vicar- Apostolic of Cochin China, to whose pre- 
 decessor the good King Louis XVI. had given some 
 vestments, writing just as a fresh burst of persecu- 
 tion, in which he had suffered, had died away, says 
 pleasantly : " They were old and worn out, but they 
 were the best I had, and I kept them for the greatest 
 solemnities. Now, I have lost every thing. I have 
 only two poor chasubles, of which one is in strips, 
 and the other patched with linen. What a Bishop !" 2 
 
 1 Annates, tome ix. p. 61. 
 
 2 Ibid, tome vii. p. 535. "And the holy Bishop who traces 
 this sketch for us, from the depths of a cavern lighted by a 
 wretched lamp, and hunted by police commissioned to arrest him 
 for capital punishment, adds, ' I have left the cleft of the rock in 
 which I was stationed ; this is the sixth cavern which, within a 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 129 
 
 But all this was only a matter of jest to these 
 noble-hearted apostles : sometimes, however, they 
 had trials not quite so easy to bear, though still 
 short of martyrdom. 1 
 
 In 1834, the Abbe" Retord, now Bishop, received 
 a letter from one of his colleagues, who thus de- 
 scribed his actual position. " I am concealed in a 
 hole, four feet and a half in width and nine in 
 length, inaccessible to any ray of light. The silence 
 is broken only by the hum of the musquitoes, and 
 the gambols of the rats, who show no respect for 
 my presence. For thirty-four hours my abode was 
 surrounded by seventy soldiers, and for eighteen I 
 remained without motion. I confess that at the 
 beginning such a life appeared to me tedious." 2 
 
 few months, has served as an asylum to me in my seventy-fifth 
 year.' " Annals, vol. x. p. 9. 
 
 1 It should be remembered, since we are tracing a Contrast, 
 that all this time the English and American missionaries were 
 disporting themselves with their "objects of tender esteem," 
 drawing their salaries quarterly, and acting their ignoble come- 
 dies at Macao, Canton, or Amoy. 
 
 2 Annates, tome vii. p. 497. The Abbe" Marette, who was 
 hunted in the same manner, says : " I was not without apprehen- 
 sion, you may suppose, crouched between two walls ; I recom- 
 mended myself to all the saints, and in particular to my com- 
 panion so lately martyred, whose clothes, covered with his blood, 
 I had with me in my hiding-place." Annals, vol. i. p. 120. 
 
 K 
 
130 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Perhaps it may occur to some that all this was 
 hard to bear, and that mortal men might well have 
 fainted under the burden of so great tribulations. 
 The thought would be injurious to these elect souls, 
 fortified by supernatural aids ; but still more injuri- 
 ous to their Divine Master, who knew how to sustain 
 His own, and to feed them with ineffable consola- 
 tions. Father Masson, one of the bravest and meekest 
 of this apostolic company, being asked by a friend 
 in Europe, who had thoughts of entering the Chinese 
 mission, what special difficulties and spiritual trials 
 he might expect to encounter, gave this sublime and 
 memorable answer : " As respects the peculiar temp- 
 tations and spiritual troubles to which one is most 
 exposed in this manner of life, it is happily im- 
 possible for me to give you any information on this 
 point ; since I have always found myself in a state 
 of joy, and have observed the same thing in all my 
 colleagues." 1 In listening to these men, — if indeed 
 they Were not rather angels, — one seems to hear 
 
 1 Annales; t. iii. p. 441. "You wish to know," Writes ano- 
 ther, " what troubles I endure. I have none. Or, rather, I often 
 experience the sweetest consolations in seeing the great number 
 of conversions Which, through God's grace, are daily wrought 
 tinder my eyes. Last year we baptized more than twelve hun- 
 dred adults. Praise be to tasus !" Ibid. Vol. vii. p. 65. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 13i 
 
 echoes from Paradise ; and so in truth, with much 
 more reason, did they. " If our churches," says the 
 Bishop of Isauropolis, in 1830, "are only covered 
 "With thatch, they receive nevertheless the visits of 
 heavenly spirits." He then alludes to choirs of an- 
 gels being heard, when no one could be seen, and 
 adds, " but I cannot venture to speak df these things, 
 for the temper of men's minds in France would not 
 fendure them." 1 
 
 /And now, in the year 1833, we come to another 
 of those glorious events of which the history of the 
 Church in China is so full, — the martyrdom of the 
 Abbe Francois Isidore Gagelin/one of those illus- 
 trious priests of whom "the eldest daughter of the 
 Church" counts so many, as if to atone for the faults 
 of her other children. For the whole narrative we are 
 indebted to the Abbe' de la Motte, who was almost 
 an eye-witness of every detail which he recounts. 
 
 1 Armalea, tome v. p. 391. Frequent miracles, as might be 
 expected, marked the course of the Catholic apostolate in China. 
 Many are recorded, or referred to, in the Annates, and the Let- 
 tres e'difiantes ; but the greatest miracle of all was the super- 
 natural sanctity of the apostles themselves, and the enduring 
 constancy of their noble flock. One of the missionaries, who was 
 himself condemned to death, but delivered, records, amongst 
 other miracles, the raising a dead man to life. Divers Voyages de 
 la Chine, ch. xxii. p. 149. 
 
132 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 The Abbe" Gagelin had been long in prison, as 
 well as his colleagues, Father Jaccard, also a French- 
 man, and Father Odorico. They were in separate 
 dungeons ; but from the 23 d of August to the 11th 
 of October, the two latter, by the connivance of their 
 guards, had been allowed to visit him twice a week. 
 On the 12th of that month Father Jaccard writes to 
 his brother in bonds, — for they were still able to 
 communicate by letter, so that we shall now assist, as 
 it were, at the closing scene, and watch the martyr 
 through the last hours of his fiery conflict, — that he 
 had that morning offered the Holy Sacrifice pro in 
 carcere constitute), and supplicated God to give him 
 patience and resignation. Later in the day, in an- 
 other note, he says, "I think I ought to tell you, 
 happy brother, that you are condemned to death." 
 The next morning the martyr replies, " I recommend 
 myself to your prayers and those of Father Odorico, 
 as well as of M. de la Motte :" but, still doubtful if 
 martyrdom was indeed to be his lot, he modestly 
 urges that perhaps he will only be exiled. The let- 
 ters continue to pass to and fro; 1 and towards the 
 close of the day Father Jaccard, who had received 
 
 1 Even a Protestant writer says of this correspondence : " It 
 is worthy of a man who had lived well, and was about to die 
 well." Chinese Repository, vol. viii. p. 609. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 133 
 
 certain information, tells him, "Your sentence is pro- 
 nounced irrevocably, and so, behold you a martyr ! 
 What happiness is yours I" And now, all doubt 
 being definitively removed, Father Gagelin replies as 
 follows : " Sir, and dearest colleague ; the intelligence 
 which you announce to me, that I am irrevocably 
 sentenced to death, fills my inmost heart with joy. 
 Lcetatus sum in his quce dicta sunt mihi : In domum 
 Domini ibimus. The grace of martyrdom, of which 
 I am most unworthy, has been from my earliest child- 
 hood the object of my most ardent desire. / have 
 specially solicited it every time I elevated the Precious 
 Blood in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. In a little 
 while, then, I am going to appear before my Judge ; 
 to render Him an account of my offences, of the good 
 which I have omitted to do, and even of that which I 
 have done." After some simple and touching reflec- 
 tions, and a few words of farewell addressed to his 
 family and friends in France, he continues : " The 
 sight of my good Jesus crucified consoles me in any 
 bitterness which may accompany my death ; my whole 
 ambition is to depart quickly from this body of sin, to 
 be united to Jesus Christ in a blessed eternity. Cupid 
 dissolvi et esse cum Christo. I have only one more 
 consolation to desire, that of seeing you and Father 
 Odorico for the last time." But this was to be de-» 
 
134 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 nied him. On the 15th, Father Jaccard writes to 
 him, as to one already sealed for heaven : " Sir, 
 and venerated colleague ; we have read your letter 
 with the utmost joy ; we can only render thanks to 
 our Lord, who has given you so much courage. Fa- 
 ther Odorico wept for joy over your letter. ..... 
 
 Adieu, dear martyr of Jesus Christ. Pray for me." 
 The same day the martyr replies : " My condemna- 
 tion produces no impression upon me except that of 
 perfect contentment. I slept last night as tranquilly 
 as usual, and ate with the same good appetite ; only 
 the cangue, which weighs down my shoulders, fatigues 
 me more and more, and I have difficulty even in re<- 
 
 maining seated Recommend me to the 
 
 prayers of all pious souls," On the 16th, Father 
 Jaccard, after telling him that there is no hope of 
 their obtaining permission to visit him, adds, "Father 
 Odorico and myself cease not to speak of your hapr 
 piness. He is radiant with joy, and would fain share 
 your lot, As for myself, miserable sinner, I often 
 know not what I am doing, and can hardly sleep. I 
 confess to you that I should be almost sorry if the. 
 king released you, now that you are so near the mo- 
 ment which will give you the palm of martyrdom, 
 and admission into heaven. Pardon me, dear bro- 
 ther, all the scandals which I have caused you, and 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 135 
 
 all the uneasiness which, I may at any time have 
 occasioned you." 
 
 On the 1 7th, at seven in the morning, he was led 
 out of prison by a band of soldiers, two mandarins 
 riding in the rear of the procession. The pagan 
 crowd, filled with admiration at his patient compo- 
 sure, exclaimed, "Why should an innocent and worthy 
 man like this be put to death \ who ever saw any one 
 go to death with so little emotion 1" Shortly after, 
 the martyr had won his crown. 1 
 
 But he did not die alone. 2 While living he had 
 
 1 Vie de M. VAbbe Gagelin, Missionnaire apostolique et Martyr, 
 par l'Abb6 Jacquenet (Paris, 1850). His relics are deposited in 
 the Salle des Martyrs, at the Seminary of Foreign Missions, in 
 Paris. The reliquary in which they are contained was sealed by 
 the hand of Monseigneur Affre, the " martyr of charity." He 
 was declared "Venerable" by Gregory XVI. in 1840; ch. xii. 
 p. 458. 
 
 2 Fathers Jaccard and Odorico were both sent into exile, with 
 secret orders to the mandarins to starve them to death. The 
 injunction was disobeyed. The latter died in prison in 1834. 
 On the 21st of September 1838, after protracted sufferings, which 
 he endured with apostolic fortitude, Father Jaccard received the 
 crown of martyrdom. Ten bamboos were broken by the execu- 
 tioners over his body ; but " though each stroke made the blood 
 flow, this intrepid soldier of Jesus Christ did not utter a sigh, 
 nor allow a single cry to escape his lips." The Bishop of Annecy 
 relates, — Annals, vol. i. p. 397, — that when Madame Jaccard, his 
 mother, heard of his martyrdom, '< she uttered a cry of joy, and 
 
136 CHKISTIANITY IK CHINA. 
 
 not laboured in vain, and the spiritual children whom 
 he had begotten to God proved worthy of their apostle 
 and guide. Many accompanied him in that last dread 
 journey, whose death was perhaps as admirable as his 
 own. Some were beaten till the flesh fell in pieces 
 from them, yet they faltered not. Paul Dbi-Buong 
 being dragged to execution, and embarrassed by his 
 chains, said smilingly, " Let us go a little slower ; I 
 know the way, and there is no danger of our losing 
 it." His friend Michael Kenou was thus addressed 
 on the following day by the king himself : "You have 
 seen Buong's head cut off; well, have you learned to 
 fear a little \ If you are ready to renounce your re- 
 ligion, speak." The answer was heroic, but calm and 
 sober, as becomes a martyr. " Certainly, we all fear 
 your power much ; but as to abandoning my religion, 
 that I can never do. If you release me, well ; if you 
 order my head to be cut off, I shall suffer it cheer- 
 burst into a flood of tears, exclaiming, ' Thanks to the Almighty ! 
 I am freed from the dread which I felt, in spite of myself, lest he 
 should be overcome by his sufferings.'" Thomas Tien, a Chinese 
 youth of eighteen, died with him. " Upon arriving near the inn 
 where it was usual for criminals on their way to execution to take 
 some refreshment, the young Thomas, turning to Father Jaccard, 
 said gaily, ' Will you take any refreshment, father V ' No, my 
 child,' replied M. Jaccard, smiling. ' Nor I either,' added Tho- 
 mas : 'to heaven, then, my father !' " Ibid. vol. i. p. 284. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 137 
 
 fully." 1 The spirit of Bicci and Verbiest was still 
 alive in the Christians of China, after the lapse of 
 two centuries of trial and suffering. 
 
 Thaddeus, a son of this Michael Kenou, wrote 
 thus from prison to his parents, of whose fate he was 
 ignorant : "I salute my father and my mother. I beg 
 them to remember the example of Jesus Christ, who 
 suffered for us ; to call to mind also that the Holy 
 Virgin, His blessed Mother, had her soul pierced with 
 a sword of grief ; yet it was necessary that she should 
 conform to the will of God the Father. I beg my 
 father and mother to remember and meditate upon 
 these examples, lest they should give way to sorrow, 
 should be impatient and afflicted on my account, and 
 thus render themselves guilty in the sight of God, 
 not accepting His holy will. It grieves me that you 
 should be witnesses of my sufferings ; but I beseech 
 you to render thanks to God who gives me strength 
 to support all these torments." 2 Surely these saints, — 
 and there were many of them, — were a worthy 
 escort to the martyr on his passage to the heavenly 
 kingdom. 
 
 Monseigneur Taberd, Vicar- Apostolic of Cochin 
 China, in his account of this awful persecution, says : 
 
 1 Annales, tome vii. p. 529. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 532. 
 
138 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 "Eighty thousand Christians are flying hither and 
 thither in the deepest distress, and often destitute of 
 every thing ; so that a native priest writing to me 
 observes, ' Our Christians will die of hunger before 
 they have time to die for their religion. 5 Nearly 
 four hundred churches, the creation of their labours 
 and alms," — for they offered their substance to God 
 first, and their lives afterwards,-—" are utterly de- 
 stroyed." As the Association for the Propagation 
 of the Faith had collected this year 16,000/., which 
 they thought an enormous sum, they sent the poor 
 Bishop 520/., which would not go far towards rebuild- 
 ing 400 churches, and feeding 80,000 Christians. 1 
 But the storm which the powers of darkness had 
 raised did not quench the faith of this persecuted 
 flock, whose numbers actually augmented, by fresh 
 conversions, during its very crisis. "Forests, caves, 
 and rugged mountains, these are at present," writes 
 the Bishop, " the asylum of our missionaries ; pri- 
 sons or exile that of our neophytes." The trials of 
 the primitive Church were renewed amongst them; 
 what marvel if God enriched them with the same 
 gifts and graces which He had poured out with a 
 liberal hand on the Christians of that epoch 1 Z 
 
 1 Annates, tome vii. p. 570. 
 
 2 The Vicar-Apostolic wrote as follows, in 1835, from Pulo- 
 
OHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 139 
 
 It would be only too easy to fill a volume with 
 the acts of the demoniacal Minh-Menh, the Nero of 
 Cochin China ; one only shall be added, not so much 
 for the sake of illustrating the furious malice of the 
 persecutor, as the invincible fortitude of his victims, 
 The narrative with which I am about to terminate this 
 meagre record of a few of the martyrs of China, each 
 of whom displayed a nobler courage than a thousand 
 vulgar heroes of the battle-field, is perhaps without 
 parallel even in the annals of that goodly company. 
 It is in the gardens of the golden palace of the Ro- 
 man butcher, in the bloody lists of the Coliseum, or 
 in the amphitheatres of Smyrna and Antioch, that 
 we must look for cruelty so hellish endured with 
 valour so incomparable. 
 
 The Abbe" Marchand, a French priest of the dio- 
 cese of Besangon, quitted his country in 1829 for 
 
 Penang, where he was in exile ; " The miserable condition of 
 Cochin China, and the uncertainty of my ever seeing M. Jaccard 
 again, have made me resolve to go to Syncapore, to consecrate 
 M. Cuenet. I shall start in three days. I have prepared a poor 
 wooden crazier, which I will have painted yellow if it cannot be 
 gilt. I have an old white mitre to put on his head. In a word, 
 I will do all I can to provide for this consecration. I hope, how- 
 ever, to succeed : it would be too bad of him to send me back 
 after such a painful journey in vain.'' Three months after, Mon*- 
 seigneur Cuenot announces his consecration as coadjutor. 
 
1 40 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 the mission of Lower Cochin China. When the per- 
 secution of 1833 broke out, he refused to quit his 
 post ; for he served One who had said, " The good 
 shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." For a long 
 time he succeeded in escaping the search of the 
 bloodhounds who were on his track. In September 
 1835, during the civil war which then raged, he was 
 captured, and the heart of Minh-M6nh was filled 
 with exultation. Conducted forthwith to the capital, 
 and surrounded by all the instruments of torture in 
 order to intimidate his soul, his examination com- 
 menced. 
 
 " Are you Phu-Koai-Uhon V This was the Chi- 
 nese name of the Vicar- Apostolic. " No, I am not." 
 " "Where, then, is he V " I know not." " Are you 
 acquainted with him V " I know him, but it is long 
 since I have seen him." " How many years have 
 you been in this kingdom V " Five years." That 
 night the flesh of both his thighs was burned off with 
 red-hot irons ; and then he was enclosed in a cage, 
 two and a half feet in height, three in length, and 
 two in -width ; and so he passed the night. On the 
 morrow he was again brought forth ; and then was 
 enacted a scene of unutterable horror, at the bare 
 recital of which the heart grows faint and nature 
 shudders. At a signal from the presiding mandarin^ 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 141 
 
 five men held him down, while five others plunged 
 at the same moment as many bars of hot iron, each 
 eighteen inches long, into different parts of his body. 
 The strong heart of the martyr of Jesus Christ did 
 not fail, though the anguish was more than mortal 
 man could bear ; yet even the sharp and bitter cry 
 of agony was obedient to faith, and as the smoke 
 rose up and the tender flesh seethed under the burn- 
 ing rods, the baffled heathen only heard him ex- 
 claim, " 0, my Father !" And now they mocked 
 him, when the irons had grown cold in his body, 
 and cried out, " Father of the Religion of Jesus !" 
 and then they asked him questions of his religion, 
 such as men, worse than the heathen, sometimes 
 ask among ourselves. " Why do Christians tear 
 out the eyes of the dying?" they said, alluding 
 to the anointing of the eyes by Extreme Unction. 
 The victim, gathering up all his strength, answered, 
 " They do not so ; no such thing is ever done." Upon 
 this five fresh irons were applied to him. " Why 
 do married people," they asked, when these in their 
 turn had become cold, "stand before the priest round 
 the altar V He could still speak, so he said, " They 
 come, in the assembly of Christians, to ask a blessing 
 on their union." A third time his agony recom- 
 mences. " What enchanted bread do you give to 
 
1 42 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 people who have confessed, to make them Cling so 
 firmly to their religion 1" " It is not bread," replied 
 his dying lips ; " it is the Body of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, Incarnate, and become the nourishment of the 
 soul" Thus, to the last, he -witnessed for God : but 
 it was not over yet, though fifteen deep and ghastly 
 furrows had been burned in his body. They offered 
 him food to eat, which, like his Master, he refused. 
 And now two other executioners advance, each armed 
 with a keen and heavy blade ; a rolling of drums is 
 heard, and when it ceases, both his breasts are lying 
 on the ground. He makes no movement. Again 
 the drums are heard, and again two great pieces of 
 flesh are cut from him. He turns his eyes to hea- 
 ven, then nature yields, and he bows his head, before 
 they have finished their Work. Strike on, ministers 
 of hell ; that poor body feels no more. The soul, 
 which you could not touch, has fled, and the martyr 
 is with his God. 1 
 
 Such are the apostles,— -for we speak of an event 
 which is but of yesterday,— whom the Church, strong 
 and youthful as in the days when her Lord gave her 
 
 1 Whoever would read of similar deeds done ly Englishmen 
 to Catholic missionaries, for no other crime than his, — love of 
 Jesus, and of the souls for which Jesus died, — should read Chal- 
 Itfner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests. 
 
CHEISTIANITY W CHINA. 143 
 
 her first lessons, sends to do her work even in this 
 nineteenth century. Through great tribulation they 
 pass to their immense reward. "We do not stay here 
 to compare them again with the motley crew of 
 wrangling and heretical prophets, who preach, not 
 Christ, but themselves. Who could endure the com- 
 parison \ Who would not shrink from it with dis- 
 gust I The mind, filled with thoughts of heaven, 
 and of the " strong men" who have " taken it by vio- 
 lence," refuses so soon to turn its glance downwards 
 to the things of earth. Let us forget, then, for a 
 moment, that there have been in China teachers of 
 any other class. We have enough to do to meditate 
 on these, — the just, the pure, and the faithful. 1 
 
 i " When in China, we are grieved to our heart's core to see 
 the servants of the Romish Church indefatigably and zealously 
 working, making converts of the Chinese, regarding neither diffi- 
 culties nor discouragement; whilst too many Protestant missiona- 
 ries occupy their time in secular pursuits, trading and trafficking. 
 
 Alas ! the lives of many missionaries whom we have 
 
 seen in China (and elsewhere) are totally foreign to and at vari- 
 ance with their sacred calling, much of their time being passed in 
 attending auctions, buying at one price, and transferring their 
 purchase to a native at an advanced rate, although they receive 
 a handsome allowance, more than sufficient for their support. 
 
 The conduct of many missionaries is most unbecoming, 
 
 whether considered in a Christian or social view ; and to prove 
 the impression produced on the minds of the Chinese heathens 
 
144 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 More than twenty years have elapsed since the 
 event just narrated, yet the battle of which it was 
 only a terrible but characteristic incident has not 
 ceased to rage, nor changed its character, during the 
 interval. Each year in succession, even up to the 
 present hour, has witnessed a repetition of similar 
 combats, and of equally glorious victories. But it is 
 impossible to record them all. " The time would fail 
 to tell," as the great apostle says of some not more 
 noble than these, of all the great deeds which were 
 done by these illustrious preachers, " of whom the 
 world was not worthy." One brief and rapid glance 
 let us give to their work, before we turn to other 
 lands, where we shall again meet the heroes of the 
 Cross, fighting under the same standard, and, like 
 the apostles of China, " not accepting deliverance, 
 that they might obtain a better resurrection." 
 
 In 1837, on the 20th of September, after a fitting 
 preparation of affliction and toil, Father Corday was 
 added to the number of martyrs. On the 12th of 
 June 1838, Monseigneur Ignatius Delgado, for forty 
 years Vicar-Apostolic in Tong-king, died in prison 
 
 by the lives of the missionaries being at variance with their 
 preaching, the common expressions made use of with reference to 
 them a/re, IAe-preaching devils." China and the Chinese, by Henry 
 Charles Sirr, M.A., vol. ii. ch. x. pp. 215, 216 (1849). 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 145 
 
 of his sufferings. His venerable coadjutor, Dominic 
 Henarez, after an apostolate of forty-nine years, was 
 martyred on the 25th of the month, in spite of his 
 gray hairs. On the 5th of July, still in the same 
 year, Bishop Havard, stretched on a mat in a wretched 
 hut, after all his noble labours, died of want and 
 fatigue. 1 Fathers Candahl and Vialle, who had long 
 been hiding in caves and dens, died the same death f 
 while Father Simonin perished in his flight to the 
 mountains. 8 On the 24th of November, Monseigneur 
 
 1 It should be instructive to religious Anglicans to know, 
 that during the troubles in France he had been French tutor in 
 an English school in London, but was dismissed for " refusing to 
 conduct the pupils to a Protestant church." Annals, vol. i. p. 535. 
 
 2 On two occasions M. Candahl received a gratuitous passage 
 on board an English ship, though he was known to be a Catholic 
 missionary. Both in China and India our missionaries have 
 often acknowledged similar acts of generosity ; for there have 
 always been individual Englishmen whose private virtues rebuked 
 the national crimes. Father de Fontaney, who returned to Eu- 
 rope in 1704, wrote from London to Plre la Chaise, "I can 
 declare of the English who reside in the Chinese ports that their 
 conduct does them honour." Lettres edifiantes, tome xvii. p. 384. 
 
 3 He and Father Vialle contrived to enter Tong-king in the 
 spring of 1835, passing through dangers of every kind, some- 
 times shipwrecked, often hiding in caves and mountains, ex- 
 hausted by hunger and thirst, their feet wounded and bleeding, 
 and only venturing at night to the seashore to moisten their 
 parched lips with its brine ! Annates, tome viii. p. 402. 
 
 L 
 
146 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Borie, Vicar- Apostolic of Western Tong-king, was de- 
 capitated, after seven fruitless attempts on the part 
 of the executioner, whom the martyr calmly encour- 
 aged in his task, so that even the mandarins hid their 
 faces in horror. 1 Thus the Church in the kingdom 
 of Annam lost four Bishops in one year. Well might 
 Bishop Cuenot, upon whom the mantle of the mar- 
 tyred prelates had now fallen, say, in a letter from 
 Cochin China in 1839 : " Our ranks, as you perceive, 
 are thinning fast ; and if this deplorable crisis lasts, 
 our poor flock will soon be orphans." Father Dela- 
 motte also, who had become Pro-Vicar- Apostolic of 
 Cochin China, writes as follows : " The year 1838 
 has been a year of sorrow and misery for Tong-king 
 and Upper Cochin China. The sword of persecution 
 has committed terrible ravages, and heaven has been 
 
 1 When Monseigneur Borie refused to answer the questions 
 of the mandarins, the presiding judge said to him, " When your 
 flesh is torn to pieces with iron rods, will you then be able to 
 keep silence?" "I shall then see what I can do," he replied; 
 " I dare not flatter myself before the trial." In his prison he 
 continued to preach Jesus Christ with extraordinary fervour. 
 " The joy which beamed in his face, notwithstanding the heavy 
 cangue which weighed down his shoulders, excited the admira- 
 tion of the pagans. ' This master,' they were heard to say, ' has 
 truly a heart for teaehing religion ; if hereafter he can continue 
 to instruct us, we also will embrace his^doctrine.' " Annals, vol. i. 
 p. 551. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 147 
 
 peopled with martyrs. The two Dominican Bishops 
 of Eastern Tong-king were arrested and beheaded in 
 the month of July last. Three Spanish fathers of 
 the same order were also beheaded, and seven native 
 priests shed their blood for Jesus Christ." 
 
 It would be too long to speak of the sufferings of 
 the laity, yet a single example may suffice to show 
 that they were not unworthy of their teachers. Mi- 
 chael Mi, one of these generous confessors, received 
 in forty days more than five hundred lashes ; yet 
 nothing could shake his firmness. " Fool," said the 
 mandarins to him ; " why are you so obstinately bent 
 upon dying?" And the members of his family, even 
 his children, emulated his courage. When the mo- 
 ment of his martyrdom arrived, and the executioner 
 offered for a certain sum to cut off his head at one 
 stroke : " Cut it into a hundred pieces if you like," 
 said the martyr : " so that you cut it off, that is 
 enough for me." Even the mandarins, brutal as 
 they were, were so much touched by the virtues dis- 
 played by some of the martyrs at this time, that 
 they privately said to them : " We know that you 
 do not merit death, and we would willingly save 
 you ; but the orders of the king do not permit us 
 to do so. Pardon us, therefore, if we are compelled 
 to take away your lives, and do not impute this 
 
148 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 crime to us." 1 Like Pilate, they knew they were 
 condemning the innocent ; so they calmly washed 
 their hands, and protested it was no act of theirs. 
 
 It was with reference to this persecution that 
 Pope Gregory XVI. said, in his encyclical letter 
 of the 18th September 1840, " What greater triumph 
 for the Church and religion, what greater cause of 
 confusion for the persecutors, than to see realised, 
 even in our own days, the Divine promises of perpe- 
 tual assistance and protection ! Hence may we say, 
 with St. Leo, that no species of cruelty can ever destroy 
 the religion which is founded upon the mystery of the 
 Gross of Jesus Christ." 
 
 But Cochin China was not the only theatre of 
 these events. In Corea, at the other extremity of 
 the empire, Bishop Imbert, so well known to all 
 readers of the Annals, was martyred in 1839, and 
 with him PF. Chastan and Maubant. With them 
 also a glorious company of the faithful ascended to 
 heaven ; of whom seventy were beheaded, and one 
 hundred and eighty strangled. " There is nothing 
 in the records of missions," says an eloquent French 
 voice, " so like a martyrology as the annals of the 
 
 1 Annals, vol. i. p. 543. Bishop Luquet has given a brief 
 narrative of the principal native martyrs in his Preface to Thei- 
 ner's L'UgUse Schismatique Russe. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 149 
 
 Church of Corea. Her whole history is written in 
 blood; every date is marked by a persecution; every 
 detail describes a scene of torture, a dungeon, or an 
 execution. Every person discovered to be a Chris- 
 tian is invariably a martyr. Her first neophyte 
 was a martyr ; her first Chinese apostle a martyr ; 
 her first native priest a martyr ; her first Bishop a 
 martyr ; her first European missionaries were all 
 martyrs." 1 
 
 1 Annals, vol. xiv. p. 189. When the overtasked apostles 
 of this land of martyrs sent to Eome in 1817 for a European 
 priest for the Corean mission, they said, "Any ecclesiastic who 
 may receive this vocation may be assured that he will have the 
 happiness to suffer much for the glory of God, that he will make 
 many conversions, and that in a few years he will obtain the 
 crown of martyrdom." Annates, tome iv. p. 205. The formidable 
 invitation was accepted ; and here is a recent example of the 
 spirit in which the true missionary of Christ responds to such a 
 call. " It is for the purpose of penetrating into a kingdom from 
 whence his predecessors have only been delivered by the scaffold, 
 and with the intention of sharing the misery and proscription of 
 a few faithful and unknown strangers, that M. Maistre has de- 
 voted to this object ten years of his life, spent sixty thousand 
 francs in roaming around the impenetrable frontier, in running 
 about in all sorts of disguises through all kinds of perils, from the 
 ports of China to the deserts of Leao-tong, seeking for Corean 
 guides, which he looked for in vain, asking alternately the Chi- 
 nese barques and the French ships to land him upon the coast 
 where his tomb was already marked out ! Death was so evi- 
 dently to be the result of the enterprise, that the most courageous 
 
150 CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is so wonderful in this marvel- 
 lous history as the prodigious fortitude and heroism 
 of men who, in a vast number of cases, had scarcely 
 received the baptism of water when they were called 
 upon to accept also the baptism of blood. Father 
 Marette observes, in 1840, of the lay martyrs in 
 Tong-king : " Their constancy is the more worthy of 
 admiration, since they are neither Europeans, sus- 
 tained by the natural vigour of their constitutional 
 character, nor apostles, impatient to shed their blood 
 for the Gospel, but timid Asiatics, whom grace alone 
 has converted into heroes." And then he quotes 
 some of the letters which he had himself received 
 from them in their last hour. " I confide in the 
 
 seamen refused to be his accomplices by lending him their aid. 
 It. required all the zeal of an apostle to comprehend this heroism, 
 and second its endeavours. Being a priest, Father Helot under- 
 stood what was required by the cross ; and as a member of a 
 society whose tradition is that they have never been baffled by 
 any difficulties or perils, he felt himself at the post where his 
 company wished him to be, when rivalling in zeal and courage a 
 foreign apostle. In the general panic, the Jesuit turns himself 
 into the pilot of a battered bark, safely conducts his intrepid 
 passenger to an unknown land, and after having deposited him 
 on the shore, and looked after him some time in prayers and fer- 
 vent, good wishes, returns to his neophytes with the consoling 
 satisfaction of having, exposed his life for a mission that is not 
 his own." Awmis, vol. xiv. p. 190. 
 
CHBISTIANITY IN CHINA. 151 
 
 merits of my Saviour," says one, " and in the protec- 
 tion of the holy Virgin, and of the blessed martyrs 
 who await me in the bosom of God. I salute you 
 for the last time !" " Your child offers you a thou- 
 sand salutations," writes another, who was a mere 
 youth, and whose agony was about to commence ; 
 " I am filled with joy at having been predestined by 
 God for martyrdom. I say it with sincerity ; for I 
 would not dare to boast before you, who are esta- 
 blished judge of good and evil. Pray, while your 
 son is in the combat, that God, at your solicita- 
 tion, may grant him strength in the midst of his 
 trial." 1 
 
 But we must hasten to an end. In 1840, M. 
 Perboyre was martyred on the 11th of September, 
 after long and horrible tortures, and with him M. 
 Torrette, a Lazarist missionary. This year also saw 
 the death of Father Luke Loan, a native Annamite 
 priest ; a man so venerated for his virtues, that it 
 was only by offering a large bribe that the mandarins 
 could procure an executioner. " My father, I bow 
 before you," said this man, when he came to perform 
 his bloody task ; " if it depended on me alone, you 
 should live in peace ; but the king's will must be 
 done, and I cannot resist it. Do not, I beg, impute 
 1 Armcds, vol: ii. p. 202. 
 
152 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 your death to me ; and when you are in heaven 
 pray for me." 1 
 
 Meanwhile the supreme pastors of this noble 
 flock, — in whose ears and hearts was ever sounding 
 a gracious voice, which ceased not to say, Feed my 
 sheep, — were striving by all means to recruit their 
 own diminished ranks. In 1841, Monseigneur Retord, 
 Vicar- Apostolic of Western Tong-king, says, " I have 
 just consecrated Father Hermozilla. After having 
 surmounted a thousand obstacles, and escaped a 
 thousand dangers, he arrived on the 23d of April. 
 The ceremony was performed on the 25th, in a 
 cabin thatched with straw, in a village situated on the 
 edge of a thick forest, in order that, in case of immi- 
 nent danger, we might take refuge in it. You may 
 well suppose that the ornamental part of the cere- 
 mony was not of a very costly kind. Almost imme- 
 diately after, the new Bishop set out again, in order 
 to confer the episcopal character on his coadjutor ; 
 for in these regions we must hasten to anoint with 
 the holy chrism other foreheads, when our own head 
 is perhaps about to fall immediately under the axe 
 of the executioner." And in the next year, 1842, 
 the same prelate, for he still survived, could say, 
 " Since my return to Tong-king, I have already con- 
 1 Annals, vol. viii. p. 201. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 153 
 
 secrated two Bishops and eleven priests. We have 
 at present but one priest less than before the per- 
 secution ; for in proportion as heads fall, others rise 
 up to blunt the sword of the executioner." 1 
 
 And now a momentary lull occurred, and the 
 storm seemed to abate; so that, in 1846, Father 
 Rodriguez could say, " During the course of last year 
 I travelled unconcernedly through the three districts 
 of the province, where I baptized 300 adults, ad- 
 ministered the sacrament of Confirmation to 3402 
 persons, and received into the bosom of the Church 
 a great number who had been dissevered by the vio- 
 lence of persecution." An age of martyrdom is no 
 doubt glorious for the Church ; but a season of tran- 
 quillity has also its advantages. For see what these 
 apostles did during three years of comparative repose. 
 Monseigneur Retord gives the following account of 
 them. In 1844, in his own mission of Western 
 Tong-king alone, they baptized 1237 adults; in 1845, 
 1328 adults; and in 1846, 1308. In the three 
 years they also baptized 25,673 children. Again, in 
 the same mission they heard, in 1844, 181,418 con- 
 fessions; in 1845, 226,413 confessions; and in 1846, 
 230,939 confessions. Once more : in 1844 they 
 gave 110,519 communions; in 1845, 129,124 com- 
 1 Annals, vol. iv. p. 209. 
 
154 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 munions ; and in 1846, 135,640 communions. In 
 1850, the same Bishop could still report that "our 
 Christians increase at the annual rate of three thou- 
 sand." 1 This was in a single province of Cochin 
 China ; in which they could now reckon, in spite of 
 a persecution perhaps unparalleled in the annals of 
 Christianity, 91 native priests, 49 in minor orders or 
 seminarists, 200 catechists, 300 Latin students in 
 six colleges, and 673 religious in 34 convents. 2 
 
 From Corea, in the following year, 1847, Mon- 
 seigneur Ferreol writes as follows : " The generosity 
 and the triumphs of the Corean martyrs will have 
 filled you with joy The apostolic ministry in 
 
 1 Annals, vol. xii. p. 313. 
 
 2 Throughout all the provinces of China there are communi- 
 ties of religious women, who consecrate themselves to God in the 
 holy state of virginity. " In localities where there are at most 
 only a few hundreds of the faithful, there are forty or fifty vir- 
 gins whom neither promises nor threats can dissuade from the 
 resolution which they have taken from their infancy, to devote 
 themselves to the service of God, under the protection of Mary. 
 So sweet is the perfume of the virtues of Mary even in this land 
 of infidelity." Quoted in Life in China, by the Rev. W. C. Milne, 
 p. 486. This gentleman, in proof of the " gross system of Ma- 
 riolatry" which prevails amongst the Chinese Christians, quotes 
 such expressions as " Holy Mary,'' " Holy Mother of God," 
 " Mother of Christ," <fec. Does he mean to say that she is not 
 holy 1 not Mother of God ? not Mother of Christ 1 How ad- 
 mirably qualified this person must be to convert the heathen ! 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 155 
 
 these countries is crucifying to nature. The diet is 
 fatal to Europeans; bread and wine are unknown 
 here ; boiled rice, and water in which barley has 
 been steeped, are the substitutes. Encompassed with 
 perils, we can never venture out except enveloped in 
 the garb of mourning, to conceal our faces. Yet in 
 the midst of our pains and toils God does not leave 
 
 us without consolations to soothe them On 
 
 several occasions, in the capital, I have been afflicted 
 to tears at beholding Christians, belonging to the 
 highest nobility, availing themselves of the moment 
 when the rest of the family were asleep in order to 
 come to confession. This mysterious secrecy is here 
 a necessity ; for every Christian seized is put to 
 death, unless he rescues himself by apostasy/' 1 Yet 
 that very year he baptized 768 adults, and admitted 
 467 catechumens, — being an addition of 1235 to the 
 number of those who were willing to endure the loss 
 of all things for His sake whom they had so lately 
 learned to know. 
 
 In the next year, 1848, — for it is well to read 
 this story to its last page, — Monseigneur Perrocheau 
 writes from the province of Su-tchuen, in the very 
 heart of China : " In spite of the obstacles which the 
 mandarins oppose to the conversion of the infidels, 
 1 Annals, vol. x. p. 268. 
 
156 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 we have admitted 1280 neophytes upon the roll of 
 catechumens, and baptized 888 adults within the 
 year. God be praised ! But it is our angelic society 
 which affords us the greatest consolation. The num- 
 ber of children of infidels baptized in danger of death 
 amounts this year to 84,416; of whom about two- 
 thirds, who are now already in possession of unspeak- 
 able happiness, will love and praise God through all 
 eternity." 1 
 
 From the province of Nanking we hear, in 1849, 
 that the Stations of the Gross had been established 
 in nearly 300 different localities, and " more than 
 100 chapels newly built or substantially repaired ;" 
 while " 5000 pagan adults had been regenerated in 
 the waters of baptism, and 15,000 to 20,000 chil- 
 dren, most of whom," says Bishop Maresca, " have 
 gone, since their baptism, to swell the train of the 
 spotless Lamb." He adds, that the number of Euro- 
 pean missionaries in his diocese had increased from 
 four to twenty-eight in five years. " My college," 
 he says, " contains thirty pupils, who are all natives, 
 except a young Englishman." 
 
 In 1850, the flame of persecution burst forth 
 once again in Tong-king, in which the laity showed 
 a firmness of faith and courage which not even their 
 1 Awnals, vol. xi. p. 93. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 157 
 
 anointed apostles could surpass. 1 In 1851, Father 
 Augustin Schceffler, a French missionary, was mar- 
 tyred. " With reference to the individuals whom 
 
 1 Let a single example suffice. The village of Ly-tou-pa, 
 near the city of Kiu-hien, contained, in 1847, two hundred and 
 forty inhabitants, who were all Christians. So great were their 
 virtues that even the pagans of the neighbourhood " proclaimed 
 aloud that the inhabitants of Ly-tou-pa were irreproachable." 
 The mandarins of Kiu-hien thought otherwise, and in an evil day 
 repaired to the village. The houses were sacked and pillaged ; 
 some of the people were seized and tortured, a mandarin asking 
 at intervals, " Will you renounce your religion J" and the con- 
 fessors answering with one voice, " Never." After sixty blows, 
 "the mouths of the confessors were full of blood, and they were 
 unable to reply. The mandarin distinguished a voice which cried 
 ' Jesus ! save us !' ' Oh ! they still pray ; strike, strike, kill 
 them !' Their jaws are mangled ; the blood gushes from their 
 mouths ; their hands hang paralysed, and the bloody scourge 
 still makes deep gashes along their backs." Five days after, they 
 are again brought up from prison, and commanded to trample 
 on the cross. "Toung-tcheu-hio replied in the name of all his 
 companions, — ' Mandarin, it is useless to speak to us of apostasy ; 
 we are prepared to suffer every thing rather than renounce our 
 faith. You can imprison, exile, or decapitate us if you think 
 proper, but you can never deprive us of our God.' On hearing 
 these words, the judge struck his breast with bewilderment. He 
 seemed to say, ' Alas ! what is to be done with such people ?' In 
 a word, he had never met with Christians." The letter which 
 describes all the details is written by Father Bertrand, from the 
 city of Kiu-hien, and dated the 23d of August 1850. Annals, 
 vol. xii. p. 203. 
 
158 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 this fellow has trained in his doctrine," says the edict 
 which condemned him, " and the houses that have 
 furnished him an asylum, he entertained such attach- 
 ment for them, as utterly to persist in refusing to 
 disclose them, in spite of all our cross-examining." 
 As he went to the place of execution,, a placard was 
 carried before him which ended with these words : 
 " On his arrest he confessed truly the whole charge 
 of preaching the religion of Jesus. His crime is 
 patent. Let Mr. Augustin be beheaded, and cast 
 into a stream." 1 
 
 In 1854, the Vicar- Apostolic of Western Tong- 
 king writes to a friend in France : " Do not imagine 
 that, amidst all our trials, I am melancholy, dejected, 
 and discouraged ; you would find me at the present 
 day such as you have always known me. We are not 
 without our consolations ; the Lord has compassion 
 on our weakness. If He does sometimes allow us to 
 drink the cup of bitterness, it is always mixed with 
 the honey of His grace. Whilst permitting us to be 
 persecuted, He blesses our efforts to convert souls to 
 Him. Last year we regenerated upwards of 15,000 
 children of infidels in danger of death, and have col- 
 lected upwards of 700 in a state of health, whom we 
 have placed with our neophytes, to be brought up 
 1 Annals, vol. xiii. p. 17. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 159 
 
 as Christians. We baptized also upwards of 1500 
 adults, and heard 222,008 confessions. I have just 
 completed the census of our faithful ; and I have 
 great pleasure in stating that, during the last five 
 years, their number has increased by about 10,000. 
 This is about all the ecclesiastical news in Tong- 
 king." But he also tells his friend that these Chi- 
 nese Christians " are living in the observance of all 
 the precepts of religion with an exactitude, assiduity, 
 and constancy far exceeding that of your European 
 Christians." And his brother Bishop of Eastern 
 Tong-king, Monseigneur Cuenot, reports that, in that 
 province, in the same period, they had baptized 
 1040 adults, 15,960 children, and admitted 600 new 
 catechumens. 
 
 / Finally, in 1856, the history ends as it began, 
 by fresh martyrdoms, as glorious as any which pre- 
 ceded them. /On the 29th of February in that year, 
 in the province of Quang-tong, Father Chapdelaine, 
 who had only spent three years in the mission, was 
 beheaded./ He had a few days previously been tor- 
 tured, and had received 100 blows in the face, so 
 that his jaws were completely smashed ; yet, as the 
 apostolic prefect relates, he did not utter a cry, " but, 
 united as he was to the heart of our suffering Lord, 
 he endured the most exquisite tortures without a 
 
160 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 word." He was carried back to prison, frightfully 
 mutilated and unable to move . hand or foot ; yet, a 
 moment after, to the amazement of all who saw him, 
 he rose up and began to walk, as if in perfect health." 
 When his astonished guards begged him to reveal to 
 them privately how it was possible that he should be 
 able to walk, " the Father answered with a smile, 
 ' It is because our good God has protected and blessed 
 me.'" 1 
 
 And now we may conclude; for we have received 
 the record almost up to the present hour. Some- 
 thing we have learned of the Catholic apostolate in 
 China ; yet how little ! How feebly and faintly do 
 a few barren dates and skeleton facts shadow forth 
 the sublime incidents of that sacred warfare, — the 
 long years of patient suffering and unquenchable 
 zeal, — the secret and ineffable communions with 
 God, — the days of toil and tbe nights of prayer, — 
 the mysterious operations of the Holy Ghost, — the 
 
 1 Annals, vol. xvii. p. 346. There have been additional mar- 
 tyrdoms since this date, and two more Bishops have sealed their 
 faith with their blood ; but the details are not before me. The 
 Singapore Free Press, April 13, 1843, recording the sufferings 
 of the French priests in Cochin China, says, that the heathen 
 were so astonished at their calm patience under torture, as to 
 exclaim, — "These strangers probably possess some charm to 
 deaden pain." Chinese Repository, vol. xii. p. 539. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 161 
 
 floods of grace poured out, — the matchless fidelity, — 
 the calm unearthly strength, — and all consummated, 
 at the appointed hour, by the keen knife or the burn- 
 ing brand. Happy they who are kinsmen, begot- 
 ten of the same Mother, with these great apostles. 
 Happy they who may boldly claim them, by the 
 communion of saints, as friends, brothers, and advo- 
 cates. 1 "We are of the same family and household, 
 and their glory is ours also. But, alas for the alien 
 and the stranger, who has neither part nor lot with 
 these marvels of grace and beauty ; in whom no 
 wistful thought of love or reverence is kindled by 
 the contemplation of their incomparable lives ; who 
 bite their lips and scowl, as some scowled even at 
 the foot of the Cross ; or who look on from afar, 
 with hate or malice or envy, at best with bitter 
 and unavailing regret, upon deeds which they cannot 
 understand, and virtues which they cannot imitate. 
 
 Such, then, is the first example of that great 
 Contrast which we propose to trace, not only in 
 China, but in every part of the world where Catho- 
 lic and Protestant missionaries are found together. 
 Every where we shall see the same ineffaceable 
 
 1 " Mirabilis est Dominus in Sanctis suis, in quibus nobis et 
 prcBsidium constituit et exemplum." S. Leonis Mag. Serm. 83, 
 Opp. p. 346. 
 
 M 
 
162 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 distinction, both in their character and their work. 1 
 Every where too we shall find the truth of the 
 French proverb, — Heresy always stops where per- 
 secution begins. We have seen the Protestant mis- 
 sionaries swarming in a few of the sea-ports of 
 China, where they could reside without peril or in- 
 convenience ; but we have not met them in Su- 
 tchuen, nor in Corea, nor in long-king, nor in Tar- 
 tary, nor in Mantcheou. Their temperate and cal- 
 culating zeal arrests them on the frontiers of danger, 
 and they recoil even at the distant prospect of hard 
 fare and ceaseless toil, of the smart of the lash, the 
 clank of the chain, the gloom of the prison, and the 
 final combat on the scaffold or in the flames. Nor 
 can we reasonably blame their caution. They have 
 no vocation to this apostolic warfare, and they know 
 it. St. Paul in Athens they think they admire, but 
 St. Paul decapitated is quite a different thing. They 
 talk complacently of St. Peter preaching at Jerusa- 
 lem, but St. Peter crucified at Rome is an unpleasant 
 
 1 " It cannot, indeed, be denied that the great number of 
 poor Kegulars (voluntarily poor), inured to hard living, and 
 brought up in an implicit obedience to their Superiors, hath 
 hitherto given to the Church of Eome, in regard to her missions, 
 great advantage over the reformed churches." Bishop Berkeley's 
 Works, vol. ii. p. 433 (1784). 
 
CHRISTIANITY IK CHINA. 163 
 
 reflection. As soon as blood begins to flow, they 
 turn away their heads. But at least we might fairly 
 expect that they would discharge the easier duties 
 of the safer calling which they have assumed. Even 
 here we are disappointed. A recent traveller in 
 China, an officer in the British navy, has published 
 a work which is entitled Five Tears in China. It is 
 impossible to terminate this chapter without refer- 
 ring to it. After asserting, as the result of his ob- 
 servations, that " partial success has attended the 
 preaching of the Roman Catholics alone," and notic- 
 ing with wonder that there are " more than forty 
 thousand members (of their Church) in the apostolic 
 vicariate of Fukien," he continues thus : " I wish I 
 could say as much for the success of the Church- 
 of- England mission ; but at Koo-lung-su, where I 
 was for upwards of a year, the only two Protestant 
 converts that I could hear of were suspected of 
 running off with the communion plate!' 1 It seems 
 their " converts" are always of the same class. But 
 this gentleman has more to tell us. With the honest 
 candour which belongs to his gallant profession, he 
 contrasts with the Catholic missionaries some of 
 those of his own creed whom he happened to meet 
 in China. The first is a clergyman of what is called 
 1 Five Years in China, ch. xi. p. 184 (1848). 
 
164 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 " the Church of England," though only one third of 
 our population even profess to belong, in any sense 
 whatever, even the loosest, to that decaying insti- 
 tution. 1 This clergyman, he says, would not even 
 " attend the military hospitals to administer the con- 
 solations of religion to the sick ;" and when he was 
 rebuked by the regimental surgeon, he blandly re- 
 plied : " Soldiers and sailors are so very bad, it is 
 of no use, I never like to go near them." 2 
 
 In this unexpected dearth of what is somewhat 
 inaccurately called " the consolations of religion," it 
 appears that the authorities, more humane than the 
 clergy, had recourse to " an American missionary, 
 who undertook the cure of souls of an English regi- 
 ment, at a salary of 250/. per annum, paid weekly," 
 — an arrangement which must have been highly ad- 
 vantageous to the Chinese tradesmen whom he hon- 
 oured with his custom. Being " sent for," to visit a 
 dying soldier, " he came — as far as the foot of the 
 staircase" — where, learning what the case was, "the 
 holy man merely gasped, ' Delirium tremens !' in a 
 tone of pious horror, turned upon his heel, and went 
 his way !" What follows is worthy of notice. " Fa- 
 ther Barrentin was in the hospital at the time, visiting 
 
 1 " Ruinosa est domus, et piget migrare !" 
 
 2 Five Years in China, p. 185. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 165 
 
 some Catholic patients belonging to the regiment, 
 and the officers told me he attends most assiduously 
 to his duty, and gratuitously, inasmuch as it forms 
 no part of his regular mission ; and though his sti- 
 pend, under the Bishop of Macao, is only ninety dol- 
 lars per annum, — less than 18^., — yet upon that he 
 lives, and declines all offers of further payment. He 
 had seen the dying man, when told that there was no 
 hope of his obtaining the consolations of religion as 
 prescribed by his own church. At the soldier's own 
 request, communicated to him through the hospital 
 attendant, the good Father administered to him the 
 last offices of the Roman Catholic Church, in com- 
 munion with which, I need hardly say, the poor man 
 died." 1 
 
 One more passage we must borrow from this 
 intelligent officer, and it shall be the last. We have 
 read in these pages of Gorea, — a peninsula which 
 forms the northern boundary of the Yellow Sea,— 
 and of its many martyrs. Mr. Smith gave us some 
 information about it, and about that worthy captain 
 whose own father and grandfather had been mar- 
 tyred. Here is another Protestant witness, who can 
 assure us that the Corean Christians have not de- 
 generated since Mr. Smith saw them. " When at 
 1 Five Tears in China, p. 186. 
 
166 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 Shanghae," says Lieutenant Forbes, " I met with 
 a Corean, of noble birth, and by profession a Ro- 
 man Catholic priest. His father, grandfather, and 
 great-grandfather, had all died for that religion. 
 After completing his education at Macao, he was 
 landed from a junk at Ningpo, to find his way 
 from thence to his own country, on foot, a distance 
 
 of at least fourteen hundred miles ! More 
 
 than once he had witnessed a partial massacre of 
 his own flock, and had himself been hunted down 
 by dogs." 
 
 Was he, then, fleeing from these perils, and grown 
 weary of suffering % Not so ; he was worthy of his 
 martyred ancestry, and of his own vocation. " The 
 reason of his again quitting his country," says Lieu- 
 tenant Forbes, " was to meet a French Bishop, lately 
 appointed, and to save him the trouble of a land 
 journey. For this purpose he had brought a junk. 
 ... He dined with us once or twice on board, and 
 we found him a clever, agreeable, well-informed man, 
 with a fund of anecdotes, and a very good manner. 
 He spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chi- 
 nese, and Corean, with a smattering of Japanese, and 
 had travelled all over China, Manchou, and Mongul. 
 The last I heard of him was a report, though after- 
 wards contradicted, of his having been cast ashore 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 167 
 
 on the Shang-tung province, and only one man 
 saved." 1 
 
 If, however, the contrast which exists between 
 the two classes of missionaries is so flagrant and 
 palpable, that even the most indifferent and super- 
 ficial observers are compelled to notice it, and re- 
 luctantly reveal their new-born suspicion that G-od 
 is with the one and not with the other; 2 and if 
 there is precisely the same difference between the 
 converts whom they respectively attract, — saints and 
 martyrs being formed in the one school, and in the 
 other only a few cunning and disreputable recruits, 
 ready to desert as soon as their wages fall into 
 arrears, and apt to appropriate every stray waif 
 within their reach, not excepting the " communion 
 plate," 3 — it must be admitted that at least the 
 Protestant Missionary Societies do not hesitate to 
 apply the only remedy which they can command, 
 
 1 Five Tears in China, p. 190. 
 
 2 " Non intelligimus judicantem, sed vidimus operantem." St. 
 Leo. 
 
 3 We shall see hereafter similar examples in other countries. 
 Morrison speaks of a Chinese " whom I tried to make attached 
 
 to us by acts of kindness, and who robbed Mr. of 121 
 
 dollars." Memoirs, vol. i. p. 287. At Malacca some of their pre- 
 tended " converts," employed in printing, stole " several cases of 
 type;" vol. ii. p. 67. 
 
168 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 or which is within the compass of their ideas. 
 When England and America had sent fifty missiona- 
 ries to China, though their labour was for the most 
 part limited to the tranquil expenditure of their 
 salaries, it was determined that, since fifty had 
 failed, the number should be made up to a hun- 
 dred; and when the unwelcome discovery was made 
 that these also were only looking each other in the 
 face, and repeating Mr. Medhurst's lament, " Why 
 are we not successful in conversions V — the only 
 device they could frame was to send out another 
 hundred. 1 It is true that this profuse employment 
 of missionary gentlemen was due to a complex 
 motive. The various sects into which Protestantism 
 is divided are condemned, by a law of their being, 
 to be always running a race with each other, and 
 
 1 " Up to the year 1847, the number of (American) Protestant 
 missionaries, not including females, sent to China, was one hun- 
 dred and sixteen." Scenes in China, by Mrs. Henrietta Shuck, 
 Missionary in China, p. 246. See also Memoirs of American 
 Missionaries, by the Rev. Gavin Struthers ; and Tear-Booh of 
 Missions, by Elijah Hoole. The latter remarks, p. 186, that 
 "the sum of 15,0001." nearly as much as is expended annually 
 in all the Catholic missions of China, " has been contributed 
 for the endowment of a Protestant bishopric." I find no allu- 
 sion by any Protestant writer to the gentleman who holds this 
 office. What does he do ? 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 169 
 
 never getting to the end of it. As soon, therefore, 
 as the London Missionary Society had made a settle- 
 ment at Canton, it was natural that the " Establish- 
 ment" should hurry on the embarkation of its rival 
 emissaries. Then the Presbyterians could not en- 
 dure to leave the field to their hereditary foes ; while 
 the Wesleyans, in their turn, resolved to contend 
 with both, and to have a share in what was going 
 on. And so they were soon to be seen running 
 after one another, in a more or less symmetrical 
 procession, and presenting their several spiritual 
 wares to the notice of the astonished Chinese. 
 Here is a list of them, or at least of a good many 
 of them; and a very singular picture the group 
 must exhibit to the ingenious inhabitants of the 
 Chinese sea-ports. They appear in the following 
 order : 
 
 1. The London Missionary Society. 
 
 2. , 
 
 , Church Missionary ditto. 
 
 3. , 
 
 , General Baptist ditto. 
 
 4. , 
 
 , Presbyterian Free Church ditto 
 
 5. , 
 
 , Methodist ditto. 
 
 6. , 
 
 , Chinese Evangelisation ditto. 
 
 7. , 
 
 , Rhenish ditto. 
 
 8. , 
 
 , German ditto. 
 
 9. , 
 
 , Swedish ditto. 
 
1 70 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 10. The Berlin ditto. 
 
 11. „ American Board of Foreign Missions. 
 
 12. „ American Baptist ditto. 
 
 13. „ American Presbyterian ditto. 
 
 14. „ American Episcopal ditto. 
 
 15. „ American Methodist ditto. 
 
 16. „ American Southern Baptist ditto. 
 
 17. „ American Seventh-Day Baptist ditto. 1 
 Probably by this time the list, ample as it is, has 
 
 been considerably augmented. 2 "We have all classes 
 
 1 Dr. Brown's History of the Propagation of Christianity among 
 the Heathen, vol. iii. p. 370. 
 
 2 Though not much to the advantage of the Chinese. "There 
 is no greater barrier to the spread of the gospel of our Saviour 
 among the heathen than the division and splitting ■which have 
 taken place among the various orders of Christians themselves. 
 Let us ask any intelligent Chinese what he thinks of this, and 
 he will tell us, that these persons cannot be influenced by the 
 same great principle ; but that Europe and America must have 
 as many Christs as China has gods !" Suggestions with regard to 
 employing Medical Practitioners as Missionaries to China, by 
 T. E. Colledge, Esq., H.M.S., p. 33. "There is a great and 
 fatal error to be avoided ; and that, is, the rivalry of religious 
 sects among each other, and the at.tempt to gain followers at the 
 expense of each other's tenets." Bernard's Services of the Ne- 
 mesis. How is the error to be remedied 1 Another Protestant 
 writer, who proclaims all his opinions with rare honesty, says : 
 " It cannot be denied that, in respect of unity, the Protestant 
 communities are in a most awful state, and all for want of 
 
CHRISTIANITY IF CHINA. 171 
 
 of missionaries here," says Mr. Wingrove Cooke in 
 1858, " except only high churchmen, whereof I have 
 met none. 1 The ordained clergy in China often 
 abandon their Prayer-book, and conduct their service 
 in the Presbyterian form. Some of the sectarian 
 ministers carry their Protestantism with a dauntless- 
 ness that makes one start or shiver." Apparently 
 it only makes the Chinese laugh ; and Mr. Cooke 
 tenders " to the Missionary Societies in England and 
 America" a valuable suggestion, which they are not 
 at all likely to receive, when he says, "Ignorant de- 
 claimers in bad Chinese have no success in China." 2 
 
 a tribunal in matters of faith." Journal of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, 
 LL.D., p. 128. There is one such tribunal : does Dr. Wolff 
 suppose there can be two ? 
 
 1 They are probably too conscientious to go there. They 
 know it would take them years to learn the language, and are 
 not generally the kind of men who would accept a salary for 
 doing nothing. Mr. Osmond Tiffany says he went out in a ship 
 with "two missionaries from Oxford, going to enlighten the 
 Chinese on the Thirty-nine Articles." The Canton Chinese, ch. i. 
 p. 9. One can hardly imagine the hopeless perplexity of a Chi- 
 nese trying to understand the difference between High and Low 
 Church Protestantism. 
 
 2 China, ch. xi. p. 176. People will remember Mr. Cooke's 
 anecdote of the Protestant missionary, who, being asked by a 
 mandarin if he would trample on the Cross, answered eagerly : 
 " Certainly I would." Who doubts it 1 
 
1 72 CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 But we may be quite sure that, in spite of their want 
 of success, they will stay there, and that their in- 
 comes will continue to be punctually paid : for, con- 
 sidering what these gentlemen do there, and how 
 entirely satisfied their patient employers and admir- 
 ing patrons are with them, we are led to believe that 
 the popular conception of the objects of a Protestant 
 missionary body is a mistake ; and that, after all, they 
 are simply benevolent societies, supported, like other 
 eleemosynary institutions, by voluntary gifts, and 
 designed only to provide a gratuitous maintenance 
 for the fruitful wives and abundant progeny of an 
 indefinite number of necessitous ministers of all de- 
 nominations. This is their real aim ; and if their 
 benevolence is a good deal more profitable to the 
 missionaries themselves than it is to the heathen, so 
 much the worse for the heathen. 
 
 It seems natural to ask, before we close this 
 chapter, with what feelings Protestants themselves 
 regard the Contrast which so many of their own 
 friends have revealed to us, and whether they are 
 prepared to suggest any explanation of it % This 
 is our final inquiry. 
 
 It appears, then, that the better sort admit, some 
 with frank and hearty sincerity, others only with 
 effort and a more reluctant candour, that the history 
 
CHBISTIANITY ITS CHINA. 173 
 
 of religion in China exhibits the action of two dis- 
 tinct agencies, of which one is Divine, and the other 
 human. But some, as might be expected, prefer to 
 gainsay the success which they cannot themselves 
 attain, and even to revile the apostles by whose 
 labours it has been accomplished. Nor need this 
 surprise us. It was by Beelzebub, said the unbe- 
 lieving Jews, that the Son of God cast out devils : 
 while He Himself warns us, that " the servant is not 
 greater than his Lord." And accordingly we find 
 that some Protestants, — men of station and of cul- 
 tivated minds, incapable of meanness or falsehood in 
 the ordinary commerce of life, but who cherish a 
 supreme aversion for all which is supernatural, and 
 therefore for the mysterious virtues of the Catholic 
 apostle, — are quite prepared with an answer. They 
 deny the success of the work, and they vehemently 
 defame its authors. As this may appear incredible, 
 in the face of such evidence as has been collected in 
 these pages, it becomes necessary to quote their own 
 words. Two or three specimens will suffice. 
 
 Mr. Wells Williams, a gentleman who published 
 in 1848 an elaborate work on China, has the cour- 
 age to say of Catholic converts, "they can hardly 
 be considered as much better than baptized pagans." 
 It is true that he imprudently avows his reason for 
 
1 74 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 thinking so, for he presently adds, " until the confes- 
 sional be abolished, and the worship of the Virgin." 
 Perhaps it did not occur to Mr. Williams that it was 
 the martyred apostles of China who taught them 
 their respect for the confessional, and their reverence 
 for the Mother of God ; and that the first kept their 
 souls free from stain, while the second was only the 
 complement of their belief in the Incarnation. Does 
 he think that Father Ricci and his successors were 
 only " baptized pagans" % But we need not be care- 
 ful to answer a gentleman who, like all his fellows, 
 makes haste to answer himself. " Few missions in 
 pagan countries," he says in one place, " have been 
 more favoured with zealous converts, or their mis- 
 sionaries more aided and countenanced by rich and 
 noble supporters, than the early papal missions to 
 China." Again, speaking of the eighteenth century, 
 he says, "The converts exhibited the greatest fidelity 
 in adhering to them, even at the risk of death." 
 And once more, of the recent events in the kingdom 
 of Annam he speaks as follows : " Many of their 
 converts exhibit the greatest constancy in their pro- 
 fession, suffering persecution, torture, imprisonment, 
 banishment, and death, rather than deny their faith, 
 though every inducement of prevarication and mental 
 reservation was held out to them by the magistrates 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 175 
 
 in order to avoid the necessity of proceeding to ex- 
 treme measures. If suffering the loss of all things 
 is an evidence of piety, many of them have proved 
 their title to it in many ways." 1 Can Mr. Williams 
 suggest any better title? 
 
 Another Protestant writer, the Rev. William Gil- 
 lespie, goes a little further, and says of the Chinese 
 Christians, — " in becoming Papists they give up no- 
 thing"! 2 They would probably be very much obliged 
 to him if he could prove it. Does Mr. Gillespie think 
 it " nothing" to give up cheerfully, for the love of 
 Christ, goods, liberty, and life \ Is he prepared to 
 imitate their example 1 Perhaps he may one day 
 understand, that to sneer at graces which we do not 
 ourselves possess, is odious both in the sight of God 
 and man. 
 
 Mr. Montgomery Martin gives us also his view 
 of the Contrast, and a very notable one it is. The 
 Protestant missionaries are " so very strict," he 
 says, and this is why they make so few converts ! 
 They could easily make a great many if they were 
 as lax in their conditions as the Catholics. How it 
 comes to pass that the few whom they do make 
 are such as we have seen, while thousands of Catho- 
 
 1 The Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. ch. xix. p. 324. 
 
 2 The Land of Sinim, ch. iv. p. 132. 
 
176 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 lies resist every temptation, striving, as the Apostle 
 exhorts, usque ad sanguinem, — this Mr. Martin 
 has discreetly omitted to notice. 1 But he has an- 
 other explanation of the failure of Protestant mis- 
 sions. " The Protestant missionaries will not adopt 
 secret and stealthy means to promote Christianity." 2 
 The Protestant missionaries, as Mr. Martin very well 
 knows, would do just what the Catholics did; only 
 they want courage to imitate them. 3 The. Catholics 
 knew by experience that if they presented themselves 
 openly, and in their European habit, they would be 
 turned back at once ; therefore, in order to deliver 
 
 1 That such men as the Catholic missionaries of China would 
 not " cast pearls before swine," nor commit the sacrilege of con- 
 ferring the sacraments lightly, hardly needs proof. The charge 
 is only a new illustration of the familiar fable of the " Fox and 
 the Grapes,'' a tale with which Mr. Martin is perhaps acquainted. 
 It is useless to give examples of their strictness, of which almost 
 every page in their annals is full ; but see the Letters of Pere le 
 Comte, and the Lettres e'difiantes, tome xvii. p. 317. 
 
 2 China, fyc. vol. ii. p. 490. " Their object was to propagate 
 the Roman Catholic faith. The means they took were not open 
 and direct, but covert and disguised." China, by Peter Auber, 
 ch. ii. p. 47. 
 
 3 " The risks the Catholic missionary would run, and the 
 dangers he would hazard, were greater than those which the 
 Protestant missionary feels himself called upon to encounter." 
 The Cross and the Dragon, fyc. ch. xiv. p. 189. Why? How many 
 of the first Twelve were martyrs? 
 
CHEISTIANITY Iff CHINA. 177 
 
 their divine message, they adopted the Chinese dress, 
 and then boldly confided themselves to the Provi- 
 dence of God. Does Mr. Martin still condemn this 
 necessary precaution % If he does, will he tell us 
 why he has no word of censure for a similar act on 
 the part of a missionary of his own sect % He re- 
 lates with complacency how Mr. Milne, — in 1842, 
 after the war ! — was the only Protestant missionary 
 who " succeeded in travelling in the interior ;" and 
 then tells us, with the astonishing inconsistency of 
 his class, that " to prevent detection, he always hired 
 a boat to himself, so that his expenses amounted to 
 more than two hundred dollars." And as if this were 
 not a sufficient refutation of his own imprudent argu- 
 ment, he declares immediately, that "no effort was 
 made, in any way," by Mr. Milne, " to carry out his 
 objects in coming to this country." Yet he ventures 
 to repeat again his foolish charge, and says with still 
 more emphasis : " Protestant missionaries do not feel 
 justified in practising the deception so constantly 
 made use of by the Catholic priests, and through 
 which alone they succeed so effectually in entering 
 within the barrier, and propagating their tenets in 
 face of the most severe prohibition." 1 It is quite 
 
 1 It is amusing to find that, after all, the Protestant mission- 
 aries did practise " deception," though not with the purpose of 
 
178 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 lawful, then, according to Mr. Martin, to travel for 
 pleasure or amusement in China in such a garb • as 
 to " prevent detection," provided we do not " in any 
 way" reveal our Christianity ; but if the same pre- 
 cautions are taken in order to preach the Gospel, 
 and to find the opportunity of encountering martyr- 
 dom, it is a shameful " deception." And this is all 
 which Protestantism has to say in explanation of the 
 Contrast l 1 
 
 One Protestant, indeed, and I believe only one, 
 
 confronting danger, but of escaping it. Thus Morrison ; "like 
 the Jesuit Fathers in one respect, he assumed in Canton, at first, 
 the Chinese costume, and adopted several Chinese customs. He 
 cultivated a tail of respectable length, allowed his finger-nails to 
 grow," &c. The Gross and the Dragon, ch. xv. p. 209. So also 
 Gutzlaff "adopted the dress, conforming himself, so far as he 
 can consistently do it, to the habits of the Chinese." Missionary 
 Records, ch. iii. p. 60. And again, the Rev. Horatio Southgate ; 
 " his Muhammedan dress shielded him from much of the difficulty 
 and danger of the way, that he must have experienced had he 
 been known as a European." Residence in Persia, by the Eev. 
 Justin Perkins, ch. xix. p. 317. And once more ; " Mr. Milne 
 dressed in a native costume.'' The Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 364. 
 1 Not quite all. Mr. Samuel Kidd, Professor of Chinese at 
 the London University College, determined to surpass all his 
 compeers by one bold effort, goes beyond it, and says, that the 
 Catholic success in China " was gained by pandering to human 
 passions and lusts" ! China, section vii. p. 393. Does this gen- 
 tleman suppose that men are no longer responsible for their 
 
CHBISTIAHITY IN CHINA. 1 79 
 
 has been found to maintain that the success which 
 has attended the presence of his fellows in China 
 has been complete, triumphant, and marvellous. 
 Such a writer as this is surely worth quoting. 
 The London Missionary Society, in their Report for 
 1857, assure their confiding subscribers that they 
 can reckon 363 Protestant Chinese. This devout 
 company does not appear to have betrayed its exist- 
 ence in any other report, and is probably utterly un- 
 known to any body actually residing in China. One 
 would like extremely to make the acquaintance of 
 these 363 gentlemen, if they are indeed to be found 
 within the orbis terrarum ; though, considering the 
 acquisitive and larcenous habits of Protestant con- 
 verts, it might be prudent to be fortified with the 
 presence of a policeman. But the veracious Secre- 
 tary of the London Missionary Society, who probably 
 wrote this pleasant story on some sorrowful day when 
 the funds at his disposal were found to be rapidly 
 
 words 1 or that the law which exacts " an account" of them has 
 been abrogated in his favour ? There was a Kidd, a Baptist 
 missionary, who refused to employ the proper Chinese word 
 for God, from a "fear of identifying the doctrines of the Bible 
 with the system of Popery." Critical Notices of Dr. Morrison's 
 Literary Labowrs, p. 34. If they are not the same individual, 
 they must at least be close kinsmen. 
 
180 CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 diminishing, clenches his statement, as usual, with 
 an appropriate and conclusive text. " So mightily," 
 this jocose person exclaims, " has the Word of God 
 grown and prevailed" ! Protestants have a good deal 
 to answer for in the profane use which they habitu- 
 ally make of Holy Scripture ; but this is an example 
 which was probably never surpassed. 1 
 
 We have seen, then, in all its instructive details, 
 the Contrast which the Chinese missions exhibit ; and 
 we have heard the comments, such as they are, which 
 a certain class of Protestants make upon it. We 
 have seen on which side God is found, with whom 
 His Spirit rests, upon whom His gifts are poured 
 out. There is little need to wait for man's judgment 
 when God has pronounced His own. If the Divine 
 sentence had been promulgated, as of old, " amidst 
 thunderings and lightnings," or by the voice of an 
 Archangel in the streets of one of our crowded cities, 
 or in letters of fire on the wall of the firmament, — it 
 could not more manifestly appear whose labours He 
 
 1 The Keligious Tract Society, though not always free from 
 the same fault, frankly confess, in a work already quoted, that 
 " little has been done" since the death of Morrison, who did no- 
 thing. And another : " Little has been done by missionaries in 
 China except the printing of books." Points about China and 
 theChinese, ch. xxxii. p. 314. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 181 
 
 accepts, or to whom He says, "/ know you not." The 
 past, then, with all its solemn lessons, is revealed to 
 us : but it is still possible to speculate on the future. 1 
 A new era has been inaugurated in this distant land. 
 
 1 The speculation appears to turn mainly upon the success 
 of the Chinese insurrection, which is deemed " a religious move- 
 ment, essentially Protestant Christian in its origin, development, 
 and tendency." Calcutta Review, vol. xxii. p. 102. Mr. Gillespie 
 natters himself that if the rebellion succeeds, " China will be 
 thrown open to the efforts of Protestant missionaries.'' The Land 
 ofSinim, ch. v. p. 237. More accurate information has probably 
 discouraged this cheerful anticipation. " The rebellion is but 
 feebly charged with the spiritual element," says Mr. Kesson ; and 
 though it is true, as Mr. Meadows observes, that " the leader of 
 the rebellion applied for baptism," unfortunately he demanded in 
 the same breath " a monthly support"! The Chinese and their 
 Rebellion, ch. vii. p. 87. Mr. Oxenford assures us, that " there is 
 no reason to suppose that the insurgents are otherwise than ortho- 
 dox Confucians, with a superstructure of spurious Christianity.'' 
 History of the Insurrection in China, by MM. Callery and Yvan, 
 Supplementary chapter, p. 312. Of the sympathy which the Pro- 
 testant missionaries have manifested towards the insurgents, in 
 spite of their crimes and blasphemies, Mr. Wingrove Cooke says, 
 with natural indignation : " We have men here who have gone 
 among them in the same spirit as Samuel went to Saul (?), and 
 who have produced scandal, even among their own body, by 
 urging these ruffians to go forth and kill." China, ch. xi. p. 107. 
 The Protestant missionaries are willing to make alliance even 
 with a bloodthirsty impostor, who calls himself " the Brother of 
 Jesus Christ," rather than remain in their solitude. 
 
182 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 The age of persecution, we are told, is over. As far 
 as China Proper is concerned, its last page has been 
 written, its last victim buried, or cast into the sea, or 
 consumed in the flames. The same thing will per- 
 haps soon be true of Corea, Tong-king, and the whole 
 kingdom of Annam. And already the Protestants 
 lift up their heads, and send messages to one another, 
 and prepare to come forth from their hiding-places. 
 " Persecution is no longer to be feared," cries one 
 of them, as he throws his cap into the air, and an- 
 nounces, with an almost sublime candour, that this 
 is, for such as himself, " a peculiar encouragement" I 1 
 No doubt it is ; and we shall soon see him and his 
 companions, with jaunty and impressive air, accom- 
 panied by a smiling escort of females* and armed 
 with an assortment of texts, walking abroad to take 
 the air in the fertile provinces of China. Two diffi- 
 culties, however, lie in the way of his triumphant 
 progress. He has first to acquire a knowledge of 
 the language. His mere presence, imposing as it is, 
 will hardly suffice to convert the Chinese. He must 
 condescend to speak to them in their own tongue ; 
 and he must speak it accurately, or, as Morrison com- 
 plained, they will be " irreverent," and laugh at him. 
 It is absurd, trivial, and annoying ; but there is no 
 1 The Land of Sinim, ch. v. p. 140. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 183 
 
 help for it. Chinese he must learn, or be content 
 to resume his former secluded and somewhat mono- 
 tonous life. And one of his own class, Mr. David 
 Abeel, tells us, that " those missionaries who have 
 not been toiling for years at the language, are not 
 qualified for such an undertaking." 1 
 
 1 Journal of a Residence in China, ch. vi. p. 120. "The dif- 
 ficulties to be overcome in the Chinese language, except to a 
 man with indomitable spirit and determination, are most try- 
 ing." Recollections of Service in China, by Colonel Arthur Cunyn- 
 hame, ch. xv. p. 208. " It is a great mercy/' says Mr. Malcolm, 
 with amusing candour, " that China should be shut at present. 
 Were it otherwise, Protestants are without persons to send; while 
 Popish priests abound in the East, and would instantly enter in 
 great numbers, making the field worse for us, if possible, than 
 now." Travels in South-eastern Asia, vol. ii. p. 196. Surely Pro- 
 testant missionaries, who have swarmed for nearly fifty years in 
 the Chinese seaports, might by this time have learned the lan- 
 guage, if they are ever to learn it at all 1 Yet we are told that, 
 " excepting a small vocabulary, published by Dr. Morrison in 
 1829, no work of any note has yet been provided for the stu- 
 dents in the dialect of the Chinese literates.'' Chinese Chresto- 
 mathy, by E. C. Bridgman, Introd. It seems impossible even to 
 find an interpreter among them ; and Lord Jocelyn ventured to 
 suggest, in 1851, that " the members of the Eoman Catholic 
 Institution at Macao would be easily induced to furnish, at all 
 times, a certain number of interpreters for the use of Govern- 
 ment." Six Months in China, ch. vi. p. 145. And this would be 
 nothing new. " It was from Father Ripa's foundation that Lord 
 Macartney obtained two interpreters for his embassy." Residence 
 
184 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 But another little difficulty awaits him, and one 
 which will be still harder to overcome. The Chinese 
 are an acute and intelligent people, keen and even 
 sarcastic observers, and apt to call things by their 
 proper names. " The aristocracy of talent, and not 
 of wealth," says Mr. Osmund Tiffany, an American 
 writer, "bears sway in China." And so Mr. Lay 
 tells us, that when " a clerical friend" of his went into 
 a shop with him, and replied to a polite inquiry of 
 the puzzled shopkeeper that he was " a priest," — " A 
 priest," said the Chinaman, " and yet married" I 1 The 
 
 at the Court of Pehin, by Father Ripa ; preface to English edition. 
 " The want of interpreters was very much felt by Captain Her- 
 bert. He repeatedly applied for some one to be sent up to him 
 in that capacity." Bernard's Services of the Nemesis, ch. xix. p. 194. 
 And finally, Mr. Cooke is still asking, in 1858, "Where are the 
 interpreters who were to be supplied by the Bishop's College, an 
 institution that has I believe for some years received 2501. an- 
 nually for this purpose 1 It has never yet turned out one Chinese 
 scholar ;" ch. xxvii. p. 359. If England and America like to sup- 
 port, at vast expense, hundreds of useless " missionaries,'' who 
 would be just as profitable in London or New York, they are 
 rich enough to afford the amusement ; meanwhile, it is suffi- 
 ciently evident that they are not likely to prove very formidable 
 rivals to the true apostles. 
 
 1 The Chinese as they are, ch. ix. p. 100. " Preachers of the 
 Gospel in China have to deal with a teeming population of sharp, 
 clever, intelligent, sceptical, not naturally devout or religious, but 
 
CHRISTIANITY IS CHINA. 185 
 
 Chinese know something of true priests, and have 
 seen them at their work. They are also, at least the 
 majority of them, familiar with the noblest type of 
 Christians, have lived amongst them, or in their 
 neighbourhood, and been edified by their super- 
 natural virtues. They are too good judges to be 
 tricked by a sham, and will easily detect the carica- 
 tures which clumsy impostors may try to palm upon 
 them. More than two hundred years of persecution 
 have produced this good result, amongst others, 
 that the Chinese have learned to know something of 
 the religion of St. Paul, St. Anselm, and St. Francis 
 Xavier. " The very edicts of the emperor," says a 
 Catholic missionary, " and those of the governors of 
 provinces and cities, against Christians and mission- 
 aries, have made the Christian religion known to the 
 whole of China." While another tells us, that it is a 
 common saying of the heathen with respect to them, 
 "they are worthy people, who do harm to no man." 1 
 When the Abbe* Hue lately traversed the whole em- 
 
 often very learned men. We ought not, therefore, to delude 
 ourselves so far as to suppose that the people of China will, as 
 a matter of course, bow to a few scattered emissaries of a more 
 florid complexion." Who is God in China, Shin or Shang-Te ? by 
 the Eev. S. C. Malan, p. 176. 
 1 Annates, tome i. p. 188. 
 
186 CHEISTIANITT IN CHINA. 
 
 pire, the viceroy of the province of Su-tchuen, a cousin 
 of the emperor, told him that he knew the very house 
 in which the Catholic Bishop, Monseigneur Perocheau, 
 was living; but, he added, "I have not disturbed 
 him, because I have convinced myself that he is a 
 virtuous and charitable man." And, in a memorial 
 which the same viceroy addressed to the emperor, 
 he tells his sovereign : " In all the provinces of China 
 there are men who have left their own country to 
 preach religion, and there is not one of them who 
 does not exhort men to do well : they have no other 
 object." 1 
 
 It will not be easy to contend with such apostles 
 
 1 VEmpire Chinois, tome i. ch. ii. pp. 51, 84 ; and ch. vii. 
 p. 333. In this celebrated journey, which Sir John Davis calls 
 "the most daring missionary enterprise on record," the Abb6 
 Hue saw the Chinese Christians every where manifesting openly 
 their faith, and even in many cases attacking "the idols and 
 superstitions of the Bonzes'' before assemblies of the heathen. 
 In the province of Su-tchuen, containing 100,000 Catholics, he 
 saw " a great crowd of Christians going in procession, with ban- 
 ners flying ; ... all wore their rosaries round their necks, threw 
 themselves on their knees, and with one voice demanded our 
 blessing." And the heathen, far from scoffing, only said to one 
 another : " These are the Christians, asking the chiefs of their 
 religion to jcause blessings to descend from heaven ;" ch. vi. 
 p. 270. Every where they seem to have been worthy of their 
 noble pastors. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 187 
 
 as these, who will continue to display the same ad- 
 mirable virtues, and to labour with the same Divine 
 succours. But this consideration, we may be sure, 
 will not deter others of a different class from at- 
 tempting to reap where they have not sown, nor from 
 striving to plant tares amongst the wheat which is 
 now ready for the harvest. " There shall be among 
 you lying teachers," said the Prince of the Apostles, 
 "who shall bring in sects of perdition." 1 We have 
 seen how many such sects there are already in China, 
 and their number will increase. They will scent 
 their prey from afar, and the air will be filled with 
 unclean birds hastening to the feast. " Through 
 covetousness shall they with feigned words make 
 merchandise of" all whom they can corrupt, " speak- 
 ing proud words of vanity, promising them liberty, 
 whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption." 
 Nor will holy fear arrest these men when they 
 reflect, if such as they can ever admit the solemn 
 thought, that in that soil of China, moistened by the 
 blood of saints, " they cannot even dig the founda- 
 tions of their temples without disturbing the bones of 
 our martyrs." Such a reflection will not occur to a 
 man who does not fear to call our Lord's witnesses 
 "baptized pagans," scoffs at His apostles as agents 
 
 1 2 St. Peter ii. 1. 
 
188 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 
 
 of fraud and deceit, — or avows before heaven and 
 earth that he prefers a Mahometan to a Catholic. 
 Such a " missionary" as this will do his work to the 
 end. (Loaded with the gold of England and America, 
 he will gather round him, here and there, the false 
 and the covetous, who will affect to embrace his 
 vague and shadowy religion as long as he buys their 
 adhesion with solid coin. Surrounded by such dis- 
 ciples, and safe from the perils from which he once 
 hid himself in trembling fear, he will now walk with 
 head erect and confident mien, perhaps even invite 
 others with supercilious words to imitate his tardy 
 courage./ We shall see him, loquacious and arro- 
 gant, numbering his converts with complacent air, 
 and bidding the world take note of his success ; a 
 new Saul, clothed in the armour which David dis- 
 dained to wear, and boasting before the armies of 
 Israel that it was he who killed G-oliath. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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